Mrs. Carson looks surprised. "Two thousand and twelve," she agrees. "Is that a discontinuity?"

"Last we knew it was nineteen eighty."

"...ah. Well, it is currently 2012. September twenty-seventh, more specifically."

"Well, that makes sense of the weird technology." 

"It's also partly a consequence of having Gadgeteers around; their mutation is a kind of instinctual understanding of technology, and their inventions are often, though not always, reproducible by baselines. Most industries have been kickstarted to some extent by Gadgeteer innovations."

"Oh I was already assuming that part. We had this one guy, Dr. McCoy, back home, back before everything."

"Well, anyway, it is 2012. You might be happy to hear that, if your society was anything like ours, social issues have advanced considerably in the absence of killer robots. Gay marriage is legal and everything."

"--What, really?"

"Yes! In many states, at least - Massachusetts, where we are now, was the first, but several have followed suit, and there's cases in the supreme courts just about everywhere. It's quite exciting."

"That's so cool! How are mutant rights?"

"We're not what you'd call universally beloved, which is a large part of why Whateley Academy is still kept mostly secret, but it's certainly better than it was even a few years ago. Mutants are acknowledged to have rights, and you don't hear nearly as much about the pitchfork-wielding mobs. At least in the States."

"...Secret? --I guess that might've been a good idea.' 

"Even with the secrecy, there have been incidents. Most of the population may have gotten with the program, but it only takes a handful of baselines with assault rifles to cause a serious problem. But there hasn't been a major incident of that sort since Halloween of 2006."

"What happened Halloween of 2006?"

She looks slightly haunted. "A full-scale invasion of the campus by the supervillain Deathlist and his private army, the Tiger Guard, during the annual Halloween Ball. There were only three deaths on our side, but it was extremely traumatic for everyone involved."

She pinches her nose. "...Why."

"There was a particular team of students who had thwarted a plan of his, during a trip to Boston, and he wanted revenge. After the Halloween Invasion, his power structures were systematically dismantled by a coalition of superheroes and supervillains who had attended Whateley and did not appreciate his threatening their alma mater, and the man himself was in Detroit when the city was destroyed, so he's presumed dead."

"What happened to Detroit?"

"There was a coalescence of ley lines, which drew a large number of superheroes and villains to Detroit hoping to claim untold power for themselves, but during the peak of the event, the city and its environs simply... ceased to exist. A perfect sphere was carved out of the ground. No one knows why; the event was claimed by a handful of terrorist groups and supervillains, but not plausibly. The going hypothesis is that whoever was responsible was consumed along with the city."

"...Wow. How, uh, often does the ley lines thing happen?"

"This was the first time in five hundred years; the next isn't scheduled for another six centuries."

"What happened five hundred years ago?"

"That one occurred in what is now Nigeria; the power of the ley lines was claimed by a local king, Omotayo, who established a fairly substantial empire with the power it granted him before being assassinated by his wife. Why?"

"Trying to figure out if the Detroit thing is typical."

"It wasn't. It was, by all accounts, unique in all of recorded history."