Choices That Matter: And The Sun Went Out

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

How many readers of The Gaming Table mistakenly thought I was done with Choose Your Own Adventures? 


Choices That Matter is a series of text adventures available for Switch and Android.  Each game is far too big to map out like a You Say Which Way or one of the random Spanish books I find, so don't expect CHOICE #[numeral] format.


"Day 95 and the orange ball of gas that sustained life on this planet for billions of years was still burning in the sky.  The scientists were completely wrong.  Thankfully".


So begins the adventures of our hero and Moti the AI companion.  Everyone's trying to figure out why the sun has disappeared, and the temperature has already fallen to 30 degrees Fahrenheit.  (Good thing for me, since I don't think in Celsius!).  The first decision was to visit Delores who's been calling me, or the deranged Professor Sole.  I went to see Sole since a scientist seemed like the more likely option for resolving an astronomical issue, even if one that defies all known laws of thermodynamics.


The second choice was to review Moti's message for Delores to explain my absence, or to say "No need.  I trust you, Moti".  It seemed more prudent to look at the message, which turned out to be professional enough.  Professor Sole was in the basement, and I had to either look in his suitcase or not.  Snooping wasn't a good idea since this wasn't an RPG.  Professor Sole insisted on not turning on the lights, so I asked why in the next option instead of saying "Professor?  Is that you?"


I approached Professor Sole instead of declining, and he "began to ramble incessantly about theories and equations".  One symbol looked suspiciously like a Choose Your Own Adventure map, with a square on top and branching lines leading to two circles.  I left the diary alone instead of looking at it, since a mad scientist was already dangerous enough without him becoming suspicious.  Moti claimed their "linguistics processing unit" was damaged and therefore they couldn't understand Professor Sole.  (Moti is a "they" according to the text.)


Someone shot Professor Sole and ran away after the murder, one choice after asking the latter why he called me.  Just before he died, I listened to him rather than trying to stop the bleeding.  His ideas seemed important to the plot, and the text said after the fact that my character didn't know much about anatomy.  (Is this an R.A. Montgomery scenario where if I DID try to heal him, then my character would be a surgeon?)


I took Professor Sole's revolver and tried to carefully approach the suspect rather than charging at them.  Two options were presented:  a suspicious person was going down an alley, and the bus stop may have had our suspect too.  I went with the alley and shouted "Stop!  Or I'll shoot!".  I chased this person rather than "Pull the trigger!" because it might have been the wrong suspect.  For the sake of discretion, I tried to climb over the fence instead of shooting the lock on the gate, but this may have been a bad idea because I almost lost my balance on ice.


The next decision was effectively "Are you REALLY sure you want to climb the fence?", so I shot the lock this time.  I was knocked out for about 5 minutes and Moti thought I had a concussion.  The suspect was now known as Gold Eyes, and Professor Sole's revolver had disappeared while I was unconscious.  Delores, or "Miss Montague" as Moti called her, called me for the fifth time.  With true tact, I asked "Why are you calling?" instead of "Is everything okay?"  I stood her up again by trying to return to Professor Sole's house to pick up his research.  (Hey, bringing the sun back is much more important than punctuality!)


A "man with a megaphone standing on a small box" shouted "The land will freeze over on the hundredth day!" among other doomsday prophecies.  Moti didn't understand the concept of apocalyptic religion, so they thought that people enjoyed lying to themselves.  "I am unable to find any scientific literature to support his claims, Teacher".  The next choice is where my character differed significantly from what I'd say in real life:  "He's just scared, Moti.  The sun thing got a lot of people spooked".  The option not selected was "It's a prophecy, Moti.  You won't find it in scientific journals".  (You have to admit that the sun disappearing randomly would disprove conservation of mass.  Even Revelation 6:12 is less drastic than these events.)


Delores was in danger too, probably from Gold Eyes.  I stayed on the line to listen rather than calling for help when Delores was attacked.  I've treated her badly for the whole playthrough so far.  Why stop now?  I hung up to take a taxi, but it might have been as slow as walking.  Moti warned me not to tell the police my identity, and listening to the AI was always a good idea.  A "bloodied bread knife" had stabbed Delores, and it was unknown whether she was alive or dead.


