About to talk to myself until I figure something out about Krok’s brother and the secret third thing.
MB has established that Krok thought the universe was shaped by the minds within it. Control those minds and keep them from looking forward and that should make the universe recursive.
It’s also established that Midnight Burger and the rest of the franchise show up at random to fix problems on the universe. And it would seem that Krok’s little brother is the one who made the franchise. Buuuuut, this is bidirectional, because the diner’s signature also seems to attract all the chaos of the universe. It can repair damage to the fabric of spacetime, but it’s a bit of a chicken-egg scenario. Does it show up where chaos already is, or does it bring the chaos to it by showing up.
Either way, the function of Midnight Burger stands in direct opposition to its own nature. The franchise is an entropic force. More often than not, fixing the problems it and its inhabitants encounter involves fucking shit up. Midnight Burger moves things along more quickly, it’s a catalyst. And yet, inside its doors, time stands still.
At the same time, there’s this weird thing going on with the Urts. They have peculiar genetics that are protein-based — which, if you are a biologist, seems recursive in and of itself. Given that Eldin makes it seem like everyone else is doing the normie DNA-based genome, I’m imagining the central dogma remains intact throughout the universe as it’s been observed thus far. DNA -> RNA -> Protein, there are retroviral exceptions but that’s just an additional step. RNA -> DNA -> RNA -> Protein.
If protein is your means of passing information, you’ve created this weird paradox because there’s nothing giving directions to have made the protein. You’ve got to assume the protein is functioning like DNA and giving those directions to make more of itself. So (in my mind) it turns into Protein -> RNA -> DNA -> RNA -> Protein. It’s a circle instead of a one-way flow of genetic information. If you really get into it with DNA it also technically is but not in the mirrored way, DNA -> RNA -> Protein -> DNA. You need polymerases to make more DNA, you don’t have to make RNA and turn that into DNA (excluding retroviruses).
Now the next part is a leap but considering the Sheep’s Eye/Hood’s Pocket is built around a metal frame that only the Urts are known to be able to wield and shape, it’s interesting that in their creation, time still marches forward. Doug’s dad dies. It’s not a shifting point of null entropy, it’s just a shifting point. It also moves a lot slower. And yet the Urts, on a genetic level, are recursive, and unique in comparison to everything else on their home planet.
They also show up in the background a lot, like in the walk-in with the Urt door. They are incredible engineers that show up everywhere. So at a certain point… one has to wonder — if Krok claims to be the common ancestor for all life such that he can have all these kids of different species, did his little brother do something similar but opposite. Did his brother become the common ancestor for Urts?
This gets even weirder when thinking about the relationship between entropy and enthalpy, how they counterbalance each other to keep the energy involved in a given reaction constant. So like, if you improve the way a protein binds to something, the trade-off is often that it doesn’t “move” as well. The stabilization is penalized and the result is net neutral. For whatever reason, on the level of biophysics, Mother Nature will always hit a wall in terms of efficiency such that energy remains constant. Another circle.
Krok is the enthalpy, his brother is the entropy. This all assumes a closed system and not an open one. And it is at this point I wish my brain had a better grasp of physics than it does, because I feel like there’s something to be said about the multiverse as described as a bunch of simultaneously overlapping pearls and an open thermodynamic system that can borrow from its surroundings. Especially because Ava thinks it’s very bad for energy to be borrowed into a universe it shouldn’t be staying in. In fact, it’s so bad it calls the franchise to Krok’s home planet.
But for whatever reason, that ultra-dangerous energy gets absorbed by Mount Hood. So like, what’s the physics explanation for that? That’s suspiciously secret third thing scented. Because it can’t be explained by the Enthalpy-entropy compensation Krok and his little brother exhibit. That assumes a closed system.
What would Krok be afraid of that would require time guns and a recursive universe? What would that person have to be capable of? And is that person separate from the little brother?
That bothers me because so much of this story is presented in pairs. We have Effie and Zebulon, who were made by Chuck — the entity that seems to have inherited the power Krok lost. An entity that almost unmade Clementine when the MB crew finally found her. Granted it stopped and could be reasoned with, but that’s a curiously absent powerhouse right now. I flip flop on whether it’s the little brother Krok refers to, but if it is, that’s another pair. Then we have the logos vs agon theories of how the world came into existence; speech versus struggle. Fermions and bosons, particles of matter and the forces that act on them.
Everything in this story is about balance, and a secret third thing really fucks with that unless we’re going the triangle route for the most stable shape of all.
I just… need to know where the fuck Chuck has been. Chuck wanted the diner crew to find the thing that was fucking with the fabric of spacetime, and we come to find out that thing was a person named Clementine that Krok broke the laws of the universe to make because he predates the universe (which is another paradox because there can be no before if there was no TIME, hence his inability to describe it). And yet Chuck was nowhere to be found in this battle against Krok, not even once.
Why would Chuck not try to unmake Krok after all that? Sentimentality? It’s already proven to be a little wistful because it made Caspar friends.
This secret third thing has got to be an absolute power if it’s not Chuck. Because Chuck is damn near god. It can create simulated spaces, move Ava through space and time without having to construct a machine like Krok had to, it made two consciousnesses, and it exists in all moments simultaneously. That’s a god. The limit here is that Chuck can’t create a REAL space in entirety, it’s missing the little things (like bacteria in the soil). And when it made Effie and Zebulon, it wasn’t riffing, it pulled from existing humans that were storytellers and wasn’t able to give them a body. They’re waveform, not a configuration of particles.
The third thing, if it is a separate He from the little brother I view as being Chuck, has to be all powerful. The problem is that falls apart when you bring back the time guns. It has a targetable “body” and while it can be slowed by being moved through space and time, it can’t be killed. Idk man that sounds like entropy! You can shift it but it’s always there in the background. But Chuck doesn’t have a body! Chuck’s body is the universe because it’s a fourth dimensional being and there’s only “one” of him! Another paradox because there are infinite universes. But I guess we can blame that on the same thing Ava says will happen to the universe one day. It’ll expand so much that it rips and impossibly shrinks back down to zero size. Chuck exists in all moments in all universes because all of them are overlapping simultaneously in an eldritch string of pearls.
I am once again asking what the fuck the third thing is. It seems adjacent to the Urts. And the Mungos too maybe? Idk, they’re also weird. I can’t tell if they’re a bit or a purposeful inclusion, because somewhere it’s mentioned that they’ve been found on multiple planets like weird little interstellar travelers despite just being giant plant eaters that go batshit insane when injured. There’s this whole natives and aliens thing going on. Native in this context relating to planets or maybe even the universe.
I also wonder if the secret third thing is human-adjacent. That’s the other throughline here. Everyone seems to be obsessed with humans for their storytelling ability and how they observe the universe. And it’s like a Matryoshka of baddies, because the Teds were on some very similar bullshit in the recursive department. In order to maintain their stranglehold, they have to keep civilizations from advancing so they stay dependent on the warp gates. Then Clementine, who was doing Krok’s dirty work, wiping out the change agents of the franchise, and Krok himself who wanted a never ending universe. Chuck is the only sentient oppositional force thus far and seems enamored enough with humans to want to protect them like a pet almost.
Idk man. I just don’t know
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