Wild Card

“We think we've got this all figured out—the Takisians, the Swarm. We don't know sh*t.” –Bradley Finn, Joker Moon (Melinda Snodgrass).

With so many characters, storylines, and authorial voices all interwoven through the WC saga, quite a lot of things happen “off camera,” so to speak, and Finn’s trip home is one of those. Due to a time-travel event caused by someone’s stray wild card power in Low Chicago, absent-minded British ace Abigail “the Understudy” Baker was sent backwards in time, landing in the age of the dinosaurs. So it would seem that the Network has been, retroactively speaking, interested in Earth for over sixty-million years … still all due to the virus’ release in the 20th century. And besides, as the Glabberian explains to one of the last surviving Freemasons at the end of Aces High, “The Master Trader would never have given you world dominion. There is a lot of information about them in Mutants and Masterminds, suggesting that they are one of the most important of the Network’s member races. A Network agent came to Earth, making contact with Count Alessandro di Cagliostro. Certain information was imparted unto the count, which led to the creation of the Egyptian Rite of the Freemasons. Like a game of telephone, the sacred knowledge was distorted somewhat as it was passed down over generations of Egyptian masonry, and across continents as well. The Network is a coalition of multiple alien races; sort of the Wild Cards version of the United Federation of Planets, albeit not quite so benign in intent. But that means the history of the world prior to Wild Card Day should match real life precisely. As far as we know, the contract remains open—so the question still looms as to what exactly Tachyon is going to do when the Network comes to collect. “His chariot is the size of Manhattan Island, and armies of angels and demons and gods fight at his beck and call. The Master Traders decided to establish a presence on our planet only a few years later; so ever since 1952, there has been a Network xenologist from the planet Glabber living on Earth. Glabberians look nothing like humans, but fortunately that hasn’t been a problem. Guided by their “Swarm Mother,” these doughy invaders came calling in late 1985, only to be completely repelled in the summer of ’86, as thoroughly documented in Aces High. As far as most of humanity in the WCU is aware, we have faced alien invasion twice now in our history, and survived both times.