Sonic and Elise stood before the white flame of Solaris. It flickered gently, alone and peaceful in its transparent bubble.
"This is where it all began," Elise said. "Who knew such a tiny flame could bring such devastation?" She walked up to the flame, dismissing the protective shield surrounding it. She took it into her hands, holding the flame carefully in her palms.
"If we put out this flame, Solaris will never exist," Elise said with a hint of sorrow. "And then we'll never have to worry about the Flames of Disaster…" Elise looked to Sonic, uncertain. "Right?"
Sonic nodded.
"But our encounter…" Elise turned her whole body in Sonic's direction. "You and I… will never meet." The thought of never seeing her friend again weighed on Elise. "It will never have happened."
"I…" Elise choked up, a tear streaming down her face. "To tell the truth— I don't care what happens to the world!" she wailed, clutching the flame as she sobbed.
"Elise," Sonic said. Her sobs ceased for a moment, ears trained on Sonic's voice.
"Just smile," Sonic offered in the gentlest, most genuine voice he could possibly provide at that moment.
Elise's lip quivered as she struggled to do as Sonic told her. But she eventually succeeded, a sad smile adorning her face. She and Sonic both nodded as they knew what to do then. She took a deep breath…
.
.
.
"We'll end it! Burn! Burn to ashes!" Eggman yelled madly, forcing the Time Eater to release a giant fireball at the two hedgehogs.
The rallying cries of Sonic's friends encouraged him and his younger self to combine their powers and defeat the evil once and for all. They spun rapidly, digging into the fireball with pure determination and brute force, until they finally pierced not just the fireball, but the Time Eater as well!
Everything faded to white as Sonic found himself back in the grassy field where he held his party. A chili dog fell from the sky; Sonic grabbed it just in time. He munched on it. "Still warm." He chuckled. "Time travel!"
Little Sonic scampered over to Big Sonic, skidding to a stop on the grass. They turned when they heard a noise, and one by one, Sonic's friends appeared in a flash of light around the table, almost exactly where they were before. Once they realized everything was back to normal, they cheered, celebrating their victory.
"I'll admit… you weren't half-bad, Sonic," Knuckles begrudgingly complimented.
"Half-bad!? Are you kidding? He was all-great!" Amy exclaimed, shoving Knuckles harshly into a tree.
In the distance, Tails and Little Tails chatted about such-and-such. "Wow, he collects how many? Where does he keep all those gold rings?" Little Tails questioned in astonishment.
"You know what? I don't know. I keep forgetting to ask," Big Tails said in response.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
"Hey, wasn't winter supposed to start here a few months ago?"
"Huh?" Tails looks up from his Miles Electric.
"Winter," Sonic repeats. "Snow, cold, hot cocoa? We're in the Northern hemisphere, and it's December, isn't it? The snowfall usually peaks around this time of year."
Tails gives Sonic a puzzling look. "I don't ever remember it ever snowing in Hill Top Zone..."
Now it's Sonic's turn to be puzzled. "What? Seriously? C'mon, Tails, Hill Top's the tallest mountain range on Westside Island! It's usually covered in snow for most of the year!"
Tails shakes his head. "I think you might be confusing Hill Top for Ice Cap."
"No way! You know how much of a geography wiz I am, Tails, no way I'd confuse Hill Top for Ice Cap," Sonic insists. "I swear... double check what month it is. I'm pretty sure it's December."
"Uh... okay," Tails says, giving Sonic a weird look. He opens the calendar on his Miles Electric and shows it to Sonic.
Sonic leans in to read the calendar. For some reason, he can't. The month name is completely garbled. "What's with the weird new font you're using for the Miles Electric? I can't read the month's name."
"I haven't installed any new fonts. Everything's the same."
"No it's not."
"Yes it is! It says XXXX."
"...What? Didn't catch that buddy."
"XXXX. Today is XXXX XXth, XXXX."
"What?? I can't make out a word you're saying."
Tails looks at Sonic with increasing concern. "Sonic? Are you okay?"
Sonic blinks, then shakes his head. "Yeah, I'm fine. Let's just drop it."
.
