However, given the huge collection of portal devices, universes with time machines, and so on that we have access to, I would be inclined to say that you could land in World One at basically any time you wanted, like it was any other fic.

You never know how much time will pass between worlds.

I remember seeing someone say that if, when you're in HQ, you stop and think "Hey, time should be passing," it does. Otherwise it tends to drift. Me, I was just clumsily trying to work out an actual timeline for my stuff on a couple occasions and I was more-or-less winging it, so don't take anything I did timewise as undiluted PPC-canon.

On a related note, I have to say I hope they have a way to slow it down, otherwise S&S and the M-kids would age at four times the rate of a human. Eh, there's probably some drug in some continuum which would slow the aging rate ...

...I've assumed that time in HQ is kind of like the geography. By which I mean that it doesn't stay in place and sort of moves all over depending on the individual. So while time is generally in tune with World One, it might also depend on how much time an Agent thinks has elapsed.

HST is tuned to World One most of the time; New Caledonia is occupied /now/, the AD 2004 Oxford Gathering caused problems in HQ in 2004 HST, there's Laburnum's interlude, etc etc. But not all cases fit. Agent Vemi, for instance, returned home "only a few days after she'd originally left". In general, however, HQ is synched to World One. We hope.

hS