All he wanted was to turn back time so he could prevent his wife's death. Instead, the Traveler finds himself in the center of a scheme to destroy universes.
It's the year 2089 and Dr. Janet Dreyfus, Dr. Henry Lanselius, and Joakim Le Quin are best of friends. Janet is an up-and-coming young geneticist at Tempus Corp; Henry her amicable superior; and Joakim a Model whom Henry nurtured to have a personality and consciousness of his own. For a while, everything seems perfectly fine among the friends... but Henry's controlling tendencies begin to disturb the other two, and Janet and Joakim, for their part, find themselves falling in love. Eventually Joakim and Janet break away from Henry and get married, but their happiness is cut short when Henry reappears and tells them that something "grand and terrible" is going on and only they can stop it. Joakim instead drives Henry away and he and Janet continue to live in peace, but he begins to suspect Janet of cheating on him with Henry, and one day after a heated argument, Janet disappears and reemerges in the morgue—killed in a car accident.
Always a genius engineer, he spends the next ten years building a Time Machine, in the hopes of going back in time and preventing Janet's death. Finally, he succeeds, but he soon discovers that his machine doesn't just travel through time but through dimensions as well. So begins a grand world-hopping adventure, in which Joakim gains friends and allies; learns shocking truths about himself, Janet, Henry and the multiverse; and against his will finds himself drawn into a universe-spanning battle between the forces of chaos and order.
So that's Broken Memory in a nutshell. It's an ongoing Web Fiction Serial by Bickazer, and it can be found here here
. Prelude to Broken Memory, a Prequel that covers Joakim's backstory, can be found here here. Very loosely inspired by Ludo's Rock Opera Broken Bride, and believe it or not, was originally meant to be a Kingdom Hearts-based Massive Multiplayer Crossover. Yeah...needless to say, that is no longer the case.
This page is still under construction, and there may be unmarked spoilers floating around, so browse with caution.
Story Tropes
- A Day in the Limelight: Dr. Hong gets one in an interlude, and Vigilante begins to become the viewpoint character for large stretches of the story starting with the Bad Son arc.
- Amplifier Artifact: One of the many, many uses of the Lawful Scepter is amplifying Razhum's and Hina's powers. And Joakim's.
- Artificial Human: Models occupy a niche between this and Ridiculously Human Robot. They are technically Artificial Humans, but they are sold and marketed as 'organic robots.'
- Author Appeal: Tons, naturally. I have an apparent fondness for Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette s, and there's
Ho Yay up to the wazoo and plenty of Bodyguard Crushes to go around. And of course the ridiculously epic plot, what can I say. - The Big Damn Kiss: Joakim and Janet's first kiss. And later, their kiss at the Aestus midsummer ball.
- Canon Immigrant: Adam, Japheth, and Mal come from a previous slash story of mine, Most Perfect Servant.
- Characterization Marches On: Expected, since I have been working on it for over a year. Mika, in particular, has changed a lot, mostly because when I first wrote her I didn't have a solid idea of what her character should be like.
- Chekhov's Gun: Quite a bit. As an example, keep an eye out for all the references to "the Faceless King."
- Chromatic Arrangement: Not the main characters, but the trio of Adam, Japheth, and Mal form one, based on the colors of Adam's and Mal's magic and Japheth's eye color. Adam is green, Japheth blue, Mal red.
- Clock Punk: Ned's world, featuring flying paper airships and American Revolution -esque fashion.
- Constructed World: Most of the worlds so far can be seen as alternate versions of our own, but the Golden Lands is a pure Constructed World.
- Cool Airship: The Blue Sky is an airship that looks like a flying galleon. For bonus cool points, it's made of magically reinforced paper.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Used to showcase the differences between the worlds. For instance, Hina thinks she should inherently be in charge because she's royalty, whereas those from worlds with more democratic positions emphatically disagree. Vigilante is in a constant state of paranoia because she comes from a Crapsack World, which rubs against those from more comfortable worlds.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Joakim and Razhum often have dreams like this. Joakim learns it's because Janet and Henry are deliberately feeding him the dreams to guide him back to them.
