A Note on Notation: Constructing a coherent timeline of the Burgerverse is confusing. Where possible everything should be cited from a story (the numbers are not pages, but sections). Some dates can be inferred from the story's context, but in some places only rough estimates can be surmised. Try to narrow dates as closely as possible, but only so far as logic allows. If events of one story obviously take place before those of another, or before a certain date, then '-BH' will suffice. Likewise, 'BH+'. If events seem that they likely occur at a certain year, but there is no hard evidence to suggest an exact year, label them as '~date'.

 

 

Timeline

This space is reserved for events which occur prior to or are connected with the genesis of the Secret Math

 

Pre-Written History: Lallo encounters strange beings and becomes Long, possibly the first and oldest of all the Long (TLM 1)

 

33: Jeremiah and Tim visit Mara Yeshua, an upstart Jewish teacher of some reknown (JR 1). They encounter Simon (of Space), who becomes upset because Jeremiah is 'not even supposed to be here yet' (JR 2). Yeshua restores Tim's ability to walk, its loss most likely a psychosomatic symptom of his guilt (JR 3).

 

1904: Albert Einstein mentally constructs an atomic bomb at a meeting with close friends and a mysterious Turk. (TSM 3)

 

1936: Bahram Siraj, Prince of Anwar, is born (TSM 19).

 

1945+: Bahram Siraj, Prince of Anwar, begins funding Lallo Long on behalf of the Shah of Anwar (LM 6).

 

~1950: Lallo Long meets the Shah of Anwar. The Shah reveals that they are already on Mars (LM 6).

 

1955: Albert Einstein is assassinated by the Turk and Bahram Siraj in order to keep the beginnings of The Secret Mathematic from the scientific community (TSM 6).

 

1960: Fleuve, a young native woman, is proscribed Kevadon by her rich, married boyfriend's doctor for morning sickness. The boyfriend, Dean Willoughby, believes the child to be his. The Kevadon, a thalidomide-derivative, will result in multiple birth defects in her son, Sky Mississauga, who will be born later this year. These defects include congenital phocomelia (flipper-limb) and somnianimus conscientia (consciousness while asleep) (TSM 2).

 

1964: Lallo accompanies Bahram into The Mine of Truth, a secret complex buried beneath New York City. The Mine is the sanctum of a society of Hasidic Jews. Bahram asks the head of Jeremiah, called the artifact, whether it is 'time yet,' to which Jeremiah replies 'Soon.' (TSM 9)

 

1966: Lallo loses his arm after being hit by a truck. Prester John saves his life, but then tortures him to reveal Lallo's employer. Lallo breaks, and the Shah of Anwar breaks off all contact with him (LM 7)

 

1960s or 1970s: Bahram heads up an escavation site which the Nazis had previously unearthed and where they had performed bizarre experiments on children (TSM 12)

 

1971: Young Sky Mississauga is taken from his loving father, mostly because Creek's primary source of income is selling drugs.  Scientologists step in and raise the boy. (TSM 5)

 

1976: Sky Mississauga, now 16, escapes the scientologists and, aided by Yves LeRoche, begins his trip to Canada to find his father (TSM 8)

 

1977: Dragana Zoranovic is born (TSM 4).

 

1980s?: Barry Porter is shown the true nature of the Shah of Anwar by disloyal palace servants. He is killed, along with the rebels and Barry's photographer.

 

1986: Drago Tesla Zoran is born in Serbia to Ratko and Danica Zoranovic (TSM 4). 

 

1988: Justine Schaler captures Angus Craig Llewelyn, a con-artist, in Cancun. (SS 6; BG 8)

 

1989: Michael Zhang is born.

 

Early 1990s:

Sky Mississauga investigates the murder of his father, Creek. (TSM 11)

 

Sky Mississauga investigates the nightly displacement of the residents of S. Inlet from the town's current location to its old location. He encounters Aglakti, an Inuit teenager who will one day become the pop sensation Cherry Nuk Nuk (ST).

 

1991: Nicole Gavrilovna Zoran is born.

