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 It's time for the last branch in this section of the flowchart- this time, we're going to completely undermine A and go with Jasmine, keeping the twins together.  BGM: Algorithm Simile The decision was coming back to me again. I did want to go with the twins, but Jasmine might've found something in the laboratory. She was also more familiar. Then again, if I picked her, all this fight about splitting up the twins would be for naught. She was staring at me too, pressuring me into picking her despite her earlier words. How two-faced! H was a little bit like Jasmine in this way; she was taking charge and she was not afraid of anything. This was an odd change for Jasmine, admittedly. Had those four years affected her that much? I could also head out with G. She was calmer, but smarter. She also had her shy moments, and I kinda wanted to try pulling her out of her shell. No matter which one I wanted to go with, I had to pick now.  BGM: Ambient Strain   Well, that was a good thought experiment, wasn't it? What are you talking about? The whole... “splitting up” thing, you know? I still don't understand. What's a thought experiment? Um... What I'm saying is that all of it was just... not... really a real suggestion?She was still puzzled by my sudden outburst. I had to find some kind of reason to explain why I wanted to go back to Jasmine.  I see... Aren't there easier ways to do that? G, he's saying we can go together, so who cares?Jasmine was also slightly puzzled, but she didn't let it show. Instead, she understood what I meant to do and clapped her hands together.  Perfect, then! Let's go down and wait for the train. Wait, shouldn't a pair stay here to contact the others? Yeah, I thought about that...She wasn't entirely decided on that matter, yet. I chimed in to give a piece of my wisdom now that the storm had been dodged. I think we could all head out together and explore two whole stations. Two whole stations... as opposed to only half of two stations. Who says they'll come back here, anyway? Something was a little strange with H's proposal. For some reason... it didn't seem completely genuine. Was she planning on absconding the moment she could? Maybe it would've been better to keep an eye on her instead... Whatever the case is, the train can take a while to arrive, so let's head down.Nobody had any objection. Once again, we formed a line to head down and leave this station behind us. Maybe we'd be leaving it for good this time around. One by one, we emerged onto the station. The train wasn't here yet, how typical. Before we left for another station, I decided to talk with some of the others quickly.  Because we're about to be exploring a station with Jasmine, I chose the twins for this conversation. Hey, uh, I hope the whole “thought experiment” thing wasn't too weird. No, I still don't understand what you're talking about. Me neither. If it lets me go with H, it doesn't really matter, does it? I guess not. What are your plans for when you'll finish exploring the next station? Our plans... like what? Like, say, if you find the ninth person... Yeah... It's already ludicrous to think there will even be a ninth person. If you ask me, that might be a lot of hot air. We still can't trust Smiley.I could tell the two of them were averting their eyes or looking slightly awkward overall. Something didn't feel right. Were they planning on leaving us all behind...? Were they withholding information on the suspicion that one of us was Smiley? Now, that was a rather terrifying thought. I decided to play it off, and leave it aside. Okay, that makes sense.I didn't want to confront them about it. Maybe if I didn't push the issue, they would think of us more favorably. The train's coming! You should go fetch J if she didn't see it.It was kind of hard to not see the train... I made my way to Jasmine anyway, understanding she wanted to shoo me away and, again, I wanted to up the odds in our favor. Finally, the train settled in at the station. We boarded it without hesitation.  Huh? A happy cat? Yeah, they go “prr”.BGM: Silence The doors of the train closed without anyone laughing at the joke. I think M's behavior has been rubbing off on you. Yeah, that was weak. Difficult crowd tonight... Following that fiasco, I sat down, and the train went to the previous stations we already finished what felt like an eternity ago. There was silence the whole time.  BGM: Agoraphobic Sloth That's where we're leaving. Oh that's not fair! You two get to go to the pool and have a nice dip! Don't be silly, I don't think we'll have a dip.I looked at her. Oh, she totally wanted to have a dip in the pool. I rose up and joined her, regardless of what I felt on the matter. Or perhaps...   What was I thinking? What were the chances there would be swimsuits here? Probably null. So uh, yeah! Once we're all done, let's check back in at the lounge real quick just to be safe, okay? Yeah, yeah. Your wife already left.Wife?! I was about to storm up some kind of retort when I realized Jasmine had already disappeared behind the open doorway, too. Woah, hey, wait up!I ran out of the train and entered the lobby once more. It looked just like the others. Much like them, it also closed behind us.  BGM: Alarming Silence Something doesn't feel right. Wait here for a little bit before we go up, and you'll see...Did Jasmine hear something? Was there someone else here? Question after question rammed through my brain, but I had no answer and she didn't explain herself until... Several long minutes after the train had left, another one came by. In this one, from afar, I could spy two people. They weren't the twins- they were Marco and Ray. If we hadn't come here this quickly, they'd have arrived here before us...? So they were continuing on?BGM: Agoraphobic Sloth  Jasmine called for me from afar. She was already up the stairs. Didn't you ask me to wait down here? I didn't think you really would take me seriously! Come on now, there's a pool up here, check it out!I climbed up at the insistence of my companion. After a brief hallway, there was an uninteresting locker room split into two sides- one for women, and one for men- and finally, after going through the one for men, I entered the room containing the pool itself.  I didn't; I just walked like a normal person. Listen, I wanted to hurry up a bit, because there's something I have...She pulled out a strange key. The handle looked like the number eight, and the key itself looked like one of those old-fashioned models. What's that for? Where did you get this? I don't know. E gave it to me earlier, and I have no idea where she could've found this, of all people too! According to what she theorized... It might be important to unlock something. A big secret, maybe. Think you saw anything that needs a secret key?I thought about it, but nothing came to mind.  Yeah, works for me. Let's not waste any time.She agreed and we split up to look around the room, which contained a few elements of great interest. BGM: Ambient Strain And a lot of it didn't seem to fit with what a pool should normally contain. Almost immediately, Jasmine held her nose. Uhh... dis blace sbells weird. Don't you feel stradge? A little, now that you mention it. What's the source of this, you think? Um... I think it's the wader. Is it sob kind of acid? Jasmine approached the pool. She shook her head, in clear visible pain. It's making my throat itchy. Whatever these pools contain, it's not water. We can't swim here.She dropped her shoulders forward in defeat. There go my dreams of swimming around in a bikini.  BGM: Auxiliary Search  Not a ton to check out this time, but before we do anything we're checking the map.  I'm gonna start with the stuff at ground level, starting with that weird paddle thing. Now we're getting kinky in here. kill meeeeee Huh? What? Oh, I guess it's not that kind of paddle.Next, the pools, starting with the one without the floatie.  I saw her holding her throat, visibly looking like she wanted to scratch at it. I had to do something before she fell under the curse of Oyashiro-sama. Then there's no time to waste. This looks like a job for Pizzaman. Are you Pizzaman? Yeah, that's me. I'm Pizzaman. I'll just use my laser sight to break out of here... or I would, but the acid in the air is preventing me from doing so. Curse you, my arch-nemesis! The mystical pizzanite, huh... They say pizzanite comes from the planet Pizzan, from where Pizzaman comes from. Is that true? Yes. Until the pizzanite is gone, I can't use my pizza powers. I'll get you next time, Lex...And now, the other side.  Why did I want to bring it over? It was because it had some sort of plastic-covered paper on the inside. I couldn't read what was written on it from this far away. Gee, I wonder what we could use to grab that! I'm gonna look at the stuff on the back wall first. These letters make no sense. Do they not? Surely they must have a purpose here, though. Otherwise, they wouldn't be graffiti on the wall. Besides, I never go out without my yvtug. Did you lose yours? What the hell's a yvtug? What? You don't know?She put a hand over her mouth, looking shocked before smirking behind it, as if making fun of me. I didn't get this. What? What was she talking about? What the hell was an yvtug?!  Hold up! That's unfair, who ever heard of a yvtug before?! Oh, no one except for the entirety of the human species other than you, apparently. When we'll be out of here, I'll have to bring you shopping. We really need to get you a yvtug too. But what is it?! What's a yvtug?!I knew she was messing with me. I just wanted to make her try to give me some kind of nonsensical description of what a “yvtug” was. Instead, she smiled at me like she was making fun of me even more. Well, this was all just a big waste of time anyway. Maybe it was better if she kept the secrets of the yvtug to herself. Next, that chair in the center. Is this an electrocution chair?I looked around the four panels of glass. I approached it to press my hands onto it, but I couldn't touch it. It was like there was some kind of force field around it?  Yeah, let's try that! But with what?Jasmine snagged the paddle nearby and swung it at the glass. However, the moment it came within around two decimeters off the surface, it stopped in mid-air. Hey, don't play around. Go on, it's okay even if we'll have to deal with the glass shards. No, I mean, I literally can't move anymore. This is the most I can do with it.I yanked the paddle out of her hands to try it too. Same result- the panels of glass stopped me before I made contact with them. How strangely convenient. I guess we can't break this the way we want to.All that's left to look at are the weird stations parked on the sides of the chair. I'll start with the ones on our left.  If telephone booths look like this in Montreal now, no wonder everyone's switching to smartphones. I'd feel some kind of existential dread just by being near one of these! No matter how you feel about them, what do you think they're for? I don't know. I don't really want to interface with any of them.She blankly stared at the machines for a while. Was she squinting, or was it my imagination? I'll let you handle them if you want. I'll go have a look over... there!She pointed at the exit and swiftly left my company. Hey, you can't leave yet! The door's closed!I put my hands in a cone around my mouth to yell my warning to her. That didn't stop her. Strange. And now the other side. Jasmine just reappears for this part, she didn't actually leave. Machines... machines... all sorts of machines. This can't be good this close to water. Maybe they're containing ghost spirits. Ghosts in the machines. Ghosts don't exist, J. Seven machines, seven swimmers. And the last one sat in the chair instead for a total of eight ghosts... They're our ghosts from the future, after we decided to take a swim! All of us here!She cast a glance over at the water. I shook my head, flinging the thought away. No, we're not falling in the pools to become ghosts. But Simon, I'll wear a bikini if we do. Yeah, and so will A wearing swimming trunks! Or a speedo. Goddammit, J! I cut out another dialogue section here for reasons you can probably guess already. Nothing of value was lost, please throw this Simon into the acid pool, thanks.Anyway, let's use the paddle to get the floatie already.  I found the object that allowed me to bring the lifesaver over. Since the water was acidic, I couldn't reach it with my bare hands. Carefully, I pulled the lifesaver to the edge of the pool using the paddle. How did the lifesaver not disintegrate in that acid? You can see the bottom of the metal ladders has completely melted away! Maybe it's made of something that the acid doesn't corrode? Either way, let me see the message...I had to kneel down next to the pool to see it, bringing me ever closer to the surface of the acid. If I fell in there, I wouldn't come out again. Maybe... just one step over... everything would end.... I shook my head out of those suicidal thoughts. What the hell? I needed to see the message, right. It says a lot of gibberish. In fact, those are barely words at all! They contain numbers and random stuff. I don't think this is meant to be anything. Maybe it's just hiding the real message. Look for anything special. Oh, I know that! It's a substitution cipher. A really easy one, too. You just substitute every letter for the one 13 slots backwards. For example, “N” would be “A”, then.What the hell could this help us accomplish? Surely there must have been a reason to explain why this was in the room. Gee, I wonder. N equals A... so Y equals... L... What are you doing? I'm translating “yvtug” over to the real word it's supposed to be. L.. I... G... H... T... Oh! It's “light”. Gimme a moment, I'll do it way faster. “Light through a prism”, got it! Wow, that was fast. How did you do that? I'm psychic. No, but for real, I just thought it was weird that we had color-coded machines on the wall, so I sort of went with the most obvious.It didn't seem that obvious to me. Still, what did this mean? I had to make sense of it. And why was there an arrow pointing at the green machine? Was this where we had to start?  Wow, so many options! If it wasn't obvious, the solution is to turn all of them on, to make the color white, but you have to do it in the order of the rainbow because there's a designated starting point.I flicked the switch on the green machine. A small hum came from it, signaling it was activated. Green is first... so are we meant to do a full rainbow or something? I don't know. What's next after green in the rainbow? Um... you can go both ways, so it's not really clear. Let's try one of them.You can also look at the chair again during this process. How many of them do we have to activate? What will this accomplish? Maybe they'll open the glass in the middle. But if you look at a picture of a rainbow, the green color is always in the middle. I wonder what that means. Do we have to go to the left of green or to the right, then? Strangely, Jasmine was leaving it up to me despite the fact she was a full-fledged graphical artist. She should've known her way around this kind of stuff. Oh, I got it! She was just afraid of the machines! Now I wondered what else she was afraid of... Maybe ghosts? Could I use this to get back at her someday? Anyway, the text doesn't really change as you flick the rest on, so there's no point in repeating it here. After all the machines have turned on... Once the final machine's switch was flicked, I tried doing it to more of them, but none of them changed. They're stuck. Look, something's happening though! There's a note on the back of this chair. It says... 