Game 24: Viewfinder

If you remember nothing STOP and read this before you do anything else!!!! Day 1: I don't know where I am. I have the sense that something may have gone very wrong, because I also don't remember who I am. The first thing I can recall is arriving earlier today. The place appeared to be a building floating in the air - I looked down off the edge and all I could see was a blue haze, I have no idea how far down the ground is. I can see mountains in the distance in all directions, and I wonder if I am above some vast, unseen valley below. I think nobody has lived here for a long time, but someone used to live here. I found notes and a recording of someone's voice, talking about someone named Mirra - the name doesn't bring any memories to mind.

Plants have begun to overtake the walkways

Almost as soon as I arrived, I heard her - Jesse. I know it's Jesse's voice, though I don't recall anything else about her. I think she knows me, and she can somehow see what I see... but I only hear her. I tried speaking and I don't think she heard me. As I explored, disaster - an old, rotting wooden walkway to the pagoda collapsed under me and I fell about ten feet down. Despite landing badly, I wasn't in any pain, which also feels wrong somehow.

Jesse seems to want the best for me but she doesn't know much about this place either.

I was trapped - with sheer walls on all sides I couldn't climb back out. I wondered why it was built this way - surely whoever used the table and paints here must have had some egress? I wished that I hadn't tried to cross the bridge before testing it - and suddenly, I felt as though I could make that wish a reality, like finding a muscle I'd never used. I concentrated on that feeling, and words fail me when I try to describe exactly how I did it, but in moments I was back where I'd been, safely out of the pit. At first I thought I had somehow flew, but no - the collapsed bridge was now intact again. I'd somehow un-done the entire event.

I tried it again and the bridge re-formed before my eyes.

I had found a way of rewinding myself and the world around me... but not everything. Jesse watched it happen and expressed surprise, so SHE wasn't rewound with it. Instead, she commented on the odd photograph nearby.

I didn't recognize it so I took a closer look.

I took the photo and was examining it, wondering where this was and how the photographer had gotten there. I was holding it close to my face to examine a minute detail that had caught my eye when I found I was no longer holding the photo, but I was still viewing the image - imagine my shock when I found that the photo had become real.

Jesse was shocked as well.

I paced around the sudden appearance of the photo made real. It was as though the photograph had just been superimposed over reality, with a part of the landscape simply now consisting of what the image had formerly shown. Part of the walkway was consumed by empty space - I am grateful that there were no others present here or they might have been harmed.

Most disturbing to me was that in the distance the background must have grown to an immense size.

I gingerly stepped onto the road from the photograph and found that it was every bit as solid as it appeared. Despite being in black and white, it was clearly real. I approached the strange device that was the focus of the photo, and Jesse identified it as a teleporter.

I peered into it and could make out a few objects there.

I probably should have made a more thorough exploration of this building for food and water but, I'll admit, I was curious. I touched the large button on the machine, and I found that I had been transported to the location I saw in.

There is another teleporter here but it does not work.

I wonder if another teleporter is what brought me to the first building, there appeared to be no way to walk there.

I have found a beanbag chair in this new building (which is floating by itself like first one) and I find that I am exhausted - the effort of 'rewinding' has drained me. I am going to sleep here for now. Day 2: I woke up and found another 'Loggagraph'. This one was a recording between Aharon, a painter, and his subject - Hiraya. Something Hiraya said struck me...

She called this place a 'digital landscape'.

Does that mean this world isn't real? Am I inside a computer somehow? Is that why after a night of sleep (or was there even a night? I fell asleep while it was still light and so it remains now that I am awake). I think I understand the problem with the teleporter - it requires more power, which comes in the form of large batteries. One was already set up and I found another but I think it requires three. I haven't found a third, but I did find a photo with a battery in it. I've been trying to repeat what happened with the first photo but so far it has remained a photograph. Day 3:

I tried for most of the day but still no luck with the photo. I'm wondering if the incident with the first picture was actually my doing or not. Perhaps it was a fluke, something Jesse or the photograph itself did, and it's not something I can repeat. If so, I may be trapped here. Between attempts I've been looking at the painting that artist left behind.

