A Potential Answer to the Maxis Fallout Timeline

[RadZakpak]

So many years on, and still there is a lot about Black Ops III's zombies iteration that we do not fully understand. Specifically, there are several radios from some version of Maxis speaking about a timeline full of radiation, where his children are destroyed before his eyes. Maybe it's a fool's errand, but I want to crack this and figure out the truth of the matter. I think I have some leads as to what might truly be going on.

 

Let's start after Buried. As the timeline states: 

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Now corrupted by the Dark Aether, he (Maxis) reveals his true intentions to Victis and punishes Richtofen by trapping his soul in a zombie. Drawn into Agartha by her Father, Samantha witnesses the evil that has corrupted him.  When a rift opens in Dimension 63 in 1918, she reaches out to that timeline’s Maxis for help.  

A key detail in the wording here is that Samantha only reaches out to the Dimension 63 version of her father after a rift opens. This leaves an opening for more to be going on between Buried and Origins.

 

Here is where some uncertainty comes in: I believe that Sam reached out to a Maxis before the Origins version. For simplicity's sake, let's call this new Maxis "Punished Maxis". In Punished Maxis's timeline, he is living his best life married to a Sophia and has children inside his dream home on the countryside. But he is still a scientist at heart, continuing experiments in his basement. With the help of this dimension's Richtofen, he creates a working teleporter. This event, however, changed the lives of them all for the worse.

 

By creating the teleporter, the break the seal between their own dimension and the Aether. A rift opens, allowing for Samantha to reach out. In doing so, however, she spreads her corruption as well as her true father's, unleashing the Apothicons upon this dimension. From here, something causes the earth to become irradiated. It may be the Apothicons bringing with them copious amounts of 115. It could be humanity nuking itself to try and wipe out the Apothicons.

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Beyond the window, I saw a wasteland stretching far as the eye could see. I saw scourge visited upon the Earth. I saw the children withered before my eyes.

 

Day 66. The children are gone and the house feels empty. I miss their laughter, their games. The sirens have not sounded for several months. I do believe that we may have turned the tide on the battle, but at what cost? The radiation levels from the fallout remain dangerously high.

But Punished Maxis had a plan.

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I can only pray I live long enough to confirm that my plan was indeed successful and the dark presence that has haunted our dreams, that infected every facet of our existence, has finally been vanquished.

"The Plan" is something we still don't quite understand. But I think it has to do with the other most baffling mystery of Aether:

 

Things start to get very fuzzy. I believe that Maxis and Richtofen tried using the teleporter in the basement to search other dimensions for solutions to fix their own. I believe that this Maxis is the one who created Zero Base, a reality residing in the Empty Earth, somewhere safe from the Apothicon scourge. He collected artifacts from across the multiverse, searching for answers to potentially bring his children back, perhaps even to fix the corrupted Samantha residing in Agartha who brought this upon them in the first place. In his travels, he began to understand parts of the nature of the universe, finding the Kronorium, and learning of Primis and Ultimis.

 

What we are seeing in the comic panel above may be part of Punished Maxis' plan. He enlisted Richtofen from his own dimension to track down the three men who could help him in the plan. This plan may very well have been the one that Primis Richtofen would later attempt, in collecting the eternal souls of the four of them. The comic panel may be them returning to a version of the house with a teleporter after collecting Nikolai's soul in Stalingrad.

 

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You swore a promise to me, Edward. It may have been a long time ago, but I am sure you will not have forgotten. You swore to follow my instructions, to comply with my every order. You swore to enact whatever plan I conveyed to you, all in the hope that we could overcome the chaos that we, ourselves have created. You have kept your word. However much it pains my heart, I owe it to you to confess. I'm sorry Edward, I have withheld certain truths from you.

 

 

But still, the plan did not seem to work. A rift opened in Dimension 63, allowing Samantha to reach out to the version of her father from Origins.

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After so long in isolation, we have begun to believe that we were the only survivors of the catastrophic event that had shaped our lives. Supplies were beginning to run low, and I was forced to prepare for the worst outcome. Just as I feared that we were truly alone, just as I feared that the end was near, there was a knock at the door.

The siren has not sounded in many months. I am... confused, by the changing world around me. I look at my hands, and they are not the hands I remember. The wrinkles, stains and liver spots that textured my skin have disappeared, as though time itself was unraveling against its natural order. Is this the end, or a new beginning?

 

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With Doctor Monty’s help, the Maxis Drone arrives at the house in Agartha. Despite the absence of his soul, Monty recreates a physical manifestation of his Dimension 63 form.

