Island Wars

The universe begins in an explosion that resembles a dandelion clock--so bright that its light pierces and persists through the far reaches of time, weaving nets of superclusters through the monarchial dark, pioneering the virgin universe. The dark stares back, pliant to the bright stranger's entry.

Thirteen billion years later, a sixteen-year-old girl finds an abandoned mobile phone in a corner of her schoolyard and, being slightly less scrupulous than most and slightly more familiar with cravings, particularly for things one cannot own, she pockets it surreptitiously. She's had her fair share of scuffles with the prefects, and while not averse to aggression, she'd rather not get into trouble if it can be helped.

One would think the latter event the direct consequence of the former, but in absolute objective truth, there is no temporal hierarchy between the two. Neither event caused the other, the Big Bang did not cause the discovery of the phone, even if the discovery can apparently be traced to factors that were generated by the Big Bang.

The Big Bang happened contingent on the fact that the phone would someday be found.

This is a quality of time rarely discussed by beings of the third dimension, because it is not easily-acknowledged by minds confined to such a planar paradigm.

We like to think that events unfold in accordance with the choices we make, but really all our choices are scripted, as are the circumstances that led to them - planned in full detail, by the gods collaborating on this cosmic novella. The perfect future paths of meteors have been plotted with divine instruments, and everything that has happened, and has yet to happen, has been engraved in extrauniversal certainty. It was, long before the universe even thought of beginning.

Here in the Pacific micronation of Havaiki, two trios of teenagers seek to escape a plan to obliterate them all. On one side we have a prescient seaside girl, her hot-headed best friend and a studious boy who knows the stars better than anyone else--on the other, an anarchic time traveller, a girl who sends gifts into the past, and a humourless head prefect who wades in a bog of duties spanning two centuries.

Naturally, only one of the two trios will be given the chance to live beyond these days. And to win it, they will have to scheme, race and triumph in a treasure hunt that spans both space and time.