Hot Tub Time Macheen

Type: tree | Size: medium
COMPONENTS
Time Warped
Temporal Reset
Big Red Button
Duct Tape
PROBLEM

The present is not working out.

SOLUTION

The Hot Tub Time Macheen is a decommissioned resort hot tub retrofitted with a malfunctioning control panel, a short-circuited vortex mechanism, and a fuel system that runs exclusively on Chernobly — an illegal, highly volatile Russian energy drink that is no longer in production and was probably never legal in the first place. When the conditions align — heavy drinking, the correct quantity of Chernobly introduced to the intake valve, and a control panel failure at the exact wrong moment — the Macheen transports its occupants to a prior temporal coordinate with full sensory fidelity and zero operational guidance. The Prime Directive applies: replicate the original events exactly or the timeline diverges. One person will not replicate the original events exactly. The timeline will diverge. At least one occupant will return to a significantly improved present that they did nothing to earn in this timeline. The price is zero because it does not appear to be purchasable. It appears. The spelling is intentional. The Macheen does not care about the spelling.

intangibles

Time Warped is the perceptual manipulation of temporal experience in both directions, deployed almost exclusively in the direction nobody asked for. It does not move time. It moves the experience of time, which is a completely different thing and a significantly worse one. In its slow configuration, a three-hour meeting becomes a spatial environment the attendee lives inside of. A Monday morning becomes a geological epoch. A loading bar at 97% achieves a kind of permanence. In its fast configuration, the weekend, the vacation, the last good year, the decade you meant to do something different with — all of it gone before the perception caught up. Time Warped does not manipulate time itself. Actual time manipulation requires the Hot Tub Time Macheen tree, and interfering with real temporal mechanics would cause the Temporal Reset intangible to never function, which would be everyone's problem. Time Warped works entirely in the mind. This does not make it less real. Ask anyone watching that loading bar.

Inspect

The Temporal Reset is the mechanism by which a diverged timeline is collapsed back toward its original configuration, or alternatively abandoned entirely in favor of the improved one, depending on who is operating it and how their 2010 was going. It requires exact timing, a volatile and probably illegal input introduced at a precise moment into the correct vortex, and the full cooperation of everyone involved, one of whom will decide at the last second to stay behind. The Reset does not guarantee return to the original timeline. It guarantees return to a timeline. Whether that timeline matches the departure point is a function of how strictly the Prime Directive was observed during the interval, which is to say it is almost never the original timeline and is usually better for at least one person who had nothing to lose. The Temporal Reset is not reversible. Once the vortex closes, the window is gone. Lou is not coming back. Lou is fine.

Inspect
components

A large, tactilely satisfying momentary pushbutton in red, mounted on a housing that communicates importance. The button is big because whatever it does is important. The color is red because the designer wanted you to know that. It has a satisfying click on actuation that makes the person pressing it feel briefly in control of something, which is the intended experience regardless of what actually happens next. Sometimes sticks in the closed position. When it sticks, whatever the button is responsible for either keeps happening or stops happening depending on which direction the stick went, and in either case nobody near the button is prepared for it. The button does not know it is stuck. The button does not know anything. It is a button. The chaos that follows is not the button's fault and the button has never claimed otherwise. Not to be confused with any other big red button. This is a component. It is a physical object. It ships in a box.

Inspect

No confirmed uses. Automagically instantiated at every recursive loop.

Inspect
Inputs
Outputs
TREE
AVAILABLE INPUTS
AVAILABLE OUTPUTS
  • comp_onoff
Schema
                            {
    "id": "tree_hot_tub_time_machine",
    "name": "Hot Tub Time Macheen",
    "type": "tree",
    "inputs": [],
    "outputs": [],
    "passthru": [],
    "children": [
        "intangible_time_warped",
        "intangible_temporal_reset",
        "comp_big_red_button",
        "comp_duct_tape"
    ],
    "extends": null,
    "price": 0,
    "size": "medium",
    "problem": "The present is not working out.",
    "description": "The Hot Tub Time Macheen is a decommissioned resort hot tub retrofitted with a malfunctioning control panel, a short-circuited vortex mechanism, and a fuel system that runs exclusively on Chernobly \u2014 an illegal, highly volatile Russian energy drink that is no longer in production and was probably never legal in the first place. When the conditions align \u2014 heavy drinking, the correct quantity of Chernobly introduced to the intake valve, and a control panel failure at the exact wrong moment \u2014 the Macheen transports its occupants to a prior temporal coordinate with full sensory fidelity and zero operational guidance. The Prime Directive applies: replicate the original events exactly or the timeline diverges. One person will not replicate the original events exactly. The timeline will diverge. At least one occupant will return to a significantly improved present that they did nothing to earn in this timeline. The price is zero because it does not appear to be purchasable. It appears. The spelling is intentional. The Macheen does not care about the spelling.",
    "template": "tree"
}

Universe Alpha