Pandora's Box was a temporal distortion machine developed by American scientists in the 24th century with technology and materials stolen from the Qrondtians. Linearly, it was the first such machine developed by Humans. Due to the incompatibility of Human and Qrondtian technology, the device was highly unstable and was inadvertently activated three days after it was completed. It then vanished (from a 2311 perspective) and was temporally displaced to 1653, where it was discovered by the local Lakota people. The device arrived in an active state and began leaking temporal energy, causing the next three days to be repeated in a loop 11 times until it was cast into a great fire. The heat sealed the hole, ending the time loop, and the device was buried deep underground. It remained there for the next two centuries until it was stolen by the U.S. Army in 1870, who had heard stories of it. Thankfully, it remained stable during this time and was transported back to Washington, D.C., where it was presented to President Ulysses S. Grant. Believing it to be little more than a piece of art, it was displayed in the White House for another 35 years. In 1905, Quentin Roosevelt stole it and attempted to open it, but failed. He refused to tell anyone where he had hidden it and it was thought to be lost for another 30 years.
It was recovered in 1941, and was to be sent to a museum, but was confiscated by the Army when a scientist determined it was some sort of machine. In truth, this scientist was an agent from the 24th century sent to recover it. The identity of the agent is disputed, but is generally believed to either be Dr. Kellen DeVry, a pioneer of middle time science, departing at the age of 53, or future president Jase Reno, departing at the age of 28. Regardless, this agent was killed by legendary 28th century pirate Ys Magen, who recalled the story in her
Book of Misdeeds. Local American scientists of the 1940s then began experimenting on it, which caused numerous temporal distortions. It was at this time that the device was named "Pandora's Box," as the scientists observed that terrible things emerged whenever they opened it. Having decided it was too dangerous to use, they built a containment module using Qrondt metal from a recently discovered site in Alaska, noticing that the metals had the same glyphs as the exterior of the Box. The Box, in its new casing, was sunk at sea, where it was believed to be secure.
During the 1950s and 60s, the United States government, as well as that of the Soviet Union, began observing more extranormal incidents and gained information from various temporal visitors. The extranormal cold war developed as a highly classified undercurrent of the actual Cold War. The U.S. decided to recover the Pandora's Box in case it would be needed as a weapon. It was then housed at a top secret military base beginning in 1967. After that, it was relocated several times in order to prevent its discovery. Several new containment modules were built as the previous ones disintegrated. Module transfers led to many leaks, the most notable of which occurred in 1997 and 2012. In 1997, a compound leak led to a time dilation which led to people feeling that the the next four years were passing slower than they should have. This leak was repaired in 2001. The 2012 leak was much larger and led to the beginning of Illusory Time, the period when people felt that time was passing when, in fact, it was not. A false leak in Illusory Time (which did not occur in real time) occurred in 2015 which led to Illusory Time speeding up.
In 2019, the so called "Area 51 raid" was announced on the internet, but the Department of the Exterior was aware that the raid was a ruse to distract from a planned assault of the Pandora Box's true location. The Knights of the Sixth Circle had uncovered its location in 2027 and were determined to recover it. As such, the Army came up with the brilliant idea of moving it to Area 51 while the Knights would expect it to still be in its old location. This proved to be a mistake. At Area 51, the containment module and the Box, previously in stasis mode, was shattered. The ensuing chaos was known as the Rupturing.
The primary effect of the Rupturing was the Reversal. Time began flowing backwards from the moment of the Box's destruction. Babies recently born were wiped out of existence. The dead returned to life. People began de-aging. Technology disappeared in the inverse order of its invention. The sun rose in the west and set in the east. After people got a handle on the situation, they began to search for ways to undo the Reversal. Scientists with the relevant knowledge scrambled to record all they knew before their memories were lost. It was determined that the only would be to find Pandora's Box and open it again. Thus, Exterior agents were brought to the secret base in order to experiment with the Box. However, there was a problem: the Box was no longer there. It turned out that people from further up the reversed timeline (ie, the past, which was now in their future) had come to the same conclusion, but as it was lost during their time, they traveled forward to a known location to steal the Box.
As a result of the cross time stream dual disappearances of the Box, the people of the main timeline had no choice but to wait until they arrived in the past to go forward and steal the Box from themselves again. In the interim, they had to learn how they would develop the technology to travel forward to steal it in the first place, as they would have to do so without possession of the Box. This was not solved in the first generation of the Reversal. The second generation of people, who were born entirely within the Reversal, were raised with full knowledge of the Box and other extranormal secrets. Additionally, technology began to be reinvented and by 1974, 2019 levels had been restored. Temporal engineers believed that if they were not able to recover the Box, they would have to wait until they had the technology to build a completely new Box. As the original one was built in the 24th century, a perfectly linear reversal implied that the technology to build a new Box would be available in the 18th century. The Box was not recovered at its theoretical point of theft, 1926, probably due to a paradox, and the 18th century theory was adopted by all.