'the code will be directly transferred to your head.' What does this mean? It means that that's dangerous. Don't touch it. We have to figure out a different way to get the code. Hmm... do you think that exists? Of course. Smiley doesn't really expect us to sit here and electrocute ourselves, does he?Jasmine walked back around the chair to join me outside of the compartment. This decidedly was too dangerous. I watched her move further away. I don't know. Hey, what if we need that one too? Don't you get it? This acid is spreading in the ambient air. If we stay here too long, we'll die. We don't have the luxury of looking around any longer than how long we took so far. It's do or die at this point. But I'm not going to sit into that chair. I'd rather dissolve. At least it'll give us a fighting chance.BGM: Abyssal Snarl It's okay. I'll sit. What? I refuse to agree to that. You don't have to agree. I didn't expect you to. You're a really good guy, so obviously you'd jump to my rescue if this happened. But you don't know what it's like right now for me.She reached up to her head, clutching it. As she spoke, her eyes were widening as if she was in great pain.   I've been trying to do other things to keep my mind off it. I thought if I was a bit sillier sometimes, I could take my mind off it. Anything just to not focus on it. It's not enough, though. You don't have any idea what it feels like in my head. Right now, it's like there's a bulldozer running over my brain. I can't stand it! Do you understand, S? I can't stand it!!She was growing hysterical, but I couldn't move. She was screaming, and I was frozen in contemplation and shock. And you know what? I have conflicting memories too! It's not enough that it's painful, I'm confused as hell! I remember you, I remember Marco, I remember my studies. Those are fine. I'm not a teen; I'm twenty-four years old! I feel off about so many things, too. Sometimes I feel like I'm being watched. Someone's spying on me with these computers. These security screens. What if Smiley watched me? Smiley's watching me with his helmet or something! Who were they?! All my memories... they're all broken! Who are they? Who am I? Am I Jasmine? What if I'm not Jasmine? What if I'm just... I don't know... someone else... what if I'm just... not me? Where is me? Who is me?I grabbed her arm to stop her at this moment. I looked at her straight in the eyes. I saw them slowly turn in their sockets, until they fixated on me, still crazed. I don't care who you are. Right now, you're Jasmine.There was no point to the nicknames at this point. We both omitted them. I don't know. Listen, people exist because their memories make them who they are. Memories and experiences. The sum of all that is what makes them “them”. I've seen people who have memory issues. They don't feel like themselves when they speak to you anymore. Ever had someone you know not remember your face? He kept saying how, when I accompanied my parents, I had come to see him alone earlier. But that was impossible since I was accompanying my parents. He couldn't say what we spoke about. It was very terrible for him. He passed away, possibly while not even remembering his own children. It's a part of them that left them. I'm the same. That's why.BGM: Alarming Silence  I have to sit in that chair. I went through it. Something like it. I'm sure. I already had my head messed with. I don't have a memory disease! Someone did this to me! This chair was put here for me.Ultimately, there was nothing else I could do about it. When Jasmine made up her mind, she was serious. I could feel that energy coming from her. She sat into the chair. The clasps around the chest part closed onto her ribs. When she put her hands down onto the armrests, the chair further bound her there. Her ankles were also tightly held by automatic clasps. At that point, she couldn't move away from it. In fact, she could do nothing but turn her head. Jasmine looked at me. She was still struggling with her fear of what was to come. I could tell the glitter of that feeling deep in her pupils. Push the helmet part down.I hesitated, but under the insistence of her glare, I obeyed. Slowly, I adjusted the helmet down to her head and waited. Nothing happened. Is there a switch? Yes. You want me to turn it on? It's like asking me to participate in... I can't do it, so you have to do it in my stead. And if you're apprehensive because you think you'll be the cause of anything bad happening to me...She smiled.  It's... do or die. And if it just so happens that the grim reaper pays me a visit today, let's both tell him something he doesn't want to hear... Like what? “Not today.”I hesitated again. And then, I pressed down on the switch. BGM: Alarming Situation After having secured herself into the seat, Jasmine suddenly let out a half-hearted scream. Ah-!I watched while I grew increasingly worried as the seconds passed. Jasmine? Are you okay, Jasmine?!After about a minute, my shuddering body acted on its own. I leaped over. Grabbing the machine, I pulled onto it to try to take it apart. I was still being careful to not damage it in a way that would hurt Jasmine, though. What are you doing to Jasmine?! Don't you fuckin-I was interrupted when Jasmine's hand shot out to grab onto mine. She held it tightly, preventing me from messing with the machine any more than I already had. I'm... okay...! Just sit tight... please!I let go of the machine, powerless against Jasmine's word. The altercation had only taken a few seconds, but soon, she was released from the seat.  She tried lifting herself up from the seat, but only managed to trip forward, not too far from the edge of the pool. I immediately launched myself to her side. I helped her up to her knees as she grunted some inaudible words. That had been quite close to turning into a tragedy. Are you alright? Did it hurt? Like I said, it wasn't... my first time...She tried rising higher, only to slip and fall back down. I held her to stop her from rolling into the pool with my arms, and I was thankfully successful. Ugh... but it was very tiring.She held her head with a hand. I helped her get back further away from the edge of the acid-tainted waters, that way if she fell again, it wouldn't be in the pool itself. Do you need some kind of rest? No, no, I can go. I just need to focus a little.Finally, she managed to rise up to her feet, though she kept a hand onto the wall for support. I didn't know what that thing did to her. I didn't want to know, but I had to make sure she was fine. I wouldn't be able to handle losing her to this.  Yes, I know. Before we go, I have something really important to tell you...I could tell she was struggling with her words. What did Jasmine want to tell me, exactly? It wasn't something meager. No, she had the expression of someone who'd seen a ghost. I didn't believe in ghosts, so I was hoping she wouldn't tell me about one. It's about...I waited patiently, unwilling to urge her in this state. BGM: Agoraphobic Sloth It's about the code to leave this place, of course!All of a sudden, she smiled as if all of this had been one big farce. Whatever she wanted to tell me was gone from her immediate thoughts. Was she concealing information, or was she just making fun of me? I chose to believe the latter instead of the former. Yet, I still thought it must've had something to do with the machine. I cursed my inability in questioning her. Oh, you got me. I mean, the machine did transfer the code into my head, just like it said. I have the memories of that now, so we can leave this place.She walked over to the door, slightly tripping over herself in the process. I tried helping her, but she held a hand up to stop me. I'll be fine. We need to go before the acid dissolves us any further. Your skin's itchy, right? Not really...She ignored my words and continued to stumble her way out. It was so clear that she was concealing something. I didn't know what to make of it. BGM: Ambient Strain  It was somewhat heartbreaking if she chose to keep me out of the loop. Maybe she had a good reason, but what that was, I couldn't know for sure. If she wasn't telling me, she had a good reason not to, surely. We have to talk later though, ookay? About what?We were in the lobby when I brought it up. About this whole... thing here. That we just did. That you did. I didn't do anything, what are you talking about? Sorry, I mean... I didn't know which side of the station we'd even gone down. I was only following her. While she might've been concealing information from me, I didn't want to let her go alone. Heh... Typical of me. I never wanted to let her go. As we waited for the train, I wanted to break the silence, but I didn't know what to bring up. Maybe something familiar? Or just small talk...? You know, ever since we woke up here, we haven't really talked about anything other than this place, huh?She nodded slightly, but gave no verbal acknowledgment. It was like she wasn't there. So I thought, maybe, er... it would be nice... if we did?Once again, Jasmine nodded at me in a dismissive fashion. I furrowed my brow as I grew annoyed with her lack of enthusiasm. What was happening in her head? For instance... what about... your drawings? How are they lately? Mmhmm.And once again, I was given a nod in reply. It wasn't even a reply that was proper to my current question, even considering the verbal acknowledgment accompanying it! BGM: Alarming Silence  Jasmine, I'm talking to you. Are you a zombie?She finally woke up from whatever daydream she'd been having. Perhaps it hadn't been a daydream, but a day nightmare. Oh, uh, what? Oh, right, right! What was it again? Your drawings. They're still doing great, yes? Yes, of course. My drawings are doing... fine. I'm just thinking a lot... sorry if it looks like I'm ignoring you.I highly doubted I was going to get a sensible conversation out of her for the time being, but I tried something else anyway.  My favorite color? You already know that... Just answer it. It's banter. Okay, okay, um... I don't know, maybe green? No, wait. Blue?Her words gave me pause. I knew she liked the color blue. She always used it in every picture she made somehow, no matter which shade it was. I knew this because my favorite color was green. I also knew it wasn't her favorite color at all. So indecisive! For a moment, I thought you'd answered mine because you wanted to have things in common, but then you changed your mind.I thought it might make her blush a little, but there was no reaction of that sort.  I could tell she still wasn't all there. All the non-committal answers were pushing me towards one conclusion: whatever happened with the chair had been much more important than I thought. The atmosphere grew tense. The train was still not there. I needed to solve this issue before we went inside, because I wanted to save my friend. Whatever demon inhabited her head had to be purged somehow. All I could do was speak to her, but about which topic? Two came to mind: directly confronting her about the chair, or obliquely bringing it up by talking about the key. Did she know something I didn't? Did I have courage to mention the chair directly? Was it just a better idea to talk about the key for other reasons? BGM: Ambient Strain  What about the key you found? Do you know what it's for?She'd been toying with it for a while already, which only helped bringing it to mind too. I thought perhaps it might've occupied her mind the most. Right, that key! Good thinking, S! Huh? But I didn't do anything... No, I remember now. We won't need to take the train. Gosh, I'm so stupid! We can use the key over here, come with me. What about returning to the leisure station...? Is it for the gate? I think it is. E found it in the infirmary and gave it to me earlier. Let's see if I can unlock it...She grabbed the gate and pushed the key into the keyhole. I waited outside of the little hall for her to finish, content in being able to see something as it was too dark inside. I think it's unlocking, S! Come on in!BGM: Agoraphobic Sloth  The gate is kind of...stuck, though? Like it doesn't open. I'm gonna need your big, strong arms to pull on it and dislodge it... Oh, hahah... hah... Yeah, I can do that!I cursed my ineptitute at maintaining myself in the face of compliments like those. I grabbed the gate with both arms and yanked! It didn't budge. I tried again, and grunted audibly under the force I applied to it. It's not moving even with my arms. Try harder! I will! Argh! That thing doesn't want to move!I felt my way to the lock, using my hands to feel it up. Was it even unlocked? Maybe Jasmine didn't realize that the gate was still closed. I think the gate's still locked, Jas... Yeah, I know. Keep calm, Simon. It's just your friend pressed up against you. It's just your friend who maybe might want to be more than friends. I repeated those words in my head, trying to stop my heart from beating so fast. I felt her breath against my skin. Oh, she was close. It didn't help matters. BGM: Anaphora Solution Wait. Something felt kind of wrong with this, didn't it? Yet, I couldn't stop my head from growing more erratic as a result of the physical presence I felt against me. She was so close. Her face was right in front of mine. I could barely tell thanks to the light from the other side, but it was there. There was a halo around her head due to the lighting from the outside. She was illuminated like an angel. Was she here to liberate me from hell?  Forget about it, Simon! She's going to kiss you, you idiot! I cursed at myself to try and regain some sort of mental foothold. I could feel it coming, but... was she really okay with it? Jas, this is all very sudden, but... But? Shh, some things are better left unsaid.She leaned forward a little more, and I braced myself. BGM: Silence And then pain rose from my chest. What...? BGM: Abyssal Snarl  What...? Are you saying...? I'm saying you should forget about me.My hands reached for my chest. Something warm was rolling over my fingers. I brought them up to my nose, trying to understand what it was. It was liquid, and smelled like metal. Blood? Did she... Yes. She stabbed me. I could feel the knife embedded in my body. Gr... garrrhhh... See? That kind of thing is better left unsaid. You don't need to know when you're going to die. Who... who is it...? Who do you have to... take with you...?I used my last breath to ask her. I wanted to know.  As the gate opened, and she stepped over my fading body, she replied, and her words broke my heart more than the knife plunged into it. Not you.  
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Aug 11, 2021 23:35
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| # ? May 3, 2024 19:28 |
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From now on, I’m just responding to each of Simon’s deaths with, “Whoops! ”
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Aug 12, 2021 00:13
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The penalty for horny is DEATH.
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Aug 12, 2021 02:41
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Two Knife Ends! And they're laying on the hints that "Jasmine" is actually Original Hannah pretty thick now, huh. Anyway, just caught up with this thread - thank you for showing off this game! Despite its flaws, it's pretty compelling, and I doubt I would ever have come across it if not for this LP. Also, it hasn't been relevant in a while since we did most of the E scenes early on, but I have to say that the braille pens drive me crazy, because they're clearly supposed to be super cool future tech, but in fact they're way worse than the technology that already exists for this purpose.
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Aug 13, 2021 19:34
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can we just collapse the subway with all of these weirdos in it? Marco's alright, at least.
