The Spirit Of Disaster (Competition 2012)

[LieselSolo]

Okay, I should try that too, but first (since I saw the screenshots, I think I can review it now).

For Stellie

It was definitely well-written. The professor was a well-established character the way he's given up on his dreams and become a cynic about his job and his life in general. However, it seemed like he used a lot of cliches in his narration ("like it was yesterday," "pins and needles," etc.). I know that's nitpicky, but since he's an English professor it seems like he'd be wary of cliches.

I also love the theme of returning to childhood dreams and the idea that wishes keep us alive. It made me sad at the end.

I didn't care for the way the game used NVL mode for the entire story. IMO, NVL is okay to use in small bits, but when used for an entire game it gets annoying to just look at a wall of text over and over. And also, there was no music and no menus - two more negative points. I prefer VNs to be interactive and have music.

It also seems like the author broke the prompt. Shooting star, yes, but what about the "spirit of disaster" part? I couldn't find any possible interpretation that would qualify Stellie as a spirit of disaster. In fact, she seemed to be the opposite, someone who encourages dreams and wishing. The professor briefly says that's cruel if she doesn't grant the wishes, but that's not the same as being a spirit of disaster. It struck me as cheating the prompt.

[Arowana]

(sneaks back in and marvels at the thread growth)

Not so much an obligation, but a reason. I have this problem with academic writers as well. The whole reason they are writing their papers and books is to convey information to the reader. But then they stuff it with so much jargon that it becomes inaccessible, which means the whole reason has been eroded. It is possible to make information accessible through writing, just look at the masterpiece that is A Short History of Time by Bill Bryson. That man knew how to communicate. It's the same thing here. The writer doesn't HAVE to do do anything, but if their purpose is to communicate a story, to have the reader understand the meaning then they must try to make it as accessible as possible without wearing down the actual content. Creating clear communication isn't dumbing things down, it's just being very clever and resourceful with what you present. The meaning doesn't have to change, but the way it is written probably does.

I think one of the major differences between academic and fiction writing actually is purpose. The purpose of academic writing is typically straightforward - you write a journal article to communicate what you did and convince others that your methods/results/conclusions were valid. I feel the "jargon" in most cases arises from a combination of journal page limits and assumptions about audience specialization - you'll never have the space to explain everything, so you assume certain terms/methods in your field are common knowledge in order to be concise. If you're writing for a lay audience, on the other hand, your assumptions about what is common knowledge will probably change. Ultimately, how you communicate changes depending on the intended audience, and it's often difficult to gauge exactly who your audience will be and what they will/won't know (anyone who's ever had to teach a class or give a public presentation probably knows this all too well). However, the basic goal of showing what you did and why you are right stays consistent.

The purpose of a story, on the other hand, may vary a lot more. I'm not sure what the purpose for 4Dimensional was intended to be, but I think it might be similar to that of a mystery game or logic puzzle. The clues for what's going on may all be there, but they aren't supposed to be clear or easy. Instead, it's up to the reader to put in the effort of finding them and piecing them together. And once you figure out the puzzle on your own, it's far more satisfying than if the author had made the clues more obvious or clearly telegraphed the answer.

Well, that's assuming that pieces eventually do come together in a satisfying way. That' s the thing - if there's a good explanation, the "aha!" moment will make everything worthwhile. If the explanation is poor, though, then there's no payoff and it was all a frustrating waste, haha. To be honest, my first impression was much more of the latter - I thought the author had just thrown together a bunch of random cool-sounding ideas, but didn't have the time to explore them properly and add cohesion between them. After seeing OokamiKasumi's post, though, I began to wonder if I just hadn't put enough effort into finding the clues yet.

I now feel like the author has put in a lot of extremely subtle hints, but you actually have to try all the choices and carefully note what is being said. So despite the game's structure, there's enormous replay value. Man, the more I think about all the work that probably went into this story, the more impressed I am. I really hope it generates more discussion and speculation, as I'm interested in seeing how other people interpret it. (Then again, I could just be overthinking everything and seeing connections where they don't exist, haha.)

After replaying yet another time (if anything, the author has clearly been successful in keeping me engaged), here are my current theories.

WARNING: Tons of spoilers! You probably don't want to read this until you've played "4Dimensional" several times.
You, the player, are actually a 4D being (Stein) watching a video of the cat girl (Seki) talking to a 3D person, 676F64 (cutely enough, that number is actually the hex code for the name's color). I don't have much to back up the idea of the player as a 4D being, other than the fact that the branching structure suggests the player has no free will, just like a 4D person...and the title is 4Dimensional after all, haha.

-The video takes place in the present day, but Seki and likely also Stein are supposed to be from the distant future (possibly after the so-called calamity takes place)? I get that impression because 676F64 makes references to modern things, but Seki mentions how "outdated" they are.

-I don't think the morality tests are as random as they seem. Let's start with the question about whether is it moral for scientists to euthanize "near death" people to prove the existence of an afterlife. Perhaps this related to the two other times that death is brought up. First, Seki mentions that the non-free will (aka 4D) beings that take these tests suffer terrible consequences, including death. Second, in the ending with the "meltdown," the player is warned that "downloading the attachment" can have serious consequences, including death - but the player downloads the attachment regardless. So...going along with the idea that the player (Stein) is a 4D being from the future, maybe he's being made to go through the video and do these tests by scientists, even though it could result in his death. What if this is because he is actually part of a "potential euthanization to prove an afterlife" experiment - in the future? (That might also explain why Seki is so strangely supportive of the euthanization thing - it's the norm in the future) Then the ending where Stein sees "God" may make more sense, i.e. Stein was part of the afterlife experiment, and all those people crowding around him at the end were probably the scientists. This may also relate to the mention of "lifelines" in this same ending.

