Time is a Möbius Strip

Choice adventure number: 1562

Time is a Möbius Strip

There's a loud, world-wrenching whoom whoom whoom noise. The kind of noise you hear in a movie when the continuity of time is being threatened... weird. Also, why is your Möbius ring so warm. Possibilities from the past and future lay before you.

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I'm not messing with the timeline!

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Borrow a cup of sugar from yourself

You feel the urge to bake some cookies. Not a typical urge for a fantasy adventurer type I guess, but hey, cookies are pretty good, right? Anyway, you're fresh out of sugar, so you "walk" next door (in the timeline) to borrow a cup from your neighbor (your future self). Hopefully he's not so far in the future that he's already used the cup of sugar he got from whoever he got it from.

You acquire an item: cup of sugar

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Draw a goatee on yourself

You twist your ring while walking, and see someone napping on a park bench -- oh hey, it's you. With barely-restrained mirthful glee, you take out a permanent marker and scribble a goatee on your sleeping self's face. It's the perfect revenge for how he ate the last doughnut even though you laced it with sleeping potion and put a sign next to it that said "This is mine, don't eat it! (signed, playername)"

You acquire an effect: Merry Prankster (duration: 30 Adventures)

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Succumb to evil

It probably wasn't a great idea to fill that last doughnut with sleeping potion so nobody else would eat it, because you ate it, and now you're very sleepy. You pass out on a park bench for a while, and when you wake up, you discover that some ass has scribbled a goatee on your face with a permanent marker. If you ever find out who did it, you'll kill her within an inch of her life.

You acquire an effect: Evil (duration: 30 Adventures)

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Make friends with a famous poet

You have a wild dream about a beautiful magical city, and especially the pleasure dome that is the city's main tourist attraction. Ordinarily, you resist the urge to tell people about your dreams, because that is canonically one of the worst conversations you can inflict on a person, but this dream was so cool you've just got to tell someone about it. So you go back in time and tell this poet guy named Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

When you get back to the present, it turns out Coleridge wrote and published a whole poem about your dream, and became an even bigger deal than Shakespeare, if you can believe it. And he didn't even credit you, which stings, but it doesn't seem to have prevented you from becoming as obsessed with poetry as everyone else is now.

You acquire an effect: Just the Best Anapests (duration: 1000 Adventures)

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Go back and take a 20-year-long nap

Let's be real: what's the first thing that anyone with any sense would do if a time-travel ring falls into their hands? That's right -- go back in time so you can take as long a nap as you want. You end up sleeping for twenty years straight, and it feels so good. The only kind of rough bit is that your dream ends up being really boring -- you just spent the whole time counting grains of sand on a cosmic beach. You counted all 69,420,037,023 of them, and then just sort of hung around for another year or two until you woke up.

You acquire an effect: Older than You Look (duration: 30 Adventures)

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Go for a nature walk

While you're strolling you absent-mindedly twist your ring way too much and end up visiting the carboniferous era. Turns out it's more like carnivorous era, as most of the plants you encounter want to eat you! In your struggles with the flora, you accidentally save the life of a giant butterfly. No way that could have any lasting impact right?

When you return to the present the formerly temperate climate is now just a never-ending thunderstorm, and you immediately get struck by lightning. A bunch.

You gain some hit points.

You acquire an effect: Stricken by Lightning (duration: 30 Adventures)

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Cheeze it, it's the pigs!

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Plant some trees and harvest them in the future

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Plant some seeds in the distant past

You decide to go back to your youth and plant a bunch of seeds. Wildflowers, nuts, whatever. You don't know much about it, but if you just throw a bunch of acorns and such everywhere, that'll probably do the trick. It's not like nature requires those little garden trowels and pruning shears in order for plants to work.

When you get back, it turns out way more plants root than you were expecting. There's so much oxygen now, you're practically getting high off of it!

You acquire an effect: Raised on Fresh Air (duration: 30 Adventures)

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Chop down some trees

Okay, so, having all this oxygen everywhere is pretty cool, but you know what else is cool? A profitable lumber industry. So you pay a bunch of kids to cut down all the trees and mow down all the flowers for you, and pay them in like marbles and dead rats and that.

You acquire 3 morningwood planks

You acquire an item: cherry

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Play Schroedinger's Prank on yourself

The effects of this insane time paradox ring are ripe for scientific study, you suddenly decide, and furthermore you decide to see if you can replicate one of the classic scientific experiments -- Schrödinger's Cat. Which is not a real experiment, just a thought experiment, but that's fine since you're not really a scientist, just someone who kind of thinks of herself as one.

Anyway you load up one of your pockets with radioactive material and a fragile canister of poison gas, just to see if anything happens.

You acquire an effect: Schroedinger's Anticipation (duration: 20 Adventures)

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Check your pocket

You open your pocket -- which as you might remember is definitely full of radioactive metal and maybe or maybe not also full of poison gas -- and take a deep whiff. The results are annoyingly inconclusive.

You acquire an effect: Neither Alive nor Dead (duration: 20 Adventures)

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Steal a club from the past

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Borrow meat from your future

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Mind your own business

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Take the long odds on the trifecta

Turns out the big Loathing Derby horse race is today, so you take the opportunity to make some real Meat. You jump forward in time a couple of hours, and grab a copy of the race results: turns out it was "Prince Pumpernickelback" with the win, "Daddy's Other Meatcar" coming in second, and "The Complete Text of Atlas Shrugged" in third. Then you jump back to before the race, and bet the trifecta.

