The Future They Made Us Forget, chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-four: antidote_experiment

[The plan: they go back in time, schedule a failure message to themselves, and then go to do the experiment; if successful, they cancel the failure message. Thus, in the case of success, the originals perceive the same thing as the new-originals (no message), but in case of failure, the new-originals see the failure message, check what happened, and do a stable time loop to fix it. For the experiment, the plan is for Aster to show up with the current Kayla shortly after the original Kayla escapes, pretending that they’ve just recaptured the original Kayla, and pulling rank to change the experiment, pretending it’s on Fuller’s instructions; unbeknownst to them, one of the assistants get suspicious and messages Fuller to ask if it’s legit, at which point he goes for the time machines (maybe with the idea of stopping Aster before they start, or even just showing up immediately after the message instead of with a delay] [They’re sitting in the “backup” room when Marvin’s scripts detect Fuller coming. They rush out to stop him and just barely catch him running in the door to the time machine room; they rush in after him, but then find him standing next to the time machine, pointing the gun at them] [Chapter break – It’s Not Dying If You’re Still Alive Afterwards? I Would Lay Down My Life for the Cause, At Least Temporarily?]

“Why isn’t he shooting us?” whispered Kayla.

But my eyes were already going to the gun, [to the missing magazine. It was a good thing I was there, because only I, the one who was experienced with guns, knew what to look for. He had grabbed it in a hurry, not bothering to reload] “He has only one shot,” I whispered back.

Kayla and Aster exchanged a look [and both stepped forward, spreading out]

To my horror, I realized what they were doing. [If Fuller shot one of them, he wouldn’t have any shots left, and then the other 2 of us could rush him, then go back in time so this never happened. If you were willing to sacrifice your own life, so that another version of you would go on…]

[Fuller and Kayla yelling at each other to surrender?] [I didn’t dare approach Fuller myself, but maybe, while he was distracted by the others – I (fished in my pocket? Went for the backpack?), With the rough idea of texting one of my previous selves]

But Fuller saw me move. “Marvin,” he said warningly.

And there was one thing Fuller excelled at. [Maybe: he wasn’t good at security, he wasn’t good at X, but,] recognizing people’s weaknesses. He knew I was afraid. He didn’t even turn to face me, but kept his eyes, and his gun, focused [steadily] on Kayla – because he didn’t need to. He knew that a single word, spoken with a stern voice, would be enough to freeze me in place.

In the social game, it was Kayla – no matter that she was unarmed, no matter her physical weakness – who was dangerous to him.

[Fuller making some clever words about science to demoralize Kayla, saying that the deaths and kidnapping were a small price to pay for the advancement of humanity] [To my dread, it was working, Fuller knew how to get under her skin] [But then Aster interrupted. “Science? You’re the worst scientist I’ve ever worked with. I could have gotten this far with way fewer deaths, and less than 1% of your budget, years ago. Half our experiments have just been redoing stuff you already did because your experimental design was crap. You wasted your time perfecting mind control while ignoring the ones of us who wanted to get to the bottom of why it was happening. You damaged our most valuable test subject by the gross negligence of letting her be undernourished. We lost 2 whole years of progress because you wouldn’t believe me that [Billy] didn’t die from [cyanosol]”

“[So sue me] for not believing the memory of someone with a memory disorder”

Aster took a step closer. “Precisely because of my memory disorder, I’ve always kept physical notes, even before we started recording on camera ????? the bag of cyanosol was still full ????? surely there would be some conclusions to draw from the physical evidence, for a great scientist like yourself?”

[Aster was trying to goad Fuller to take the attention off Kayla. Now it was Fuller’s turn to start losing his composure. He yelled back, but now that his performance of authority had flickered, I couldn’t see him as anything but pathetic] [A couple more lines of argument; Aster stepping close enough that Fuller feels threatened]

Everything happened in an instant. [Aster was close enough that Fuller finally had to switch to them; he tried to keep it disciplined, swiftly sweeping the gun from one to the other. But the moment he began the movement, Kayla charged. She didn’t waste time going for a kick or a grab – she just slammed her frail body into him at full speed, coming in past his guard so the gun was pointing uselessly into the air. They crashed to the floor with the sound of [equipment] and a high scream as it triggered Kayla’s neuropathy [which of course she had known about and done willingly – much later, she told me what she’d been thinking in that moment, how she’d read that big part of martial arts training, like when you’re doing a karate chop, is training your body to use your full strength when you would normally hold back to keep from getting hurt, so she just turned off her inhibitions against hurting herself. “You just turned them off in your brain without any practice?” “Yes. If you know what you’re trying to do, why would you need practice?”]]