"While we have no confirmation that Miss Montague is still alive, we also do not have confirmation that she is dead.  This is not a totally unacceptable outcome".  -Moti


I called a taxi and said "Whoever it is, it must be important, Moti" before ending Arc 1.


"You and 33% of players will be taking the bus to Flying Falls in the morning".  Flying Falls was where Professor Sole wanted to go with his suitcase.  Not only am I ranked with other players, but there was even a nice odometer graphic of the percentage!  Does this mean that most players were Team Edward Delores rather than Team Jacob Sole?


EDIT:  It seems the next Arc is 2-3.  At first I thought it meant Arcs 2 and 3 would be short, but it might be notation for the different areas, like a Mario level.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

And The Sun Went Out Part 2 (Arc 2-3?)


According to Moti, Professor Sole's death had been ruled as a homicide, but the attack on Delores was a "domestic disturbance, and her whereabouts are still unknown".  


Before going to Flying Falls, I took a taxi because I was playing my character as a taxi obsessive enthusiast.  "Ever since the sun outage incident 96 days ago, I appreciated the beauty of dawn a little more".  Back in Arc 1, I (out of character) thought the sun was still gone, and Earth had survived the lack of heat and loss of orbit with magic or something.  Apparently the sun had only disappeared for part of a day. 


I said "I can't believe Sole's dead" instead of worrying about Delores to keep up the unfunny running joke about my character secretly disliking her.  I also thanked Moti, because only things my character believes in are rationalization rationality and being nice to AI.  Unfortunately my character never studied geography because only now did the Teacher realize that Flying Falls is in Quebec.  And the Teacher is not Canadian.  I asked Moti about Flying Falls instead of asking a "woman in a business suit" because Moti always knew best.


Moti made a dry joke at my character's expense when I asked "Waterfalls?  Like Niagara Falls?":  "Yes, Teacher, they are similar tourist attractions".  But I was more interested in learning that Flying Falls was famous as a place to watch the endangered northern spotted owl.  Älthough, it wasn't as if I knew much of the Professor's personal life.  He could have been an owl enthusiast and maybe I just never noticed".  Or maybe he was hoping to find Cedric?


I told Moti "Sure, if we have time" regarding their sightseeing question, and took a nap.  (Never understood how people fall asleep so easily. . .)   "We were driving in between two high cliffs down a twisty winding road.  If we missed a turn we'd fall to our deaths into the frozen river far below."


I waited at the bus stop for a while, but nobody that Sole knew seemed to be going anywhere.  I spied on the few people who were there instead of talking to them since my character has bad social skills.  Not even the "teenage boy" who was "playing his game on his phone" was a lead.  I suggested to Moti that maybe the person who was supposed to meet Sole knew the Professor was dead.  We noticed the cameras above us, sneaked into the security station, and told the guards there was a fight outside.  Moti's preference wasn't an option presented:  "In popular media, a fire or an explosion is the preferred way to cause a distraction, Teacher".


I picked a lock and hid in the video room, reassuring Moti that there was enough time.  We were stumped until I suggested in a choice that Sole was supposed to arrive yesterday instead of today.  A man in his late twenties was "devastated" upon receiving a phone call which was certainly about Sole's death.  "Moti, that's him.  The person we're looking for".  The game described him as having short black hair, gray eyes, "olive skin and sharp facial features suggested he had Middle Eastern heritage".


The Teacher didn't know French, so Moti translated for me.  The mystery man and the security guard were friends, and were talking about a "prank call" (i.e. my distraction), and I hid for a while instead of trying to trick them into thinking I was from "the main office".  Moti got a 10/10 rating for their translation.  The "Middle Eastern" man was named Etienne, and we looked at the souvenirs as we watched him talk.  "My working theory was that Etienne was a distant nephew of Sole's, which would explain their contrasting skin pigmentation".  Uh, Teacher, you know there are many black people with a white parent, right?  Sole was now described as having a "pale Irish skin".


