Elda Marker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
matchbreaker) wrote2020-12-20 11:19 pm
matchbreaker) wrote2020-12-20 11:19 pm
IC GUIDE FOR RETROSPEC AND RELATED THINGS
[ This guide is assumed to exist as a Google Doc or something like that which can be linked online or downloaded. I decided to put it in a post because some people can't load Google Docs as readily but if the community at large would prefer a Google Doc (which I'll edit but have a section for people to propose edits) I'm more than willing to make a Google Doc version of this, though I still might try to mirror it for people who prefer this? Idk, depends, I'm not pushing one way or the other.
As of March 2018, there is also an audio version of the guide, with everything important read out loud by Elda and/or the voice of an older man (Gilgamesh of Penelope's summons). The audio version is only updated in line with major edits to it.]
FOREWARD
Foreward by Elda Marker
If you're reading this guide, then chances are you've been put onto the Retrospec App, which will soon be installed on every device you own which can logically have an app on it. This includes public devices like library computers as long as you're the one using it. This app cannot be uninstalled and unfortunately contacting customer service about it is basically impossible. The mainstay of contact employees with the company see fit to give is a monthly update post which, if you are a new user, will likely have been the first thing you saw and posted to. I'm sorry that you were thrown into such a confusing place so unceremoniously, or for any rude or scary things you've encountered thus far.
That said, there are many things that you will want to or need to understand about this app and the related phenomena going forward. However, you need not delve into all of it, if you don't wish to. This guide will be broken up into three main sections: Introductory, Complicated and Complex. The Introductory portion includes information that everyone should know while they're on this app to prepare them for what is to come. The Complicated section will mostly be a record of previous events and knowledge of how strange happenings occur in our city, as well as basic information for what lies outside of it. And then finally the Complex section will include more detailed information that you need only pursue if you are comfortable doing so, relating to speculation about the company, the city itself, and what mysteries those of us who have been on this app longer have encountered.
I, personally, have been on this app since May of 2017. There are many people who have been on the app longer than that. While I implore you to read at least the Introductory section of this guide, if you have friends, family, or other people you trust on this app, seek them out for support and for their personal testimonies and opinions on things that have and will happen. Ultimately, those connections will be vital to you as your life, unfortunately, is likely to become more complicated. That said, welcome to the community, and feel free to count on many of us.
I: Introductory
Memories
Every user on the Retrospec app will eventually start to have visions or dreams from another life. These visions are (very likely) memories of another life that may mirror your own but is more likely to be fantastical, from a world which seems suited to being in a comic book or RPG. Regardless, these memories can be triggered at almost any time, but one fairly consistent way of triggering them (intended or otherwise) is by taking actions which mirror actions that the person whose life you're remembering has done before. Thus, those actions can be performed or avoided at your discretion.
While this will be gone into in more detail in the Complex section of the guide, the basic reason for "why" we are all getting these memories is that they represent a past life of ours. The nature of this past life is debated among users, and the staff at Retrospec has also been somewhat unclear about what our relationship to these other people are. It is possible that the memories you receive will align with other people in the city, but it is also possible that you will either not match with anyone else, or that you and your family members might all receive memories of unrelated lives. Try not to be alarmed by this, but please find people you trust to talk about these memories with, as a personal suggestion.
Also, though the data was inconclusive, a survey was taken once to try to find correlation between major connections between various users' memories and experiences. It is possible that those results might give you some indication of your experience to come.
Changes to the World
More or less every month, some oddity will happen in the city, usually as a result of unreality and its effects on the city. The nature of unreality will be discussed in greater detail in the Complex section of the guide and a more concrete list of changes will be collected in the Complicated section of the guide, but it is worth noting that these changes in the world come in two major categories: lasting and temporary.
Temporary changes often last between two and four weeks. Some examples have included everyone in the city shrinking down to the size of a doll, mistletoe bats which fly around and demand kisses to silence their singing, and visible thought bubbles. While these changes are not always harmless, they do have a tendency to be resolved within a month, either by the actions of Retrospec or the actions of the users. They only rarely persist beyond four weeks.
Lasting changes persist either indefinitely, or until Retrospec resolves them. In the past, they have prompted users to vote on which changes their R&D team should fix first. Some examples have included the colors blue and green vanishing entirely, horses being replaced with chocobos, and the sense of taste vanishing. Often, these lasting changes will be resolved in stages, such as how the color blue returned to fruits before it returned to the sky. There are other oddities around the city which are likely also changes to the world (for example, the existence of those circus of values vending machines happened overnight) which are not prompted to be fixed. It is unknown why those changes happen or what if any purpose they serve.
As a general rule, those who are not on the Retrospec app will not notice changes to the world. They might be affected, such as when everyone shrank, or they might not, such as during the visible thought bubbles incident. Either way, they will most often think of these changes, if they acknowledge them at all, as being normal. This is especially true of the the lasting changes, though their knowledge of what is normal tends to change as more of the change is resolved.
Changes to Individuals
In addition to receiving foreign memories, something that happens to many people is changes to their physical appearance or skills, to more closely resemble the person in their memories. These changes can include, but are not limited to, changing the color of your eyes and hair, growth of inhuman body parts like tails or cat ears, and the development of special abilities. These special abilities don't have any particular logic native to this world, and can include things ranging from magic, to increased durability of body, to super strength and anything between. The main indicator of what sort of abilities you might receive - if any - are what memories you've gained before then.
The reasoning for these physical changes beyond this has been suggested by Retrospec, but there will be more coverage of that in the Complex section of this guide. In terms of basic knowledge, the main take aways ought to be to seek a medical professional on the guide, in order to make sure your physical changes won't be a threat to yours or others' health, and then to train with them. The development of abilities does not necessarily come with knowledge on how to use them, and thus for your own safety it might be for the best to understand how these changes work.
People not on the app might initially react oddly to changes in appearance or abilities, but over time they tend to acclimate to them. It seems to take those that you interact with regularly a month or so until they consider these physical changes or abilities to be a banal curiosity. They will still acknowledge them, but as with changes to the world, will consider them more normal than anything else.
People not on the App
People who are not on the Retrospec app, as mentioned above, do not for the most part notice changes either to the world or to individuals. More over, physical evidence of Retrospec is hard to come by at the best of times (discussed more below in the Complicated section) and those who are not on the app appear to be incapable of seeing or at least acknowledging the app on various devices. Because they consider changes to the world to be the natural state of things, claims to the contrary are often brushed off. Even if they do believe you and your explanations for things, they will tend to forget that the conversation happened after a while.