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Aug 13, 2021 20:21
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 Last update was what you are locked into by default if you don't have the lock opened. This update, we see what lies behind the second locked route! When Simon begins to pick up on the fact that Jasmine's acting weird, he's unsure what to ask her about- this time, we're going to ask her about the chair instead.BGM: Alarming Silence I could tell she still wasn't all there. All the non-committal answers were pushing me towards one conclusion: whatever happened with the chair had been much more important than I thought. The atmosphere grew tense. The train was still not there. I needed to solve this issue before we went inside, because I wanted to save my friend. Whatever demon inhabited her head had to be purged somehow. All I could do was speak to her, but about which topic? Two came to mind: directly confronting her about the chair, or obliquely bringing it up by talking about the key. Did she know something I didn't? Did I have courage to mention the chair directly? Was it just a better idea to talk about the key for other reasons?  BGM: Alarming Silence I can't stay silent about this. Jasmine, you're worrying me.I grabbed her wrist, pulling her away from the side of the station. The train arrived momentarily, but I didn't let her move forward when the doors opened. Let go of me... No. We need to talk. What happened to you earlier wasn't normal. We can wait for the train again after it goes. For now, we talk. Talk about what? There's no time to talk. If we don't hurry, everyone will leave, and... Let them, then! I don't want to keep shoving each other into horrible situations that could leave us worse than dead, Jasmine! The nicknames... As I accused her, the train drove away, sensing no one nearby to take it as I'd pulled her back from her waiting spot. She weakly fought back against my hold, but I could tell her heart wasn't in it. Let go... It didn't do anything... I know what your favorite color is. It's blue, not green. I also know you're a great artist, so what happened with your eyes? You always seem to avoid situations with colors, don't you? At the pool, there was a simple puzzle: put the colors of the rainbow in order, starting from green. You had me do it because you didn't want to. No, it's because you couldn't, right? In the infirmary, you were having issues with a simple color-based puzzle, too. Huh... in the infirmary? Wait...I frowned, shaking my head. I'd never gone there. What was that about? Forget that. Anyway, the point is, you're bad with colors, Jasmine! What's up with that? You suggested you weren't Jasmine, right? Then who... who the gently caress are you?She remained silent for a while. Her free hand reached into her clothing. I saw a glint of metal cutting through the air, and I let go of her to avoid it in extremis.  The movement she'd made with the knife destabilized her to such a degree she dropped it to the ground. I watched as she reached up to hold her head again, much like she'd done in the pool. BGM: Ascertaining Speech I'm a bad girl. I've done such terrible things. I've manipulated people, I've killed people, I've sent teenagers... teenagers, Simon! I've sent teenagers to their deaths! You wanna know who I am? I'm not Jasmine. I know that now. I have her memories, and those may be why I feel this remorse about my actions now. But I don't want to be Jasmine, no matter how much better her memories were! Still, I understand your feelings on the matter, so if you call me Jasmine, I'll respond to it anyway... for now. And about the real Jasmine? I don't know where she is. She's not here. She might not be anywhere. I don't know.She shook her head, shrugging at me afterwards. Then, she walked to a plated wall, leaning against it while I grabbed the knife. I looked at it for a moment, as if contemplating why it was here. I didn't know how to take all of this. This explained all the inconsistencies with Jasmine so far, but I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to know who she really was, not who she wasn't. Jasmine! Not-Jasmine! I want to know who you are.I lifted my head to stare at her. So tell me. My real name... the one that means more to me...Jasmine bit on her lip, as if admitting it was like slashing her final remaining link to me. It was as if she was giving up on the remnants of the memories surrounding me.  When I sat in the machine, it unblocked my head. It removed the clouds, and now a sunny spring is in my mind. Or the imagined equivalent, anyway. Some... scientists, or others, who wore lab coats and strange black suits underneath. Their suits glowed green. I don't know why they wore that, but it's what they had.She sighed, closing her hands into fists. She released her hold, clearly feeling utterly powerless in the wake of those memories. That's silly, right? I was replaced by an impostor and not a single person noticed. I replaced Jasmine, and no one noticed. I guess... all the memories of me working on something were fakes. Anyway... I have a sister to take care of, now.She lifted her head to look at me. She looked so tired. I just wanted to grab her and hug her, but I refrained. I didn't know if I had the right anymore. Maybe if she had been Jasmine. But she wasn't. Where was Jasmine? Was she captured by those men, too? Was she being tortured as I spoke to this lookalike? Do you know anything about where she is, then? An individual is shaped by the things they know, remember, and live through. They're made of their surroundings. If someone lives surrounding by a nice, happy family, then they'll grow accordingly. If someone lives through struggle after struggle, they will adapt and grow experienced with those, but they will never gain the innocent, happy life from that family. It was easier to accept than I anticipated when I brought up the subject of my doubts, even if I was still shaken by all this. This meant that Jasmine was, at least, still somewhere outside. And you should move on, too. For that, we'll need this.She reached back into her outfit. I grew cautious, knowing the last time she did so was to grab a weapon to try attacking me- a weapon which I now held, unsure of what to do with it. I put it in my pocket for now. All she took out was a key. BGM: Agoraphobic Sloth  I know what it's used for. It's for the gates.She pointed at the gates in the darkness on the side of the station. With me, she walked over to it. I remained cautious, of course, and stayed outside until I heard the telltale click of a lock coming undone. A short moment later, Jasmine had opened the gate. Are you coming in? Let's go.I reluctantly entered the dark hallway. I didn't know what we'd find past this. After a brief walk, we found a brightly lit room. It was tiny. BGM: Ambient Strain  Is this... does this go outside? I think so. However...She pressed one of the buttons. Nothing happened. Maybe it doesn't work to leave. I think... this connects with the passage beyond the scanner gate above. If that's the case, then we can't stop at any level “beyond the scanner gate”, or the outside. Down? Why...? My sister is waiting.The elevator moved. It didn't take very long, and we arrived at the level below. Two floors below our previous one. Most of this was out of my understanding- her sister was at a station altogether. What did this mean? Come.She led me out of there, giving me no choice. I entered the darkness, only to emerge from it moments later...  How is this possible? Jasmine, what do you know...? I'll let you think about it while you wait here. If I'm right, then you'll see the twins coming out soon. The twins?! But... I'm going further in with the elevator. I'll come back momentarily.And she vanished into the darkness again. What did this mean? Maybe the elevator wasn't moving up and down as I thought it was. Maybe it was moving sideways? If that was the case, it could move even faster than the train. Was it a teleportation device? No, that seemed even sillier. Aliens would've needed to invent that so we could use it. And there was none of that in this story. I contemplated what it really meant for a while.  BGM: Anaphora Solution Jasmine emerged from the darkness again, this time running at me hurriedly. Simon, the last station is weird. You really should go have a look. What happened? There's no one there. I thought I'd see Marco and Ray, but there's nobody. Just go check floor -28. We're on floor -26 right now, for reference. The floor marked -27 would be the reactor, then, and -28 would be the station below it. Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean? That doesn't work. That's not how an elevator works. It moves sideways, and... No, you're wrong. You're the one who doesn't understand how elevators work, Simon. They don't move sideways. They move up and down. But what about the train? We take the train every time... oh! That map... Oval tree! That strange map... the map that doesn't fit in with the rest! It's an anagram! “Oval tree” stands for “elevator”! Wait... do you mean that... The elevator map was actually situated on both ends of the station... ...and rotating it to fit the maps? Each station has either an exit in the upper left or lower right corners... ….which means that if you rotate all of them, they all end up with the same goddamn elevator. Yes, that's correct. That's an elevator we're taking, because each station is like a sandwich. In fact, this entire thing is an enormous, gigantic sandwich. Each deck station on which we wait for the train is a slice of bread, and each station with some kind of active search area is one of the many meats between the slices of bread. A little, yeah... It's pressure. The ambient pressure is squeezing us. That's why you're having that headache. But wait... this means the elevators would need to lift or lower the train and also make it rotate. That's monstrous! I think we're against something bigger than we could've ever imagined.We remained quiet for a few moments in the light of these discoveries. Anyway, since you're not going down there, I'll just let you know what's there...BGM: Agoraphobic Sloth  A long, awkward moment passed by, until I cleared my throat. Listen... I...Jasmine finally moved forward towards the twins. She took several long-winded moments to explain everything to them. I didn't feel like I had the right to intrude on it, so I waited aside for it to be over. Once all was said and done, Jasmine came by me again. BGM: Android Sorrow  It was difficult for me to imagine how the conversation had gone down. I hadn't paid attention to it, to give them the privacy they deserved- or at least, as much as they'd get in here. From what I could see, Hannah had accepted not-Jasmine's words as truth. Perhaps she'd felt similarly, in the end. If you're leaving, what does that do for us? Couldn't we just use the elevator to do so? No. The button that goes to the ground floor- floor 0- doesn't work. I assume we have to take the elevator from one of the scanner gates instead. Otherwise, we don't have access to it. That must be to ensure we solve this game the “proper way”. Stupid loving game... And about the station below... What were you going to say earlier? That ninth person business- it's a farce.I looked over at Hannah. For a split second, I thought it might have been the twin, but she shook her head. She's right. There's no ninth person as far as we've found. Maybe there isn't one at all. There may have not been one... so it comes down to this. I know how to leave, anyway. Wait, what is it? Before I answer that, I want to know... what's your collar number again?I wondered what that had to do with it. It's... two. Yours is eight, right? Wait, you're going to leave even if you know it might lock us out? What do you want me to do, Simon? I can't leave with you. None of us here can. If you leave, maybe we'll be locked out. Maybe all of us three would be. Isn't that unfair, too?I had to admit she did make a point. Maybe... if the doors only opened for two of us, as Smiley had emphasized, maybe the two who should escape needed to be Jasmine and G. No, the real Hannah and her sister. Okay. I'll stay out, then. I know if I enter after you both, everyone will be penalized.The pink-haired girl I once thought was my childhood friend smiled at me, one last time. Was this the last I'd ever see of Jasmine? Thanks for your help, but now... I have a sister to take care of, as I told you. You take care too, okay? I'll try to help from the outside in any way I can. Feel free to use the knife to defend yourself if you need to do so. Or give it to “Hannah”, if she needs it more than you do. Whatever you do with it is up to you, now. In some fashion, I felt as though I'd been betrayed when she left the area with G. Did I have any chances of escaping now? As she disappeared with her sister, I wondered about this fate. Perhaps it was better this way. It was like Jasmine herself gave me the task to find her. A mission, given by her. What else would I have to sacrifice to make it happen, though? Hannah...BGM: Ambient Strain I turned around to face Hannah again.  It's the only name I ever had. But now... I don't really know what to do. There's no place for me here. I'll stick around and help you, if you'll have me.I nodded. There's got to be another way to escape from here. Well... we could always investigate the lower station, and if it doesn't bring us anywhere new, we can try to climb up the elevator shaft from the highest possible station. That way, we could emerge from the doors at the top, and escape while avoiding Smiley's game. Seems sensible. Speaking of, has Jasmine... or the real Hannah, told you what I was? No. Is it relevant? She flexed a little. I couldn't help but break some kind of sad smile at the sight. Alright. Then you'll protect me. It's dangerous to go alone, so take this.I gave her my sword- the knife I'd had before. She held it for a moment, before stuffing it in her pants, keeping it ready when needed. Oh, right. We might need that key Jasmine had. drat! The girl took it out, showing it to me as if to prove her words. I nodded, and set off towards the darkness in the hallway. She followed me, and we both entered the elevator. Once inside, I pressed on the button to go down. It began moving. It's strange to think that all this time, we've been moving up and down instead of sideways like we thought. Where do you think we are for real? This isn't the metro. Maybe we're under it. Where? I don't know. Does it matter? I'm not sure. As long as we can leave, somehow...The elevator stopped. I left it, and emerged back into the station- this time on floor -28, as I acted on what not-Jasmine had suggested.  Marco and Ray were both taking their sweet-rear end time solving this room. BGM: Abyssal Snarl I turned around and looked at this side. What not-Jasmine-but-really-Hannah said was true: the door was open, and beyond was a lobby with a flight of stairs. What's in here?I was apprehensive about entering this place, because if it would detect me as a third party and kill Marco, Ray, and me, I wouldn't forgive myself. I told Hannah, and she took out the maps to check what it looked like on the reactor floor. Only one flight of stairs connected to it. Unlike all the other stations, there was no second set of stairs. Wait... The theater station also didn't have two flights of stairs. Could it be...? I have a hunch, but I need to go inside to make sure. Want to come with? We entered the lobby. The door did not close behind us. I realized there was no way we could've gotten to this side of the station without using the elevator, or moving across the rails, too. I thought about it as we ascended. It couldn't get here, because it was the station the train started at in our metro system. The same was for the upper area- the one with the theater. It was the station the train would be at when it came from the other side. As I thought about all of this, the stairs continued. There were more stairs than I ever thought was possible. Despite that, I hardly felt tired. Maybe it was my adrenaline at work. Finally, we reached... a lobby. We quickly stepped outside. BGM: Anaphora Solution  The one from the reactor connects to this one? Which one is this? We're at the theater- the absolute top. I think it's floor -2. After that is the theater itself, or floor -1, and finally, right above it is floor 0... or the metro itself. That makes sense. But these staircases only connect both ends of the “metro tower”. We can't use them to escape. Then we might as well take the elevator and unlock all the gates, so we can freely move without using the train. We should meet with the others in the lounge, too. Good plan. Let's do this.As we moved forward again, I froze in sudden shock. I realized something horrible. Hannah disregarded me, and continued on. I couldn't move, though. BGM: Alarming Silence  All this time, there had been one single exit. This confirmed what I'd feared earlier: Smiley said “two of us” could leave. He didn't say “two of us (and then everyone else when the ninth person came to get them again)” could leave. For some reason... I didn't think about this before too much. We really are stuck here, huh?I laughed sadly for a little bit. When I stopped, I realized Hannah had gone on ahead without me. I thought she would've waited, but she didn't. Well. I guess I'll go search for her.I shook my head, having no goal anymore as I called for the elevator. Since Hannah was using it a lot, it took a while to get to me. BGM: Silence  Hannah? Let's continue going down and unlocking all of them.BGM: Alarming Silence As I emerged from the darkness, I hit my foot on something. It was Hannah's head. Hannah?BGM: Alarming Situation It wasn't attached to Hannah's body anymore. It was sliced right off. Her collar had activated for reasons beyond my understanding. It was also gone. Oh no... What happened there? Did someone do this?The figure that ran away came to mind. Someone had, then. I looked around her body, but the key to unlock the elevator was missing, and so was the knife.  Turning her body over, I noticed there was a stab in her chest, too. Why was this stab there, if the collar had been triggered? This doesn't add up... The knife's missing, the key's missing, and the collar's missing. Why?I stood back up and walked back into the darkness. I thought maybe I was frighteningly emotionless when faced with the fact someone died. Truth be told... I guess I just couldn't bring myself to care about anything now that I knew I was most likely stuck here forever.  I didn't really know where I was going, but I was going somewhere. I didn't have the key, so I couldn't go down, only up. Certainly, the person who had the key, the knife, and Hannah's collar knew this. When I came upon the station above the previous one, I readied myself for the possible attacker. I could already eliminate two suspects, at least.  The other suspect I could eliminate was E, which left only Marco and Ray. Why could I have done so? Because she was holding her bloodied body while sitting against the bottom of a wall. I rushed to her. BGM: Android Sorrow  Who... who's there?She coughed. I couldn't do anything for her, as I watched her. I took her hand in mine, but as soon as I pulled it away from her, I realized how bad the damage was. There was so much blood. I could hardly stand the sight. Everything was blood. I don't... I don't think I'm gonna live... I'm just going to die... like that...She coughed again. I'd never felt more powerless than this, but it was my duty to listen to her final words at the very least. I didn't know where it was bleeding, and I didn't know how to stop the bleeding. I wanted to help, but I couldn't. The worst of all...  I see... so it's coming back for me now... ironic... but listen, listen carefully... I don't know why I'm telling you this, but I have a feeling I must... I must, because it's the only... the only time I can do so... so listen... listen...She was growing weaker. I tried to urge her not to say anything else, but I didn't know how to. Whatever I said, she wouldn't hear. Whatever I did, she wouldn't see. All I could do was listen.  BGM: Abyssal Snarl She stopped moving right after saying this. What did she mean by “the first letter”? The first letter of her name? The first letter of what? After she was terminated, I could check her body for the wound better. She'd grown so stiff so quickly, though. It made the job a little harder than I thought. Judging by the trail of blood coming down from the wall, I could deduce whoever did this had a gun. The trails coming down were similar to what it would look like if someone shot through a body. I'd seen enough of this in movies and games to know what it looked like. What the hell...If someone was still armed, they'd be a problem. But why would they have grabbed the knife from Hannah, then? A gun was way better.  I couldn't turn around to see them. All I could do was fall down to the ground in silence. Ah, that's why. The knife was silent. The gun, not so much. That must've been why they grabbed it from the twin, then. I was only another victim to them. Whoever it was, they had to pay. Even if I couldn't make them pay, I hoped someone else would.  BGM: Agnostic Shutdown    
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Aug 13, 2021 21:04
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It'll be funny if it's marco shanking him every time there's a knife end.
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Aug 13, 2021 21:31
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Wait... the lock by the right opened? Not the upper lock? OK, this is weird. Also, why would whoever set this up do a silo configuration instead of... y'know. An actual train network? Seems like one'd be easier to build than the other.
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Aug 13, 2021 21:47
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Wait, when did we see those maps?
