Building from the themes of education, international adoption and memory/history Shuo, Nick and I created a world where the fashion was adopting children throughout history. The Rescue Group collected pre-pubescent children for men and women who wanted to demonstrate their compassion for those who would suffer in more primitive and less tolerant societies. The adopted became representatives of their cultures and were expected to teach others, including adults, about their time as this society had lost much of its knowledge of history. New parents celebrated their children's cultures and adopted their original dress and design.

For this world Shuo created Brennie. She despised the practice of temporal adoption. She believed it promoted immorality and joined the Grey, a terrorist organization devoted to the end of the Rescue Group. A teacher, Brennie attempted to persuade one of her students that his earlier life and society had been better. Bo, who had been taken from a life of slavery in early-19th century America, disagreed, but Brennie forced the issue. Finally persuaded by his teacher's arguments and made despondent, Bo took a handful of his adopted mother's pills. His resulting hospitalization became major news and temporarily forced an end to the Rescue Group's work, though Brennie's conversation with Bo had been observed and reported to the police, putting her name on a watch list. Spurred by this success, Brennie led the Grey in sabotaging a time machine that it exploded during a gala that celebrated the 10th anniversary of the first child adopted from history. Their mission was a success and killed all of those Rescue Group employees, parents and children in attendance, but Brennie was caught on the fringe of the blast. She was sent back in time to a frontier mining town in the American West, its only woman. She endured the work and men's advances.

Nick created Scipio Franklin, a child adopted from Imperial Rome. Disgusted by the soft living of the future, Scipio was obsessed with returning to his own time where he could be a warrior. Scipio failed to persuade his teacher to teach him the higher mathematics necessary for time travel, and she sent him for cosmetic surgery to remove all physical signs of Scipio's martial training, turning his scars and calluses into baby-soft skin. Given time, Scipio gained the opportunity to shadow an engineer at the Rescue Group. Immediately he took the man hostage and demanded to be sent back to his time. The Rescue Group gave in, but Scipio's memory was lost in the journey. Not only could he not remember how to operate the laser weapons he took back with him but also he lost his language. Scipio was taken to Roman priests who locked him in the temple to translate his babbling as omens of the future.

For my first game of Shock, I created Bess Wright. Born to a peasant family in 13th-century England and impregnated by the man she was arranged to marry before she was taken, Bess was determined to become a woman according to her own ideals. At twelve years old, she set to work finding a husband who could provide for and protect her. She found a likely candidate among the young men who played rugby after work. Bess struck up a friendship with him, but Wilson her social worker observed through future technology this highly unorthodox and inappropriate relationship forming and had her committed to Happy Acres Mental Rehabilitation Center and her unborn child transferred to an artificial womb. Bess found the hospital to her liking, the highly regimented life not entirely unlike that of a convent and successfully petitioned to live there permanently. Her child was sent back in time as the first in a project to bring future ideals to the past, and the child became active in the fight for women's and gay rights in late-20th century America.