Is Aharon a bad artist or would his subject not remain in place for him?

Jesse has not spoken to me at all today. I hope she will again. Day 4: I DID IT! I also very nearly brained myself. I was lying on my back, holding the photo above me after hours of effort, and I'd simply given up on making an effort. That's when it happened, I was no longer holding the photo, but I could still see the image... and since I'd been holding the image above myself, the battery in it promptly fell and nearly struck me.

I don't know if I would have been harmed but I'm not eager to find out.

The black and white battery still provides power just as the real ones do. I tried to take the beanbag chair with me just in case I was transported somewhere with no place to sleep, and that was an excellent idea because that place had nowhere to sleep - sadly it is also a failed idea as I appeared there without it. There was naught but a single photograph there. Now that I have a better feel for how the trick is accomplished I was able to manifest it after several attempts.

I took care to place it in such a way that I could walk onto it

Within this photograph I discovered another, and I was careless - I inadvertently manifested it on my first attempt, and the photograph was oriented badly. Chairs, debris, and a battery that I needed to power the teleporter in the first photo went tumbling off into the void.

Without the ability to rewind I would be stuck here forever.

I must be cautious when manifesting photographs - I will be more careful in the future. The place I have just teleported to is incredible but I am exhausted, I will write more tomorrow. Day 5: I slept here:

Compared to my prior accommodations this hammock was heavenly.

This building is more extensive and well furnished than the others. There's a bathtub and large sitting area, it seems like a wonderful place to relax. Jesse has been talking to me again and I'm glad she's back.

But some of the things she says only makes me wonder more about where I am.

There are multiple teleporters here. One seems to lead back to places I've come from, but I have no desire to head back there. Another seems to be malfunctioning and I can't get it to display a location. The last one leads somewhere new - but I'm not going to use it today. Today I'm going to spend the rest of the day relaxing, right here. Jesse already wants me to move on but she isn't here and doesn't seem to appreciate my fear - what if I teleport somewhere and there's no other teleporter there? I could end up trapped somewhere far worse than this place. Day 6:

Spent the day here relaxing. I tried perusing the books, they're mostly art related and didn't hold my attention. Jesse seemed disappointed that I was still here but I am getting one more night in this hammock before I risk the teleporter. I wrote a copy of this diary on the wall here in case someone else eventually finds this place. Day 7: An upside-down bridge works almost as well as one that's right-side up.

It did require more climbing but I got across.

I found another note that mentioned the need for better 'code' for tea leaves. I think I am indeed in some sort of virtual world, and that made me wonder - can I die here? What if I jump off these islands into the void? I don't have the courage to try it, who knows what's down there? I've found that manifesting photos in the wrong place can be incredibly destructive to the environment - manifesting while simply holding the photo in front of a structure can wipe that structure from existence.

Rewinding saved me from stranding myself

Just after becoming cognizant of this destructive potential and resolving to use this power responsibly, I managed to slice a battery in half.

It did not provide power in this state.

There's nowhere pleasant to sleep tonight, not much I can do about it so best I can do is a patch of grass. I wish I could find my way back to the hammock. Day 8:

Well that was a hell of a week. Can't believe the damn system wiped my memory like that - what were they thinking? This damn tech probably could've given me brain damage if something went wrong with that process. All in the name of being immersive - hell, something probably DID go wrong with it, who wants to run through a sim not knowing anything about who they're supposed to be or what's going on?

