Mother of Learning: ARC 3

2

Ten more fruitless minutes were spent on trying to question the Guardian about the Maker, its agents, whether it was a god or not, how long it had been since the Maker had last interacted with the Gate, and so on.

The Guardian’s response didn’t waver: they weren’t allowed to know.

Zorian wished he could just invade the thing’s mind and be done with it, but their inability to perform magic in this place extended to his psychic abilities. They had no way to force the entity into cooperation and eventually decided to move on to other topics.

“You said no iteration is allowed to last for more than a month,” Zorian reminded the Guardian. “Can you tell us why?”

“When an iteration is over, everything in it is destroyed,” the Guardian began. Well, good to have that confirmed… Zorian had assumed as much for a while now, but having the Guardian verify it was nice. “Under certain philosophical outlooks, this could be viewed as mass murder…”

“But not under all of them, huh?” Zorian mumbled, distaste souring the words in his mouth.

“Others do not view destruction of copies as a problem, so long as they do not diverge excessively from the original,” the Guardian continued,

ignoring Zorian’s interjection. “The time loop is set up under such an assumption. Thus, it is imperative that entities copied by the time loop are not given enough time to meaningfully diverge from the originals, as their destruction would then become unethical. A month was determined to be a satisfactory cutoff point.”

“What if one of the copies managed to achieve awareness of the time loop and found a way to maintain continuity across different iterations?”

Zorian asked. “Hypothetically speaking.”

“That would be very unfortunate for the copy,” the Guardian noted.

“Only the Controller can actually leave the time loop, after all.”

“See, this is the part I don’t get,” Zach interjected. “Why was such a rule put in place? I mean, there is only one Controller to begin with, so why put that sort of limitation in place?”

“To stop the Controller from trying to smuggle copies out of the time loop,” the Guardian said matter-of-factly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

There was a short pause as both Zach and Zorian processed this.

“Why… why is that important?” Zorian asked shakily.

“Because only the Controller has their real soul pulled into the time loop,” the Guardian said. “Everyone else is a copy. For a Controller of the loop to leave, I only have to re-anchor their soul back to their original body.

For one of the copies to enter the real world, I would have to switch their soul with the soul of the original. This would effectively kill the original.”

There was another, longer pause following this explanation.

Zorian wasn’t terribly surprised at the fact that him leaving the loop would require he switch his soul with his original. It was one of the first ideas he had come up with himself, after all. What surprised him was that

Zach was apparently not a copy. There was more to being the Controller than just having a marker stamped on your soul, it seemed.

“So the Controller has their original soul drawn into the time loop when it is first made,” Zorian said. “They aren’t a copy, so there is no problem with them leaving. But everyone else would have to kill someone to get out, and that’s unacceptable. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” the Guardian agreed.

“But you could do that?” Zach suddenly spoke up. “If one of the copies wanted to leave this place, you could switch their soul with that of the original?”

“Theoretically,” the Guardian admitted, “but that goes against what I was made to do. I am the Guardian of the Threshold. One of the main tasks the Maker gave me was to ensure things inside the time loop could not menace the source of the template. If a diverged copy tried to kill the original by switching their souls with it, I would do my best to stop them.”

“What about a normal, un-diverged copy?” asked Zorian. “Surely there is no harm in replacing the original with a normal copy. They’re practically the same thing! It’s what makes it okay to destroy millions of souls every month or so, isn’t it?”

The Guardian hesitated. A short, tense silence descended as it considered the scenario.

“So long as the copies do not diverge too much from the original, such a switch would be theoretically acceptable,” the Guardian eventually admitted. “But it is my purpose to keep the time loop from spilling out in the real world as much as possible, so I would still refuse to perform such a switch. Only the Controller, with the knowledge and secrets they gathered inside the time loop, is allowed to leave and make their mark on the world outside, since they are technically of that world to begin with.”

“All right.” Zorian nodded, signaling Zach with his hand to drop the issue. Though still placid, the Guardian seemed almost agitated by their current line of questioning. Zorian was afraid that if they pushed it too much, it might realize one of them was a copy and do something to

‘correct’ this. Best to leave the topic alone for now. “Let’s move on to something else. Guardian, you said the Gate is barred because the Controller has already left the time loop.”

“Yes,” the entity confirmed.

“Can you tell me how many iterations that was ago?” Zorian asked.

“The Controller is still inside the time loop, Controller,” the Guardian said unhelpfully.

Some more variations of that question confirmed that the Guardian had no idea when Red Robe left. The Controller left, but didn’t actually leave, and the Guardian was hopelessly confused about the whole thing.

Asking the Guardian for Red Robe’s description or other identifying information didn’t work either. The Guardian didn’t seem to perceive the world in the same way they did, despite its fairly human-like appearance and the lifelike avatars he and Zach were inhabiting. It seemed to ignore just about everything in terms of identifying characteristics when it came to the Controller. Other than the marker, of course.

“So the Controller that left has the marker, then?” Zorian asked.

“Of course,” the Guardian confirmed. “How could he have left, otherwise?”

“How does the Controller get the marker in the first place?” Zorian asked. “Is it hereditary, assigned by the Gate itself according to some criteria, or what?”

“The Controller is marked by the Key, by the Maker, or by its agents,”

the Guardian said. “I am not aware of what criteria were used in choosing

any particular Controller. It is ultimately irrelevant to my purpose to know such things.”

“But the Key is lost,” Zach said, frowning. “Scattered across vast distances. And if the Maker is a god like you suspect, well… the gods have been silent for centuries. That only leaves the agents. Who would that be?”

“Impossible to say for now.” Zorian shrugged. “But apparently you were purposely chosen by someone to go in here.”

“Or maybe Red Robe was,” Zach said gloomily. “I know you think I’m the original looper, but the fact that Red Robe was capable of leaving just like that… it could be that he’s the one who’s the real deal. You saw how the Guardian reacted to the possibility of switching souls between the copy and the original. How did Red Robe leave if he’s just a copy?”

“I don’t know.” Zorian sighed. “It’s too bad the Guardian gets all stupid whenever anything involving Red Robe leaving is brought up.”

“If it didn’t get all stupid about it, we would have probably been erased out of existence when Red Robe left,” Zach told him. “So that’s probably a blessing in disguise. Anyway, Guardian? This marker I have on me is unique, yes? There is no way for there to be multiple Controller markers?”

“None,” the Guardian confirmed. “Before the time loop is activated, marking a new person will invalidate the old marker. Inside the time loop, the Controller marker cannot be invoked, and only lesser markers can be placed.”

“‘Lesser markers’? What the hell are those now?” Zach protested.