Chapter Text

Experiments on Doomed Timelines

By medicinalElectricals

Timestamp 74.41

Experiment report: 4 days since session entry.

We’ve all come into contact with doomed timelines. And doomed people. I am sure that almost all of us would have experienced the death of our immediate family during our first session. For some, learning that they were going to die regardless was reassuring. For me, it made me wonder. What would it take to prevent a doomed timeline individual from dying?

I have been gifted with a very stable replay session this time around. All 14 of us, relatively experienced replayers with mostly non-murderous psyches, and so far, very little gamebreaking glitches. We all decided a few meetings in that we would create an extended session itinerary, take things very safe, and try and use this time to relax, deal with our issues, and spend some time not constantly in immediate danger like all of our befores. Current schedule sets total session length at roughly 2 and a half years.

If I can get a single doomed timeline body to survive even close to that long, it would be a revolutionary discovery. To this end, I have acquired 26 bodies from the presession world that have been taken with me in this apartment block [Note: observant viewers will note that apartment style dwellings usually only bring in the building frame and the players own apartment. To include the entire apartment, I used the “Houseboundry stacked declaration” glitch as detailed in thespianGlassblowers “Guide to initial housing conditions and medium entry”]

7 bodies, designated B-0 through 6 have been designated for experimental, esoteric procedures of removing doomed status.

The other 19 bodies, A-0 through 18, I will keep as secure and well maintained as possible, for the purpose of seeing how far “conventional” protection can keep them alive for while still maintaining a doomed status.

Current status: A-0: Age 21. Male. Healthy A-1: Age 52. Female. Overweight but otherwise healthy. A-2: Age 49. Male. Healthy A-3: Age 13. Male. Healthy A-4: Age 9. Female. Healthy A-5: Age 38. Female. Missing left leg below knee. Injury sustained shortly after medium entry. A-6: Age 73. Male. Medicated heart disease. A-7: Age 74. Female. Hip replacement. Type 2 Diabetes. A-8: Age 34. Male. Healthy A-9: Age 12. Female. Healthy A-10: Age 11. Male. Healthy A-11: Age 41: Male. Many broken bones, damaged shortly after medium entry. A-12: Age 32. Female. Healthy A-13: Age 29: Female. Healthy A-14: Age 58. Male. Early stage lung cancer. A-15: Age 45. Female. Healthy A-16: Age 44. Male. Deaf. A-17: Age 41. Female. Healthy A-18: Age 56. Male. Healthy

Overall, I could have not hoped for a better experimental group of subjects. None of them are already in immediate danger of dying. A-14s lung cancer may present issues further in the experiment, but I believe that I can cure it using my Life aspect abilities.

Containment procedures It became apparent to me early on that despite these non-players only possessing what a minority of replayers would call a life or consciousness, they still seemed to heavily object to being contained and monitored. Initially I had hoped to keep them confined in the makeshift facilities I had my server player construct, with food, water and essentials being transportalized in daily, but it soon became apparent that they had no intentions of participating without struggle. Many, in the absence of knowledge, became to believe that me, or rather the original player whose place I had taken, was responsible for not only their entrapment, but the entire circumstances of entry into the medium. During preliminary examinations they would become hostile, demand release and information, and often become very distressed upon being informed that earth was destroyed and that I could not return them there. Many attempted physical violence against my person, to no avail. To solve this issue, I have devised a containment procedure that will ensure that they can not interfere with the experiment. It will also eliminate many potential dangers in of itself, such as suicide, which is permissible for their beings. The life aspect ability [To sleep, perchance to dream] is a low level buff that is used to increase the sleep coefficient of targets, and to also induce fatigue in the target. I have found that if I increase the given power to the ability by roughly 50,000% (A less significant upgrade than it would sound due to the very low cost of the ability in the first place) by freestyling aspect modification, a permeant deep sleep state can be induced. Unfortunately, this only works on those with zero or near zero sempersand, which is universally only found on non-player humans. Extended usage of this technique may result in irreparable brain damage and muscle decay, but should not cause actual bodily harm. With the issue of consciousness solved, a type of “stasis pod” was easy enough to alchemise, and with mild life aspect infusement, the pod was able to provide its inhabitant with nutrition, waste disposal and biometric monitoring. Currently, all A series subjects are contained in my lab floor room. 4 hired consorts have been acquired to provide routine checking of systems that they are intelligent enough to handle (at this point, only cleaning of subjects). To avoid interference with future experiments that may require intact cognitive facilities, B series subjects have not been put to sleep. I have instead decided to keep them in a separate containment facility. Suicide and self-harm prevention will be an issue, but I believe that I can prevent serious issues from occurring if I ensure that their environment is unable to be misused, and also if I provide them with adequate psychological stimulation. For this, they have been provided with a collection of 10,000 pre-session human written books and 2550 tv and movie DVDs (Thanks to the society of human culture preservation for the data and achhemisation assistance). I will also take it upon myself to regularly monitor their status, hopefully when they stop attempting to aggress me whenever I show myself.

Experiment report: 12 days since session entry.

Just what makes someone or something doomed? Current consensus on the topic is that the “Doomed” flag sources from individua who hail from a doomed reality. Where doomed reality seems to be defined as “reality that is not a reality that is not doomed” or in other words, not as is the common vernacular, not “Alpha” timelines. This logic is as circular as it sounds.

Is the code that attempts to end those are flagged as doomed on the doomed themselves, or merely a tag on them that invites larger sburb code to take action against them? Indeed, is there code at all, or is doomed a property of reality itself that sburb has simply adopted as part of a game mechanic? Is such a question even meaningful, given how deeply sburb and reality itself are intertwined, that they may as well be said to be one in the same?

Analysis from our Guard of Doom have confirmed that all test subjects do in fact have a doomed status, not that them not was ever really something that I had considered. Analysis from our Seer of Heart has placed all of their surface level stats as expected, including luck, which is strange since I had expected that luck would be set at zero, due to the anecdotal convoluted coincidence that often are the end of doomed individual. Perhaps ParadoxPotentia’s theory on doomed status effecting luck checks rather than luck stat itself has more substance to it than I first assumed.

So far all reports of death of doomed individuals has been that which is in the realm of possibility to begin with. None of them have reported simple cessation of life, which is what I would expect. After all, is not the simplest way to kill someone to remove their life? Such a thing is surely within the games capabilities. Or is that just a misconception based on me being a native life player, and the simplest way to kill someone would be, as our dame would say, “Sticking a fuckhuge sword through their goddamn chest”.