Cold Relics

There’s been a lack of progress as of March, 2024 into our investigation. I barely hear from the other guys anymore. Sometimes it feels like I’m all alone in uncovering the truth now. Do the others still even care? Why do I care?

I’m not sure. But I know there’s something profound waiting to be discovered.

Look, I’ve spent a lot of time gathering these notes, curating my wildest ideas into something coherent. I’ve hesitated on sharing them because of what they imply, how they’d make me sound. But screw it. I’m tired of waiting.

This will get into some pretty heady stuff, and spoilers abound. So I’d recommend getting a Cold War refresher on the timeline page, and also, obviously, reading the first eight stories in the Cold Relics series. Assuming there will ever be anymore at this rate.

I’m Tyler, and let’s get into it. Keep in mind these are just my ideas, not factual with certainty.

The mess we’ve discovered comprises several different theories, possibilities, clear truths, and long lost companies.

Laser Tag and The Electric Rabbit introduced us to dangerous, even deadly hardware that would have been marketed to kids and teenagers in the 80s and early 90s. The hardware that made this tech possible is what we call the engine, which is explored further in Signal Intercept along with its effects on and through radio signals. A Hospital Visitor offers no further insight into the MacGuffin-esque technology, but, importantly, the incident did prove to us that Laser Tag was a real story.

The engine may or may not have been at play in Kiddie Land, though I lean towards the former as the story, like Signal Intercept and Rabbit, also involves hallucinations. That leaves us with LIZ-4, The Liminal Warehouse, and Nowhere Train. What do these incidents have to do with the enigmatic tech?

Be open to everything. I’m not holding back, yet I’m not going to go too in-depth on any one subject; I don’t want to repeat theories and observations in the stories themselves. Think of this page as a somewhat brief summary of events.

I believe it is all connected. And it begins with Nowhere Train.

Alternate universes.

There, I said it. I know, I know. Overdone trope at the moment. However, I’ve become fond of the idea that a nuclear apocalypse could unleash so much energy, that should one happen in a parallel world close to our own, the sheer magnitude of the death, suffering, and destruction could bleed over to our own universe. Perhaps, even open up a gateway, temporary or permanent. A bridge through dimensions. What if that train, and the people onboard… managed to get into our world?

But when did it happen? When was there a precise moment in time that could activate a quantum uncertainty event and flip a coin with a 50-50 chance? I guide you to this excerpt from our certainly real timeline:

“1983: Russian officer Stanislav Petrov’s decision not to report a newly installed radar system’s errant detection of incoming American nuclear weapons likely prevents a large-scale nuclear war.”

At first glance, this would line up with certain elements in Nowhere Train. However, crossing over to our world at this time wouldn’t make sense when considering how long Neptune has likely been operating, and scheming. I think it’s more likely that if the multi-worlds theory holds any water, the people from the train arrived in our world on a skewed timeline, earlier than when they left. Sometime in the 1960s, I believe. When there was time to prepare and make plans, and they saw the familiar patterns that would lead to atomic destruction all over again.

Ah, right. We only recently found out the name of the shadowy organization. This is where I can only get even deeper into pure conjecture. Neptune was made up of people from a world that made it into the 1980s, and finding themselves in our 1960s, they had a prophet-like knowledge of science and events. They either worked with or against the US and Soviet governments, maybe playing both sides. Or they orchestrated things without ever being noticed by the super powers, only contracting outsiders to sell their unique technology and products. Nowhere Train‘s story also brings up a schism in the otherworldly company, as most, if not all save one, of those working for it underground seem to have killed one another.

What does it all mean?

Paranoia. The approaching inevitability of a day in 1983 that could or could not lead to the end of the world in which they were refugees. How to stop it? How to instigate it again? Some of them may have decided that nuclear destruction was a good thing for their power structure. Why not use their engine technology to create toys that would kill and traumatize children across both the west and east? Target the kids, and the parents will spread the blame. Sell a VHS game console to the States. Then have that US company send a killer rabbit through the wires that puts children in a coma. Meanwhile, a Belarusian corporation blows up other kids with high-powered lasers. Outrage follows. Instability. Time to wipe your country off the planet.