In 1804, the first manned interstellar mission embarked to the Qrondt world in order to obtain the things necessary to build a new Box. However, upon arrival, the humans learned that Qrondt society had collapsed after the Reversal and had not recovered the way Earth did. As such, their temporal technology had not been reinvented. The humans decided to take Qrondt metal back to Earth to see if they could redevelop it themselves. After 30 years, they determined they could not. In 1769, another mission embarked to see if any other worlds beyond the Qrondt had recovered or developed temporal technology on their own. This mission also proved unfruitful. Human experimentation and exploration continued for the next decade when a breakthrough was made in 1756. The Vlond star, which was near to the Qrond world, had collapsed into a black hole. Initial probes indicated that the black hole was connected to a white hole and would, in effect, function as a temporal tunnel. A new expedition was sent through the hole to travel to a different time.
The expedition expected to return to the linear past but instead emerged in the temporal past, arriving in Reversal 2010, two years before the original theft of the Box. Not wanting to disrupt these people and condemn another timeline to their same fate, the expedition opened the Box and contained some of the released in Qrondt metal. They then returned to the white hole, which was a black hole on this side, and made the journey back home. They emerged in temporal 1721 and delivered the captured energy to the scientists. A new Box was built and then destroyed in order to reverse the Reversal and restore forwards time. However, although time was redirected, the people were now in forwards 1721. There was great debate as to whether they should attempt a return to the Rupture (2019), or to 2217, which was of equal distance to 2019 was 1721 was, and would therefore be a comparable time period. Ultimately it was decided to remain in forwards 1721.
At the Rupture, the Reversal was not the only effect. The prime timeline was divided, with one timeline being the Reversal. The other was the Recursion. Forward time progressed as normal, but the Box was thought be destroyed at the Rupturing. At the building of the Box in Recursion-Prime 2311, the Box disappeared as in the prime timeline, but instead of being sent to 1653, the Box returned to the Rupturing in 2019. This was the beginning of the Recursion. In the Recursion timeline, the Box was kept secret by the government, while a new Box would also be built in 2311. Then the previous Box and the 2311 Box both went back to 2019. This cycle repeated itself several times, with another Box being added after each Recursion. After 23 Recursions, the the building of new 2311 Boxes was ended, but all 23 Boxes continued to return to 2019 without fail. After another four Recursions, it was decided to destroy all the Boxes for good. In order to avoid temporal consequences, the Boxes were detonated on the edge of a black hole. However, this did not have the intended effect. The Boxes simply opened a temporal bridge to the Reversal, specifically at the point of forward 1723. This was because in forward 1723, the people of the Reversal had decided to stay in their new forward time and destroyed the last of their temporal energy (which had been stolen from Reversal-2 2010) on the edge of the same black hole.
The bridge between the two universes at two different points in time led to the destruction of both to create a new universe in which the matter of one universe was located in the exact same place as its counterpart from the other universe. This was possible due to quantum coexistence. Additionally, the time of the new quantum universe was 2017, the midpoint between 1723 and 2311. However, the temporal explosions at the black hole, now known as the Collision Point, continued to expand and would soon engulf the entire universe. The only way to stop this would be if both of the former universes could stop it at the same time. This necessitated the invention of quantum communications. The 1723 universe accomplished this in one year, while the 2311 world did not do so for another four years. After establishing communication, the two parallel universes concluded that the only way to save the universe would be to harness the expanding temporal energy and use it to freeze time forever.
After developing and deploying the technology to freeze time, the expansion of the temporal energy ceased in the quantum universe. However, the energy had to travel somewhere, and thus began spreading through the Collision Point, emerging at the two greatest points of temporal activity in the prime timeline: 2311, the invention of the Box, and 1653, the point where the Box would be deposited. The emergent energy served as a gateway through which the Box traveled from 2311 to 1653. From these two points, the temporal energy traveled forwards and backwards through time before reaching a new Collision Point in 2012. The reason the waves did not meet exactly in the middle (1982) was because time moves faster forwards than it does backwards, though not by much. The meeting of the wave was known as the End of Time, a slight misnomer as time did not actually end. Instead, the explosion traveled through all universes at all times and led to the dissipation of temporal energy. A new prime timeline was born in this 2012, at the point when Illusory Time originally began. Devoid of all the energy it once contained, the Box in this 2012 simply imploded. Time then began to proceed normally in this universe, with no time travel ever being developed and no one being the wiser.