Recap (Patreon)

Here's a brief summary of the previous two books. If you see anything that I should add that seems relevant or important for this book, please let me know!

Armageddon - Gloria initiates an event in game with the help of <Death and Taxes> that threatens to destroy the game world.  Jason and the other avatars work together to uncover the location of this event, but, upon arriving, our favorite smiling mercenaries teleport Jason & Company to the Mile High Club.

In order to survive the club, Eliza develops her new Mold Form and Jason becomes a lich that can augment his body with other corpses.  Jason and Alex also bury the hatchet and  Eliza reveals her parents connection to Cerillion Entertainment to the death of Finn’s wife Rachael.  The group then confronts Smiles – who reveals he is helping Gloria in return for sweet, sweet cash – and they ultimately join forces.

An epic battle ensues, the avatars defeat Gloria – who flees underground.  Jason follows and arrives in time to see Ella (the poison-based dark mage from Hellion) – who is really Gloria’s daughter Sophie – confront her mother.  Ella sacrifices herself to try to stop Gloria, killing them both, but it’s too late.  Gloria completes the event, triggering a transformation of the game world.  One that brings the former races and avatars forward in time and allows them to regain control of the elemental cities.

Meanwhile, Jason and his companions are stuck on the other side of the continent, an army of players still arrayed before them.

Timeless – This story begins on that same battlefield, Jason and his team battered and beaten and still facing an army of angry players.  Fortunately, a system notice forcibly logs all travelers out of Awaken Online.  Everyone except for Jason.

Jason is then confronted by Cady – the earth avatar – who can manipulate time.  She entices him into helping her by traveling back in time to a period when Awaken Online was dominated by the former avatars.  The pair retraces Cady’s start inside of AO during the game’s beta period in order to undermine the old avatars.  Specifically, by securing Pax (the earth city), its mana crystal mining operation, retrieving the gate pieces, and infiltrating the Vault in the original Crystal Reach to steal the old avatars’ weapons – powerful relics.

However, the in-game conflict is only part of Cady’s plan.  Back in the real world, Cady is a member of the Lazarus Program – a Cerillion Entertainment project designed to upload a person’s consciousness into Awaken Online.  In fact, Cady reveals that George enlisted Rachael to spearhead the project, unbeknownst to Finn.  She used much of her own neural information to build her initial research.  And when that wasn’t enough, with George’s help she began using other living test subjects, all of whom had experienced severe trauma, injury, or coma – including Cady’s sister.  These individuals became the original “gods” of AO, each coping with an eternity spent inside the game world with denial and lies, many of their original memories warped and tainted.

As Jason and Cady infiltrate the Vault, the Fates (Cady’s sister) entices the other gods into making a bet.  If Jason and Cady win, then they will join forces with Jason, Cady, and the other new avatars.  Jason and Cady succeed in infiltrating the Vault, retrieve the relics, and Jason discovers that the Vault’s Caretaker is in fact Rachael – or one of her personas in-game.  He is able to retrieve her body before escaping.  He and Cady then plant the various gate pieces in each elemental city and return to the present.

Finn and Eliza aren’t idle during the server downtime.  They team up to look into Eliza’s parents’ connection to Cerillion Entertainment, enlisting the aid of Julia and eventually Alex – who resents his father, and eventually becomes suspicious of his mother’s death.  With Alex’s help, they discover that Eliza’s parents work on the Lazarus Program, Eliza breaks into the company headquarters during a highly-publicized real world event at Cerillion headquarters using her parents’ credentials, and she retrieves the data on the Lazarus program.  Unfortunately, Eliza is caught by Cady and loses the data.

Eliza is confronted by George, Cerillion security, and her parents, only to discover that the data she stole is missing.  They let her go and upon leaving the facility, she discovers that <Death and Taxes> were able to steal the data from her and impersonate her parents.

During the live event, Jason re-enters the game, Cady brings Pax forward in time, and Jason uses the hidden gate pieces as an escape route for the travelers and NPCs stuck in each of the new elemental cities – allowing many of them to escape and allowing them to use Pax as a new base of operations going forward.  Smiles then reveals that Jason hired him to steal the data from Eliza and that Jason is now in possession of that data.

In the final scene, George confronts Alex for his betrayal in the research lab beneath Cerillion Entertainment.  George reveals that while he admired his wife, he resented her control and influence.  He poisoned her to simulate the effects of cancer, staged her death, but kept her alive, uploading her consciousness into AO as one of the test subjects – turning her into the Lady (the light goddess).  His hope was that she could mold Alex into someone stronger; someone capable of inheriting his legacy.  He then kills Alex in a rage… only to reveal another wing of the research lab.  One filled with Alex’s clones, implying that George has killed and cloned his son many times in order to “perfect” him.

Which also implies that George’s goal with the Lazarus Program isn’t a one way trip…

And, uh, that was the end of Timeless.