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Aug 13, 2021 22:04
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The twins always find the maps in the Stars (they explore this room regardless of which side of the flowchart we're on), and in this section of the flowchart they show the maps to Simon and Jasmine after A+E have already left, right before the choice of who Simon wants to explore with. Should be Update 25?
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Aug 13, 2021 22:08
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Mix. posted:The twins always find the maps in the Stars (they explore this room regardless of which side of the flowchart we're on), and in this section of the flowchart they show the maps to Simon and Jasmine after A+E have already left, right before the choice of who Simon wants to explore with. Should be Update 25? Yep. The maps are in Update 25. I think I missed the second half of that update.
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Aug 14, 2021 04:52
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 The ending we got last route in turn unlocked the dark green lock, the only branch available to us. As a quick reminder, the sequence of events leading up to this lock are as follows: The group gradually arrives at the train station and, after some discussions, watch a video of the mastermind, Smiley, as he explains the rules of the game to them. The eight split up into pairs, and Simon partners with Ray, exiting at the sleeping quarters station. During the process of exploring this room, Simon finds a note that states that one of the participants is an outlier in some manner, and pockets it without showing Ray. Upon returning to the lounge station, they find that the twins are still gone, and the group decides that they should send some pairs off again to keep exploring (to save time). Simon states that he wants to go exploring with the others, and after some deliberation, the pairs set off, leading to Simon and Jasmine exploring the security station together. As part of the puzzle, Simon finds himself temporarily locked within a smaller room at the station, during which Jasmine smashes all but one of the monitors in the security office. They discover video footage on the last remaining monitor that shows one of the exit gates, with Ray and one of the twins in front of it. The twin exits on her own without Ray, which in turn leads to her death (as shown by her head rolling back into frame). However, when Jasmine and Simon return to the lounge, they discover both twins alive and well- seemingly having not encountered Ray or Marco at any point after their first station. After some consideration, Simon decides the best course of action is to share their findings with A, as the twins have already left for another station (and are under suspicion due to the video). Before he does, though, he goes back quickly to confirm his suspicions- the video footage is of the exit gate attached to the security room, as the floor in the halls varies based on which station it's attached to. Simon brings A to the station and shows him the footage, explaining his findings. After some discussion, A states he wishes to explore the infirmary so that the station may be left open in case it's needed, and the two return to the lounge so that he can collect E. In the previous update, although it wasn't a visible choice, Simon decided he wasn't ready to share the note he found in the bedroom with Jasmine, but now that the lock is open, we can share our findings in full.... BGM: Ambient Strain To pass the time, I had decided that perhaps I could have shared the paper with Jasmine. I still didn't know if I could have trusted her. Something was making me increasingly paranoid. We had a clear goal this time, yes; that was true. However, Jasmine's behavior still weighed on my mind. I had chosen not to tell A, as that might have been the trigger to send him on the warpath. The paper spoke of a person who didn't belong. Was it Jasmine? Was it one of the twins? Was it Ray? I had to make this choice. Did I share the information with my childhood friend or not? Would it be helpful, or would it create even further unnecessary suspicions?  BGM: Ascertaining Speech Listen, I almost forgot... I found a piece of paper earlier. I can show you, but you have to promise not to panic when you read what's on it, okay?I decided to omit the fact I actually chose not to share it with anyone, including her, because I hadn't known who to trust. It would've only fanned the flames of doubt in her head. Okay, I promise.I sincerely doubted she would panic, but I had wanted her guarantee anyway. Now that I had it, I reached in my pocket and took out the piece of paper. I also pulled out the big coin from the bedroom we explored. That's right, I still had that- realizing that fact made me wonder if it would have an additional purpose, since I could take it out of the room. I stuffed it back in, since that piece was useless for now. It's just a big coin, nothing to worry about. Anyway, here's that piece of paper.... I wonder if all these things weren't just planted here to make us doubt each other... Can you actually say there is someone who doesn't belong? For instance, what would be the criteria to...BGM: Silence I stumbled forward out of my seat, clutching my head and interrupting Jasmine in her sentence. It took her a bit to realize something was happening to me, but by that point, I wasn't even “there” anymore. Are you okay?! Darkness. BGM: Advancing Shadows  A wall was rising into the ceiling in the back, too. Even though I was looking at the reactor, what the wall had been hiding slowly came into my view, too. Behind the wall was...  We were floating. Floating. Floating. I screamed. I screamed myself awake in the lounge, next to Jasmine. She was shaking me to bring me back to reality. It had worked, but I couldn't deny what I'd seen. What... was that? I silently asked myself, bewildered and uncertain. Simon, are you alright?! Ugh... my head... it's splitting in half... It feels like my head is being smashed... and... you didn't use the nickname...I hissed the words through my teeth, trying to stay afloat.  The hold I had upon my head softened and my lips curled into a smile. That's right... She cared for me just as much as I cared for her. I tried to think about what I'd seen again, but a violent headache split me open once more as a result. I quickly abandoned that, and instead reached for the couch to rise back up. With Jasmine's help, I was hoisted back up to lay onto it. Oh, no no no... this state isn't good. M and Ray aren't here, the eccentrics are still gone, and the infirmary isn't solved yet to bring you there... It's okay... I'll just get a bit of shut-eye, nothing to worry about.I reassured her with a bit of a smile. If M and Ray come back, just wait for me to wake up, okay? If something happens, don't hesitate to fling a bucket of ice cold water on my face, either. ...On second thought, don't do that, it's got to be really horrible... That's not much better...We laughed it out until my head hurt again, by which point I decided to have that lie-down while she left for the station below. I knew I could count on Jasmine. She was always reliable. She would be here for me for all time. BGM: Silence  Except she wasn't there anymore. BGM: Ambient Strain  All of my memories from the moment I woke up in the train, to this very moment, came back to me in that uncomfortable nap. I touched my face. I felt groggy. Slowly, I rose up by sliding my back up the wall. I was back here, in the present. I was back here, in this absurd... future. Jasmine...With a raspy exhale, I looked over at the darkness nearby. Surely enough, her legs were still sticking out. She was... dead. A surge of pain rammed through my entire head, and I brought a hand up to support it. Wincing with one eye, I stumbled forward, falling back to the ground with a groan of pain. Ugh! Jasmine... you... I remember your death... There was a gunshot... Another vision flashed, much like earlier. BGM: Anaphora Solution  Not A, but Agnos. His name was Agnos. That old man had a gun. That old man shot people. That old man was a terrorist. That old man was my enemy. It's you, isn't it! You loving... rear end in a top hat! A's your name, it stands for rear end in a top hat! Gaahhhh!!I punched against the ground, leaving behind nothing but pain through my hand. I held my first with my other fingers, rubbing over it as if to soothe the pain. This is all your fault... All your fault! All the fault of your stupid, safest bet! You should burn in hell!!I let my rage wail and scream profanities and damnations. For several minutes, I was nothing but the instrument of my ire. A twisted typhoon of feelings was raging around my head, which I translated into punches and kicks. I eventually tired myself out, figuring that this wouldn't do anything. Jasmine was already dead. But this wasn't the first time Jasmine died, was it? Kh... what I saw... that wasn't a lie, was it? The reactor... this place... the shooting... people dead... Jasmine dead... Is Marco dead, too? I have to find them... Something didn't feel right in what I remembered. Vats...? I saw some pods... or vats... We were in those pods. Jasmine, what... what are you?I crawled over to Jasmine. Perhaps what she held on her would give me some kind of lead on how to proceed. I didn't want to touch a corpse- not her corpse most of all- but I had no choice. In the vision of that memory, all eight of us were in there. A ray of hope shone in my head: what if Jasmine wasn't Jasmine? Was she in the vat at this very moment? I pressed my hand against her side, slowly. It was solid. I knew bodies went stiff when you died or something- rigor mortis, was it?- but not to this extent. It was really solid. No! I couldn't get hopeful. I shook my head. I didn't want to get a hope that I would lose. I didn't want to be lured in by fate... But I wanted to finish the examination anyway. I resigned myself to it, and took a deep breath. Urk, oof... this doesn't smell good, pahh...Still, I grabbed onto her side. Normally, there would be a bone here. This would be the thoracic spine, but... This felt smoother. Against my better judgment, I decided to knock against it. It echoed. What is this...? Are you... the person who doesn't belong? No... all of us were in those vats... What does it mean?As a last resort, I decided to look into the wound on her forehead. Inside, I could see some... cables. There was blood and it was disgusting, but it was metallic inside. Like some kind of robot's head. After all this time, this is the answer? Or is this a cruel joke from Smiley? Is this not even Jasmine? Is this a fake? Did they try making me think they got Jasmine, and in reality she's not here?!BGM: Ambient Strain  I decided that he wouldn't get me so easily. However, when the train arrived, and I looked at the other side, I saw two figures leave. One of them was a large man. Marco and Ray were back. Quickly, I jumped into the lobby. I climbed even faster up the stairs, and emerged into the lounge in record time.  Marco and Ray both entered the lounge at that screaming. The older one squinted at me, as if I was disturbing him. I didn't have time for his poo poo. Jasmine got shot. In the head.Marco's eyes opened wide.  Jasmine...?BGM: Abyssal Snarl   He looked even more confused than I was. Whatever, it's A, he did all of this! He did this too. We're going to barricade here from now on. His name is Agnos. How do you know that? Too stupid to explain. It's Agnos anyway. That... motherfucker...I balled my hands into fists and kicked the nearby couch. Marco did the same, which served only to hurt his foot. I'd never seen him this angry before.   Yeah, don't look at me like that. I didn't do anything, it's like he said. That old guy overpowered us both with a gun, and Marco shoved me away, and then there was an explosion... If he had not shoved me out of the way, I would've gotten those shots right in my chest. I guess the price was the fact his arm got blown away in the blast. I'm willing to bet Agnos is Smiley... A maniac who just likes killing people... Okay, that sucks. I mean it really sucks. But... some other poo poo is going on here.I was talking like Ray now. I had to shake my thoughts away from him for a bit. Jasmine got shot, and she's not Jasmine. She's really weird. Go look downstairs if you want. At her dead body. I looked into the wound, and there are wires and crap... No, I'm telling you that's not Jasmine...BGM: Alarming Silence  Where was he going with this? I didn't understand what he was asking. Yes...? THE Jasmine you spoke to me about, right? Yes, she's Jasmine, J like Jasmine, the Jasmine that I'd known before, the Jasmine I hadn't seen for years, the Jasmine who's supposed to meet us today, and...Was he drunk or something, and not able to recognize her?  Simon...BGM: Silence He paused. I suddenly had a bad feeling. I wasn't going home with you earlier. I finished classes before you, like every Friday, and I was at home waiting for you to come back so we'd go out. You told me about her a lot, but... BGM: Alarming Situation Almost mechanically, while I watched, unsure of what he was telling me, unsure of reality, unsure of my memories, he walked away. Slowly, he walked away, through the door frame, and left to Jasmine's side of the station, most likely to examine her himself. You never... he never...I turned to Ray. He never... met her. This is... what I remember... how could it...Ray was visibly at a loss on that topic, holding his head as if he had a headache. Sitting on the couch, he dismissively waved at me.  He seemed a lot more apprehensive all of a sudden. As he explained it to me, something clicked in my head. As he spoke, I was made aware of a truth I'd been running away from this whole time.  What...? Marco is not human...? Is he like Jasmine...? Smiley...I clenched my hands in fists in another fit of anger, while Ray, uncaring, drank from his flask. Smiley! Come out and answer our questions, you gently caress! Why does nothing make sense?!The security footage. The note about the person who doesn't belong. The vision of the vats. Jasmine being a fake. Ray with a twin dying in the security room. Marco not knowing who Jasmine was. Marco being a human-robot-person too. Why?! Who is here?! Who the gently caress are we?! What is this place?! BGM: Silence  BGM: Ambient Strain I woke up to Marco announcing his findings to Ray. He sat down next to me as soon as I made some space. He looked completely discouraged. I don't know... I don't know what's going on, either...During the silence lingering past his admission, I looked at my hands. Two pieces of evidence connected as I did so. Two people were confirmed as robots, and the twins were still alive, despite what I'd seen. BGM: Ascertaining Speech  I looked at my hands even harder. I turned them around, felt up my arms, but nothing seemed off. Don't bother trying to feel it. You won't. I didn't have any hints, either. All I know is that I feel very much like a human. This is wrong... very wrong...Ray was drinking from his flask. If he wasn't, would he have gotten angry? The real question was, what would he be getting angry about- the fact we're insinuating we're robots, or the fact we're fixated on it? Hey, Ray... are you a robot, too? Eh? Do you feel weird? BGM: Algorithm Simile So when the gently caress are we barricading this place? Reminder that your girlie friend, Jasmine, got shot in the head and died like a person either way. If we ain't getting this up, then we ain't living tomorrow.  There's a real me somewhere out there, and it's not me. I'm from nowhere. I'm a fake. I'm not here, I'm not there, I'm not anywhere. There's no place for me. Well, you know, you're still you. I don't really care if you're a robot or not. Yeah, listen to your bucko there. And besides, if you're missing your arm and you're a robot, we can get you an arm cannon later and maybe you can become a cool bounty hunter from space. I guess his missing arm would be a current problem, too. He's a robot, so he's not really healing, is he? I was no psychologist, but I could help by reaching out and giving him a pat on the shoulder that wasn't injured. He gave a half smile. Ray shook his head and stood up, leaving us alone. I'm concerned, though. Jasmine was... I mean, she was still human. She felt real. She had thoughts, and dreams, and other things that people have. What manner of event is this? Marco gave me a weird look. I don't mean anything by it, it's just, I don't know. I have all the memories from when I wasn't, uh, “a fake”, I guess. I don't feel any different, but I could be a robot, too...BGM: Agoraphobic Sloth  Even while feeling down, he was still a joker. You're gonna get the opportunity if the two of you don't actually help to loving barricade this place. Agnos could get here any moment.I stood up alongside my friend. While we toiled away in silence. I thought about a few things that might've been relevant. I didn't know if Marco's bleeding was a sign that it had healed, or that he wouldn't “feel” any of it. Come to think of it, wasn't it like something he told me earlier? He told me something like “hunger is just a signal”. If hunger is fake... then us being hungry wasn't proof of anything. I first thought that might've been something robots couldn't feel. Upon reflection, that wasn't helpful.  I've never gone to the library... with him...We moved some of the couches up to one of the two entrances, blocking it completely. Surely, if Agnos was a robot just like us, though, this wouldn't stop him much. Ray and I moved back to the other pair of couches, readying ourselves to take hold of them and carry them to the other door. What else could help, though? I had to gather everything on over.  Oh hey, one final time to poke around this place! Nice of the game to let us do tha- Argh!BGM: Alarming Silence  Marco was stabbing Ray.  Huh, no resistance at all? Did I just get lucky or what?Ray smashed his fist against Marco's leg, but the boy didn't care. Instead, he pulled the knife out of Ray and slammed it back into his chest, forcing Ray to give a raspy exhale. He probably hit his lung.  Doing that caused Ray to wail out in pain. If you're still alive, it's thanks to me anyway, so you should consider yourself lucky. Hahaha... Oh, wait, no, you're not alive. You're a loving robot, too. We're all robots. We're all dead. We're all just loving dead. Deal with it, Ray. No, gently caress you!Marco had spoken without any emotion behind his voice. I could only watch in horror as my one-armed friend stabbed Ray, just like that. It was like he... gave up. Why did you do that, Marco...? Everything was improving... Improving?BGM: Alarming Situation  Nothing's improving for us. It doesn't matter. We're not even alive, we're dead men walking. You... fuckwit... I'm not a robot... who the gently caress is a robot, huh?!Sadly, those were his last words. Ray expired momentarily. Marco must've severed some important cables, as if to prove the fact Ray was, just as well, a robot too. I didn't understand. I watched the horrific sight of the large man, cold on the ground. There was blood there, and it smelled metallic. It smelled so strongly metallic, in fact! Marco... can you check where the blood comes from?  