well, the wiki for king of diamonds says game over is -10...if we take the rules to be literally...’reach -10 is game over’...what if you bypass it by reaching -11 and glitch out the system. yeah i realize that logically, borderland rules are absolute, and -11 is going to be game over as well but. let me dream.

0.8 * (67 + 100)/2 = 66.8 which is exact match considering round 13′s 23 by chishiya was an exact match for 22.93. this triggers the double point penalty making the score go to -11.

anyway also don’t take this too seriously this is just wish fulfilment....

background

there are multiple parallel timelines. there are also ‘attractor fields’ which are like bundles of timelines where certain major events are always destined to happen, although across the various timelines there’s some variation in how this happens.

time travel related activity can send you to another timeline, although everyone’s memories will be different in another timeline.

cobb has the unique ability to preserve his memories of other timelines.

the core time travel mechanism here is the dream leap; i.e. overwrite a dream in the past with memories from the future, effectively allowing someone to travel into the past since when their past self wakes up they’ll have knowledge of the future.

plot (?)

disclaimer: this was not well thought through

sometime after the fischer job, saito shows cobb & the team some dream leap theory he’s had for a long time and they eventually complete a working prototype.

cobb leaps back to try and prevent mal’s death, but he’s in an attractor field where she will always die. even if he doesn’t incept her and they return from limbo, she eventually becomes obsessed with her totem, ends up thinking she’s trapped in her own dream and commits suicide. he watches her die over and over and keeps trying to save her. (you are not responsible for the idea that destroyed her xd)

in each timeline/iteration he’ll always meet saito/the rest of the team along the way, who help him complete the prototype (since they’re in the past where this doesn’t exist yet, but saito has the theory). saito gives cobb key triggers for contacting him so even if they’re in a different timeline where saito doesn’t remember cobb, he’ll still help him.

eventually (based on something saito said?) cobb realizes that he needs to return to the root of the idea - to become mal’s totem instead of the spinning top. that way she’ll never lose her grip on reality as long as she has him. this works, and cobb prevents mal’s death.

but now they’re in another timeline where saito is dead. since mal never dies in this timeline, the events leading to cobb meeting saito and finishing the time travel theory never existed.

cobb is devastated, but also no longer has the means to try again since saito isn’t here. after all his time spent seeing mal die he decides to just give up and live peacefully with mal, but is constantly haunted by regret.

all is well now right? lol no. turns out saito’s death results in fischer-morrow monopolizing energy. they also took saito’s theory with them and eventually build a real time machine, and become the only ones with the means to run them, leading to total global domination.

someone from the future (phillipa probably) comes back to warn them of the dystopian future and persuade cobb to save saito. but cobb’s haunted by seeing mal die all those times and doesn’t want to mess with the timeline anymore. he just can’t deal with seeing someone he cares about die over and over again whether it’s mal or saito. :(

ariadne, resident genius, comes up with the idea that he just needs to deceive his past self into thinking mal died, which will lead him onto the chain of causality to complete the dream leap theory

so they travel back to prevent saito’s death and perform inception on his past self to believe mal died (but she’s actually fine). (i guess at this point the timeline is fixed so the people who went back don’t exist anymore. but the idea remains with past!cobb).

return to the end of the actual inception film, cobb gets home and get the memories of a cobb from a distant future through dream leap. he realizes what happened, mal is right there waiting for him and not actually dead...cue tearful reunion etc

but his knowledge of the future reminds him they still need to prevent a dystopia, so the whole team all ends up working with saito to make sure the dream leap theory never falls into the wrong hands.