 

~1992: The Zoranovics feel the crushing grasp of an oppressive government. (TSM 1)

 

1994:

Their home country of Serbia decimated by civil war, the Zoranovics are refugees.  Drago drives himself dangerously close to insanity playing chess with his recently dead sister, a softcore porn model. His WISC-R test results indicate that he is 'a somewhat less than well-rounded' prodigy. (TSM 4)

 

Mike Zhang, a five year old orphan, embarks on a Crusade against the latest initiatives of Baron Toys during the Christmas season with fellow orphan Chloe and members of the Order of St. Nicholas. Mike is placed with the Cuthbertsons through the Order's contacts, and Chloe is initiated into the order (PS).

 

Late 1990s:

Dalia becomes the chattel of The Brigade, a biker gang. She then escapes and begins wandering the continent (VMC)

 

Sky Mississauga loses his job with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service due to budget cuts. He buys an old schoolbus to pursue his interconnected cases (TSM 17).

 

As a student of Budapest University, Drago is helped by a student named Piroska to bridge the gap between his extremely personal chess notation and standard notation. The same day, he transfers to the Sorbonne in Paris (TSM 7).

 

1999:

Lallo the Long writes a memoir and manifesto (The Long Man) while living in a derelict old house which details why he has decided to kill all of the Long (LM; BH 3). Mike Zhang Cuthbertson stumbles upon him on Halloween night (BH).

 

1999-2000: Lansing Mississauga, Sky's nephew, and his Star Trek geek friends are entangled in a hunt between Sandy and her prey Melody (BG).

 

1999 or 2000: Drago Tesla Zoran submits his doctoral dissertation (TSM 10).

 

2000:

Mike Zhang Cuthbertson infiltrates a nightclub called Coriander's during a family trip to Toronto. He encounters Cherry Nuk Nuk (a pop singer), Dalia (a runaway), Red Vicious (a punk rocker turned hotel desk jockey), Ed Hulver (a bodyguard), and Lorenzo (the nightclub's owner). Lorenzo either bought or inherited the club from Mr. Coriander, a guest at his Mexican disco in 1988 (SS 7)

 

Drago Tesla Zoran is struck by an errant taxi while doing math in the streets of Paris. He saves the life of Nicole Gavrilovna, a nine-year old girl, with a watermelon. He had been obsessing over constructing a mathematical description of the shotput event of the Olympics (TFF:4). When his mother visits him in the hospital, he shows her that he discovered 'true zero' in his drugged sleep, and she accidentally reveals that Drago's father lives in Paris (TSM 13). Drago visits his father, Ratko, who tells him that Drago has been awaited for thousands of years. Drago is the basis for the story of the Serbian dragon Zmaj Gorynych, whose 16 extra heads hide the greatest treasure in the world (TSM 16). Ratko is revealed to be one of the zduhaci, six-fingered and -toed agents of Zmaj who can smell disorder. They fight alongside him against Baba Yaga and her army of ale, daemons of weather and ruin. The 16 heads of Zmaj are the 16 strains of the Human Executives. The ale are the Long. Baba Yaga is Cassandra. Shortly after Drago visits Ratko, his research proposal is accepted by Dr. John Felix of McGill University, and Drago leaves Europe (TSM 18)

 

Thomas Zhang constructs his first clockwork limb, a thumb for a neighboring sculptor (TFF 4)

 

TFF+: Thierry, Nicole Gavrilovna's father, follows Nicole and her mother to America after his ex-wife realizes Nicole has secretly been visiting her father during the middle of the school day. Thierry is stopped at the border and sent to Syria for questioning. He escapes from prison with the help of Lallo Long (TFF 4)

 

~2000: Tennyson Smith, a spy-for-hire loyal to the British Crown, is hired by the Queen to retrieve the Jamijama from Ziusudra's compound. He encounters Lallo the Long, who is also looking for the book. Lallo sports an arm from the Zhang workshop (PT 6). Lallo fights Ziusudra, and takes the Jamijama after Tennyson betrays him. The Dioscuri escape from their father Zeus's custody (PT 7).

 

Sept 8, 2001: Lallo Long rips off the Shah of Anwar's arm and beats him with it. The Shah's doctor is killed in the struggle.