For this reason, some people on the app call people who are not by various names like sleepers in order to differentiate them. However, this does not mean that connection with people not on the app is impossible. It simply means that those connections will be complicated by the fact that you cannot speak with them in as much detail about what has happened to you because of being on the app and it is best to gain an additional support network.
Users who are on the app are capable of being removed from the app. When they are no longer users of the app, whatever physical changes they've gone through will vanish along with whatever memories they've gained, and they will no longer remember all the details of things that happened because of Retrospec or unreality. It is also possible for those people removed from the app to come back to the app. There does not seem to be a pattern of this process, other than that a large new crop of users seem to be registered at the beginning of every other month, and sometimes those new users will have several days in the proceeding month where they are temporarily registered, only to then be removed until a later time.
Retrospec's Mailbox
Retrospec occasionally sends items to users on the app. These items will be things that the people in your memories owned at some point, presumably. Often you will have memories of these items, but that's not necessarily the case. Previously, these items would simply be sent in the mail, but they've changed it to mailing you a twenty-digit code on a ticket which must be put into the Retrospec mailbox, located in front of the Wiffle-Waffle waffle house in Tisse. When the ticket is inserted, your item will be produced, even if it logically looks like it shouldn't fit in there. You can also store items you got from Retrospec there, and get a new ticket to reclaim them.
These items can sometimes be weapons. Members of the police who are on the app have managed to push through paperwork to allow users to legally own or carry some of these weapons, but if you have concerns, please contact one of the officers who is on the app. Other items can range from furniture, to clothing, to tools. There does not seem to be any correlation about when you will get an item, unlike the tenuous connection between memories and your own actions. These items can sometimes be larger, such as a whole house, but it unknown how that functions with the mailbox.
Additionally, linked here is a Retrospec Directory of people on the app willing and able to provide assistance (professional, medical, monetary, etc) to other users who might be imperiled. If you are in need of help, please remember to consult it and if you can provide aide, please register yourself.
II: Complicated
The Retrospec Company
The Retrospec Company is the group that produces the application that anyone reading this guide will have been signed up for. Retrospec itself is a social media platform, mostly used by the users to communicate goings on in the city or like any other one. However, people who are on the app (as noted above) both notices changes to the world and are affected by memories or personal changes. The implication, based on current evidence, is that Retrospec manges changes caused by some other force, mitigating or repairing them. Regardless, the company attempts keep the utmost secrecy from the userbase, intentionally making it difficult to contact them and rarely providing much information.
On the first of every month, Retrospec will put out an update post, usually giving a small amount of information on what changes might happen through the month or responding a month late to various questions proposed on a previous update. While they do make these posts, they never respond to them, or at least have not thus far. Some evidence has suggested that they are not allowed to by order of higher ups in the company, but it is equally possible that they simply don't want to, or are afraid to for whatever reason. Opinions vary on that subject.
The true nature of Retrospec's business seems to be managing the ebb and flow of Unreality, as well as to try to regrow dead worlds. Significantly more detail on both of those will be covered in the Complex section of this guide. In practical terms, as it applies to your daily life, all that must be understood about Retrospec is that their goals are lofty and ill-defined to use users and that they are the ones managing the app. A list of changes to the world and known players in the company will be listed below.
Since February 2018, there's been a significant change in Retrospec policy, however. Located at the top of Towers is an office that houses Zee Carlisle, a Hiring Manager for Retrospec as well as the main coordinator of what he called the Recollé Restoration Initiative. The RRI will both take requests and ship out requests for users on the app to participate on missions necessary for managing things that Retropec desires to be controlled. Equally important, Carlisle can be contacted at any time, via visiting his office, or on the app.
It is worth noting that Retrospec used to have a headquarters downtown in Tisse, one that numerous users attempted to explore at different times, to various results. This includes one user hacking CCTV cameras in order to attempt to monitor it, linked below due to what implications this might have on other things related to the company going forward.
[ It's a simple video lasting for about two minutes and has that crappy quality of CCTV videos everywhere. There's a little date and time counter on the one corner reading 'May 01 2017' with the clock ticking along from 12:02 to 12:04. It starts from the nearby streetlights, focusing on traffic, then zooming up to look at where the Retrospec building is suppose to be and showing nothing. No building. No anything to show that a building is there. Then it fizzes out. ]
That HQ is no longer there, though their mailbox now is at the same location. They have other facilities as well, including but not limited to a bunker out in the forest, a library under the university, facilities in the abandoned subway tunnels, and quite possibly some influence over the museum, planetarium, and maybe even the mayor's office. More details on those connections will also be covered in the Complex section.
One additional "service" it has been discovered that Retrospec does as well is reviving the dead. At least three users have died and then come back from the dead, though there do seem to be ramifications both to the individual and to the world caused this this. More details about the process are recorded here, thanks to the testimony of a user who experienced the process.
Known Employees of Retrospec
The following are known employees of Retrospec who you might encounter over the network or hear referenced by other users. Linked here is an earlier attempt to collect information about them, but if you have additional collected information please bring it forward.
In addition to these employees, more than one has referenced a director. Specifically, Mr. Baroque mentions that the current director's policies sees Retrospec being comparatively more transparent with us as users than the old one would have been. Little else is known about them, however.
Record of Events Related to Retrospec
This section is meant to consolidate what was in earlier drafts of this guide the Temporary and Lasting World Changes section. Both groups are collected as one to give a better sense of what happened and when. It is possible some information is missing or incorrect, please feel free to contact about that.
February 2017
March 2017
April 2017
May 2017
June 2017
July 2017
August 2017
September 2017
October 2017
November 2017
December 2017
January 2018
February 2018
March 2018
April 2018
May 2018
Other Changes to the World
The following ate demonstrably abnormal as compared to the world before Retrospec, but a concrete date for when they changed cannot (or at least the writer has not) found when they did change. There has also not been a poll associated with changing them back, as with many of the changes noted above. This list might not be exhaustive, and if you can point more out, please feel free:
Regions Outside the City
In February of 2018, the outside of the city changed. The terrain became substantially different than it had been before, and numerous monsters now appear on the roads. [NOTE: maybe make a bestiary?] Perhaps more importantly, those roads now lead to new fantastical regions outside of the city, as opposed to other parts of the United States, as previously. The likely reasons for this are detailed in the Complex section of the guide, in particular the section on layers. Below is a list of the known points of interest in these other regions:
All of these regions have previously and still might have some magical influence over them, so despite these basic descriptions bare in mind that travel to them might be fraught with oddities such as the aforementioned monsters, curses, or even remnants of previous odd happenings in the city. For example, Magatus has caves with mistletoe-bats gone native.