They say he was gone for 6 months, but it doesn't feel like that at all. Sonic feels he was trapped in that cell for a week at most. Maybe Infinite had time dilation powers they didn't know about? He could manipulate reality with his Phantom Ruby illusions, after all.
But that's not the only thing that doesn't line up. After 6 months, Sonic would've missed several birthdays. Charmy's, Blaze's, Rouge's... yet they haven't aged a day. When he asks, they give him the exact age they were before. "But how can you turn 6/14/18 again on your birthday? That doesn't make any sense." They just give him weird looks after that, so he drops it.
He tries to ignore the inconsistencies in the timeline, but they're so loud and distracting they bother him anyway. Flowers remain in perpetual bloom. Trees don't grow taller or suffer from any weathering. Critters don't make new homes. It used to rain in Green Hill. Even without Eggman sucking out all its resources, how is it not a desert by now?
Sonic is lying back on a flowerbed in a garden when he spots Silver. Suddenly, an idea rings in his head. He quickly gets up, rushing breathlessly to the time traveler.
"Silver! Silver, you deal with time stuff, right?"
"Uh, yeah," Silver replies awkwardly.
"Okay. Awesome. Cool. So there's been weird stuff going on the past few weeks… months? Year? Years?? I don't even know anymore. But I swear, I feel like I'm living in some kind of Peter Pan purgatory or something! Calendars are incomprehensible. It's been ambiguously summer for who knows how long. We have birthdays but no one ages. If I don't figure out how to get the world spinning again, nothing's ever going to change! Do you know how boring that would be? A world that doesn't change or grow?" Sonic suddenly realizes how loony he must sound. "I'm not going crazy, right? Please tell me I'm not going crazy."
Silver thinks about everything Sonic's said. "Well… I don't think it's anything I've ever dealt with before, but… I'll help you in any way I can, Sonic!"
"Good. Great. Of course you will. Thanks, Silver."
They stand around awkwardly for exactly 2.84 seconds.
"So, uh… you gonna do your timey-wimey thing, or…?"
"Actually…" Silver scratches the back of his head. "I don't really have any control over when and where I go… usually a portal appears whenever I need to go back to the past and fix something but I don't think one's gonna appear anytime s— oh hey there's one!"
Silver points at the mysterious portal no further than 10 feet away from them, swirling ominously.
"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go!" Sonic says.
"Wait, but— ack!"
Sonic impulsively drags Silver through the portal and into a… library?
The library is huge. Thousands of books, binders, folders, scrolls, and parchment line the shelves and float around in the middle of the air, gliding across the room. The library doesn't only hold literary mediums, either. There are VHS tapes, film wheels, DVDs, CDs, video game cartridges, video game consoles, TVs, and PCs. But most notably are the hundreds of clocks covering every inch of the room, ticking and tocking away.
In fact, there seems to be basically every clock in existence in this place. Alarm clocks, grandfather clocks, cuckoo clocks, analog clocks, digital clocks, radio clocks, atomic clocks, quartz clocks, water clocks, cartel clocks, turret clocks, tide clocks, flip clocks, lighthouse clocks, stopwatches, wristwatches, chronometer watches, time balls, time bells, pendulums, sundials, moondials— Just. So. Many. Clocks. All ticking and tocking and ticking and tocking and ticking and tocking on their own time, their own rhythm.
The cacophony of tick-tocks and cuckoo whistles and bell chimes and alarm shrills going off all at once is overwhelming to the poor ears of Sonic and Silver. They cover their ears, pressing on them as hard as they can to block out the noise.
Sonic looks around and spots a figure sitting at a desk, reading one of the many, many books the library has to offer. Upon closer inspection, Sonic realizes they look just like Silver! But upon even closer inspection, he notices many things about the stranger that don't look like Silver at all.
Other Silver is much fatter and much fluffier than the Silver accompanying Sonic right now. Other Silver also wears a large robe, has long, detailed, vein-like cyan stripes going down his quills, two large fennec-like ears that replace two of the leaves in Silver's maple bangs, and a cute little button nose.
And last, but absolutely not least, Other Silver has three giant fish-like eyes with psychedelic irises that spiral with gold and cyan, swirling into white pupils with black outlines. They're framed with funky-looking, gold-rimmed, three-lensed glasses.
