What are the Major Temporal Powers?
The Major Temporal Powers consists of three different governments in three different timelines, commonly referred to as Commonwealth, Legacy, and InterAct. You are from one of those, you hopefully know which.
You’ll also see the term TEA, which is short for ‘temporal enforcement agency’, a generic way to refer to the three different time travel agencies, simply because we don’t want to say (Restricted Operations Division/Office of Legacy Management/Temporal Asset Security and Protection, whichever is applicable in the timeline we’re talking about) every time we talk about them.
All the temporal enforcement agencies were created at different points in time. The Restricted Operations Division (Or, rather, the corporate research project operated by time travelers that turned into it.) was created in 1908. The Office of Legacy Management (Originally ‘Legacy Bureau’, then ‘Office of Legacy Control’) was given authority to monitor time in 1967, or 1963, depending on how you count. The Temporal Asset Security and Protection (Which has managed to keep the same name and thus not confuse everyone.) was created in 2024.
If you are wondering why the naming of the timelines is inconsistent, with one timeline named after the government, another named after the temporal enforcement agency, and another named after the entire security force and not the temporal enforcement agency under it, there is no formal reason. Timelines generally don’t name themselves, that is just the names that happened to stick from other timelines as they first interacted with each other. Everyone just started out calling themselves ‘us’.
Temporal war
All these timelines became aware of each other around five years into their existence. Roughly ~1913 Commonwealth, ~1969 Legacy, and ~2032 InterAct. No one knows how the MTPs found the coordinates to each other, considering the emptiness in between. Someone, lost literally to history, clearly found another timeline. Twice. And probably people in those timelines found them, and traced them back. That is one of those mysteries that is lost in bad recordkeeping and overwritten threads
And, as happens when you run across people with different ideologies, clandestine meddling happened. Grudges started, a cold war started sliding into place.
Cool down
There was 5-10 years of the temporal war, depending on your frame of reference, with the first part being somewhat serious, and a near stop by the end as things cools down. Luckily, sanity prevailed. Agreements were formed to not to try to change things. That everyone had jurisdiction over their own timeline, and should not be operating in other places. But if you’re trying to negotiate with someone, you have to have a before and after. You need a way to sequence conversations.
And they had run into a fairly serious problem of temporal refugees, people who didn’t exist anymore and couldn’t remain for too long in one place without reality erasing them.
Luckily, the timelines also had discovered Timeline Zero. Again, no one is quick sure how, it appears to been located independently by all timelines. They already had all established at least some level of research operations on Timeline Zero, all of which were taking advantage of a timeline with a single thread to try to figure things out. And…refugees could exist there also. Some already did, unofficially.
And they learned the others knew about that also.
Comparison Timeline
| Timeline | Commonwealth | Legacy | InterAct |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notes Found | - | 1943 | 2006 |
| Proof | 1903 (1937) | 1959 | 2023 |
| TEA formed | 1908 | 1963 (1967) | 2024 |
| Controllable | 1908 (?) | 1964 (1967) | 2028 |
| Other timelines | ~1913 | ~1969 | ~2032 |
| Haven Founding | 1920 | 1980 | 2040 |
| Current date | 1951 | 2011 | 2071 |
| Signatory | Commonwealth of All People (CAP) | United States of America (US) | Trade Accord/Undivided Concord (TA/UC) |
| Branch | Operational Standing Committee (Standing) | Department of Energy (DoE) | Inter-Accord Enforcement Action (InterAct) |
| TEA | Restricted Operations Division (Res Ops) | Office of Legacy Management (OLM) | Temporal Asset Security and Protection (TASP) |
We list ‘proof’ of time travel instead of ‘discovery’ because the person who discovered time travel by first creating a state of resonating temporal flux in all three timelines was Nikola Tesla at his Wardenclyffe lab in Shoreham, Long Island, New York, somewhere around 11:13 PM on July 14, 1903. And he only realized what he had done somewhere around 32 years later in 1935, eight years before he died. In the Commonwealth timeline, he put that into practice, whereas his notes about this were discovered either shortly after his death in Legacy, or decades later in InterAct. So the question is ‘When were they able to create and shape temporal flux consistently?’, which was the point it became clear that time travel could be targeted, as opposed to the jerry-rigging to somehow sync up with his own experiment 34 years prior that Tesla somehow did in Commonwealth and no one understands.
We define time travel as being controllable when they can take a trip and return successfully, which also requires them to understand threads.
Project Zero
So the MTPs created the joint endeavor call ‘Project Zero’, with sole authority over that timeline, and they shut all existing projects in that timeline down. They withdrew their operations, which had been in their ‘present’ (So ~1919, ~1979, and ~2039 by that point) and left the timeline alone for a thousand years, to make sure it completely settled into a single thread.
And then, January 1st, 3000, Project Zero broke ground on called Central Point, on the island called Key West, as part of the Haven concept. And the official groundbreaking of that marks the start of Haven Year 0 (Technically 3000), which was deliberately also January 1st, 1920, 1980, and 2040, making everything sync up nicely and everyone able to firmly operate with a knowledge that if two timelines decide on something, everyone after that point will agree that happened.