Fat lot of help Jesse was too, leaving me to wander around like that. She says she had no idea I was crashed out of my mind in there, couldn't get a good read on what was going on with me. We should've done a trial run, more tests, something - but we're short on money and the world is short on time. Ok, here's the deal - I'm going back into the sim. Jesse says there's a good chance that I'll lose my memory again - so if you're reading this and you don't remember what happened yesterday or who you are, then you ARE me and here's what you need to know: Your name is Calvin Levenworth. You are in Viewfinder, a virtual world that was built almost a century ago. Entering this world (again) wiped your memory. The reason you are in there is because the real world looks like this:

Yeah, it's fucked.

The climate out there is done for, but you can change that. Maybe. You've known Jesse since college and have a shared love of antique tech. Jesse found out that there are blueprints for a weather control machine somewhere in the virtual world you are in now, and you and Jesse think those blueprints are the real planet-saving deal. She's trying to hack a copy out of there while you run through the damn thing and see if you can find 'em that way. If Jesse talks, you listen. Jesse can't hear you but she can see what you do, so if you need her to pull you out, just write 'EXIT' somewhere in big letters and stare at it until she notices. Do not ask Jesse to get you out unless you really need to, because we don't want this damn thing wiping our brains any more than it has to, and I am resolved to find those blueprints. So do us both a favor and get them on this next dive. If Jesse doesn't get you out for whatever reason, here's how I got out last time - I crashed the system.

I put a photo on a photo on a photo

This is strictly last resort territory. Jesse says I bypassed the normal memory restoration routine and I'm lucky the failsafe kicked in.

Now I have the worst goddamn headache of my life.

This diary should make it in there with you. Keep writing in it, every day. I just spent a week not knowing who I was or what the hell was going on, and believe me you don't want to repeat it. Hopefully this is enough.

I'm going back in.

Go get those blueprints. I made a bet with Jesse that we'd find them first.

Day 9: The mountains are beautiful. I wish I could reach them.

For all I know the blueprints could be in that tower.

Assuming what's written here is true, I lost my memory again when I came back here. I think I was here before, there's a hammock and a bathtub that match up with the entry for the 5th day, but I didn't find any copy of the diary written on the wall as it claimed, so I don't know if the simulation removed it or if this isn't actually the same place. I heard a woman talking to me. I assume that's Jesse, but until I read this I had no idea who she was. She's certainly talking like she already knows me. I should have told her to tell me to immediately read this diary because that didn't happen and I was confused for a long time. Hell, I'm still pretty confused - can I really trust this book? Did I really write it or is someone messing with me? I found some chocolate and other food here so I tried some... and it is delicious. I get the sense that this simulation was meant to be enjoyed.

There are a lot of books here so I spent my time looking through them - after all, why wouldn't the blueprints be in a book somewhere? No dice. I also tried 'rewinding' but I couldn't figure out how to do it - I haven't found any photographs either. The hammock looks inviting. I'll try the teleporter tomorrow. Day 10: What a day! Things started off badly as I arrived in a hallway lined with books. There were no photos or teleporters that I could find so I feared I would be trapped, but nonetheless I began searching the books for blueprints - and there were many to search though. Eventually I found a drawing in one of the books.

I had no idea if it could work but....

After trying the method described with photos earlier, to my surprise it worked - I found myself able to walk around inside it.

There is more to the pictures than meets the eye

Behind the walls that I could see I found recordings of a man and a woman speaking - possibly Hiraya and Aharon. They seemed to be enjoying themselves - which, in a way, I suppose I am too - how whimsical, to be able to step inside an imagined world! That was only the beginning. Within the drawing, a painting.

Colors vibrant and unfocused

Within the painting... a cartoon!

Jumping here made a little 'doink' noise.

Within the cartoon, a castle.

A really low-res castle.

Within the castle, a photograph of a teleporter that led back to the place with a hammock.

The portal that appeared to be malfunctioning is now showing a location, and a new portal has appeared here. A decision for tomorrow. This virtual world is wonderful. I almost didn't notice that Jesse hardly spoke to me all day, perhaps she's busy. Or perhaps she's asleep - I don't have a good way to keep track of the passage of time. I don't even know if the 'Days' in this diary are actually days - I'll just be making a new entry after I sleep. Perhaps that's what I've been doing all this time. Day 11: I chose the wrong portal.