III: Complex
Retrospec's ties to Recollé
Team Absinthe's notes from August & information on the founders.
These above links all serve as secondary sources to back up and expand on the information condensed here. But in essence, it's become increasingly clear that Retrospec has deep ties with the city of Recollé itself, going back all the way to the founders of Recollé and continuing to this day. Many of the employees of Retrospec are related to one another and some of them share family names with Recollé's four founders. The founders themselves (namely, Clarence Vanderweele, Philip Spinnato, Georgia Mahoney, and Myrtle Cavendish) all fought unreality in the past. They had internal disputes, but it seems that all of them also might have been the ones who created - if not Retrospec itself - the precursor to the current company. Current information also suggests that they might not be native to this world in the first place.
Documents which connect Retrospec to the creation and the current runnings of the city have been found in numerous locations. Most damningly, some people have found connections to the company in city hall.
Additional ties have been noted, such as a file found in the planetarium possessing a Retrospec logo, in regards to additional planetary information beyond the ones in our solar system; however, the contents of this file were absent. Other residents have gathered testimony from ghosts out in the woods relating to a possible connection. Some of the people who vanished in August came back with a report that there was a "Recollé Project" that the creators of Retrospec were involved in.
In January 2018, explorations of the Recollé subway system revealed more information about Retrospec's operations and potential origins. In a grand central hub at the heart of the system, several dozens of brochures were found welcoming people to other locations, some of which were confirmed to match up with locations in the memories that people have regained before now. But perhaps more relevantly, there was a "Welcome to Recollé." book listed there. Included below are photos of the pages from that book:
[ Assume all of these are in picture form, but this is quoting the mod information on the January 2018 event: "Flipping through this book details the history of the city and the story of how the four founders traveled far to settle on Earth to create this city decades ago. The city was originally to be a safe haven, a central hub much like this subway station, until the Retrospec project could reform everything. However, the city became a home to the founders, the founding families, and others that were rescued throughout the galaxy who'd lost their planets. The book goes on to explain how Retrospec created their original headquarters in a bunker in the woods hidden from prying eyes so they could do their job with utmost secrecy. Retrospec was never to be looked into by ordinary people and the original company had less than 10 employees working for it.
This subway station, it says, used to be the way that travelers from other worlds would arrive to the city of Recollé and a way that they could leave to explore other parts of the planet at their leisure until the system was shut down sometime in the 1970s due to the collapsing of several tunnels.
There are several pages at the end of the book, too, but the text is illegible. Instead, in bold letters written in sharpie are the words "LET'S REWRITE HISTORY" and dated 2007." ]
It's very possible that Retrospec has operated on other planets before now. At the very least, we know that they have members of the company who are from worlds that have been destroyed (more on that below), and that those who vanished "outside of reality" in August went to worlds which seemed unlike anything they had ever seen before. All of their actions seem to be working towards the restoration of destroyed worlds, and to combat or manage unreality (both detailed below).
Unreality & Its Effects
Collected August information post
It is not entirely clear what "unreality" is, precisely. It has been referenced as a force that changes the world, as well as a force that Retrospec both combats and manipulates in order to manage it. It's entirely possible that unreality is the cause of the changes to the world, if not also the changes to individuals. As more information about unreality is revealed, then more will be added to this section. For now, please consider it likely that all of the changes to the world are a result of unreality. It is also possible that unreality is a place, the space outside if the layers of reality (see below).
In August of 2017, a "storm" on reality knocked out the majority of Retrospec's infrastructure. They were under-staffed at the time and as a result, numerous users needed to to be deputized with minimal clearance to assist them in getting things running again. A more complete report on everyone's findings is linked above, but the core of the issue was that monsters (referred to as malefactors by Dr. Mahoney) appeared throughout the city and caused severe damage, as well as threatened the wellbeing of the people in it. In addition to that, around sixty individuals who were on the app vanished from the the city. Those people who vanished were, in the words of Dr. Mahoney, "outside of reality" and the teams who were recruited on the Recollé side of things were taking steps to help bring them back. These steps are detailed on the linked post above, with reports from each group made both there and in person.
Meanwhile, those who were "outside of reality" went to fantastical locations outside of normal reason. It is possible that they were in unreality at the time, or other worlds. These included a sinking ship leading to an underwater exploration, a fantasy castle, and a haunted manor. Many of these worlds seemed to have some connection to the four founders of Recollé, or to their families. Eventually, the teams both within the city and outside of it managed to fix things enough that those who were outside of reality returned, and those who had been operating in the city came forth and a large battle ensued. The remaining malefactors needed to be dealt with before buttons that were created by Retrospec could be pressed, in order to restore the city to normal.
Included below are a series of videos and photographs taken both from within the city and outside of reality. We can assert that all of these are factually accurate and provided by another app user. They have been uploaded to numerous other websites in hopes of them continuing to be circulated
[ Notes: All of these videos will be edited down to under a minute, and links will be to YouTube, Vimeo, and Google Drive. Each of them will have an explanation of what’s going on and names of people visible in the video. All of them are from first person (filmed by Penelope).
1. Parts recorded from this thread.
2. Fighting Vampyrs with a shillelagh.
3. Fighting alongside Minako Arisato with a spear against several weird monkey things.
4. Fighting a Faceless with Baren.
5. Fighting anacondas in a jungle in Unreality with Carmen Sandiego.
6. Video taken from the cockpit of a giant cat mecha, fighting primarily Beowolfs.
Additionally, several individual photographs: A Dragon, Weird Ogres, Flying pinstriped mouths, Hook Hand People, Strange Deer, and Little demons ]
The largest and most dangerous of these monsters was an incredibly large creature which devoured the entire ocean. Once it was dealt with, the results of the storm appeared to have been cleared up and the world was returned to normal by the end of the month. The events in August were the most dangerous and dramatic influence of unreality that we have experienced thus far.
However, as a helpful PSA, it should not be assumed that all monsters or strange beings you encounter within the city are inherently hostile. To begin with (as noted above), several users undergo physical changes to make them less visually human. In addition to that, several others users have gotten animal companions out of the mailbox or as a result of their own abilities. Some of those monsters you encounter might well be potential allies.
Layers & Their Meaning
Beginning with our contact with Zee Carlisle and the events of February 2018, Retrospec began to talk more about layers and about the effect of the world shifting through them brings. It is not precisely clear what layers are, but the implication is that they refer to layers of reality. This has been cited as the reason that contact with people outside of the city has become impossible, that the rest of the world is existing on a different layer than the one we are on in the city. A shift in the layers is also, presumably, what resulted in us being able to interact with those regions outside of the city.