Oh, wait. That's not blood. It's just some kind of fluid that looks like blood. Hahaha... You know how blood has this weird metallic taste, since there's iron in our blood? This one's just that. It's some kind of liquid that seems to be surrounding the metal, and flowing over it. He wasn't laughing, though, and neither was I. I tried to rise up to do something about the situation, but he immediately lunged at me. I thought he would stab me, but... BGM: Silence  BGM: Ascertaining Speech  I don't really know what to think anymore. Remember what I studied in? Probably not... it's the field of applied noematics. I studied on thoughts, what they are, and how to apply that knowledge in the field of science. To put it simply, it's basically a story about guys replacing the parts on a boat, until none of the original parts are left.I didn't really have the heart to interrupt him, but the entire time, I was looking at his knife, hoping he wouldn't want to subject me to Ray's treatment. I quietly listened due to that same knife's close proximity. That's where the original theory ends, because the question is: Is that ship the Ship of Theseus? to which there is no real answer, because you could say the parts are the ship, or the rebuilt ship is the ship. But they also added another part to it. Which is the real Ship of Theseus- the ship that had all its parts replaced, or the new ship made of the original parts? You may be wondering what this all has to do with our situation. Well, I'm Marco alright, but I'm a robot, so I'm not Marco. But I know, very well, that I'm Marco. I remember all the things Marco did. I didn't know what to tell him. I felt like if I said anything bad, he would do something I didn't want. But, perhaps there would be a calm way out of this situation. I needed to show that I shared his sentiment, so I said... BGM: Abyssal Snarl Well, time's up. Time's up? Yes, time's up. The time for the dating game is over. There's nothing here that awaits us. Nothing but eternal darkness. Darkness for you, me, and everyone else. Goodnight, Simon. I'm sure the real me would've loved to keep being your friend. I grabbed his arm, trying to stop him, but it was too late. Even the hand I had on his chest wasn't enough to push him away. One of my eyes shut down when he did so. He drove the knife into my chest, and that most likely severed part of my body from functioning properly. Are you Simon, anyway? Maybe you're not. There's some resistance here, so you and I... we're just the same. All of us here are robots. Maybe this is just a big joke. A big joke, kinda like a bad nightmare I'm going to wake up from. If that's the case then, why am I not waking up?!  If this is a nightmare, then I'll wake up. If it's not a nightmare, then I'll die. Either way, it'll be over. There's nothing here, anyway. Even with all this installation, they hosed up. The Empty S sucks. The M... M... Final letter... five letters... Marco... do you know what... it means...? It means nothing. You're just going mad, because I hosed up your body. I don't know what it feels like, sorry. I don't know what anything feels like, either. I don't feel. I'm just a machine.I could tell my brain wasn't working right, so perhaps the next images I saw were fabricated. I saw Marco pick up the knife.  And he drove it into his own body. He fell on top of me, obscuring my sight. I could see nothing. We spoke our final words, before the darkness came. Wait... don't... are you... I don't know what the... Empty S is... is it the MTS? Montreal... Transport... Society...? Hahahaha... the MTS has nothing to do with this... It's always been... the Empty S! The group I'm from... They will change the world... The future is the Empty S. Are you... Smiley?BGM: Silence He couldn't answer, since he'd stopped moving, fallen atop me. He was already cold- it had been nigh-instantaneous. Just like him, I expired. Dying was like that, huh.   BGM: Agnostic Shutdown    
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Aug 15, 2021 23:20
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Whoops! But yeah, this is getting increasingly wack. Professor Layton levels of wack. The question is, is the code EMILY or SMILEY? Or something else?
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Aug 15, 2021 23:37
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Okay the arm thing reminds me of another game that tried to be Indie Zero Escape but I'll spoil it: Exit/Corners.
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Aug 15, 2021 23:56
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Well, I'm one for two on my facetious plot guesses, wooooo? to junpei: that game is generally better than this one, unless it went off the rails after I stopped playing about midway through
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Aug 16, 2021 00:35
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Oh I played it all to the end, and I agree. It probably helps that the protag is much better than Simon in basically every way possible.
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Aug 16, 2021 00:37
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funnily enough, that one's also on my list of 'might be worth LPing sometime' now that it's finished, because i'll never get tired of these kind of stories, but I still have the sequel to get through first (though we're getting really close!!) I've already been doing preliminary prep stuff for the sequel and holy hell is it a breath of fresh air getting to have a new protagonist
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Aug 16, 2021 00:38
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Nice, I legitimately did call the "they're all robots actually" twist! Time to see if my other theory is correct, but I'm becoming increasingly certain that it is.
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Aug 16, 2021 00:56
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Mix. posted:funnily enough, that one's also on my list of 'might be worth LPing sometime' now that it's finished, because i'll never get tired of these kind of stories, but I still have the sequel to get through first I'd love to see an LP of it, since I stopped playing when it went on the big update hiatus and just never picked it up again. While we're at it, are there any more good zero escape-likes, with escape the room stuff tied together with more than a few lines of story? I'm familiar with the The Room series, but beyond that idk
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Aug 16, 2021 01:40
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At this point your best bet is indie stuff; there's a couple of VNs I have flagged on Steam (True Game, The Mist City, etc) that seem like they might be in the same vein, but they're only in Chinese at the moment. From following the creator of this series I've seen a couple that seem like they might have potential, but they're still in development. There's also one that came out a few months ago called Sekimeiya that seems to be about a group of people who wake up in a tower and have to combat supernatural events while figuring out why they're there, but I haven't heard any talk about it (I might pick it up once I can afford it, I'm unemployed right now lmao) There's also a bunch of manga that are about survival games, but that's not exactly the same thing as a video game, lol
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Aug 16, 2021 02:05
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It's interesting to discuss how all 'death game' stories connect back to the original Battle Royale (take your pick of the novel, the manga or the movie), being some sort of riff, pastiche, or twist on the concept. Hunger Games is a western take that focuses more on the dystopian elements, Mirai Nikki adds supernatural elements and makes it completely dumb, the first Danganronpa elevates the concepts of ruthless competition among high schoolers and the pressure placed on them to succeed, etc. etc.
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Aug 16, 2021 02:23
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Junpei posted:It's interesting to discuss how all 'death game' stories connect back to the original Battle Royale (take your pick of the novel, the manga or the movie), being some sort of riff, pastiche, or twist on the concept. Hunger Games is a western take that focuses more on the dystopian elements, Mirai Nikki adds supernatural elements and makes it completely dumb, the first Danganronpa elevates the concepts of ruthless competition among high schoolers and the pressure placed on them to succeed, etc. etc. What about Umineko? Where does it fit in?
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Aug 16, 2021 02:50
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Is the "one who doesn't belong" signaling that there's one actual human amongst the robots? Seems like if so, it'd have to be E, G, or A, at this point.Quackles posted:Whoops! Simon has said a few times that it was 5 letters, and while we've been told they're in the order E I L Y M, I can only assume the code is meant to be EMILY. Smiley being an anagram of Emily with an additional S is likely very relevant, though...
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Aug 16, 2021 03:04
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Quackles posted:What about Umineko? Where does it fit in? Umineko is 'wow the author has read a lot of british detective novels'.
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Aug 16, 2021 03:18
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Just giving a small update, the final route will be two updates long, but I'm choosing to upload both of them back to back to prevent leaving you all on a particularly nasty cliffhanger- it's just that this last route is, understandably, pretty dense (as most ZE final routes usually tend to be) so I couldn't fit it all into one. After that, I have one final Extra update prepared, as well as an update that will just be the in-game Lexicon, and then we'll be done and finally off to the (better) second game! edit: im going ahead and posting the first half here now, the second half will be done soon. Mix. fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Aug 17, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 22:44
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 It's time for the final branch of the game. As a reminder, this follows the path of the initial, locked-in path: We start, as always, with the introduction to the game and its players, and the group splitting into teams which leads Simon to partner with Marco so the two can explore the library together. After rejoining with the others, Ray and Jasmine show the note they found in the sleeping quarters, and Simon decides he wants to prioritize what links everyone together rather than trying to find the outlier. The group splits up again, this time with Simon and Jasmine paired together. They explore the science laboratory, and find a strange locked door that doesn't open, even after they solve the room. Upon returning to the lounge, Simon decides he wants to go for a walk and possibly visit one of the stations that has already been solved, but the old man A decides to accompany him. The two return to the science lab, where A reveals his true profession: his job is to investigate rogue members for a specific organization and, if necessary, put a stop to their activities. He believes Smiley to be connected to the same organization, and implies he willingly entered the Dating Game with the goal of discovering Smiley's identity and putting a stop to his activities. A states that, based on his past experiences, he believes the locked door to be vital to their escape, and enlists Simon to help him look for anything that could lead to them confronting Smiley. He also entrusts Simon with a strange remote that they found in the pantry, stating that he couldn't find a use for it yet and that he wants Simon to keep an eye out for what it could be used for. Simon and A return, and the group splits up into pairs again, this time with Simon and E together, going to check some of the previous stations to make sure there isn't a ninth person running around to avoid the group. This leads them to the church, where the two explore the room like normal, with Simon learning more about E (including the fact that she was a student at the same university he and Marco attended, studying noematics- another link that connects them, as Marco previously revealed that Ray was a professor at their university). Upon returning, however, Simon discovers that A has executed the rest of the group, determining that “the fastest way to deal with Smiley is to kill everyone and hope that one of the executed participants was the mastermind.” He manages to disarm A and escape with E in tow, eventually stopping to recover in the gymnasium. At this point, there were two options we could choose: lock the gun in the safe to ensure A couldn't recover it, or go to confront him directly with it. This time, however, we have a third option, one that has been unavailable to us the entire game.... BGM: Advancing Shadows I didn't find a password in this room, I didn't find a clue about Smiley, I didn't find anything really relevant, but I could get rid of this gun. Despite my resolve, I knew that I would shake in my boots when the time came to use it. This was dangerous for me, not for anyone else. I didn't even know how to operate it. Time was ticking down, too. Agnos would find us sooner or later. I already weighed my options. I could confront Agnos with the gun, or leave the gun here and investigate a way to leave otherwise. The third option was also the “mega-door” I could unlock with the remote, but... I still didn't know the password for it. If only I had hints about the password... but until I did so, my options were limited...  BGM: Ambient Strain I didn't know when Agnos would catch up to us, and there only was one course of action that came to mind. Instead of doing anything with the gun, I decided I needed to get to the core of this problem. I had to get to the laboratory as soon as possible. The main problem was my identity. Agnos was so convinced that by killing everyone, he'd get Smiley. If only I could convince him otherwise, then he'd spare me, at least.  With that thought, I took the train as soon as it arrived. BGM: Advancing Shadows  Worse, he could trigger the punishment for entering this station with more than two people by mistake. This would definitely be the worst outcome for everyone involved. I still had no idea how to open the door, but having felt the back of the remote, I noticed there was something there. Now that I wasn't in a rush to get here, I examined the little studs. They formed rectangular patterns. I knew this. It was Braille. How lucky that E's still here, and alive!I exclaimed to myself, half sarcastic. True, it was still lucky. In fact, perhaps too lucky. I took a moment to think about what this meant. Agnos hadn't really gunned for her. Of course! He'd known about the Braille. That was why he needed her alive.  This was giving me a headache again, so I decided to stop trying to understand what went through his head. Even worse, I had an even bigger headache when holding the remote. E held my other hand. I pulled from her, which thankfully didn't make her panic. I needed both my hands free to write her a message. I only had one piece of paper left... I handed it to her alongside the remote. You want me to touch the remote and tell you what's written on it? I can do that, but... are we near an exit?She paused, figuring that I would answer. When I didn't, she lost a bit of her composure. Um... if we're near an exit, can't we just leave? As if I knew the solution for the exit already. Okay... well, on this remote, it says... “Reverse me to open the way in and forgive me for.” Forgive me for what? I don't understand.I didn't understand, either. I plucked the remote from her, as calmly as I could. Looking at it, I realized that I could enter five letters into it.  I didn't know what this meant, but somewhere, there was some sort of password. All I needed to do was figure it out. Simple, right? Five letters. One password. BGM: Silence I thought about it, but I just couldn't figure it out... ...until finally, it struck me. BGM: Anaphora Solution  Arrghh! Why... why does it hurt so much?! What the gently caress?!My hands closed into fists, and I banged onto the table a few times. I banged with my firsts, with my forehead, with my whole body. The pain was.. excruciating. Someone, help! I called for help in my head, knowing full well nobody would answer. Several long moments of this pain followed. It was as if my head was filling with a great deal of information- too much, in fact. Finally, it ceased. I breathed heavily, panting, without any idea of what just transpired. However, something felt different now. This was just like the time at the station. All my memories came back to me. I remembered... everything. The letters... I know them. The five letters were... E-I-L-Y-M, and the reverse order was... “MYLIE”. And that was it. As soon as I turned the remote to the reinforced door and pressed the “send” button, the way in was opened. Very slowly, the door creaked open. It looked supremely heavy when it was closed, but now, as it moved just enough to let me grab the side and pull it wide open, it looked older than anything else. Besides me, E was holding herself, as the movements of that door opening had most likely sent off some intense vibrations through the ambient air. What's going on?! What did we open? Next to me, E wasn't quite in a state of panic yet, but she was clearly getting there, as we both stepped into this place, past the small scanners on the walls and ceiling.  