Other Silver blinks, looking up from their book, and those hypnotic eyes make direct contact with Sonic's own, staring with a gaze that has known thousands upon thousands upon thousands of lifetimes, who has seen more in a few seconds than Sonic could ever see in a few centuries, whose sage-like presence exists in stark contrast to the bright-eyed naivete of the Silver he has fought gods, saved futures, and shared cake with.
"...Oh. Hello." Other Silver greets Sonic and Silver as if they were a pair of cats who decide to bother their owner while they work. Immediately their voice makes all the clocks go still, their pendulums suspending mid-swing.
"Hi," Sonic greets back breathlessly.
A long, thick silence stretches over Sonic, Silver, and Other Silver.
Finally, Silver is the first speak up. "Who… are you?" he asks.
"I'm Silver the Hedgehog," Other Silver replies simply.
"But I'm Silver the Hedgehog," Silver says, pointing to himself.
"And so am I. We are both Silver the Hedgehog. More specifically, two Silver the Hedgehog variants hailing from different universes."
"Wait, other universe? You mean there's other me's?" Silver exclaims.
"Millions of other Silvers. Billions, even. There are billions of other Sonics, too, and Tailses, and Knuckleses, and Amys, and Shadows, Rouges, Creams, Charmies… so on, so forth," Other Silver says matter-of-factly.
"You may call me Silver the Timekeeper, or just Timekeeper for short. I'm a Silver who, upon defeating Solaris, gained the god's time powers, so I can control time now." Timekeeper's three eyes squint in thought. "Sort of. A more accurate description would be that I can explore pretty much any and every universe, every alternate timeline, all the different paths you could've taken. I can't really interact with or change any of them, though. Only observe and catalog."
Timekeeper bookmarks their book, then closes it, setting it down on their desk. They rise from their seat, floating over to Sonic and Silver. "So," they begin. "How'd you two get here? My office isn't exactly the most accessible place in the multiverse."
"We, uh… walked through a portal," Silver explains.
"A portal?" Timekeeper echoes, quirking their eyebrow. "Was it an intentionally made portal or did you just happen to find one and decided to walk through it?"
"...the second one."
Timekeeper's eyebrow relaxes itself into knowing placidity. "I see. Classic young Silver and Sonic impulsivity…" They huff one thin laugh. "What was your goal?"
"Our timeline is broken," Sonic says. "Or… static, I guess. Everything's stopped. No one ages, plants don't grow, the seasons don't change… I've been living the same year over and over again. It's driving me nuts! You seem to know a lot about time, Timekeeper. Do you think you can help us?"
Timekeeper looks over the other two hedgehogs pensively. "I'll see what I can do. Hold still. I need to find your clock."
Timekeeper's two eyes close while their third eye lights up with an ethereal glow, microscopic gears spinning and spiraling around within multi-layered iris as it scans Sonic and Silver.
After a brief moment, Timekeeper's eyes return to their natural state. "No way…" they say, their eyelids nearly touching with how wide they are. "You're… you're from an alpha universe. And not just any alpha universe, the source alpha universe. The one that started it all."
"Alpha… source… universe…?" Silver questions slowly.
"Why do you think alternate universes are called that?" Timekeeper asks. "They need a universe to derive from. A source. All universes are connected to a universe, and then those universes are connected to another universe, and then they all eventually lead up to the source universe. These are known as alpha universes. They are the primary sources for other universes to derive from."
"To make this easier to visualize, imagine a really big lake. Events and decisions, or ‘rivers,' flow from that lake, and then those rivers split into streams (more events/decisions), and then some of those streams get a metaphorical beaver dam built on them so they soon become lakes, aka whole new universes, and then rivers flow out of those lakes and make more streams and brooks and creeks and ponds and puddles and… so on, so forth. Regardless of how many lakes are made or how big they get, they all still trace back to one big mother lake. The original source," Timekeeper explains.
Sonic and Silver do their best to absorb the heaping ladle-fuls of new information. Sonic seems to be understanding everything slightly better than Silver.
