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The people began to put the planet back together.

Were under the impression that it was still entirely whole.

It was actually shattered into exactly 148,983,456 pieces.

The world was sliced in twain.

655 attempted to communicate his desire for the urn to the Quarkbeast.

655 was very sad that his urn was eaten.

655 popped back up with a splash, tasting of salt.

Unfortunately, 655 could not fight from inside an urn.

655's remains had neatly contained themselves within it.

The ninjas lost, much to everyone's surprise.

Which were ninjas that had gas-powered jetpacks.

Eventually, the dragon lured 655 into a gladiatorial fight.

Who had laid claim to his urn.

If you say so. Meanwhile, 655 was on the run again.

Grace stepped inside, looking for its occupants.

That is true. If he does not see you with it, he will not know. But be careful: he has eyes in many places.

The skeins have always been in TLT. Alex may have started in TLT or been scattered only a few years into the past. He does not, the survey responded, but he would be very offended if you took it.

"Transit with the outside world has been scrambled for the past hundred years or so. Anything coming in or out is chronologically scattered."

Grace let out a short, humorless laugh. "Good luck with that."

The nice thing about the speed of light is that it is constant. That means that if you measure the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one second and then divide it by 299,792,458, you will always get the same distance, and that distance will equal one meter. Imagine I'm making a meter stick. How do I know how long it should be? Well, perhaps I take an existing meter stick and use that to measure out exactly one meter. We'll assume that the stick that I'm measuring from is, in fact, exactly one meter. Now, the new meter stick I just made is made out of wood. Wood is not a perfect material. It may bend over time, it may absorb moisture and grow, etc. Any material that I use, in fact, will not be perfect: its length will vary slightly over time. For many applications, this will not be a problem. However, what happens when someone else wants to make meter sticks? They need to know how long a meter is. So perhaps they come to me and purchase my finest, most accurate meter stick, and use that to make new ones. Even my most accurate meter stick will not be enough to give them the same measurement every time: their meter sticks will not always be the same meter that my sticks are. And if someone makes meter sticks from their meter sticks, the problem will only compound. Now, depending on what the meter sticks are being used for, the amount of variation might not matter at all. However, this raises a question: what is the actual length of a meter? You see, the physicists are knocking on my door saying that they want to have the speed of light defined in meters per second, and - since the speed of light is invariant - they want it to stay the same number of meters per second. (Physicists get quite annoyed when their invariants vary.) Now, I might just take my original meter stick and say "This meter stick is officially one meter long. One meter is defined as the length of this stick." However, there's a problem with this: my meter stick is not made out of a perfect material either, since perfect materials don't exist! That means that its length will vary, which means that the length of the meter will vary, which means that the "constant" speed of light will vary, which means that the physicists will be be annoyed. Unlike meter sticks, however, a number that is written down will stay that number forever. And also unlike meter sticks, the speed of light will never change. Therefore, in order to have a definition of a meter that is consistent, all I need to do is determine how many meters light travels in a fixed period of time and then write that number down. Any time I want to know how long a meter is, all I have to do is repeat the experiment and divide by the number I wrote down. TL;DR a meter has to be defined by something, so it might as well be something that we know won't change. None of which takes away from your point that measurements are inherently arbitrary.

"Yes," Jahrdor replied, still somewhat cautious.

Professor Jones blinked. "...What?"

Jahr hesitated. "Well, yes. I want to overthrow them."

"No," replied Jahr hurriedly. "I have no affiliation with your parents. Quite the opposite, in fact."

"Indeed," Jahr replied, thoughtful. "Tell me, princess- how did you end up where I found you?"