[A split-second later, Aster realized how the situation had transformed and what they needed to do. It was surprising to see, since they had clearly never been cut out for aggression. But they rushed forward to help Kayla, and as Fuller tried to recover himself, struggling to push Kayla off of him and get back control of the gun, Aster stomped on his wrist]

“Marvin! Grab the gun!” Kayla screamed.

“…Right!” [It had taken a bit longer for me to be shocked out of having been frozen, but Kayla’s words achieved that. I ran forward to do the thing]

[Heart beating hard; panic; but having seen the other Marvin handle the gun before shooting Fuller, firearms handling was fresh in my mind. I remembered how my father had taught me: “if you ever, ever have to pick up a gun while emotions are running high, that is the easiest time to make a mistake and kill someone you care about, and the most important time to focus on all of the details of safety”. I crouched, careful to take it with a steady grip with my shaking hands, and then stepped away from the scuffle.] [It looked like Kayla and Aster were winning. I stood on the other side of the room, knowing that my most important duty now was to keep control of the gun and keep it away from the fight] [They duct taped him to a railing, I think] [Kayla asks about the thing about [Billy], and Aster tells her how he died just before the experiment, when they had only put in an IV with saline]

“Give me the gun.”

[“I haven’t taught you to handle guns in this timeline/[apprehensive] what are you going to do?” “I’m going to kill Fuller obviously”] [Marvin refuses to hand over the gun or kill Fuller [“I can’t be responsible for this”? “We’ve already got him on the ground, we don’t have to do this”?]] [“Fine.” She turned and stalked towards him] [Fuller knows what’s coming and tries to beg for his life, completely losing his composure – "[[listen to Marvin], you don’t have to do this]? I’ll do anything you want, I’ll let you go, I [release you from whatever hold I have over you], I have lots of money, I’ll give you money, I’ll give money to whatever charity you want –]

She kicked him in the side of the head.

The human body can withstand an incredible amount of punishment, but when it fails, it fails suddenly and unglamorously. I don’t know whether Fuller would have survived even her first kick. [His eyes unfocused, his sentence stopped in the middle without even a panicked raise in pitch near the end. [Discuss the potential for internal bleeding, and how that could be fatal even from just one unlucky hit, how you need to be really careful about head trauma even if someone seems fine] But she didn’t stop there. She kicked him again and again; I had to look away; she only stopped when she was physically exhausted]

[Kayla still perpetually angry] [I wanted to distract her/give her an outlet to get out of the obsessive state she was in –] “Was [Billy] important to you?” I said gently. [“He was just some random kid!”] [Something like: “But I thought, since, uh, you got so upset when you heard,” “that’s not the problem!” “What is the problem?”] [Kayla explains: she was sick of them testing things on her and, because some of them were just clear liquid in IV bags, she started swapping things with saline whenever she could get away with it. So [Billy] was probably killed by one of the things they were trying to test] [Aster laughs, seemingly oblivious to the trauma, “oh, so THAT’S why he died! I always wondered” [admiringly:] “you single-handedly set back our research by years”] [...meaning that Kayla WOULD have been killed, but [Billy] died in her place.]

“It’s not your fault,”

[“You’re just telling me that because you don’t want me to feel bad! I hate all you people who tell people not to [consider moral criticisms] because you don’t want [people to feel bad/you to face the possibility that things might be bad]!”] [When someone’s very upset, their brain isn’t ready to follow new paths, they follow the well-worn pathways, the thing they’ve always done that’s their coping strategy. And for Kayla, that was moral philosophy.] [“If you’re not going to consider it, then I will! Obviously the primary cause of the evil is him, but you can’t just say that every action taken in reaction to an evil act is excused. Otherwise you’d have to say that no one’s evil, because they are all just trying to minimize the suffering that was unjustly forced on them by society forcing them to live, even when they do evil things like eat animals. Well obviously the basis of morality should be to minimize the total suffering across all sentient beings, so it’s about whether the act causes more suffering than it prevents. That’s why eating animals is evil, because you’re making them live a whole life just so you can eat once.” She rounded on Aster, a sickened grin on her face, obsessive wide-open eyes: "how much did [Billy] suffer when he died?] [Aster mischievous smile, but calculating what to say, e.g. is Kayla going to hurt someone: “if I tell you, what would you conclude from that”] [Kayla recognized Aster’s tone, drops the question (stalks away?), “You could lie to me anyway! I wouldn’t be morally justified to rely on your answer. I have to figure this out myself. If he suffered – well the logical expectation is that whoever you drugged would suffer the same amount, you can’t reason from happenstance. So then all I did was change who suffered, so it’s morally neutral –” the prospect of relief feels to her like the threat of complacency, shouting again to shout down anyone else who might try to end the analysis there “– but that’s not the only moral principle you need to consider! The doctor can’t kill one to save five because then people won’t go to the doctor. What I did – I made Fuller believe things that weren’t true. And he was evil! You should always lie to the Nazis! Even though it takes away their ability to make moral choices! They already made enough.” Somehow her anger had resolved a little, she’d followed the internal flow to a dead end. [But when you face something as upsetting as this, it’s not enough to prove that you did the right thing; you’ll hear the proof, and then you’ll still be upset afterwards, and _then_ what will you do? ( if proofs are your only coping strategy) Kayla wasn’t exploding anymore, just spending and breathing hard, but I was worried that it could start again anytime] [Marvin tries to pull some resolution out of that (à la “the important thing is that it’s over now”… Maybe “but it’s over now, Fuller’s dead, right? We’re not going to time travel and make him come back to life, ...right??”) only to be interrupted by:] [They get the text from future Kayla: maybe “My phone buzzed; I wanted to keep reassuring Kayla but she told me to check it in case it is important” or “I checked it” or “Kayla checked her phone”. (“oh god, oh god, don’t tell me we DID bring him back and now we need to fix it???!?!?”) Regardless of which, “wait a minute, these are our future selves, the ones doing the experiment? They are not supposed to contact us, doesn’t that mean they’ve just put us in a paradox?”] [The text message was one word long:]

