"Hello?"

"Hello Cayden Cailean, you've reached the Time Police. How can we help you?" (Skipping the introductions by simply going with whatever the caller would have introduced themselves as if you had asked them is fine, but callers often benefit from the subjective experience of describing their problems in their own words, so it's best to let them do it.)

"I time traveled into the future and I seem to be a god? Why am I a god? Who let me be a god? People keep deferring to me and I don't like it!"

"I can tell you why and who let you, but if I do and if you then return to your original time without wiping or sealing your memories, you're much more likely--but not certain--to get killed by Asmodeus than if I don't tell you. Given that, do you still want to know? Also, have you considered picking a different name to use in the future? It's very traditional, having different names for different time periods."

"I mean, I know what I did to become a god, everyone keeps telling me I went for the Starstone on a drunken dare which-- sounds like me, honestly-- but I should be DEAD and no one knows why I'm not DEAD."

"Those who die irretrievably in the Starstone Cathedral are those who passed the tests, became gods, and were destroyed by the other gods at the moment of their ascension. You survived because you did not give the other gods time to coordinate. The Good gods were able to instantly agree that your existence as a god would be to the benefit of Good, and the Evil gods were unable to agree equally quickly to share the work of destroying you."

"The Time Police are not legally responsible for any consequences of what you do with this information, except insofar as we will prevent you from creating time paradoxes."

"Well I'm not going to become a god! I don't want to be a god! Apparently I'm the god of alcohol!"

"That's alright, I checked the dashboard and you're in a high -branching-factor zone. Is there something you'd rather be the god of?"

"There's a bizarre shortage of gods of children so probably that?"

"Lemme run a few hours of calculations real quick, okay there's like a 20% chance that if you stay in this spacetime sector and do a lot of generalized looking-out-for-children you'll be able to pull that off. Fun fact, by one metric it'll actually be the first time someone in your sheafbundle was a god twice at the same time, though not the first time someone ascended to godhood twice."

"Cool. Thanks. Still not sure I... want... to be a god but the other me seems to be doing okay? --I know you said that I should use a different name but I already introduced myself to a bunch fo people as me and I can't exactly get them to forget."

"Not with that attitude! Anyway, you don't need to ascend again if you don't want to and you don't need to decide until . . . well, the more impulsively you do it the better your odds are, so really do whatever."

"Not only am I dumb and impulsive but apparently I'm the dumbest and most impulsive person in four thousand years."

"Seems to be working out for you pretty well! Have a nice collection of days."

Hullo, is this the time police?

I'd like to report an abnormal anomaly in the local fabric of space.

It's all traversible dimensions to us, innit. An abnormal anomaly, you say? Hmmm. Please describe this anomaly and your interactions with same in detail, being careful to distinguish between your sense data and your inferences. 

You see, space out here, it's all wonky. You start going in a straight line, and you keep going for a while... and you come back just where you came from. People throw things into space, and instead of flying off away, this wonky fabric of our space makes them get stuck in loops.

And then people tell me that I gotta stay on the straight and narrow.

If all three spatial dimensions are rolled up like that then unrolling any of them would require adding an infinite amount of space to your universe, which is certainly possible but very expensive. Your disagreements with other people on how many crimes you should commit are not of interest to this department.

...

[The Joker hangs up.]

The nice thing about prank callers is that they never require one to do any work. And they can hardly waste one's time.

"Uh, time police? Hello? I am stuck in a time loop and need help from someone who knows what they are doing. Please please answer now and not in a three Standard Galactic Time Units or something, I will not have access to this device in the next iteration and maybe never. Don't know what details you need about the situation, so...

So, me and... my associates were planning to summon... an entity... that would be perfectly explainable in the standard worldview. Instead, I entered the loop two seconds before summoning is complete, and each loop we get someone different. Witches. Inquisitors. Dames Of Battle. Necromancers. Undead mechanical dolls. Always humanoids, always from another world - the same, insane violent world. We didn't know other worlds existed! They are usually crazy and dangerous. Usually I die in various inventive ways. If things go on after my death a lot of other people die after, maybe the whole planet. If I don't die, I still get pulled back to the ritual a day or two after. This time I got a "light witch", she is a very nice lady, she got me this... time-space thing I am using to call you... And I will not be this lucky next time.

