The Past is Puzzle

 

Nathan tries getting to his past self via the puzzle room in Metric. He realizes that letting Arlo do the same thing would be a bit complicated, so he tests it out himself first.

It seems the iOi and chronometer equivalents in Metric sense his non-linear origin story and he breezes past the first part of the puzzle easily. He sees the various hooks for his own story light up as he lets the device shuffle his memories around. He pulls a few memories out of a Time Fissure and it lets him speed up the second wave of the puzzle’s lock.

As he does so, he remembers the Narration field that the robot had left in his house, he remembers typing up stories even then, but remembers something happened that shifted his narrative to something else. What they changed to shifted his current self, and as he looks down, his equipment is a little different. His sonic pen now has an attachment that can plot random time jumps.

He is getting used to moving sideways in probability, but can do that on command now.

Nathan tries it quickly and finds different versions of this room, each with a different guest in it.

He jumps back to his ‘home’ dimension and realizes he can still message the others. Each of the guests are trying to help with the paradox puzzle, but find the last level of the device hard to sync up.

Nathan pulls open the second lock and sees the problem.

Each of the people they’ve seen so far in Metric are only vaguely connected to their true selves. This pocket Dimension only the contains the versions that agree with Nathan and Jade’s version of Metric. The puzzle room is unique in each dimension, but functionally linked together.

Arlo thinks that is not quite right, and says so. Arlo figures it is probably just a medium sized time jump. One where each version of himself followed different clues, each pointing to a different person to bring to the final puzzle.

Jade links in with a time door and basically agrees. She recognizes the people from different mid-sized iterations of Metric and realized the one with Arlo was the key. It seemed to allow the right size of shift and that Arlo and him were more alike than he suspected.

Still Arlo felt like he was more of a hub than the key and that everyone’s input was equally valid.

Nathan, despite evidence, says that he’d rather picture it his way. Jade says it doesn’t matter, and that functionally it’s the same.

Arlo looks at the controls and realizes that people will have to agree on a certain configuration to unlock the final bit of the puzzle. Jade says she’s jumped ahead and notes that each of the stories resolves out, and that everyone will be happy as each of the stories they generate can end with a redo of the puzzle room.

Julie chimes in from another dimension and says that she picked a Romeo and Juliet style resolution last time they were here, and has a lot of those memories. Arlo says that he feels more linked to his past self and doesn’t remember anything from that branch of time.

Julie says that it was great, but that Arlo seemed troubled, like something was still out of sorts. She remembers a dream from the White King that said the door was still open.

She had something in that version of events called a DreamCube and she could plan things in there. It didn’t work as well for Arlo, who said he could only tweak small things about his past self.

Nathan interrupts saying his Sonic Pen was starting to give warnings that a major shift could happen any time, and they should pick a new setting and not worry about the full story.

Arlo suggests Mystery rather than Romance, and the two agree. They shift around levers and dials for their real names to Arlo and Julie, to influence their past selves into those decisions. They insert the cards for Nathan and Jade respectively to influence the linear copies of those people into those roles.

They agree on exiting conditions for the trip back to (almost) linear time. Juliet picks a mix that suggest time traveller and detective some time in the Post Event era. Arlo picks a bubbly song in the Pre Event time – Operation Doomsday.

Jade and Nathan agree to watch over Metric and act as a go between, providing a space for the two to meet in dreams and through AI till they can unlock the rest of the puzzle.