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Ok...wtf?
May 11, 2017 9:28:02 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by aimee1 on May 11, 2017 9:28:02 GMT -5
I just received the "last mailing" of the TF, and I'm pretty confused about what exactly I was supposed to get out of this?
This was not strong story telling. It's like 1/4 of a story.
Can anyone help me here?
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Post by dmikester on May 11, 2017 11:00:40 GMT -5
I find Tempus Fugit to be the most lacking story-wise of all of their experiences, and I struggled with understanding it at first. However, in a thread that I started where I ranked all of the experiences, craigrj posted what I think is an excellent summary of the story that made me appreciate it more. I still don't think this summary translates to what I would call a particularly satisfying story, but to each their own. Here's craigrj's summary in a spoilers tag: Brian Tanner is lost somewhere in time and his wife, Amy, is looking for him. She knows where he is - Quantico Creek - she just doesn't know when. Doing micro-jumps herself is hugely inaccurate which is why she keeps missing "our" time by up to 40 years and the second mailing consists of the letters she sends or persuades people to send on her behalf (hence the final newspaper article in Italian referring to the circumstances of the Italian menu used as a letter in the second mailing). The letters mention she cannot bring anything back with her otherwise she'd bring the artifact itself, but what she can do - and what she explicitly asks "you" to do, is to hold onto the artifact and pass it onto your descendants for several generations - until "her" present time is reached and she's already made contact with your heir to ensure that IF you hold onto it, the heir will find it and bring it to her. So what did Brian bury at Quantico Creek? Simply point - the night sky view of constellations and planets as he saw it from when he is, at that location. The carbon dating sheet gives you the year range of 420 to 620 AD, but the intention is for Amy to look at the constellation pattern in her future time, calculate exactly WHEN Brian is, and use the rest of the meteorite to jump to his time to be with him once more. In fact, night sky viewers already exist for us to use to get a rough idea of when Brian is - the diligent student can calculate the exact date from the artifact. So there is indeed a resolution to the story - IF you keep the artifact, hand it down through the generations, and ensure it does not get destroyed in a fire (as noted in Amy's letter), then you will be responsible for Amy and Brian reuniting back in the past.
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Post by Beckett on May 11, 2017 17:08:22 GMT -5
You are not the first person to feel like this - there are a number of rather lively discussions on this very forums. I found the conclusions laid out by dmikester rather obvious, too, and I thought it tied up the story in a rather unique way, although the recipient of the Experience will not live to see the outcome. I liked that in this Experience, the recipient is of vital importance to the sender - other than the kind of artifact that is only handed to the recipient for safekeeping, they herein become the one person who can help bring the story to a positive conclusion.
I also enjoy the speculation this artifact might inspire - if so inclined, one can instill the abrupt finale with a darker meaning. Did Amy even tell the truth? Does she really need you to hand the artifact down through generations? Or does she simply know of some unknown calamity that will befall you or your descendants, one that will ensure that The Artifact ends up in a specific place in her time?
Furthermore, what is the involvement of the Mysterious Package Company in this? Are you even the intended recipient? Or have The Curator and his Coterie in acquiring the original artifact unwittingly break the thread through time, and are now atoning for this by trying to seed the world with as many copies of the artifact as possible, in the hopes that one will find its way back to Amy? It might not be satisfying to expect the recipient of such an Experience to choose their own conclusion, but I always found that Tempus Fugit does have a certain special charm to it because of this.
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Post by thegenii on May 11, 2017 20:31:16 GMT -5
I feel the opposite of Beckett and share aimee1's viewpoint. You're really just left hanging. You could make a good case for craigrj's summary, but I'm not interested in a conclusion that doesn't conclude and leaves you with too many "what ifs."
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Post by julie on May 16, 2017 13:19:45 GMT -5
Having just received the final letter--I was also stumped and felt left hanging.
Then I woke up this morning, and thought of this possible ending:
Amy time jumped to the Smithsonian and found the crate with the carbon dating and panels in it--not yet sent back to the professor (each of our great-uncle). Clearly Amy was the one who mysteriouly "tampered " with the box---but noone could find any evidence of the room being broken into, or out of. Inside the crate was the Carbon Dating--which told her WHERE he was in TIME----wand On the outside of the box was the label indicated the GEOGRAPHIC location of the panels---Guanico Creek. That would have been enough for her to aim to time jump to Guanico Creek in 540 AD--and perhaps there she hoped to find the map. There at the Smithsonian, she was able to got a last piece of the meteorite, and JUMP to meet Brian there, even though she had not necessarily seen the Map on the panels----and was unsure if she would succeed. That would explain the letter she left in the box---saying she was hoping she would have Brian in her arms that night.....but leaving behind this note in case they missed each other, and he ended up in the Smithsonian with the panels on which he had written. The last mystery was why also in the crate was a scrolled up printout from the Time Machine's original effort of Brian to time jump--which went awry. Where did that come from? Perhaps, since they were both scientists.....the original experiment happened at the Smithsonian, or in DC? OR--perhaps that explains the professor's quiet little deflection away from the panels in the first mailing's clippings--he seemed to know something about the panels--maybe he had found the original printout in some other archeological dig and suspected the panels might have something to do with it--and sent that, along with the panels to the Smithsonian for carbon Dating??/ That part remains a mystery.
Anyway, when Amy successfully time jumped to 540 AD at the Creek--looking to find the Map she was instead surprised and relieved to find Brian. There they are united, and who knows if they ever came back to the future--what matters is they are together.
At least I'd like to believe that--so I don't feel quite as responsible for letting them down as the notes seemed to indicate I was the heir responsible for solving the problem.
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Post by dmikester on May 16, 2017 13:32:26 GMT -5
Very interesting take on the tampering; that makes sense. The part that I'm still confused by is the fire, which seems to suggest something more sinister at work, but perhaps it's related to her trying to etch a message to Brian or something? This is where I feel like the storytelling for this one is weak and vague compared to their other Experiences.
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Post by thegenii on May 17, 2017 18:40:48 GMT -5
"Vague" is an excellent way to put it.
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Post by mollee on Aug 8, 2017 17:48:52 GMT -5
The recipient of my gift has only received the first two mailings thus far, was very curious after the first and a bit disengaged after the second. I could not find instructions on creating a spoiler alert, so hopefully this is not a spoiler - the main confusion is
a) that the communications in the second mailing continue from one to the next - without a pause in thought although bouncing from time to time - this seems incongruous, and b) that the quality of the writing doesn't seem representative of the characters' intellect.
This appears to be a case where more complete documents at that point might create a deeper mystery.
I'm browsing this forum, but I haven't heard anyone else mention the above so far. Would you share your thoughts?
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Post by Beckett on Aug 25, 2017 4:49:37 GMT -5
The recipient of my gift has only received the first two mailings thus far, was very curious after the first and a bit disengaged after the second. I could not find instructions on creating a spoiler alert, so hopefully this is not a spoiler - the main confusion is a) that the communications in the second mailing continue from one to the next - without a pause in thought although bouncing from time to time - this seems incongruous, and b) that the quality of the writing doesn't seem representative of the characters' intellect. While I am not intimately familiar with the contents of this Experience, as I sent it to a friend of mine and only got a look at the documents once, I reckon that the somewhat frantic writing was done deliberately, after all, the protagonist is, at this point
travelling back and forth through time, trying to get this badly fragmented message out in a way that would ensure the letters ending up in the hands of your recipient. As to the non-chronological order of the fragments, this would be proof that the protagonist does not subscribe to the one-directional concept of time to which the rest of us are bound...
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