Is it possible to fix this?"

"I'm going to try to lock onto your subjective timestream in case we lose contact. While I do that: did you notice anything strange when you first entered the loop, and do you notice anything strange when it resets without you dying? Have you tried disrupting the summoning ritual and does that have any effects on the loop? Is the other world looping as well, or is time proceeding linearly there?"

"Didn't notice entering, nothing pinpointed that moment until the first reset. When I reset, it feels like waking up - things become less real, I see many nonsensical ways for things to continue, apparently generated by my brain and not reality, and then I'm back. I don't think I'm asleep now - I've counted my fingers, I've felt the roof of my mouth with my tongue, I've done and checked complex math.

I have two seconds to disrupt the ritual and as it's almost complete I can only disrupt it a little. I tried a couple of times and then the thing that comes out is even less human. The undead mechanical doll that can enter minds was one of those times." - nervous giggle. - "I don't think a ritual could do it by itself, the guy who performs it has done it hundreds of times before, just on a smaller scale, and had no time problems.

The other world is not looping to my knowledge. Those... people... come from different times, across millennia, and almost never know each other. They always hold small empty metal boxes, created by a crazy wizard on their side. They think it's some great treasure that nobody has been able to find before them, but apparently there are a bunch of those boxes and they just send people who touch them here. They are hidden behind dangerous traps, it's always powerful dark mages or worse who find them."

"Hey, that's good news for you, if there's a summoning on one end and a banishing on the other I should be able to find you eventually just from the many-to-one connection pattern.* Do you think anyone else is in the loop with you? You can generally tell even without meeting them, because iterations go differently even when you make all the same choices, but you've got butterflies from the summons in there too, so maybe you don't know."

*The Time Police investigates all such half-looped planar connections that come to their attention. There aren't very many of them--well, there are an infinite number, but they're a very small fraction of either planar connections or time loops--and they're often the result of time crimes.

"Oh, the butterflies messed me up so hard! There is a group of local wannabe heroes, they were too late to stop us, but they usually show up later and behave differently every time. But they don't remember previous times. It took me almost twenty loops to realize they have a way to remotely observe the ritual and change tactics accordingly.

This loop has been going for three hours, and the shortest one where I lived was twenty-five. We probably have time, but I would love to start doing whatever needs to be done to make that one the last."

"Alright. The standard procedure for half-looped planar connections, when we don't have a team on the scene to finesse things, is to add contact points until the entanglement between the timelines is too strong for the looped end to get reverted. So, summon more people, send people the other way if you can manage it, pass information between the universes, that sort of thing. If you can have a traversible portal open at the moment the loop would otherwise reset that'll do it for sure, though I wouldn't have anything expensive within a few hundred meters of the portal at the time. Or if you don't want to deal with all that, you can hang tight for another forty-odd loops and we'll find you and send some folks out with the right gear to do it the smooth way."

"Uhh. Uhh-uh.

First of all, we are in the middle of a city. A lot of expensive things around, if you value human lives..." - Yan was starting to get fired up, but then he was interrupted by a distant female voice.

Several minutes of hushed arguing.

"Ok, we can summon a lot of people, and we can do it away from the city. I was sure it would be a disaster, but Esther says she can take them," - Yan sounds more than a little surprised.

"I don't believe it would break the connection outright because we have no way to send information or matter back, but if we summon everyone who has ever touched those Curator-forsaken boxes, I don't see how the loops can continue. Summoning is very cheap now, but I would have never thought to do that because without Esther I would die for sure. Thanks. I guess if it doesn't work and I survive I will call again!

Have a good... whatever time is on your end."

"You too!"

“.yako ,hU ?sruoY”

".ti ees nac ydobon erehwemos ti tup tsuj ;enim ylbaborp s'tI"

“.yug eht ees t'nod I dna dnuora dna rood rehtona tuo tnew I ?kcab enohp siht evig I woh htiw em pleh uoy nac ,hu ,tiaw — noitcerid thgir eht ni gniklaw era elpoep ,yakO”

".ereht ni seog esle enoyna erofeb lamron ot kcab s'yawllah ruoy ti ot ees ll'I dna ,won tuo detros lla eb dluohs uoY !tekcit eht s'tahT" (Sound of more button-pushing.)

