Desert Theory
Desert Theory wrote:This whole time we've never really been given evidence that the Submachine has ever "left" Earth; only that it was either built under it or absorbed parts of it. So why would we now find ourselves in a location with two moons in the sky? With an atmosphere and giant pyramids in the background, no less?
I have to say, that was an ending that I bet no one, no one truly expected, to find ourselves on seemingly another entire planet. With a breathable atmosphere. What to make of it? And another thing that bothered me, and a couple of other forum members as well: How we could see Murtaugh's karma arm, even outside of the Submachine. If we have truly escaped, as it says at the end, then shouldn't we not be able to see the karma arm?
Well, yes and no. We did escape the Submachine. But why was it called the Submachine in the first place? It was named in the thought that the structure was underground. We now know that's not quite true. The Lighthouse didn't start underground. The Winter Palace didn't start underground. Those locations were both later put "underground" by crossing some layers around. The Lighthouse was buried by connecting it to two or more layers, and tilting one to reorient the gravity. The point is that these locations can't be in some obscure location away from everything else, like out in space. In fact, we know that the Lighthouse, the Winter Palace, and the Root are all in the Core. And how would one be able to transport all those locations, all that material into a place far away from the gravitational pull from Earth?
You can't. You couldn't simply make a big karma portal, aim the other end somewhere in space, and fire your karma energy there. You need matter to do that.
So the conclusion is, then, that we're all still on Earth. Outside of the Submachine, but still on Earth. So why does it look so different? Why can we still see evidence of layers outside of the Submachine?
Well, the magic lies in the sand. Sand is everywhere, and as long as you have a material under your two feet that is widespread and covers something else, then that something else is considered underground. So Submachine is still underground on Earth, no worries there. Everything in the games takes place under the sand. And the large expanses of Void that we see are simply an expanded nothing. It fits into the tiniest of spaces and yet stretches for perceived miles. It's a result of the collapse of the Plan. A Plan to make new realities for the world. A Plan to make more space out of the space humans had. Maybe the answer to the question was for a civilization to find a way to break out of its own reality and explore others.
And the Plan didn't just include Submachine. It was supposed to start as a test site, in in the Core, before it spread into an unrecognizble form. And it spread above ground, probably spreading wider and more unrecognizable, getting weaker and weaker until its effects were barely discernable, stretching into the thinnest molecules of air in the Earth's atmosphere. Around the Core, which is where we are/where the Plan is the strongest, mutations happened. Maybe once the lighthouse workers started burying Murtaugh they found that the karma portals created anomalies. The sand kept replicating and pouring. And it didn't stop for a long time. It covered everything and made everything part of a Submerged Machine.
One question remains: Why the pyramids and the second moon? Mutations of the uncontrolled collapse of the Plan. The spillage of ideas in random fashion. A problem with this: that explains the pyramids but it contradicts my statement about the Plan needing matter to expand. So in that case those moons aren't moons. They're both artificial, and much smaller than the moon, and still located within Earth's atmosphere.
What we see in the desert is Earth. It is Earth encapsulated by the rapid expansion of the Layers. That's why we see the karma arm, because the Plan exists here too. We've left the Submachine, but we haven't escaped its grasp.
Portal and Navigator Theory
Portal and Navigator Theory wrote:Submachine 10 followed typical Submachine traditions by being stubborn when it came to answering questions. The concept of sublayers was introduced, and that did not exactly make things easier to follow. However, it did give me an idea on some more explanations as to what really happens inside a Navigator, and even helps describe the properties of XYZ and karma portals.
Sublayers are a tough concept to accept. The fact that an INFINITE amount of sub-infinities, so to speak, could exist seems impossible. It helps explain why explorers seem to go missing, why they cannot find each other, and why they have trouble remembering things.
Most explorers seem to have some experience of either forgetting items or having trouble going to certain coordinates or staying together as a team. So there must be some common action or object that the exploration teams all used.
