Welcome :). You've joined the discussion at the opportune moment, and I daresay your inputs will be of great value when the current Tour of Duty playthrough threads reach M2 and Infinity, starting quite soon! And I'm sure we'll all learn something.
As for the immediate questions, that of where the timeloop starts and how the M2 timeline creates it is quite a wonder ... especially with the M2 final screen that describes events going out thousands of years into the future.
I think one school of thought is that the Infinity manual just outright nullifies the M2 timeline and makes it so we can't take anything as stemming from it. The central hub of it I guess is what is the experience for the Security Officer? One minute we're basically free, and Durandal is off doing his own thing - "you can stay and work on your tan if you like" - he is less grateful at that point than at the end of Infinity, is for sure, and with good reason, but from the SO's point of view, how do things happen?
In one timeline, in Infinity's manual (right?), the trih xeem is launched, and what ensues is essentially a split into infinite timelines - so did every version of the SO end up and come to one instance on Ne Cede Malis? We were clearly in other timelines, as in the ones we visit no one is ever surprised to see us. But are we the one from M2 in NCM? Back to my recent post about memories across timelines, oh boy.
Not sure if that helps much, but that's Infinity for you :).