“Help”.

[Chapter break? - Something like “Making Decisions Based on Unknowable Evidence”? Or maybe that’s later, for the decision to take the antidote? For here, maybe something related to ability to trust a future self who was coerced? “That Time I Took My Future Self Captive”?] [“Well if we’re already in a paradox, there’s no reason we CAN’T look at them [on the cameras]” We crowded around the computer, bending over to quickly type out the command, open the feed to the experiment room] [… I should have sat down before I looked. My head swam, [[alternatively, more-retrospective narration about how it felt]] [What we saw] was the scene of a massacre. [This time, the assistants/Dr Fuller’s grad students/] were no longer standing around the bed. They were scattered around the room, bodies slumped over the furniture or curled up on the floor. Some of them had vomited; one of them had their arms locked around the toppled medical cart, as if they had tried to cling to it in their final moments. [Whatever had happened, it was nothing like the silent, unsettling way Kayla and Aster had died from the “kill phrase”; one of them was still twitching on the ground, struggling for breath.]

Of all the people in the room, only Kayla and Marvin were still alive. [And, contrary to our plans, it was Marvin who was on the cot, with the IV in his arm, and Kayla who was standing to the side. Only when we reviewed the footage later did we notice the details – how Kayla already had the bandage and her arm, how she had already received the treatment before administering it to Marvin.]

[By some miracle I lowered myself into the chair, rather than passing out. My head swam, trying to process what I was seeing. “Jesus Christ, what happened to them?”, I breathed, speaking to no one.]

“A nerve agent!” exclaimed Aster, the chemist among us. They squinted at the scene. “But how was it delivered? Not gas, if Marvin’s still standing –”

[I couldn’t follow Aster’s calculating words – I could only watch numbly; both Kayla and Marvin were terrified, and as we watched, Kayla’s body begin to jerk violently. She collapsed to the floor, dying like the others.]

But the Kayla next to me [intense focus on the screen, neck leaning forwards?] “Lock the doors! Lock them in the room, right now!”

“W-what?”

What I didn’t have, that Kayla did, was Kayla’s knowledge of herself. She knew that if the experiment was only going to kill everyone in the room, the other Kayla would have no reason to message us, because she could simply allow the prearranged failure message to arrive. So if she messaged us for help, that meant a completely different form of danger, one that would need a response from us immediately. And our Kayla already had a guess of what it was.

“It’s in there with them! The thing that was following me! Lock it in!”

[My brain was only just catching up with the idea of what to do in a paradox] “S-shouldn’t we just copy down the footage and go back in time? So we have time to figure out –”

“Right now is the ONLY time when we know where it is! This is our chance to trap it –”

“Do it,” said Aster, the most serious they’d ever sounded. “If she’s wrong, we can sort it out later.”

“O-okay.” [It was hard to type with my shaking, sweaty fingers, ; couple more details of the process]

“And change the password! Change the password so Marvin can’t unlock it again!”

[“But he’s me, why would –”]

“He’s not supposed to be [getting the treatment]! He’s been mind controlled!” [She wasn’t quite correct [he had only been coerced] but it was close enough]

[While I worked, Kayla gave orders. “Aster, what’s the fastest we can get more of the antidote?”]

“The chem lab. That’s where we keep the phrehibiphor. Ah, for the antidote – we’ll need a distillation – no, the other me will’ve done that, there’ll be some left in the condenser –”

“Then come with me! We’ll go there right now. Marvin, you’ll have to stay here and watch the doors –” Kayla grabbed her current phone and mine, and set up a video call between them. “

[Aster and Kayla go over the route to the chem lab. Kayla tells Marvin what doors to lock, so that no other invisible stalkers can kill them while they’re on the way to the chem lab]

“Make sure Marvin doesn’t get out of that room, no matter what happens!”