The answer: The XYZ portals. Built for sub-bots, reconfigured for humans. But who reconfigured them? Who would have the capacity to do that? Murtaugh seems like a likely candidate. I'm assuming that after he built his first karma portals, he found a way to use the condensed energy to serve humans.
So let's say that Murtaugh somehow reverse-engineered the XYZ portals by pairing them with a blue karma portal, perhaps located inside via karmic electricical conduits or whatever. This initially was a good idea; Murtaugh wouldn't want to use a green karma portal because he knew the explorers would not be able to navigate through more than one layer. Except for one major thing: the karma portals were still unstable. They were said to "shatter this dimension".
Think of a layer like a string, made of several smaller strings. Or in this case, an infinite number of strings. With each karma portal placed, the sublayers begin to separate.
As a result, each time the explorers used the single-layer blue karma portals inside the XYZ portals, the string became unraveled. Maybe the portal sent an explorer to a different sublayer. One sublayer out of an infinite number. The explorer may as well be considered dead.
This only occurred more as the portals were used more frequently. It's ironic; the layers and sublayers themselves are stable, until the karma portals get involved. The sublayers are all part of the same string, but they get separated nonetheless.
And of course, as soon as Murtaugh left the layer that the exploration teams resided in, they felt abandoned.
Each time the player uses an XYZ portal, the sublayer changes. But since there are an infinite number of sublayers, no change is perceived. It would be impossible to find a version where something is changed, perhaps by a wandering explorer, because of the infinite possibilities. However there is still the possibility that the other sublayers are manipulated to an extent, since using items with objects retains a "used" status in a SubVerse playthrough.
So how does one reorient him/herself to a layer? How does Murtaugh plan on going back and rescuing those who might be still alive?
You would need something to point you in the right direction. If you were to graph a point on a set of axes, odds are you would start at the origin or a multiple of, say, 5, 3, or 2 and then work your way along the axes. Similarly, something would need to be devised so that one can start right on a specific Layer (1, 2, 3, etc.), right on a "tick mark", and then use that reference point to explore sublayers. Find a spot on the string where its compoments aren't unraveled.
The Navigator is the answer to that solution. The Navigator gives the player a set of seven layers, instead of seven x infinity layers. It's a solution to avoid getting lost. With the navigator, the player has more control over seven layers than the exploration teams had with just one. It's controlled with green energy, which ties other main layers together. It's the form of energy that Mur found first when he stuck his arm into the waterfall. And of course he doesn't need the Navigator. If you have access to the Layer of Light, you can float at will and find the right sublayer of infinity, provided you have enough time.
In summary, when it comes to layers and sublayers, XYZ portals and karma portals are the problem. The navigator is the solution.
Character Connections Theory
Character Connections Theory wrote:Let's try something new and attempt to connect some characters in the Submachine games.
It seems interesting to me that we have so many notes from a single unnamed person in the Submachine series. Specifically, the person who left notes in the cliffs and the tunnels in Submachine 6, and the jumper in the mountain location. Both the same person, as confirmed by Mateusz Skutnik. Yet we don't know the jumper's name, odd for someone we know so much about.
Then we have people like Henry o' Toole, where we also know a lot, but he somehow isn't involved in the main series, for someone we know so much about. He's very indirectly involved, but he has a name.
In an effort to try to bring together elements of the games, I'm going to propose something rather odd.
What do we know about the jumper?
The jumper worked in the Lab under Murtaugh. Yet he was not part of an exploration team, and he never met anyone else besides Murtaugh himself. The jumper was instead sent to the Edge to disable the defense systems. And even though he didn't have contact with anyone else who was also sent here, he somehow knew that at least five others were sent before him. He also knew about Liz. He wasn't eager to explore the Subnet, and this played a factor into why he was chosen. He was good at doing what he was told, and this also played a role in his selection to go into the defense systems. What can we draw from this?