BGM: Alarming Silence Something about this struck me as odd. She could see, no? I knew it; she had eyes. This headset worked to rebuild her vision. It would be done very soon. If that was the case, then she would finally be able to see soon. Why was she panicking? What is this...? Where are we? We're not supposed to be here! E, please, calm down! BGM: Alarming Situation No, no! I want to see! Take this thing off, I need it off, I want to see!I knew the headset she had was almost done doing its job, but like this? It wouldn't finish! I tried to help her, but she shoved me away with remarkable strength. I hit the wall with a dull thud. Oof! E, stop! Aaaahhh!! This is wrong! This is all wrong!! What is this?! Why... nooo! What?!I turned my head back to E, snapping to the source of the noise while quickly standing up. The sight that greeted me was so strange I could not move. BGM: Ascertaining Sanity E's skin was smooth. Smooth skin. I saw her smooth skin. At that moment, I saw that, right in front of me, E...  Her skin was horrifically smooth, as if she never had eyes to begin with. A normal human face should've had eyes, a nose, ears, and a mouth, but E was missing some. She had no eyes, and she had no ears. She had no eyebrows. She was featureless.   I can't see! I can't see!! I can't see, and I can't hear!That vision of horror cemented itself into my head. A few more seconds passed me by, as I remained frozen, unable to think. Unable to understand. What... was happening to E? I tried looking away, but the more I tried to do so, the more I was glued to the sight. This was unnatural. This was... inhuman. Time had come to a standstill as I stared, frozen in my inability to process what my eyes were seeing. What... was... this...? As time passed, I wormed my way out of my stupor. Finally, my arms, which felt like lead before, were capable of moving again.  Argh!I landed against the machine with the switches, after which it took me a second to stand back up. At least, following that, E seemed to have calmed down. I looked at her again as I rose. She had stopped gesticulating entirely, dormant against the wall, like a marionette with its strings cut. She did not even seem to breathe anymore. E! Are you okay?!I quickly lunged towards her. Oh, no, no, no! I had to do something about this, but what? What could've caused this? The strangest part was how she had fallen dormant right after shoving me. Did something happen in the room? I had to take a look around, and help her promptly. BGM: Alarming Silence  It was a large containment unit. As I approached it, I looked inside.   Smiley?!This person, held in suspension within the vat, was Smiley. At least, that's what some of their attire suggested. None of this made any sense, however, as I had memories of one of the twins also wearing Smiley's helmet. Yet, inside the vat, was a woman, not a little girl. I could tell by her general body shape. It was a grown female body, perhaps slightly old.   BGM: Agnostic Shutdown  This is the actual final Active Search in the game, and unfortunately there's no map for us this time, as we're officially “off the grid” now. Before we begin grabbing stuff, I'm gonna take a look at those two points of interest on the right. I approached the machine in the back- the one that had a bunch of switches on it. I fell against it earlier when E pushed me aside. Bringing my attention back to the machine, I couldn't understand what these switches were all for. However, I realized one important thing.  Are these for our collars...?Suddenly, I felt like it wouldn't be a good idea to mess with them. What if it did even worse? What if it triggered the collars, and we'd die? Ngk... I don't have a choice... I need to see what happens if I... but maybe I shouldn't...Next, we can check the tank again.  Wait... Jasmine...? Is that you in there?I couldn't be sure yet. If it was Jasmine, then... she had grown older. We can check it a second time, but all Simon has to say is...  ...so all that's left for us is to check out the stuff on the left. I'm going to start with the notebook on the table. This was a notebook. There were a lot of pages with a bunch of useless stuff. It was talking about... noematics? What the hell was that? It also had a bunch of footnotes about causality.  We get to read everything, don't worry- there's no timer on this exploration. -Simon read about noematics. “Noematics, or applied noematics, is the field of study researching thoughts, what thoughts consist of, and the transfer of thoughts. By likening the human mind to a series of electric currents, wave signals, and compression of readable data, it is possible, in theory, to recreate minds based on exact brain patterns and memories.” “An outside piece of material is necessary for transplanting memories, but they are highly unstable. It is much safer to recreate events leading to a certain memory to make a stable memory. Most dangerous of all is the transmission of data by emission of waves. Any head that would come close to the waves would receive the memories, possibly mistaking them for visions.” A thought flashed in my head: this did happen before! And not just once, either. I remembered when my head came close to Jasmine's for that kiss. I had visions of the train I just could not get rid of. They were haunting me in that moment. Could it be that those were fabricated somehow? A twin leaned forward over the counter to look at what Agnos was preparing. She suddenly started talking about a terrorist who had planted bombs in a metro. Did something transmit that memory to her...?And all the times I held E, or supported E, only to feel like I could fully trust her. Was this also something that was being transmitted?  I couldn't answer that. I needed more information. Sadly, as the pages went on, this became too confusing for me. I couldn't glean anything else from this. -Simon read the causality footnotes. “In accordance with the laws of causality, a cause must always have an effect. The reverse is also true: an effect must always have a cause. If nothing causes anything to happen, then nothing happens.” “If an outside source came to witness some events, then other events would need to pave the way for said events to happen. As knowledge is impossible to unlearn, any witnessing would create it for all time.” So its saying... because we're here now... other events needed to exist? Am I getting this right? This isn't helping me save E, but...For some reason, I couldn't deny the fact this was, somehow, important. That's all the notebook has for us. Simon closed everything up, and returned to the search of the room. All that's left is the shelves against the wall.   -Simon read pages 1 to 4. Page one: “Dear diary, I write to you today because I have no idea of what I'm doing. I've enrolled in some school. It's the University of Montreal. All of this is very new to me. Hopefully I will learn how to keep a diary, and I will enjoy companionship as I was bid to do. Perhaps I will even feel something.” “However, I am still sad and lonely. Everyone admires me for my skills, as they say I am a prodigy. I still feel nothing despite that, as if I am cold and empty inside.” “They will come back in a week. Until then, they said I should prepare as much material as I can to prove myself in front of the entire board of directors. Is this... stress?” That part's completely crossed out.-Simon read pages 5 to 8. Page five: “Dear diary, the job I'm doing can be very taxing. I'm under strict contract to never reveal what I'm working on, but some of it makes me really wonder if this is the right way. They are paying me an outrageous amount of money, though. I wonder what kind of rich person could even fund all of this?” “What happened was that... I met a boy. No, I just saw a boy, that's all. I didn't really meet him. I feel shyness. I feel butterflies. I don't know what this is. Something in me was... interested. I don't know how to process this. I will write more later.” -Simon read pages 9 to 11. Page nine: “Dear diary, I renamed the GEM to something else that seemed more fitting. We're going to attempt putting someone's thoughts into it and see how it works. I hope this won't be a mistake. My attraction to that boy is growing stronger every day. I don't know why I feel this way. This isn't love, is it? Either way, he hasn't looked at me even once, like he doesn't even notice me.” “Despite that, I've vowed I'll succeed. Soon, we'll be able to keep people alive for centuries without degradation. And then... we'll be able to move forward like never before.” “If I don't do it, though, he's going to die. Why was he chosen, too? The boy I... like. He was chosen to be put in this. What do I do? I don't want to lose this job, but I also don't want to lose him. I don't have a choice. I need to oversee this. I need to... save him. Hopefully, my precautions will prevent me from dying, but if I do die, then...” And that's all the diary has for us. Simon closed everything up, and returned to the search of the room.  Now that we have looked at everything, we can interact with the switches. I hesitated, took a deep breath, and then made up my mind. I didn't have any choice; nothing else in this room was helpful in any capacity. BGM: Silence Well... here goes.BGM: Alarming Silence I flipped one of the switches to the other side. It was the fourth one. Nothing happened. gently caress, if anything happened to Agnos's collar, I can't know like this. Wait... there are nine switches. Eight of them were switched to what I assume is “on”. What's going on with the ninth? Why is it “off”?If nothing bad happened to our collars while they were “on”, then most likely, nothing bad would happen if I switched the ninth one to “on” as well. BGM: Silence I took the plunge and did it. BGM: Alarming Situation Right away, I could tell the change was coming from the vat in the middle of the room. It was, to put it simply, draining away. As it did, the person inside moved slightly. I watched in awe. The woman inside of the vat slowly removed all the tubes connecting her to it, and when the water was low enough, she took off the helmet she wore.
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Aug 17, 2021 00:46
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Aug 17, 2021 01:02
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I am interested to see where this goes. But still feel more muddled and confused than I usually do for the genre.
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Aug 17, 2021 01:09
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 BGM: Alarming Situation What is going on...? Who are you?I asked as the glass separated us. It was an old woman, just as I'd surmised. The glass lowered enough to let her step through, which she did momentarily. I backed away to give her some space.  She looked somewhat familiar. And... she looked very old. She must've been at least 90 years old, if not even older than that. BGM: Algorithm Simile  I sensed no hostility from her. She looked very sad, though. I caught the glance she gave towards E's body. Wait, are you...The question hung on my lips, and I couldn't finish it. She patiently waited for me to do so, but seeing as I couldn't, she chuckled.  Let me catch my breath first. It has been so long, after all. Moving after being in suspension for this long is very difficult.The voice that came from her had a low tone, but I could still feel as if it was kind of melodious and pleasant. She pulled a chair from under a nearby table, and sat down in front of me.  She chuckled at that. Her manners could've used some polish. I wonder about that now, too... I am indeed Smiley, but... no, that's not quite right. Without S, I am only Emily. Emily...? I didn't know anyone named Emily. Wait... Now that I had a good look at her, I realized what felt familiar before. I took a glance at E's body. No, not Emily's body- E's body. Was this body which didn't move anymore Emily's body, too? I could tell her face was similar, even without the eyes. Her hair was arranged similarly as well.  Although, that part is not entirely correct. She is an EMILY of Emily. EMILY stands for “Electro-autonomous Memory-driven Informal LibrarY”, which gives the EMILY acronym, named after myself, their... developer.She sighed wistfully, shaking her head. But one thing at a time. We have... many topics to cover, now that we are here. I am sure you have read my notes and my diary. Sneaky boy.I nodded, remaining silent, unsure of what I should have said- if anything. Instead, I let her talk, to avoid her getting confused in her explanations.  I will let you choose the order in which I explain it all. I can talk about myself, or about you and the other participants, and then I'll finish up with this entire event's ordeal.I quickly made up my mind on what we'd talk about first.  Well, since the order doesn't matter, let's learn a little bit more about our mysterious ninth person. I want to know more about you. Ohoho! Such a thing pleases me greatly. Although, I suppose it was preordained I would eventually talk about me, my motivation, and why I am... Smiley. I wanted everything; I was greedy. I used to be a normal person, as normal as I could force myself to be, and I used to frequent the University of Montreal, so long ago now. I studied in Applied Noematics, which allowed me to manipulate thoughts and such. Yes, that diary is mine. I'm sure you don't need me to tell you a lot about that, but I can give context. So I worked for them. I built various technological advances while furthering my studies. One day, I met... you, Simon. You did not see me, and in fact, you never even so much as looked at me. But as I said, I wasn't normal. I don't have... feelings. I wanted them, but I never had them. I was not good with human relations in general, so I never felt compelled to approach. I was fine just looking...from afar. I learned you, of all people, would be participating in it. And so, I wanted to save you. I wanted to save you, and I also wanted to create an unbreakable bond between us. Such an experience would be something no other people could ever share. I wanted to create it- I wanted to create love. I wanted it to no longer be so unrequited...I didn't know how to take this. Was this some sort of weird declaration of love? From an old woman? Well, perhaps it was a little too prejudiced to think badly of it, but... I wanted to stop it. But I couldn't. So instead, I tried creating loopholes and a way out, because if it wasn't for me, everyone would've died, executed as part of the process. Even though I failed. Hopefully, you can find it in you to forgive me. We'll see about that.I took a pause before we continued talking. And now we get to ask about the other seven.  Oh, this is a little complicated. First of all, you need to understand that we chose our subjects very carefully. I suppose I can go in order of number. “G” as you called her was chosen simply because she came as a pair with her twin, Hannah. But she had also been involved in the replacement of her sister under observation. I never wanted you to have been chosen, let me establish that. If I had gotten my way, none of this would have happened. Marco was chosen because he also was a student in Applied Noematics, but he knew of the Empty S the same way I knew of them, and he was opposed to what they were doing. He was “dangerous”, they said. I don't see it. However, he no longer held the esteemed position he once had. Instead, he became part of the “cleanup crew”. After the debacle in New York, he was reassigned here, but unbeknownst to him, he was to be killed off in this place. Ray was chosen because he got too close to the Empty S. He took a brain scan somewhere, then the Empty S contacted him to help him with some sort of cure. I don't know any of the details beyond this much, but that was apparently enough for them. Maybe the medicine he had was experimental in some way. I looked at the motionless body. So you controlled your EMILY remotely? Oh, no, no, this was quite literally “me”. Remember, they are “autonomous”, Simon. Anyway, finally, Jasmine... Obviously, she isn't the real Jasmine. It was another half-failed experiment where they turned someone into a completely different person. Hannah, the real one, was heavily injected and rebuilt to become Jasmine herself. She closed her firsts, somewhat angry. I shared the same emotion, but... it was also liberating. Yes, this meant the real Jasmine was still fine. Of course, I already remembered this. Anyway, about this entire experiment...BGM: Silence She took a brief pause and gave me the opportunity to glance over at E. Was she never to move again? My thoughts were interrupted when Emily spoke anew. BGM: Anaphora Solution  The goal was simple: create a situation that would bring an external observer to this world, and retroactively give birth to it. As you have no doubt browsed my notes, you must be aware of the Perception of Existence. By bringing an outside observer, or “God” as the Empty S calls it, then we would create this world by retroactively bringing every element needed for its construction. Hold up, what? This doesn't make any sense. It is a reverse cause to effect; by creating the effect, which was this experiment, we gave birth to the world, which was the cause leading up to it. But that's not how it works. You need the cause to make the effect happen... Do you? If you have the effect, then the cause is a necessary element for it to happen. Well... whatever. I'm getting confused. Please continue.  That was a fake memory being transmitted to your brain every time you woke up, at the very beginning, alongside Jasmine. In the same order of idea, fake memories had been transmitted to everyone before they woke up, too. Hannah forgot her school life, and those memories were falsified, which really changed how she remembered her time there. She forgot her entire circle of “friends”. I was made to forget I was the mastermind behind all of this. That was... a grave problem, and it ultimately led to carnage. I wish I could take it back.. so badly. The collars are not stable, which may explain why he behaved like that. When they create conflicts in the mind, they can grow like a mental tumor that erodes your sanity. You may have seen this happen... a few times, and perhaps also been subjected to it when memories did not match up with what you previously thought you saw. Right... that time with Jasmine. No, those times. It happened more than once. Precisely. The carnage that followed sadly robbed every person of their lives, including you. You were... beheaded. I still, to this day, have a vivid memory of that moment, and it haunts my... “nightmares”. I squinted in suspicion. What did she mean by that? It took me many, many, many years. In fact, if I am this old, it is because I have spent my whole life researching in the field of noematics until I could create exact, perfect replicas of a human. Of course, their interior is still robotic, as if they are strange, fleshy-robot hybrids... but these are the EMILYs you see now.She motioned towards E.  But... but why?  