How does the Shangri-La loop work?

[NaBrZHunter]

19 minutes ago, RadZakpak said:

An interesting idea. I'm still of the opinion that canonically we collect the stone only once, and in that case, why are there no lingering effects from being entangled? So does changing variables in the eclipse (moving the crystals, shooting them, helping Brock and Gary along) cause variables in the real world to change (radios appearing, crystals staying in place that weren't there before, the wall staying blown up)? It's sort of like how freeing the Apothicons in the sort of pocket dimension that is Shadows of Evil also frees them in Dimension 63.

I think I tend to be as well, though this flight of fancy gives me sympathy for the possibility. According to my theory, if you had 5 players, you could collect it 5 times, if you had three players, you could collect it 3 times - which is, I suppose, technically possible, except that you can't reach two buttons at once.
Then again, (see strikethrough, above) perhaps the temple's paradox resolution mechanism (the central structure) itself was designed with an established maximum allowance of 4 external variables (your reply prompted me to account for these internal and external variables), so that 5th actor would fail to be a variable altogether - rather, be a constant, and when the shift occurred, would remain on the plane where they began. Brock and Gary might be good examples of constants lodged within the fracture - which is a paradox, because in order for something to exist in the fracture at all, it has to be a variable, that is, have multiple possible states.

 

So yes, I would say as the external variables (Ultimis) interact with the internal variables (crystals, radios, dynamite), the outcome of those interactions determines their final state in the primary universe. BANG! And there it is, folks! A Donnie Darko reference. The below is a must read. Mind bending, and doubtless even more confusing if you've never seen the movie, but if you haven't, you must do so ASAP.

 

http://www.donniedarko.org.uk/introduction/

 

[RichKiller]

5 minutes ago, NaBrZHunter said:

I think I tendrock and Gary might be good examples of constants lodged within the fracture - which is a paradox, because in order for something to exist in the fracture at all, it has to be a variable, that is, have multiple possible states.

Why do you think Shangri La happens in a fracture? 

[NaBrZHunter]

7 minutes ago, RichKiller said:

Why do you think Shangri La happens in a fracture? 

I think Brock and Gary are stuck in a fracture because this tends to be the nature of time-loop paradoxes as far back as my favorite callout - The Shadow: The Man Who Murdered Time. EHRMAHGERD IT'S ALMOST FALL!!! Almost time to start binging The Shadow episodes again!

 

 

[RichKiller]

10 minutes ago, NaBrZHunter said:

I think Brock and Gary are stuck in a fracture because this tends to be the nature of time-loop paradoxes as far back as my favorite callout - The Shadow: The Man Who Murdered Time. EHRMAHGERD IT'S ALMOST FALL!!! Almost time to start binging The Shadow episodes again!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDTquiIB3vU

I don't think it's impossible but I think this is very unbased as of now.

[NaBrZHunter]

4 minutes ago, RichKiller said:

I don't think it's impossible but I think this is very unbased as of now.

The evidence seems entirely in favor of it - consider the symptoms, the variables, its state in flux, and ultimately, its collapse into a single resolution. The eclipse mode has all the hallmarks of a fracture dimension.

[RichKiller]

1 minute ago, NaBrZHunter said:

The evidence seems entirely in favor of it - consider the symptoms, the variables, its state in flux, and ultimately, its collapse into a single resolution.

The resolution is not of Brock and Gary's though so there is no "collapse". It just keeps on going. Also Mob is not in a fracture "on paper". 
I'm not sure what do you mean by "variables, its state in flux". You can also expand about "symptoms" because I'm not sure we agree here. 

The eclipse is a good argument. If you can provide further base it would be great. 

 

[NaBrZHunter]

6 minutes ago, RichKiller said:

The resolution is not of Brock and Gary's though so there is no "collapse". It just keeps on going. Also Mob is not in a fracture "on paper". 
I'm not sure what do you mean by "variables, its state in flux". You can also expand about "symptoms" because I'm not sure we agree here. 

The eclipse is a good argument. If you can provide further base it would be great. 

 

After a fourth repetition of the easter egg, the cycle ceases to repeat, and the fracture can no longer be entered. Please see my full reply and read through the Donnie Darko site.

 

[RichKiller]

2 minutes ago, NaBrZHunter said:

After a fourth repetition of the easter egg, the cycle ceases to repeat

Isn't that a clear glitch though? It doesn't seem to be canon tbh, there is only one Focusing stone coming from Shang. 

[clueless]

2 hours ago, RichKiller said:

Isn't that a clear glitch though? It doesn't seem to be canon tbh, there is only one Focusing stone coming from Shang. 

