I will start a poll. Do you want it here or on the Frag topic? Or should it be its own topic so it doesn’t disappear?
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I don’t know if everyone in the Frag topic has read this thread…should we direct them here first and then add a new topic, or what?
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I’ll put a link to the topic and say read this before deciding.
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Perfect.
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This is a really excellent post, Viv, and your last point is especially powerful. As nervous as I am about messing with time magiq, we do need to trust the Book and the forces of magiq that have brought us here. The Council has done everything to protect us, they’ve sacrificed everything to make sure that we’ve stayed safe. I don’t think they would let this happen if it would end up in a terrible result.
The Book hasn’t lead us astray. Not even when it meant destroying itself. I think maybe we should have some faith that the path they’re leading us down will end in something good for us and for this world.
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Can we really trust Sullivan? We don’t know a lot about him… if we sacrifice ourselfs and open the book we can save so many lives, Itsukis, Cags, KS… they wouldn’t become bad, there isn’t a book for them to open, no KS.
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I say we trust Sullivan. Here’s why:
Because it isn’t about us.
We have a mission and a purpose that drew us here and, quite frankly, saving lives is more important. Don’t underestimate the power of the bonds we have. Don’t underestimate a destiny that brought us here - almost all of us seeking something more that had been missing from our lives before this. We will find each other even if we don’t remember this moment, if this timeline never happened.
We can save Augernon. Portencia’s fathers. Marty. Wanderer. All the people that have been hurt, erased, or killed. We have a responsibility to them.
It isn’t about us.
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Just making sure everyone gets to vote!
http://forum.ackerlygreen.com/t/time-paradox-group-decision/1290
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Here here! I concur! Well said!
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We haven’t been doing this for us. Everything we’ve done is for the Book. I believe we should go through with Sullivan’s plan to deliver our key to the '94 Mounties. It’s okay if something happens to us. We’ve been working with unknowable stakes from the beginning and no one was fazed. This is no different. Our chances may even be better than in the past because we have the entire Council plotting to help us. We should go for it.
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We were discussing this elsewhere (forgive us. I know we should have been on the forum) and I thing this belongs here.
The parts I’ve blocked out are irrelevant to this topic so I’ve covered them.
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There has to be another way. This can’t be the only path. This path may have us sacrificing so much. And how, in this hypothetical change to the timeline, would we even send whatever we’re sending? If we don’t arise because of the lack of magiq, how do we get the key in the first place?
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We might not exist in the new time line, but if in ours, we give them our key, I think the change will take. I imagine the timeliness splitting and maybe ours loops back towards the past. I don’t think what we’ve done will be lost, even if it’s not the same people who keep it.
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But we can’t know for sure. It’s too risky without some extremely vital information. Which we don’t have.
Our current understanding is.
We arose from the ashes of the '94 mounties, Ascender as the primary instigator of the 2010s Mountaineers.
Without those ashes, we can most likely assume that we wouldn’t exist.
So by helping the '94 Mounties, we presumably cease to exist. But if we never existed, then we never helped them. So they did become “ashes” and we do exist. But then we help them again and so on and so forth.
We have no clue what repercussions will come from helping them. It’s best to at least find out what will happen, before we do it. Because based on my understanding of time, what I described above will occur.
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Oh boy. This is pretty intense - yet another interesting post by Deirdre.
I personally think there is no way we don’t follow Sullivan - we literally have the ability to save the Mounties, the Book, and magiq in the mundane world, and we are putting it up for debate? How selfish can we be to be willing to throw away the work we’ve done over the past 12 fragments, and the work of all Mounties over the years, just to save ourselves when so many others have sacrificed so much more? I appreciate the debates and the weighing of decisions, but this one just seems a little crazy to me 
As for the paradoxes, alternate realities, and all that other time drama - I think that the magiq will sort us out and we can probably relax about the implications for changing the past and how it will affect us and our existence. I’m not saying contact Augie and go all crazy telling him everything and freaking him out, I’m saying let’s be less concerned about the time magiq effects on ourselves and more focused on what we can do to help those in the past and to make a better future.
