🔴 REC    OCT 18, 2018 00:08:48    [▮▮▯▯▯ 40%]

Watching over six hundred Dinas fight the Generation Killers was almost an academic exercise.

We had long speculated about how stats worked when multiple players fought against an enemy. It wasn’t like your Mettle stats just added together—no, there was some other consideration, something to prevent players from bum-rushing more powerful enemies.

I watched as each Generation Killer fell, and the statuses that I would occasionally catch a glimpse of were quite interesting. They had the trope Desperation, which allowed them to convert Savvy or Moxie into Mettle or Hustle when they were in a desperate situation.

When their Savvy or Moxie got low enough, I could actually see their statuses clearly.

And yet, despite them having such good combat stats, a few Dinas could gang up on them—especially with a weapon.

Since there were no hit points, what would actually happen was something more like this: Dina would attack, and the Generation Killer would be overwhelmed, causing incapacitation. The first blow would make him scathed; the second might make him mutilated or hobbled, depending on where she struck him.

After that, the stat differences stopped mattering as much as multiple Dinas would pile in. I wasn’t sure what was happening under the hood, but it all looked reasonable.

Dina, on her own, only had three Mettle, but she was buffed by Anna’sHeart trope a few points. The copies of Dina that had my special hedge shears also got a boost—not to mention the powerful finishing move that a sawed-off shotgun could provide.

Often, a Generation Killer would be distracted killing one Dina while the others managed to kill him. Either way, whichever one died would soon get swept away across the ground as they fell through time and space to the Shores of Time.

The streets were filled with fighting.

I would have joined. I packed a small bit of combat prowess—four whole points of Mettle coursed through my veins—but I had to survive this altercation, which was hard enough considering I had such low effective Plot Armor.

Luckily, Dina knew this. And somehow, all of the Dinas were the real Dina—although trying to figure out how that worked made my head hurt.

I had given her my Who You Truly Are trope, which was an Outsider trope, one of the tickets I had received after the Grotesque storyline that I wasn’t able to use.

It slowly gave her more and more Plot Armor as the story went along, and as I watched them fight, I got this strange feeling that the fact that she had more Plot Armor than she had total stats actually gave her some advantage. But I didn’t know the math behind what was happening.

Did it mean that you had more capacity for things like a shotgun or teamwork to work in a fight?

Maybe.

All I knew was that I had to surround myself with Dinas just in the hope that I wouldn’t get killed.

After all, because of all her Plot Armor gains, she was now at a higher level than any of the Generation Killers—and there were tons of her.

“We need to get into the museum and make sure the others aren’t killed!” I screamed.

They were in there surviving the night, the win condition. I still wasn’t completely sure how that could possibly make sense when the enemy had time travel, as I had very little knowledge of the main plot after I left it.

The nearest eight Dinas all nodded, and I swear they did it in unison.

Dina avoided talking across all universes.

That wasn’t to say she was silent—she was cursing up a storm. It was a weird thing to see, with the Generation Killers being oddly polite and Dina being appropriately ticked off.

I moved forward toward the museum as more and more Generation Killers poured out of it, realizing that they needed to join the fight rather than continue trying to break through the metal bars and get into the jail cells in the basement, which must have been their destination because the rest of the building was destroyed or on fire.

All the while, I was trying my best to film everything.

And I certainly got a few good action shots because the Generation Killers would target me if they could, and Dina would blow their feet off with her shotgun.

That was a move she liked. And it was a bit clever, too, because a non-lethal attack was probably easier to successfully land with Carousel’s system. Then another Dina would jump on top of him and—well, not exactly decapitate him, but certainly try with a pair of hedge shears.

One that got his feet mangled by a shotgun blast tried to activate his meteorite and travel away in time so that he could heal up. Unfortunately, three Dinas grabbed onto him and were jettisoned away right along with him—which probably meant he wasn’t going to heal up wherever he went.

For as strong as his build was, that was a weakness—he automatically tried to time travel every time he got a non-lethal injury big enough to trigger a jump. When you had multiple players to throw at him, this turned into a liability because he was taken out of the fight and wouldn’t actually get to heal.

Headshots Only was perhaps one of the most powerful enemy tropes, and yet now, it was his weakness.

