The Future They Made Us Forget, chapter 7

Chapter Seven: aster_talk_alternate_future

[Because Kayla died [How did he get disturbed by any of our changes??] [I got to witness firsthand the moment when Marvin realized he was in a paradox and was going to cease to exist. His facial expression, horrified or whatever] [We need to go back in time before the time we first went back in time, which is soon! Aster: Wait we still have X minutes, don’t you want to see what happened in the experiment? Marvin: we can download the video and bring it back in time with us]. [Fuller putting his arm around Kayla’s shoulder and making a self-congratulatory little monologue about how her life is achieving such great value for human knowledge as a test subject, which is oh so much more valuable than what ever pathetic little life she thinks she’s running away to by trying to escape. Fuller’s voice and body language are as if this was a completely normal conversation,; Marvin finds himself momentarily unsure of how evil it is, then is revolted (“I was struck with an understanding of why the other Marvin had been willing to help kill him”)] [Kayla screaming a bunch and then died, but it has been beeped out (Marvin voiceover: “I’ve removed some of the audio here, it was uhhh... it’ll be obvious why pretty soon”)] [Wait he knew she was going to try to escape, that means he actually saw one of us or something, but how? [They realize the covert recording; they decide to go to Aster’s office early again and find the microphone. But wait, what if Fuller hears them looking for the microphone, and goes for the time machine? Well now that they think about it, they are already in a paradoxical future, so there’s no limit to how much they can mess things up as long as (1) they go back again before their current time limit, and (2) they don’t let anybody else use the time machine. So they go to Dr. Fuller’s office first (with narration about the gun: in a fancy glass case, designed with the aesthetic of an antique hunting rifle but actually with modern gun features), take his gun (K takes it first but then Marvin is like “woah, that’s not how you hold a gun! Oh Jesus, I never taught you to use guns in this timeline, I’ll have to do it”) and Marvin shoots him (and then says “I promise this won’t have happened... Oh God, I shouldn’t have shot him in the doorway, now we’re going to have to step over his dead body. Uhhhh let’s knock over that bookshelf so we can climb over him without stepping in his blood”), and THEN they lock down the building and find the hidden microphone, and also talk to Aster again]] [As part of that, they need to make sure there’s no paradoxes from the original KM, the KM who went shopping, or the KM who talked to aster (none of them departed before the current deadline, so we just need to prevent them from departing; the shoppers are easy because they probably left the building before the action, and the other 2 groups can be told explicitly)]

This time, Kayla says “let’s talk to them [Aster] in person” and then she beats them up (“you told me the experiment would be safe!”… [“Okay but seriously we need to ask them about the science” and/or maybe they sent the video ahead so Aster’s already watched it] “did you notice what she said before she died?” She said “what the hell are you? how long have you been following me? … what the hell you mean ‘beep’” “this needs more investigation but I would rather it be done by one of me without a broken nose” eventually Aster excitedly repeats the phrase ’beep’ and then dies)]

[During that: K:“she said, ‘what the hell are you?’ That’s not what I’d say to a human!” Marvin: “so, what, there’s an invisible alien in that room with her? This is ridiculous [...] Anyway, if there’s really an invisible alien, how come we are able to talk about it? If we still can’t see it even with the [cyanosol], shouldn’t we have forgotten that it exists?” A: “Well, maybe ‘invisible alien’ is just the closest concept that we are able to think about, and it’s not really an invisible alien, but something different. Or maybe we DID see it and forgot it, but [like with the thing in the sky?] we forgot it so hard that after we looked away, we didn’t know it was something we needed to forget”] [They go back AGAIN, stop themselves right after they kill Fuller and do the lockdown (because Marvin doesn’t want to have to kill someone again), talk to Aster again? Consider practicalities (what do they do during the downtime after Aster dies? How many hours have they been awake?)] [Permission to murder your past self: Aster suggests hypothetically how they could do the research (counterfactually? As in “but it’d be hard to figure out what to do next when we don’t know what the toxin is”) Kayla is like “but we can get access to it, just repeat the same process” “but you’ll die horribly again” “do you realize there’s an invisible creature following me around! [I’m not going to leave any stone unturned in trying to see it]! And she’s me, so I’m allowed to consent to it, we don’t have to kill any other person unjustly” “would you really want to have your future self sacrifice you?” “Yes! She’s me, so I know she would agree to this if she knew about it”]