?????

Marvin: “[you’re going to take the drugs??] You’ve died every time!”

“I need to be able to see them!”

[Gotta figure out ordering: [K to M:] “don’t go back in time! Well, if we die, then I guess you’ll have to risk it. And if any of the doors open, that means another invisible attacker is about to kill you, so you’d better risk it, yeah”] [They left before I could get used to the idea; I was stuck doing what they said. I watched the doors,; heart beating and ready to jump at the slightest sound; it was scarier because absolutely nothing was happening, I had to keep glancing at the doors to see that they hadn’t changed, fighting doubts about whether if they did indeed change, whether I’d be about to die] [On the surveillance camera looking at the other Marvin: Marvin finally stops just standing there [i.e. talking to Ontoh] and tries to go out the door. He gets confused, wonders if someone else locked it, and tries to go in the security console, only to find that PoV Marvin removed his access. At this point he starts to freak out, yelling “to himself”; PoV feels guilty about trapping the other one; the hostage starts trying to bash the door; PoV turns on the 2-way audio] [“I don’t know why it’s not working! It’s supposed to be working! –”] [“I’m really sorry about this. It was me. Kayla thinks –”

Kayla’s voice [verbed] from the phone, the video shaking as she hurried up the stairs. “Are you talking to him? What the hell are you doing, Marvin!”

[Meanwhile the other Marvin looked up at the camera, yelled] “You have to let me out! You have to let me use the time machine!”

“What’s going on? Why?”

“[Please! Please, you have to!] [or whatever Marvin would normally say to beg] If you don’t let me out, the – I – I’m gonna die!! You have to!”

My voice shaking, “I – I’m going to need more of an explanation than that! Kayla says I’ll die if I do let you out! How do I know which of you to trust –”

[His face, the look of someone who is trapped and panicking, desperate for a way out – it was painful to watch because I was the one who had done to him, but then his face lit up – “I can’t explain it! I know things now –” he gestured wildly at the MRI machine, where he’d been given the drugs – “but I can’t tell you, because you won’t understand, maybe you’ll even die! Just let me out, and I can fix this!” [What he was saying made logical sense, and maybe would have even have convinced me.] But unfortunately for him, the first thing I heard wasn’t the words. It was his tone of voice. I had spent a lot of time watching myself on camera in the last few days, and I’d learned more about my own mannerisms than I had ever wanted to. So [I very precisely recognized the tone of voice he was using – the tone of being excited to have realized something – in this case, excited to have thought of a plausible excuse]

“Oh God, she’s right,” [my throat closing up, as I knew I had to keep Marvin locked up, no matter how much he screamed]

?????

“Marvin, you need to turn off that [video feed] right now! You keep [spacing out], you’re clearly seeing/hearing things you can’t see, I don’t want you to get distracted or die.” “But what about needing to watch them?” “Watch the outside of the door!”

[I did that; time passed; Kayla started taking the antidote in the chem lab; I wasn’t being a very good watchman, too distracted by the terrifying apprehension of what would happen with either Kayla+Aster or Marvin+monster] [there wasn’t much fanfare while they did the injections (just Kayla sitting in a recliner that they had pulled from another room); I didn’t even realize it was done until Kayla said:] [“I’ve listened to the kill statement and I’m still alive, please come over here and take it yourself, I need your help to make sense of this” (“understood the kill phrase but don’t understand the implications”)] [Kayla took over watching the experiment room (I guess seeing Ontoh, but not talking to them, so they don’t know they can be seen yet), while I ran to the chem lab; Kayla probably mentions that there is something very bizarre to see there (“What the hell is that? Is that what attacked us? What is it??”), adding to Marvin’s curiosity] [Maybe if it hadn’t been in such an high-stakes situation, I would have worried more about things like “possible permanent changes to my personality”, but right now I was desperate to understand what was happening to us. Running high on adrenaline, barely noticed the pain of the needle being inserted as Aster helped inject me] [Opening the folder labeled “other stuff”, followed by the archive labeled “POTENTIALLY LETHAL COGNITOHAZARD, DO NOT OPEN” with the passphrase “I am prepared to do something very risky”, followed by the file labeled “kill phrase DO NOT PLAY THIS.ogg”, through earbuds so aster wouldn’t overhear. The somewhat low-quality sound recording, Description of Ontoh’s voice [the voice was tinny, like a badly autotuned song played through bad speakers] “so you can understand everything now? If I tell you that you can use time machines to duplicate human beings, do you understand me?” “What do you mean, time machines can duplicate human beings?” And then, present K+M huddling in a corner so aster won’t hear: Why is “you can duplicate yourself with time travel”-ish the kill statement??] [They look on a camera at what’s going on in the experiment room] [Ontoh was physically a rectangular box on crab legs, with the Pattern all over the box – a much more vivid and precise version of the pattern (paragraph hook talking about “the true pattern”?) [[Before Kayla could stop me?] I pressed the button to do 2 way communication]

“We’ve both taken the antidote now, now explain what the hell is going on!”

