Thiotimoline

it's like gasoline but more complicated and in spaaaace

"It's the transition that's troublesome."

Issxik Aximik, generally accepted to be the first person to discover the properties of Thiotimoline

Thiotimoline is a carbon-based substance infamous for its temporally unbound bond. If you had a handful of powdered thiotimoline and held it with intent to dissolve it in water, it would fully dissolve 1.12 seconds *before* it entered the water.
Bej-Amel as well as all other Hive-based lifeforms as well as several beings on her home planet keep a steady supply of thiotimoline to fuel their shapeshifting powers, although very few, if any, know the formal NAME of that substance (and thus what to study, beg, borrow or steal to acquire more).

Properties

Physical & Chemical Properties

Thiotimoline is an incredibly rare and chronologically anomalous hydrocarbon. Of the four chemical bonds attached to its single carbon atom, two are "normal" while one is attached to an atom in the past while the other is connected to an atom in the future. This chronologically anomalous property gives it unique attributes, such as accelerating the growth of otherwise mundane plants and animals, appearing to create more or less of itself without a corresponding energy input (because this input comes from either the past or the future) and by itself containing a tremendous amount of energy if the bond is broken through radiolytic decay

Compounds

Thiotimoline is known to contain at least fourteen hydroxy groups, two amino groups and one sulfonic acid group.

Origin & Source

Rosacea karlsbadensis rugo is the scientific name of a type of flowering shrub found on Yger 6 where this compound was first able to be studied. This shrub was capable of "refining" the particle, and had evolved to create a flowering bud that would ONLY bloom if the seed was going to be carried off. Until the invention of the Aximik drive, this was the only practical use for the particle as it was otherwise too troublesome to gather in large quantities.

Life & Expiration

Due to its properties it is incredibly difficult (some would say pointless) to apply these terms to Thiotimoline. It is commonly *believed* to be mostly stable, provided nothing has ever happened to the quantity that you are studying nor WILL anything ever happen to it. The amount seems to fluctuate infrequently, most commonly as a reaction to its future use- it often appears to "compress" or lose significant mass shortly before being burned or broken down.

History & Usage

Industrial Use

Concentrated Thiotimoline is the principal fuel supply for the so-called "Aximik Sublight Engine" or "Aximik Drive." Based on principles first laid out in his research, it was discovered that a Thiotimoline engine with chronoton shielding and a matter/energy conversion matrix could be used to create a self-sustaining reaction inside the sublight engine- allowing an impulse drive to continually expel particles without losing or gaining mass, until the fuel supply runs out. Future drives have refined the concept and it is now used in extremely high end luxury or military grade impulse engines. The expense of refining thiotimoline- which is difficult to chronologically isolate in the quantities required- makes this unfeasible for mass production, but some organizations have attempted it anyways- its value in long distance probes and sublight engines is second to none.

Refinement

Thiotimoline is a naturally occuring substance, but those natural conditions were never fully identified. It APPEARS to occur most frequently when a chroniton flux meets a nascent hydrocarbon deposit in the presence of telluric fields, but as this phenomena has never been observed firsthand this is just the most popular theory. Refinement is done by collecting it from the areas in which it is most frequently located and manually removing each particle with a chroniton discriminator, separating it at the molecular level.
Theoretically, a biological engine with trace amounts of Thiotimoline incorporated into its structure could be used to automate and speed this process, but as a hypermetabolic carbon-based organism that is naturally compatible with thiotimoline has yet to be discovered, this is, again, pure speculation. If such an organism DID exist, however, it would be most efficient to utilize it by consuming vast amounts of any carbon-based substance that isn't physically harmful to it- especially energy-dense substances such as existing hydrocarbons- in the effort to either synthesize the particles itself by bonding existing thiotimoline into existing group 14 Cycloalkanes, or by simply digesting and discarding non-thiotimoline particles while saving the rest for later.

Hazards

Thiotimoline can be hazardous to any form of life that exists in linear time, because it can bond with and chronologically displace important biological structures if consumed. Do not drink this.

Common State

solid