"Now, your multiverse is funky. You have multiple alpha universes. Multiple primary sources to draw from! But even those A-verses draw from an A-verse, the big one at the tippy-top that feeds all the other universes in this multiverse. I like to call it the Alpha Origin, since it's your multiverse's primary primary source. That's where you're from," Timekeeper says, pointing at Sonic and Silver. "You're pure as pure can be."
"What this means—" Timekeeper finally begins to conclude. "—is that I know exactly what your problem is. Come with me."
Timekeeper grabs Sonic and Silver by the hands with no warning and swiftly drags the two hedgehogs down the endless hallways of the archive.
They finally stop at a gigantic clock tower, at least 100 feet high— the biggest clock Sonic and Silver had seen at that point.
"This—" Timekeeper gestures to the massive clock. "—is your lake." They sigh heavily. "I've been trying to fix it for years, but no matter how hard I try, how subtly I make the changes, it never gets fixed! It just splits off into another beta universe— oh Sweet Solaris I haven't even begun to explain beta universes."
Timekeeper shakes their head. "Whatever. I'll explain that later."
"You said you know what's wrong with my world. So what's wrong with it? And how can we fix it?" Sonic asks.
"I'm afraid it's not that simple, but I'll show you anyway."
Timekeeper turns the entire tower around with their telekinesis and cracks open the back-door. They all shuffle inside and are greeted with a chaotic sprawl of pistons, gears, and cogs of various shapes and sizes, clinging and clanging and ticking and tocking and bang! bang! bang!ing erratically. There are clocks within clocks, many of them tarnished, cracked, and out of sync.
"Would you look at this mess!" Timekeeper turns again to the other hedgehogs. "Your universe's timeline, and the space of the world itself… is deeply flawed. It's all tangled up like a plate of spaghetti. Your incident with Solaris and the Time Eater—" they highlight two particularly rough-looking clocks with their telekinetic aura "—has permanently warped your world."
Timekeeper pulls one of the clocks out. Its hands lie completely still, and it's charred and ashy, like it was tossed into a fire. "With Solaris in particular, blowing out its flame and therefore erasing that timeline has caused all sorts of consistency problems."
Timekeeper screws the clock back in place. "Killing Solaris and erasing the timeline wound the clock too far. It doesn't even know what time zone it's in anymore. Whether it's late or early barely matters."
"Solaris… that name is familiar to me, but I don't know why," Silver mutters.
"Solaris is a constant in many Silver variants' lives. It's practically our destiny to defeat them at least once," Timekeeper says.
Timekeeper pulls out the other clock. Unlike the other clocks, who continue to tick clockwise, this one ticks counterclockwise. "The Time Eater is most likely where your 'nobody ages' problem comes from. You were turning sixteen that day, right Sonic?"
Sonic nods, confirming Timekeeper's inquiry.
"Killing the Time Eater, coupled with the chunks of time it bit out of your timeline—" Timekeeper gestures to the many patches of broken parts "—has essentially 'broken' the clock. The Time Eater has ripped out the gears necessary to make your timeline work properly. Your clock doesn't tick properly anymore. It's stuck and can't progress forward like normal. I like to call this Neverland syndrome."
Peter Pan purgatory, Sonic thinks. "Alright. So let's replace the parts and fix the timeline!" he declares.
Timekeeper sighs. "Like I said before, it's not that simple. I've tried rewinding it, replacing parts, I've even rebuilt the entire thing from the ground up. Nothing's worked. Otherwise you wouldn't even be in this situation in the first place."
Timekeeper beckons Sonic and Silver to follow them. "Come. I have something to show you."
They don't drag Sonic and Silver anywhere this time, trusting the hedgehogs to follow them. The trio go down halls lined with bookshelves packed with every medium of media out there, just as chaotic and messy as Timekeeper's office. And of course, plenty of clocks.
They finally stop in front of unfathomably large double doors reaching hundreds of feet into the air. Now that he's properly looking up at it, Sonic can't make out a ceiling. Timekeeper pushes the doors back, an ungodly groan reverberating throughout the hall and in Sonic and Silver's ribcages.
The doors open to a massive room with rows upon rows upon rows of clock towers just like the one they saw before.
"Now's probably a good time to explain what beta universes are," Timekeeper says.