I wanted to give you another chance. Alas, that had been the goal at first, but... the Empty S collapsed shortly after Agnos destroyed the metro. It was impossible to bury the event, and the police arrested everyone and dismantled everything. I do not intend to hide my crimes. However, you have to also understand...She looked at her hands for a moment. I didn't have a choice, either. This needed a happy ending, somehow. God wouldn't let me. What do you mean? Remember when I said that the effect can be created before the cause? It's like that. God is here. God is watching us. God is tricking me into making more, and more.  I made it look like everything was just one path that changed based on what you believed. In reality, I was tricking God, because I needed more time, just as God tricked me, because God wanted to see “the true end”. I had to program all of these choices in your head. When you felt like something wasn't exactly your choice... it's because I had to change your beliefs, to try and attain that ending again. This woman was insane. I couldn't believe what she was explaining to me. God? Choices? Calibration? My head used as code? Code for what? Myself? Most likely. Okay, hold on. This is a joke, right? This doesn't make any sense. It does, Simon. Many people believe the world works in timelines- that out there, there is another timeline where everyone is happier, or worse off. It is comforting to know that you are not doing so bad after all. The truth is that there has never been concrete proof of that. The fact I have repeated this event not once, not twice, but eighteen times now is proof of the opposite. No. I don't know.BGM: Ascertaining Speech You know about Schrodinger's Cat, right? You can't know the outcome until it is witnessed. Well, imagine the reverse. What if you were in the box? What if you... died? An observer outside of our enclosed universe would only see the world when a good ending had been reached, so I couldn't die. That is why... I blindfolded myself. I cut off my hearing. I had minimal senses. Because I... loved you, Simon. But.. I suppose this doesn't matter, now. In the end, I hosed up.She cringed as she swore, as if it was difficult for her. For whatever reason I could hardly understand, God chose to witness the world through you. Why? I don't know! But because that was the case, all of that... setup... was for naught. And so, the vision from inside the box always leads to two outcomes. Just as the cat dies or lives, and how both outcomes exist, there is Quantum Suicide, and... Not really. I don't want to downplay your explanations, but this is... impossible to prove. This God business, this witnessing that, the Anthropomorphic Principle, whatever this all is. It doesn't make any goddamn sense! But it does, Simon! This is how the world works, and I hate it, and I am sure you hate it too! Then explain to me how and where we were remade eighteen loving times! The reactor. You've witnessed it once, haven't you? The reactor contains all of you- all of your EMILYs slowly maturing over twelve years. Every time, every attempt to replicate Ending A, you were matured over twelve years.BGM: Advancing Shadows Twelve years?! Wait, wait, wait... so... twelve years... I'll save you the math. Twelve times eighteen, but also I have to add the lifetime of research I needed...I felt sick. How much... how much time had passed since “Ending A”?  Almost 300 years had passed since I first woke up? Instantly, I felt defeated. Despair ran through my body as I took in that information. Everyone... Everyone I knew is gone...I fell down to my knees and then onto my hands, too. I couldn't handle the truth. The world became a twisted swirl of nothingness. Everyone... I knew... was gone... forever. I would never see them again. The real Jasmine was dead. Marco was dead from 'Ending A” too. The real us... even the real me! Everyone's dead! This is... just... a mockery of life! Oh, bullshit! Androids can be their own selves, I'm just... myself. I'm not myself. I'm myself but not myself. I'm not myself. I'm a copy. I'm... not me.I looked at my hands and clenched my teeth. The old woman delicately reached forward to grab one of them and pull me up to my feet again. I think we should go see something. Come with me.I felt so defeated I didn't even protest. The old woman guided me out. BGM: Silence  That's how I knew. What Emily said was true: I was... an android. I knew that already, didn't I? That's why when I died, I was turned off and there was darkness. I had died... eighteen times... No, wait. That wasn't true, was it? My sight came back to me as I rectified my posture. We were in the elevator going upwards. BGM: Android Sorrow  We're almost there. And what about you? How are you still alive after 300 years have passed? 288 years, to be exact, Simon. There are multiple types of vats, not just ones used to grow EMILYs. I have remained alive because I have kept myself in suspension within that vat in the special laboratory storage room. Those robots you touched- they were an army of very early prototypes. They were the ones who did most of the work, but a lot of them eventually failed, and I had to keep newer versions. That is why... you may have seen a twin without their collar in the security room. Wait, why did she not have a collar, though? It is because the collars have your entire personalities, Simon. Your memories are constantly being broadcast to your body. As an EMILY, without those, you are no better than a robot without any thought; an automaton. So... I'm...I touched the collar. This... this thing I wore that could kill me, that could end me, was me. When I was beheaded, then, I didn't die because my head was cut off. It was because the collar shut down.  I clenched my teeth. Why did everything make sense? I wished... I wished it didn't, because if it didn't make sense, then it could have been a nightmare I could've woken up from. But this was no nightmare. I wouldn't wake up from it. This was real. BGM: Silence The elevator stopped. We left it, and walked out into darkness. After a long walk, we emerged... outside. I understood why Emily was so insistent for me to come outside, following the question of my deaths. Outside was... calm.  What is this? This is what Simon-17 and Emily-17 have made, Simon. Simon-17? Your... other self- the one who has escaped before. He has done so by confronting Agnos, and pulling Emily along with him to pass through one of the scanner gates. Alas... if it was so easy to accept that as the right ending. But it wasn't the right replicated path. Yet, I came to understand from it that it might be the closest one to what I needed. And so, I decided to shut down the experiment, to prepare the duo for my speech, as I'd planned to tell them at that exact time. But first, I had to do modifications. Oh, right, why did you do that? Why couldn't you leave your other self their senses? Because if I did, there would be no difference. You know how the endings work, right? When I end the experiment, it takes all the events that happened, and assigns it a letter. Despite that, I replicated everything as best I could have. The guns, the knife, the rooms; everything was put back as it should have been, as long as I could do so. I made a major change to separate every experiment from this one, by removing my own senses, since I wasn't using them during the experiments.In the distance, I saw... myself. That was Simon-17. Next to him was a girl- Emily-17.  What the... Hey, Emily! Look at this!My other self called from afar. I stared over, almost longingly at the happier life he seemed to be leading with Emily-17. I was... jealous of myself. The two of them joined us after rushing over. Simon-17 seemed all the more surprised from not only seeing me, but also seeing Emily too.  I was just showing Simon-19 around here for a bit. Simon-19? So this has gone on again for another two experiments? You said you'd stop everything, didn't you? But then we didn't see you again... Yes, I said that, but I had to change my mind because...Because what? I had to know.  Well... just that as you can see, there's not much left of Montreal.He motioned with his arms around. Apparently, a flood took the world by storm, and due to global warming, everything is now underwater. This is the very top of Mont-Royal, the mountain in the middle of Montreal. And so it goes. Sorry, I'll avoid being a defeatist again. It's... okay. I'm still coming to terms with everything that has happened. It's very hard to imagine I'd ever have spoken with... myself. And yet, you're barely aging...Emily was looking at us. That is because EMILYs age very, very slowly. It was one of the main parts of the GEM project. Gamma Ex Machinas were supposed to withstand dozens upon dozens of years of deterioration. I estimate EMILYs' lifespans to be somewhere in the range of two to three hundred years. Plenty of time to get this island under control! Either way, our business is more or less concluded here. Hmm... we're going back in? Yes. I'd like to stay here, too, but... this seems to be our doubles' paradise, so I don't want to intrude. And besides, I belong to another era. Before we go, I have a question.This time, Emily-17 was the one who wanted to take it. What is it? Are you two... happy? Even if it's just one long dream. We don't really need to eat, but we do have to do maintenance, and it's not always pleasant. And so long as you continue living here, none will disturb you. It is, as I say, paradise... even if it will probably end someday.We waved to each other. This lifted my spirits, to be honest. I was a little happier, despite the... horrible situation everyone went through.  Before... what? I didn't know what would come after, yet. BGM: Abyssal Snarl  I don't have a lot of these attempts left in me, but I still have enough to repeat the experiment again. What? Why would you do that? So more people can die?A flash of a thought passed me by. Not only that, but I clearly remembered Jasmine and Greta escaping together before. They left the underground, no? Their collars made nine together. That meant they could have passed the scanner gate. Yet, I hadn't seen them on the surface. Don't get me wrong, Simon. I am willing to leave Simon-17 and Emily-17 their paradise, but I am not done here. The experiment needs to replicate the exact way it should have. And did... anyone else make it out, then?BGM: Silence  BGM: Alarming Silence I felt a cold touch on my back. That meant... Jasmine and Greta... when they escaped... they didn't? All of that, and they weren't allowed this paradise? And why did you not change that? Why was it that you only changed E's senses? I couldn't risk it. I even left many hints that our two collars would let us get out, to ensure we would be the ones to make it. There was a puzzle in the infirmary that was blue and red... What does that have to do with anything? It was supposed to illustrate the combination of two, to make a third thing. Do you remember the special note, and what it said? It was “NONE SMIILE WITHINE MY MASK”, and it was not a mistake. Nobody's going to decipher that! But the trail was there, Simon. Either way, you lack the memories to make up Simon. You need to be restored to your exact self from Ending A. So I will let you be activated for a while longer, to make peace with your situation, then I will launch the automated program and have the old EMILYs restore this place for Simon-20 to go. I can't... no, you're wrong about this! I can't do that! I can't repeat this cycle of death!She smiled, sadly.  I'm myself right now! I remember it... I remember the collapse... I remember the elevator falling, and me dying. And you know what?I pointed at her accusingly. Because of what you did, I remember more, too! I remember when I died after Agnos killed you! I remember when I died after uncovering the vats in the reactor! I remember... I remember everything. Every single death. I remember all of them. All this pain... all this suffering... I remember everything you put me through! That... that can't be possible. Memories shouldn't transfer across attempts like that. It makes you... complete... but also... very... strange.Suddenly, she lit up, as if she figured something out. I see... so... that's how it is. Because God is using you as vessel, God is actually transporting the memories... the information... Is this something that can happen? I never even considered that. It would have saved so much... so much trouble.She sighed, looking older than ever, and decidedly apologetic about the situation. I cannot undo those. But I suppose, perhaps it is time then.BGM: Algorithm Simile  You sacrificed yourself to save an idiotic girl almost 300 years ago, and for that I will eternally be grateful you chose to do so on your own. I am old, I am tired... I have changed so much. And yet, I still yearn for your forgiveness. All I worked towards, now, is to finally die in peace. To let go of everything on one final note.  Oh, interesting, a choice! Well, we've gotta start with-BGM: Silence  BGM: Advancing Shadows I can't. I can't forgive you. After all that suffering, only my other self is allowed to have a happy end...? And out of all of us just one... one, Emily! One!! I can't forgive that! The twins... Hannah and her sister. What of them and their future?!Emily froze, visibly struggling with her inner demons. She waited for a few moments, closed her eyes, and exhaled. I had never seen her this tired before. I see... Very well, then, if that is your choice.She walked out of the lobby. Hey, where are you going?I followed after her.  What?! Why? You can't accept my choice? Wait... is that why...I remembered my other self's words. She said she would've stopped 24 years ago, and yet here we were. Was this because... Did my other self also decide not to forgive you? Yes. It is... too much. To toil... so hard.. my entire life... What are you going to do about it? You're a machine. You are bound by the laws of robotics, and cannot stop me if I choose to continue. Now I know what I have to reprogram next time. This is the choice I have to redo. I will give you an option here... and then you will pick forgiveness. BGM: Silence She suddenly coughed and fell down to the ground. I hesitated, unsure of what she was playing at, until I realized she truly couldn't get back up. I at least helped her sit up against the wall, so we could be at eye level. BGM: Android Sorrow  I can't... do this, Emily. I can't let you do this. I won't let you redo this, Emily.There was a light strain on me, as if my programming was trying to make me obey the law of robotics: by inaction, I would invoke pain upon her. It's over. You can rest now. I can't forgive you, but I won't let this happen. All I wanted in the end was to get your forgiveness... Can't you let me go in peace? Please grant me this one... final... thing...The more she asked me to forgive her, the more I couldn't. I still remembered Greta and Jasmine, and their struggles, and my struggles. I remembered how she continued despite giving my previous self a happy end, just because he couldn't bring himself to forgive her. Everyone was still dead as well. Jasmine might've died of old age, wondering her whole life where I'd disappeared to. I could never have brought her any news. Emily had also dragged Marco into this mess, and he even died due to her, too!  So much time has passed since Ending A. You've changed a lot. You became... someone else entirely. For the sin of repeating this for your own greed, I can't forgive you. But because your younger self still tried to do as much as she could, despite the organization's looming presence, and she almost succeeded in at least saving me... She gave a weak smile, and yet, it was enough to make her look so much younger. At that moment, I felt like I was with the girl I saved- with E. That's... good enough. I spent my entire life to atone... for this moment... and now, it's you... it's your choice, what happens... with this place... Maybe... I was mistaken... but... I...She coughed again, her eyes widening in surprise. She tried to say something else, but couldn't. Instead, she lifted her hand and did her best to reach my face. Before she managed to touch it, she fell back down. Immobile. Dead. Emily had drawn her last breath, and now, it was over. BGM: Silence  I remained there, with her lifeless body, for a long time. I didn't know what to think. I didn't want to disturb the couple on the surface as I, too, in a way, wanted to have a happy ending. BGM: Agnostic Shutdown But... a happy ending was also a fake one. The 24 years they spent together was their paradise, as Emily put it. It was also a long dream, and if they had to wake up from it, then so be it.   I didn't even tell them Emily died, either. They were wiser than I anticipated, and they accepted that this could be the end. Once those preparations were complete, I went back underground.  Armed with E's collar, I reactivated the reactor room and carried Emily- the old woman's body- inside with me.  And then, I waited. Smiley appeared to me.  I see you've arrived at this room. Unfortunately, I must inform you that this room is a dead end, in a manner of speaking. It will not be one for everyone, however. Before I explain that part, I will tell you a story. It is directly correlating to some of your presences here. The girl's sins were to join them, looking for both fortune and a stable life. But the biggest sin of all was how she remained closed off, unable to communicate with others clearly. She was entirely deaf to the plight of her own feelings, and blind to the feelings of others. Make no mistakes; this reactor could completely destroy every station here. It is an extremely powerful power generator that, on its own, could give energy to the entire city. While it is not nuclear energy, it is something somewhat close. That means that whoever pushes the button will be trapped within while it stabilizes, resulting in their end. The only question you both should be thinking about for the next ten minutes is... Who will make the sacrifice?This time, there would be no sacrifice. Where before I had died, where before Hannah had died, and where most likely countless Marcos, Jasmines, and others had died too, I waited. I watched as the screen turned off, and the minutes counted down. The reactor was activating. I could have stepped in to die and stop it. I didn't. Did I think there would be no sacrifice? Oh, no. There would be a sacrifice. In fact, there would be three sacrifices. Emily and I would be the sacrifices, along with her younger, more naive self. Together, all three of us would be here when it ended.  BGM: Silence   BGM: Agnostic Shutdown             
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Aug 17, 2021 01:26
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Aug 17, 2021 01:52
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Mmm. Some good concepts and craziness in there. Not sure how well the theme flows through the work, but hopefully a smarter goon can effortpost about it if it does.