[ Information about the events of the missions in February will be included here ]
In May of 2018, Zee Carlisle announced that the "layers had collapsed" and that Retrospec itself didn't understand enough about them. The results of the collapse of the layers were that the world turned pure white and invisible (a choice apparently made by Retrospec itself) and users were provided with paintbrushes to paint the city back into existence. This collapse also extended as far as the regions outside the city. In addition to this, people who were not on the app became significantly more self-aware of oddities in the city, both the current state of things being blank, and changes to individuals which they had previously accepted as normal.
Destroyed Worlds & Soul Shards
Wendy Gou's post referencing this & reports from August
There has been much evidence - including direct claims from Retrospec itself - that the true purpose of Retrospec is to rebuild worlds that have been destroyed. We don't currently known what is causing these worlds to be destroyed, only that they were. Once they were destroyed, Retrospec, or those associated with Retrospec, collected shards from these worlds, or in other words, souls. These souls are supposedly the origin of the memories and changes to people that those of us on the Retrospec app experience. Namely, that our souls are the same souls that Retrospec plucked from those destroyed worlds.
They have referred to those souls - and therefore us - as being seeds in the past. Those seeds are needed to "regrow" the destroyed worlds, and as long as at least one soul from a destroyed world exists, the world can eventually be restored. It is for this reason that they consider it important for us to "regain" those memories and changes to our appearance, to better simulate the bodies and minds of the souls that we, supposedly, have.
None of this has been confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt, but the evidence does continue to pile on that at least Retrospec wishes for us to believe this is the case. It has also been suggested that when people are removed from the app, it is a matter of their souls being knocked out of alignment, and thus people who aren't on the app are waiting to have those other souls put back into place. It is unclear what this means for people who have never been on the app at all, however.
Regardless, more information about these and other oddities related to Retrospec and unreality will likely be revealed over time. If you happen to discover any more information yourselves, please report it both to the community of people on the app as a whole and to those who can and will update this guide.
As of March 2018, there is also an audio version of the guide, with everything important read out loud by Elda and/or the voice of an older man (Gilgamesh of Penelope's summons). The audio version is only updated in line with major edits to it.]
Foreward by Elda Marker
If you're reading this guide, then chances are you've been put onto the Retrospec App, which will soon be installed on every device you own which can logically have an app on it. This includes public devices like library computers as long as you're the one using it. This app cannot be uninstalled and unfortunately contacting customer service about it is basically impossible. The mainstay of contact employees with the company see fit to give is a monthly update post which, if you are a new user, will likely have been the first thing you saw and posted to. I'm sorry that you were thrown into such a confusing place so unceremoniously, or for any rude or scary things you've encountered thus far.
That said, there are many things that you will want to or need to understand about this app and the related phenomena going forward. However, you need not delve into all of it, if you don't wish to. This guide will be broken up into three main sections: Introductory, Complicated and Complex. The Introductory portion includes information that everyone should know while they're on this app to prepare them for what is to come. The Complicated section will mostly be a record of previous events and knowledge of how strange happenings occur in our city, as well as basic information for what lies outside of it. And then finally the Complex section will include more detailed information that you need only pursue if you are comfortable doing so, relating to speculation about the company, the city itself, and what mysteries those of us who have been on this app longer have encountered.
I, personally, have been on this app since May of 2017. There are many people who have been on the app longer than that. While I implore you to read at least the Introductory section of this guide, if you have friends, family, or other people you trust on this app, seek them out for support and for their personal testimonies and opinions on things that have and will happen. Ultimately, those connections will be vital to you as your life, unfortunately, is likely to become more complicated. That said, welcome to the community, and feel free to count on many of us.
Memories
Every user on the Retrospec app will eventually start to have visions or dreams from another life. These visions are (very likely) memories of another life that may mirror your own but is more likely to be fantastical, from a world which seems suited to being in a comic book or RPG. Regardless, these memories can be triggered at almost any time, but one fairly consistent way of triggering them (intended or otherwise) is by taking actions which mirror actions that the person whose life you're remembering has done before. Thus, those actions can be performed or avoided at your discretion.
While this will be gone into in more detail in the Complex section of the guide, the basic reason for "why" we are all getting these memories is that they represent a past life of ours. The nature of this past life is debated among users, and the staff at Retrospec has also been somewhat unclear about what our relationship to these other people are. It is possible that the memories you receive will align with other people in the city, but it is also possible that you will either not match with anyone else, or that you and your family members might all receive memories of unrelated lives. Try not to be alarmed by this, but please find people you trust to talk about these memories with, as a personal suggestion.
Also, though the data was inconclusive, a survey was taken once to try to find correlation between major connections between various users' memories and experiences. It is possible that those results might give you some indication of your experience to come.
Changes to the World
More or less every month, some oddity will happen in the city, usually as a result of unreality and its effects on the city. The nature of unreality will be discussed in greater detail in the Complex section of the guide and a more concrete list of changes will be collected in the Complicated section of the guide, but it is worth noting that these changes in the world come in two major categories: lasting and temporary.
Temporary changes often last between two and four weeks. Some examples have included everyone in the city shrinking down to the size of a doll, mistletoe bats which fly around and demand kisses to silence their singing, and visible thought bubbles. While these changes are not always harmless, they do have a tendency to be resolved within a month, either by the actions of Retrospec or the actions of the users. They only rarely persist beyond four weeks.
Lasting changes persist either indefinitely, or until Retrospec resolves them. In the past, they have prompted users to vote on which changes their R&D team should fix first. Some examples have included the colors blue and green vanishing entirely, horses being replaced with chocobos, and the sense of taste vanishing. Often, these lasting changes will be resolved in stages, such as how the color blue returned to fruits before it returned to the sky. There are other oddities around the city which are likely also changes to the world (for example, the existence of those circus of values vending machines happened overnight) which are not prompted to be fixed. It is unknown why those changes happen or what if any purpose they serve.
As a general rule, those who are not on the Retrospec app will not notice changes to the world. They might be affected, such as when everyone shrank, or they might not, such as during the visible thought bubbles incident. Either way, they will most often think of these changes, if they acknowledge them at all, as being normal. This is especially true of the the lasting changes, though their knowledge of what is normal tends to change as more of the change is resolved.
