#Time Trap

[outofgloom]

THE TOOLS WE HAVE

He was back. The room spun, and he heard, rather than saw, the worm-like creature slough away and plop into the water of the nearby pool. Then he was very, very sick...

When it was over, he raised himself shakily and checked the interface suspended above him. The six brains glowed faintly, and the six Matoran bodies attached to them remained motionless, as still and unmoving as they had been since the Signal crossed the universe and worked its terrible transformations, however long ago that’d been. There were no more days or years since the sky had been taken apart, so it was hard to keep track.

The various linkages of the interface seemed unphased, which was more than he had expected. He steadied himself against another wave of dizziness. His mind felt…bloated��expanded, worse than normal telepathy. Helryx had mentioned side-effects…the toll of “transtemporal projection”. She was one to know, of course.

Aside from that, everything had gone according to plan. He’d conveyed the information that Helryx had provided, as best he could. The Matoran that he had addressed…the Matoran had been strange—confused at first, but seeming to understand by the end. Afterward, he’d successfully pulled himself back, though the effort had been greater than expected.

Was it enough? How would he know? Even Helryx hadn’t been sure. The fact that he was still here, in this chamber, still in continuity with past thoughts…Did that mean he had failed? Would he even recognize success? The changes might be subtle...

He looked around. The chamber looked no different than before. He placed a hand against the cool stone of the floor and sent out a sonar pulse into the substructure. Mostly intact, no new incursions, although the ominous microtremors were still there, as always.

Unsatisfied, he stood and crossed to the long row of masks embedded in the wall nearby. He removed an Akaku and an Iden and placed them on the faces of two of the inactive Matoran. He tried not to look at them for too long. It still disturbed him to see them this way, even after all this time. His sensitive hearing registered the ever-so-slight shift and rasp of their autonomic breathing.

“Get used to it,” Helryx had told him time and again. “We work with the tools we have. If you succeed, you can have all the stimulating conversations with them that I’m sure you would’ve had otherwise. I never found Ce-Matoran to be particularly good talkers myself…”

Krakua wasn’t sure that he would ever get used to it.

The interface hummed ready. He stooped and positioned himself in the center again, and the six brains glowed in a circle above him like a living Suva. Eyes closed, he exhaled and activated his own Suletu.

Suletu into Iden. Up through the stones of the fortress his consciousness projected, broadened, then coalesced. He was in open air, hovering just above the central column. Into Akaku, he swept the interior rooms briefly from above. All as expected. The many defenses continued to be manned by his forces. No change.

Now he moved his mind-spirit out to the ramparts and brought the telescopic components of the Akaku online. The dense protosteel walls went transparent, and he looked beyond:

Dry oceanbed greeted him, but that was nothing new. He had hoped...but no. In all directions the waste spread from what had once been the shores of the fortress island. His fortress, now. The ocean floor was eaten into numerous holes and channels, all the way to the smoke-filled horizon. The Swarm appeared to be focusing its efforts elsewhere for the time being. He glanced up at the sky, or what once had been sky—now a mixture of jagged gaps and fitful flickering lights. It was a strange, broken thing, and beyond his sky there was another sky. More alien, with a single great light burning down.

He remembered when the Swarm had started to eat the sky, and the stars had gone out one by one. That was when he’d known for sure that the world was over.

He had not felt that way when the first Cataclysm had struck the universe, and they all learned that the Great Spirit had been deposed by a treacherous Makuta named Teridax, nor even when the second Cataclysm followed, and the seers said that the Makuta was contending with the Great Beings themselves.

Even when the Swarms had appeared from every hollow and deep crevasse, and the strange Signal washed across the universe, converting every Matoran it reached into a servant of the Swarm, into a destroyer...he had not yet given up hope. Everyone he had sworn to protect, gone. All but the Ce-Matoran, whose minds were different, and who instead were simply hollowed out by the Signal and left empty. The seers cried that the Great Beings had cursed the universe for the crimes of the Makuta, and had sent their robotic servants to accomplish one last terrible Duty: to eat the world into Nothing.

