The Time Crash was a major event in The Missing Series that occurred at the end of the twentieth century. It was unintentionally caused by Gary and Hodge when their plane containing the Missing Children "crash-landed" at the Liston, Ohio airport. As the Time Crash was caused by time travelers and therefore, never meant to happen in original time, it drastically altered the lives of many people in the twenty-first century. The magnitude of these changes resulted in nearly thirteen years of Damaged Time in the twenty-first century, preventing any time travelers from entering the twenty-first century during these years (with few exceptions). The Time Crash was primarily explained in Found and Revealed, with some additional details of it being learned in Redeemed.
Background[]
Gary and Hodge kidnapped 36 famous children from the past and unaged all of them into babies. The duo wanted to bring them to the future to sell them to families for millions of dollars. While transporting the babies together in a futuristic device disguised as a plane, they were caught and pursued by the Time Agency, who ordered them to "land in the nearest Time Hollow". To avoid arrest, Gary and Hodge abandoned the babies, and the plane carrying them crash-landed in the late twentieth century. The plane suddenly appeared at Gate 2B of Liston airport, which was witnessed by Sky Trails Air employees Angela DuPre and Monique Waters. The former boarded the plane and unloaded the babies upon discovering them. The babies were urgently distributed to local families via adoption while the airline and FBI, both unaware of the plane's true origin, agreed to deny the incident.
Clues as to When It Takes Place[]
The exact year that the Time Crash occurred is never stated in the books directly; however, we can work out a few clues.
- It is repeatedly stated in the series that the Time Crash takes place at the end of the twentieth century, meaning that the latest possible year it occurred was 1999.
- In Caught, a projection montage of Emily's twenty-first century life shows her father wearing a T-shirt that said he volunteered at the Columbus Marathon in 1995. He was wearing this T-shirt when he first heard the news that he was adopting Emily. As a result, the Time Crash must have taken place in 1995 or later.
- In Risked, Linda Skidmore states that the bones of the final two missing Romanovs were found in 2007, which apparently "wasn't that long ago". Since the Time Crash was "thirteen years ago" from the present setting of the series, it must have taken place at most thirteen years before 2007, or sometime after 1994.
- In Revealed, Katherine mentions that she used Instagram to obtain a picture of Charles Lindbergh on her cell phone. Since Instagram was founded in 2010, this means that the time setting in the series is 2010 at the earliest. 13 years prior to 2010 would be 1997; therefore, the earliest year Time Crash could have occurred is 1997.
When considering all these points, it can be concluded that the Time Crash happened sometime between 1997 and 1999.