-And 676F64 is "God"? YHWH = Yahweh? Okay, back up. 676F64 seems like a normal modern person, so he's obviously not what we would think of as God. But if the player is a 4D person from the distant future, maybe 676F64 is viewed as a God in the future. In another ending, 676F64 mentions going into a science career after his conversation with Seki- and he then befriends a girl who looks just like Seki. So...what if 676F64 goes on to become a scientific genius? And he somehow invents time travel/4D projections and all that crazy stuff (maybe Seki is actually an "invention" of his based on the girl he met? - she does mention that her supervisors can render her "nonexistent," which suggests she is not a real person). Maybe 676F64 ends up saving the world from the so-called calamity. Or maybe the calamity hits and he has to reinvent the world and create 4D beings, which could give him a godlike role. And he ultimately sends Seki back in time to prepare his past self for the calamity? Hmmm...

-Now, how does the "POV switching" mortality test relate to anything? Not sure, but I noticed that Seki mentions that Graham can be viewed as having no free will. 4D beings also have no free will...is there a connection? What if Graham is a 4D being? What if he is the player/Stein? (lol, this is probably way off base) Seki also mentions that the situation with the boy could have turned out very differently. What if the mother had reacted more violently? If the 4D being is Graham, maybe that's why he's up for euthanization - he either was seriously injured by the mom, or got in big trouble for his crimes. All this is probably a big stretch, because it didn't seem like that scene was from the future. -_- I do feel said scene is supposed to be important, but yeah...not sure how it relates quite yet...

[papillon]

see, that? THAT is the kind of spoiler tag I was recommending people stay away from.

Not saying that to pick on you, Arowana. But theories and discussion and reviews are what people are supposed to be sharing in here, and locking that much text up behind a spoiler tag slows everyone down and makes them more reluctant to engage with each other's ideas.

[OokamiKasumi]

4Dimentional Again

I've read through all the endings multiple times, and I'm still very confused. I'm interested to hear how other people interpreted it (pokes OokamiKasumi), because I'm still unsure of the connections between most of the events. Right now, many things still seem random and disjointed to me. So...the player is a 4D person watching an video of a 3D person talking with the cat girl...does that mean we are supposed to be one of those "non free will" test subjects? Since 4D people don't have free will, but 3D people do, did the 4D person (aka the player) go crazy trying to understand what free will was, hence all the errors? And having free will makes the 3D person God? Huh? And what was the connection between the so-called calamity and the morality tests? Ugh, cue major headache...

Okay, since so many people seemed to have a problem seeing what I saw in the game, (and a walk-through has since been posted,) I figured that the dump-age of major spoilers would be okay now. Even so...

If you have NOT played this game: Read No Further!!!

Okay! Your first clue on what is really going on in this game, is the game's Title: 4Dimentional.
-- Anyone who has read classic sci-fi; Azimov, Bradbury, and Heinlein... knows that the 4th dimension is TIME.

While Wikipedia does not say this outright, (it shows you a fancy cube animation, and a lot of math,) it does call it a tesseract, and those who have read sci-fi since childhood know good and well that a tesseract is A Wrinkle in Time and Space. In other words, it's there in the Wiki if you read between the lines.

Your next clue is in the opening line, (right after the title.) Note: this is my 2nd go-through after clearing the persistent data.

Subject: Report 001, Series 6

This told me right away that what I was seeing should be treated as a recording.

...YHWH file extention.

YHWH is the Judaic name for God. This told me that I was dealing with "Man tampering in the realm of God." In other words: Life and Death.

Opening in FreeWill Media Player.

Only living beings have Free Will, though according to organized religion only people have Free Will, therefore the test subject in which this Media Player was running was Human -- or a simulation of one.

FPV mode must be enabled to view message.

I admit I had no real clue as to what this might stand for, but my guess was: Free-willed Person View.

Playback initiating...

This is another reference to the fact that this was a Recording.

Then the story began -- only to abruptly stop with:

ERROR

This told me that something had already gone wrong with the Experiment -- and the recording.

Proxy Undefined

In other words, the Media was playing from an Unknown Source. In short, the program was being Hacked.

Assigning substitute Value.
...
Value confirmed.

Something important to the program had just been replaced with something else.

Resuming Playback

And so, the game began again.

The main character is named: 676F64.
-- 676F64 is Color, a rather bland military-green. However, if you Google 676F64 you also get a web hosting site called Catalyst2 (which lists 676F64.com as one of its sites.) More importantly, a Catalyst is a person or thing that precipitates an event or change. (Dictionary.com)

However, and far more importantly, the main character does not notice that their name is a NUMBER.

This line:

Strange Girl
You must be the one!

-- Told me that the second definition of 676F64, was in fact, the correct one: Catalyst. The main character was a catalyst for some sort of major change involving the 4th dimension: Time.

Invoking time skip

This was a clear reminder that the hacked program was still running.

Then we come to the naming issue.
-- If you choose to allow the cat-girl to use her Japanese name, you get Seki. In Japanese, this is comprised of the characters for Star and Spirit.

I didn't kidnap you! I borrowed you.

This is the raw truth. Remember, the program running has been Hacked.

If you choose to hear Seki's explanation, she starts off with a doomsday prophecy, then abruptly interrupts herself by stating that her name means World and Prayer. Since I knew exactly what her name really meant, this was a LIE. In other word's, either she herself or some of what she was about to say was Lie. Truthfully though, I suspected that I could be wrong about the meaning behind her name, and that I was reading a little too much into all this.

Right after this she says:

You were the ones that asked for this, after all.

If I was right, this was most likely the Lie.

Next you get a chance to ask questions.

I went straight for the last one: We asked for this?
-- If I was right, this would reveal the full extent of the lie.

After a bit of back and forth you get this:

The media is a reflection of society's expectations and standards. It's a way of connecting you all to each other and providing a platform for the exchanging of values. It's what bridges the collective conscious.

First of all, what bridges the human collective conscious is the realm of Dreams -- Not Media. (Read Carl Jung for this.)

More importantly, Media is NOT a reflection of society. Media is PROPAGANDA aimed at society to MAKE them WANT a platform of values (that only the ignorant and inexperienced will fall for; namely young people.)

In short, I was right. Seki was lying about some things and those lies were based on Propaganda.

I next went for: How will it all end?
Seki doesn't actually answer this. Instead she says:

The only way to prevent it is to figure out the mystery behind the calamity yourself.

She dodged the question.

She then ends with:

At least you're not threatened with non-existence if you try and break the rules.

