[Report This]Date: May 01 2021 11:24 AM Title: Chapter 8
I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that a door "closes inwards/outwards", but I can guess what it means.
I like the bit about signs not having correct grammar! Previously, the idea that creating comprehensible signs might be harder than creating people that can communicate with the pilots was completely out of my realm of thought (and I think pseudo-Vanessa said enough to convince me that her words couldn't have been hard-coded), but now that I think about it, it sounds plausible, at least because signs require some notion of "society" (actually, this is the only explanation I can think of, but it sounds possibly compelling to me).
My guess is that programmers have the ability to "reset" a world to a previous state (and not just the original state) independently of other worlds, seeing as I guess the notebook change-key was placed there by a programmer who observed that one would be needed to use the door, but the building would have already been destroyed if they weren't able to revert the world state back to some time after the notebook was placed there but before the door was opened for the first time. (Either that, or they reset the world to original independently of other worlds and replace the notebook after using the door each time, which isn't implausible if they only explore the edge rarely but sounds expensive if they explore many worlds in one expedition.)
Author's Response:
Jesus I can't even catch my typos even in my responses!
Anyways, as per your comment on the worlds "resetting," there are things like that throughout the story I don't bother explaining, though I feel they're too minor to really count as plot holes. I did put some thought into this though, and I figured that most of the worlds would eventually time-out and reset to a pre-determined state when there were no pilots present in them. Considering the amount of destruction that occurs in some worlds, it's the only real explanation that makes sense.
As far as the notebooks go (or "change-keys" as the characters call them), I also figured they were either programmed in or scripted to spawn randomly near the green doors that connect all the worlds to each other. They're not supposed to be wholy random, as evidenced by Sujay's shock in Chapter 5 when Jessica explains how she gre bigger unexpectedly in Chapter 4.