Detective Time - Media Room

 

Nathan thought about going to the Media Room anyway. He knew he wouldn’t be there in the same time-slot as the girl and Jade, but he had other business there. It was one of the more overlooked pocket realms of Metric, considering how interconnected it was to everything.

There was the obvious connection between the Text AI and the Stanley Apartments, the Apartments back to the TV, and the audio hookup to the Temporal Lighthouse – Metric Radio.

It was also one of the few private areas to get a full menu Time Pizza delivery. That solved the issue of travelling out to other locations to back and forth the process. Best done in small doses, but not bad for exposition or quickly fleshing out new areas.

The computers there seemed under-powered, for what they did, but the exponential effect of using them was pretty obvious. Stories written up and movies roughly cut became part of the greater Metric idea ‘farm’ and frequently led to inspiring citizens in vague yet significant ways. A character written up here could influence who you met outside and failing that, found its way into jobs available at the Actors Guild.

Most of this Nathan knew, but even then, he hardly used the place to it’s full potential. He figured Jade and the girl might be a bit more thorough in it’s use, but he only ever saw the obvious parts of their work here. It wasn’t that he couldn’t dig a bit deeper, but he’d rather be surprised than over rehearsed.

Knowing that, Jade left the TV on the preview channel and had a custom Time Pizza order for Nathan to make use of once he settled in. The other devices were powered down, but showed signs of recent use. The Missing Piece card printer was still warm. Again, he could have signed in and checked their public game accounts, but he preferred to do that after taking in other media first.

Nathan sat down and scanned through the options. “Fragments” “Never Say Goodbye” “It Matters What We Leave Behind” were all in the que to play, but he wanted something to set the scope of what he’d be doing in ‘Pizza Mode’ a little better.

He looked a little closer at the order. “#675 NPC Breadsticks” was the appetizer. He switched to that channel on the TV and had a quick bite. He saw himself on screen, at the Stanley Apartments, but it wasn’t quite the future or the past. The Pizza place’s motto – When you don’t have Time, there’s always Time for Time Pizza. You could split your awareness with a time echo of yourself and as long as you had somewhere to direct it, you could do so pretty well. The Media Room was pretty much set up for that. As was the main restaurant, naturally, and also the Game Room on the far side of the Pocket Realms.

The TV turned on closed captions by itself “TESTING ONE TWO”. Nathan started reading the line, expecting his double to mimic him. Nothing. He grabbed a headset when his double mimed not being able to hear anything. He tried again. “Testing One, Two” a weird echo and a half memory about hearing and speaking at the same time in two different places at once. A prompt came on the TV about memory feedback with suggested settings. Low signal from double, except for context, quick reaction time, muscle memory, cut and refuse options. Bail out word “Apple”.

The prompts on the screen vanished once he had dialed in the settings. He took another bread stick and finalized the time clone balancing act. He’d get a vague idea about the situation this extension of himself was in, but not the memory of the setup. Perfect for a real reaction preview, but no spoilers.

He talked himself through the tutorial, walking through the Stanley Reset scenario. It would influence this area of Metric into a new set of Time Rules that would provide a framework for their adventure and exploration.

It wasn’t strictly his set of rules, but a mashup between the input of a few of the major characters. As usual Jade had been the go between and made sure there was enough Vanilla Time for everyone to workshop the plans. In the montage she would get approval with the various interested parties and set up a custom Missing Piece board and network for them to communicate and check in with each other.

Right on cue the card printer came to life again and gave Nathan his updated cards. iOi who had been with Jade for the montage, appeared suddenly at the Media Room and scanned them in.

iOi ‘chat’ with Nathan about the cards. /Whirr-Clunk-Tick-Tick/ “Sure thing buddy, keep them till I need them.” /Click-Whir-Click-Whir/ “That’s the point of the preview, isn’t it? Showcase the new roles?” /Clunk-Tock-Grind/ “Fine, I’ll give them a once over to prevent a minor paradox”

Nathan paused the screen and it went to a head shot of his time echo. Various thought bubbles appeared showing the last few things he said to iOi. The blue robot got the hint and plugged into a special dock. /Whirr-Sprong-Tick/ he said to both Nathan’s

“Okay” said the Media Room Nathan, “Narrator, no surprise there. Time Gopher, humbling, but necessary. Preview guinea pig, already doing that. Metric Radio Jockey, that sounds interesting.”

He grabbed the last card and looked it over. He knew of the Temporal Lighthouse connection to audio, and how it influenced the area around it based on the tunes that were playing, as well as being a way to triangulate teams that weren’t quite in sync. He was never sure of how people were picked for that job, and how they managed.

A phone rang in the room, and asked him the song that was cued next. “Heartracer – The Way You Want” he said reading the display under the sound system on the shelf. “Thanks” said the voice and hung up.

iOi showed a time triangulating schematic one of the other screens. It detailed Jade’s presence in the room in the previous time-slot and how that was interconnected to his presence here and now. He leaned into the role a bit, using his sonic pen to link the radio to the preview channel. The song “Beautiful Disaster” ended up being chosen as the theme music to the previews, as Nathan and the two women synced for a moment due to the radio.

He linked it to his headset as well, hoping the various devices to read enough of his mental state that his mood could prompt music from the AI catalogue. It worked, but it was a bit of a strain. Nathan grabbed a Pop’s Pop to help cement the action and balance out the new demand on his attention. It wasn’t something that should work, but he felt like his actions were symbolic rather than entirely physical. Due to his location, frame of mind, and unknown quality of the refreshment – it seemed to work.