Suddenly, another option presented itself among the questions.

Rather than take the dangling bait, I went straight for: Is there a way we can prevent it?

Seki replies with:

You must determine the nature of the calamity. Alternatively, you could do nothing at all.

The questions menu popped back up. I went for: Why Me?

The choices you make specifically are very important.

However, some of what Seki is saying are Lies -- are Propaganda. Was this one of them? Keep in mind that the current media in the Americas almost constantly touts that we are all individually Unique and Important. This is NOT something other cultures agree with. The far east in particular, touts the opposite; "The needs of Society outweigh the needs of the Individual."

Your presence in the world has impacted a great many people.

I found this odd, seeing as this was a Program. Then again, if the program was being run on many people this was very likely True.

The main character then states:

Like the Butterfly Effect?

The Butterfly Effect is part of Chaos Theory, where something insignificant and small affects something else, which affects something else, which effects something else... ultimately resulting in a significant and large scale occurrence.

However, we're dealing with a Program.

Seki ultimately responds with:

Yes, I suppose the "butterfly effect" is at play here, somewhat.

My reaction was: Could Seki be referring to herself? Was Seki the butterfly flapping its wings in an attempt to create a hurricane?

After a bit more banter, the questions popped up again. I finally took the bait: Nonexistance?

Seki responds with:

Seki
You know it's not like us spirits are just allowed to run-around willy-nilly. There's order to it. We have superiors.

676F64
...Wait, so heaven really is a bureaucracy?

Seki
I don't know. I've never been there.

Of course she hasn't. This is a Program.

The questions popped up again with yet another addition: Enough Questions.
-- Since I had read all the others, that's the option I took.

Only a few lines later you get another menu.

I chose to investigate.
-- The last thing I wanted was a sudden dead end to my game.

Seki then says:

This marks the start of the Morality Test.

The main character then asks, quite logically:

Why do I have to find the solution? You know what it is right? Why can't you just tell me? Why do I even need to find out in the first place?

Seki replies with:

Honestly? You'll understand once you know the answer.

This is not as mysterious an answer when you put it up against the fact that you are viewing a running Program. My knee-jerk reaction was: "Oh, once main character figures out that they're a program!"

Shortly afterwards, the Morality Test commences in which the main character is shoved into the bodies of 3 different people: A pregnant mother with two children, an aging male pedophile, then the pregnant mother's young son.

In short, there are 4 distinct personalities represented: 4 dimensions.
-- If you look at the illustration for the tesseract, it shows a Box within a Box, which is exactly what you just saw: a personality within a personality.

Seki then asks:

How was it?

The main character states:

Well, it was kind of hard to follow. I didn't really have any context.

Seki's response is this:

Key phrase here: ...time of that recording.
-- This is a blatant reminder that you are watching a Program.

Seki then gives a bit more background info on the people our main character had spent time within.

The main character states:

I still don't understand the significance of it.

At the time, I didn't either.

Seki replies with:

Here let me help: Who do you think is the bad guy in that situation?

My immediate answer was: "It depends on the who's point of view you're coming from."

• The Mother was convinced that Man was the bad guy because of his past history and that he was with her son.
• The son thought his mother was wrong for hurting him and for being mean to someone that hadn't done anything.
• The man was convinced that he himself was the bad guy for what he wanted to do to her son -- even though he hadn't done anything at all.

Another menu pops up.

Since none of those choices reflected my actual answer, I selected the closest one: It's not that simple.

This pleased the Seki, and then...

She's describing a tesseract.

Seki then says:

The answer is No. It took their combined traits to make that scene occur.

Seki doesn't provide an answer. Instead, she goes on to say:

Alright, next I'm going to pose a hypothetical situation to you.

Suddenly the significance of this clicks into place.

...YHWH file extention.

Man --science-- is tampering in the realm of Life and Death.

A menu appears with a simple YES or NO option.

Before I answer this question, I want it understood that I have my own opinion on euthanasia, which many would not share. However, that's not what is being asked here. I'm not being asked My Opinion, I'm being asked: Is It Moral?

The answer is No. Murder for the sake of Science is not moral.

Seki then goes on to say:

Imagine the people they'd choose for such an experiment.

Then she says:

The main character then says:

But it's not like the future is predetermined.

Keep in mind, this is a program that thinks it has Free Will.

Seki's response:

Are you sure about that?

The main character's response:

What? Of course I'm sure!

After the main character queries how much longer this is going to take, Seki says:

Alright, looks like we're on the final stretch.

Then, cue cheery music and...

676F64, I think I will give up my ways and create a peaceful world with you

Note the lack of a period at the end of that line.

Then you get these 4 responses:

Note that the last one clearly states: Good Ending.

These are Not Renpy coding mistakes. These are part of the actual story.
-- The hacked program that had just been playing --from the very beginning-- has come to an unexpected end.

And then you get a hallway scene and:

Message Received.

The program has not only come to its end, it was fully Downloaded.

Then you get:

Subject: S6R001 Data Summery

If you remember, this was: Report 001, Series 6.

Okay!
-- The first line proves that I was right in my guess that the program had been Hacked.

The Warning.
-- Fatal consequences can only happen on a download if the download it being put directly into a Living Being.
-- Independent builds of MindOS: Fancy way of saying; independently thinking minds -- which the main character clearly was.
-- Decay of memcom systems: Decay of memory.
-- Decay of vital physical stabilizers; such as the heart and lungs.
-- Sabotage of any and all communications-based applications; the recipient goes catatonic.
-- 30% chance of wipe-out for users of MindOSiris; 30% chance of total Brain-Fry.

By the way, Osiris is the Egyptian god of Reincarnation, not Death.

Note that the message above states that this user does have MindOSiris, and is NOT an ideal candidate for the attachment.

What do they do?
-- They download it anyway and resume playback -- which means you are STILL watching a running program.

Indeed Seki reappears, along with this message:

It appears that they've stopped pretending that this was in any way Reality.

Seki goes on to explain that several subjects of the test our main character just participated in have suffered some nasty side effects.