Etienne turned out to be the park warden.  Looked for a taxi, as usual, but this time only a rental car would do.  Moti warned me "Also, you have not driven in over a decade", and I slowed down and turned off my headlights to follow Etienne to his log cabin.  I said he must have been used to the cold and looked in the study.  According to Etienne's research, animals had been just as confused by the sun's disappearance and started migrating randomly.  In the bedroom, there were mainly animal pictures, but also one of Etienne and Pierre the security guard with arms on each other's shoulders "grinning cheekily". 


The lack of pictures disturbed Moti and the Teacher, making Moti question whether or not I was their friend.  I said
yes and went back to the living room.  Etienne didn't have a GPS or even a computer for some reason.  There was a baseball cap with a mysterious logo:  "a series of concentric rings and twelve circles equally placed around the rings".  Moti noticed the pattern was a Magnesium Atom.  If this is anything like an Argentine soap opera, there will be some kind of evil Lodge connected to it.


Etienne hit my on the head with a hockey stick.  The most Canadian way of knocking someone out!  Etienne handcuffed me to a radiator and took everything except for Moti on my wrist.  I said "That really hurts" instead of "Hello".  Etienne accused me of murdering Sole, who was really his dad.  So much for the Teacher's "distant nephew" hypothesis.  Etienne slammed down a chair and punched a wall before I managed to escape the handcuffs with a letter opener and fled to the rental car.  I drove off in a panic, ignoring Etienne's warnings about the icy roads. 


This was a bad idea:  "You and 21% of players have fallen into a frozen river in Flying Falls".  What follows may be the shortest Arc 3-4 ever.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

And The Sun Went Out Part 3 (Arc 3-4?)


My rental car broke through the ice on the frozen Quebec river, though at least I managed to get out of the vehicle by using "the slack in the belt" and breaking a side window with a screwdriver.  It should have been a Death ending when I couldn't punch through the ice above, but the Teacher woke up in a log cabin similar to Etienne's.  I asked "Did I. . .drown?", and Moti confirmed it:  "Medically speaking, you were dead for ten minutes, Teacher". 


A woman in her sixties called Lily had noticed my car falling into the river and rescued me before hypothermia would have been fatal.  Moti informed me that Delores's disappearance "has been upgraded to missing persons, though still unconnected to Professor Sole's murder".  Moti requested a software update, which I granted.  Based on my experience with Windows and the Silk browser on my Fire tablet, it should have caused more glitches than ever before, but Moti was fine.


Lily was also a park warden, and I asked her about the animals' strange behavior.  She thought that the sun's disappearance wasn't a problem:  animals deal with worse natural disasters than the sun going out for 3 hours.  I asked about Etienne and Professor Sole.  Lily was surprised to learn that I thought Etienne was violent:  "That boy wouldn't hurt a fly.  And I mean that quite literally".  One fact that probably wasn't a coincidence was that the local endangered owls remained calm since the sun's disappearance.


Some of this animal behavior had consequences for my character:  "Teacher, North American brown bears are supposed to hibernate in winter!"  I waited as Lily shot a tranquilizer dart since she had warned me against making sudden moves.  Then I hid under a tree's roots and played dead until the bear walked away.  Lily may have been wrong about the owls:  one of them was visible in the morning, and I followed them to a roost with hundreds of them.


I asked Moti whether this event was normal, and tore a sleeve from my shirt to apply pressure to a wound.  "I fell forward, my face hitting the snow-covered ground just before passing out".  The Teacher faints more than a character in an 18th century Gothic novel!  One star had assumed "the shape of an owl" and told me I was dreaming.  I asked what was wrong with the sun, and the owl insisted there was no problem.  My next question was "What are you?", and of course it said it was an owl.  We were interacting with telepathy instead of speech.  My last question was how I could know it was real instead of a hallucination, but the owl suggested it was real.


I woke up next to Etienne.  His excuse for the hockey stick attack was "No, I mean, it was me, but what I mean is, that's not really me".  (Mind control?)  I told him I would have explained why I broke into his house if I had the chance, but this event made our argument pointless:  "Stepping to my left, I saw it too.  The black spots appearing on the sun, rapidly multiplying like a disease".  The scientists should just check their math again.  That's what made the sun calm down in a B movie called Supernova.  (It came too late to save the Taj Mahal.)


