Per 
A large metal box materializes by a farmstead. The door opens, billowing steam and smoke, and Dr. Rotcod steps out. He looks around, and spots someone frozen in the action of tilling the field, staring at him.
Dr. Rotcod: Well, I suppose there's no use hiding it now… Hello, farmer!
Farmer: S-Salve.
Dr. Rotcod: Oh, Latin… (switches to Latin) Salve! Annum dīcāsne?1
Farmer: Undesexaginta2 BC.
Dr. Rotcod: (Switches back to Esparanto as he calls back into the large metal box) Did you hear that, Biff? We overshot by seventy years! Better get back and-
Biff: Hang on-
Dr. Rotcod: What is it, Biff? We don't have all-
Biff: Did that farmer just say B.C.?
Dr. Rotcod: So what if he did?
Biff: So how does he know that term? The Anno Domini system won't be established for another five hundred years! He should be saying "The year that such-and-such and So-and-so are consuls!"
Farmer: Bibulus et Caesar. B.C.
Biff: Oh. That… that makes sense. Those are the consuls in that year-
Dr. Rotcod: No, it doesn't make sense! [[back to Latin]] Why say undesexaginta?
Farmer: This is the fifty-ninth year of their consulship.
Biff: That's impossible! Caesar only lives to be fifty-five-
Thaddeus Xyank emerges from the wheat and tasers Doctor Rotcod and Biff. He begins bundling them back into their time machine.
Dr. Xyank: Sorry about that, Marc.
The farmer removes a mask, revealing the visage of Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus.
Farmer: Sometimes I wonder how much these time travelers might actually affect their history if they knew how little their calendars and clocks actually measured.
(The farmer's wife and children rush out of the farm house to check on him, each bearing the visage of Gaius Julius Caesar or Marcus Calpurnius Bibulus.)
Farmer: Care to stay for dinner, Thad? The missus made salad.
Dr. Xyank: Caesar salad?
Farmer: (long pause) That's not funny.
Dr. Xyank: Yeah, I know.
Dr. Xyank: I'm sorry, I can't stay. Got to get these two back to their proper time, wipe their memories of the machine, all that. Lots of paperwork, you know the drill.
Farmer: I thought so. Well, we packed you a bowl, regardless.
(The farmer offers Dr. Xyank a styrofoam bowl, covered in clear plastic wrap. The bowl is filled with leaves of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and chopped cucumbers, each with the animate screaming face of Gaius Julius Caesar.)
Dr. Xyank: You know what? I'm not hungry.
Ideas:
Parallel universes are not parallel, they are sequential and take turns. (Is this how multi-threading in computing works?) All registered time machines must therefore have special configurations to skip over the other universes, so the public does not become aware of them.
Twenty-Eight are known, from AM to ZM, in addition to no-longer-executing ones, like the BC one above. Each have only twelve-hour days; the rotation of the earth the other twelve hours is skipped over, creating great desolation in the lands where the sun never gets to shine.
Our earth used to only have AM, until the Day of Flowers when we took the slot away from the original universe of the Children of the Night. (so called because when they shifted here, it was the first time they saw flowers, it having been dark all the time in the original PM universe). How did we do this? Magical injection attack virus, perhaps?
Possibly put a time selector at the top of the article, with a dropdown box having AM and PM as well as all other universes where the Foundation exists, so you can see what their perspectives are like.
How do we put the preceding AD and BC thing into this system?
| Time | Suggested Abbreviation | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| A.M. | Amplitude-Modulated Radio Signals | |
| B.M. | Bowel Movement | |
| C.M. | Centimeter | |
| D.M. | Direct Message | |
| E.M. | Electromagnetism | |
| F.M. | Frequency-Modulated Radio Signals | |
| G.M. | Game Master | |
| H.M. | ||
| I.M. | ||
| J.M. | ||
| K.M. | ||
| L.M. | ||
| N.M. | ||
| O.M. | ||
| P.M. | Prime Minister | |
| Q.M. | Quarter Master | |
| R.M. | ||
| S.M. | ||
| T.M. | Trademark | |
| U.M. | ||
| V.M. | ||
| W.M. | ||
| X.M. | ||
| Y.M. | Yottameters | |
| Z.M. | Zeptometers |
Universes No Longer Being Run:
[[table]]
[[row]]
[[hcell]]Time[Abbreviation[[/hcell][[hcell]]Effect[Date[[/hcell][[hcell]]Reason for ending[[/hcell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[cell]]B.C.[[/cell]]
[[cell]]Bibulus et Caesar[[/cell]]
[[cell]]All life bears the faces of either of the two Roman consuls from the year XX BCE[[/cell]]
[[cell]]XXX BCE, the Ides of March[[/cell]]
[[cell]]In the AM timeline, XXX, general of the Celtic tribe YYY, attempted a ransomware attack on the identity of Gaius Julius Caesar, in an attempt to get him to destroy all copies of his book, "The Gallic Wars", citing the poor quality of the prose. The attack exploited a known vulnerability in the universe software which had been patched on all legitimate copies the previous week, causing the malware to look for targets farther afield. The BC timeline's admins had pirated their timeline software, rendering them vulnerable to the attack. As so much of the file structure depended on Caesar's identity, the timeline crashed within minutes. The admins managed to recover enough of Bibulus' information to be able to start "Timeline B", if they so desired, but declined.[[/cell]]
[[/row]]
[[row]]
[[/table]]