The Worlds Outside

    Not much is known about the worlds outside our own, other than the fact that they exist. We know about the world of mind, the world of anti-magic, and the four elemental worlds, but it's also known that there are eleven guardians and that there can be no more than one guardian per world. So there must be at least eleven other worlds other than the one earth lives in. 

   Guardians are strange beings, somewhere between gods and mortals. They can't naturally die, but they can be killed by someone with powerful weapons or magic. They can't shape the world with a thought, but their magic is the most powerful magic in the Multiverse. There's only one of them per world, but I've heard it said that a million or more may exist in each of the worlds they own.

   No one knows much beyond that, because Earth doesn't have a Guardian, nor are there any throughout the rest of the Universe. All the ones we know of live in other Universes, and we don't know if they each have a Universe to themselves or they split between one another. We don't even know most of their names. But we know that they're there, and many believe that they protect us the way the gods of old did. 

The Earth of the Past

     I've heard many people say that my only "real" job is to keep us from going back to "the good old days". Back when we didn't have magic, to be clear. There are way too many people alive, right now, in the 31st century, claiming that life was better in the 23rd, 22nd or even the 21st centuries. I can kind of understand being excited about going back to the 23rd century, it's when we found hard evidence that we lived in a multiverse after all. Heck, I even understand wanting to go back to the 22nd century. We did lose physics, but so much technological advancement happened that it's hard not to wish that you could have been alive to see it. But the 21st? That's when we lost the past for good. 

   It's not something we like to dwell on. Most historians agree that the 21st century, when religion dwindled to nothing and we started dreaming of changing physics the way we changed clothes, was the beginning of the dark age of humanity. This was the century that ended with society being little more than a distant dream, and where the population was less than a quarter of what it had been during its height. The only glorious thing about this century was the fall of the Joylan Empire, which does loom large for a good reason, but that only took up a small part near the end of that century. There's also the part that no one wants to talk about; defeating the Joylans meant taking responsibility for our role as mages, a conflict that defined all of the Next century and well beyond. I don't think, even now, that we've fully come to terms with what that means. All we've ever done is turn the other planets of our solar system into farms so we have more food for people. It's better now than it was a Millennium ago, we have almost three billion people now, but we're nowhere near as glorious as we once were. 

   The problem is that throughout the 21st and 22nd centuries we destroyed much of our biosphere. It's recovering, but not quickly enough to outpace our destructive tendencies. There used to be discussions about the possibility of moving our population off of earth to another planet, but those stalled when it became obvious that the only way to do that in a cost effective way was to use magic, which we'd vowed never to do. So we held ourselves back more and more as time went by, the grand cities that defined us being little more than fantasy at this point. Yet people can't stop wanting more. We have makeup and fine clothes now, most houses still have central heating and running water, and food is plentiful if not satiating. So why can't we go back to the good old days, when money ran free and you could become a god if you wanted to?

    We could do that, if we were willing to give up on the one thing that redeems us in my eyes. The problem is that that isn't what we want. The forgotten moral of the Joylans story is that they thought we all wanted to be at the top of our hierarchy, because that's what we kept insisting. They, and we, couldn't see the infinite for what it was, but unlike them we knew that it was there. We knew that power, true power, didn't exist at the top, so the true race was a balancing act between being rich enough to have social clout while not so rich you became separated from the Infinite and lost your ability to connect with your fellow men, a problem the Joylans didn't have. Overcoming them meant that Terrance had to convince everyone that seeking power was never the right call, the right call was to listen to what people wanted and to keep them on your side, for only then could you achieve your goal. "If you want to succeed, never look at your score card." was said to be his favorite saying. 

    I sometimes worry we're forgetting that lesson, the reason we left the old world and it's fascination with "power" and money behind for good. Haven't people heard the theory that the reason the world fell apart was that there was an enormous, unseen schism between the world we wanted and the world we actually had? That the reason the world fell apart was that we tore it to pieces out of rage and helplessness? The core tenant of both Infinitelism and Universalism is that our world is only held together because we believe in it, and that the right and moral thing to do is to never, ever, reject the power you hold. Why are we so eager to abandon morality? 

The Joylan Empire

     There was a time when all Earth had was history, when all the stories ever told had happened, somewhere far away. Now, A thousand years from the moment that physics, our foundation, failed us, most of what we have are stories. Did they happen? Are they real? We don't know, for anything we dream about now becomes real. 

