Parrolan sees it first from his spy-spiders.

He's sitting at his (shrouded) desk trying to upgrade his spiders to get more evidence of what was going on with Councilor Brodrig.  Unsurprisingly, it hasn't been going well - he'd been supposed to be working in trade and logistics, for stars' sake!  But the invasion - the conquest of his homeworld - had wreaked havoc in all sorts of plans, and left him the only one in a place to maybe fix things.

And then the spiders suddenly give an exotic radiation alert.

No idea what sort of radiation - but Parrolan grabs up the spiders and dives out of the shroud for shelter.

He sees his niece Rinn and Jerach both there (Jerach's back?  Good), and a weird ball of pink light in the middle of the room that reminds him of the first stage of an exploding torpedo.  Rinn is standing there staring at it, and Jerach is doing something with his pocket computer.

"Radiation!" Parrolan cries.

"Safe for the moment," Jerach replied.  "Trying to get a read -"

Parrolan breathes one easy breath.  Jerach is a spacer; he should know that.

And then suddenly they're somewhere else.

Rinn gasps and looks around brightly.

"Is this a costume party?  Or -"

Or has Brodrig decided to just kidnap them.  But she doesn't want to say that out loud; Uncle Parrolan will say it soon enough.  And it's happier to think it's otherwise.

(All three of them are wearing shirts and pants of a strange cut, with embossed curves and spirals over them.  Parrolan has a large silver lapel-pin; Rinn a necklace with some small gems.)

"I'm afraid not." responds the man in the waistcoat. "The White Moon managed to locate our summoning point."

"The White Moon?  Who's - who're they?"

He glances around.  He hasn't seen these black crystals before - do the Tenevri have another previously-unknown substance?  He hasn't seen anyone wearing anything like this, either, so something is clearly up anyway.

(His hand strays toward the pocket where he has his computer, and the secret pocket next to it where he has a blaster.)

"And where is this!?"

"The White Moon are our enemies. The ones we've brought you here to help us against. We've summoned you to our timeline - we're in 21st century Tokyo. I don't know how much Wiseman explained, but it's not a good time to explain more."

(He doesn't have the least idea what backcountry town in Kenchester is "Tokyo.")

So the different factions in Kenchester's planetary government that were jockeying around have now come to an all-out fight?  "Look, I don't have any vested interest in any faction right now.  I just want to get to Arphax."

Rinn doesn't recognize "Tokyo" either, unfortunately.  On the other hand, she noticed the part about "twenty-first century" enough to halfway put it together with the strange costumes.

"Is this some masquerade party or something?"

"Twenty-first centur --"

He's pretty sure he's heard the name "Tokyo" before, too.  And that ball of radiation really did look weird enough to put him in mind of the wildest of wild tales about wormholes.

"Is this somehow Old Earth!?  In the Early Anthropocene, too?"

"We're on Earth, yes."

"Earth!?  But - how!?"

"However we got here - I'm Sky-Admiral Parrolan Milver of Alorica, and I've got vital information for your government about turning back the Tenevri invasion before they conquer any other worlds."

"I answer directly to the prince and can convey your warning to him, but that sounds as though it can wait until after this battle."

"Who are the Tenevri?"

"Aliens.  But if this's really the twenty-first century, they're not important; you wouldn't have heard..."

Well, if he's got his dates right.

"It's only been a century or so since someone first left the planet, right?"

"Earth had space travel during the Golden Kingdom, more than two thousand years ago. The first manned space-flight after their fall was just over half a century ago."

"We're early twenty-first century. Pre-Crystal Tokyo." the man in the waistcoat adds.

"You're saying those wild stories about ancient spaceflight were right!?"

"I would've thought I would've heard of this Golden Kingdom... and what's that 'Pre-Crystal Tokyo'?"

"If we don't stop them within eight years, the White Moon will take over the Earth, establish Tokyo as their capital and rename it Crystal Tokyo. Pre-Crystal Tokyo means before that happens - I've been sent back in time to change the future, and summoned you directly into the past to save the additional cost of transporting you from Nemesis to here."

"Wait, if we change the past, what happens to all of us?  And all our friends in the future?"

"Take over all the Earth?  I didn't think the Global Bureaucracy got started this early, and I know nobody else took over the whole planet before them -"

He pulls out his pocket computer.

"Computer, when did Old Earth's Global Bureaucracy come into effect worldwide?  Also, wiki 'White Moon' with reference to the Bureaucracy."

A man's voice, with an unnatural accent, reads out from what looks something like a purple cellphone.

"The World Government of Earth, popularly called the Global Bureaucracy, unified on 1 January 2184, though antecedents can be traced back to the mid-twentieth century.  Stop.  No references to 'White Moon' found in offered context."

"Well?" he snaps.

Are they not being honest here after all?

"We've already pulled you into an alternate timeline, so I wouldn't expect your actions here to modify things in your own timeline more. If you wanted a better understanding of the timeline mechanics you should have asked Wiseman about them."