Even then he had not fully despaired. But the sound of the world being unlidded: a deep, unnatural groaning noise that shook the atmosphere and went down into his innermost ears, into his bones…That had been the moment. There was no going back.

But Helryx had another plan. A backup plan. She always did.

The interface powered down as he reinstalled himself into his own body. He sat motionless, letting the seconds beat by. Nothing outside had changed, as far as he could tell. After all the battle and desperate strategy, all the effort, the sacrifices and pain, all the millennia of preparation…he had hoped that it would be enough, that he would not have to—

The ground shook slightly, enough to ripple the water of the dark pool. Suddenly there was a squat figure in the doorway at the other end of the chamber. Two icy-blue eyes stared at him from beneath a domed faceplate. It was one of his. It chkt'd at him in its ugly way, and he understood it—he had by now become adept at communicating with the creatures via their sound-frequencies.

“INCOMING INCURSION. NORTHERNMOST HEXTANT, BELOW,” it chkt’d.

He’d been the only Toa of Sonics in existence when the second Cataclysm arrived, and that made him uniquely suited to combat the Swarm. He was able to confuse their command-structure, deactivating individual units entirely or even turning them to his own will.

“RETURN TO COMPLEMENT,” he chkt’d in reply. “INTERCEPT AND DIVERT.”

The swarm-unit acknowledged his command and swiveled to go. Another tremor went through the floor as it did so, and for a moment it teetered, off-balance.

“Careful, Mazek—” he began to say involuntarily, but stopped. Helryx’s words drilled into him. They are gone. Their names are gone. He fought back a tide of memories, memories of a Ko-Matoran, a friend…the accursed Signal ringing in their ears—unexpected, too fast for him to neutralize it with his own counter-vibration—of the painful sound of limbs buckling and stretching, of armor fusing here and splitting there, of a voice pleading for help, pleading as the vocal tract deformed and the words distorted, and the eyes elongated into slits, still icy-blue.

Disconnecting it from the rest of the Swarm had been the only mercy he could give. They are gone. Shut it out.

No, he would never get used to it, not even after ten thousand years.

The swarm-unit had left. He sighed, resigned at last to what he must do. He removed the Iden and Akaku from the interface and re-cycled the system, checking the attachments on the Masks of Truth, Translation, and Helryx’s own Mask of Psychometry once again.

Next, he retrieved a stack of tablets from a nearby table. They were covered with writing and calculations: Helryx's logs. He waved to the far wall, and the door of the vault opened with a hiss. The chamber beyond was cold and damp, green-tinged, and filled from top to bottom with hundreds of small tubes.

And in each one there was a worm.

He surveyed the result of their centuries-long hunt through the wreckage of the world. The Order had known for some time that the transtemporal memory encoded in the nascent minds of the creatures could be used to reconnect to moments in the past, but never to change those moments. Not until Helryx’s research, and the creation of the interface.

He consulted the tablets again, tracing along the carefully organized shelves. He would have to select another specimen, target the right moment, and communicate the right message, but which to choose? Helryx had been unsure if a sequence was required, even with all her years of traversing alternate dimensions and spying on different timelines using the last remaining Olmak.

For his first attempt, just minutes ago, he had used the one that Helryx deemed to have the broadest potential: a specimen that had attached itself to a single Matoran prior to either of the cataclysms. The messages he had transmitted were obscure, something about the importance of “lightning” and “six heroes”. That was as much as he could transmit through the link.

It was odd, though. The Matoran had not responded to the name Helryx had listed. It insisted its name was something else, something starting with a “V”. He couldn't recall. Hopefully it wasn't vital. The target had been located in an important place, after all—very close to the Core. Surely it had been the right Po-Matoran...

What next? The logs offered many options. A number of specimens had apparently interacted with the Makuta Teridax himself at one point, but such direct interference seemed unlikely to succeed. Another of the worms had apparently linked itself to an ancient entity called Tren Krom at least forty millennia before the cataclysms. There might be an opportunity there, yes…

He pulled down the canister containing that specific worm and tucked it under his arm, returning to the main chamber. There was another shudder in the ground, and the stasis tubes clinked and jostled as he moved to the interface, preparing to unseal the tube.

