Story Circle

In case you'd like to read the stories of the "Infantus Cycle" in chronological order, this is the guide for that (as far as we've been able to tell – we didn't exactly plan it):

Modern Earth:

• A few decades ago: The Family (On Earth, an unusual family and an organization of nannies save the day and found what will become the Earth branch of Babies of All Ages, Inc.)
• More or less now: Abducted (An alien abductee is left at Nanny Vanessa's Daycare)
• Universal Megacorp Babies of All Ages - Hiring of Sally (Sally's hiring process at BoAA is not what she expected)
• Infantus (The first story written – an Earth couple is taken to Infantus through space and time by a mysterious spacecraft and becomes Mommy and Baby)
• Baby Company (A young man is drafted into a very unusual military unit; Sally appears)
• My Baby Inventions (On Earth, a new hire develops several new inventions for BoAA and becomes instrumental in protecting the company from a new threat)
• The Man in Gray (On Earth, a new threat to Persephone arises but makes a tactical error)
• Rise of the Floppits (Persephone sends the Floppits of Infantus to Earth, which will never be the same)

Near Future:

• BoAA's Earth branch spins off a tech company called Nano/Gen (which could potentially make several other stories part of this cycle)
• A.M.I. – Artificial Machine Intelligence (At Nano/Gen, a new tech hire meets an AI unlike any other)
• Cyborg (At Nano/Gen, a young woman wakes up after a fatal auto accident and finds herself in an experimental cyborg body)

Far Future (Or Distant Past?):

• Persephone starts BoAA
• Persephone, pretending to be a mortal named "Persephone Pandemos," discovers the planet Iota-95 Chamaeleontis, which later becomes known as Infantus
• Infantus colonized by ships from Earth: Dawn of Infantus (during the colonization of Infantus, the Mining Consortium plots to strip-mine it of its resources, which Persephone will not allow; BoAA is mentioned)
• 100 years later: Infantus Conspiracy (A spy infiltrates Infantus and BoAA)
• Infantus' ecosystem is altered to have no large predators
• Infantus develops a culture where nearly everyone is a baby, cared for by Nanabots
• The Denebian Princess (A man embarks on a space cruise liner and experiences a serious computer error; the ship stops at Infantus, and Sally appears)
• The Pretender (One of Infantus' only non-babies saves the day; no mention of BoAA or Sally but Persephone appears; the princesses from Deneb are mentioned)
• Infantus' culture develops, diversifying into multiple regions
• Thousands of years later: Baby by Night (A new Nana comes to Infantus and catches a strange illness, leading to the discovery of an intact 6th Legion ship from "Dawn of Infantus")
• Legend of Infantus (Persephone's daughters are lost and found; origin of Nana Pedersen)
• Baby Rules: the Cute and Adorable Rule (Persephone teaches her daughters about one of the Baby Rules)
• Fantasies Do Come True (One of Persephone's new babies is on a planet very far away and in trouble; the family comes to Infantus temporarily)

Some notes about the order of the stories:

First of all, most of them were written as standalone stories. In some cases an Infantus or Persephone element wasn't originally part of the story but popped in later as things developed. Miki especially flies by the seat of her diapers; she follows where the Muse takes her. Sometimes I write that way too, while at other times I have certain cinematic moments that I want to see happen, while the rest is fluid. But anyway, we tend to focus on the story itself with occasional references to other ones in the series, so it's not really terribly consistent. The only way this makes any sense at all is if traveling to Infantus means traveling through time as well as space.

The first story of these to be written was "Infantus" itself, and that was started by someone else working with Miki, but they then abandoned the project, leaving Miki with an unfinished story. She asked me if we could finish it, and I said OK, so we did. In this story, people from modern Earth are taken by a spaceship to a well-established planet Infantus. It's implied that there's a galactic civilization of which most of Earth is unaware. This has consistency problems with, for example, "Dawn of Infantus," where Infantus is originally colonized by ships from Earth, but hey, there are spacetime anomalies surrounding Infantus. There, problem solved.

"Universal Megacorp Babies of All Ages: the Hiring of Sally" was a story that Miki began and then put forward for us to write together. I inserted a foil for Sally named Veronica, a rival for the job, who hadn't existed before then, to give the story a bit of conflict. I think this story might be the first appearance of Persephone, in disguise until the end, but she was Miki's idea. She isn't the exact same Persephone from Greek mythology. But since this story introduces Sally, any other story that involves Sally must take place afterward. What happens to Mandy after this story? I'm guessing she got a promotion and was transferred to another branch, so she's happily working on another planet.