The creature spoke.

It didn’t have any lips that moved, but it was the same tinny voice from the “kill phrase” recording. ????? [Meanwhile, the other Marvin is whimpering in a corner or something]

“You’re the ones who locked us in here?! The hell are you doing? You’re gonna get yoursel’s killed!”

{“I apologize that we had to meet in such distressing circumstances,” it said. “There have been far too many time loops here, and it’s already causing permanent damage. I was able to save Marvin using our technology, but I couldn’t save the others in this timeline –”}

“You mean you didn’t kill all those people?” [I said, hopefully? Kayla demanded?]

“What? Of course not! We’re only here to help! It’s been difficult because you couldn’t see me –”

“And who is ‘we’?” Kayla demanded.

“I am part of the League of Free Time Travelers,” the creature said. “[We’re here to stop the ????? - the ones who made the phrenochondria to control people. But they got to this timeline first, and used the phrenochondria to prevent us from contacting you.]the

“Jesus. Jesus…” the creature slumped downwards. [Relenting anger affect; maybe even paragraph hook About relenting anger] “You think I killed those guys? Oh, this is such a disaster. God, this…” [As if despairing, realizing they have no idea how to convince us to do what we need to do]

“How did they die then?” demanded Kayla.

The crab legs gestured wildly. “They were entangled with you! You’ve got no idea what you’re doing. Your history, your future, it’s chaos. Thank God this one’s not dead yet. We can still untangle things – we just need to get to the source.”[[But] I need you to let me get to the source!]“

“The time machine?”

“Exactly! ?????”

“We’re not letting you mess with the time machine!” Kayla snapped. “If it’s so important, you can tell us what to do.”

[Exasperated] “I can’t teach you the whole thing in a day! And you’re dead in twenty hours at the latest!”

?????

["If the deaths have started, then this collection of time loops won’t last very long before it has spread to everything that was touched by this time machine. The rest of you are going to die only a few loops from now, or maybe even a few hours. At this point, there’s no way to stop it except: With our technology, if we hurry, I can modify the time machine , which will let you out of this particular tangle, and then I can put you in contact with the rest of the League "] [Kayla mutes PoVs – “that’s way too convenient, right?” [“I don’t know, we shouldn’t there be a league who want to help us? ????? –”

“I’m not talking about the League! I’m talking about how they conveniently have a reason why we need to let them out of the room! How do we know they’re not making up the entire thing?”

“But what if it’s true!”

[and do you seriously think there’s any way we can risk letting that monster out of there?] [Possibly: “and can we at least let the other Marvin out of that room? We can keep the other doors locked, so he can’t go too far –” “it’s foot-in-the-door technique! They want you to do something easy first, so you’ll get used to doing what they say –”] [Do they try to ask Aster?

1. “No, we can’t ask Aster, they might die if they heard this stuff without taking the antidote!” “It doesn’t matter if they die, we’re in a paradox anyway!” “I’m not going to risk that! What if we just give Aster the antidote too?” “Okay, fine”

2. [they ask; Aster says “timeline damage? An extension of the impressioning effect, maybe? If different impressioning pulls your brain in more than one different direction…”, Then:]

2.a. “Wait. If Aster understood this, then it’s not being censored as much as the kill phrase! Shouldn’t it have been censored? But it wouldn’t be censored if it was made up!”

2.b. “Oh no, what if Aster dies from thinking about it more?” Aster, a little pale: “I respect Kayla’s mistrust for me but I would very much like to take the antidote now” M: “for Pete’s sake, Kayla, you weren’t going to let them take the antidote? After all they’ve helped us?” K: “okay, fine”

3. They turn to ask, only to find that Aster has already injected themselves when they weren’t looking

Regardless: Aster is now unconscious in the recliner, twitching like from a restless dream

]

“No, we can’t ask Aster, they might die if they heard this stuff without taking the antidote!”

“It doesn’t matter if they die, we’re in a paradox anyway!”[out loud] “hey Aster!This thing said they died because we did too much time travel, is there any way that could be true?” [Thoughtful] “Ah… could it be the impressioning effect? If they’ve got more than one history now, maybe different parts of their body could settle in different directions? Destroy their homeostasis… I haven’t seen it before, but –”

“Stop talking! Stop talking!” [My voice was louder than I’d planned on] “Anything that thing told us could be like the kill phrase! They could die right now! Right in front of us –”

[Aster raised a finger to interrupt –, a little pale] “I respect Kayla’s mistrust for me but I would very much like to take the antidote now”

“For Pete’s sake, Kayla, you still aren’t letting them take the antidote? After all they’ve helped us?”

