The Plan

The Plan is the blueprint for all events in a given iteration of the Clarkwoods Literary Universe universe. Though there remains debate as to who or what creates each Plan—God, fate, or some other force—the most learned scholars in the cosmos all agree:

everything that is happening, has ever happened, or will ever happen is predetermined;
free will is a myth, or else has been so well accounted for as to be essentially useless; and,
the person or thing in charge has both a malicious sense of humor and a love for ultimately happy endings.

What none of them understand—because they don’t have access to the halflings of Eden except during Interregnums, and because they consider The Sister’s Regulars to be a bunch of crackpots—is that there is a loophole written into the very fabric of their universe.

If someone wants it bad enough, they can travel through time, change the past, and reboot reality in the process.

Manifestation

Though only the halflings, safely outside of the space-time continuum in Eden, can observe this, The Plan manifests itself as a deliberate reworking of events from the previous iteration of reality—a reworking designed to account for the change made by the Riverbender who brought that iteration to its end.

For instance, after Emily Henderson traveled through time to prevent the acquisition of The Shroud of Turin by Mitchell Genetics—ending the Earth-668 iteration of reality as a result—The Plan written for Earth-669 accounted for this by making the Shroud of Turin a fake, which in turn reversed the fortunes of the family who had cared for the relic in the previous version of reality, which in turn altered the destinies of the people they interacted with over the centuries, and so on.

The halfling scientists of Winkie Country hypothesize that there are two competing forces at work in the creation of each Plan: one vying for strict adherence to the script, and the other advocating for healthy amount of ad-libbing—so long as the basic outline is respected. It is the Winkies’ belief that the conflict between these two opposing forces is responsible for the aforementioned loophole.

Some believe that a reconciliation of these forces might lead an extended cut of reality which never reboots again, and which progresses until it reaches its natural death. But amongst those who believe this, there is little agreement about how such a reconciliation might be facilitated.

Localization

While The Plan applies to the 99% of reality bound by The River Without End, the purgatorial paradise of Eden is untouched by it. In Eden, free will truly does exist, which halfling scientists believe accounts for the completely unpredictable timespans of each Interregnum. When the gods or fate or whatever leave the final step in rebooting reality up to the citizens of that reality, it can take a long time.

Or no time, at all.

Type

Metaphysical, Supernatural