Changes to Individuals
In addition to receiving foreign memories, something that happens to many people is changes to their physical appearance or skills, to more closely resemble the person in their memories. These changes can include, but are not limited to, changing the color of your eyes and hair, growth of inhuman body parts like tails or cat ears, and the development of special abilities. These special abilities don't have any particular logic native to this world, and can include things ranging from magic, to increased durability of body, to super strength and anything between. The main indicator of what sort of abilities you might receive - if any - are what memories you've gained before then.
The reasoning for these physical changes beyond this has been suggested by Retrospec, but there will be more coverage of that in the Complex section of this guide. In terms of basic knowledge, the main take aways ought to be to seek a medical professional on the guide, in order to make sure your physical changes won't be a threat to yours or others' health, and then to train with them. The development of abilities does not necessarily come with knowledge on how to use them, and thus for your own safety it might be for the best to understand how these changes work.
People not on the app might initially react oddly to changes in appearance or abilities, but over time they tend to acclimate to them. It seems to take those that you interact with regularly a month or so until they consider these physical changes or abilities to be a banal curiosity. They will still acknowledge them, but as with changes to the world, will consider them more normal than anything else.
People not on the App
People who are not on the Retrospec app, as mentioned above, do not for the most part notice changes either to the world or to individuals. More over, physical evidence of Retrospec is hard to come by at the best of times (discussed more below in the Complicated section) and those who are not on the app appear to be incapable of seeing or at least acknowledging the app on various devices. Because they consider changes to the world to be the natural state of things, claims to the contrary are often brushed off. Even if they do believe you and your explanations for things, they will tend to forget that the conversation happened after a while.
For this reason, some people on the app call people who are not by various names like sleepers in order to differentiate them. However, this does not mean that connection with people not on the app is impossible. It simply means that those connections will be complicated by the fact that you cannot speak with them in as much detail about what has happened to you because of being on the app and it is best to gain an additional support network.
Users who are on the app are capable of being removed from the app. When they are no longer users of the app, whatever physical changes they've gone through will vanish along with whatever memories they've gained, and they will no longer remember all the details of things that happened because of Retrospec or unreality. It is also possible for those people removed from the app to come back to the app. There does not seem to be a pattern of this process, other than that a large new crop of users seem to be registered at the beginning of every other month, and sometimes those new users will have several days in the proceeding month where they are temporarily registered, only to then be removed until a later time.
Retrospec's Mailbox
Retrospec occasionally sends items to users on the app. These items will be things that the people in your memories owned at some point, presumably. Often you will have memories of these items, but that's not necessarily the case. Previously, these items would simply be sent in the mail, but they've changed it to mailing you a twenty-digit code on a ticket which must be put into the Retrospec mailbox, located in front of the Wiffle-Waffle waffle house in Tisse. When the ticket is inserted, your item will be produced, even if it logically looks like it shouldn't fit in there. You can also store items you got from Retrospec there, and get a new ticket to reclaim them.
These items can sometimes be weapons. Members of the police who are on the app have managed to push through paperwork to allow users to legally own or carry some of these weapons, but if you have concerns, please contact one of the officers who is on the app. Other items can range from furniture, to clothing, to tools. There does not seem to be any correlation about when you will get an item, unlike the tenuous connection between memories and your own actions. These items can sometimes be larger, such as a whole house, but it unknown how that functions with the mailbox.
Additionally, linked here is a Retrospec Directory of people on the app willing and able to provide assistance (professional, medical, monetary, etc) to other users who might be imperiled. If you are in need of help, please remember to consult it and if you can provide aide, please register yourself.
The Retrospec Company
The Retrospec Company is the group that produces the application that anyone reading this guide will have been signed up for. Retrospec itself is a social media platform, mostly used by the users to communicate goings on in the city or like any other one. However, people who are on the app (as noted above) both notices changes to the world and are affected by memories or personal changes. The implication, based on current evidence, is that Retrospec manges changes caused by some other force, mitigating or repairing them. Regardless, the company attempts keep the utmost secrecy from the userbase, intentionally making it difficult to contact them and rarely providing much information.
On the first of every month, Retrospec will put out an update post, usually giving a small amount of information on what changes might happen through the month or responding a month late to various questions proposed on a previous update. While they do make these posts, they never respond to them, or at least have not thus far. Some evidence has suggested that they are not allowed to by order of higher ups in the company, but it is equally possible that they simply don't want to, or are afraid to for whatever reason. Opinions vary on that subject.
The true nature of Retrospec's business seems to be managing the ebb and flow of Unreality, as well as to try to regrow dead worlds. Significantly more detail on both of those will be covered in the Complex section of this guide. In practical terms, as it applies to your daily life, all that must be understood about Retrospec is that their goals are lofty and ill-defined to use users and that they are the ones managing the app. A list of changes to the world and known players in the company will be listed below.
Since February 2018, there's been a significant change in Retrospec policy, however. Located at the top of Towers is an office that houses Zee Carlisle, a Hiring Manager for Retrospec as well as the main coordinator of what he called the Recollé Restoration Initiative. The RRI will both take requests and ship out requests for users on the app to participate on missions necessary for managing things that Retropec desires to be controlled. Equally important, Carlisle can be contacted at any time, via visiting his office, or on the app.
It is worth noting that Retrospec used to have a headquarters downtown in Tisse, one that numerous users attempted to explore at different times, to various results. This includes one user hacking CCTV cameras in order to attempt to monitor it, linked below due to what implications this might have on other things related to the company going forward.
[ It's a simple video lasting for about two minutes and has that crappy quality of CCTV videos everywhere. There's a little date and time counter on the one corner reading 'May 01 2017' with the clock ticking along from 12:02 to 12:04. It starts from the nearby streetlights, focusing on traffic, then zooming up to look at where the Retrospec building is suppose to be and showing nothing. No building. No anything to show that a building is there. Then it fizzes out. ]
That HQ is no longer there, though their mailbox now is at the same location. They have other facilities as well, including but not limited to a bunker out in the forest, a library under the university, facilities in the abandoned subway tunnels, and quite possibly some influence over the museum, planetarium, and maybe even the mayor's office. More details on those connections will also be covered in the Complex section.
One additional "service" it has been discovered that Retrospec does as well is reviving the dead. At least three users have died and then come back from the dead, though there do seem to be ramifications both to the individual and to the world caused this this. More details about the process are recorded here, thanks to the testimony of a user who experienced the process.
Known Employees of Retrospec
The following are known employees of Retrospec who you might encounter over the network or hear referenced by other users. Linked here is an earlier attempt to collect information about them, but if you have additional collected information please bring it forward.