I have been wandering for hours. One photo is contained within another, which somehow again contains the first - shouldn't that be impossible? The photos are impossible, something is upside-down or sideways no matter which way the image is turned but the tables and chairs never fall, should they not fall?

An infinite maze of my own mistakes

I need to rewind, I never figured out how, I never needed to before but I'm trapped now, if I can't fix this I

Day 11 again:

I got the hang of rewinding. It happened just when I thought couldn't actually do it, when I felt real fear and the need to undo what I'd done. I took my time again with this place, slowly and carefully trying to orient the images so that I could find another way forward when the pattern began to repeat itself or I found a dead end. Eventually I discovered a photo showing just a piece of a teleporter, clearly taken from above.

So I looked down as I manifested it and fell into it.

What a relief to again be home with the hammock. There is something new here - it looks like a tunnel in the sky. I don't know what might be causing this place to change but I'm nearly certain it wasn't there when I first arrived. Or rather when I remember first arriving, and there's no mention of it earlier.

Jesse also seems to be seeing it for the first time

I will see if I can reach the tunnel tomorrow, I think I may be able to grab onto the metal railing that leads into it. Day 12:

I fell. I climbed onto the metal railing, had a sudden sense of vertigo, and dropped into the blue.

I was about to rewind but I found myself almost immediately back on the island in a sudden, jarring transition. I have since recovered and I have absolutely no desire to repeat that experience, so I headed for the new teleporter instead. There, I found a piece of technology that Jesse says is truly ancient - a "photo copier". With it I was able to make surprisingly low quality versions of existing photos, but it still had some utility.

I turned a picture of one battery into three.

I found a photo of a person and I tried to manifest it without success - perhaps I can only manifest photos of inanimate things, it was silly of me to hope to conjure up someone I could speak to. I also found a sketch of some sort of water circulation system. It's not instructions for building a weather control machine but it gives me hope that the people who were here before were thinking along those lines.

Easy to forget... did this place make you forget too?

I returned to my 'home' island to a surprise - a railcar coming out of that sky tunnel. It had a passenger aboard!

It's a cat!

CAIT the Cat is difficult to look at - I can never quite find the perspective to make it appear whole. It talks though, and told me a little bit about this place - apparently it's some sort of program designed to maintain Viewfinder.

CAIT wouldn't give me much detail beyond that but it seemed happy to have me for company.

The railcar ride took me to another island - CAIT says this one is Hiraya's island, and it feels different. The centerpiece is a magnificent garden with a large tree - Jesse marveled at it, said she's never been so close to one. I suppose things much be truly awful in the real world if that's the case.

Or perhaps Jesse doesn't get out much.

There are more sketches and plans here concerning water and possibly weather systems, but from what I've heard of her I'm not sure Hiraya is an engineer. Still, this is the first day I've seen anything like this.

The weather control machine must be in here somewhere.

Weather and water were not the only thing on Hiraya's mind.

I suspect she had quite a sweet tooth.

Hiraya's garden has no good places to sleep but it seems I can use the railcar to return to hammock island as needed. The ride home is a nice time to record these entries.

Day 13: Hiraya (I assume) developed a new way of 'painting worlds' where she placed them on the walls, disjointed.

It must have been difficult for her to get things to line up correctly.

I found I could manifest them as with the photographs if I stood in the just the right place and looked at them just the right way.

I think Hiraya was shorter than me because I had to bend slightly to get the angle right.

This way of manifesting is interesting but much less versatile than the photographs, since with those I can choose where and at what orientation they appear. I'm no longer as worried about being trapped somewhere - since I know this is a simulation Jesse can pull me out if that happens.

The people who made this didn't want to be trapped either, they always leave a way to return home.