It only took 3 seconds before the sun faded again.  The Teacher remained calm and said "Uh oh" instead of choosing "Panic".  It was funnier that way.  I explained to Etienne about Moti and my investigation of the random sun disappearances.  Etienne could have still arrested me with his authority as a park warden if he wanted to, and Moti had legal advice:  "I recommend against continuing without a lawyer, Teacher".


Denise the mayor of Flying Falls introduced herself after I identified a flash as a gunshot.  I decided to "follow the trail" instead of examining the corpse of a climate scientist named Ben Jenkins.  Flying Falls's power lines were destroyed when a fuel truck crashed into them, and the backup generator wasn't working.  My power once went out when a vehicle crashed into a power line years ago, so I can relate a little bit to these characters.  Moti downloaded another update without delay.  It seemed risky at first because Moti said he couldn't use his location services while downloading, but was no problem in the end.


Etienne was skeptical about trusting a "computer" like Moti.  They weren't happy about that comment:  "I am more than a computer, Teacher.  Kindly let Mister Etienne know that".  With a couple of dialogue choices, I convinced Pierre the security guard I had tricked with the "fight outside the building" ruse from the previous Arc to help. 


A man named Wong knew Ben, and had this to say:  "Five years in the Chinese army and I was never shot at even once.  A few days in Canada and I get my first gunshot wound".  Wong said a man with "yellow eyes" that were "contact lenses" had attacked him at Seraphi Falls.  Golden Eyes was chasing two other men named Lucky and Louis.  Wong was also a scientist, and therefore a potential target.  His specialty was "condensed matter physics".


Instead of taking a cautious approach, my character said "With any luck, we'll just have to follow the sounds of gunshots".  While reading that line, I imagined the Teacher saying that as a joke.  Golden Eyes was hiding in a 110-foot tower by the waterfall, and I turned off my flashlight so Moti could detect the enemy's lights.  A brief gunfight forced Gold Eyes to run away and saved Lucky and Louis.  Golden Eyes punched me in the temple, and I punched right back in the next choice.  Kicking him may have been a mistake, since I fell off the bridge. . .and landed on a lower bridge.  Golden Eyes shot at me again, and the Teacher must have realized that this fight couldn't be won.


I retreated back to Flying Falls and lit a bonfire to try to keep everyone warm.  Too bad this set someone's house on fire!  I used a hose to put it out instead of the "bucket and snow" tactic.  Sometime after 8:00 AM, the sun returned.  This time my character gave into his emotions and picked "Cheer loudly!" instead of saying "It's about time".  You'd think people would panic more, but And The Sun Went Out seems to be the "Cozy Catastrophe" kind of apocalypse (e.g. Day of the Triffids).


No matter how much I ignored her, I couldn't avoid talking to Delores.  She was confused as to why I was in Canada instead of Peru.  I told her I was in Flying Falls, and told the whole truth to Etienne.  He wanted to come to Peru with me to investigate Professor Sole's murder.


"You and 22% of players are going to Peru after dreaming about a talking owl".


BEGIN ARC 4-5


EDIT:  How much do you want to bet that the next plot involves the Nazca Lines?  It's either that or an Incan curse.


EDIT 2:  Since I'm officially a Vampire Hunter according to this forum, I'm obliged to acknowledge the possibility of vampire magic in a Choose Your Own Adventure about the sun disappearing.  Only the stupid ones try to cast a spell to block out the sun forever.  How can you suck blood when the humans can't grow any food?

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

And The Sun Went Out Part 4 (Arc 4-5)


Time for the longest Arc yet!  Any one of my predictions was within a few miles of being correct.  (NOT kilometers, even if the characters think that something that isn't literally on fire is called a "torch").


A driver who helped with the previous Arc's bonfires took me in their vehicle, which my character always prefers to buses.  Moti recommended relaxing by either eating or listening to music.  The latter led to a much funnier possibility:  "The song you are hearing is 'If I Only Had A Brain' from the musical 'The Wizard of Oz".  Moti insisted that "It is not a formal performance, as there is no accompaniment, and no volume enhancement", but liked the singing anyway.  Of course I had to follow the singer!


