AERC FAQ

Who is Yeardley Dekader?

Yeardley Dekader discovered the existence of Alternate Earths sometime in the late 1950s. However, due to Dekador's foresight, the knowledge of alternate realities was not made public until he had perfected the science and until controls could be put in place to prevent the technology from falling into the hands of evil.

No one knows for sure how the technology he used to make his discoveries came into existence, but the predominate theory is that Dekader was not really from our Earth. It is believed that he may have come from some alternate reality where the Earth was far more technologically advanced and somehow became trapped here and feigned his discovery when he was actually searching for a way home.

Yeardley Dekader

A major contributor to this theory is that shortly after announcing his discoveries, and the creation of the first safe inter-reality travel vessel (IRTV), Dekader vanished. However, it has been maintained that Dekador actually was lost in 1975 due to a malfunction of his proto-type IRTV. Prior to the accident Dekador made several excursions into alternate realities and brought back proof. To the left is a picture of Dekader holding a violin-type instrument that he brought back from an alternate Earth. In this other reality, the instrument was called a "webber."

The AERC was founded by one of Dekador's assistants B. Ryan Newhouse who had assisted Dekador during the creation the first practical IRTV. Overall it took more than 40 years for the technology to be perfected and now Newhouse too has since vanished, but not before establishing a research center to catalog and study Alternate Earths.

What is an IRTV?

It is a vehicle for traveling between realities. It can also travel through time. The perfected IRTV allows passengers to travel to any point in time and to any reality. Recent IRTV's have limited flight capability and can be made invisible in alternate realities.

Other Realities?

Dekader discovered that there are an infinite number of realities all basically residing in the same spot in the universe. However, each one of them exists at a different frequency. You can call it a Harmonic Ping. By boarding an IRTV and alternating the harmonic ping you can travel to a different reality. The IRTV alters the passenger's frequency to match that of another reality. (Slightly altering this ping allows the IRTV to appear invisible in other Realities.)

Time Travel works a bit differently. As Einstein explained, all time exists at once. Basically the IRTV also allows you to slip above the time stream and then dip back into it at the time you desire. The science is mind boggling and much too difficult to explain here.

The past and the future?

Sure, but the AERC has seriously limited excursions into the future. Mainly because once a person leaves the past, the future they are visiting records them as vanishing on that day. You can't visit yourself in the future because once you leave the past, you no longer exist in any future you may visit. You can visit yourself in an alternate reality, if you indeed exist in that reality.

B. Ryan Newhouse

It is speculated that Ryan Newhouse traveled into the future, but for all we know now, he vanished never to be seen again. So history records him to be gone, unless at some point he comes back.

Anyway, any future you visit is unreliable because any impact the traveling party may have on the timeline is absent. When AERC first founded, we didn't put such limitations on resulting in the cataloging of a lot of erroneous information. On the amusing side one of our travelers collected news stories detailing her disappearance six different times.