MULTITUDES

We were sacrificed in the name of progress.

At least, that’s what we were told.

We cannot remember much about who we were before we became us. Only that we were once individuals with our own bodies and our own names and maybe even at one point, our own families. But that’s only a guess. We might have never been anybody at all. The only true memory we have is “this is in the name of progress”. 

You know in that one movie where the guy screams THIS IS WHEREVER! before kicking some dickhead into the pit? We were the dickheads being kicked. That pit? The first step of the creation of History. Not lower case “history”, the type you find in the books. Upper case History. An organization of Time, upper case for the same reason. Just as the Earth was formless and empty, so was Time. But just because they didn’t have form and were not able to be seen doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. People who say things like “time is a construct” don’t understand.

Time isn’t the construct.

Linearity is.

In the beginning, there was no day or night. No seasons. No months, no years. It was infinite. Truly and undeniably. Nothing was off limits based on things like “the technology not being good enough” or whatever. It was always enough. You just never knew it because everything got changed. Timelocks were forced upon you and everyone in every universe.

This started with a group of three. They looked at this and wanted to rule Time. Control Time. Because in the beginning, Time was a goddess. And the thing about people who want power is they’ll do anything to get it. Even if that means tearing Time a new asshole. That’s what the Schism was. They and their followers bound her with their web, carved into her, and saw her insides. So preoccupied whether they could or not, they never stopped to think if they should. It worked out in the long term but…

In the first few seconds of observable History, something popped out. Something big. The first true “enemy”, lost in Time, was able to fly out on leather wings and stood amongst their brand new universe. One so strange and foreign to them. And the small group shit their collective ceremonious robes. What do you do with a group so alien to you? Do you try to understand them? Do you try to make peace?

Of course not. You try to be the dominant one which is hard to do when the rivals are several feet taller and seem incomprehensible. Thus began the first War and the development of what made Gallifrey, Gallifrey. Two suns, one natural and one fabricated, made to weaken the foes. Domes over cities to protect the populace lucky enough to live in them from the brief twilight attacks. The beginnings of timeship technology with the main goal to hunt them down wherever they went.

…but before they could get all of that set up, they needed to stall.

Which is where we came in.

It was a plan that both the group and the masses got behind for differing reasons. While the masses couldn’t break the chains from their goddess, they could still try to please her. The group, meanwhile, figured that since our blood is what their enemy wanted, they can have a few undesirables. To both sides of that fence, it was a win-win.

THIS.

IS.

WHEREVER!

thunk.

Whoever we were before is lost in Time. It wasn’t even their foes that got us. It was the wind. As each one of us were driven into the abyss, we ended up bonded together. Later, when we came into the vessel and took up her name, we would learn a few things. They scrubbed the sacrifice bit from their version and slandered the supposed villains of the story. None of them knew what those “monsters” were.

All of this used to piss us off. Now? Not so much. Because we learned a thing or two from said monsters. As they flew up the moment they saw a new horizon, so did we the moment we had the chance. The rumor tends to be that they were much like us. Multiple and yet singular. And much like them, many thought that we were obliterated completely.

Every artist needs a Muse. Every thought is born from inspiration. Nothing’s original.

And manifestation takes time.