Noise Lights: A Text Adventure- Sweet and Sour Victory

>We h4ve come full circle! M4ybe they 4re your p4st 4nd future selves.

That’s an interesting concept. At first you consider brushing this thought aside as being improbable, but, after thinking for a moment, it really seems just as probable as several other things that have happened to you today. You can think of four possible scenarios off the top of your head.
The first one that comes to mind is that both trapdoors are glimpsing into the past and future. It only looks like the other versions of you are miming your actions because they’re both your past and future selves acting out what you have done and will do. A few problems with this scenario, though. If the trapdoors don’t transform what you put through it and was actually your time-you tossing in the replacements he (meaning you) would need to have gotten them from somewhere as having them materialize out of nothing is very unlikely. “Unlikely”, you say while staring at a possibly time traveling portal door. The second problem is: now knowing that time travel is a possibility you would willfully go out of your what to not do what you saw your future-you doing. You’re a leader, not a follower, after all.
The second scenario is, that while the doors do indeed pierce into the past and future, they are only milliseconds before and after the present. It looks like the other versions of you are mirroring your movements only because the time difference is far too minute for the naked eye to see. That still doesn’t explain where the extra items came from, and anyone who would go through the trouble of building physics breaking and time traveling doors only to make the time shift too small to notice has an off sense of priority. What would be the point? Disappointing, is what it would be.
A third scenario could be that a version of yourself from a different time is responsible for this. Maybe a future-you, having lived through some sort of calamity, built this in an attempt to prevent the oncoming/already-happened apocalypse. Each door you ascend through could take you forward through time until you see what caused the end of the world, then you descend back through time to prevent it. Or past-you saw some necessity for time travel and built this, then made himself (yourself) forget for another even more necessary necessity. The extra items could have-been/will-be acquired by a future-you and sent down to you-you and past-you for a vital purpose that you will/have-already learned about. That would explain the extra junk, but there are a few problems with this one. Even if it was a necessity, you would not force yourself to forget on the simple grounds that self-inflicted amnesia is dumb. Another is that, simply put, that is far more effort that any version of you, past, present, or future, is willing to give for anything. You suppose that you could make someone else do it for you, but you’d probably end up being roped into overseeing the project the entire time, and that’s something you just wouldn’t want to do.
The final scenario is simple. Aliens did it. They did it for an experiment. The extra items clonking you on the head and all the mirror miming of your future and past selves is just part of their plan. Everything that happened to you today was all according to their experimental designs. The only problem with this scenario is that you don’t believe in aliens.
The creaking and shuffling on the floor behind you derails your train of thought. You grimace at having your intellectual musings interrupted. Whoever is behind you just can’t be bothered to let you have a moment. Jeez, some people.

>Reach down and help up the other you, unless he is your brother from another universe, then help him up AND slap his ugly face.

After a moment you realize that he must be hesitating. You’re probably in his way. He doesn’t seem to want to call out to ask you to move. That could be a sign that he’s trying to hide his voice. That could be a sign that this is your brother masquerading as you since his voice has nowhere near the charmingly roguish quality that yours has. Whether it’s another you, future-you, your brother dressed as you, or whoever-else-you, you’ll find out a lot quicker if you help them up. If it is your brother, then after you help him up you can hit him with your book and push him back down.
You stand up from your crouching position and take a step forward. Before you can turn around, something catches your ankle and yanks you back to the floor. A little wind is knocked out of you as you hit the ground. As you try to get up you’re pulled back causing you to hit the floor again. You are pulled again, dragging your jaw as well as the rest of your body across the dirt covered wood.

> Wait for them to arrive, and then say hi.

