Zoostuck 2

your signal tells a tale of a thousand lives, all ended swiftly by this sandcastle builder. revenge must happen

Well, that's a bit exaggerated, it's more like one life seriously inconvenienced, but then the signal code's never been very good at subtleties. It's the best you can do.

Of course, it occurs to you that you're not sure just how well the seagull understands your signal code, you've never really practiced it or anything. Oh well, nothing you can really do about that right now, you'll just have to send the signal and hope he gets it right.

> Seagull: eat him. the crab. The crab wants you to eat him

You are now the seagull, and you think that crab down there is signaling you to eat it. But you aren't sure. You remember that you made a specific decision to leave crabs out of your diet, though you aren't actually sure why right now, and you feel conflicted.

If only there were some sort of advice column you could send a question into.

You are now a big tub of lard. Your greatest dream is that one day you will be put in a sandwich.

That day is not today, however. Well, probably not, at least. Not if the last few days are any indication. You spent them all falling. You aren't even sure any more where you were than when you started falling.

You've decided to start a new civilization as you fall, because this new civilization will surely have sandwiches and then you can realize your dream. In order to accomplish this, you've started a newspaper advice column, because surely where there are advice columns, civilization will inevitably follow. And then sandwiches will follow that.

Anyways, you have some questions to answer. You don't know how you're aware of them, maybe this is one of those mental adventure things inanimate objects sometimes have and you somehow know about.

So here's the first question!

Dear Lard,

I have a difficult dietary question. I've sworn off crab meat for reasons I don't remember, but a crab is signaling me to eat him. (I'm pretty sure that's what the signal means.) Should I eat him or not?

Struggulling With A Tough Question

The second question is just as tricky.

Dear Lard,

Recently, a past version of myself established a connection with a session of a game with universe-spanning consequences, only to discover that it had zero players. I have since learned that this session is a placeholder; each planet that ever gets involved in this game has two planets connected to it through dreams. The null session is a safeguard to prevent those two dream-planets from triggering the game and developing their own two dream-planets, which would develop their own two dream-planets, and so on. Obviously the resulting recursion could destabilize the universe, but even more drastically, it could bring into being a terrible sitcom about some kids playing the game.

However, I only learned of this through my past self completely screwing it up and unleashing the problem. Should I risk a time paradox by telling him about it before he actually does it, knowing full well that the paradox could wipe out the universe or create the sitcom anyway?

Troubled Time Traveler

Oh man, these two questions are so tough you just aren't going to be able to handle any more in this column. So what are the answers?