Not a clear glitch, after the fourth Stone is obtained the Eclipse Buttons push themselves inwards in both BO1 and BO3

[NaBrZHunter]

1 minute ago, clueless said:

Not a clear glitch, after the fourth Stone is obtained the Eclipse Buttons push themselves inwards in both BO1 and BO3

Arguably, the fracture no longer exists, so the paradox resolution mechanism is no longer active (it seems to activate when it detects a paradox.)

[anonymous]

If the Eclipse stops, are the main chracters teleported back to the spawnroom?

[clueless]

6 minutes ago, anonymous said:

If the Eclipse stops, are the main chracters teleported back to the spawnroom?

I mean at the end of the Easter egg everyone is supposed to be in the spawn room anyways, between the person obtaining the Focusing Stone and then all of them listening to the radio that leads to (let's not assume the radio is the causation for) the cycle repeating.

 

But to be blunt, no, they are not forcibly teleported back to the spawn room

[NaBrZHunter]

10 minutes ago, anonymous said:

If the Eclipse stops, are the main chracters teleported back to the spawnroom?

No, because the buttons don't cause a teleportation, they cause a quantum shift into the fractured state of the temple (According to my theory).

[anonymous]

16 hours ago, NaBrZHunter said:

No, because the buttons don't cause a teleportation, they cause a quantum shift into the fractured state of the temple (According to my theory).

And the quantum shift affects the location in the space-time plane? Sorry I'm not yet fully knowledgeful about quantum things.

[NaBrZHunter]

8 hours ago, anonymous said:

And the quantum shift affects the location in the space-time plane? Sorry I'm not yet fully knowledgeful about quantum things.

Well, it’s a bit of a floppy definition of quantum entanglement since the randomness of outcome when measuring quantum particles really takes the conversion to a whole other level, although, granted, it is one that would be very friendly to the idea of a simultaneous, parallel multiverse. 
Quantum physics in a nutshell, from my very basic understanding, says that if you measure the “spin” of a quantum particle that is in an entangled state with another, the outcome will determine the “spin” of the other entangled particle, and that spin will always be the opposite, and this is true even if the particles are light years away from each other.*
 

*By the time I finished the explanation below, I realized that my theory isn’t really a quantum one, though the two could be further connected in a more detailed thread on the multiverse. 
 

So with Shang, I’m applying that logic on a macroscopic scale - that this “fractional” version of Shang is created as a result of a irrational mathematical equation that occurs in reality. Shang isn’t the only place in the universe that this can happen - in fact, I would argue that it’s possible, even probable that it could happen at any place that has interacted with a teleportation event; however, Shang is the only place we’ve seen so far with a mechanism designed to reconcile these irrational mathematical equations, a classic example being 0/0=i. So when those equations occur on the site of Shangri La, the equation can be rationalized by bringing a variable into the picture and redoing the equation to get a rational outcome, which can then essentially transmute the outcome in the destabilized main dimension, stabilizing it and collapsing the fracture back in. So if we have x/y=z in a stable dimension and we find that x = 0 and y = 0, a paradox is created and the dimension becomes destabilized. Not to take too great of a tangent, it’s arguable that this might then begin to lead to the creation of simultaneous parallel dimensions resulting in a multiverse, but perhaps that is entirely unavoidable and can only be resolved with a Tag-scale solution. 
However, the Shang temple appears to be attempting to do so for these paradoxes on a case-by-case basis, resolving paradoxes for the plane from which the variables input originate. 

So if x = 0 and y = 0, pressing the buttons inserts different, arbitrary variables into the fracture created by a paradox on the site, with the end goal of replacing the original paradoxical outcome with a rational equation. 

So let’s just insert some reasonable arbitrary numbers to represent the change in variables:

Let’s say x = 4 represents the change in circumstance provided by the arrival of Ultimis. It doesn’t have to be 4, I just said “4” because we think of them as the four. 
Now, let’s say the other variable represents Brock and Gary and their situation, and because in paradoxes you generally want to change as little as possible to resolve the outcome, we should keep their variable at whatever value it was when it entered and hope that the arbitrary variable determined by Ultimis and their actions will result in a rational outcome.
 

So let’s say Brock+Gary’s situation is y = 0.  Now our equation in the fractured dimension is 4/0=0, giving us a rational outcome, which the temple can then transmute onto the origin dimension where the irrational equation initially occurred, resulting in a now rational outcome, and the cycle is broken for the variables in the origin dimension. 

[RadZakpak]

I'd like to suggest a theory here that might explain a couple of things. I workshopped it with @anonymous on Discord and want to know everyone else's thoughts.

 

So a lot of evidence points to the daytime portion of Shangri-La being in 1956: We know it's on Earth, and we know the US is aware of an outbreak there in 1956. One glaring issue that was pointed out all the way back in 2012 is that the radios that appear in Shangri-La were made in the 2000s. So if they are Brock and Gary's radios, then they must be from the 2000s.

