OK. At the moment there are two timelines. The current 'main' timeline, North Mural, contains most of the recent modules, and nearly all of the named characters.

There was another timeline, implied by the 'real' timeline, detailing a much larger sweep of events from the past into the far, far future, referencing the VHZ era, Alex Muto and the Partisans, and the enigmatic spaceman James Killjoy. This timeline was subsequently de-listed from the site, though the direct URL still works. I will not post said URL here, as a courtesy to the creator.

The most recent update, which introduced MIRINET, however, added a 'comming soon' tab to the NM timeline, under the title Behind the Curtain. Weather or not this is a re-working of the old 'Real' Timeline, or something wholly new, remains to be seen.

The MIRINET module explained the hidden connections between many of the modules within the NM timeline, laying out which characters are involved in the creation of which module. It ignores some which fall outside the NM timeline, writing them off with a cryptic "oops, some are missing!". This seems to dismiss the events of the 'old' timeline, but some of the comments by the mysterious narrorator(s) of MIRINET also allude to the VHZ era and later events.

So, this seems to insinuate that the two timelines take place in the same universe, but were written to focus on different sequences of events, one on the human race and the whole world over many eons, and another on a single city and the Sensitive underground over the span of a few years. The 'real' timeline even has a gap of a few years between notable events that NM would comfortably fit into.

But the problem is that the NM timeline does not metnion any of the specific events in the Partisan timeline taking place before it, but many taking place after it.

A second posibility is that the NM timeline and its characters are a story-within-a-story, told collectively by the Partisans of the 'real' timeline, presumably written a ways afterwards, when the world has grown darker and grimmer. The hints of things to come are social commentary by the Partisans on the state the world has fallen into

ZEROWORLD, however, seems to complicate things considerably, moreso than any other specific module. On the one hand, it was most definitely created by characters within the NM timeline, but it seems to take place in the future, in the 'real' timeline.

I will come back to this, but consider Walltown. It takes place in a far future, where the Strangers are rare, but seemingly everyone can see them, instead of just sensitives.

There are many references to something called 'The Flood", which is aparently both an alternate dimension and an event in which this dimension bleeds into the real world. I suspect that the 'everyone is a sensitive now' is a byproduct of this 'Flood'.

But where does that leave us with the timelines?

Let me lay out a purely hypothetical cosmology.

Both are real, and both are fictional.

The Partisans created NM as a nostalgic throwback to better times, and also as commentary on the present. Meanwhile, the Partisan timeline is the collective product of the NM characters works, a cautionary tale of how the world could, and ultimately does, come undone. Each timeline is a fictional story existing within the other. While this may seem needlessly elaborate, I suspect that this ties into the other great Wild Card: The Flood.

See, a common trope in Science Fiction is for a timeline to diverge in response to a great event. I suspect that this is the opposite. To quote the glossary "The Flood is the break that occurs when the structure and order of one world can no longer be sustained. It marks the end, and cannot be resisted."

The VHZ era is inevitable, and any timeline with Strangers in it will, eventually, gravitate towards it. As the two timelines, and possibly others yet unwritten, near this end-state, they begin to bleed togeather, acelerating the process and creating exotic Stranger strains as it does so, and magnifying other paranatural forces as well, like... Whatever happened between Default and whoever the 'Goshawk FM' is.

When a certain threshold is passed, the afflicted timelines collapse into each other, creating a singular hyper-world.

The Flood.

It is likely that The Flood is triggered by specific event in addition to the bleed-through, like the speck of ice that causes a supercritical water to frees solid in an eye-blink.

In North Mural, I suspect that this event was the detonation of Fifi Cherishes magnum opus, the Motherbomb, a device which possibly incorporates Stranger powers and other extra-dimensional influences. In the Partisan timeline, I suspect that the catalyst is either something that James Killjoy does, or the first extrusion.

Thoughts?