   The one thing we all agree happened, though it happened before physics collapsed, is the fall of the Joylan Empire. An Empire we weren't a part of, because it wasn't even a part of our Universe. They came from the world of the mind, where mind magic rules. I'm told that their world is run not based on strength or cleverness, but based on who can force people to obey them. 

    The story goes that a thousand years ago, they sense power growing in our world. Upon investigation, they saw a world that was very similar to their own, with a strong upper class, and a weak middle and lower class. Naturally, they thought that we were developing the ability to use mind magic, and that we would try and take over the moment we found out about their existence. So they infiltrated us, and used their magic to try and destroy us. 

    What they didn't know was that Terrance Gregson, Earth's first ruler, awaited them. He wasn't at the top of society, or even anywhere in the middle. He was at the bottom, a loser who lived with his mother, whose sole contribution was angry, stream of consciousness blog posts. He was the one who first saw the outsiders for what they were, and he was the one who united Earth against the threat. 

    What he knew that the Joylan's didn't was that the reason they sensed power coming from Earth, in the age before mages, wasn't because there were any mind mages. Or Elemental mages, space-time mages, or Anti-Mages. What Earth had was a growing problem, physics being torn apart by the different views of those who lived on its surface. This would wreak havoc one day, but to him it was an opportunity to crush the Joylans for good. He worked and planned for decades, and when the stars aligned he ripped the world apart, in such a way that Joylan was sucked into the Infinite, never to be seen again. 

    Nobody in the Mind World remembers the empire, for once it was sucked into the Infinite it ceased to be a place and became merely an idea. Nobody on Earth knows much about it either. We don't know who the Joylan's were, we only know they fought us, and even the reason why gets debated from time to time. While the most common theory is the one that says they wanted to stop us from colonizing them, some claim they knew going in that we weren't mind mages, and they were attempting to stop a more evil form of magic from emerging and taking control of the world. Others claim they just wanted slaves, and we seemed like easy pickings without a guardian or any magic to protect us. Still others say the Joylan empire never existed, it was just a myth built by Earth over the thousand years since our fall, to make us feel better about ourselves.

   As Earth's ruler, I don't know what really happened, but I do know that officially Joylan never died. It still exists in the mind Universe, on top of where Earth now is. Anyone visiting "Joylan" would see it as we imagine it to look, an appearance with changes drastically at least once every few decades. About all we can agree on is that it was around earth's size, with over fifteen billion people in its heyday, and that they were far more technologically advanced then we were, because their physics didn't fail the same way that ours did. Strangely, although Joylan of the past supposedly sat at the center of multiple trade routes, no one much visits. Those who do leave shortly after visiting. I don't know why, but I suspect that since we aren't Mind Mages by nature, the illusion spell we're using is incomplete enough that anybody visiting can see right through it into the Infinite. I've brought this up a few times, but Dr. Tilreh and his cronies say that it doesn't matter, so long as they can't see earth. 

   I don't think he's right. I think that it's only a matter of time before the Guardian of Mind investigates. I'm honestly stunned she's ignored this for as long as she has. I'm told the Guardians are masters of all types of magic, including the lost form, soul magic, yet she doesn't seem to realize that a small planet in another Universe is tricking someone who ought to be the undisputed master of Trickery. Rose says that she's doesn't think we're all that much of a threat to her. She's right, but if I were in her position that would be my excuse to get rid of the problem before it becomes too big to take care of. I think the truth is that one of her advisors warned her that attacking us would put her in danger, though I honestly don't know how. It sounds crazy, and maybe it is, but we are the world that made Terrance Gregson after all.

Europa

    It's my eighteenth birthday, and as usual no one remembered it. You would think I'd be used to it by now, but some part of me still hurts. I'm not really sure why.

   I'm on the hill that overlooks the remains of the work camp that used to be here. The one run by the world government. My friends and I shut it down. If anyone knew of my involvement, I might have ended up a hero amongst mages, a villain amongst the elite. Or maybe the other way around. 

   Strange that people consider Europa a land of magic. I've been to all of earth's seven continents, and all of them feel about as real as this place. Yet this is the continent everyone abandoned in the chaos a thousand years ago, when we were still dealing with the horrible realization that we were in charge of our future. 

   Not that long ago there were many abandoned cities and towns. Paris, Berlin, London, and so many others. Destroyed not by bombs or plague but by the simple passage of time. Not even ruins remain of them now, only the stones of churches and castles, crumbling against the sky. You can't even visit unless you work for the government. They say it isn't safe. 