I sent a photo of the singer to Delores, who seems to be my boss at The Company, a private investigation firm.  I'm now picturing Delores as Miss Betty from Deadline Delivery.  (It's been so long that I'd forgotten her name, so I had to read my old CYOA thread posts to find it!)  Delores called If I Only Had A Brain an "unskilled thug" associated with Professor Sole's murderer.  If I Only Had A Brain was now called Mr. Dolt after his boss's preferred insult.


I followed Mr. Dolt for a while as he looked around the shops at the airport.  I picked his pocket to take his phone, and the Teacher provided some backstory:  "It was just like old times, investigating real estate fraud".  I think of the Teacher as the sort of noir detective who spends most of the time complaining about "dames and broads".


Moti worried about being stolen, and I tried to reassure them with talk about anti-theft devices.  But there was an oversight in the pickpocketing plan:  I'd left a receipt where Mr. Dolt could find it!  I tried to reverse pickpocket his phone, but the Teacher had no aptitude for the Shady Sands Shuffle.  Mr. Dolt chased me and I tried to hide in the crowd.  We ended up getting coffee together after a short standoff.  He called me a "know-nothing get", which meant that although I wasn't a direct target, I knew potential victims.


The options for a disguise on the plane were "cross-country skier" and "germaphobe".  The latter was funnier.  The outfit involved reading glasses, "cheap anti-flu masks every newsagent and chemist sold near the counter with the other impulse buys" (obviously written pre-COVID!), an expensive wheeled suitcase, orthopedic shoes, diabetic socks, and fingerless mittens.  "I only regretted being too late to hire a wheelchair".  But that would just attract Soraya Montenegro de la Vega's attention!


Moti didn't think the disguise was convincing:  "These physical differences are sufficient to fool other humans?"  It was at least enough to trick Mr. Dolt.  Moti asked where Dr. Sole was now.  I tried to play the Teacher as a materialist and said "His body is buried.  That's all I know", but just turned him into an agnostic instead.  "Perhaps Professor Sole is in some kind of Heaven or even Hell, but that's not something I can experience firsthand without dying myself".


According to the backstory, the "collapse of Flare Energy" was good for General Resources, whatever that was.  "Hoping that it made them care about humanity's existence was too optimistic".  Uh. . .no humans means no money for General Resources.


An Australian woman named Sharon was my taxi driver in Peru.  (Choices That Matter is a Screen Australia production if I'm not mistaken.)  The destination was Cusco, because of course Incas were going to be involved somehow.  A hipster CYOA writer might have chosen Huari.  Her daughter Chrissy was living in Peru too.  I "answered vaguely" at first to avoid more suspicion than necessary, but then I told her about the sun disappearance investigation.


Sharon said she had a historian friend with a "different angle to the one most people are pursuing".  She revealed there was a whole group of Golden Eyes in the area.  Concerning a service fee in the hotel that I had to pay, "I suspected Delores had argued them out of a similar service fee over the phone, but I didn't mind letting The Company play their part in capitalism's endless dance".  The Teacher is clearly not a socialist, or at least not the overly optimistic ones who use phrases like "late capitalism" when capitalism still exists.


The next contact information was inside a toilet cistern.  "I wondered darkly whose idea that was".  A note said "Thanks for the pile of cash and all those spare IDs.  It's terribly handy to have so many photos of you now.  I feel we're truly getting acquainted!"  It was from "your golden-eyed friend", and he told me to visit the "main hall of the sun God's temple most mornings".  Moti realized the TV was bugged, so what did the Teacher do?  Switch the channel to Lifetime movies to annoy the Golden Eyes!  I imagine Golden Eyes as sounding like Metal Face from Xenoblade Chronicles.


Golden Eyes had probably burned the streets in the meantime, and the Teacher thought he'd "thrown back his head and laughed".  He really is Metal Face!  Delores said Dr. Manuel Huerras the scientist was no replying to calls, and it was best to get out of Peru.  She hadn't mentioned his name before.  My response in a choice:  "There's more than one scientist in Peru!"  A rational option on Earth, but not in CYOA land where writers have a limited number of characters.


