One of the first things that the people of Durus voted on for the Solar
Democratic Republic was what to do about the Time Crevice that Escher
Bradley was trapped in for a hundred and eighty years. It was too dangerous
to leave lying around, even with guards protecting people from it. There was
no reason for something like that to exist, so it was vital that they find
some way of getting rid of it. Of course, any attempt at destroying it could
have devastating consequences, and completely backfire on whoever was
unlucky enough to be assigned the task. If they were going to do this, it
would have to be by fighting fire with fire, using paramount powers
against it, once and for all. The first thing they needed to do was study
it, not only to understand its properties, but also to know its range.
Obviously, anyone who walked through it would start experiencing time at a
much slower rate, but where exactly did that start, and where did it end? If
they dug a tunnel from five meters away, when would it start happening for
them too? Was it the rock? Some kind of temporal gas inside the crevice. An
invisible man in there who was just controlling the whole thing for kicks
and giggles? After all this research, they came up with a few options. There
were some paramounts who had the ability to control the flow of time,
and could potentially alter it for the Time Crevice. Unfortunately, none of
them was successful. They could hold a time lock for a period of realtime,
but unless they actively remained there, it would always snap back to the
way it was, so that wasn’t a long-term solution. Perhaps they could simply
bury it, so that no one could accidentally end up in there anyway. Well,
that would take quite a long time, because remember that one second for the
crevice was one day everywhere else. It took weeks to make any noticeable
progress, and years until completion. Then someone had a bright idea to rid
themselves of the problem forever.
A former president of the Democratic Republic suggested that they remove the
crevice altogether. There were definitely paramounts powerful enough
to rip it out of the ground, and banish it from the surface of the planet,
at least when working in tandem. To be safe, they could even remove a
kilometer diameter of land along with it, and hey, free crater. The risk was
great, but if they could jettison the entire thing into space, they wouldn’t
have to worry about it anymore. Fixing the time discrepancy or burying the
crevice would have been fine to do once they covered the logistics.
Something like this, however, couldn’t be decided by just the people
involved. All Durune had to have a say in the matter, so they put it on the
ballot for the 2205 elections, to make sure everyone had a voice. The great
thing about this, which was one of many this democracy enjoyed, was that no
one was fighting too hard one way or the other. Everyone could agree that
they wanted to do what was best for Durus, and if that meant going back to
the drawing board, then that was what they would do. Earthan governments
experienced a lot of infighting, but not Durus; not anymore. There was only
one side now. The ballot measure passed, not with unanimous votes, but not
by a small margin either. The necessary paramounts started working
together immediately, to make sure they could perform this amazing feat in
one go. They had never apported anything quite this large before, so it was
important that they took their time, and got it right. Once they were ready
and confident, they got into position, took out the huge chunk of land, and
sent it into outerspace, in a fairly random direction. They didn’t come out
of it unscathed. A lot of them ended up with psychic nosebleeds, and one
developed a chronic migraine condition. She was okay with it, though,
because she felt they had saved a lot of lives, or at least a major hassle
that might have been. Sadly, they didn’t consider all of the angles, and
that chunk of rock would one day come back to bite them in the ass. It
wouldn’t be for decades, but it would ultimately change everything about how
Durus operated, and potentially destroy all they had worked for since the
beginning.
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