Mother of Learning: ARC 3

3

“The Controller can temporarily add people to the time loop by placing a lesser marker on them,” the Guardian explained.

“What?” Zach squawked. “There is a way to include someone in the time loop and you’re only mentioning this now!? And what do you mean temporary?”

“Though I’m happy to answer any question you may have to the best of my ability, I am ultimately not designed to teach the Controller how to operate the time loop,” the Guardian said. “That is the job of whoever placed the marker on you. And by temporary, I mean that the target of the lesser marker will retain their memories and abilities for up to six iterations before the marker dissolves.”

“Why would this lesser marker be temporary like that?” Zach asked, baffled. “Is there a way to make it permanent?”

“It is temporary to keep divergence from the original to a manageable level and discourage the Controller from getting excessively emotionally attached to copies marked in such a fashion,” the Guardian explained.

“There is no way to make it permanent, as that would be needlessly cruel.

They cannot leave the time loop, after all.”

“But if copies that retain awareness for more than a month count as people and killing them is wrong, doesn’t that mean that using these lesser markers is effectively murder?”

“Yes,” the Guardian readily agreed. “But it is not the Gate that does it, so it is acceptable. It is up to the Controller to decide when and if they feel comfortable using such an ability.”

“So…” Zorian began after a short pause.

“I would never have used such a spell,” Zach immediately said, correctly guessing what Zorian was about to ask. “Never. Why would I torture myself by bringing people into the loop, knowing they would suddenly go back to their old, ignorant self in just six restarts?”

“Fair enough,” Zorian said, guessing he had touched upon a sensitive topic. “Guardian, what about the ability to expel people from the time loop?

Make them start each iteration soulless and dead? Does this ability exist?”

“The Controller has such an ability as well,” the Guardian confirmed.

By now, Zorian knew better than to ask whether such an ability had been used in the past. The Guardian had very limited awareness about what happened in the time loop itself, caring for little except the Controller.

“How about the ability to restore people ‘erased’ in such a manner?” he asked instead. The matriarch had planned to betray him by leaving the time loop first, leaving him to die when the time loop fell apart, and he was still angry at her for that… but he wanted her back anyway.

“No,” the Guardian said. “The ability instructs the Gate to make changes to the base template that is used to construct each iteration. There is no undoing them without direct intervention from the Maker. The Controller is advised to use this ability with wisdom and restraint.”

For the next twenty minutes, Zach and Zorian tried to question the Guardian about the manner in which these abilities could be performed by the Controller or about any other abilities at their disposal. Sadly, neither line of inquiry achieved results. The Guardian did not know how any of these abilities might be accomplished, and it refused to list all the abilities, saying they were not authorized to know that information.

“This makes no sense,” Zach complained. “It’s happy to tell us about specific abilities if we ask, but a simple list of all options is forbidden?”

“Well, it sort of makes sense if the Maker didn’t want every Controller to know about all the features at their disposal,” mused Zorian. “If some or all of the Controllers are given limited information, it wouldn’t make sense for the Guardian to be capable of revealing everything anyway…”

Another fruitless question-and-answer session occurred, in which Zorian tried to ask the Guardian about the history of the time loop and its purpose. The Guardian claimed not to have any knowledge of previous time loops, beyond simply knowing they existed. Apparently it did not retain its

memories between different time loops. As for the purpose of the time loop…

“The purpose of the time loop is between the Controller and the one who marked them,” the Guardian concluded. “Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say it is whatever the Controller wants it to be. There is little to stop them from doing whatever they want while inside the time loop, after all.”

Zorian sighed. “All right, next question, then. Can you tell me how long will it be before the time loop runs out of whatever is powering it and shuts down? That is to say, how long do we have to leave this place?”

“Yes, of course. The time loop has enough power for fifty-two more iterations before it must shut down,” the Guardian said. “Assuming maximum utilization of each iteration, that is equivalent to a little more than four years of operation.”

Four years… Maybe he was just greedy, but that seemed very short to Zorian. He asked the Guardian about that just to see what it would say. He expected it to bring up their lack of sufficient authorization or whatever, but the Guardian actually had an answer.

“The time loop is normally supposed to be initiated at the peak of planetary alignment,” the Guardian explained. “Unfortunately, something seems to have gone wrong, and the time loop has been activated one month prior to it. This made everything more costly, causing the time loop to degrade far more rapidly than it is supposed to.”

“Do you know how long the time loop has been in existence thus far?”

Zorian asked.

“Nine hundred and sixty-seven iterations,” the Guardian answered.

“Approximately thirty years in linear time.”

Wait, those numbers were kind of strange… how could almost a thousand iterations equal thirty measly years?

Zorian frowned. “So the time loop spends power per iteration, not according to how much time passes?”

“Yes,” the Guardian confirmed.