Meanwhile: An Amazing Choose Your Own Adventure

[Fri]

http://shigabooks.com/

Go to that page and visit the interactive section. You won't regret it. It'd be confusing at some times, but it's amazing.

Basically, by some chance you have stomach ache and you borrowed a stranger's bathroom. And the stranger is an inventor. With invention like the Killotron, a device that can KILL EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING IN A UNIVERSE IN ONE TOUCH OF A BUTTON.

And while you're at the site, you can read Fleep too. It's a really awesome comic about a boy who wakes up in a telephone booth which has been mysteriously selaed in an envelope of concrete. Using only the contents of his pockets (two pens, a paperback novel, three coins and 20 ft of unwaxed dental floss) our hero must fashion and execute an escape plan before he runs out of oxygen.

Or should I just change the title to Fleep?

[Cespenar]

I just read both of them and they were very interesting, to say the least. Unfortunately, I'm not in a mood to elaborate right now, but it's definitely worth your while.

Oh, and I didn't have the chance to look at the other stuff at the site. Are they as good as these two, or you picked out the gems to tell?

[Solo]

So... everyone in the world is the same person?

[Cespenar]

That's one way to look at it.

[Solo]

Then how do you reproduce? Or does it just not happen?


Firthermore, romantic relationships seem like they'd be fairly difficult....

[RebelRogue]

I think it's better not to ponder too much about that one :smalleek: I really liked Meanwhile a lot, though!

[Cespenar]

Firthermore, romantic relationships seem like they'd be fairly difficult....

Would there be any female people to start with?

[Manga Shoggoth]

Then how do you reproduce? Or does it just not happen?

Binary fission?

[chiasaur11]

Binary fission?

Just getting more people every couple of years?
On the plus side, you've got some great nature V nurture expiriments.

[pendell]

Okay, I have just completed the story, but I don't *entirely* understand the final four panels.


I see two possible endings:

1) Jimmy successfully diverts his younger self and resumes his normal life as it was before he accidentally pressed the button -- the timeline is the same just as if he had originally ordered vanilla in the first place. So you can "win" the strip in one short move!

2) Based on the third frame in which the professor is staring bemused into the innards of the killtron (though it might also be the time machine) , I think it possibly Jimmy took the precaution of sabotaging the killtron before he left.

But why? He couldn't have prevented the original kill tron disaster, since he didn't know its access code. So all he would have done is prevented the professor from continuing his plan to repopulate the world. That isn't a benefit. Beside, if the professor originally built it (or at least retains the memories of the original builder), I strongly doubt Jimmy has the capacity to damage the killtron beyond repair).



Would anybody be interested if I posted a spoilered walkthrough?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[RebelRogue]

Would anybody be interested if I posted a spoilered walkthrough?
That could be interesting!

[pendell]

That could be interesting!

As you wish.

Posted in spoiler tags, for those of you who want to drive through yourself!


1. Order chocolate ice cream. You'll
get very sick, and have to go to the
mad scientist's castle to use the bathroom.

2. You're a curious guy, so rather than
simply leave the bathroom immediately,
let's check out his cabinet and see
that he has no bandaids. Continue.
The mad scientist will offer to let
you help him test three of his inventions -- the mind probe,
the kill-tron, and the time machine.

3) Saving the mind probe for last, ask him to explain each of the machines to you, in as much
detail as you can get, especially the non-lethal uses of the kill tron.
But do not play with anything -- yet. Note especially what he tells
you about access codes and where they are hidden.

4) You will be forced to use the mind probe. Use it on the professor,
see that he punched in the access code some time in the last 10 minutes.
But you can't see what it was.

5) Try it on yourself. See you remember sampling the vanilla in the ice cream shop and hating it.

6) At this point you're caught in a loop -- you can continue testing the mind probe on yourself and the professor for as long as you like, but that isn't productive. So break out and ask to test the time machine.

7) You have a choice of running out the door to stop yourself from eating the nasty chocolate ice cream or of looking for the professor. Wait for the professor. He will come out of the bathroom and see you for the first time (quantum paradox here but we'll let it pass). He will offer you two of his machines ... but the time machine is unuseable because it needs ten minutes to warm up. Ask to use the mind probe. Mind probe the professor.
Yay! Now you know the time machine access code!

8) Right about now another version of you will be coming to the door. You need to hide from yourself. You have a choice of hiding in the loo, the time machine, or the killtron. You know that your self will use the bathroom and play in the time machine, therefore neither of these are safe places to hide. Into the killtron with you!

9) Oh, my! That was unfortunate, wasn't it? Fortunately, you know the access code to the time machine. Go into the time machine and enter the access code.

10) You have a choice of going back 20 minutes, 5 months, or 7 years. Do NOT go back 7 years. Instead, first things first -- remember what the professor told you happened five months ago? Sure you do. Go back 5 months, go into the bathroom, look in the medicine cabinet. Now you have the secret access code to the mind probe!