Moti wanted me to talk to an English speaking therapist, and didn't appreciate being considered a substitute.  The historian wasn't responding either, and we had to break into his house.  It seemed dead already, and far too neat for a living person.  The Teacher was particularly concerned about "a single used toothbrush in the rubbish bin" and believed the historian to have severe OCD.  


I looked at the historian's note and asked Moti about the map, which was supposedly incorrect:  "this cavern marked on this map does not exist".  The historian's name turned out to be Clegauth Ngeh.  "Even the Australian genius for nicknames had let her down when it came to her friend's moniker".


A guide named Ariel said her people's name was once Ayar, or "the owls that first made this place".  In spite of the previous Arc being about an owl dream, this clue was not the endgame.  Ngeh had willingly sacrificed himself in an attempt to offer his blood to the sun.  If you want results, you have to rip out the heart and offer it to Huitzilopochtli instead.    


One corpse in the underground area that wasn't sacrificed was Dr. Huerras.  The Teacher distrusted Sharon for a bit until seeing her "tremor" reaction to finding Dr. Huerras.  "She'd approached me at the airport, dropped me at a compromised location, and now led me to a murder scene-but she was no killer, and no liar".  Without a choice, I then proceeded to plant evidence with the help of Mr. Dolt's phone.  The corpse's finger drew the phone number onto the floor with help from the Teacher.


The Golden Eyes that killed Professor Sole kidnapped Sharon's daughter Chrissy.  I demanded proof that he had her:  "Pics or it didn't happen.  Of course!  Every mother loves pictures of her little girl, doesn't she?"  Maybe Golden Eyes spends his time on video game forums like us.  Sharon rammed the enemy's vehicle and rescued Chrissy, while I went home with them instead of bothering with a hotel. 


Etienne hasn't been mentioned yet, and I was wondering if the game had forgotten him while playing.  His part in the Arc happens now.  Etienne was in a shootout with a Golden Eyes who had followed him, and I climbed through a broken window to assist him.  We managed to question the attacker.  "Arrogant fool!  You think the mysteries of the universe are small enough for your mind to contain?  How dare you!"  The leader of the Golden Eyes seemed to be Victor Santiago, and it was implied they were killing people for religious reasons.


Etienne found out that his father was part of the Aetherites, a "cult of scientists".  Some people refer to "scientism" when criticizing excessive faith in the scientific method and empirical observation, but the Aetherites look like the kind who would take that as a compliment.  Most of the Aetherites were in Japan right now.  Delores badgered me to go to Indonesia to investigate a fallen satellite, but several choices later and it was off to the Land of the Rising Sun.


ARC 4, COMPLETED


"You and 36% of players are going with Etienne to Japan from Peru".


BEGIN ARC 5-4


(So the Arcs really do work like Mario level notation.)

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

And The Sun Went Out Part 5 (Arc 5-4)


A teenager named Akio sang for everyone on the plane, and had an "eidetic memory" for lyrics "from Queen to Kanye".  Eidetic memory must be more common in fiction.  The building Etienne and I were looking for "was a celebration of 1970s brutalist architecture.  It managed to look just like every other high-rise in a row yet with an extra layer of hideousness the others lacked".  Wasn't Brutalism the architectural style used to justify all those grey concrete buildings in East Bloc countries?


We remained coy about our search for the Aetherites, and shared a suite.  You'd think this would lead to romantic plot choices, but it didn't at all.  We looked for a "different door" rather than trying to get in through the cafe, and it led to the mandatory chloroform cloth incident.  In an attempt to blackmail one of the kidnappers, I threatened to reveal that they had used Shihori Kanjiya film footage.  That wasn't the expected result of "Loudly threaten to expose the building's secrets".


I told someone I was a physicist, and used Moti to cheat on the quiz to get past the kidnappers.  The moon's orbit had become more elliptical since the sun disappeared, but not the Earth's orbit around the sun.  I looked for the Aetherites in a series of "dull corridors repeated over and over", compared to a video game in the text.  One room had a drawing of a wooden cog on the door.  I called Etienne, and he said he could join the Aetherites because relatives of geniuses are allowed inside.  Is it a eugenics program, or just nepotism?