The idea of using Timeline Zero for temporal refugees was there from the start, hence the name Haven Zero, and a lot of them immediately relocated there unofficially, even before they were ‘supposed to’. Before that, they generally just had to keep skipping around trying to do as little changes as possible, knowing that staying in a single thread for too long would actually destabilize that, so they would have to jump again.
The formal refugee system of registration and food shipments was set up piecemeal over the next few years, and has been fully in place since 4 HY.
At the time of writing this, it’s 31 years later. So it’s 31 Haven Year (3031 Common Era) in Haven dating, 1951 CE in Commonwealth, 2011 CE in Legacy, and 2071 CE in InterAct.
Commonwealth
The signatory is Commonwealth of All People, commonly referred to as the Commonwealth or the CAP, pronounced like the word ‘cap’. Their temporal enforcement agency is the Restricted Operations Division, aka, ‘Res Ops’, and is part of the Operational Standing Committee.
The Commonwealth of All People is technically not a government, it is a committee that is comprised of delegates appointed by a) the state governments, b) a federation of unions called the Commonwealth Union, c) other unaffiliated unions, d) various special interest groups that essentially function as political parties, e) a few unique businesses such as Cooperative Research and Commonwealth Next although that was phased out as they were incorporated into CAP, and e) some delegates elected at-large by the remaining population. Over 20% of the citizens in Commonwealth of All People are members of the Commonwealth Union.
This CAP committee appoints and fully controls an Operational Standing Committee, which is the formal government. However, large parts of what would normally be considered a government, such as voting for elected officials to represent them and making long-term policy, exist outside of the OSC in CAP. Meanwhile, the legal system has almost entirely devolved onto the state level, but to the extent it is national, the CAP appoints judges to hear disputes.
We are aware that this will seem incredibly confusing to anyone not from there, it often is confusing to people who live there, and it usually make more senses for people from other timelines to think of the CAP as the legislature and a tiny judicial branch, and the Operational Standing Committee as the executive branch.
And this is only what is true now. Restricted Operations Division was originally a subdivision of Cooperative Research, which redeveloped time travel, and the original signatory to the MTP treaty was Commonwealth Next, a corporation, which eventually ended up creating a framework for a government after the succession of several states from the USA.
Legacy
The signatory is the United States of America, commonly referred to as America or the US or the USA. Their temporal enforcement agency is the Office of Legacy Management, aka, ‘Legacy’, and is part of the Department of Energy.
‘The United States of America’ is familiar to all of you. The United States of America still exists in InterAct, and still exists in Commonwealth, although depending on what point you’re from it may control less territory or have some fairly large changes.
Legacy essentially has two governments at all locations. It has the Federal one, the United States of America, which operates the Office of Legacy Management. But also all their territory is carved up into states, which the other two timeline understand as a general concept, but visitors from InterAct often don’t understand how much power that states have in the US. Basically all laws you deal with will be state laws, and people are arrested and charged under the authority of the state, not the Federal government. But a lot of rights exist at the Federal level, which that government forces state governments to follow, the Federal level has ultimate authority. People from other timelines that get entangled in the legal system in Legacy often find it extremely confusing as to what level things should be happening.
InterAct
The signatory is Trade Accord/Undivided Concord, commonly referred to as ‘the TA/UC’, which is pronounced as the Greek letter Tau with a K at the end, or almost like the mineral ‘talc’. Their temporal enforcement agency is Temporal Asset Security and Protection, aka ‘TASP’, and is part of Inter-Accord Enforcement Action, aka, InterAct, which is the general ‘law enforcement’.
TA/UC is a merger of two different NGO (non-government organizations), the Inter-Atlantic Trade Accords with the Undivided Concord of North American, which were two agreements by various corporations that created to handle interactions between themselves and their employees. With the merger in 2026, the signatories to TA/UC collectively own over 86% of all private property from Mexico to Canada, and regulate it via their private rules and an enforcement arm called ‘Inter-Accord Enforcement Action’, or InterAct. All three governments in the territory TA/UC mostly own, the Dominion of Canada, the United States of America, and the Estados Unidos Mexicanos, still technically exist as governments, they just exercise very little control over anything. TA/UC is also expanding into Central America.
People from other timelines likely will find it easier to think of TA/UC as the government, and should know that the ‘demerits’ they give have much larger repercussions for most people there than criminal punishments for violating the law, so much so that the government often doesn’t bother enforcing criminal law. It’s left entirely in the hands of TA/UC and their administrative punishments.
Ironically, this means that the non-TASP parts of InterAct, the part that enforces the general rules and do not know about time travel, often are completely flummoxed by time travelers. Time travelers do not care about threats of losing their TA/UC signatory housing or their TA/UC signatory employment or their access to TA/UC signatory stores for food. Legally, InterAct has very little real options if you are outside their carefully constructed interlocking contracts, they cannot even legally touch you to remove you from property they have jurisdiction over. They would have to contact the actual law enforcement, which any particular InterAct agent likely has no idea how to do without sending it up the chain of command, and actual law enforcement is incredibly understaffed regardless.
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