Just like everyone else who went to the Edge, he was placed under special conditions. He worked under Murtaugh for a while before being sent out. However what do we know about people who were sent out to the Edge? Submachine 5 tells us that they needed some sort of special training with wisdom gems first, and that is why they were chosen. So we know that the jumper most likely had special training with wisdom gems. And since the jumper is said to not be interested in exploring the infinity of the Subnet, then maybe he was only interested on one part of the Subnet while he was inside it. Or two.
Now let's talk about Henry O'Toole. Henry was brought to the king's attention as a young man with special architectural skills. His first project under the king was to build the Winter Palace and exploit the uses of "anti structural engineering" with the help of karmic energy. So he knew a great deal about how to manipulate karma to build the Winter Palace. He worked as a subservient at least two levels down from the King, as the servant of the King's urbanist. Most likely, the urbanist gave him orders directly from the King to experiment with building new structures like the ones we have found in Submachine 7. He was a servant. He was to do what he was told in order to succeed. This resulted in building the Palace and then the Lighthouse, both located in the Core. This was before there was a defense system, before the collapse.
A bit of a sidetrack: Submachine 10 comfirms the purpose of the lab complex. It was an effort to explore the properties of karma.
So here's a scenario:
Henry o'Toole builds the Winter Palace in 1832 with his knowledge of karma. I'm assuming the lab complex would therefore have to be in the Core to make it easily accessible to the Palace. Then much later he builds the Lighthouse, on top of the Root. The Root is then later explored later and used to test out the first teleportation systems by use of transporters. Soon after, Murtaugh learns to manipulate karmic energy. The AI is established by others in the Core as well. Expansion begins. Murtaugh is somehow able to start using karma portals in the Palace, but how? Odds are that he would have to have been granted permission by the king to act there. So maybe he signed up for a position to overlook the grounds. Maybe he becomes the master urbanist, with o'Toole as his inferior. Murtaugh abused this position, and this angers the others. Murtaugh transfers to the Root and leaves the Palace deserted and broken. He enters the Lighthouse and becomes its keeper. The Root is then abandoned. The only location populated at this point is the Lab complex. Murtaugh continues to experiment with karma portals at this time, unrefined and raw. He destroys the Root's power source with a portal, therefore triggering the collapse and the uncontrolled expansion. The AI responds by building the defense systems.
What is o'Toole doing during this time? He separates from Mur by order of the King, and continues refining karma in the Lab complex. Meanwhile the others plan to bury Murtaugh to stop his destruction. Murtaugh leaves via the Lighthouse and ends up in the Lab, outside the Core. This means that lab locations would have had to be relocated outside the Core as well possibly during the collapse. They became displaced and removed from the Core as the AI recognized humans as a threat.
O'Toole managed to continue working in the labs, now outside the Core. He was more determined than ever to refine karma and restore the beginnings of the collapse, and if not, simply prepare to find a way to leave the Subnet. In other words, he had no reason to explore. Murtaugh, however, had the opposite idea. Mur wanted to explore, to find ways back into the Core. Eventually he found a way to access the Edge and therefore to access the Core and escape the Submachine. But he had to travel for 32 years to do it. He grew up, and o'Toole grew old. Murtaugh approached o'Toole with a plan for escape, and that involved sending him to the Edge. Of course, the idea attracted Henry greatly, as he wanted out as well, after 32 years of trying to refine karma while Murtaugh made ill use of it. He reluctantly followed Mur's orders, as an old man tired with the constant destruction, and accessed the Root before pulling back out of the Core, and then advancing again to the Edge to open up a path for Mur's invasion.
Henry was sent to the Edge under Mur's orders. Henry lived in the cliffs for a long time, facing the hardships of the protocols and the defense system. And after a certain time he became lost and gave up. He never wanted to explore. He only wanted to leave the Subnet. And after becoming trapped on the cliffs, he realized he could not leave.
Henry traveled away from the cliffs. He found the mountain. He left a note.