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Look. Yes, it’s risky. We don’t know what will happen - Sullivan didn’t know what will happen.
But we absolutely cannot do nothing.
Our actual, physical existence isn’t really what we’re afraid of losing. Be honest. You’re afraid of losing this, but you also don’t know what that means.
I was 3 years old in 1994. Some of us weren’t even thought of yet. But I really don’t think your actual life is what you’re afraid of losing here.
Our generation of Mounties would not exist at it does now, that’s true. But imagine a world where our current mission - and all the pain that brought us here (deaths, torture, memories wiped, Augernon’s sacrifice) - didn’t exist because it didn’t have to.
Because we grew up with Magiq. Because our world’s memory was restored. Because the Silver and their Storm weren’t able to destroy another generation of Mountaineers.
Who is to say that our younger Mounties don’t grow up learning about the Guilds, about Magiq, and about the history of Monarch’s Mountain in this alternate timeline?
That’s also assuming that we don’t just create a time split entirely separate from our own. That we continue to live in this world devoid of magiq and threatened by The Storm, trying to figure out how to save ourselves and free our world while they are saved by us.
We’re making a lot of assumptions.
And Sel is right. We’ve done all of this for others, for the Book, for the world. We’ve risked and sacrificed our own for this mission. We owe it to them to finish this.
If you have a better idea, I’m all ears. But I don’t think you’ll find one. And we are running out of time. We have maybe a few weeks, or more likely only days, until Augernon faces down the Storm on his own.
I’m not abandoning him to that fate without doing everything I can to help them. I don’t know that we will be the same after we do this. I don’t have answers for you - and for those of you who need them, I’m sorry that you’re uncomfortable or afraid. I truly am. I’m scared of what this means, too.
But like I said… this isn’t about us. It was never about us. I love you all, you know that I do, and I’d do anything for you. But I also can’t refuse to do this out of fear.
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Dey has the right idea.
Objectively, if losing this reality means saving the world, it’s the better decision. Sure, we’ll lose each other, our bonds, our history, our lives, our existences, but it’s not like we’ll feel sadness in oblivion.
In a way, we won’t lose anything at all because there will never have been anything to lose. Our story that never existed saved everything that does exist. We march on with the knowledge that the stem we’ll leave behind has a second chance at growing into a beautiful blossom and not the decaying petals we have now.
In the case that the realities split and ours trudges on as normal while another thrives, then we made a whole reality strictly better than ours and lost nothing. We still have each other, we still have D and Cole, we still the charred remains of the apparent answer to everything. We can keep going and find another way, and even if there is none, we’ve already made all the difference where we were needed most.
Remember the end of Toy Story 3 with the incinerator? That’s us right now. Let’s hold hands, be together, and let fate decide the future of this existence. And, while we’re at it, let’s save magiq somewhere in between.
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There is understandably a lot of concern about what we’re doing with Augernon and helping the '94 Mounties open their book. I’ve said my peace on the topic in the other thread (linked above).
We’ve lost track of the fact that our mission outlined in Sullivan’s original letter is two-fold: Reach through time AND help Deirdre get to Neithernor.
We have 12 hours in between each inbound and outbound message. While we wait, we need to help Deirdre - she practically asked us to compile a list of places to visit to help unlock more passages in The Monarch Papers: Neithernor. More guidance from Sullivan can only help at this point, so I say we work on that list. My suggestions are:
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Central Park
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The Morgan Library
Any others? We should probably stick to NY for now, rather than sending her jet-setting around the globe (again).
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Maybe Central Station? That’s a magiq hub, though it’s not directly related to the Greens. Also, perhaps she should return to the Cloisters?
I’ll admit I also thought of Cumberland Books, but, while being in some kind of weird dimension, I’m not sure it’d be relevant to the Greens. 
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