They continue down the corridor in between the duplicates of Primordial Big Ben. "Every clock tower you see here is a derivative of the one I showed you before, an attempt at fixing your world. And every attempt has only spawned another beta universe."
"Beta universes are derivatives of alpha universes. While alpha universes generally exist on their own merit, beta universes are almost entirely reliant on an alpha universe to draw from. Most alternate universes are beta universes. Beta universes are far more frequent and diverse than alpha universes. The ‘infinite possibilities' of the multiverse really shines in those universes."
"Hang on— didn't you say there were multiple alpha universes? If those universes were drawing from a source, the Alpha Origin, aka our world, wouldn't that make them beta universes instead?" Sonic questions.
Timekeeper looks surprised, then smiles. "Nice to know you're actually paying attention, Sonic. I was worried I'd bore you with all my exposition."
"Are you kidding? This is nuts," Sonic says. "I mean I always knew of other worlds because of Blaze and mini-me— but I didn't think there'd be so many! Or be so complicated… but I guess high-concept stuff like multiverses and alternate timelines are bound to get weird by nature."
"Tell me about it. I've had this job for over 17 years and it still gives me a headache," Timekeeper groans.
"17 years? Hang on, how old are you exactly?" Sonic asks.
"31 and counting."
"Woah! You're old!"
"31 is not old…" Timekeeper grumbles. "Ahem— The difference between alpha and beta universes is in the Meta makeup."
"Meta?"
"The Meta is like… the membrane that connects every universe to each other. The flesh containing the blood, the land between water. Alpha and beta universes have different makeups. It's like saltwater and freshwater. They're both water, yes, but still different types of water housing very different ecosystems. I don't exactly know why some alternate universes have an alpha makeup while billions of others have a beta makeup— it's something I've yet to figure out."
"The Meta of your world has sustained permanent damage. As far as I can tell, it is… virtually beyond repair. I am afraid there is nothing I can do to fix your world in a way that matters. At least, nothing I've figured out yet."
"This isn't something you can magic away with the Chaos Emeralds or Time Stones or any other magical mcguffin. Trust me, I've tried. This is an out-of-universe issue. While the Chaos Emeralds are incredibly powerful in their own right, they are still restricted to the worlds they reside in. The Kraken may be the most formidable monster in the sea, but it is useless on dry land."
Not even the Chaos Emeralds can solve this…!? Sonic thinks.
A pensive silence hangs over the hedgehogs until Silver finally breaks it.
"So that's it? We're stuck like this?" Silver says in disappointed disbelief. "I thought you were some omnipotent time god or something!"
Timekeeper gives a pointed look. "I am omnipotent in the same way you may be omnipotent to an ant. While I certainly know and comprehend more than you do, I don't truly know everything."
"Despite everything I've told you about the Meta of your world being beyond repair, I haven't given up. I'm still looking for ways to fix your world permanently and get it ticking again. Until then… you'll have to deal with perpetually blooming flowers and meaningless birthdays. I'm sorry."
"So we came here for nothing…" Silver says in frustration. If there was a small pebble in front of him he would kick it.
Sonic immediately goes to bring Silver back up. "Hey! This ain't nothing! This is absolutely something! Now we know why the timeline's acting so weird! We just gotta figure out how to fix it," he says, his optimism knowing no bounds.
Sonic optimism rekindles Silver's own. "Yeah.. yeah, you're right. Timekeeper?"
Timekeeper hums in acknowledgement.
"How can we help?"
Timekeeper mulls over it for a moment. "I suppose you could retrieve certain parts for me… would lessen the workload of my co-worker… I'll have to think about it." They yawn. "Anyways, it's way past my bedtime. My husband's probably worried about me. I'll send you two home and call you back when I've made up my mind."
Sonic and Silver double take. "You have a husband!?" Silver exclaims.
"Yes."
"Does that mean… I'll have a husband in the future?" Silver says, cringing at the possibility.
"No."
Timekeeper waves their hand, summoning two swirling portals, one green and one blue.
"The green one's yours. Hurry before it closes." They disappear into the blue one without another word, the portal closing as soon as they completely step through.
Sonic and Silver look at each other for a moment before returning home as well.