Dr. Wong from the Quebec story returned and greeted us.  Everyone in the Aetherites feared the "dragon lady", who couldn't have been Madame Nhu.  The Golden Eyes turned out to be the Hundredth Day cult, which probably had some connection to the doomsday prophets from the beginning.  Etienne and I headed for the roof and noticed that we could brute force a 4-digit access code since we saw where someone had used specific numbers.


The Aetherite laboratories looked like what you'd expect.  The Matron warned us not to go to prohibited areas.  Etienne and I followed a woman past windows with gray screens nailed to them.  The top floors of the building were also invisible to those looking at it from outside.  We returned to the dining hall and met the Aetherites, who got their name from their belief in the Greek element of aether.  Aether supposedly affects your thoughts.


It seemed the group of "cog people" we ran into next were involved with the Peruvian voluntary human sacrifice cult, since they mentioned Ariel and discussed the possibility that she was meant to give up her life.  We talked about Professor Sole and I offered access to the top floors of the building.  There was a short subplot involving an eavesdropper and a man wearing a Marvin the Martian tie.  Moti was skeptical of the validity of social media, but the Teacher came to the conclusion that multiple satellites crashed around Indonesia, since people thought they came from 3 different nations:  America, China, and Italy.


We talked to someone named Miki, who was involved in the research inside the building.  Miki didn't know about the "cog people", but we found out the sun had gone out and was restored with human intervention in prehistoric times.  This made the characters come to the conclusion that there was one true religion that had become extinct, since Stone Age people obviously couldn't have used technology to revive the sun.  (How do they know it was human intervention if it was prehistoric?  Unusually well-preserved oral legends?)  "What if there is a God, and he really is dead?"  Was Miki reading the January 9, 1966 New York Times?   


But Miki had a different answer:  "stupid, selfish, megalomaniac billionaires".  The Teacher said something sure to anger a particular Realms Beyond poster:  "Are you saying politicians like Ronald Klumpp are to blame for the whole thing?"  You established that the moon's orbit had changed, writers!  Even if Klumpp had surrounded the Earth with shades, he couldn't make the moon do that!  And there are satellites that would be outside the shades. .  You might as well say Mr. Burns did it at this point.


The Teacher had the appropriate response in a dialogue choice:  "Yes. . .but no.  Just no".  I sat with the cog people instead of the Aetherites.  A man named Justin shouted "You're worthy!  You're the one!", somehow realizing I was a player character in a Choose Your Own Adventure.  I insisted on keeping Etienne with me, even though he wanted to flee from these cultists as soon as possible.  


Victor Santiago, the main Golden Eyes, was on a flight to Japan, so Delores warned us to get out of Japan as soon as possible.  I told as little about my investigation to Delores as possible to continue the tradition of being rude to her.  The cog people performed several tests on me, including a blood test.


ARC 5, COMPLETED

"You and 51% of players have gained the special interest of the cog people".


BEGIN ARC 6-3


At least several of the Arcs must converge here.  My previous Arcs were followed by much fewer players.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

And The Sun Went Out Part 6 (Arc 6-3)


Etienne started the Arc with a crush on "Miss Enamoto", aka Matron.  The Teacher teased him about it for a bit before heading off to "poke around in Astronomy".  The astronomers were wearing "self-consciously cliche white coats".  ¡Como Dios manda!  I told them I had information to trade.  Their lab coats matched the furniture and computers in the room, which were also all white.


Doctor Simit proposed her explanation for the weird events in this story:  time travel.  Specifically, that "a large section of the universe is shifting in time, but we are not".  Isn't there a novel called Spin where time passes slowly on Earth compared to the rest of the universe?  Anyway, Simit was too enthusiastic about the time travel idea.  "History will remember this moment as the moment the past and present had their first kiss!"  All the Teacher could do during this conversation was to shout "Brilliant!", because sooner or later one crackpot theory would have to be embraced.  It's either time travel, a Peruvian human sacrifice cult, or an American billionaire running for president by blocking out the sun with shades without anyone else knowing.


