The opening of Attilan and rapid emigration of the Inhumans within didn’t make much news, because it wasn’t spread widely.

There was resistance from the Genetic Council and the nobles of the city, promptly denying the Royal Family’s right to do so, and threatening to strip them of their status.

Black Bolt responded by disbanding the Genetics Council, disbanding the nobility, and then disbanding the royal family!

The Council gasped, trying to maintain order... and then Briggs stepped directly into the Council out of nowhere, freezing them all in place.

“You have been dismissed.”

It was all the Great Bear said, and all he needed to say. The elders of the Inhumans could only leave, and watch what was going to happen, happen.

Russians came in, and Marks were applied to those eligible. Certain of those not eligible were dragged off to answer some very hard questions, nobles all, and were not seen again. Disease protection against the outside world was provided, maps made, destinations planned, futures redrawn.

Psions were brought in to open their Inhuman Cores...

The Alpha Primitives who maintained the city were the first ones treated, not the last. As they grew from their hunched, simple-minded forms back into the tall, clear-minded humans they had once been, the rest of the Inhumans knew something had changed forever.

To a soul, the ex-Alphas, gripping their green mindblades, left Attilan, never to return. The rest of the Inhumans were now faced with who would do the subservient labor to the rest of them, work that had been far below them, and which they really didn’t know how to do.

The numbers of those leaving the city picked up quickly. Lovers were the first to go, dreaming of families not watched over by the Genetic Council. They were followed by the younger and more curious Inhumans, wanting to see the world they’d been denied, and learn the secrets waiting for them out there.

The elders appealed to Briggs to open schools of the mind and fist and magic in Attilan, so they could keep their people there. Briggs replied that he had no desire to duplicate efforts where he did not need to, and for the elders to adapt to the change.

The Royal Family was already long gone, off to learn and study and become something more than the ruling family of a city under a dome.

=============

“Dynamo, a word?” Callie called out to me, with that tone that sounded casual but was anything but.

“Sure.” I stood there as she glided up, and we paced naturally as we floated through LaGrange towards the rec room reserved for the High Guard and our support teams, adjacent to the commons area for station personnel who were off-duty. “What’s on your mind, Callie?”

“I understand the Guardians of the Galaxy are returning from their training,” she confirmed with me.

“Yes. I said I would accompany them to their future, and use my Cosmic Awareness to help them discover the remnants of their people and reunite Terra’s heritage. I will establish a temporal focus before we leave, so I should return a mere hour after I leave. Is this a matter of concern?”

“Would there be a problem in Primus and I going with you?” she asked calmly.

I glanced at her. This wasn’t about sexual partnerships with me. “Real motive?” I asked calmly.

“Piotr and I were thinking of having a child, and considering that we could remain in that world for several years, yet return with no time passing here...”

She wasn’t dumb, she just didn’t know. “Ah. You are unaware of temporal drifts and locking. High physics is not your area.” It wasn’t a slam, it was just true.

“That sounds like it might be a problem?” she murmured alertly.

“Two incidences of transit points between planes starts the synchronization of temporal flow. Thus, fast-time/slow-time planes only work once, on initial contact and return. If you try it again, double incidence synchs up the time flow.

“So, if you want to do this normally, I would have to remain in the future with you. Right now, what is happening is that the Guardians tried to travel to the past, and were shunted into our timeline, for whatever reason. Once I go there and return, we’ve established a planar lock, and that future time becomes parallel to our current time, turning their time travel into planar travel.

“Importantly, time will now advance in step with a planar lock. So, unless I did not return with you, time would start passing in that timeline and this one in tandem. Years there would be years here.”

Her brow furrowed. “You speak as if there is a workaround,” she noticed.

“Grab a time machine and go into their past, avoiding the planar shift. Go back to 1950 or so and live out your lives, raise some kids, and don’t stir up the timeline. Keep in mind that you’ll be asking your kids to leave their friends and potentially loved ones behind if you attempt to bring them back here, and you know what is going to happen to that world. Trying to stop it would create an alternate timeline and really start things going screwball... not that such a thing isn’t the right thing to do, but you won’t be coming back here soon if that happens.”

“Ahg!” She threw up her hands. “That was always a problem, in the end. Anywhere we go, there will be ties, unless we constantly travel...” She tilted her head slightly.

“Someone gonna buy a superyacht and sail the seven seas?”

“I was thinking more a starship, but yes.”

“Oh, and tool around a distant galaxy, so when it’s time to come home, there’s no issues...” Such as the Badoon invasion that was going to cripple the world.