- Jim Halloway (Research & Development): First Retrospec employee that users on the network met. He had a tendency to be uncouth and sardonic and is currently banned from contact with us.
- Janet Halloway née Wiseman (Human Resources): Married to Jim following a proposal he put over the network, sometimes is the one who puts out the network posts Retrospec does at the top of the month.
- Joanne Wiseman (Technician 2nd class): Presumably related to Janet and is reported to be quite young. Frequently is the one who puts out Retrospec posts recently.
- Wendy Gou (Security/Archivist (formerly Security alone)): Is a "humanoid from Aht," a world that no one else is native to. Sometimes puts out the Retrospec posts, and has a brusque attitude.
- Maurice Fitzwilliam (Mail Department (formerly Intern)): Previously worked under Jim, but is now the one responsible for the Retrospec Mailbox. Presumably also young.
- Marguerite Mahoney (Admin?): The administrator who was managing things during the storm that damaged everything in August. A forty-seven year old doctor of some sort.
- Mr. Baroque (Chief of Security?): Nearly seven foot tall cyborg that resembles Morgan Freeman a little. He has been with the company for a long time apparently, or at least enough to see more than one director.
- Nigel Cavendish (Research & Development): Worked with one of the teams in August 2017. Works on different projects in R&D than the ones Jim works on.
- Ronnie (works with train lines?): Worked with one of the teams in August 2017.
- Danny (???): Mentioned at least once by Jim Halloway.
- Zee Carlisle (Hiring Manager) is the main contact with Retrospec we have as of February 2018. He has an office at the top of Towers and can be contacted via the app whenever. He is the primary coordinator for the RRI, though claims to have little power outside of that.
In addition to these employees, more than one has referenced a director. Specifically, Mr. Baroque mentions that the current director's policies sees Retrospec being comparatively more transparent with us as users than the old one would have been. Little else is known about them, however.
Record of Events Related to Retrospec
This section is meant to consolidate what was in earlier drafts of this guide the Temporary and Lasting World Changes section. Both groups are collected as one to give a better sense of what happened and when. It is possible some information is missing or incorrect, please feel free to contact about that.
February 2017
- First users for the Retrospec app (that we know of) were added to it. Some of them still remain on the app.
- Horses were replaced by chocobos. (since resolved; they co-exist now)
- Founder's Day included beads which changed color corresponding to moods.
- Electronics began to act up mid-month. (which continued into March)
March 2017
- Continued electronic errors (including to the Retrospec app) persisted. This resulted in messages sometimes being sent to the wrong individuals and a garbled Retrospec post at the beginning of the month.
- A city-wide blackout occurred on March 3rd. This blackout lasted several hours.
- Following the blackout, the secrets of Retrospec users were shared across the internet or in public areas via electronics. These secrets were shared in the form of either paparazzi photos or videos of the people themselves admitting it, among others.
- Mid-month, fruits were replace with weird dancing fruits with faces (since resolved; they co-exist now)
- Mid-month, photos of users wearing green were posted on Retrospec, and people's phones shocked them until they themselves wore green as well.
- Users received a horse and/or chocobo commemorative coin, with the Retrospec logo on the other side.
April 2017
- Glitches persisted on the network for the first half of the month.
- Mid-month, clothing sizes began to be off for many users. (supernaturally)
- Mid-month, dogs were temporarily replaced with insects. (repaired by end of month)
- Retrospec began posting daily fun facts for the rest of the month.
May 2017
- Restrospec also took harassment pictures of user's backsides, sent to users regularly.
- Everyone (users and non-users) were made the size of a small doll, while the rest of the world including animals and homes were unaffected. Some users took advantage of this to explore usually locked off locations.
- Numerous cracks which seemed to lead to strange lights were noted throughout the month.
June 2017
- The colors Blue and Green vanished from existence. (both have since been restored)
- Retrospec implemented their polling system to ask users what restorations their techs should prioritize.
- Mid-month, numerous oddities resembling trivia or obstacle courses from game shows began to appear around the city and harass users.
July 2017
- Some users had some bleed over between regained abilities or memories this month
- Retorspec hosted an elaborate bingo game with numerous challenges through the first half of the month. People who completed the challenges received QR codes which could be turned in at a Retrospec booth at ReConvention at the end of the month, and those that did received new powers, items and/or animal companions.
- At ReConvention, the network went down and monsters appeared to terrorize the city. This eventually resulted in a large creature appearing to swallow the ocean entirely. This lead directly into the events of August.
August 2017
- A Storm rolled in which knocked out most of Retrospec's infrastructure, and put around sixty users "outside of reality" - several teams of other users were deputized to help bring them back. The details of these events will be covered more completely in the Complex section.
September 2017
- Word bubbles and sound effects generated above people's heads/around them. These word bubbles contained people's thoughts.
- There was another error in Retrospec's texting system, resulting in texts being split in parts and the later parts sent to random users.
October 2017
- The full restoration of fruits (to allow the co-existence of dancing and normal fruits) is completed.
- All Retrospec users experienced daily/nightly nightmares for the duration of the month. People could cross into other people's nightmares as well.
- Ghosts began to be visible during the day (even to people without the ability to see them normally) pranking people. This abated after the end of the month.
- At night, a fog appeared capable of summoning visions (based on memories), which could interact with the physical world.
November 2017
- The color blue was entirely restored this month, having gradually come back before this point.
- The turkeys that the mayor ordered produced golden eggs, which had prizes or pranks inside of them.
- Retrospec's in-town headquarters vanished this month, having been replaced with Wiffle-Waffle. In addition Retrospec installed their mailbox in front of the waffle house for users to pick up items they send.
- The layout of the city changed dramatically, with numerous restaurants and shops vanishing or merging together, most notably bakeries, flower shops, and bookstores across the city becoming one large shop each.
- All contact to people outside of the city via phone, text, or email failed over the course of the month, eventually resulting in radio silence.
December 2017
- The color green was entirely restored this month, having gradually come back before this point.
- The sense of taste was erased at the beginning of the month, but gradually restored over the course of it in stages. The final restoration was in early January.
- At this point mail and packages stopped being able to be sent out to or received from outside of the city.
- Bats made of mistletoe compelled people to kiss via singing, garland came to life to capture people, and certain candy-canes produced a sticky effect.
January 2018
- Horses were finally restored to existence, now living alongside chocobos.
- Retrospec put a large dome in place over the city, blocking out the sun. This was ostensibly to defend against another oncoming Storm, like in August 2017.
- The long time disabled subway system under Recollé invited people down into it, eventually leading users to a grand central station with implications due to city as a whole. More details about these findings are included in the Complex section.