At first, two or three started to glow and disappear. Then, there were handfuls at a time doing it—and all of them dragging Dinas with them, who would be able to finish the job wherever they were going.

And those were the ones that survived long enough to time travel. The rest just died the old-fashioned way and were swept to the Shores of Time.

This battle made me regret that this story was a found-footage narrative because there was no way I could do justice to all the showdowns going on around me.

Dina was completely brutal.

No joke—if she ran into a Generation Killer who was specced for impossibly high Grit, she and her other selves would blind him. Literally. They wouldn’t even try to kill him the moment they realized he was too tough.

The audience could suspend their disbelief at a lot of injuries, but even the deadly Basilisk and the mighty Cyclops had jelly for eyes.

There was no healing the types of injuries they were going for.

We pushed forward into the hole in the side of the museum—the one the Generation Killers had made to get inside.

I had Dinas all around me, and it was hard to keep track of them, but they seemed to have a pretty good idea of what they were doing. Maybe coordination was easy when all of your allies thought exactly the same way you did.

On camera, it was a flash of carnage and destruction—not perfectly well-lit, yet the audience would not be confused about what was happening.

The Generation Killers were doing fine; they could easily take out four Dinas before being taken out themselves.

But that wasn’t enough.

Every time a Generation Killer fell, the remaining Dinas would go help other groups.

I had nearly spent two weeks straight in real-time recruiting these Dinas, and it was worth it.

Inside the museum, the battle became scarce as the Generation Killers chose to hide behind corners and attempt surprise attacks.

Which would work—except they would usually only work on one Dina at a time. And that just wasn’t going to cut it for them.

Dina cut, shot, and bashed her way forward, creating a trail for me all the way down to the basement, where the Generation Killers were using power tools to try to get into the main jail block.

They were almost in.

The one holding a large saw and working his way through the iron bars didn’t even hear us come in over the loud noise.

Dina grabbed the saw and harshly jerked it so that the spinning blade found contact with the man wielding it—ending him right there.

“Kimberly!” I screamed. “Kimberly, are you there?”

There was silence from the jail cells beyond.

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Then a head popped out from behind the barrier they had constructed in case the Generation Killers managed to make it into the cell block.

Kimberly knew I was coming—more or less—but her character wouldn’t.

If things worked out how I predicted, she had just seen me die. Hopefully in a blaze of glory, but probably in a puddle, pathetically. But my character wouldn’t know that.

This was a confusing storyline.

“Riley?” she asked, confused.

“I’m here,” I said.

She stood all the way up. The entire left side of her face was mangled.

No one had gone without punishment in this storyline.

After she stood up, so did Camden and Anna.

Camden was bleeding from a neck wound that had been hastily bandaged. He looked like he could pass out at any minute—pale, barely able to open his eyes, barely able to stand. Yet he held firm to a device that, to my eyes, looked like some sort of fish finder—except instead of being mounted on the steering column of a boat, it was in his hand.

Strange.

Anna, who had suffered many wounds herself—including, at the very least, a broken nose and jaw—quickly came from around their barricade to the metal doors leading to the cell block and opened them.

She looked at me for a moment, confused. Yet, she was more puzzled by the presence of five identical Dinas with me.

“I thought you died,” she said, struggling through the pain of her shattered jaw.

I looked at her, then at Kimberly, and said, “No. I just had some other stuff to do. But I’m here now. I’m sorry I took so long.”

I walked through the cell block door, and so did my guardian Dinas.

Anna quickly locked it behind us. One of the Dinas grabbed the saw they had been using to cut through the cell door.

I had to hope that would mean they wouldn’t be able to break through—not in the time they had remaining.

“How did you get away from all of those Generation Killers?” Kimberly asked.

“Did Camden not tell you?” I asked. “We set up a trap to escape the casino and then went and healed up at a hospital.”

“No,” Kimberly said. “I’m talking about when we were in 2025. All the Generation Killers—you stayed behind because you said you were going to buy us some time.”

How brave of me.

“2025?” I asked. “I was with you in 2025?”

“Yes,” Kimberly said. “After we found the meteor-attracting device from KRSL and made our battle plan, you stayed behind to try and take out some Generation Killers. Somehow.”

I made sure to film her face because she was putting on a good performance. I only hoped that I could come somewhere close to matching it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “Wait—did you say meteor-attracting device?”