 

Dimension 63 Maxis arrives in Agartha to find himself in a new body, in a House on the countryside with a laboratory in the basement. The timeline entry says that Monty "recreated a physical manifestation of his Dimension 63 form." The body was not simply an illusion: It was physical. Just like the House. It's a physical place within Agartha that mortals like us can occupy. Monty could not have created this matter from thin air, surely. Instead, it was plucked from elsewhere.

 

The House is potentially the version from the comic we saw earlier, or it is pulled from an earlier point in time in Punished Maxis' timeline. The body IS Punished Maxis' body. Punished Maxis was old and decrepit from years in isolation with limited supplies and radiation sickness in his home dimension. The wrinkles, stains, and liver spots fade as though he is becoming younger. Time for him is unraveling, and his body becomes a vessel for Origins Maxis to occupy in Agartha.

 

Now that Monty has decided to intervene, he takes Samantha away to remove her corruption, leaving Origins Maxis alone in the House in Agartha. But it was not his to begin with, and memories slip in of this previous life.

 

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Reality itself is shifting. I find myself reflecting on memories I am not longer sure are my own. Beyond the window, I saw a wasteland stretching far as the eye could see. I saw scourge visited upon the Earth. I saw the children withered before my eyes. That was before... before he came. Samantha has been returned to me once more, as have you Edward... as have you.

 

Being in Punished Maxis' body presented him with memories of this hellish version of reality, and it also may be what led him to using the basement teleporter to explore dimensions and relocate the Empty Earth, where Punished Maxis had collected the Kronorium. The plan continued, even after Punished Maxis was wiped from existence.

 

Some other evidence to support this is the fact that at the end of Revelations Maxis and Sophia come together, expressing their love to one another before using the Summoning Key to close the rift which brought the Apothicons to Agartha in the first place.

 

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Maxis: Sophia...

Sophia: Maxis...

Maxis: You know what we must do my dear.

Sophia: Yes, my love.

Maxis: We will do it together. As one we are, now and forever.

Origins Maxis never gave any indication of having a family in his home dimension. Samantha reached out to him, showing him the life he could have, and so he loved her like a daughter. But why should he love Sophia, someone who he never knew? His memories from Punished Maxis' life may be what caused him to remember having a family with Sophia, and thus he loved her as much as she loved him.

 

 

 

That's a lot to unpack, and it still leaves some unanswered questions. Like, what exactly was Punished Maxis' plan? Does it have to do with the radios from Primis in The Giant and the paradox visualizations? What about the beacon?

 

The beacon was shown to be radioactive as it caused Dempsey to lose his hair; Is the beacon what Punished Maxis used to try and stop the Apothicons?

 

There's still a lot more to figure out, but I feel a little closer to the answer after writing this.

 

 

[anonymous]

The time period between Buried and Origins marks one of the most interesting gaps in our story, with the potential to explain many mysteries crucial for understanding the story wholly. I like this theory!

On 2/8/2022 at 4:04 AM, RadZakpak said:

The beacon was shown to be radioactive as it caused Dempsey to lose his hair; Is the beacon what Punished Maxis used to try and stop the Apothicons?

Often I have thought about this as well, as it seems to be the only time that radioactivity is directly mentioned. However, it must somehow tie with Maxis' "war" that he is trying to win, which reminds me also of the Moon missles he sends to Earth, or his final victory at the end of Buried (even though he was already corrupted back then).

 

Another mystery is the one about the seemingly connection between the House and the MPD. Are the souls of Samantha and Richtofen transferred into the physical appearance of innocent children wearing pyjamas during their "cryptogenic slumber party" in the MPD? Do they play with their toys following the pages of the Kronorium which is located in Sam's room, which become actual events resonating outside Agartha into the Multiverse? Quite often the House reminds me of Plato's world of ideas, where Agartha is the place where non-physical essences of everything exist, of which objects and matter in the physical universes being merely imitations of these essences.

[Rapt]

A great theory!

These are definitely the loose threads that I still find myself thinking about as well. 

 

The really great part is that the unsolved ciphers on The Giant and Revelations are almost definitely related to this subplot.

(Subplot probably being the wrong word, as it's a massively key plot point that causes/effects the whole story post Buried)

Seeing as The Giant radios and the Dempsey Rev cipher are also related to this story thread, the unsolved ciphers likely are also.

 

It's plausible that we could actually get a resolution to this story thread one day.

Once the massive brained cipher solvers finally crack it (which I'm sure they will).

 

As you've shown here we areadly have a LOT of the pieces of this puzzle.

Hopefully we find the rest.

It would answer so many questions about the story that still live rent free in my mind all these years later. 

 

Really great theory.