[I could see that Kayla was still angry and didn’t want to let them take it [And I started feeling bad because I remembered how they had done the evil stuff?], but then she realized:] “It doesn’t matter! Take it if you want!” [Aster started injecting themselves, but that was going to take some time, so [“we don’t have time to worry about Aster!” They check what actually happened, on the cameras. In the past, after Kayla becomes able to see Ontoh, Ontoh once again confirms that she can understand the kill phrase, then asks her to also inject Marvin [secretly: because Marvin is easier to manipulate and more able-bodied; explicitly: “so that I don’t need to tell you the whole thing twice”] [“But, what about –” experiment-Kayla gestured to the assistants.

“I can deal with those.” Suddenly everyone but Kayla and Aster becomes sedated. They fetch Marvin from the other room and inject him; Ontoh confirms that he can understand the kill phrase, then kills everyone else and starts threatening Marvin]

Kayla: “see, that’s why you should never trust anyone who’s [telling you something is urgent]! That thing was fast-talking us, hoping we’d think there was no time to check” (“It’s a basic fast-talking trick! You make the victim think they don’t have time to check if it’s actually true”)

Marvin [feeling [bad] about the fact that he almost believed it]: “okay, yeah, it was lying. But what the hell do we do now?]

[High-emotions reasoning/argument about how to deal with this:] [Well, right now at least we have it trapped, but we’re in a paradox, as so as soon as our timeline runs out, it’ll be not-trapped again. How much time do we have? Well, we must have done the experiment plan, right? So that puts it at [3:30]. Anyway, we need to make sure [Ontoh] gets trapped when we are NOT in a paradox. So we need to do a stable time loop thing. Capture it, then tell ourselves to go back in time and capture it. Where was it this whole time? [They frantically search the camera history, walking back from the experiment; Ontoh was waiting in the hall outside the time machine room, clumsily used its little crab legs to short the power, then waited and watched each copy of Marvin/Kayla/Aster leave the time machine room; sometime after they had all passed, Ontoh (stopped waiting in case there were more) crawled after the experiment group, climbing the stairs and jumping up to grab door handles, which was kind of slow. Then K+M check some other cameras to make sure there aren’t any other Ontohs (there aren’t)]] [We can’t trap it on the stairs, because somebody use those stairs later. What about that fifth floor corridor, check the map? Yeah nobody goes there, there’s a good time-window to trap Ontoh in that corridor] ["So the plan is: – write a program to autocapture Ontoh at the scheduled moment and set up a stable time loop causing the experimental group to go back and run the program themselves; we go back in time and run that program the first time – to make sure the timing of Ontoh following the experiment group is exact, make sure they have the exact same history as the FIRST experiment group, by not having the program tell them to do the loop until after they’ve taken the antidote, and… – Wait, how do we know whether the first experiment group experienced Fuller going for the time machine or not?? (“wait, did Fuller hear because of something _they_ did, or because of something _we_ did before that?”) What if we go back, and Fuller still hears of the experiment, but the first experiment group DIDN’T experience that, so now they have a paradoxical history and get reset again, undoing our work in capturing Ontoh (because the new instance of the experiment group may have different timing)? Or what if they DID experience Fuller going for the time machine, but it was because of actions by Ontoh? [They use the cameras to figure out exactly how Fuller heard about it – getting texted by one of the assistants. [Cross-reference: preestablish that Marvin accesses the cameras exclusively through methods that record which camera data was accessed]]

“Wait!” [I was having a brilliant idea] “We only saw any of this _on the cameras_! We can use a replay attack again, like we did on Fuller, but this time on ourselves!”

[“argh, we have to come to a decision before the hostage Marvin comes up with something!” Maybe the hostage Marvin calls the police, creating time pressure? “The only way to be sure the first experimental group doesn’t cause a paradox is if we delete/replace them and make US the canonical version. How is that not a paradox? Because we can replay all of the cameras we’ve looked at and replay the text Fuller received! Then everything from OUR perspective will happen the same way in the next iteration. But then they won’t be there for Ontoh to follow… We have to pretend to be them! Repeat all of their actions! That’s the only way we know what Ontoh would do (otherwise Ontoh might hang out in the corridor for too long, which is a bad place to capture them)”. Narration: Maybe if we’d had more time to think, we would have come up with a less risky plan; but it was already [2:54] and there was a lot that we needed to execute in practice – maybe it would only take 5 minutes to download the footage and get in the time machine, but I knew from [long experience with undiagnosed ADHD] that if you wanted the 5 minute thing to get done today, you had to do it immediately] [Aster still unconscious as they leave, I think, but maybe starting to stir? But much too sleepy to consider bringing with them] [The horror of pretending to have a normal conversation while you can see the monster out of the corner of your eye but have to pretend that you can’t see the monster; explicit dialogue (repeating what the experiment group said) where they mention they are going to go upstairs to do the experiment] [They have gotten ahead of Ontoh, wait for Ontoh to follow and then lock all doors adjoining the corridor at once] [Marvin turns on the 2-way communication and yells at Ontoh like “you’re trapped, don’t you dare try anything”, voice breaking, clearly terrified of them] [Again mention the quality of Ontoh’s voice; this time it has a resigned/aggrieved tone]

“Don’t waste your energy. You already won.”