Something stirred in the doorway on the far side of the chamber—another of his swarm-units, or one of the lesser couriers he’d peeled off. He chkt'd to dismiss it without looking, too absorbed in his task.

“The Manutri chirps its greeting,” a voice said, “but the icehawk is earless and cannot hear. It dives for the kill. Who is the greater fool?”

Krakua’s eyes snapped upward. It was a Matoran—bent and ill-shaped—standing across the room from him, examining the interface with sharp eyes.

“Who—?”

Another tremor shook the fortress. Harder this time. His forces must have engaged with the latest incursion below ground. The Matoran moved into the room. A Po-Matoran. A familiar mask. Krakua stared. For a split second, he thought he might be hallucinating. His mind still had that bloated feeling. It was possible...

“I take it that, from your perspective, we have only just spoken,” the Matoran said, stepping into the room. “For me, it’s been a little longer, but here I am.”

Krakua finally found his words: “How are you not…not…”

“Not part of the Swarm, like the rest? When the fields of Flameleaf dissolve each season and must be replanted, the hardier Firevine is exposed, for it does not melt. But that’s not really important, is it?”

It was relief that he was feeling. Relief like pain, washing over him. He felt his legs go weak. He hadn’t had a real conversation for such a long time. It was difficult to formulate his thoughts aloud.

“I thought…I thought nothing had changed,” he stammered. “Thought the message didn’t work. I can’t believe it.”

“Well...” The face of the Matoran now grew flat and serious. “You’d better get over that quick. I’ve had time to consider this plan of yours, messy though it is. You’ve at least done most of the legwork, I see.” The Matoran motioned to the open vault.

Krakua nodded slowly, still feeling a little dazed.

“First,” the Matoran continued, “you can put back that worm you’re holding. It’s the wrong one—the markings are off. We’re looking for a specimen from Metru Nui, around the time of the first Cataclysm. You have this, yes?”

“Metru Nui…” Krakua set the tube down and focused his attention, sorting through the tablets he still held. “Yes, here. I dredged the specimen from the ruins of the city outskirts, but Helryx classified it as ‘minimal impact’.”

“Did she? How disappointing. No matter. There is, or was, a certain Toa of Fire in the city who will need some special...encouragement, I think. And then…then we’ll see what happens.”

“Encouragement? There’s nothing about that in the notes…I wouldn’t even know where to start...”

“Encouragement was never her strong suit, I suppose. Well, I'm sure your mentor did her best, but this may have been a little beyond her expertise. Where is she, by the way? I thought she would be here.”

Krakua blinked: “She…The last time…she never came back.”

“Encouraging.”

“She was probably just delayed. Time runs differently on other planes. Or maybe—”

“Or maybe not.” The Matoran shrugged dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll work with the tools we have...”

The tools we have. Krakua’s gaze wandered to the interface as the Matoran spoke. The masks stared back at him. The eyes were open, glowing but empty.

“...And we’ll have to get a bit more creative with our messages,” the Matoran was saying. “We can do better than...whatever it was you relayed to me back then.”

The floor trembled again, just a little. By the feel of it, he could tell that his forces had been successful in deflecting the incursion. His tools...They’d report in soon.

They are gone. Their names are gone. But if you succeed...

Krakua shook himself. The Matoran was looking at him expectantly. “Well, uh...the messages have to be simple,” he said. “Otherwise the disturbance is too great, and the timeline splits.”

“Of course. Basic causality.”

“And they have to be cryptic as well—not too easy for the target to comprehend immediately, but still decipherable at the right moment.”

“You don’t say.”

“That’s the hardest part, really. Helryx hated it, and I was never any good at riddles...”

Velika smiled.

[autumnhobbit]

I think this confirms that Makuta was just reading Vakama’s mind to build the illusion.

