2012 Pt.3

It was suddenly mid 2013, and people were confused but went right back to work, finding projects they were just beginning the night before advanced, new project they claimed they never thought of nearly completed, and sometimes pages and pages of mysterious theory in their own handwriting. Nearly complete invasion plans were thrown out out of fear that it was a bug trick. The astronomers and physicists were either at a loss to explain the months lost or desperately claiming responsibility for advanced instruments that had appeared over night in their labs.

Strangely, no one really knew the last day they remembered before "the jump," only that it was sometime in mid-February. The matter was disturbing and eventually the NEU ordered everyone to simply put the matter of what happened aside and get sorted out what was missing and what was new.

Their were casualties, family photographs of people who had never worn a uniform were discovered tacked to veterans memorials. One woman had awoken to the sight of herself on television giving an interview on her dead daughter. A daughter she claimed to have never know. Her husband was dead, and her remaining daughter was space side, and according to the NEU office where her enlistment records were discovered, in combat.

One scientist, in cooperation with an author whose books were classified and one of his unpublished manuscripts destroyed, claimed that they were in fact not who they remember, something to do with two parallel universes merging and the one they believed themselves to be from had been annihilated. Fear not though, they had never actually lived there, and somehow vauge memories were transfered. In the spirit of giving in and moving on, NEU declared this explantion correct and declared all further expenditure of effort towards the discovery of a cause and in fact mention of "the jump" in a non-official capacity to be forbidden. They had their own quiet program investigating, but over all they had bigger fish to fry.

Mars was to be invaded, and fleets were forming up in free space and around the moon. The earth's trailing Tin Pot was gone, and records showed it had vanished mysteriously after launching towards Jupiter, a manuver that could leave it anywhere, engines silent, hidding in the vast, cold depths of space.