And getting home is just a matter of perspective

Jesse called me today, said something is interfering with her regular communication but she was able to contact me through a virtual phone system.

And this time I was able to talk back to her

I explained the situation with my second memory loss and she sympathized and answered my nagging questions about what was going on. I told her to assume this will happen every time I go into this system so hopefully if I have to go through this again she'll make it easier. On her end she's having no luck on the hacking, Viewfinder is so old that there are compatibility problems every step of the way. One of the Loggagraphs has a new voice on it - someone named Chi Leung. I don't know much more than that, it seemed to be a recording off them playing some sort of card game. Our conversation has snapped me back to focus on the mission - I sometimes get carried away with the whimsy of the place.

Manifesting some playing cards and watching the spades / hearts fall out got me no closer to a weather blueprint.

Day 14: Good news: I discovered a camera!

Bad news: It was anchored in place.

If I ever get ahold of a portable camera I will become a very dangerous person in this world. As it is, I was able to perform some mischief by manifesting photos in front of the camera.

Somehow this teleporter was still functional.

The ability to take my own photos opens up a world of possibilities.

A photo of one battery leads to another battery....

And I may have enjoyed myself a little more than I ought to considering the criticality of saving the world.

I did not NEED 8 batteries, but I WANTED 8 batteries.

Day 15 TOMODATCHI DAY I have made an incredible discovery - an ancient plant-growing simulation.

I must discover its secrets. Yes I manifested it.

Day 16:

Jesse needs to stop calling me this is critical research.

Day 18:

The plant has died I must begin again.

Day 21: The secret... is music.

Music lures the bees which makes the plants grow.

I finally picked up Jesse's call and she does not understand. She is in fact very angry with me. We'll see who's laughing when I tell the world about this.

Day 22:

The last few days are a blur. Did I really spend a week playing some stupid plant game I found? What is wrong with me? I'm not thinking straight. I find little paper notes here and there and the ones I found today don't make sense.

Did I write these? Surely not... right?

I told CAIT about my search for the blueprints and the cat offered to help but wasn't sure if they actually existed, so we'll see if that yields anything. CAIT was more helpful when it came to Chi Leung, which is timely because the tram will now connect to their island. CAIT claims Chi Leung was an incredible engineer that designed the portals, batteries, and other mechanisms on these islands. Chi Leung's island is a model of efficiency and organization.

I wonder if Chi recreated their workshop from the real world.

I was feeling a bit disappointed that Chi's worlds seemed to lack the whimsy and artistic flare of Hirram's when I found a new toy - one I had been hoping to receive.

Yes, it was a camera. Technically I found a picture of a camera but that's an easy fix.

It was a joyous occasion, and there was a photo of a birthday cake nearby. Armed with my own camera, I can take a lot of photos - of anything I want.

Happy Birthday to Me! Happy Birthday to Me!

Every photo can double the number of things that exist if you keep putting the new objects together with the old ones.

It's probably good they only let me take 5 pictures.

Did you ever want to hear what 32 instances of the same conversation sound like when played slightly offset from each other?

Teleporters, batteries, and loggagraphs all still function when copied.

Day 23: I may be enjoying this camera too much. I don't remember the 'real' world and I find that it's hard to make myself care that much about it. I realize that's... wrong, maybe even evil to waste time here while people may be dying. But it's all so abstract - I don't know those people, and doesn't climate stuff happen on a long timescale anyway? I haven't stopped looking for the device - if I find it eventually will a few days really matter? CAIT says it searched for it but nothing there yet. If the resident AI cat can't find it, is it really here? What made us believe it was in here in the first place? These are things I should have asked Jesse but it didn't occur to me until now, and last time I found a phone it only had a voice message from her - she says it's getting harder to contact me as I get deeper into the simulation. I don't really mind. Today's entertainment du jour came in the form of a videogame screen with a double-jump powerup.

Picking up duplicates of the powerup increased my jump height exponentially.

After carefully collecting all of them, I tried to see how high I could go.