‘Vakama took an involuntary step backward’ gotta say I do love when characters are openly intimidated when they ought to be

[legend-as-old-as-time]

I'm trying to look up where the Rahaga and Dume were while the clusterfuck that was Time Trap happened in Metru Nui. Keetongu had sensed Teridax and was there.

Where they off the island in different places? Just to return to Metru Nui and find new traces of destruction? With Keetongu nursing a headache and some injuries, then telling them of a wild story of their old boss, THE Boss of the Dark Hunters, and Vakama fighting over the Mask of Time?

Or were they on the other end of the city, held up by something, as they heard the explosions in the distance? Then they arrived after the fact, when everybody else but Keetongu had already skedaddled.

Keetongu: You wouldn't believe the kind of day I had.

[supersumc]

The tale of Time Trap really should have been told to the Toa Nuva and Matoran.

Yes, they would have caught on to what the Quest For the Masks really was (Lose-and-seek, anyone?), but more importantly it may have helped them be more prepared for the island of Voya Nui. A war between the Brotherhood of Makuta and the Dark Hunters sounds like something you should tell the Toa Nuva about as they prepare to go back into the "real" world, just in case they come across any of the latter. Lewa definitely wouldn't have bragged about beating the Rahkshi, even if they were six of the most powerful, if he had known about said war since the BoM would have no doubt used legions of Rahkshi in the battles. And any Toa that got caught up in the drift of it no doubt would have been overwhelmed and even killed.

Vakama, you dunce, you deserved to eventually lose the Mask of Time to Voporak.

[black-hole-daycare-attendant]

What Sci Fi Movie Are You?

[byz-was-here]

So this is basically the plot of Time Trap, right?

With Vakama holding the Vahi hostage and all.

[specialagentartemis]

Reverse Unpopular Opinion meme: the Time Trap series by Sean Dalton >:)

They are IMMENSELY ENTERTAINING to ME SPECIFICALLY and I have a blast reading them!

I love every time Leon appears on the page. The whole concept of Leon is so ridiculous but also so evocative and thought-provoking. He didn’t ask to be created through Time Clone Nonsense! He’s never known Noel’s future and has no connection to it nor feels any duty to preserve it! He wants to create a world he can belong in without being erased by Noel fixing the timeline! Can you blame him! The added pathos of 1) he can feel Noel’s pain 2) he is an imperfect copy, angsty because he can’t taste food, it tastes like nothing to him, is catnip to me. Also he’s psychic for no evident reason.

The fact that he’s also kind of ineffective at being Evil, mostly making trouble for himself and occasionally Noel and no one else, and Noel constantly has to rescue them both, is also endearing. Leon you are an angsty clone fuckup and I love you.

(And to actually praise something the book was trying to do, I enjoy the whump a lot. Noel gets the absolute shit kicked out of him on a regular basis and it is described in loving painful detail without being gory.)

[islam-defined]

7 Heavens and 7 Earth ? Yes it is but we cant move

Quran is very clear that Allah created 7 heavens and 7 earth in 6th CE which science has also approved in the name of parallel universe and mirror image of our universe etc.

“It is Allah Who has created seven heavens and of the earth the like thereof (i.e. seven). His Command descends between them (heavens and earth), that you may know that Allah has power over all things, and that Allah surrounds (comprehends) all things in (His) Knowledge.” [65:12]

But it is Allah alone who grants approval to discover the secrets of His creation only that much what He desires for humans and Jinns.

“O company of jinn and human, if ye have power to penetrate all the regions of the heavens and the earth, then penetrate them! You will never penetrate them save with Our approval [55:33]

This is very powerful verse in the Quran and a direct challenge to the human-beings and the whole world of Science that they cannot discover the mystery of the Allah’s creation, except ONLY what Allah will desire.

Dr. Derek P. Blake (Aerospace Engineer) so honestly said, “Essentially, we have explored 0% of the universe, and it will probably stay that way for as long as humans live. The universe is that big. I don't think we could ever get nearer to even 0.00001 percent”.

Only our Prophet was allowed to travel and see every creation of Allah, past and future through all these seven heavens and earth and their inhabitants also. He also saw the inhabitants of hell and heaven (the future) and all the prophets and messengers (past) and much more...