 

Or are they?

 

The radios on Shangri-La do not start off spawned into the map, they appear over time as steps of the easter egg are completed in the Eclipse. They are the result of actions in the past. But how did they end up in the past? Why did they end up there?

 

My first thought was about that board in Alpha Omega identifying Shangri-La as a "Time Paradox Site". So the US were aware of such a thing in as early as 1968? I theorized that Broken Arrow from the 2000s or later sent an explorer into Shangri-La to study it, and they used these radios as sort of "breadcrumbs" to tell people of the future just where and when this time paradox site takes place. That's based on a lot of assumptions though, and it doesn't account for why they show up after each step.

 

Next thing I thought was maybe Sally brought them with her from 2011, and she left them around to pick up recordings of Brock and Gary. But again, why do they only appear after each step?

 

The common denominators of all the radios are Brock and Gary and Ultimis. We've assumed that Brock and Gary were the ones using these radios, leaving them around as the easter egg progresses. Except... for most of the egg they are trapped underground, and they die before they can escape, and restart the cycle. 

 

So I think that Ultimis are the ones to bring the radios. Why? To use them in a similar fashion to how I suggested Broken Arrow would have done it. They (probably Richtofen) would plant the radio to record the progression of the easter egg, then when the eclipse ends, Ultimis returns to the future (1956) and the radio is still there, with a recording showing how they die each time, so they know their progress in freeing them with the limited time they have each time. Where did they get the radios from? Their previous location, the Call of the Dead set in 2011. How does Broken Arrow know about the fact that Shangri-La is a time paradox site? Explorers found these radios and realized Brock and Gary were trapped in a cycle.

 

So, evidence still points to daytime Shang being in 1956, and it looks like we can get into the eclipse mode from any other time (Sally gets there from 2011). The last piece of the puzzle, then, is when is Shangri-La? Does it even matter?

 

Maybe, maybe not. But evidence points to it being pre-1956, and as Anon pointed out, another unique feature of the Eclipse is the massive meteor embedded in the temple, and it's as if over time the meteor split up into pieces and became embedded underground to be mined. That would take a LOT of time, surely? Perhaps even decades, centuries, eons. Shangri-La could be prehistoric. This actually fits how @caljitsu has said that the original plan for Moon was for it to be prehistoric, when Earth's surface was still a megacontinent.

[anonymous]

Gonna directly quote another comment of Rad on the discord: In the Eclipse mode sometime in the distant past we're assuming, there's still the gongs with Illuminati coding, and things like the poles with the giant crystals. The same crystals that glow with Treyarch's logo, now often associated with the Illuminati. Do you think maybe the Illuminati had access to Shangri-La? Maybe they could even go into and out of the Eclipse just like Ultimis. Maybe they even had access before Richtofen did, and when Richtofen found evidence of their arrival there without his knowing, he then quit the Illuminati as soon as he returned. "Teddy was a liar" being a big fuck you for not telling me about this place.

 

The Illuminati remains the most mysterious faction in our story. There are moments one would think they are part of the Ancient Order of the Keepers, but why would they not tell Monty about the Alcatraz Lab then? There is a weird contradiction in this: In Shadows of Evil, we encounter an undercroft with a map of Alcatraz, which is guarded by the Keepers. However, the room is filled with Apothicon artifacts and skulls, and Alcatraz's Warden seems to be Apothicon-sided. On the opposite, the Warden expresses his disdain for the Illuminati.

 

@RadZakpak's idea might explain a possibility that they aren't sided with any other faction (nor the Keepers and nor the Apothicons) and yet have their influence in Shangri-La. However, I'd like to add a part of Vril-Ya mythos here. Inhabiting Hyperborea (CotD), the Himalayas (Shangri-La), Lemuria (Zetsubou) and Atlantis, one faction of the Keepers got corrupted and war began between the corrupted and uncorrupted (at least, that is how the winner wrote history). @Tac came up with the idea that the Shangri-La Keeper faction was the one corrupted, and this one ties to the Illuminati as well. This because one particularly “credible” occult author and sitesuggests this faction was slightly corrupted, and may have actually been evil or had evil inclinations. They describe it as the Hyperborea faction following the Wheel of the Golden Sun, and the Shangri-La faction following the Wheel of the Black Sun. The symbolism of the MPD being a very large, black pyramid could also be seen as a sign that the Illuminati and the faction of the Apothicons are related. The Shadowman also mentions RIchtofen making a promise to him long ago, which could also have been when Richtofen was still in the Illuminati.

 

My own idea is that the Illuminati are an independant organization, possibly one so powerful that they have established a secret world domination, a la conspiracies. However, they might very well be conscious about the existence of the Keepers and Apothicons, perhaps via discovering Shangri-La.