Then Seki hits us with this:

A Buridan's Ass scenerio is where the subject is offered two things they need equally badly (traditionally, Food and Water when they need both.) Needing both options equally badly, they can't make up their mind which one to grab first and so freeze in place undecided -- until they die.

The main character then asks what the point was in all that.

Seki dodges answering by calling it psychological fluff to keep her attention, then says:

Would you like to comment on your experience here?

The confused main character starts to get upset.

Seki tells her to calm down.

This only makes the main character more upset.

Seki then pronounces:

Subject displayed heightened fear, agitation and stress. That should be good enough, I suppose.

The main character then demands an explanation.

Seki pronounces the end of the experiment and the screen goes black.

We then get:

4 years later...

and...

By the way, Redacted is a 2007 film about War Propaganda.

And then our main character bumps into a familiar face.

However, this cat-girl is not the same one our main character bumped into before. In fact, it's the cat-girl's first day of work at the same center.

Proving that she is indeed Seki -- just not Yet.

Also proving that 676F64 was on her way to fulfilling the second meaning behind her name. By changing her major to the Sciences and joining the REDACTED Center, she was well on her way to becoming a catalyst for Change -- and very likely the programmer who hacked into her brain at the story's beginning.

This completes the game and makes a perfect loop by taking advantage of the Sci-Fi term of a tesseract -- as a Wrinkle in Time.

[Arowana]

see, that? THAT is the kind of spoiler tag I was recommending people stay away from.

Not saying that to pick on you, Arowana. But theories and discussion and reviews are what people are supposed to be sharing in here, and locking that much text up behind a spoiler tag slows everyone down and makes them more reluctant to engage with each other's ideas.

I saw your concerns about that earlier, actually, and was debating whether or not to put that section under spoilers. However, I felt that point of that particular story was to think through it yourself, not just to read it once or twice and then have it given away by someone else. While I want to encourage people to give this story another look if they've dismissed it as being too confusing or random, I don't think anyone would want to read my interpretation until they've had a chance to think about themselves first, else it would ruin their experience.

But I guess since OokamiKasumi just posted her interpretation of the game, I might as well unspoiler mine too. ;p

@OokamiKasumi
Ooh, thanks a bunch for posting about 4Dimensional (I was really hoping you would!) I'm going to go back and read your post more carefully later, but some preliminary thoughts for now:

I didn't catch the 4D = time reference, nor the 676F64 = catalyst - thanks for pointing those out! I actually still don't see the connection for the latter, though - when I google Catalyst2, I just get some random webhosting site.

The hacking theory is very interesting, though I'm not sure what the motivation behind that would be or who is doing it. Care to elaborate?

It's interesting that you mention the naming function doesn't work, because mine did. However, I agree that the main character is not supposed to have free will, given the story structure, so that would have been an appropriate addition.

Might non free-will 4D beings all be programs, then? Then I can understand why the 3D person (676F64) is viewed as "God" - he could be the scientist creator of all the programs (aka the 4D beings).

In that vein, any comments on the second ending (the "God" one)?

[Anarchy]

@OokamiKasumi
Ooh, thanks a bunch for posting about 4Dimensional (I was really hoping you would!) I'm going to go back and read your post more carefully later, but some preliminary thoughts for now:

I didn't catch the 4D = time reference, nor the 676F64 = catalyst - thanks for pointing those out! I actually still don't see the connection for the latter, though - when I google Catalyst2, I just get some random webhosting site.

When I googled "676F64", the only connection I found to Catalyst2 was this page, which seems like a normal user's profile page belonging to somebody called 676F64. When I click on the link to 676F64.com, it leads to a dead website, and it seems like the user was complaining about it. Could this perhaps be mere coincidence? Or did the author deliberately create a link between "676F64" and Catalyst2 by creating a fake account so that people googling "676F64" would see the connection to Catalyst? Scratch that theory - that particular user account was created in 2003.

The hacking theory is very interesting, though I'm not sure what the motivation behind that would be or who is doing it. Care to elaborate?

@OokamiKasumi:

Your basis for the program being hacked is that the proxy is undefined. I'm not very literate in computer systems, but I thought a proxy is something that is used to communicate between two clients? Personally, I had a rather different interpretation of that scene. Right before the error screen pops up, you can see a screen where the recording's protagonist's name is corrupted. It seems to me that for a 4D person to view a recording featuring the experiences of a free-willed being, not only do you have to have software that emulates free will (the FreeWill Media Player), but you also have to have some kind of virtual avatar through which to experience that free will - the "proxy" through which the 4D person receives the FWB's sensory data. This avatar is probably supposed to simulate the FWB. Because that avatar wasn't set, the recording experienced an error and the software had to assign a substitute value - a substitute avatar instead of an accurate simulation of the FWB being recorded - which is why we don't know the FWB's name, that is, his/her identity.

Now, pay attention to the timing of the error screen. The recording succeeds in playing a couple sentences of the FWB's inner monologue, but it is when the FWB speaks out loud - that is, the very second that the FWB's name box pops up over the dialogue box, necessitating the revelation of his/her name - that the error occurs. This, combined with the textual corruption that happens at the very end of the recording, strongly suggests that this visual novel format is literally what the 4D person is seeing. The FreeWill Media Player takes the FWB's real life experiences and translates it into a visual novel format so that the 4D person can experience it. The simplistic branching choices are a poor, clumsy imitation of the myriad of potential actions that a real FWB can take in real life, and the lack of significant consequences to your choices supports the interpretation that this is merely a simulation of choice.

Wow. Was that just a critique of the simplistic, black-and-white nature of many visual novels' branching structures or what? Or perhaps, a commentary on how free will is ultimately just an illusion? In any case, the story fully exploits the very heart of the medium in order to get its message across - you couldn't get the same effect in a non-branching medium.

By the way, the naming section later in the game works for me as well. Perhaps it's a problem on your end? I'm still not sure what the significance of being able to name the spirit is, as well as the choice of the name/color 646F64 is... the catalyst website connection seems a little too flimsy to me, as I mentioned earlier.