Is time travel possible, Albert Einstein said YES, just move faster than light, time will stop. EXCATLY, this happened when prophet returned back after his night ascension his bed was as warm as he just left it. [I personally believe, according to Quran verse 17:1, that it was a physical ascension and not at a dream or something spiritual] Buraq was a time travel machine in terms of speed as revealed by Prophet, so the Miraj or Night Ascension is as true as the sun and moon, scientifically because time stopped that night for Prophet.

New Theory Suggests Parallel Universes Interact With And Affect Our Own Universe-Lisa Winter Author in "Space & Physics"

[cemyafilmarsiv]

Time Travel Themed Movies!

Primer ( Shane Carruth )

Jubilee ( Derek Jarmen )

Source Code ( Duncan Jones )

Total Recall ( Paul Verhoeven )

Twelve Monkeys ( Terry Gilliam )

The Terminator ( James Cameron )

The Time Machine ( George Pal )

Back to the Future ( Robert Zemeckis )

Time Trap ( Mark Dennis, Ben Foster )

The Thirteenth Floor ( Josef Rusnak )

The Time Traveler’s Wife ( Robert Schwentke )

Letterboxed: Cmya

[indigoartistrulu2004]

☀Sacrifice 🌑

[choiceofgames]

A Wise Use of Time

"A Wise Use of Time." With the power to freeze time, you can ransack a casino, rescue a celebrity, or cheat death itself!

https://www.choiceofgames.com/wise-use-of-time/

When you freeze time, no one can see you, hear you, or stop you, except, perhaps, a handful of mysterious time controllers like yourself. Every second you steal puts more stress on your body and mind.

Will you bring justice to the mobsters who run rampant in your city? Will you steal from them to provide for those in need? Will you share your power with friends and family? Will you destroy your own powers, or will your powers destroy you first?

A Wise Use of Time is a thrilling 260,000-word interactive sci-fi novel by Jim Dattilo, author of Zombie Exodus, winner of the 2011 XYZZY "Special Recognition" award for interactive fiction. Your choices control the story. It's entirely text-based--without graphics or sound effects--and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.

[utoshi-san]

Это все мои просмотренные за январь фильмы. Не особо много было времени смотреть, а ещё я в который раз убедилась, что комедии это не моё

Годнота - 💗, хороши для разового просмотра - 😌 нейтральные - 🙄, не стоящие внимания - 👎🏻 полное днище - 💩

"Выпускной класс"/"Senior year" 😌

"Всё могу"/"Absolutely anything" 👎🏻

"Очень плохая семейка"/"The estate" 👎🏻

"Билет в рай"/Ticket to paradise " 👎🏻

"Ловушка времени"/"Time trap" 👎🏻

"Тёмные отражения"/"The darkest minds" 😌

"5-я волна"/"The 5th wave" 💗

"Вторжение"/"The invasion" 💗💗💗

"Что скрывает вода"/"What lies below" 🙄

"Ангел мой"/"Angel of mine" 😌

[autumnhobbit]

okay okay OKAY IM GOING TO LOSE IT OVER THIS

1. TAKUA WAS VAKAMA’S NEIGHBOR/FRIEND??? this adds SO much intrigue to Vakama’s later understanding of his differences and problems fitting in? was he ever tempted to tell Takua on Mata Nui when he saw him struggling? but how would he even understand? did he wonder if it was some side effect of what he’s been through?

2. JALLER WAS HIS FRIEND TOO?? again, this opens so many questions about how they choose to relate to the matoran later. These were their friends, their equals, they gave up their lives as toa to save them, so then they dedicate their lives to being their mentors and guides while letting them forget them completely? it’s so messed up?

3. ‘Work? That thing you do all day? That thing Takua is apparently allergic to?’ hA

[legend-as-old-as-time]

Time Trap Thoughts

It was never addressed later in the story, so it's dubiously canon, if at all. But:

Makuta created that illusory Metru Nui so he could figure out from Vakama where the Vahi was. The illusion wasn't perfect. Vakama saw some glimpses of the real, still damaged Metru Nui. But he believed he had travelled back in time, at least at first.