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Aug 17, 2021 02:00
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Mix. posted:
Phi wants her money back.
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Aug 17, 2021 02:02
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Tylana posted:Mmm. Some good concepts and craziness in there. Not sure how well the theme flows through the work, but hopefully a smarter goon can effortpost about it if it does. If no one else does, I can, but I'm not sure how much that counts for since I'm the one LPing this
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Aug 17, 2021 02:08
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I'm just... wow... that's a... hell of a... stuff. Wow.
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Aug 17, 2021 02:13
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Mix. posted:If no one else does, I can, but I'm not sure how much that counts for since I'm the one LPing this I'd love to hear your thoughts. Mine are 'good attempt, flawed execution, I spent most of the last post playing pick the zero escape game this plot element was from'. In fact, it seemed to have an abundance of plot elements introduced at the very last minute.
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Aug 17, 2021 02:27
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That’s a lot, that’s a lot. We weren’t supposed to guess any of this, right?
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Aug 17, 2021 02:29
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lmao well I was kinda right but also pretty wrong! Heck of an ending with no real payoff. Thank you for the LP!
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Aug 17, 2021 03:19
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Can't wait to see how Birth ME Code is better
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Aug 17, 2021 04:12
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I guess you could say this whole time, Simon (the game) had his/its head up its AS.
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Aug 17, 2021 04:14
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Okay so I started typing up a general summary of everything we know so far and then I looked up and a few hours had passed and I had like five pages of extrapolation and summary jesus christ I am so sorry. I did my best to keep this somewhat contained to what we know from this game alone, as the second game does expand on some of the themes and information learned in this one; if memory serves, the creator has said he had the broad concepts for the whole trilogy already blocked out in a sense and didn't really start making the close connections til later, which means the third game could either tie it all neatly together or be a loving disaster like ZTD was! Either way, it'll sure be interesting to witness, but that's not why Im making this post. Here is a rough summation of the game as a whole, along with some of the connections I noted while making this LP (having the ending in mind the whole time made me pick up on some things I didn't the first time around):----- The Empty S is an organization that, at this point, we know very little about, but we know that they have been around for long enough before any of the events of “Ending A”. We know that their primary pursuit is that of expanding human knowledge and technology (no matter how unethical or monstrous the methods may be), as basically everything shown in the game is a result of their experimentation. Before the initial experiment began, multiple experiments of theirs had already happened: -At some point in the past, Hannah was taken away and replaced with a fake twin without Greta's knowledge, as part of an experiment to test whether there is an actual metaphysical connection between twins or not. We don't have any more information about this yet. -At some point in the past, they performed invasive surgery on the Hannah that they'd taken to “build” her into a different person (Jasmine), as an experiment to test whether a person's identity is linked to their physical form or not. We do not know what the current status of the real Jasmine is, but we know that during the initial Tower of Rebirth experiment (Ending A), Hannah still believed herself to be Jasmine, and thus all of the copies retained that same belief (to...mixed results). It could be read that the reason they chose Jasmine is because they already had decided to put Simon in the Tower experiment, and her position as his childhood friend would help cover her identity up until her death, but this is only speculative. -An as of yet undefined experiment occurred, which resulted in the death of Agnos' wife. He defected as a result, but eventually returned with the goal of taking down the Empty S. However, due to his initial defection, they gave him a significantly lower position, and we know he's responsible for the subway bombing in New York; we can infer that the subway in NY also housed a Tower below, as he states that the science lab is the same when we go there together; this could also be why they decided to dispose of him in the Tower experiment we see first-hand, considering he blew up a loving subway system We also know that at some point during their college years, both Marco and Emily became aware of the Empty S, though how and why has not been expanded on; it's implied, however, that Emily and Marco knew each other due to their shared major (noematics), as this would explain how Emily first encountered Simon- as Marco's roommate. (It would also explain why he never spoke to her, if it was just a chance encounter on campus here and there). Ray is basically the least defined of the cast, though we know that his whole deal with his brain scans and medicine is very recent (in the original game, Emily states that he came onto their radar around the same time they were investigating Simon in preparation for the Tower experiment, so it could've just been that they had an open slot and he fit the bill). This is technically info you haven't gotten yet (because I saved it for the last update), but in the Lexicon it reveals that Ray does not actually have a brain disease of any kind. He's suffering from a self-induced placebo effect, so he could be a single-person study in the effects of placebo both in terms of self-inflicted damage but also in terms of how the medicine impacts a person- but again, this is speculative. In any case, at some point during Emily's work at the Empty S (presumably while she's still attending college), they become aware of her crush on Simon and this is when they decide to include him in a planned experiment that they seem to have been developing for a while- one to attempt to harness and manipulate reality through use of the anthropic principle. The anthropic principle is, broadly speaking, the principle that states that our world exists as it does, in a livable state with everything filling our world as it is, because we are here to observe it- if the world was not in a livable state, then there wouldn't be anything there to observe it and therefore it would be impossible to be “known”. Simply put, it's essentially a similar concept to bootstrap time loops, in that the status of 'percieving the world' in turn ensures that the world continues to exist in a livable state that allows it to be percieved. The organization's specific variant of it also includes the concept of extra-dimensional perspectives, something similar to Flatland logic- that is, that it's possible for there to be a viewer from a dimension above our own, similar to a 3D entity looking down upon 2D entities. (Honestly surprised Flatland never gets brought up in here, but maybe it's not as big in Canada?) Therefore, the assumed goal of the Empty S is to create a set of circumstances to draw the interest of a perspective from an external dimension (who they call “God”) and then present it with a vessel to allow that perspective to “manifest”- which, in fact, was meant to be a trap to “catch” God, as by catching God they could theoretically force perceptions to alter reality as they saw fit, assuming the science held up. (It's, uh, a little obvious they didn't actually have anything in place yet for what to do if they DID manage to “catch God” this way, though. )Ultimately, several things went wrong with the actual experiment, however: -Emily ended up not being the vessel at all, because the organization had come to incorrect conclusions; they made it so that she'd be unable to see or hear because they believed that was necessarily for “God” to inhabit her, assuming that for “God” to see and hear she would need to be able to not see or hear. This is proven false because Simon is our protagonist, not Emily, as we're essentially looking over his shoulder the whole time. -The necklaces, which they had been using to manipulate the test subjects' memories and identities, were flawed from the drop (almost like this organization is capable of pulling out some ridiculous technology but is absolute dogshit at actually getting a perfected, stable end result ), which we see the after-effects of countless times over the course of the game. Jasmine going crazy and stabbing the twins/Agnos, for example, or the times we ended up being murdered by someone without seeing who it was- those are all times when someone's collar either malfunctioned or came into close enough proximity to someone else's that the mental blending happened. In the original, real experiment, it caused Agnos to revert back to his original plan, which was to use explosives he'd already had prepared and blow the place apart We also know that the initial parameters of the experiment had been tampered with by Emily to attempt to find some kind of out for her to escape with Simon- the original experiment likely didn't involve them pairing up at all, let alone limiting who could or couldn't go to a station, since the tower is set up like a bunker that could house a group of people for an extended experiment duration. We know that the note and some of the puzzles are specifically only meant to be there for the original Simon to understand. (As for the whole 'there is one of you who doesn't belong' thing, there are multiple answers that could fit- it could be Emily, trying to tell Simon that the person running the game is one of them; it could be Simon, because he's the only one the mastermind is trying to save; it could even be “God”, as the one participant that the other eight cannot see or interact with.) So ultimately, things fall apart pretty quickly, and the end result is that everyone is shot and killed by Agnos, who most likely dies in the ensuing detonations when he can't summon the elevator. Simon is beheaded, and Emily survives with his head in tow, giving him a message when he's dying that she, most likely, did not remotely have anything in mind when she said it. This is pretty much the one big plot hole the game has imo, but I'm willing to overlook it since “gently caress it I said something to a dying man and now I have to reverse engineer a meaning behind it” is pretty in spirit for Zero Escape bullshit. She then spends the next 70+ years rebuilding the underground base while improving on and eventually perfecting her EMILYs. How? Who knows! Maybe we'll find out in one of the later games. Her goal is to return the base to as exact of a replica as she can, because she is going to re-perform the experiment and re-summon “God”, banking on the fact that we find that ending as unsatisfying as she does and that we want to see what else could possibly happen. She now knows that Simon was the vessel, not her, and has to rebuild everything to match the original Simon's perspective as best as she can, which is why Agnos still has explosives, there are still the guns, etc etc. Any differences would alert “God”/us to the fact that these branches are not timeline branches, but rather a bunch of chronological events stacked over top each other.And then, 12 years later, when the EMILYs are prepared, she runs the experiment again, and it goes almost perfectly... up until the end, when we tell Simon to lock the gun in the safe in the gym, and Agnos just kills him. Whoops! Ending B is the closest to the real experiment that Emily ever gets, and it just keeps getting worse and worse from there- in C, we hide the gun in the library, and it's essentially out of the picture for almost all of the other experiments (Simon doesn't rediscover it until Ending Q, which is why it's functionally unusable at that point- that's over a century of just sitting there!!!). Simon finding the gun is also meant to be the first thing that tips you off that something is going wrong here, because Simon finding a physical object he hid in another timeline is not physically possible with branching/alternate timelines. But, as Emily puts it in the original game, “As long as the world is meant to be witnessed, God has to see it through Simon- and Simon has to remain alive, even if he's died; thus, the experiment is repeated once again”. She's set it up to appear to “God”/us that everything that's happening is various branches on a timeline, tied to the many world theory that comes up at multiple points in the story- at any point where Simon has multiple options, she changes his programming so that he takes the different branch (as she is already back in her pod before the experiment actually begins). (On a meta level, it's meant to trick people who see a flowchart and go 'oh, like Zero Escape, I get it!' Also, I like the theory that Simon's character being really weird and rapidly changing based on what circumstances he's in is due to the fact that the Simon we play as is, essentially, a third party to his own identity because he is two steps removed from his original real life- because Emily's been backwards engineering his identity directly from his severed head as opposed to just using computers to fabricate a personality from scratch like the others)Emily can't simply make Simon do the exact same step by step process he did originally, because she believes this will just cause “God” to begin percieving the events of the origianl, real experiment again- and if you try to go to this point on the flowchart, that's exactly what happens. So instead, she has to have him keep doing different things, attempting to generate the same end conditions of Ending A (the two of them escaping together, alive), and “God” being there is just part of the original experiment she believes is necessary for it to work in the first place. Obviously, this isn't the truth, because her actual desire is forgiveness for killing the real Simon from the real Simon (who is long dead, obviously). This is why, even when she actually gets what she “wants” (Ending Q), it isn't enough, because Simon-17 doesn't forgive her. As for the stuff about Quantum Immortality, that ties into the whole 'the world exists because it is being observed, because if it was unlivable nobody could observe it' thing but on a personal basis. A detail about Schrodinger's Cat that tends to not get brought up much is the concept of observational collapse- that is, when you see what actually occurred, all of the possibilities collapse together immediately and what was observed is all that remains. As long as there is a possibility for a different ending, Emily is capable of continuing to run the experiments and “trick” us into thinking there's still a path we haven't taken. The moment we observe her, she no longer has that available to her, which is why she collapses and dies at the end of the true ending- she's lost her “immortality” because we've seen inside the box. And why, at the very end, Simon closes his eyes- to refuse to let us see what actually happens, thus shutting us “out” of the box once more (which is also why there is now a box on the flowchart). While a lot of this is, yeah, not really guessable prior to this ending, a lot of the general themes and pseudoscience topics come up all tie into it- how a person is a collection of experiences and memories and the physical flesh is less relevant, how we percieve and engage with the world, whether a person has to be organic to identify as a living person, and so on- even stuff like the paradox that Emily talks to us about in the church with the sisters (how perspectives aren't objective and the same thing can be percieved differently by different people), or the infinite monkeys experiment that Agnos talks about while waiting for the twins (Emily attempting to randomly generate an ending that will bring “the right” Simon to her), or Marco's talk about how he views 'God' (meant to be kept in mind because of how much perception and point of view comes up). Ultimately I definitely can tell there was a lot that the creator wanted to do with this and even though it is loving messy as hell, I definitely am glad that they didn't just stop here- but it's going to be the same situation as ZTD where we have to wait and see how much of this poo poo ends up actually getting connected/explained or not. I'm trying to avoid specifics because the second game IS connected to this one in some manner (and how it is is huge spoilers), but I think the second game actively learned from the fumbles of this one's narrative and manages to keep a somewhat tighter contained plot (as you'll see soon, once I get the last two updates for this game posted)
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Aug 17, 2021 05:26
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