Chiasmata: Found Footage

>Are you the reward for the puzzle?

ASH: "Wait, I worded that wrong. What would be the reward for this puzzle?"
ARCHIVIST: "I'm unsure. This having a purpose other than timewasting would indicate that there was some kind of plan."
SAM: "Didn't you build this place, though? Surely you'd know what things were for."
ARCHIVIST: "Well, I thought I understood this place. But now I'm fully awake again, after a subjective... several thousand years in bits, with various bits of my mind in various places, after that I find that this place has completely gone to Hell in a handbasket."









~=>

ARCHIVIST: "Everything's broken! Just... everything! The power's not working, the inevitability deferrers - which should only be used in emergencies, they're bad for the temporal health of this entire timespace - have been running flat-out for decades! The Archives themselves are starting to gain sentience, which is a whole can of worms in and of itself, and someone's disabled all the safeguards on it, before putting large chunks of my mind in it! Something dreadful is going to happen, and my idiot siblings were too busy bickering and getting themselves killed to do anything about it! My dear brother, even, I'm pretty sure he kludged most of this stuff into failing so spectacularly! I'd call it suicidal, but he clearly had no idea what was going on when he awoke."

As the robot-with-Archivist-in rants, the shell of its head creaks and the fleshy substance inside bubbles.

ARCHIVIST: "And, not to mention the worst-case, which draws ever closer!"
SAM: "Uh, what's that?"
ARCHIVIST: "The shadow of the Location, where we currently are, will burst like a soap bubble, and all nearby Earths will be sterilised."
SAM: "Wait, Earths plural? That sounds weird, although I don't remember why."
ASH: "I'm more concerned about 'sterilised'."
ARCHIVIST: "Well, comparing Earths isn't relevant here. More importantly to you, however, is that if the shadow of the Location breaks, you die, and everyone on the Earth you came from dies, too. Additionally, myself and my siblings will have wasted millions of years of work."
ASH: "Like I said, more concerned about 'sterilised'."









~=>

SAM: "Which Earth are we from, then? Are we even from the same Earth?"
ARCHIVIST: "Ah, you are. Earth-Crimson, I believe you call it."

Your brain twinges with mild recognition at that phrase.

ARCHIVIST: "The Location's shadow itself hangs between two Earths, dangling from the 'true' Location like a... well, like a parachute, maybe? Or a shadow, or a dragline, or a surface layer extending in a direction kata, and honestly analogies in your language kinda break down. Took me ages to explain to... haha, well, you don't want me to prattle on about digressions."
SAM: "Are you going to save the Earth...s?"
ARCHIVIST: "I certainly hope so! We won't be able to continue our work if the Location ceases to be, and I won't be able to talk sense into my siblings!"
ASH: "Question: why were you killed before the rest of your siblings?"
ARCHIVIST: "Ah. Well, we had a vote, and it was two to one against me. Brother Dearest was still fuming about, er, certain past events, so he voted to kill me forever. Sister Dearest said no, and also that that was pretty much impossible, and Sibling Dearest tiebroke by saying that it'd be most harmonious if I was put away for a million years, or until another sibling woke me up. I think something went wrong, though, because I certainly wasn't in exile, as I expected from that."
ASH: "That's... an unusual approach to conflict resolution, by my experience here."
ARCHIVIST: "Well, I guess that's a human perspective. And I did, er, take some liberties with the retelling, to make it easier to comprehend. And also because my memory is flaky. I think I lost some somewhere."

Footnote:

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