That likely damaged Vakama's confidence that he could trust his senses.

Makuta also shaped the illusion so that only "Nokama" could meet and stay with him. The illusionary Nokama told Vakama that Matau had died to the Morbuzakh.

Even if he later realized that he was trapped in illusion. That moment where Makuta lied that Matau had died? When Matau nearly had died days ago at most by falling from the Coliseum? That could've been terrifying.

All of that would have added up with the rest of Time Trap's events to be very traumatizing on top of everything else Vakama went through before. While it frustrates me, I can understand why he's been unable in canon to tell his friends what happened to him. Especially if he doubted for a while that Mata Nui was reality - was he truly out of Metru Nui? Or had Makuta trapped him yet again?

Were his friends just more illusions, while the real ones grew more and more concerned about where Vakama was?

When he realized he had truly escaped with the Vahi and his life? All of it felt too late, too painful, too foolish that he doubted so long, to talk about something the others hadn't been present for.

[marieandersoneq]

POV: you're a time traveler

[adamwatchesmovies]

Time Trap (2017)

Time Trap is an honest effort from directors Ben Foster and Mark Dennis, who clearly have enthusiasm for this story. Unfortunately, the film never lives up to its potential. We spend so much time with characters who are stupider than we are that you'll become bored and frustrated waiting for them to catch up to you.

Professor Hopper (Andrew Wilson) has been searching for his missing parents and sister for years. After discovering their abandoned vehicle, he claims to have solved the mystery of what happened to them. When he vanishes as well, his students - Taylor (Reiley McClendon), Jackie (Brianne Howey), and Cara (Cassidy Gifford), her sister Veeves (Olivia Draguicevich), and Veeves' friend Furby (Max Wright) go investigate the site.

As Professor Hopper enters a cavern near his parents’ van, he spots what looks like a cowboy, frozen still up ahead. Not frozen as in ice, frozen as in he doesn’t move. After taking a couple of steps, the rancher begins moving normally while the daylight behind Hopper flickers rapidly from light, to dark, light, to dark, over and over. What could it mean?

If you haven’t guessed, it’s pretty obvious when you see it in action. Professor Hopper has stepped through a time barrier. Inside, time passes by so slowly that to those watching outside, it looks like you’re standing still. The mystery is obvious even if you don’t know the film’s title. I realize the characters in the movie don’t know they’re in a movie but it takes them an eternity to put two and two together, even when they receive camera footage from Furby that show him wondering where they went, waiting for them to return overnight, and then descending into the same cave in which they disappeared even though to them, they've only been gone for a few minutes.

The problem isn’t that it takes long for the students to realize what they’ve walked into; it's that the film makes it too obvious to those watching. There’s plenty of strange happenings: ropes suddenly snapping, phones being unable to contact that surface, artifacts from the past in pristine condition, etc. In any other movie, these would draw you in. Here, they make you restless. Within minutes, it’s clear too much time has passed. Even if the party gets back to the surface, so much time has passed that everyone they know has been reduced to dusty bones and memories. Escape is almost pointless except for the fact that you can’t live underground.

Time Trap is 95 minutes long and it’s about an hour before the non-mystery steps aside so the plot can begin. It gets pretty silly and inconsistent from there. Magic is introduced for no reason except to force a happy ending in a movie that shouldn’t have one. Villains show up out of nowhere. The characters jump to wild conclusions. Meanwhile, you’re still stuck asking questions about this time cave. If the time barrier has been there for millions of years, shouldn’t the place be filled to the brim with random bugs and debris that’s been blown in by the wind? What about rain?

Time Trap is a concept and nothing more. It either needed to keep its cards closer to its chest - and even then, that ending desperately needed a re-write - or do something worthwhile with its idea of people forced into the future against their will. There’s got to be a movie that handles this idea better. Even if there isn’t, not enough about this film works for me to recommend it. (July 16, 2021)