February 2018
- Another major Storm event occurred this month. Several dozen users were selected by Zee Carlisle to participate in assessment tasks in the newly revealed (likely due to a shift in the layers) regions (Bosuma, Magatus, Respatrum, and Pesgare) outside the city. Within the city, those who remained formed connections to those regions from Recollé. This incident has greater details noted below in Complex. [NOTE: or it will once I have all the information]
- The Mayor and numerous city officials were kidnapped and held in the tunnels below the city. Around a dozen Rrtrospec users were able to rescue them from the strange monsters that held them.
- All users were provided with a heart shaped stone which supposed cartoned off a portion of their soul and were advised to both keep it on them and care for them.
- The dome (from January) was removed as soon as the pathways to the new regions were revealed.
March 2018
- The effects of the heart-shaped stones were rendered inert and non-dangerous early this month.
- Zee Carlisle's RRI (Recollé Restoration Initiative) started in earnest, sending people out onto mission based assignments for the "mutual benefit" of Retrospec and the city.
- The connection between Recollé and those new outer regions was supposedly fully stabilized this month.
April 2018
- Numerous magical effects influenced the four main outer regions. Respatrum floated up into the air and had capricious fire spirits influencing people and objects, Magatus has a curse plague, numerous people fell victim to another curse in Bosuma, and Pesgare suffered from a tsunami that held the town under water for the whole month (with residents and visitors given means to survive magically)
- Mail which has been held in limbo presumably since December piled into the city and came to life
May 2018
- The whole city and other regions were erased, replaced with a white void. Users were provided with paint brushes. Once painted, the world popped back into existence, albeit in a monochrome color scheme or whatever colors the cooperating paint brushes created.
Other Changes to the World
The following ate demonstrably abnormal as compared to the world before Retrospec, but a concrete date for when they changed cannot (or at least the writer has not) found when they did change. There has also not been a poll associated with changing them back, as with many of the changes noted above. This list might not be exhaustive, and if you can point more out, please feel free:
- Ghosts exist. It's possible they existed before now but people couldn't see or interact with them, however. As of Spring of 2018, all users seem to have gained some spiritual affinity to at least sense them.
- Berry trees with strange fruits and nuts including but not limited to spicy tomatoes exist around the city.
- Blue flowers somehow capable of repeating speech exist.
- Small robotic devices used in surgery and to clean the environment can be found around the city regularly fixing things up.
- Vending machines that sell firearm ammunition among other things called the Circus of Values exist in the city.
- Semi-intelligent(?) replacements for phones which resemble winged golf balls exist.
- There is a shop in Tisse run by a sentient stuffed animal.
- A large magical(?) stone was placed atop city hall.
Regions Outside the City
In February of 2018, the outside of the city changed. The terrain became substantially different than it had been before, and numerous monsters now appear on the roads. [NOTE: maybe make a bestiary?] Perhaps more importantly, those roads now lead to new fantastical regions outside of the city, as opposed to other parts of the United States, as previously. The likely reasons for this are detailed in the Complex section of the guide, in particular the section on layers. Below is a list of the known points of interest in these other regions:
- Pesgare is a fishing village which also appears to be a trading hub located south of the city after a several hour ferry ride. There are many languages spoken there, suggesting some connection with the outside world.
- Respatrum is located underground and east of the city. It can be accessed through the remnants of the Recollé subway system and some other caverns. The town is incredibly hot, but has forges with great craftsmanship. The air is also smokey and the town is in proximity to magma as well.
- Bosuma is a forested region two hours west of the city. There are no real points of interest in it other than the fact that it is a forest which feels right out of faerie stories.
- Magatus is a region located seven hours north of the city, past the forest. A wide but cold region, it's dotted with communities who make their living via ski tourism. They used to and still might have a werewolf problem.
All of these regions have previously and still might have some magical influence over them, so despite these basic descriptions bare in mind that travel to them might be fraught with oddities such as the aforementioned monsters, curses, or even remnants of previous odd happenings in the city. For example, Magatus has caves with mistletoe-bats gone native.
Retrospec's ties to Recollé
Team Absinthe's notes from August & information on the founders.
These above links all serve as secondary sources to back up and expand on the information condensed here. But in essence, it's become increasingly clear that Retrospec has deep ties with the city of Recollé itself, going back all the way to the founders of Recollé and continuing to this day. Many of the employees of Retrospec are related to one another and some of them share family names with Recollé's four founders. The founders themselves (namely, Clarence Vanderweele, Philip Spinnato, Georgia Mahoney, and Myrtle Cavendish) all fought unreality in the past. They had internal disputes, but it seems that all of them also might have been the ones who created - if not Retrospec itself - the precursor to the current company. Current information also suggests that they might not be native to this world in the first place.
Documents which connect Retrospec to the creation and the current runnings of the city have been found in numerous locations. Most damningly, some people have found connections to the company in city hall.
Additional ties have been noted, such as a file found in the planetarium possessing a Retrospec logo, in regards to additional planetary information beyond the ones in our solar system; however, the contents of this file were absent. Other residents have gathered testimony from ghosts out in the woods relating to a possible connection. Some of the people who vanished in August came back with a report that there was a "Recollé Project" that the creators of Retrospec were involved in.
In January 2018, explorations of the Recollé subway system revealed more information about Retrospec's operations and potential origins. In a grand central hub at the heart of the system, several dozens of brochures were found welcoming people to other locations, some of which were confirmed to match up with locations in the memories that people have regained before now. But perhaps more relevantly, there was a "Welcome to Recollé." book listed there. Included below are photos of the pages from that book:
[ Assume all of these are in picture form, but this is quoting the mod information on the January 2018 event: "Flipping through this book details the history of the city and the story of how the four founders traveled far to settle on Earth to create this city decades ago. The city was originally to be a safe haven, a central hub much like this subway station, until the Retrospec project could reform everything. However, the city became a home to the founders, the founding families, and others that were rescued throughout the galaxy who'd lost their planets. The book goes on to explain how Retrospec created their original headquarters in a bunker in the woods hidden from prying eyes so they could do their job with utmost secrecy. Retrospec was never to be looked into by ordinary people and the original company had less than 10 employees working for it.
This subway station, it says, used to be the way that travelers from other worlds would arrive to the city of Recollé and a way that they could leave to explore other parts of the planet at their leisure until the system was shut down sometime in the 1970s due to the collapsing of several tunnels.