It also disrupted the link to the time echo a bit, so it was a little more independent, but not so bad it would break character or behave oddly. The music acted as a kind of guiding field, so line by line dialogue prompts were no longer necessary, a quick yes or no reaction would forward the prompt.

On screen his duplicate was still in ‘Thought bubble’ mode and was digesting the various changes and rules of the new cards as Nathan continued to read them. The next handful of cards were Utility cards, distilling his equipment and expertise into discreet packets that could be honed, improved, traded and otherwise made more game-like. Nothing that foreign to him, obviously, but it did highlight what would be forefront in his upcoming adventure. The only new content was a card called “Trouble” that was a bit of a negative, but could be used to stir the plot a bit, and create some needed challenge.

iOi had a new set of cards as well, which was a bit unusual, but like his own cards, made useful introductions a lot faster. Most of the robot’s cards were highlighted with strange symbols, the written equivalent of the noises it made, so open to interpretation, but Nathan had a general sense of them.

They were also digitized quickly and set to display on iOi’s on again off again translating screen attachment.

The next thing on the food order was ‘Rewind Sliders’. A note on the receipt said to use those during the previews. Nathan hadn’t tried them before, at least in that context, and asked iOi to explain them. The robot didn’t know either, and connected to a ‘live’ version of Jade in the past-room.

“Right. As with anything from Time Pizza they don’t actually do anything on their own. They’re just there to balance out the chemical and mental gymnastics to use the time effects of the room. Scan the preview with the captions on, say the lines you see and kind of follow the pictures, but not too deeply, just a quick impression is good. Chomp a bit of a slider and rewind. That’ll send your impressions and voiceover back to us to build on, and you can scan the preview again. Say anything new, or redo the whole thing, and rinse and repeat. First though, I need you to think about the investigation so far, in the context of the titles on the preview TV. iOi can probably juggle a few things if you need the scenes in a different order.”

Nathan took off the headset and noticed the brain scan function as well. He put his thumb on the panel and authorized the scope of the next few info grabs. iOi walked him through everything so far, making sure that nothing was missed.

The Time Detective talked through the case and his Time clone walked by the various rooms in the Stanley Apartments that simulated the various locations. The Media Room AIs scanned the various images and did some inquiries about the real sites. It constructed them virtually for iOi to explore as a simulated camera.

At the other end, the women had a quick break and explored the Stanley Apartments in person, with a simulated Arlo adlibbing the post room conclusions and quickly making Missing Piece cards for them. It helped to clamp down the ‘went on unlimited adventures’ tangents that some AIs tended to have.

With the skeleton of the stories explored, they headed back to their version of the Media Room and waited for Nathan’s contributions.

Using the available evidence, he surmised that “Never say Goodbye” was a version of the story where all the loose ends were tied up and eventually forgotten once the rush of the impossible was over. It did leave the girl in a different timeline, and an unresolved paradox, as a version of the writer vanishes from the new timeline.

At this point it wasn’t as much of a preview as a shortened version of the story. Still, it had potential and could probably be told in reasonable length of time. On the downside, it made the ‘stars’ relatively famous and no place for Nathan, other than the Narrator and background Time Investigator.

“Fragments” was more Nathan-centric but less organized overall. It involved a lot of running around and trying to get different bits from various stories to work together in a coherent way. It was also more character oriented as various people took on roles reading and acting out various blogs, letters and internal monologues. It was hard to tell if it was AI deepfakes or real actors from the guild in the Stanley Apartments. The song “Catch and Release” set the mood fairly well, another nod to Metric Radio coming up with the right song at the right time.

“It Matters What We Leave Behind” was the last part of the trilogy, if one put them all together. It showed the aftermath of everything in the first two stories being found and the first movie being redone with standins. It becomes a bit Meta as it acts as the first movie in the real world, as the others are set in the more dream-like areas of Metric. It also acts a pilot for the Doctor Time show that follows Nathan and Jade as they travel through time.

It seemed that everything was still a work in progress rather than something that could be wrapped up in an afternoon with some CGI and AI slight of hand. The women wanted to get a rough cut of the less spoiling preview up and spent the next few hours editing the simulated footage.

Nathan figured as much, grabbed a Parmesan Pause and twiddled his thumbs for a bit. Before he could get bored waiting, an alert popped up on the TV suggesting that the others had done their bit and were waiting for a review.

“Never Say Goodbye” was shown in a kind of split screen that showed two people in dream-like environments with inaccurate copies of the other person. The two protagonists eventually see past the illusion and into the wider world they created together. It highlights their desire to help others through tough times, and put any possible relationship on the back-burner for now.

“Fragments” was a more hurried pace, showing a calamity happening, and various groups working together to survive. Small nods to the works in the first preview show up – though iOi had to pause them and point them out. Nathan sees his new role to bridge the gaps between the various groups, having been knocked out of time and experiencing events from a different angle. Heavy use of mind palace type situations provide the extra tension, as the real work through the calamity is shown to go off without a hitch.

“It Matters What We Leave Behind” seems to be a slow burn Detective crossover with a lot of audience participation. It happens in the aftermath of the calamity, and showcases the way the various stories of ‘Fragments’ line up and support each other. It seemed to need a lot more work though, as the parts it would draw from were still in flux.

Nathan gave the effort 4/5 stars, which was very high for a first cut of a set of trailers. They all agreed via comms to have a Forget-me-Knot – a memory dulling pretzel from the restaurant to not get too attached to their work so far. Jade made the arrangements to seed out the idea through Metric and see what they could harvest from the work so far.