I was airborne for almost half a minute.

Day 24: The camera is dangerous and I nearly trapped myself today. I must take care to never repeat this.

Prior to today, I never found more than five rolls of film pre-loaded in the camera, and I often wished I had more. Well, be careful what you wish you. This island had two rolls of film, but they weren't in the camera - they were sitting on a desk. Which meant that if I got creative with the one photo I started with, I could take a picture of both of them.

Yes, this means I have infinite film.

This seemed like heaven - now I could take and manifest as many photos as I wanted. I imagined whole worlds flowing from this camera.

And those worlds were looking pretty cool.

The problem was subtle, at first. Just a hitch here and there, a brief millisecond where the world seemed to stutter after yet another photo manifestation. And then the world stopped for at least a full second as I was working on a great wall of film... and I foolishly shrugged and thought 'Eh, it'll be fine.' It was not fine. The next photo I manifested caused the world - and myself - to freeze in place for over a minute. I couldn't move. I desperately hoped that Viewfinder wouldn't crash and leave me memory-less beyond the past several days - or wipe my brain entirely. Even when things un-froze, the world stuttered awfully when I moved - more like lurched - around. And I still had yet to take a photo of the sideways teleporter in order to escape to the next island. Waiting for that teleporter to appear was an eternity of not knowing if I'd ever reach the damn thing; I must have been stuck there just looking at my escape for five, maybe ten minutes, completely unable to move, and I never ever want to relive the experience.

Real talk: 2 Frames per second

Viewfinder thankfully did not crash and the system recovered when all my handiwork disappeared and I arrived on the next island. That's more than enough for one day. Day 25: Jessie managed to contact me via the phones. It was great to speak to her again but the news was not so good - Jessie told me that the simulation itself is corrupt and it gets worse as I explore it. She said that it could get to the point where she couldn't pull me out safely and I'd have to find a way to extract myself if that happened.

She wasn't sure what 'my own exit' would even look like so I'm in the dark.

I don't remember if that's something I was aware of when I agreed to do this. Hell, I don't remember agreeing to do this, come to think of it. I guess it doesn't matter. Finding that weather machine thing will save lives - a lot of lives. I'd rather not get my brain fried doing it, but better than sitting around all day playing Tamagawhatsis. Jessie thinks that whole thing might have been because my brain got a bit messed up by the memory routines, maybe they're corrupted too. Still, she thinks I'm our best shot - and I don't want her to come in here and maybe also lose her mind in this place. My mind is still good to go, most days. Today had a particularly fun island to navigate where I took a picture of some flooring and then jumped off into the void and was falling when I manifested the floor under me - this was so I could look up and get another picture of the teleporter along with the whole wire circuit that gives it power. Took about three tries with rewinding because free falling doesn't exactly put me in the nice, relaxing mindset that you need to manifest.

Then I fell again and manifested this upside-down so it was right-side-up.

CAIT's been following me around, making small talk. Even though it's a program I get the sense that it was lonely without people here. Day 26: I found a proper blueprint today. It's nice to confirm that there are actual blueprints here, somewhere. It was just lying there, discarded. I may have to look everywhere to find the one I'm after.

It was not a weather control machine.

I don't know if it was on of Chi Leung's little bits of cleverness or a corruption of the system, but I experienced... whatever the opposite of photo manifestation is when I had part of reality go flat on me. Right after I had walked out of there.

It was disconcerting

I still don't think there's a proper day / night cycle here but on one island that I visited it was night time.

I couldn't see any stars but the moon was bright and the place was peaceful.

I've thoroughly explored Chi Leung's islands by now - I'm going to try further up the tram line.

Day 27: Mirren's island looks like a Victorian observatory. Is that right? How do I even remember the word 'Victorian'? I certainly don't remember where I learned it. It just popped into my head when I was looking at it.

Maybe the rain made it feel Victorian?