- Expy: A few, given its origins. Joakim and Janet are obviously modeled off the (nameless) protagonist and his wife in Broken Bride. And Razhum and Ebley, believe it or not, are very, very loosely based off Zexion and Demyx.
- Fantastic Racism: In Joakim's world, Models are viewed as mere machines, not human. He has no legal rights and his marriage to Janet isn't even legally recognized. On Janet's part, a lot of people think she has a weird robot fetish and her feelings for Joakim are just lust.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Most visible in the Golden Lands - the Isohora Islands are a mix of Japan/Indonesia, Inata a cosmpolitan trading city like many of the cities along the Silk Road. Ned's world, Nepentheland, also bears a vague resemblance to Revolutionary-era America...with airships.
- Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Since this is a multiverse, after all. A lot of the worlds come from scrapped novel/comic/TV show ideas of mine; it's a chance to explore those ideas without having to go terribly in-depth.
- In a similar vein, I guess you could view it as a Massive Multiplayer Crossover for all my stories.
- Fetch Quest: In the Golden Lands, the crew's main goal is to find and retrieve the Lawful Scepter.
- Foil: Practically every character reflects on Joakim in some way or another.
- Functional Magic: Various kinds in the various worlds.
- A mild kind of Magitek in Ned's world. The magic here is fairly low-level and used only to augment technology.
- In the Golden Lands, magic users tap into the Universal Soul to manifest Full-Contact Magic and Psychic Powers.
- Geometric Magic and Instant Runes in the cistern world. Can be used to manifest elemental powers and summon spirits.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Shows up surprisingly often. Ned/Mika is a pretty straight example, but we also have Henry /Joakim and Ivar/Traveler.
- I Will Find You: Joakim's quest for Janet sets off the entire plot.
- No New Fashions in the Future: The people of Joakim's time period pretty much dress and act like people from the late aughts, mostly because I don't want to bother coming up with futuristic fashions.
- Omnicidal Maniac: The villains wish to destroy the entire multiverse.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The zombies in Vigilante's city are especially vulnerable to fire, and they are sentient, cunning, and well-organized.
- Precision F-Strike: Happens on occasion. Joakim in particular is a master of them.
- Vigilante is more of a case of Sir Swears-a-Lot, with a bit of Sophisticated as Hell mixed in.
- Punny Name: The name of the "Bad Son" arc not only refers to the titular "bad son," Ivar Svensson, but is also a pun off the title of the song "Bad Sun" by The Bravery, which is pretty much Ivar and the Traveler's Image Song.
- Shout-Out: Naturally, there's a lot to Broken Bride. The titles and content of the first and second arc especially.
- Soiled City on a Hill: The cistern city has become this, though not through its own fault - it's because the gangs (as an indirect result of the villains) have overrun it
- Story Arc: Broken Memory is told through arcs, which range from one to ten chapters. If my current planning holds true, it will have thirty arcs.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Happens whenever Jo and Henry have to work together. Which is distressingly often.
- Title Drop: Happens when Jocasta first appears in the cistern, and later when the Traveler learns the truth behind himself."Through this broken memory...I'm beginning to uncover...who I...truly...am."
- Trauma Conga Line: Joakim goes through one at the end of the prelude.
- And the Traveler is currently undergoing one. We'll see how long it lasts...
- Two Guys and a Girl: Joakim, Henry, and Janet start off as friends, but eventually acquire baggage. Although Henry and Joakim don't clash over their feelings for Janet so much as their feelings for each other.
- Wham Episode: Joakim finds out Janet is still alive, and Henry has been using him all this time. Whoo boy....
- And later, we get one that blows even that out of the water: Joakim is dead all along and the real protagonist is another Model given Joakim's memories.