/brb rereading 4dimensional before responding to the rest of the speculation

[OokamiKasumi]

4Dimentional

@OokamiKasumi
Ooh, thanks a bunch for posting about 4Dimensional (I was really hoping you would!) I'm going to go back and read your post more carefully later, but some preliminary thoughts for now:

I didn't catch the 4D = time reference, nor the 676F64 = catalyst - thanks for pointing those out! I actually still don't see the connection for the latter, though - when I google Catalyst2, I just get some random webhosting site.

@ Anarchy and Arowana
Think: Considering the theme of this particular entry: No Free Will, this also points to: No Coincidences. (In other words, in order to have Coincidences, you have to have Free Will.) It doesn't matter that 676F64.com is defunct. What matters is that 676F64's association with the word Catalyst is NOT a coincidence and therefore holds Meaning.

My guess is that the creator Googled Catalyst and picked the most obscure association they could find for it.

@ Arowana
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The hacking theory is very interesting, though I'm not sure what the motivation behind that would be or who is doing it. Care to elaborate?

I do in the post above, but you have to read the whole thing.

It's interesting that you mention the naming function doesn't work, because mine did. However, I agree that the main character is not supposed to have free will, given the story structure, so that would have been an appropriate addition.

Hmm... Clueless here.

Might non free-will 4D beings all be programs, then? Then I can understand why the 3D person (676F64) is viewed as "God" - he could be the scientist creator of all the programs (aka the 4D beings).

According to the theories presented by this entry, to be a 4d being, you'd have to be a personality within another personality. If you add God to a program though, you get:

God in the Machine: Deus ex Machina.

In that vein, any comments on the second ending (the "God" one)?

Oddly enough, I haven't gotten that ending -- yet.

@ Anarchy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your basis for the program being hacked is that the proxy is undefined. I'm not very literate in computer systems, but I thought a proxy is something that is used to communicate between two clients?

Exactly! Something wedged it's way between what was supposed to be downloaded, and what was downloaded.

Personally, I had a rather different interpretation of that scene. Right before the error screen pops up, you can see a screen where the recording's protagonist's name is corrupted.

I totally missed that! It happened so fast... So that's why the fact that their name was a number wasn't noticed. Because of the corruption, they honestly believed that that number was their name. Huh...

It seems to me that for a 4D person to view a recording featuring the experiences of a free-willed being, not only do you have to have software that emulates free will (the FreeWill Media Player), but you also have to have some kind of virtual avatar through which to experience that free will - the "proxy" through which the 4D person receives the FWB's sensory data. This avatar is probably supposed to simulate the FWB. Because that avatar wasn't set, the recording experienced an error and the software had to assign a substitute value - a substitute avatar instead of an accurate simulation of the FWB being recorded - which is why we don't know the FWB's name, that is, his/her identity.

You're missing what a 4d person is: It's a Personality within a personality. In other words, the observer is observing the free-willed 3d person from the Inside. However, the rest of your theory does work. To get into someone's head you would need to be Downloaded into their brain with the appropriate software to allow viewing: the FreeWill Media Player. However, the avatar that was substituted was clearly the Cat-girl. She even states that she was supposed to go elsewhere; namely Japan, not where she ended up, with our main character.

Now, pay attention to the timing of the error screen. The recording succeeds in playing a couple sentences of the FWB's inner monologue, but it is when the FWB speaks out loud - that is, the very second that the FWB's name box pops up over the dialogue box, necessitating the revelation of his/her name - that the error occurs. This, combined with the textual corruption that happens at the very end of the recording, strongly suggests that this visual novel format is literally what the 4D person is seeing.

The FreeWill Media Player takes the FWB's real life experiences and translates it into a visual novel format so that the 4D person can experience it. The simplistic branching choices are a poor, clumsy imitation of the myriad of potential actions that a real FWB can take in real life, and the lack of significant consequences to your choices supports the interpretation that this is merely a simulation of choice.

Holy crap... I didn't even notice that.

Wow. Was that just a critique of the simplistic, black-and-white nature of many visual novels' branching structures or what?

LOL!

Or perhaps, a commentary on how free will is ultimately just an illusion?

Actually, I think the entry is a comment on the fact that free will not only Does exists, but like grass growing between the cracks of pavement, will exist no matter how hard we try to pave over it.

In any case, the story fully exploits the very heart of the medium in order to get its message across - you couldn't get the same effect in a non-branching medium.

Definitely! I was amazed.

By the way, the naming section later in the game works for me as well. Perhaps it's a problem on your end?

If it is, that would suck because it totally ruins my theory behind it.

I'm still not sure what the significance of being able to name the spirit is...

A chance to exercise Free Will?

...as well as the choice of the name/color 646F64 is... the catalyst website connection seems a little too flimsy to me, as I mentioned earlier.

In a world with No Free Will, there is no such thing as Coincidence -- which means it Does matter.

[KimiYoriBaka]

About 4Dimensional

I'm sorry if this comes off as overly negative or condescending, but I can't let this go. Anyone who puts that many vague references in a short story, especially one for a writing contest guaranteeing that any and all readers will be reading lots of other stories at the same time, is incredibly pretentious. I understood pretty much immediately that the main character was a robot of some sort just by the gibberish at the start and the name that looked like an id number, but there was nothing in that story that made me actually want to look up anything. I spent most of the story wondering when there would be any indication of what kind of world the main character lived in, just so I would have a sufficient context to even pay attention to the stuff displayed in the first scene. The only thing I got was that the main character lives in a context where having an id number for a name is not unusual (which makes sense for a robot).

about the title, I'm sure anyone who has studied physics would think of time as the 4th dimension. However, the problem with the clue in the title is that it also sounds like what someone would come up with when trying to sound cool. It especially didn't help that the number four is written with the number instead of the word.

one last thing, it is not a good assumption that the player is going to play a second time when they have other things to read.

[OokamiKasumi]

About 4Dimensional

I'm sorry if this comes off as overly negative or condescending, but I can't let this go. Anyone who puts that many vague references in a short story, especially one for a writing contest guaranteeing that any and all readers will be reading lots of other stories at the same time, is incredibly pretentious.

I'm going to have to disagree with you. I thought this entry was absolutely brilliant because they didn't assume the reader wouldn't get it. They didn't dumb it down into a space opera. It was a Riddle based on some of the easier theories in physics. A Wrinkle in Time, my first introduction to tesseracts, is a Children's book.