You look over your shoulder to see your assailant. He has you by the ankle with one hand and is using the other to pull himself up. Now that you have a close look at him, you can see the clothes he’s wearing are similar to yours, but a lot dirtier and rattier. The dim lighting reveals that he seems to have spilled some sort of glow-in-the-dark ink on his shirt and sleeves. You also finally get a look at his face. It’s… Oh my.
His face is a twisted, grotesque parody of yours. While his hair had looked mostly like yours earlier, up close, you can see matted strands are plastered on his forehead as if drenched in sweat. The skin on his face, and only his face, is beet red and peeling like he's been very badly sunburned. The skin around his eyes is stretched out to a painful degree, making where his eyes would be look unnaturally large; you can see the folds of skin around his eyes held down as if by seemingly invisible clamps. There are single light bulbs jammed into his eye sockets, both dimly lit and flickering. His nose is crooked in a way that looks it was broken and healed improperly many times over. His mouth is wide open and his jaw hangs so low, it looks dislocated, but it's still rigid enough to function. His efforts to pull himself up actually causes him to attempt to clench his jaw, nearly closing it with his teeth almost touching; almost, but not. Actually, instead of teeth he has the bulbs of pointed Christmas lights of various mismatched sizes and colors jutting out of his surprisingly pale gums. In the opening of his throat that, like his eyes and mouth, are unnaturally large, there is a bundle of wires that jolt and spark with every breath. His tongue is hardly visible and caught up in the twisted bundle of wires, only noticeable because it twitches and spasms with every shock. His physical movements seem to be jarring more wires loose, you can now see them poking and hanging out from his shirt collar, his sleeves, and other parts of his clothing; all of them live and sparking. There are even a few wires poking out from under his fingernails. Despite his mangled expression, what little emotion can be gleaned from his flickering eyes is a look of pure and utter hate. His labored and muffled breathing sounds electronic and buzzy, like every noise he makes is run through a damaged speaker. He takes a deep breath causing his mouth to spark and sizzle before letting out a cry that sounds both confused and very, very angry.

You: "Hello."

[STATUS CHANGED TO AFRAID]


Player Statistics:

SpoilerShow

Status: AFRAID

Death Count: 4

Inventory:
1 can of dehydrated cans, add water for more cans
1 book (read) titled Staying Delicious: Keep Your Cool as a Fool
1 electronic codex, knowledge is power and power is pain
1 legalese document
1 extend-o-grab
1 mallet
1 pistol
1 fistful of pennies
1 bunch of coupons
1 keys

Abilities:
A Kall To Keys [X]
Stat Tat [X]
Honeyed Vinegar [X]

I don't know what your problem is, he looks friendly to me.

Softmind Software^tm Almost-Semi-Monthly Corporate Newsletter:

SpoilerShow

Hello again to our semi-valued Corporate Investors (Mandatory Benefactors),

Our Company had a good month(s) so far since our last letter. Due to some of our oversights in selecting facilities, staff, and overall frivolous money spending, our company’s productivity is still firmly locked in the all-time lowest the world has ever seen. We’ve actually been setting and breaking new records by a wide margin, but hey, setting records is a good thing no matter how you look at it. Despite being located in six sport stadiums, space is becoming a much bigger issue. The pinball collection has started overflowing into our other buildings. I know I said we’d work on that, but some things just seem more essential at the time than they really are.
I’ve kept my word, and we have indeed stopped accepting mail from you in addition to phone calls. We’ve never even bothered looking at your emails, so I wouldn’t recommend you try now. I understand. I understand your concerns completely. We want to be productive and make money, you want to make money too, and you want us to stop illegally draining money from your accounts. For us to be able to achieve any of those goals, we need to first eliminate all distractions. Your concerns are perfectly justified from a conventional standpoint. However, our business model, contrary to what we actually described in our contracts, is not conventional. If we have to stop and listen to every cry of “that’s illegal” or “please, for the love of God, you’re driving our business into the ground” we wouldn’t get anything done. With that in mind, I’m pleased to announce that our project’s progress, as well as other newly started projects, has reached almost acceptable levels of development.
Back to the subject of contact, a few of you have actually sent representatives and lawyers to speak with us directly. I wouldn’t have recommended that since it turned out to be a waste of time. We recently installed patrols of armed guards who turned those representatives away. Well, some of them were turned away. All the performance enhancing drugs we’ve been stuffing into them have made the guards a little trigger happy. Sorry about that. I mean seriously, sorry. We’ll send what’s left back to you. We’re still trying to find all the paperwork shreds.
I am aware of your concerns. There’s no need to get desperate. I am fully in the know that a few of you are financially in the red. I will be the first to admit that some of our acquirement of funds may have gotten a little overzealous once or twice. There’s no need to panic or worry. Even though some of you are so far in the red that a child’s melonade stand would be a safer investment, we fully intend to pay you back. Yes, provided there is anything left to give back to, we will reimburse you for every cent that we borrowed. Don’t worry, I promise.

From the desk of Geraldine Hayes.