I turned the camera to look at the device in Camden’s hand. Despite his poor health, he was holding it tight, gripping it like it was all that mattered.

“Why are we attracting meteors?” I asked.

“It’s complicated,” Kimberly said.

“He didn’t stay behind to fight the Generation Killers,” Camden said, struggling through his injuries.

Silence came over the room. Only the sound of the fight outside could be heard.

“Then what happened?” Kimberly asked.

“He hasn’t done it,” Camden continued. “Not yet.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “When I left you at the hospital, I had to go recruit some help. This is Dina Cano. She’s Gabriel Cano’s mother—remember? From the letters?”

They looked at the various Dinas, but then their attention went back to me.

Each Dina gave them a wave. She wasn’t talking much. She had the awkward manner of someone who didn’t know what to do with her hands, and she did have many pairs of hands.

“After you left me at the hospital,” Camden said, “you came back to 2010 to help us rescue Logan.”

I thought for a moment.

“Oh,” I said.

“Or at least, you will,” Camden said.

“Does that mean we win?” Anna asked, struggling with every syllable.

“Maybe,” Camden said.

Before we could continue, the device in his hand started to beep.

“The signal,” he said. “It’s about to go out. We’re almost out of this.”

“What’s happening?” I asked. “You’re attracting a meteor?”

Camden limped over to me and showed me the screen.

I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

“Just explain it,” I said.

He thought for a moment, then said, “We’re redirecting the meteors to hit Dyer’s Lake—across all timelines. If the meteors aren’t discovered until after the point in time that a Generation Killer could steal one, then there will be no Generation Killer. Not in any universe. Or at least, not a time-traveling version.”

“And you needed this device to send out a signal to make that happen?” I asked.

“Yes,” Kimberly said.

“But you had to survive long enough for the signal to go out,” I said. “You had to survive the night.”

Realization dawned on me about how the plot would turn out.

Just as we broached the topic, a ray of light reached in through one of the windows at ground level—the same ones I had gotten electrocuted sticking my arms through so long ago.

The beeping on the device continued until, eventually, a little tune played, signifying something had finished.

Outside, the battle had been raging, but suddenly, all was quiet.

“The signal’s sent,” Camden said. “Every other timeline should be directing their meteors where we told them now. I’m activating the attraction phase for our timeline and setting the coordinates to the town of Carousel.”

Wait… What kind of maniac would put themselves in the path of a meteor?

“What?” I asked, alarmed.

“You’ll understand in a minute,” Kimberly said as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a memory card.

If I wasn’t mistaken, it was the same memory card that I currently had in my camera. Future knowledge for the win.

Outside, a strange sound started to pour into the basement.

It sounded like a river.

We left the basement. I needed footage of what was happening outside.

As I moved through the wreckage of the museum, I found no Generation Killers. There were only Dinas, still coursing with adrenaline but comforting each other.

I walked outside through the hole in the wall.

And that’s where I saw them—the remaining 20 or 30 Generation Killers who hadn’t gotten killed or maimed.

They seemed to know what was happening before it did.

To my ears, it sounded like a river was running right through the street, even though I couldn’t see it.

And one by one, the Generation Killers were taken away in that river—falling down into the ground as if beneath the water’s surface and disappearing.

They tried their old tricks. They tried to travel away using time travel. But somehow, it just didn’t work. Even when they maimed themselves to try to trigger their jewels.

There was no red glow.

In fact, all the various jewels they carried dropped from their hands as if completely intangible.

“So that’s Event B,” I realized.

Camden, who was still struggling to remain upright, said, “Event B had to happen. Remember that. No matter what the options, Event B must happen.” He put his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. “Whatever you have to do, you have to make sure that we don’t try to find another way.”

I looked at him and nodded, focusing the camera on his face. He was doing a really good job—though that might have been because of his injuries adding a sort of morbid production value.

“You saved us in 2025,” Kimberly said. “We were being chased by a huge group of Generation Killers, and they were going to just follow us here and stop us from being able to send out the signal. But somehow, they never did follow us. I don’t know what you did to them, but it took a while for the others to show up.”

“I’m guessing I didn’t just appeal to their better nature,” I said.

I would have to figure out how I had managed to kill a bunch of Generation Killers. But if I had done it before, surely I could do it again.