   Nothing is safe anymore. Not with them in charge. I used to think they had our best interest at heart, but traveling across the multiverse made it clear to me that they believe in magic, but only so long as they can turn it to their interests. They don't want anyone to know their manipulating the world for their own benefit. No one knows what they're doing, and nobody could fight them if they did know. 

  Only the Europans are safe, for we are the ones with magic on our side. 

  The sun is setting. It's truly magnificent, a reminder that no matter how hard we try, we can't extinguish beauty from the world. They say that, during the twenty-second century, they were so worried about running out of resources that they banned the use of make-up and made it illegal to wear fine clothing. When it became clear that the laws of physics weren't as solid as they thought they were, after they got over the initial shock, they used magic to build a bridge between the earth and other planets, to help with terraforming and resource extraction. People complained of course, said we were going against the natural order of things, but nothing about our world was ever "natural" to begin with. It was always being changed, and it was better that it was in the hands of those who could predict what would happen, should they take the time to look into the future. 

    The earth has mostly healed, or so they say. Mars and Venus are much more polluted, and people worry that they won't recover quickly since life was never established there. Some scientists are using "special technology" (magic, but for laypeople), to establish ecosystems and build more space for us. As they point out, we only have so many billions of years left before our star dies, so we should start working on a backup plan. 

    That Backup Plan can wait. I have to keep us safe, from insiders and outsiders. To do that, I need to overthrow the government.  Not something I thought I'd say when I became Earth's ruler almost ten years ago, but it's more true than ever right now. 

History

    I hate history. How can we have a subject dedicated to what "actually" happened when nobody knows what's going on anymore? We haven't known what's real for almost a thousand years now, we don't even have reliable physics any more. Most people don't think we had reliable physics in the first place, we were just really good at convincing ourselves that we did. 

    I know everything that happened after about 2075 or so. I have to, it's part of my job. I know how, after our amazing failure at stopping global warming, we rebuilt everything by scratch, piece at a time. It was slow, messy, and took centuries, but we pulled it off. Because the human race is amazing and nothing can defeat us. Unfortunately, even before global warming destroyed everything people were beginning to notice that when you looked at things at a large enough scale, things didn’t add up. Even back in 2020 people were theorizing that there was no such thing as an objectively real world, it was all subjective in the eyes of its inhabitants. We found our first evidence of that in 2110, it was confirmed in 2403 and everything we've done since then has been to try and keep our world real while figuring out what laws magic runs by, if it even runs by laws. I suppose I should be grateful that we at least have actual scientist studying magic now, and the discipline isn't run by random people writing novels anymore. Though even back when it was the rules were oddly consistent. Given how people react when reality fails, I guess it isn't very surprising. 

   We have no way of knowing what, if anything, was going on before the 2000's. We have written records, but they aren't reliable enough for anyone to get any real data from. The problem is that the further back into the past you attempt to look, the messier it becomes. It turns out that little changes can lead to huge outcomes, but it also turns out that sometimes changing something seemingly massive can have little to no impact on history at all. Most of our records could be justified by any number of steps from a certain point, and we have no way of knowing what actually happened. 

    That doesn’t stop people from judging you if you don't "know" what happened in the 1800's or something. Like what people thought back then had any impact on today. Well, I guess the ancestors are the reason we're stuck with a dating system that doesn't make any sense. No one I know worships Christianity any more. A lot of people respect it, but most agree that by the twenty-first century it was showing its age, and by the twenty-second there were better, more consistent belief systems to use. Okay, I guess it's a stretch to call them "better", since there are still a lot of jerks who worship the Universe, just as they used to worship god. Also there's the fact that while we have a solution to the problem of evil, nobody knows how to deal with the problem of Utopia. I get that conflict can make a world stronger, but it can also tear a world apart, so why make it impossible for people to have a "perfect" world if that's what they want? 

    Rose doesn't know much about this. She's only about four, and the local schools aren't as good as the one I went to back in America. I haven't been to school in three years, but I study at home whenever I can. The people in charge would love for me to miss an obvious fact that everyone knows so they can justify killing me off and letting somebody else rule over earth, but I won't let that happen. I can't argue that they would probably do a better job, but I will argue that it's better for everyone not to have the jerks in charge of Earth's government have control of earth's ruler. None of them know how magic works, and none of them understand the danger it's putting us in.