Mirren's islands have a strange purple material that doesn't interact with the camera properly. The purple structure appears to have taken Mirren by surprise too, her notes indicate that she thought it was some sort of infection or error at first, but later she began studying its properties and decided it was worth looking closer at. Camera-wise, it's like CAIT - photographs of the material don't show it.

In fact, you can reveal what purple material may be hiding by taking a picture of it.

Another interesting property is that manifesting photos on it also doesn't replace the purple stuff, which proved crucial in bridging these gaps.

Normally manifesting this photo would have erased the platform in the middle.

Caught a message from Jesse near the end of the day - she's very optimistic that the blueprints will be here, weather was Mirren's area of work, moreso than the other individuals that were in Viewfinder. Day 28: I dislike the purple substance. It doesn't seem dangerous at least, but near my feet it shifts into a repeating pattern of squares, and it's slightly sticky, which leads to a tacky, almost static sound when I'm walking on it.

That unpleasantness was nothing compared to today's discovery

I found confirmation that Mirren was working on the machine Jesse and I are after. I found files on 'Violet Rise', some sort of environmental manipulation project. I confess the actual files here we beyond my understanding but I archived them anyway - they're not machine blueprints but maybe someone smarter than me can get something out of them. Or maybe I'll be able to when my memory comes back. I can't tell if Violet Rise IS the weather machine project or whether Mirren was cooking up the weather machine in response to something wrong with Violet Rise, but for the first time I feel like I'm closing in on the blueprints we came here to find. I'd like to hold on to that particular feeling but it's since been replaced by anger. That fuzzy little shit CAIT suddenly spoke up and said that it knew of the machine I've been asking it about this whole time... and then unhelpfully said I was 'close'. I've been at this for days! I've practically lost my mind and the system AI just... it just sucks! Maybe it's corrupt too, I don't know. I shouldn't get mad at it, it's a program and all.

Real helpful, kitty.

day 2S caits secret i know it

found it in the files

shark week

on discovery channel

Day 30(?): I woke up to find myself lying on the purple substance, and not in the hammock where I'm sure I last went to sleep. Or at least the last place I remember sleeping.

I don't remember what happened yesterday, and I don't even know if it was a single day. I worry that my mind might be deteriorating, who knows what this old software has done to my brain.

I think Mirren might have been affected by whatever this system is doing to me. Some of her notes don't make sense, something about sound being the key to controlling the weather? That doesn't seem right.

Mirren's islands are either more difficult to escape from or I'm just not thinking straight.

Some of this stuff would drive just about anyone insane.

On the other hand, maybe she's just working through the problem. Scientists are wrong all the time, right? And I'm here because I can't design a weather control machine, obviously, and neither can anyone else or we wouldn't be trying to find one here. I feel ashamed of that. I don't know exactly how old Viewfinder is but... we couldn't figure this out ourselves? None of our scientists from then until now has this thing?

It's probably a goddamn wild goose chase. If the damn thing actually works why didn't the plans get released when Mirren made it? Shit. This is probably all for nothing.

I stopped for the day when I found the watermelon. Damn tasty.

Even the black and white ones still taste good.

Day 31: Mirren appears to have created these portals which change the whole world around you into another 'style', they are a delight to traverse.

Sadly this island does not have a camera, I would love to experiment with both

Day 32: This is hell. The damn blueprints are probably in this damn room, and it's absolute utter hell.

I found Mirren's archives.

I think it's everything. Her life's work. The culmination of a brilliant scientist's lifetime product of knowledge and research. CAIT says this is all of it, everything she ever wrote or designed, so if there's a weather control machine blueprint at all, it's here - and NONE of it is labeled or organized.

I'm going to be here awhile. Day 36:

This is impossible. I wish the damn cat would help me search but CAIT got very recalcitrant when we got here and it's just watching me do all the work with a sad expression on its face. It seemed helpful when I first mentioned the weather control machine but now I feel as through it doesn't want me to find the blueprints.

