| Untitled Note | |
| |
|---|---|
| Type | Document |
| Subject | Shifters |
| Author | Martin Hatch |
| Date | October 10, 2016 |
| Act | Act 5: I'll Come Back For You |
| Part | Act 5, Part 1: Monarch HQ |
| Location | Paul's Office |
| Previous | Time Stabber |
| Next | Re: Time Machine Core |
Untitled Note is a Document Narrative Object found in Act 5, Part 1. The document details Martin Hatch's transformation into a Shifter that was written for and directed towards Jack Joyce.
Content[]
I have left this message here for you to find, so that soon, when the time comes, and I ask you to choose, you can do so with your eyes open and with some hint of understanding. I have no secrets, and the only things I choose to omit are the ones that you, in your current limited state, would not be able to grasp no matter how hard I tried to make you understand.
I have walked down the same path you are now on. Once - from your perspective, a long time ago, although time no longer has such meaning to me - I too came in contact with a time machine. In my case, it was not a manmade device, but a natural one, in a cave. It should come as no surprise, really, that such things exist, much like natural nuclear reactors do exist, such as the now defunct ones at Oklo, Africa. After all, the Meyer-Joyce field has its irregularities. I too became chronon active. I too developed Chronon Syndrome. And in time, I too lost control and became a shifter, became at once everything and nothing, was everywhere and nowhere, died countless deaths and was still alive, my every probability, every possibility happening at once.
I promised I would not lie, and thus I tell you: the noise and the pain and the rage were more than anyone could suffer and not go insane. I burned in this fire a long time. There were brief moments of awareness in this endless nightmare - different versions of certain key moments in my life that I found myself reliving again and again. Trying to make things right. Like a puzzle. On and on and on.
I am convinced that the stutters and the End of Time saved me. For those were the only places, the only times, where I could even briefly stop and rest and slowly find focus and control again, and ultimately master this state - not emerge from it, not be cured, not go back to what I was before, for there is no such thing, but to learn to be in one place and everywhere at once. My perception is altered, like that of someone who has seen a perceptual illusion, and discovered that the picture is both a young girl and an old woman at the same time. Once you see them both, you can never not see them. We are such limited beings, we play with just one piece, on just one square on an endless chessboard, just one life, one timeline, in an infinite multiverse of possibilities. Am I an exception? The only one who has found his way to the other side? Or is this just a shifter's brief dream before a stutter collapses?
There are other shifters. You. Your best friend who is now your mortal enemy. Dr. Kim. Others, some of whom you know. It doesn't matter who, because they are gone, and when they emerge, if they ever emerge, they will not be who they were, just as I am not who I was before. I have done my part in helping you all achieve this state.
If time is an ocean with a frozen surface, then the stutters and the End of Time are holes in that ice. Opportunities to come up for air.
I have a plan. It's already in motion. But it would be futile to try to explain it to you, like trying to explain three dimensions to someone who can only see one. But make no mistake; I do not look down on you. I strive for humility even as I shift this world from one state to another. I will make this possible. I stand in between. I don't see myself as a gate. I remain humble. I'm something smaller. A hatch.
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