Timeline / Quantum Break

Naturally, due to things like split timelines, time being tied to the machine's moveable core, multiple perspectives, several Stable Time Loops and a dozen other overlapping factors, things are better clarified post-plot with basic chronology. As such, unmarked spoilers right down to the twists hidden in optional collectable documents (some of which only appear in certain timelines) will be throughout, so proceed at your own risk.

1990s

Pre-1999

• William Joyce discovers and later proves the existance of chronons, quantum particles involved in time flow.
• Will puts his resulting research grant to build a time machine, which harnesses chronons to send the user through time to any active time machine hooked to the same core.

1999

• Will finishes and activates his time machine.
• Immediately on activation, Paul Serene exits having travelled from the end of time. Serene wounds Will, but flees when attacked by a pursuing Beth Wilder who followed from the end of time.
• Beth outlines that Will has seventeen years before time fractures and the world will end, so he needs to invent a Chronon Field Regulator.
• Beth warns Will that he needs to hide his machine from Paul and what will become Monarch Solutions. Will spends a huge part of his grant buying the abandoned pool hall as a hideout.
• Old!Beth makes a new copy of her old notebook, which lists several key events in her life. Giving it to her pre-teen self Young!Beth (who mistakes her for an angel), Old!Beth closes the central time loop to her life.
• Unable to talk about the future with Will, Old!Beth begins expressing future knowledge through leaving mysterious predicting graffiti, signed "Toto", all over Riverport.

2000s

NONSPECIFIC

• Trying to fight fate, Young!Beth attempts to save the Joyce parents from dying in a crash, only to accidentally ensure it.
• Young!Beth begins watching Jack due to the notebook mentioning him, but doesn't approach him to prevent screwing the timeline.
• During an argument, Will blames younger brother Jack for their parents' death. A heartbroken Jack severes ties and leaves for Asia.
• Paul Serene, using his memory of now-future significant stock movements, tactfully invests in companies which will be successful. He uses these riches to establish Monarch Solutions.
• After Serene founds Monarch Solutions, Martin Hatch worms his way into the position of his second-in-command, allowing him to manipulate Paul easier through being his advisor.

2001

• September 11th occurs, despite the efforts of both Beths and Serene. All three are emotionally crushed with being unable to save thousands, though young!Beth starts finally believing in the notebook and Old!Beth and Old!Serene understand that time is effectively rigid to prevent paradoxes.

2010s

2010

• Will finishes his CFR, locking it in his workshop safe and leaving for the night.
• 2016!Jack finally arrives after Old!Beth has waited for eleven years, as the technology to send her back to 2016 didn't exist in 1999.
• Old!Beth and 2016!Jack attempt to steal the CFR, closing the loop created by Will's tapes about it disappearing.
• Beth shoots at Serene when he corners her, and Serene shoots her in retaliation. Beth drops the CFR which activates it. The resulting chronon blast creates Ground Zero, sends Jack back to 2016, and gives Serene Chronon Syndrome.
• Serene executes Old!Beth. Jack can only watch through time.
• Cleanup of Ground Zero begins, with the collected chronons being put towards research and building stutter equipment.

2010-2016

• Serene begins suffering from visions of key future events due to his illness. He begins treatments created and administered by his head of research (and later lover) Dr. Sofia Amaral.

2016: University

• Young!Paul Serene finishes his time machine, despite pushback from higher-ups when Will Joyce warned them of the dangers. As a result, Paul decides to test it illegally and without his staff, using his own data and Jack Joyce as an assistant.
• Jack Joyce returns to America.
• PLOT STARTS
• Young!Serene activates his own time machine. The freak malfunction caused by his miscalculations douses both him and Present!Jack in chronons.
• Attacked by Monarch, Paul flees to the future only to land after the end of time.
• Future!Jack, travelling from near the fracture, appears and fights through the other side of the university.
• Beth bumps into Present!Jack, finally meeting him for real.
• Monarch steals the time machine core from the university, moving it to their own machine at their HQ and inadvertently closing a loop.
• Old!Serene appears and explains the limits of changing set events. He attempts to crush Will, though it's unclear if he knows that he survives; regardless, Present!Jack believes Will is dead (impacting his plans significantly), and Future!Jack uses his time controlling to pull Will to safety.
• Will explains they can't fix the fracture as there's several key events before time stops (including numerous people jumping to several different times) so it'll risk a time paradox even if it would work.
• While Present!Jack is taken into custody, Future!Jack and Will go to the pool using Nick's abandoned cab, and jump to the end of the plot timeline to minimize what a fracture fix would undo.