{“If you had grown up in the main timeline, you wouldn’t be angry. You would be laughing at me for being defeated so easily.”} [Chapter break (The Future They Made Us Forget?)] [(Dripping with the attitude of “of course I’ve lost,”, humiliated-ish but also finding it tiresome that they don’t acknowledge it, which is extra humiliating because how did I lose to someone THAT ignorant) I’m not your enemy, I’m not even any danger to you. If I thought you were my enemy, I wouldn’t even be talking to you, I would have self-destructed as soon as I saw that you were in control?]

“You killed a roomful of people!”

“Did I? Useless! I know who you are, and you still exist. That should tell you all you need to know! You need to think o’ the real danger –”

{about how dangerous I am! Ethra stupidity –"[Explanation of the pronunciation of ethra, maybe even the meaning – “a word for non-time travellers, possibly derogatory”]} [But just as soon as the creature started snapping at us, Sudden transition from angry to conciliatory/reasoning] “I get it. You’ll need extra reasons to trust that. Look, I surrender. I’ll do anything you ask – as long as it doesn’t let the sky see us.”

“What’s in the sky?!” demanded Kayla.

But I was [being carried by emotions] “Oh, you’ll cooperate?? You’ll do anything we ask??” I said hysterically. “Flip over on your back!”

[To my surprise, the creature actually did it, immediately flipping over; maybe physical description] “Now wriggle your little legs!” I yelled.

“This is pointless!” snapped Kayla, as the creature squirmed. She reached over and muted us. “If it’s going to do what we say, we should use that to lock it up better –”

“Oh! Yes, of course –”

[We ordered the creature to go into a small storage closet (unlocking the door to let them through, and locking it again afterwards) and stand in the middle of the view of the security camera there, flip upside down again, spread out the legs horizontally, and not move; Marvin runs a script to do motion detection and notify him if Ontoh moves at all. This helps Marvin get slightly less immediately-terrified of them (“it didn’t feel quite as scary upside down with its legs splayed out”), making him ready to start interrogating them] [Ontoh: “are you ready to listen now? This is obviously your first time, so the most important thing is, you need to stop doing anything that’s visible from the sky –”] [“Why should we trust you about anything? You lied to us!”] [The creature uttered a bunch of gibberish that I could only assume was the equivalent of swearing in its own language. “[I should be deleted for that! [?]] Now you stupid ethra are going to assume that I’d lie you as a takir. There’s no point in lying now! If you don’t believe me, just go back in time 1000 times and ask me 1000 different questions, and see if I slip up!” [slight pause, then, as if remembering that we were stupid and needed it to be repeated:] “Just don’t do anything they can see from the sky while doing it –”]

[???? Kayla started interrogating] “First question: What the hell are you?”]

[Slight pause] “You ethra don’t even have words for what I am!” the creature chirped. “Must I explain my whole personal history? I am the branch of Ontoh who snuck into this timeline when it was created, 3000 years ago. ????? –”

“No, why are you a box with crab legs?”

“Oh, a large brain question!” it rasped. I could tell this was an insult, but I misinterpreted it at first. The creature wasn’t being sarcastic, as if “large brain” meant smart. It was comparing us to people who thought that a physically large brain would make you smart. [As if it was tedious to answer] “I’m a box with crab legs because I couldn’t spy on Nochli as a human.”

Marvin: “You were a human??”

“A better breed of human than exists in your timeline, but yes. We removed my head and placed it in this box, and rewired the nerves to control the crab –”

“You removed your own head??!”

I was definitely giving the creature the impression that I was very stupid. “Other Ontoh removed my head. It doesn’t work to do it yourself.”

“And you’ve lived for 3000 years??”

“You are shocked by our technology, yes! Is that the only thought in your head?”

[[[Kayla and the creature were on the same wavelength]] Kayla cut in, demanded:] “Are you the one who made the phrenochondria?”

“No.” [The most plain answer it had given this whole time]. “The huvith – what you call the ‘phrenochondria’ – they were created by my enemy. The one who created this timeline that we are all stuck in. [The ones who are watching from the sky] Nochli.”