11) Back into the time machine, back 20 minutes. The best way to prevent this dreadful accident is to prevent your ever coming here, which all started with that dreadful chocolate ice cream. Hurry down to the ice cream shop, and you can prevent yourself from ever coming here, and these horrible events will have never happened! Off to the ice cream shop! Go, go! You've only got two minutes!

12) Darn! Not quite fast enough. But you can still chew out the ice cream man. Now you learn something about him you never knew ...
... this is escalating waaayy to fast! Into the machine! Blast! The entire human race has been destroyed! Again!

13) Perhaps there's still a way to undo this ... go to the castle and grab the mind probe. Use it on the ice cream man. See where the microbes came from.

14) Now let's go to the professor's castle with the mind probe and use it on the professor. Fortunately, you got the access code from the professor's bathroom. Apply it.

15) Do NOT mind probe yourself (see below). Mind probe the professor. Learn the rest of the story.

Now you know the rest of the story. You have a choice. Use the Killtron or use the time machine.

16) Not much of a choice, is there? Into the time machine with you. You convince the ice cream man to throw out the chocolate before your other self arrives. The timeline where you kill off the entire human race twice is avoided.

I'm not sure what happened to the professor's machine in the end, there. I think Jimmy sabotaged the kill-tron. But what use is that? The professor invented it. The professor can repair it.

ETA: I have been in e-mail communication with Jason Shiga (who is a true pleasure to talk to!) and he explained the ending thus:



Call me old
fashioned but I don't really like vague or open to interpretation
style endings. So I really do appreciate it when readers tell me about
parts they found confusing. To answer your questions:

1) The infinite loop Jimmy enters when probing his life is caused by
the fact that the probing of his life is also part of his life. Sadly
for Jimmy, this leads to an infinite recursion.
2) The professor looking at the killitron innards panel was supposed
to be part of a larger montage of all the characters going about their
daily lives. I suppose the professor is just doing routine maintenance
or repairs the killitron.





Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Admiral_Kelly]

The only scenario that does not lead to a downer ending is Jimmy ordering vanilla ice cream.In the one where Jimmy undoes killing everyone twice; Jimmys is stuck in a world knowing everyone out there is really a duplicate of himself. In the one where Jimmy probes his own entire life; he will eventually die of starvation; everyone else is dead. In all the others everyone is dead.Great stuff none the less. One thing that bugs me though...Why didn't Jimmy simply use the time machine to rescue his Dad and whoever else he could get (using the time machine multiple times) within the three minute period when the receiving end of the time machine was finished and before the killtron went off for the first time?

[pendell]

Admiral_Kelly,



I disagree; the major ending is equivalent to the vanilla ice cream ending. The reason being that our hero headed off that timeline early and cut it off; his destruction of the human race is undone. We established this is possible earlier in the story when the scientist undid his destruction of his teacup. A nifty bit of foreshadowing.

Another thing to keep in mind is that everybody is a duplicate of Jimmy in the vanilla ice cream ending as well .. in that timeline, the Killtron has been used and the professor is in the process of repopulating the earth. If you look closely, there really IS only one character in the entire story.

The difference between the two endings is that in the first, Jimmy is ignorant of this fact. He is not in the second. Is that a "better" ending? Good question...

Why didn't Jimmy go back in time and rescue people? Because the transmitter portion of the time machine did not exist at that point in history, and therefore any trip back to 7 years is going to be a one way trip. The only thing that can stop the timeline is to enter the access code into the killtron. That can only be entered by the person in the booth, and it is impossible to break into the booth from outside, even with an atom bomb.

So a person who goes back in history to that time cannot go forward in time again. Nor can they stop the killtron. The only thing they can do is have a moment with dad and die with him. Which is precisely what happens in that branch.


Those are my thoughts, anyway.



Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Admiral_Kelly]

Thinking it over, I figured out exactly why he didn't do as I suggested.The ten-minute warm-up period. If his Jimmy's dad had finished the receiving end 10+ minutes before the killtron went off then more people could have been sparred from the first total human genocide. Of course; I think it would still be possible to fix the whole 'must warm up ten minutes after use' flaw; but that is beyond the scope of the story.Back to the downer ending thing:While technically every character is the same; in actuality they're not. When Jimmy went back in time and stopped his infant self from using the mind probe on his Dad, there were two Jimmys from that point on. We will call them Jimmy Prime and Jimmy Junior. Jimmy Prime never actually lives out Jimmy Junior's life; he gives an alternate version of himself the life he wanted. All the other lives he does live out, apparently (Jimmy Prime 'dies', goes back in time, makes himself younger, becomes someone else, lives out his life, rinse and repeat). When Jimmy Junior uses the mind probe on Jimmy Prime, he gets the full memories and knowledge of ten thousand lives. He even considers suicide at that point (which you can decide happens). Instead, he decides it is best to give all his other selves (technically, only two people) their lives back by using the time machine over again.

...Which also means there are now two Jimmy Juniors; the Jimmy who got vanilla ice cream and the Jimmy who is now traumatized, lost his childhood, and probably out their somewhere alone and miserable. That right there is a downer ending.