Timeline

One date in the Liminal universe is fixed: 14:22 EST on 18 June 1993, when the Sector 7 carrier-wave reactor entered critical resonance. Everything else is placed by what it depends on. The records count shifts, projections, assignments and maintenance cycles, and they do not give years.

The eras below are the ones the games site and Beyond Dawn's Observation Station use. The games on one timeline shows which game is set in each.

1. Before the incident

   Undated. The records place these before 14:22 or give no time at all.

   1. Before the facility

      The site is selected

      The sampling point is there first. Liminal pours a single containment ring around it, small and unlit. That ring is the ring, the original works, older than every drawing that references it.

   2. Sector 7 is built upward

      Each expansion of Sector 7 is added above the last, wider and further from the ring, until the top levels hold administration, records and personnel who never go below Grade 3. Liminal makes the original survey of the site and does not publish it.

   3. The city sleeps

      Above the facility, the city sleeps. Liminal Transit runs its loop all night, and the custodial fleet carries out the dawn sweep before every first light. A closed session approves the word hibernation for the public notices.

   4. Freight goes down

      A recurring order for LIMINAL SUBGRADE descends from Coldharbor interchange for eleven minutes with nobody riding it. Ruth from survey asks for a signature and gets the spare carbon.

   5. Scavengers work the night

      Scavengers salvage between the sweeps and report to the shelter operator by radio. The Night Circuit asks for every district's service to be acknowledged in one night.

2. The Sector 7 incident

   18 June 1993 · 14:22 EST

   The one fixed date in the universe. Record INC-0618.

   1. 14:22 EST

      Critical resonance

      The carrier-wave reactor enters critical resonance during the Last Shift. Sector 7 ceases to persist as ordinary matter and survives as an addressable lattice, and RIFT-01 opens around the reactor chamber. See the Sector 7 incident.

   2. 14:22 onward

      The bridge runs both ways

      Project T-Link stops being one-way. Sensations, injuries and foreign memories begin to write back into projected Operators. Staff transponders keep answering from inside the lattice, and Liminal cannot say whether the staff survived.

   3. A worker reaches the receiver station

      The maintenance worker escapes on foot to the receiver station, outside the containment field, and goes back in by projection.

3. During the incident

   After 14:22. The records count projections and assignments, never dates, so this order is the order of dependence.

   1. Containment runs

      Operators are projected to the ring to calibrate Transmit Nodes and climb five floors to the top hatch. At least one gets out. See Containment runs.

   2. Research bay four

      Liminal Corp examines returned samples through T-Link at Research bay four: Sample 09, then the Capillary Stone and the Echo Glass. Receiver C-12 and landing L-14 are repaired there.

   3. The Unlisted Return

      From the receiver station an Operator investigates freight recorded as arriving without ever being dispatched. See the Unlisted Return.

   4. The armed response

      Liminal authorises armed response at the perimeter of RIFT-01. Armed operatives insert at the ring, climb into the plant and put down what steps out of the rifts. The records do not date it beyond placing it after 14:22. See the armed response.

   5. The perimeter orders

      The first armed projection goes in alone, from the ring to the hatch of the plant, under five orders from Operations. See the perimeter orders.

4. Aftermath

   After an operative got out.

   1. The site is judged recoverable

      With a confirmed survivor on file, somebody upstairs decides Sector 7 can be recovered, and hires the contractors to go in from the top. See Recovery contracts.

5. Possible futures

   Branches. Repairs made in earlier eras change which versions can be reached, and none is the fixed ending.

   1. The Wasteland

      The trams have stopped, the lit floor is dark and the dead walk the streets. The contact works the radio from the old shelter. See the Wasteland and Service repairs.