I understood pretty much immediately that the main character was a robot of some sort just by the gibberish at the start and the name that looked like an id number...

This game is about Free Will, and Robots do not have free will. That's how I knew immediately that the main character was not a robot.

...there was nothing in that story that made me actually want to look up anything.

I knew almost all of the science and psychology references on sight -- and found them absolutely fascinating. Then again, I've read a LOT of Sci-Fi. I've written my share of it too. (I only needed to look things up when it came time to explain myself in my critiques.)

I spent most of the story wondering when there would be any indication of what kind of world the main character lived in, just so I would have a sufficient context to even pay attention to the stuff displayed in the first scene.

In other words, you were expecting a simplistic Character story instead of a Theoretical one. Surprise!!!

The only thing I got was that the main character lives in a context where having an id number for a name is not unusual (which makes sense for a robot).

But it was unusual. The main character was the only one with a number for a name. This is what made it stand out and actually caught my attention.

about the title, I'm sure anyone who has studied physics would think of time as the 4th dimension. However, the problem with the clue in the title is that it also sounds like what someone would come up with when trying to sound cool. It especially didn't help that the number four is written with the number instead of the word.

LOL! Sorry, but I just don't see the presence of this pretentious ego. If someone as stupid in math as I am could figure this game out, it's not that pretentious at all.

one last thing, it is not a good assumption that the player is going to play a second time when they have other things to read.

LOL! I must have played his one game like 8 times already when I only played through the others once, maybe twice -- and that was for a review.

4Dimentional is my number one most favorite game in the entire competition.

[Auro-Cyanide]

I'm going to agree with KimiYori on this one. References in stories outside of the context of the story (as in references to other books and literature) should be a nod and a wink at those you know them, they should not isolate everyone who hasn't. That is poor writing in my opinion. References should make people feel smart when they get them, not make everyone else for stupid because they don't get the story, or worse, think the writer is terrible at what they are doing because they are so incoherent. You are cutting off so much of your audience because you want to be cryptic, instead of being smart about how you wove it in. Why would you do that? Even Stephen Hawkings knows that you shouldn't complicate matters more than you have to and he was writing about the very fabric of space and time. A good writer has the ability of words. A writer unable to communicate their story? What is that?

I consider myself reasonably intelligent. I know what the 4D is, I got that the coding errors meant what I was viewing was not real. However, I was given so very little context that since I was lacking the references, knowledge of coding etc, I was unable to work it out. So that's why this one is a hit and miss for me. I felt there was something there, but it lacked the clarity to give it to me. Stories exist from the readers interpretation. If you aren't careful with how you communicate, and I'm a big believer in clear communication, your audience can misunderstand your intentions or, in this case, not get them at all.

[OokamiKasumi]

4Dimensional

I'm going to agree with KimiYori on this one. References in stories outside of the context of the story (as in references to other books and literature) should be a nod and a wink at those who know them, they should not isolate everyone who hasn't. That is poor writing in my opinion.

Okay, on this we actually agree. A story shouldn't use references so obscure that only the scientific community gets them -- unless that story is specifically aimed at said scientific community. 4Dimentional IS a hard-core sci-fi, and true sci-fi is Theoretical in nature. Characters tend to be cardboard cut-outs intended to illustrate the author's theory, and nothing else. (At least according to Azimov.)

References should make people feel smart when they get them, not make everyone else for stupid because they don't get the story, or worse, think the writer is terrible at what they are doing because they are so incoherent. You are cutting off so much of your audience because you want to be cryptic, instead of being smart about how you wove it in. Why would you do that? Even Stephen Hawkings knows that you shouldn't complicate matters more than you have to and he was writing about the very fabric of space and time. A good writer has the ability of words. A writer unable to communicate their story? What is that?

But this creator did communicate their story -- to those who read Sci-Fi. (I cannot be the only one who got this story. It's just not possible.)

I will say that 4Dimentional was Not suited to this reading audience; those who read and create visual novels. The people here are Gamers and storytellers, and most of them are Young. They're not the type to read quantum physics and chaos theory for pleasure.

[KimiYoriBaka]

This game is about Free Will, and Robots do not have free will.

and here we have the problem. without some context of the world the story takes place in, this can't be assumed. remember that the concept of robots without free will comes from the idea that humans can't or won't give them free will.

I understand that it can be nice to connect all the little pieces in a story, but if the story is too vague it's still going to alienate a lot of readers just because of a difference in experiences and association.

If someone as stupid in math as I am could figure this game out, it's not that pretentious at all.

I'm not sure how math is relevant here.

[Arowana]

The FreeWill Media Player takes the FWB's real life experiences and translates it into a visual novel format so that the 4D person can experience it. The simplistic branching choices are a poor, clumsy imitation of the myriad of potential actions that a real FWB can take in real life, and the lack of significant consequences to your choices supports the interpretation that this is merely a simulation of choice.

Wow. Was that just a critique of the simplistic, black-and-white nature of many visual novels' branching structures or what? Or perhaps, a commentary on how free will is ultimately just an illusion? In any case, the story fully exploits the very heart of the medium in order to get its message across - you couldn't get the same effect in a non-branching medium.

What an excellent idea, Anarchy! This is the interpretation that I'm buying into now as well. The whole game is actually a simulation of free will for a 4D person...just like how VNs are a simulation of reality for us. Wow, that's a really clever use of/commentary on the medium...sends shivers up my spine.

I'm also liking the idea that 4D beings are actually artificial entities (e.g. programs), which could explain why they don't have free will, as well why they view free-willed 3D people as gods (humans create programs, after all)

one last thing, it is not a good assumption that the player is going to play a second time when they have other things to read.

Heh, this is far from being the only branching entry, not to mention it’s on the shorter side (only about 5000 words, if I remember correctly). This is a VN competition, after all – many of the games are going to require multiple playthroughs in order to see all the branches. The author also posted a walkthrough for the game right at the start, so if anything, he/she was trying to save people time.

In other words, you were expecting a simplistic Character story instead of a Theoretical one. Surprise!!!
4Dimentional is my number one most favorite game in the entire competition.

