General Worldbuilding

cyan

Of a person, having the set of physical features that includes skin in the blue-green range and eyes with dark sclerae and (usually) white irises. This is a dominant inheritable trait present in every part of the world.

warm/warm-toned

Refers to people who are not cyan.

Politics

UNAT

Union of North American Territories, the country where most of the story is set. It is the third (or second in name) subsequent country that arose in that part of North America after the fall of the United States in the early 20th century B-timeline.

INTACT

International Taskforce for the Conservation of Timelines. An international organization responsible for enforcing time travel law and regulating time travel agencies worldwide.

COATTA

Committee of Officers Against Time Travel Abuse. The law enforcement division of INTACT.

Time Travel Treaty

A treaty establishing a set of laws for time travel, and proposing they be enforced by INTACT. Most existing countries signed this in 2100.

Time Bureau

A general name for the national time travel regulatory agencies which exist in many countries. They answer both to their respective national governments and to INTACT.

Whereverbourg

A placeholder name for a small country in what is now part of France. Has a capitalist economy. Known for being the only country in the world where human reproductive cloning is legal and regulated.

HCI

The Human Cloning Institute (French: L’institut du clonage humain). The government organization which oversees cloning in Whereverbourg. Despite its name, it also oversees non-human and non-reproductive cloning.

societal stagnation

The common reactionary belief that society has made no progress since the end of the Turbulence.

dangerous speech

A blanket term for speech the government (usually the UNAT government, but other governments have similar laws) considers dangerous and may therefore censor. Theoretically just for hate speech and things that promote violence.

Time

Timeline Collapse

The thing that happened on June 7, 2059, where two timelines collided in timespace and became one, causing disastrous consequences.

A-Timeline

The timeline that was destroyed in the Timeline Collapse.

B-Timeline

The timeline that the A-timeline crashed into during the Collapse.

C-Timeline

The combined timeline: the timeline that resulted from the Collapse.

Turbulence

The period of global political and social turmoil in the decades immediately following the Collapse. There is no set definition of which years it encompasses, but it probably ended around the 2090s.

timespace

The metaphysical space in which timelines exist.

Timescope

A device that allows one to “view” timespace and the timelines therein. The user does not view timespace directly, but sees the energy emitted by timelines translated into a viewable image.

divergence

A point in a specific timeline where it splits into multiple timelines.

divergence detector

A device that detects timeline divergences. It tells the user how many timelines have broken off from a certain moment, and can be set to display the number for larger or shorter periods of time.

timeline drift

The movement of timelines through timespace. Proven to exist, but scientists don’t know for sure what causes it.

remnants

Pieces of the A-Timeline’s history and physical culture that remained in the C-Timeline after the Collapse.

time crime

A violation of time travel law, usually referring to the Time Travel Treaty. Examples of time crime include: unauthorized time/timeline travel, purposefully creating a new timeline, transporting someone else through time without authorization, harboring a time fugitive, etc.

time tourism

Time travel for non-serious reasons. Explicitly banned by the Time Travel Treaty.

time liberation

The political movement aiming to deregulate time travel and timeline hopping. Goals may include trans-timeline communication, legal time tourism, or timeline resource extraction.

timeline exploitation

Typically refers to the extraction of resources from one timeline for use by another, with a negative connotation.

ABCentrism

The belief that the A-timeline, B-timeline, and C-timeline are the only important, or at least the most important, timelines. ABCentric people consider events in other timelines to be unimportant or somehow less real than A-, B- and C-timeline events. The term is used by people critical of this outlook.

Timeline Collapse

Collapsist

Relating to the belief that the Collapse was a good thing, with the connotation of being pro-death and destruction, rather than engaging in apologism or downplaying what occurred. Usually refers to the idea that the Collapse was a supernaturally ordained event. A Collapsist is also a noun for someone who believes in this.

cowsob

Derived from the acronym CWSB (Collapse Wasn’t So Bad). A Collapse apologist; a person who believes the Collapse ultimately did more good than bad. Derogatory slang, reclaimed by Collapse apologists.

chater

Collapse + hater. A derogatory slang term used by Collapse apologists to describe people they consider “brainwashed”, who think billions of people losing their home forever and hundreds of millions of people dying was “bad actually 🤓”.

WWWB

Where Would We Be (if the Collapse hadn’t happened). An acronym cowsobs like to spam as a “gotcha”, asking what would have happened to the A-Timeline and their descendants if the Collapse hadn’t occurred.

whatinsteadism

A term that typifies the questions asked by cowsobs about the Collapse. “What would have happened to them (A-Timeline people) instead?” Those engaging in whatinsteadism assert that if not for the Collapse, the A-Timeline residents would have suffered a worse fate, since their world was so fucked up. Whatinsteadism implies that the Collapse was in effect saving the A-Timeline residents, since they supposedly had no future in their own world.

Edgesplanation

A conspiracy theory created by Roy Edgerton in September 2164. The theory proposes that the Collapse was purposefully engineered by fascist A-Timeline governments, and that these governments planned to seize control of the resulting timeline during the Turbulence, but were unable and so remain underground, surveilling, waiting to take power.

Media

Terrafilm Underground

The independent filmmaking scene originating in the Midwestern UNAT, primarily in Chicago, beginning in the late 2130s.

Terrorfilm Underground

The horror offshoot of the original Terrafilm Underground scene.

cave flick

A type of atmospheric experimental film associated with the Terrafilm Underground. Cave flicks typically feature isolated settings, opaque plots, and vivid surrealist imagery.

argyle drama

A subgenre of hyperlink cinema characterized by historical settings or dated imagery, whose multiple story lines generally overlap slightly but do not coalesce as in a traditional hyperlink film. This term was coined by Patricia Preamble in 2137 to describe the work of Joey Lakomy.

office film

A short-lived genre that flourished in the 2090s and was exclusively set in office environments. Office films generally dealt with worker’s issues in the post-Collapse era in a humorous way.

distant past nostalgia

The phenomenon of societal/media obsession with the pre-Collapse past, especially the A-timeline.

Technology

note/noat/noter

A device like a more advanced pager, which a lot of people carry around. It can be programmed to notify the user of lots of different things, but most people use it to alert them of phone calls and new messages and posts on various online platforms.

dial

A specific type of home telephone which incorporates more advanced features than a basic phone, but is not a “smart” device.

liif/leaf

I'm not sure what this is.

autopaint panel

It paints a picture. Automatically.

Slang

tonic

Cool. Awesome. Based.

bwer

Someone capable of only black and white thinking; someone incapable of nuance, especially in regards to historical events.

hoper

Someone perceived to be too optimistic in the face of tragedy.