"The Family" was my idea and started out as my take on sort of an "Addams Family" (or Ray Bradbury's Elliott Family; see From the Dust Returned). The Addamses are very accepting of their wide variety of odd relatives; the only thing they don't accept is non-acceptance, and I wanted to explore what it would be like if such a family had a permanent baby – and what happened when that baby encountered the outside world. However, one thing led to another here, and there ended up being a more literal conflict into which Nana Pedersen stepped. This led to the founding of a Nana agency that we decided was the beginning of the Babies of All Ages corporation, or at least the Earth branch of it. So any story that mentions BoAA, Inc. (or, well, the Earth branch of it) must take place after this story. And this mentions Nana Pedersen, so it must take place after "Legend of Infantus."

Speaking of which, "Legend of Infantus" was Miki's idea and featured Persephone's two daughters, the Cherubs Becky and Trina. I immediately imposed the notion that the two characters needed to have very distinct personalities. I'm not sure how to pronounce the name of the planet Lxcrox IV, nor which of us made that up, but I'd suggest "Lexcrox Four." Nana Pedersen makes her debut in this story, meaning that any other story in which she appears must happen after this one – but it's fine, because since they're Persephone's daughters, Becky and Trina are immortal and will stop aging at some point, meaning that even if this one takes place long ago, Becky and Trina can appear again. The only reason why I think this story takes place after "Dawn of Infantus" is that there's a book about Infantus in the orphanage.

"Dawn of Infantus" was Miki's idea too, and it features the first appearance of Floppits. Miki had already been talking about Floppits in chats; she's incredibly creative and started talking at one point about going down "Floppit holes" instead of "rabbit holes" in plots, but in this story we finally wrote Floppits into something. We're halfway through the story by the time we find out the planet's earlier name, Iota-95 Chamaeleontis, which gets shortened to Infantus. "Dawn of Infantus" mentions Babies of All Ages, Inc., which I did talk to Miki about, and we agreed that this is not the Earth branch of the company; the interstellar company was started by Persephone before Infantus even existed, although there's also the shattered spacetime around Infantus, which we've invoked to explain various inconsistencies. And one of those is the fact that the story mentions that the colonists came from Earth, meaning that this story takes place both in Earth's far future and far in the past of the other stories. Sigh. But ... spacetime anomalies, so there.

"The Pretender" started out as an idea of mine where I posited what might happen if Infantus, by this time a planet that is almost all babies of varying physical age cared for by Nanabots, was saved by one of its rare non-babies, and how that would happen. Placing it in the timeline is trifficult, because Infantus is a very homogeneous culture in this story, yet we later see Infantus populated by both babies and non-babies – but in this story it's stated that the princesses of Deneb sometimes come to visit Infantus, which places it after "The Denebian Princess," and that one must come after "My Baby Inventions." This means that the all baby/Nanabot culture must develop later, for a reason that hasn't been told, and steps are taken to diversify its culture at the end of this story, so it can fit fairly late in the timeline. This story features an appearance by the Renni-Tu or Lizard Cats, an alien race Miki invented that appear in her Empress series, and an alternate version of them appear in "West of Eden," which isn't related to either series.

"Infantus Conspiracy" specifically states that it takes place only about 100 years after Infantus' colonization in "Dawn of Infantus" and starts at the Infantus branch of BoAA. To make things crazier, one of the characters says she's from "Mars Colony" in the "Sol system," meaning that this must take place in Earth's future, which makes sense relative to "Dawn of Infantus," but not relative to the later stories that take place on modern Earth, such as "Infantus" itself.

"Baby Company" is rather short and deals with a modern Earth man who's drafted into a military unit but then transferred to another very unusual unit. This was an idea of Miki's that she then involved me in. Sally appears, and she's the only connection this story has to anything Infantus related. We never find out what this baby unit is for.

"The Denebian Princess" is the name of an interstellar space cruise liner, and my idea was based on a fantasy of mine about being mistaken for a baby by a computer-controlled system of robots that has an unfortunate data entry error. Miki introduced more characters, and the idea turned into a story. The cruise ship stopped at Infantus, the characters met Sally, and surprise, one of the characters turned out to be an actual space princess. It's a far-future space opera.

"My Baby Inventions," "The Man in Gray," and "The Rise of the Floppits" are sort of a trilogy, taking place on a modern Earth that is being affected by Babies of All Ages, Inc. (I wish it really existed). "The Man in Gray" came first and was my idea; I wanted there to be a sort of equal and opposite force to Persephone. But at the end of that story Persephone says it's time for the rise of the Floppits, so a while later we decided to write that story, about Persephone sending the Floppits of Infantus to impose changes to Earth's culture. Later on, I was playing with AI-based characters I'd created and decided to write them into a story that became "My Baby Inventions," about what it would be like to work at BoAA HQ on Earth. Miki went along with this, and with time we realized that the adversaries sounded a lot like the start of what was happening in "The Man in Gray," so we made it into a prequel to that story. However, the characters of "My Baby Inventions" are brought to Infantus at one point, and technology is developed that leads to the events of "The Denebian Princess."

More later!