Or maybe I got it all wrong. They could’ve also been trying to scare families away from supporting saber-rattling politicians and seek de-escalation. I don’t see how it’d work that way, but since the game and laser pistols never left development stage, who knows for sure what they were planning long-term? If things could have gone either way, these “outreach” programs may have also been the cause of the schism.

Luckily for us all, these toys never made it to market. Neptune fell apart before they could be mass-produced.

What was the engine’s original purpose?

To inject hallucinatory paradises, or any reality really, into the minds of anyone nearby. Kiddie Land, in Florida? A prototype, a testing ground. Inject an entire visit to a dreamlike amusement park into kids passing by. To what end? To eventually keep people calm during the apocalypse. To give them hope during nuclear winter. To shut their eyes from a world of cinders.

Kiddie Land was designed (some might say “programmed”) in rural Pennsylvania by using a camera on rails to capture a “shadow box” version of the theme park made with wood and scrap metal, an installation not meant to be permanent. The area around the site also seems to be saturated with strange radio signals.

The fountain of youth mentioned in LIZ-4, appropriately in the same state that Ponce de Leon believed was the home of the mythical waters of life. The LIZ-4 station and Central, the biological computer who oversaw its operation, even had a direct connection all the way to a place in Florida. Central must have been from the other world as well, and knew the signs to look for to predict an impending final World War. The remnants of Kiddie Land, still broadcast from an abandoned utility shed after the Berlin wall fell. If not run by Neptune itself, the project was headed by the government, some section of it that used the technology to plan their “Second America.” A kind of utopia where programmed reality provided either a brief escape from the horrifying truth, or a permanent one. Could be remotely triggered as soon as incoming nuclear warheads were detected. The original goal may have been to put the engines all across the country. Give everyone nice thoughts at the end, reduce panic. Give them the courage or peace of mind to rebuild, repopulate.

And the warehouse in Ukraine? Probably owned or operated by the company that created the laser tag pistols. The little America they built there may have been a training ground for an invasion. The laser tag set may have been trialed there, as well. The lights and the metal beast are really delving into sci-fi territory, but the only explanation I can come up with is that the lights somehow reach the alternate world, the one destroyed by nuclear war. I can’t think of any other reason that those lights brought radioactive dust into the warehouse. And the killing machine itself… I think, created by the survivors on the other side. Some kind of hunter-killer that can operate on the toxic surface, without need for food or sleep. The lights allowed it to briefly exist in our world. Terrifying, really. Not just the machine itself, phasing into our reality—also that their people might still be killing each other even after atomic hellfire.

Why?

All questions can eventually be boiled down to, and rendered unanswerable, by the word “why.” And this is where I have to stop. This page already looks like the ramblings of a mad conspiracy theorist. In my opinion, Neptune isn’t a rotting corpse. It’s already a desiccated husk, brought down by inner conflict and loss of trust amongst dimensional refugees (or possibly even time-travelers?). We came along too late to make a difference, to change anything, to see their fall. We’re just picking up the remaining pieces and digging into a grave full of mysteries we’ll never fully understand.

What about the Umbrella Man?

Likely the sole survivor of Neptune. Featured prominently in Nowhere Train. Probably had something to do with LIZ-4‘s narrator (stalked her) and the house arrest of her daughter. But there is a lack of evidence as to his motives and possible malevolence. Yes, he apparently killed his own people to clean house, but that was decades ago. What about today? Is he just trying to keep this all a secret? Observing? Laughing at our naive stumbling about? I both dread the idea of meeting him, and very much want to. He must be very old. I want to know what he’s seen. I want to find him. But preferably powerless, tied to a chair in a bright, public space. Where is he? How does he get around? Does anyone in the government know he exists? Did they ever?

Have to find Isaac. He could be our best bet for answers. Only confirmed person to face our nemesis and survive. Need to find Umbrella Man, before he finds us. Only chance to end this all in a way where I can stop thinking about it, so I can move on with life. To get the poison Kiddie Land put in my brain so long ago out. I already know too much.

Please, help me find the answers. My friends.