Good news! You won a crapton of Meat! Bad news: the local Mafia runs the bookies, and they do not like it when someone wins big.

You gain 5,000 Meat.

You acquire an effect: Marked by the Don (duration: 100 Adventures)

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Fix the race and also fix the race

You go back in time a few days before the big race, and sneak into the stables where the the horses are quartered. (In the sense of "stored", not "divided into fourths". Although there are "quarter horses", so maybe they actually do that sometimes? I don't know how a horse can run a race with only one leg though. But anyway.) You find the three winning horses you (will have going to have) bet on, and whisper to them how glue is made, and how the fastest horses are used to make the strongest glue.

Naturally, the horses are pretty spooked by this (it does not take much to spook a horse), and they come in last. Fortunately, you also had the presence of mind to tip off the local Mafia goons about the fix, in time for them to bet accordingly. You've made some rich friends today.

You lose an effect: Marked by the Don

You acquire an effect: Favored by the Don (duration: 100 Adventures)

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Go back and write a best-seller.

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Lift yourself up by your bootstraps

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Shoot yourself in the foot

Someone runs by you, bumping your shoulder and shoving a gun into your hands as they pass. Wow, crazy -- that hardly ever happens. Guns aren't even very common in the Kingdom, due to it being ostensibly a fantasy setting, albeit very loosely restrained.

Suddenly, you feel a tap on your shoulder. Startled, you spin around, and are double-startled to see yourself from the future standing there! That's so much startling that you accidentally shoot yourself in the foot. Your other self, I mean. She seems pretty upset by this.

You gain X Sarcasm.

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Give your past self investment tips

You write out a quick note "Buy Bugbear Bakery and Monorail stock at 28 1/2" and slip it into another you's pocket in the past. When you return to the present, you find yourself holding a stock certificate.

You acquire an item: Stock Certificate

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Steal from your future self

Traveling to the future, you discover that your future self has used all of your investment earnings on expensive food and expensiver booze. You balance the scales by swiping some of it for yourself. I mean, it's hardly even stealing, since it's yours already.

You acquire... something. [[Data:{{{item}}}]]

You acquire... something. [[Data:{{{item}}}]]

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Peek in on your future

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Defend yourself

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Stop your arch-nemesis as a baby

You step back in time and find yourself face to face with a baby Naughty Sorceress. She reaches for a tiny illustrated codex of naughty spells, but you grab a handy book of nice blessings and give her that instead. She chews on the thick cardboard pages gleefully.

Returning to the present, you discover a world overrun with listless adventurers lacking any goal in life. One of them gives you a pamphlet about finding your life goals.

You acquire an item: Life Goals Pamphlet

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Steal a cupcake from young Susie

As you wander through your past -- idle reminiscing is much easier when you can just go back there -- you spot the little kid version of Susie, the Arena Mistress, who has set up an adorable cupcake vendor stand.

You tap her on the shoulder and say "Hey, look at that weird dog over there!" which distracts her long enough for you to steal her last cupcake and leg it. The cupcake looks delicious, but Susie is terribly embittered by the experience, and later in life she makes her arena fee ten times higher out of hatred of adventurers.

You acquire an item: Susie's cupcake

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Bake Susie a cupcake

Because you either feel bad about stealing a cupcake from a little kid or about paying so much Meat to use the Arena, you steal a cupcake from a baker's market stall, and sneak it into Susie's stand when she isn't looking. Susie is touched by the anonymous gesture, and you either feel good about doing a good deed, or because you like stealing cupcakes from people.

You acquire an effect: Good Feelings (duration: 30 Adventures)

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Hey, free gun!

BLAM! You hear a loud noise nearby. There's a huge commotion, people yelling, cops running around asking questions and dragging somebody to the hospital. Wonder what happened?

Oh hey! There's a gun on the ground. Neat! Don't see those every day.

You acquire an item: the gun

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Meet your parents when they were young

You go back in time to check out what your parents were like as teenagers, just as a laugh, but you forgot about how they used to drive on the other side of the road back then, and your grandpa hits you with his Meatcar, instead of your dad. This completely screws up how your parents originally met, and through a long and chaotic series of events... well, long story short, you're your own mother now. This is exactly as confusing and uncomfortable to think about as you might imagine it to be.

You acquire an effect: Your Own Parents (duration: 200 Adventures)

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Fix your parents' relationship

Unable to deal with the thought of how uncomfortable the next big family reunion is going to be, you resolve to go back in time and make sure your parents meet properly. This turns out to be pretty simple, because all you really have to do is shove your dad into traffic. Then your mom nurses him back to health, and it's all pretty adorable so long as you can keep from getting weirded out by the fact that this is your parents we're talking about.

You acquire an effect: Met Cute (duration: 50 Adventures)

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Occurs occasionally when a Möbius ring is equipped.

Notes

• There are 23 choices you can take (not counting "I'm not messing with the timeline!"). Initially all of them are about the past, taking a choice increases your Paradoxicity by 1 and replaces that choice in the following NCs with a related choice about the present/future. Taking that new choice decreases your Paradoxicity by 1 and restores the original choice about the past.