There are sequential, numbered pages of the same document scattered across entirely different file cabinets. This level of disorganization doesn't feel haphazard or thrown together anymore - this is maliciousness, not carelessness. Day 40: Paydirt.

There's pages and pages more on subsystems and components

Somehow it was the one document in the whole mess that was kept together, and writing that sets off warning bells but mostly I feel relieved, this is what Jessie and I have been searching for. She'll be thrilled. I'm over the moon. It's a couple hours on the tram from here back to the hammock and I didn't want to spend the time commuting. Tomorrow I'm getting out of here. Day 41:

CAIT wanted to show it to me before I left.

Mirren built the machine already

I tried to wring that scrawny cat's neck - doesn't work. Can't even get some small satisfaction from that. You know what else doesn't work?

CAIT says the machine never worked. Mirren couldn't make it work even in a virtual world.

You know what that psycho little feline said? It said it didn't want me to feel how Mirren did, to feel that disappointment. Told me not to even try turning the thing on. You know what would have made me feel less bad, CAIT? Just being straight with me however long ago we met. The damn thing knew all along, but it didn't tell me.

I told the cat I was even more disappointed in it than I was in the machine, though I guess that's a lie. It actually looked hurt, if you can believe that. Good. I've wasted a huge amount of time here and that thing is responsible.

I found a phone and got in touch with Jessie.

She took the news about as well as anyone could.

Jessie can't pull me out from this deep, so I went back to the tram to get the hell out of here, but the tunnel back the way it came isn't there anymore.

Shit. I gotta find my own way out.

Day day day whatever

psycho cat cant tell me what to do

go where i want

pretty sure it sabotages files cat wants to keep me here liar

a selfie im not looking good not feeling good

fail safe find fail safe

its me or the cat

the world is breaking the camera is wrong is breaking the world

how did the camera ever take pictures and also leave them this is more correct

FOUND IT

THE CLIMATE MACHINE BLUEPrINT

here here it is five minutes

five minutes nine worlds 300 seconds

water water watermelon

watermelon

Day unknown: Viewfinder is gone. Mostly. It's just me, CAIT, and a teleporter. I'm responsible - however hazy the memory of the decision is - for destroying it. I crashed the program in order to exit.

CAIT is sorry for what I went through here. It didn't want me to leave. It says it just missed humans so much that it was desperate for the company. It doesn't know how long it was alone. I told CAIT that I understood. I'm not angry anymore. I think I've been through a lot to get here. I feel exhausted, burned out. I was trapped - but how long has CAIT been trapped here alone? CAIT is a program that the people here abandoned, a program that could feel lonely, for god knows how long in whatever subjective way it experiences time.

I don't remember, CAIT. But I know it's real.

And... that was it. I used the teleporter one last time. Epilogue:

Where... where am I?

Wasn't I in an office building? The world around me was barren, dead. I pinched myself - no pain. I wasn't in the real world yet. CAIT's last little thing it wanted to show me, I guess. I walked to the tree.

That's when I found the seed, right before I woke up.

The genetic code for a plant that could clean the atmosphere.

I don't know if it was from Mirren or one of the others. Hell, if they'd developed it, we'd have known about this year ago. I think it came from CAIT, that cat went on about alternate possibilities and solutions when I mentioned the climate machine, I was too dumb to listen. Too single-minded. That AI cat probably had decades to sit with the research they'd done and make progress on it.

My lost memories are coming back to me in their own time. Now that Jessie and I are semi-famous I'm looking forward to the future and less focused on the past anyway - though I do want to set the record straight on this discovery. Jessie and I don't deserve all the credit - the people in Viewfinder laid the groundwork, the cat iterated on that and I really believe it deserves credit for the invention.

Me? I wandered around a virtual world whacked out of my mind half the time and was lucky enough to get a gift, that's all. It was a wonderful place, and it's a tragedy that more people can't visit it. There's nothing else quite like it.