 

Sept. 11, 2001: The Shah of Anwar summons Morris Abrams, a Jewish physician affiliated with the Doctors without Borders, and asks him to become his new physician. The World Trade Center is destroyed, and in the chaos, Lallo Long steals the head of Jeremiah. (TSM 19; TSM 20)

 

Sept. 16, 2001: Lallo attempts to smuggle himself and Jeremiah into Canada on a ship. He encounters a twenty-two year old drifter named Dalia and various Arabian-Americans stowing away on the same ship (TSM 20).

 

~October, 2001: Lallo and Dalia have set up shop in an abandoned barn, feeding Jeremiah various materials while he attempts to rebuild his body. Lallo reveals that Tennyson Smith retrieved the Jamijama from him. Lallo is shot by the new owners of the barn, Jeremiah kills them with the Math, and Dalia steals their car and leaves (TSM 25). 

 

2000s:

Sky Mississauga investigates a memetic virus sent from the future. The virus takes the form of a dream which warns the infected to "Stop Tim." Patient Zero is a pubescent girl named Cassandra. Sky contracts the virus, and is allowed to explore it more fully than others who are infected because of his somnianimus conscientia. The dreamer is chased by Tim, and Sky, who is wearing armor and Zhang limbs. (TB)

 

Sky Mississauga investigates a woman who has become a photon trap which converts light into mass. He convinces Alexander Baum, a prison guard, to evacuate the neighborhood before the woman becomes a black hole and explodes (TSM 21).

 

Piroska visits Felix and Zoran's lab at McGill University, but becomes angry that Zoran has succumbed to hubris and refuses to submit his Math to scientific investigation before the theory is completed (TSM:20).

 

John Felix hires Sandra to put together a trust plan to cover the lab's operating budget for the next five years. Zoran visits a pair of conjoined twins from India who travel the world, giving people advice (TSM 23). They are joined at the head, and because of this experience a sort of somnianimus conscientia (TSM 24). It is likely that Sandra is actually Justine Schaler.

 

Dr. Felix and Danica Zoran convince Drago to check into a mental hospital after a particularly baffling experiment at the Lac à l'Eau Claire facility (TSM 26).

 

The Shah of Anwar becomes aware that Drago Zoran is the author of the Secret Math, and that Sky Mississauga is the human abacus he has searched for. The Shah has a Zhang arm (TSM 24).

 

A manned mission to Mars reveals that someone has already landed on Mars, and wants the Earth to believe that millions of people already live underneath the planet's surface. Morris Abrams' estranged Zionist son Lawrence, a doctor and astronaut, deigns not to return to the lander in order to see what happens (WM 3).

 

A third World War between the West and China develops. The Chinese are apparently allied with Mars.

 

-LT; ~2009: Zoran's 20 AIs found a corporation for each of themselves, with the other corporations as officers.

 

2010:

Mike Zhang Cuthbertson marries Sarah, his childhood sweetheart (RC 1). Weeks later he goes MIA. Their friend Paramjit Pakaresh is accepted as Drago Zoran's doctoral student at McGill University. Quebec is in the process of seceding from Canada.

 

Mike is tortured by his own army's intelligence agents because of a misunderstanding. He is then lost in transit and becomes the leader of a tribe of chimpanzees fluent in sign-language. He and his chimps are sent to the Moon (ABFA).

 

2011: Phat-so Kim, his brother Sun, and his friend Becca stumbled upon one of Sky Mississauga's cases.

 

2012:

Drago Zoran has his first date with Nicole Gavrilovna, his future wife (TFF 4).

 

Event Zero (TSM 24)

 

~2015:

Two of Dr. Drago Zoran's AI corporations die. Mendelssohn uses quantum tunnelling to move his active number matrices outside of his computer array and into the building's electrical system and jumps into Gloria's tank. The lab was forced to euthanize both of them (LT 2)

 

A week later, Drago Zoran and his graduate students trick the newly-formed Republic of Quebec to grant legal personhood to their AI corporations as a building block towards true personhood. Paramjit Pakaresh, Phat-so Kim and Cassandra work for Zoran (LT 1,2).