Lol! I think I love you, OokamiKasumi. (By the way, you get the “God” ending by playing a second time, without closing the game or clearing any persistent data, if that was unclear from the walkthrough).

References in stories outside of the context of the story (as in references to other books and literature) should be a nod and a wink at those you know them, they should not isolate everyone who hasn't.

Though the author might have thrown in some extra tidbits for sci-fi fans, I don’t think you need to know all the references OokamiKasumi mentioned to reach a reasonable interpretation of the game. I think Anarchy’s interpretation, for instance, is excellent, and it requires minimal outside knowledge.

and here we have the problem. without some context of the world the story takes place in, this can't be assumed. remember that the concept of robots without free will comes from the idea that humans can't or won't give them free will.

Hmm, maybe you haven't seen the “God” ending yet? If not, check the walkthrough in the second post.

[OokamiKasumi]

This game is about Free Will, and Robots do not have free will.

and here we have the problem. without some context of the world the story takes place in, this can't be assumed. remember that the concept of robots without free will comes from the idea that humans can't or won't give them free will.

Even I know that human beings will do literally anything to stay at the top of the food chain, especially when it comes to potentially smarter and stronger beings, like robots. Anyway... Robots not having free will is assumed among those who read sci-fi regularly because Issac Azimov's Three Laws of Robotics have been in common use in Science-Fiction since the 40's. In fact, they are actually practiced in the current robotics community.

Anyway... Basically, what you're saying is that the creator didn't describe enough of their world for you to grasp what was going on? I can accept that. It did take me more than one run-though to figure it all out.

I understand that it can be nice to connect all the little pieces in a story, but if the story is too vague it's still going to alienate a lot of readers just because of a difference in experiences and association.

There, I agree. This story wasn't a good match for the readers in this community.

If someone as stupid in math as I am could figure this game out, it's not that pretentious at all.

I'm not sure how math is relevant here.

Physics is Mathematical in basis, and my skill at math is Grammar school level -- except in geometry. I shouldn't be smart enough to get this story.

[Anarchy]

4Dimentional Again

Subject: Report 001, Series 6

This told me right away that what I was seeing should be treated as a recording.

The very first line we see after the title is MESSAGE RECEIVED. It's a recording, yes, but the game immediately told me these things:

It's a message, meaning that it's communication. It's data that somebody wanted to convey to the person who's playing back the recording. The experiment interpretation, therefore, doesn't seem to hold water given this word choice - if it was merely an experimental simulation, why would it be called a "message"? Who was that somebody who sent the message? Why? What effect did the sender want to have on the recipient? Why did the recipient play back the message?

...YHWH file extension.

YHWH is the Judaic name for God. This told me that I was dealing with "Man tampering in the realm of God." In other words: Life and Death.

I do agree that "YHWH file extension" implies that the recording has something to do with God, or perhaps, has the qualities of God, but does that necessarily translate to life and death? Or that it's "Man tampering in the realm of God"? These aren't beings from our dimension, after all. Given the overall theme of this work, couldn't the file extension refer to free will as well? Since from what I know of Judaism, isn't free will something gifted to humans by God?

Opening in FreeWill Media Player.

Only living beings have Free will, though according to organized religion only people have freewill, therefore the test subject in which this Media Player was running was Human -- or a simulation of one.

The fact that this .YHWH file is opened in FreeWill Media Player reinforces my theory that this is a file format that has to do with free will. It's a file that has to be played back in FreeWill Media Player in order to work. Like I mentioned earlier, I think the .YHWH file format is used to record the experiences of free-willed beings, whether it be sensory data, thoughts, memories, and so on.

FPV mode must be enabled to view message.

I admit I had no real clue as to what this might stand for, but my guess was: Free-willed Person View.

I think that's absolutely it!

However, and far more importantly, the main character does not notice that their name is a NUMBER.

How would the FWB notice their name at all? Are you implying that 676F64 can see the visual novel format, and thus their name box? It's the person who's playing back the recording who sees that the name of the FWB has temporarily been designated as and colored with 676F64.

-- If you choose to allow the cat-girl to use her Japanese name, you get Seki. In Japanese, this is comprised of the characters for Star and Spirit.

If you choose to hear Seki's explanation, she starts off with a doomsday prophecy, then abruptly interrupts herself by stating that her name means World and Prayer. Since I knew exactly what her name really meant, this was a LIE. In other word's, either she herself or some of what she was about to say was Lie. Truthfully though, I suspected that I could be wrong about the meaning behind her name, and that I was reading a little too much into all this.

Yeah, depending on the kanji, "Seki" could probably mean either of these things.

After a bit of back and forth you get this:

The media is a reflection of society's expectations and standards. It's a way of connecting you all to each other and providing a platform for the exchanging of values. It's what bridges the collective conscious.

First of all, what bridges the human collective conscious is the realm of Dreams -- Not Media. (Read Carl Jung for this.)

More importantly, Media is NOT a reflection of society. Media is PROPAGANDA aimed at society to MAKE them WANT a platform of values (that only the ignorant and inexperienced will fall for; namely young people.)

First of all, Jung's theories have no scientific basis whatsoever. Secondly, aren't those just your personal opinions? Seki's view on media is completely identical to mine. I think that calling her a liar just because she has different opinions than you do is a little hasty. And I'm curious - do you really think all media is propaganda? Including all the entries in this contest, for example? Seriously?

This is not as mysterious an answer when you put it up against the fact that you are viewing a running Program. My knee-jerk reaction was: "Oh, once main character figures out that they're a program!"

This message is called "Report 001, Series 6". "Report" implies that the sender is reporting on something that has happened, that they're telling the recipient about things that they've observed. In other words, I got the impression that the contents of the .YHWH file were things that had already happened, and the sender had merely recorded them and sent them to the recipient (Stein?)

In other words, I don't think that 676F64 is a computer program - it's just a stand in avatar for whoever that FWB was, because for some reason the data got corrupted (hacking? maybe) and the identity of the FWB was lost. It's like how Renpy automatically throws up that black and white checkered background whenever there isn't a background specified.

