#fossilscript

no look folks im onto something

upd. its expanding

do yall ever wonder where the pieces came from? i might have an answer. so we know everette changed dramatically after the procedure of protocol 14. he talks all the time how forgetting made him look onto everything in his existence from a different point of view. but i dont think he simply underwent an amnesia causing procedure. all of the protocols we know about seem to have this in common - they manipulate people's mind. they can block memories and hold the person back from remembering (e. making andrew ignore his videos befor the lethe protocol). i believe the 14th protocol isn't just that. it literally separates the person from their (unwanted) memories. thats what the pieces are - parts of everettes mind thag hurt too much. without being able to feel these things he saw the world differently. i noticed throughout the series that his way of thinking is very black and white. thats right, he just cant feel complicated anymore. the pieces also resemble him in a way but are distinctive enough. i believe their :0 represent different emotions and expressions, as each of them has a slightly different character: some are more playful while some are more cautious. everette doesn't play by someone else's rules and he doesn't hide or run for his life. there's always a smile on his face and he's in control of the situation. at some point he became so unbothered by being constantly chopped into pieces he made a machine to test his new "runners".

at this point andrew has entered the Facility and is destroying himself in order to get to the top. he's gaining more information but also becomes for ignorant. i believe that is why he made the mistake of falling for smiles trick. so he's more conscious and aware then ever but his heart is dying because he chooses the mind over it over and over. and when he jumps into the void it all resets.

3. the void. now, if my theory is right, the lowest layer is the least consciousness one. it can only be accessed from the top when you know of its existance. while the protocols allow you to send yourself/others a layer down (tha katabasis chris did to andrew sent him from memories back to the overworld) or up (anabasis) thats doesn't apply the void. i'll touch more on the methods of going through the layers later.

it appears to be an empty world. there's only a basis: the terrain (generated the old way btw) and the trees that are a bit uncanny but serve their purpose i guess. in the teaser we see more structures: a staircase, a computer, a house-like structure, something like a fence pen, a cave(?). all of them are pretty primitive. looks almost like someone trying to recreate something from memory but it isn't quite right.

i would also like to note that the trees are probably artificial because trees never generated in this shape, even in the older versions. it is the same shape as the tree in smile's tester though.

what do we make of all of it? honestly im not sure. i can theorize that those are the structures smile left behind since we know for sure he was there.

^ this journal also confirms you lose your memories by descending there. and it's not just the katabasis protocol effect, bc andrew remained mostly himself after undergoing lethe, while ev, well, became smile.

it's unclear if chris had been to this layer before, but id say it's unlikely.

4. wells&doors. there's currently three ways to travel between layers: wells (only going up), protocols (which there are more of then katabasis and anabasis only and not all of them include losing memories), and doors, which chris uses. we know that wells(their properties) were there even before ev, protocols, partially, were made by smile and doors have unknown origin. chris didn't build them, judjing by "this place again?" and smile can visit the door dimension ("i should be quiet here"), but for some reason it appears to be chris's corner of peace. my theory is that the land of towers and the door dimension aren't their separate layers, but more of just tools to travel. the wells are like taking a (one-way) staircase, while the doors and protocols can be concidered elevators.

i'm rewatching ag67 and the first bone andrew finds is in a furnace... was chris this cold? oh my god the foreshadowing of "chris froze to death" i'm gonna be sick