2016: General

• Jack and Beth learn of the pool hall and arrive to investigate. If Nick was saved, he notes that his cab is somehow already there.
• Jack and Beth find several dated notes and tapes from Will that predict key events. The tape addressing Beth (despite the fact that Beth won't meet him until she time travels) asks if she took the CFR, closing a loop that sends her and Jack to steal it in 2010.
• Jack steals a stutter backpack for Beth, allowing her to move when time stops due to the fracture.
• Using Dr. Amaral, Jack and Beth attempt to travel to 2010 to steal the CFR around when it went missing. Amaral sabotages the machine, sending Beth to the end of time.
• Martin Hatch blows up Amaral's lab, destroying all but one of his Chronon Syndrome treatments and framing Amaral for the crime.
• Jack leaves for 2010, leaving either Nick or Amy with Dr. Amaral.
• Amaral is recovered by Monarch. Nick or Amy escapes by using the time machine.

2016: Act Five

• Jack returns from 2010 due to the CFR blast.
• Despite Serene's calculations, the frequency and length of stutters suggests time is due to end in several hours.
• Serene, now approaching death (later revealed as turning into a shifter), either decides to succumb to his illness and destroy the lifeboat and CFR, or takes a final recovered treatment and attempts to protect them.
• Realizing the pool hall is housing Will's time machine, Serene leaves with Monarch forces to intercept it.
• Jack secures the CFR and uses the Monarch time machine (equipped with the university core) to travel back to the first act.
• Jack, having saved Will at the university incident, travels forward with his brother using the pool time machine, only to find Serene waiting for them.
• Jack kills Serene, and Will seemingly fixes the fracture. Jack appears to contract Chronon Syndrome in the process, and has a vision seeing the end of time.

2016: Epilogue

• Jack leaves an interview with Clarice Ogawa, a Monarch executive trying to piece things together. Despite not answering her, it's shown he believes time is malleable if pressed enough, and intends to save Beth somehow.
• Martin Hatch, alive through apparently being a shifter living in 3D spacetime, offers Jack a Monarch position. It is unclear if he accepts or not.

Late-2010s onwards

End of Time

• Time ends, apparently due to a permanent state of stutter caused by the fracture. Since time seems pretty rigid in nature, this means there may be a second fracture after the main story, which could explain how Serene and Beth travelled there in the first place despite Jack and Will apparently fixing things (and would explain Serene thinking that time would stop in years rather than days).
• Serene arrives from the university and Beth arrives from the pool hall, both in 2016. Serene can move due to his time powers, while Beth can move thanks to her stutter backpack; said backpack inspires Serene to reverse-engineer the idea for his soldiers, making another time loop.
• Horrified by the world without time and full of shifters, Serene fixes Will's time machine to escape and travel backwards as far as he can.
• Serene, plotting to murder Will and prevent everything after the first machine's activation, sets the machine to 1999. Beth, failing to kill Serene, narrowly jumps into the machine after him and follows.

Unknown

• Jack, believing time can be changed to an extent, travels to an unknown point and place in end of time to presumably try and save Beth.

N/A

• A man, discovering a natural time machine located in a cave, uses it as a means to travel through time.
• The resulting chronon exposure eventually turns him into a shifter.
• He somehow regains composure and self control, allowing him to return to three-dimensional spacetime and live as a normal man.
• Adopting the pseudonym of Martin Hatch, he uses his foreknowledge of the fracture and believes its creating numerous shifters makes it a catalyst in the next stage of human evolution. As a result, he begins plotting on ensuring it occurs.

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