There are several pages at the end of the book, too, but the text is illegible. Instead, in bold letters written in sharpie are the words "LET'S REWRITE HISTORY" and dated 2007." ]
It's very possible that Retrospec has operated on other planets before now. At the very least, we know that they have members of the company who are from worlds that have been destroyed (more on that below), and that those who vanished "outside of reality" in August went to worlds which seemed unlike anything they had ever seen before. All of their actions seem to be working towards the restoration of destroyed worlds, and to combat or manage unreality (both detailed below).
Unreality & Its Effects
Collected August information post
It is not entirely clear what "unreality" is, precisely. It has been referenced as a force that changes the world, as well as a force that Retrospec both combats and manipulates in order to manage it. It's entirely possible that unreality is the cause of the changes to the world, if not also the changes to individuals. As more information about unreality is revealed, then more will be added to this section. For now, please consider it likely that all of the changes to the world are a result of unreality. It is also possible that unreality is a place, the space outside if the layers of reality (see below).
In August of 2017, a "storm" on reality knocked out the majority of Retrospec's infrastructure. They were under-staffed at the time and as a result, numerous users needed to to be deputized with minimal clearance to assist them in getting things running again. A more complete report on everyone's findings is linked above, but the core of the issue was that monsters (referred to as malefactors by Dr. Mahoney) appeared throughout the city and caused severe damage, as well as threatened the wellbeing of the people in it. In addition to that, around sixty individuals who were on the app vanished from the the city. Those people who vanished were, in the words of Dr. Mahoney, "outside of reality" and the teams who were recruited on the Recollé side of things were taking steps to help bring them back. These steps are detailed on the linked post above, with reports from each group made both there and in person.
Meanwhile, those who were "outside of reality" went to fantastical locations outside of normal reason. It is possible that they were in unreality at the time, or other worlds. These included a sinking ship leading to an underwater exploration, a fantasy castle, and a haunted manor. Many of these worlds seemed to have some connection to the four founders of Recollé, or to their families. Eventually, the teams both within the city and outside of it managed to fix things enough that those who were outside of reality returned, and those who had been operating in the city came forth and a large battle ensued. The remaining malefactors needed to be dealt with before buttons that were created by Retrospec could be pressed, in order to restore the city to normal.
Included below are a series of videos and photographs taken both from within the city and outside of reality. We can assert that all of these are factually accurate and provided by another app user. They have been uploaded to numerous other websites in hopes of them continuing to be circulated
[ Notes: All of these videos will be edited down to under a minute, and links will be to YouTube, Vimeo, and Google Drive. Each of them will have an explanation of what’s going on and names of people visible in the video. All of them are from first person (filmed by Penelope).
1. Parts recorded from this thread.
2. Fighting Vampyrs with a shillelagh.
3. Fighting alongside Minako Arisato with a spear against several weird monkey things.
4. Fighting a Faceless with Baren.
5. Fighting anacondas in a jungle in Unreality with Carmen Sandiego.
6. Video taken from the cockpit of a giant cat mecha, fighting primarily Beowolfs.
Additionally, several individual photographs: A Dragon, Weird Ogres, Flying pinstriped mouths, Hook Hand People, Strange Deer, and Little demons ]
The largest and most dangerous of these monsters was an incredibly large creature which devoured the entire ocean. Once it was dealt with, the results of the storm appeared to have been cleared up and the world was returned to normal by the end of the month. The events in August were the most dangerous and dramatic influence of unreality that we have experienced thus far.
However, as a helpful PSA, it should not be assumed that all monsters or strange beings you encounter within the city are inherently hostile. To begin with (as noted above), several users undergo physical changes to make them less visually human. In addition to that, several others users have gotten animal companions out of the mailbox or as a result of their own abilities. Some of those monsters you encounter might well be potential allies.
Layers & Their Meaning
Beginning with our contact with Zee Carlisle and the events of February 2018, Retrospec began to talk more about layers and about the effect of the world shifting through them brings. It is not precisely clear what layers are, but the implication is that they refer to layers of reality. This has been cited as the reason that contact with people outside of the city has become impossible, that the rest of the world is existing on a different layer than the one we are on in the city. A shift in the layers is also, presumably, what resulted in us being able to interact with those regions outside of the city.
[ Information about the events of the missions in February will be included here ]
In May of 2018, Zee Carlisle announced that the "layers had collapsed" and that Retrospec itself didn't understand enough about them. The results of the collapse of the layers were that the world turned pure white and invisible (a choice apparently made by Retrospec itself) and users were provided with paintbrushes to paint the city back into existence. This collapse also extended as far as the regions outside the city. In addition to this, people who were not on the app became significantly more self-aware of oddities in the city, both the current state of things being blank, and changes to individuals which they had previously accepted as normal.
Destroyed Worlds & Soul Shards
Wendy Gou's post referencing this & reports from August
There has been much evidence - including direct claims from Retrospec itself - that the true purpose of Retrospec is to rebuild worlds that have been destroyed. We don't currently known what is causing these worlds to be destroyed, only that they were. Once they were destroyed, Retrospec, or those associated with Retrospec, collected shards from these worlds, or in other words, souls. These souls are supposedly the origin of the memories and changes to people that those of us on the Retrospec app experience. Namely, that our souls are the same souls that Retrospec plucked from those destroyed worlds.
They have referred to those souls - and therefore us - as being seeds in the past. Those seeds are needed to "regrow" the destroyed worlds, and as long as at least one soul from a destroyed world exists, the world can eventually be restored. It is for this reason that they consider it important for us to "regain" those memories and changes to our appearance, to better simulate the bodies and minds of the souls that we, supposedly, have.
None of this has been confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt, but the evidence does continue to pile on that at least Retrospec wishes for us to believe this is the case. It has also been suggested that when people are removed from the app, it is a matter of their souls being knocked out of alignment, and thus people who aren't on the app are waiting to have those other souls put back into place. It is unclear what this means for people who have never been on the app at all, however.
Regardless, more information about these and other oddities related to Retrospec and unreality will likely be revealed over time. If you happen to discover any more information yourselves, please report it both to the community of people on the app as a whole and to those who can and will update this guide.
Submit a Change
Feel free to blur the IC/OOC thing here in terms of the reply if that's easier for you but remember this guide is an in character guide, so any corrections/additions must be things that your character knows and thus a source is preferred. ]
Notation of Updates
5/10: Refitted the world changes section into something more logical, added Zee Carlisle to the list of known Retrospex employees (side note: wow it's been too long)
5/13: Edited wording throughout the guide, added a section about the regions outside the city, and the layers. (side note: I need to get collected information on what happened in February)
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