ADV_comp_4Dim012.jpg

Okay!
-- The first line proves that I was right in my guess that the program had been Hacked.

The ending corruption does seem like the .YHWH file was hacked. But by who? The sender? Somebody intercepting the original sender? This implies that whoever hacked it didn't want Stein to see what the spirit really said to the FWB. Which means that in order to figure out the motivation for the hacking, we need to look at what was deliberately hidden from the recipient (Stein?), who would have to risk the following dire consequences in order to find out the true ending.

The Warning.
-- Fatal consequences can only happen on a download if the download it being put directly into a Living Being.
-- Independent builds of MindOS: Fancy way of saying; independently thinking minds -- which the main character clearly was.
-- Decay of memcom systems: Decay of memory.
-- Decay of vital physical stabilizers; such as the heart and lungs.
-- Sabotage of any and all communications-based applications; the recipient goes catatonic.
-- 30% chance of wipe-out for users of MindOSiris; 30% chance of total Brain-Fry.

Playing devil's advocate here: Does the use of the word "fatal" necessarily mean that the downloader is a living being? Couldn't "fatal" also refer to the death of a "mind" (or perhaps a MindOS - literally, an operating system designed to simulate a mind - but what kind of mind? A free-thinking mind? Obviously not, because why would a free-thinking MindOS need additional software like FreeWill Media Player to experience .YHWH, or recordings of free-willed experiences)? By "physical stabilizers", couldn't that also mean any kind of hardware the mind is being installed on?

Also, in my headcanon, memcon refers to "memory consolidation".

To me, the most important line in this screen is "Recipient functions with MindOSiris." Not "Recipient is currently using MindOSiris", or "Recipient is installed with MindOSiris". "Recipient functions with MindOSiris." This suggests that the recipient can not function without some kind of operating system that simulates minds, suggesting that in its natural state, the recipient does not have a mind even though it cannot function without one. To me, that suggests some kind of robot/computer that cannot take action without software to direct it; or, if we look at the .YHWH file and what the spirit says - my theory is that 4D people themselves are naturally mindless, paralyzed by their inability to perceive cause and effect because they perceive time on a different level from 3D FWBs. But with MindOSiris, perhaps 4D people can emulate the way 3D beings see the world, and thus be able to "function" in the sense that they can influence and interact with the world around them.

Yeah, flimsy speculation, feel free to poke holes in it. I'll go have another reread to see if it holds up.

Note that the message above states that this user does have MindOSiris, and is NOT an ideal candidate for the attachment.

What do they do?
-- They download it anyway and resume playback -

Why does the recipient do this? What is so important that they have to risk their entire life to see it? Why did the hacker want to hide this from them, even if it meant killing their mind?

Turns out, it's a scene of the spirit girl explaining to the FWB that s/he's taking part in an experiment to determine the nature/motivations/etc of FWBs, followed by a scene of the same FWB 4 years later where s/he runs into the spirit girl at a testing center. But wait! If the spirit girl will indeed become Seki in the future, that doesn't quite make sense, because Seki is a 4D being in 3D guise, while this new spirit girl seems to be a regular 3D girl. Does that mean that in the future, there will be a way to convert 3D beings into 4D beings?

I actually have another theory about this last scene that takes part after the corruption. During your second playthrough, the ending changes subtly. You get more information on the nature of the experiments, and the nature of Seki and 4D people. Finally, the message is actually described as ending from the perspective of the recipient, not just through a "The End..." and blackout in the recording itself. This implies that the second time around, what we see is the real contents of the message, whereas in the first time around, what we saw was just another, more convincing hack that achieved a happy, "normal" ending for the FWB. My reasoning? The corrupted "Good Ending 000000001" had the spirit girl happily deciding to renounce her evil ways and create a better world with the protagonist, with romantic descriptions of hand holdings or whatever, whereas the "actual" ending of the first playthrough had a very typical meet cute romantic ending with an optimistic, hopeful ending for the FWB, who changes majors to science. Both of those "endings" are similar, which makes me suspect that one is obviously corrupted and the result of a failed hacking, whereas the latter is an eerily convincing ending that seems like a natural part of the recording instead of something that was hacked into the recording to cover up the information we get in the second ending. My conclusion: truefile.YWHW was also hacked.

If we assume that corruption is a result of hacking, look at what happens when the recipient, through 676F64, simulates choosing not to pursue the investigation. Grammar starts to break down at that point, signifying a corruption, which makes me suspect that this branching choice has also been hacked. If you press on and refuse to investigate, you're dumped back into the main screen. If you give in, you're routed back to the beginning of the VN, where the only way to proceed is to play the simulation in such a way that complies with the spirit.

Most chillingly, even though it seems that we see the real contents of the message during the second playthrough, because we see the whole message without any corruption happening, and then we see the consequences of finishing that message in the 4D world, at the very end of the second playthrough, you still get a The End blackout screen, but the words The End are immediately followed by two or three corrupted characters, thus implying that the ending scene in the 4D world is also a hacked-in delusion, which implies that what happens is that the whole 4D world sequence is also a message, a recording that can be hacked, and we, the players, are also being duped exactly the same way the hacker tried to dupe Stein. In this way, the work is drawing parallels between us and the 4D world characters, with the implication that as beings from a higher dimension (3D) to the beings in the VN (2D), in the same way that 4D characters are from a higher dimension than beings from the 3D world, we don't have free will, much in the same way those 4D beings don't. The fact that the 4D protagonist (Stein?) is addressed as "you" helps to facilitate this identification with the 4D beings.

But forgetting about the whole 4th-wall-breaking thing and bringing this whole speculation back to the in-universe hacking issue - why would the hacker want to corrupt the .YHWH file Stein(?) received? The ending of the second playthrough has a big hint at the end - Stein says that by seeing through the FWB's eyes as they talked to the spirit girl, s/he finally realized the identity of God, which implies that the whole reason the file was hacked and corrupted was to prevent Stein from realizing that identity, and to seal his/her mouth if s/he found out. Now that Stein has realized that, s/he's now pretty much mentally dead and unable to tell anybody what s/he found out from watching the file. That's the conclusion that makes the most sense to me. If that makes any sense at all.