Aster calls Fuller; with a little smirk on their face, “For yet a third time, one of my clever ideas has cost the life of one of our valuable test subjects.” “So we need to cancel the experiment? (“Fine, I’ll cancel the experiment.”)?” “No, I am thinking we kill her a second time, but this time drill a hole in her skull first so that we can sample the toxin” (Fuller gives a satisfied chuckle at the audacity of that) (also remember that they need to start the experiment early in order to have time). They do that and it works, they identify the chemical and come up with one to neutralize it.]

[Kayla “when we do the antidote experiment I want it to be the real me, the me who isn’t going to be reverted” “but what if it doesn’t work, isn’t it less risky if we do it here in the doomed timeline?” [They figure out the plan where they wait around as backups for themselves and then go back in time to do the experiment]. Then they go back for a last time (and clean up their various arrivals?), run the script to do the replay attack (see below) and send the message to PoVs, and go hide in a random room waiting to cease to exist (PoVs don’t see this last bit but get told that they were going to do it; PoVs need to know what room it is in order to not go there themselves)] [Somewhere during the above, when they have a bit of downtime, somehow get Kayla to talk about how humanity are probably going to wipe themselves out]

MARVIN: isn’t there anything you want out of life, for yourself, when this is over?

KAYLA: of course there are things I want for myself! I want to have my own life, I want to be able to eat good food without constantly feeling guilty about who was exploited to make it for me, I want people to take me seriously, I want a boyfriend who loves me and respects me. But I can’t have any of that because the world is still fucked up! [????? if I just go and try to build my own nice life for myself, chances are it’ll get destroyed by [the previously mentioned existential risks]]

A: [softly, thoughtful] “guilt, feeling like there’s no future, those are PTSD symptoms”

K: then it’s the people with PTSD who are correct, then! If the PTSD-havers and the PTSD-have-nots have different opinions about something, you can’t just assume that one of them is correct because they don’t have PTSD, you have to look at the facts –

A: [bit of a sigh] I grew up during the Cold War, people thought the world was going to end any day now, and it didn’t happen any of those times [i.e. “I’ve heard this same claim over and over”]

K: and so you assume it won’t happen this time? ????? Can we agree that humanity will probably wipe themselves out _sometime_ in the next 10,000 years?

Marvin: “uhhh” I didn’t want to think that humanity would wipe themselves out

A: no, please go on

K: so, let’s say it happens in the year 5001. Well, in the year 5000, what do you think people will be saying? The ones without PTSD are going to be saying ’we haven’t destroyed ourselves in the last 5000 years, why would it happen now?' And they’ll be flat-out wrong. How do you know that’s not what’s happening right now?

[Somewhere in the downtime, or maybe in downtime in Part 2: Aster explains how Fuller cheated at the head-of-department election by telling Reggie the wrong date so he wouldn’t get to vote; Marvin explicitly comments on how this makes him seem [not badass], just a petty, selfish man… Until he found the Ring of Gyges, and became a monster. ] [Somewhere during the above, Marvin: how are you so comfortable with ceasing to exist? Aster: well, is it really dying if you’re still alive afterwards? One of you still exists, and the only difference is that you won’t remember the same things you do now. Marvin: it’s still freaky. I had my wisdom teeth removed and the anesthetic made it so that I didn’t remember stuff I’ve said afterwards, I don’t like to think about that. Aster: well, think about who I am. If I thought it was death every time I didn’t know if I would remember, or didn’t know the next time I would be conscious, then I would have to believe that I was dying basically every moment of my existence. Marvin [later]: so it really is just like forgetting…?] [[More later, Marvin] okay I can be okay with forgetting, but I really don’t want to forget the conversation where we met Aster]

“but how are we going to have that conversation if he’s being recorded”

[they do the thing to deceive the microphone input, “time travelling replay attacks” (maybe I literally explain what a replay attack is, and then how the usual protections don’t work if you’re a time traveller?)] [By the end: the toxin that was released in the Kayla’s brain was luckily a well-known chemical, and the antidote can be synthesized in less than 2 hours; they are ready to perform the antidote experiment]