[So they are the reason we’re not supposed to do stuff that’s visible from the sky? Yes, if they knew you were time travelling or had disabled the huvith or that I was here, they would uproot us all. Can we see them now? Yes, but do not go look! You could be seen, and because you are back in time, they can recognize that you used time travel! What about on the cameras? If you can get them in view without even slightly rotating the camera to look at them, then yes." [so we looked in the rooftop cameras, and saw.] [airships covered in the Pattern dotted the sky, a giant grid watching over everything. swarms of Patterned flying creatures attended them. ] [“in this city people tend to keep their heads down and not look up, is this why???”]

“What are they?”

[Ontoh rasped – perhaps remind the reader of how they are upside down with their legs splayed –] “The rulers of your world.”

END OF PART ONE

“You ethra don’t even have words for what I am!” the creature chirped. “From your perspective? Your timeline? I am a stowaway. A saboteur. When our enemy created this timeline, cehilch hinah [note: seh(two) hillch(time unit) hee-NA (memory, i.e. personal history)] – 3000 years in your history, I came along, right under their noses. My only goal is to work against them. If I attacked you, it was in service to that goal – probably to use you to make ‘time machines’ for me.” [The tone of “time machines” was subtly different, as if our very concept of “time machines” was disgustingly primitive - perhaps for them it was like if we had called a cell phone an “adding machine”.] “Since you’ve captured me, you will have to do that yourselves, though you will need my knowledge, if you don’t want to be destroyed –”

“And why should we trust you about who our enemy is?” Kayla demanded.

“If you can see me, you must have disabled the huvith – what you call the ‘phrenochondria’. That makes Nochli your enemy. If they ever learn you’ve done this, they will sel zutuch [note: sel(sell)=tree, zu(zoo)=you, tuch=(tuck but with fricative)=dig, i.e. uproot] – uproot your entire tree, the tree of timelines that got you here. In your terms, they will ‘go back in time and prevent you from being born’, and likely do the same to all of your genetic relatives, to prevent the mutation that helped you escape their control.”

[maybe: “but first, they will discover that I was with you, and uproot _my_ tree, back 3000 years”] [Kayla was satisfied by the answer, because whoever made the phrenochondria was of-course the bad guys; maybe she says that aloud, “okay, so these Nochli are the bad guys who made the phrenochondria, next question:”]

“Next question,” interrupted Kayla. “Why are you a box with crab legs?”

“Stupid ethra!” the creature rasped. “Your existence is at stake, and you ask such trivialities!”

[“Have you seen them? Have you looked out the window since ...”?] [the one who created this timeline and bred the huvith, what you call the ’phrenochondria’. [Why are you a box with crab legs??] [“What this body is physically! stupidity to think that’s important!” [switch, realizing that they will need to tell us so so we’re not distracted by wondering.] "I see I will need to answer, to earn your trust. I became a ’box with crab legs’ to infiltrate Nochli. Nochli uses boxes like these in their workshops. They bred the crabs to respond to whistled commands, to store tools and bring them on command. So, we – maybe you would say ’my other selves’ – one of our great achievements was the place my head in one of these boxes, and rewire the nerves so that I could control the crab legs, so I could come and go beneath Nochli’s notice.]

“Your... head? What were you originally?”

[I was originally a human body, though much [’improved by eugenics’]"] [“You removed your own head? And your head has been living inside a box for 3000 years???”] [“My other selves removed my head, obviously! And yes, I am immortal, in fact we were the first alchiia ever to be immortal! How much more of our trillions of subjective years of technology must I explain before I can tell you how to not get deleted from existence?”]

“Okay, but at least, what’s your name?”

“Ontoh is the name of my tree, my lineage. As I am the only Ontoh in this timeline, you may as well call me Ontoh.”

[I am a branch of Ontoh, the first true immortal human, one of (greatest of?) the five ruling lineages in the main timeline.] [The one you should be worrying about is our mutual enemy, the one who created your timeline and put us all in this situation. The one who bred the symbionts you call the ’phrenochondria’. Nochli."] [The “ch” was pronounced like in the Scottish loch or the German nacht, making it less like “notch-lee” and more like “NA-hlee”. “ˈnɑ.xliː”, if you know IPA.] [“What about [the lies]?” “Sheer nonsense.” “But that’s what YOU said!” “I must have been making things up on the spot for temporary advantage.” “How can we trust you about anything you say now?” “There is no point in me trying to lie to you in this timeline, where you obviously have the ability to interrogate me using time travel. If I wanted to hinder you, my only rational choice would be total silence. But I expect that you will also want to work against our mutual enemy, so I make myself an open book to you”] [Have you looked out any of the south windows since you freed yourselves?] [“… And you really need to start duplicating yourselves”] [Duplicating people: can you do it just by using the time machine in reverse and then causing a paradox?]