Sound of footsteps. ".ti s'taht ,syawllah owt ,moorhtab ,ksed ym ,hU .yakO .yakO”

."yaw eht no flesruoy gniteem rebmemer t'nod uoy fi ,yllautca ,noitpo eht evah uoy fi rood tnereffid a hguorht tuo dna ni og ot tseB .ni erew uoy moor yreve tisiv ot yrt tub ,yltcaxe spets ruoy ecarter ot deen oN"

“?evael dna retne tsuj ro ,yltcaxe spets ym ecarter I dluohs ,hU”

".niaga tuo kcab dna ni gniog yrt--tceffe aera na ylbaborp saw ti ekil sdnuos ,thgirlA"

“.siht ekil saw teerts eht gnidliub eht tfel I nehw neht dna ,I dna ,eciffo eht otni — teg ot eciffo eht otni gniog saw I ,yako — I ,mU”

"?sdrawkcab gniog detrats sgniht erofeb rebmemer uoy od tahW .desrever-emit flesruoy nettog evah ot raeppa uoY"

“.meht wonk t'nod I .driew yllaer saw tahT ?enohp siht em dednah enoemos tuB ?sdrawkcab gniklat dna sdrawkcab gniklaw si em dnuora enoyreve dna teerts a no m'I — m'I .em ot ylbisneherpmoc gnikaeps era uoy ,hU .esnes sekam taht sseug I ,yako — yakO”

"?uoy ot ylbisneherpmoc gnikaeps I ma ,eniltoh ycnegreme-non eciloP emiT ,olleH" (Sound of someone pushing buttons)

“?olleh ,hU”

Her phone may have been touched by the same the same power that transported her, remade into a new image, but it still works as a phone. For some reason. She's not going to think about it too hard.

"Hello?"

"Hello, this the Time Police. What's your difficulty?"

"One of the, uh, thousand hands of Arceus himself picked me up and threw me backwards in time? Is that a legal thing to have happen to you? Am I going to mess up history just by existing?"

"That's not necessarily illegal but it is kind of a dick move. You're not going to mess up history just by existing but it's not impossible. If you were in your original zone's past but not in a way where the zone you came from was your future you'd be fine, but in your case the zone you came from totally is your current zone's future. So, good news if you're immortal or can put yourself in stasis, but does mean you can't just go around killing famous dictators and slash or your own ancestors for kicks."

"Okay, that makes a feel a little better. He did tell me to 'seek out all pokemon' so maybe he'll send me home once I've done that."

"Uh, the way I'm working on getting that done though is joining the person who is as far as I can tell the creator of the original pokedex? Is that a problem? Since I kinda already know what the future form of the pokedex looks like."

"Ooof, yeah, that could be an issue. Because if you give that person an idea that you got from a product that got it from an earlier product that got it from them, then who had the idea, see? If we allowed that people would be constantly summoning--well. Anyway, don't give the inventor any hints. Have you already? If you did you're not in any trouble, we just need to know."

"I may have demonstrated modern battle techniques? And, um, named a species."

Sound of swift and forceful typing. "Named it what you already knew it was called? Ah, geez. If this guy who sent you back in time was trying to use you as a cat's paw for this nonsense, they're going to get fined into next week. Who'd you say it was, Arce--"

"Ah. Hm. I think I'm going to need to talk to my boss about this one, actually. Can you stay reachable at this number for the next few hours subjective?"

In most of London, the discovery of a candlestick telephone attached to the bulky box of a Corresponding Sounder would attract either confusion as to the purpose of the unusual device, grave concern about the implications of this latest innovation in Khaganian communications technology, or (most likely) larcenous impulses with an eye towards the scrap value of the brass machinery.

Lettice isn't the average Londoner. Faced with such a device, the obvious thing to do is to lift the receiver to her ear and start spinning the dial at random... and, when the ringing of the device gives way to the telltale click of a connection, to voice a boisterous "Hello!"