William Joyce
William Joyce is one of two people who discovered the Joyce-Meyer Field. This field is the very fabric of time itself. After years of research and tinkering with the discovery, William created a working time machine. Now, the one he created isn’t the one that caused the Fracture. This part of the story can become a bit confusing since it’s contained to certain collectibles and only briefly mentioned during gameplay.
The first working time machine was used many years before the Fracture, and it was what allowed Paul to build Monarch. When time traveling, you can only go as far back as the first time somebody time traveled. Will’s experiment was over 10 years before the Fracture was formed when Jack Joyce and Paul Serene were trying out the new machine. This allowed Paul to make a sort of preemptive strike on the end of the world.
It was this machine that the one that caused the Fracture was based off of, although there were changes made. Some of the components were altered or removed altogether, something that William became aware of. This is the reason why he was so adamantly against the experiment. He knew something was wrong, but many thought that he had just lost his mind.
Coupling the knowledge of the error along with the fact that a future Beth Wilder had informed him of events to come, it made it seem as if William was unhinged throughout a majority of Quantum Break. The reality of his situation, though, was that he was just an awkward genius. His looking like a maniac wasn’t random, however. Everything was orchestrated by one man, Martin Hatch.