 

 

The Future Timeline

This space is reserved for events which assumedly take place after the death of Drago Zoran and are presently unconnected to the earlier timeline. Because of their disconnection from other stories, it is impossible to place them in a true timeline, and at this point, we can only place them in rough relation to each other.

 

Free Felix 1: Felix is mistakenly shipped to the small Martian camp of Naktong, which had been founded 35 years prior to the events of FF1. Sherrif Wa Tom is 73 years old.

 

FF2 (FF1 +42 years): Sherrif Wa Tom is 115 when he dies. Felix stays in Naktong for several years before leaving to find his original shipping address in Texamerica. The planet is now known as Ares (a company called Water of Ares is referenced on a sign). This means the war is over.

 

Bikes of New York: Luc Drapeau starts a gang to protect the citizens' of New York City right to use the power bikes. At the end of the story, the Mayor of New York announces that all New York residents with a permanent address will recieve an Aresian Power Bead (BNY 12).

 

One Small Step for Santa: Brother Marcus and George, an initiate of the Order of St. Nicholas, are charged with bringing tangerines to the poor people of the moon. At the end of the story, George is made a full member of the order, and it is hinted that he may be charged with caring for the children of Mars. The Royal Aresian Library is referenced, and Chloe of Pink Santa is now an old woman.

 

Two Moments of Invention: Slimfast Metamucil kills a young Martian girl and acquires a dampener.

 

Robots Bury the Dead: Sander Yi comes to close his older brother Vim's estate on Callisto, and becomes a man when he stands up to his family's influence.

 

Tim, Destroyer of Worlds: Tim is an obese infographic engineer specializing in encryption envelope manifold topography, assigned to Titan as a civilian contractor (TDW 1). He accidentally blows up the settlement on Titan, the planet Neptune, and the Sun (TDW 7). The Human Executives overthrow the Aresian government and close their jaws on the Secret Math, hiding it from humanity until it can handle the power.

 

Felix and the Frontier: Felix the Traveller acquires a companion and discovers something wicked.

 

 

Issues with the Time Line

The Zhang Workshop: Miriam's thumb is the first clockwork limb that Zhang constructs (TFF 4), and we know that the events of Three-Face Flip occur during one of the years of the Summer Olympics (TFF 2). Lallo has obtained a Zhang arm by the time of Plight of the Transformer (PT 6), which we know is before Sept. 16, 2001, because Lallo discusses being outwitted by Tennyson with Dalia (TSM 22). Therefore, this seems to place TFF in 2000. Drago is 14, and Lallo obtains an arm almost immediately after the workshop becomes famous. This seems to place the events of TSM 7, Drago's first encounter with Piroska Fodor, somewhere between 1995 and 1999 and means that Drago was barely pubescent when he obtained his doctorate. The timescale seems too accelerated for comfort.

 

Felix: Felix presents a problem to the timeline because he seems to have dual origins. During Felix and the Frontier, he reflects on the day he said goodbye to Dr. Zoran (who is an old man), and stepped into a hyperspace gate. He says he never saw the Sun again (FATF 5). It is well-known that there only one Felix (FATF 5). However, in Free Felix, he arrives at a small Martian frontier town in pieces, with no fusion micropile, and apparently no memory. If it is indeed the same Felix, the only way he could have been to Mars after leaving Earth is if he returned after FATF, which occurs 700 years before Simon and Space. By this time, Mars is certainly not a frontier planet.

 

 

Editor's Notes

TRH: I think the best course of action would be to pick one story, or even only one chapter of one story, reread it, and update this page with the events of that chapter or story.  If you don't know what year or date it happened, approximate it's location.  If we all work together, this thing may actually one day be up to date, and be EXTREMELY helpful in picking up some of the easter eggs inserted into various chapters.  Thanks!

 

Evan: Anyone with a hard copy of Simon in Space may be able to contribute greatly to the timeline--there could be untold Easter Eggs connected to the secret math, the executives, and the rise of Mars hidden within its pages. The key to filling in the timeline is the details--search for references to small events that can connect stories, or widen the context.