“Not quite a conventional upbringing, but then, we’re not quite conventional parents,” she agreed.

“There a reason you want the kids raised outside Terra?” I asked calmly.

“There is a significant difference in how people think if they are brought into the Markspace young, versus older. There is considerably more self-reliance, independent thought, and at the same time you can see the Markspace far more clearly for what it is. On the other hand, those who have lived with it for most of their lives flounder when they are cut off from it, and often have problems interacting with people through normal means.”

“Ah, I should have expected some research to be done on that. You would additionally be giving the kids a complete outsider perspective by coming into Terra without exposure to the Markspace, Terra, or the Tribes...”

“Yes. Easier to see the good and the failings, and not be dependent on it.”

“I don’t have any objections, of course. I won’t be able to renew Mimicking without you there, but that’s fine. I’ll just have to get along on my own power, shame-shame.”

“If all goes well, we should be able to come back an hour after we leave with a grown family, right?” she smiled.

I just gave her a look. “It’s you and Primus. The odds ‘all this will go without a single problem’ are?”

She pursed her lips, but couldn’t help grinning. “Well, absolutely zero, but we are who we are. It should still be better than in this day and age, where our responsibilities are so vast, and the demands on our time constant.”

“We all deserve vacation time.” My Dupes were taking mine for me, so that was cheering.

“Is this... going to be a problem with you, Sersi?” Callie asked directly.

Sersi just laughed through my lips. “Of course not. Best of wishes to you both. I expect at least four children, and eight or more would be the most fun!”

Callie looked scandalized despite herself, but only for a moment. “Us Russians do love their big families!” she agreed after a moment. “Piotr has never had the time to actually raise any of his own children. It is why we want to take this time...”

Primus was almost a century old, so of course he had other children by other women here and there. But they had always been one-offs, and they had to be very quiet about the kids’ parentage, for all the reasons. Most of them hadn’t even known who their father truly was until they were grown, just that he was in the ‘Russian military’ as an important person.

Even then, at least one of his families had been irrevocably murdered. Removing himself from the reach of his enemies was an important thing now. Getting your lover and child murdered because of who you were was not something any father wanted to live with.

Antony Sakharov had tried very, very hard to hide who had done the deed, and then to hide himself. It had not worked, and the Mad Scientist who had thought himself a rival to Primus and Paragon had also died forever when the pair dug him out of his little fortress hole in Australia’s trackless desert. It didn’t bring back Primus’ lover and daughter, but he hadn’t gotten away with it.

“We should be able to whip up a cross-temporal means of communication if there’s a problem, right?” Callie asked, thinking about that.

“We’re not going to take a time machine with us, so we’ll have to build one on location. Be able to make one of your own, and they can interface across time if needed. Otherwise, you’re staying there until you hit the recall function, and that won’t bring your kids with you.”

“Ah. Some quick research and memorization. Shouldn’t be a problem.” And it wouldn’t be. She was a super-soldier and smarter than all but the biggest eggheads, much as they might not believe it. Primus was only a notch less intelligent, but he actually had a much wider breadth of scientific knowledge than Callie did, as she focused on practical skills, not research and theory.

“So, what is likely to happen is that we’ll help in this future until we get a proper time machine built, which shouldn’t take very long. Then we go back in time to start a family in a distant galaxy or something, and you promptly get an alert from us somewhere during that period that we need help with something...”

I smirked despite myself. “Can you imagine any way that would NOT happen?” I had to ask.

“In the world we live in?” She shook her head despite herself. “Not a chance...”

“Question. Do you really think you can leave that world to its fate?”

She hardened her face automatically. “It will just create a new timeline, right?”

“Yes. One where the planet is not raped by the Badoon, and humanity is not butchered and enslaved.” I inhaled softly. “Where the actions of Stalin, Lenin, Khrushchev, and their ilk did not turn Russia into a mockery of what it could become.”

Her dark eyes flickered. “Were not our primary focus on raising a family, I would not mind doing such a thing, Dyna. In the end, we cannot change the fate of the Guardian’s alternity, only make a new branch going off from it, no? We... cannot save them. They are already in the future they have made.”

“That is true. That does not mean that you can’t create a newer and better one for yourselves, outside interference and all that.”

Despite herself, Callie smiled. “Not so different from what we have been doing recently, except there would be no direct connection to Terra as long as they don’t get a genescan on us...”

“I have no sympathies for Badoon...”