Kimberly looked at me. “I mean… maybe he doesn’t have to go back,” she said, pleading with Camden. “I mean, we already sent out the signal. The entire time anomaly is rewriting itself. Why do we need to send him back? Paradoxes don’t matter, right?”

“Not for the stable timelines,” Camden said. “They have so many different tributaries that even if you changed one of the component timelines within them, the consequences of that action would be overwhelmingly negated as the timelines collapsed into one. But a time traveler’s personal

timeline does have to make sense. At least when it comes to things like this.”

I paused to take this in. I had to go back and be Second Blood. That was within the possibilities of my plan. Still, dying was a bummer.

“I have to go back,” I said. “Where exactly? 2010, right?”

Camden nodded through much pain. Then, as if completely exhausted, he fell down right there in the street—barely managing to catch himself and land on his rear, like he was just sitting down.

“I guess I better watch this,” I said, making sure to get a shot of the memory card.

Unlike all of the Generation Killers, whose time travel abilities had apparently been sapped away conveniently, my necklace still glowed red from all the injuries of the people around me.

Besides, I had to complete the loop. The rules of movie time travel demanded it.

“I’m sorry,” Kimberly said. “I wish we could do something different.”

I expected Camden to respond to what she said, but he was passed out on the ground, on the edge of death. He had pushed through—survived long enough to send the signal.

Event B did have to happen, and he had devoted all of himself to making sure it did.

“You know,” I said, just an attempt at humor, like the banter we had between us back when this storyline was still new and we were just coworkers, “you really do have a way of making guys do favors for you.”

“Don’t say that,” Kimberly said. She was crying.

“I guess if this all works out, it means that we get to live our lives, right? Like none of this ever happened. Versions of us.”

At that, I noticed that Anna was crying on the ground, over Camden’s body.

“Not all of us,” she said.

And, of course, that was true. Because Anna was going to die anyway. So was Camden. Even without the Generation Killers, they died in the sinkhole at the skating rink.

And yet, they had fought to make sure that it happened. So that others could live. And so that the timelines could be free of one very creepy and irritating serial killer.

“I’ll see you on the other side,” I said to Kimberly.

She hugged me.

I was sure to get footage of all the various Dinas sitting around the wreckage of the fight.

The world was getting weird. Not just in the way that the broken timeline the Generation Killers used as a home base got weird.

Things were washing away—exploded cars, shotgun shells, dead pedestrians that the Generation Killers had terrorized.

Everything was going away.

In the distance, I could hear barking.

And Bobby was running toward us.

Apparently, breaking the entire time anomaly was enough to get him away from the other side of time. Or maybe we had just joined him there. Met him halfway.

But he wasn’t the only one.

The older Generation Killer was there.

But he wasn’t filming.

He must have realized the implications of what we had done—somehow eliminating him from existence, despite the stubborn rules of time travel in this storyline.

And finally, Gabriel Cano made his appearance.

And made the remaining 300 or so Dinas very happy.

Even though they didn’t all get to hug him because—like all the Generation Killers—they started to get washed away in time.

Gabriel was crying.

And so was Dina.

One day, we would make it real. And not just in a storyline.

I didn’t know why we needed an Invitee. Or why Carousel insisted on teasing Dina like this.

But it all had to amount to something, right?

I was worried that Carousel was trapping Dina. Tricking her.

And that whatever version of her son she rescued would not be him. Not really.

But now, I started to wonder if it was possible that Carousel intended to go through with its promise.

I hoped it would.

But at the same time, if Sean Cano—or Gabriel, as he was called in this storyline—was really here, who else might be?

What was waiting for me in the back rooms of the video store—I couldn’t bear the thought.

It was time to go while I could still travel.

Apparently, the time anomaly was only collapsing locally because I still had the middle part of the movie to live through.

It wasn’t like I didn’t expect it.

“See you soon,” I said to Kimberly.

She didn’t say anything, but she nodded tearfully.

It was time to watch what had come before and make sure it would happen again—heck, I might even improve upon it.

I just wanted to know if my plan to sneak around the theater was going to work.

Probably not. Surely, Carousel wouldn’t want me to learn its deepest secrets or get too long of a look at its strange employees.

But hey, maybe I would get lucky.

■ STOP

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