Akio the eidetic memory pop singer suggested hiding the scientists from the secret Number Five building in his mansion, which would probably have better security.  His parents wanted him to "become a research scientist and cure cancer", and this idea was "the closest they're going to get".


I preferred Miki over Matron in terms of deciding what to do with the scientists.  In general, the Teacher treated Matron in this part like Delores:  ignored whenever possible.  We examined the fake lobby where the "dragon lady" worked, only to find her shot dead.  Victor Santiago had come to Number Five.  Moti found out my phone was bugged.  I pressed all the alarm buttons that Dragon Lady had available instead of calling Matron.  Etienne did that instead.


Etienne and I stuck together instead of splitting up, because the latter option always leads to disaster.  We instructed the Number Five people to evacuate at once and organize some guards.  I stood up on a table rather than "leading by example".  We took the scientists to the dining hall rather than Matron.  One Aetherite had been murdered, so I comforted Wong by saying I would fund their research.  For once I told the truth to the cops rather than "being as evasive as possible", though I did tell Moti to break into their records.


I slept rather than telling Delores anything, and returned to the dining hall.  The Teacher made a snide comment to Etienne:  "I like to get myself incarcerated every time I visit a new continent".  We did our best to ignore Matron by looking in the Aetherites' rooms and calling Wong.  I packed my bags and told Moti that I was afraid.  A short time afterwards, Justin the Finder of the cog people had been killed.  Justin's corpse managed to point to a secret passage that Matron could open.


Etienne and I prepared an ambush for Santiago.  Etienne wanted him alive rather than dead, which the Teacher secretly admired.  I took the first shift on the higher floor, but it wasn't Santiago that we caught in the secret passage, but Vivian of the cog people, who wanted to walk outside.  Matron scolded her for her carelessness.  I was appointed head chef during the dining room shift, so instead of pancakes I prepared this:  "Toast.  So much toast". 


I went off to investigate Number Five's architect myself instead of letting the police do it.  Justin was wrong about me being the "one" for the cog people, since the tests showed an ordinary "resonance".  Given that the "one" was likely the next human sacrifice victim, the Teacher should have been more pleased about that fact.  I observed Mr. Nagoku the architect and introduced myself as "the enemy of a murderer" rather than "a friend".  Santiago took some pages from a folder about secret entrances, and he was only interested in the underground floors.  And The Sun Went Out is surprisingly realistic about secret passages in modern buildings for a thriller:  the workers who built them have to know about them too, not just the residents.


The entrance beneath the neighboring fireworks store seemed like the best place to visit next.  Santiago drove away, but left a bomb behind!  Rather than pursue him, I decided to go to the dining room and rescue as many scientists as possible.  SOMEBODY needs to figure out how to keep the sun shining, after all.  Delores tried to call me, so of course I tried to neglect her by reassuring Moti.  I was forced to talk to her anyway.  She gave me a new lead:  an Australian photographer named Henrietta that had the best pictures of the night sky around the time of the sun's disappearances.  Meanwhile, Santiago was flying back to Peru.


I called Etienne and said I'm the "closest thing he's got" to a next of kin.  "I looked at my arms, and for the first time saw a large piece of glass embedded in my left shoulder.  'Huh', I said, and fainted".  Does fainting work like that?  You realize you're injured, and only then do you pass out, like walking off a cliff onto the air in a Bugs Bunny cartoon?  Are Gothic novels really documentaries about a subspecies of human with an unusually weak constitution? 


Sharon came to visit us in the hospital.  She split open the wooden cog accidentally, which contained the key to Professor Sole's diary.  Only Etienne could transcribe it because it was written in code with keys relating to the family's personal lives.  The last decision of this Arc was to go to Australia or Indonesia.  I couldn't be nice to Delores after mistreating her for 6 consecutive Arcs, so. . .


ARC 6, COMPLETED


"You and 13% of players will be heading to Indonesia, after witnessing the destruction of the secret base of scientists".


BEGIN ARC 7-6

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

And The Sun Went Out Part 7 (Arc 7-6)


Anyone who hates Delores as much as this version of Teacher does will be pleased to know their relationship is more acrimonious than ever.


Sharon and Etienne were arguing in the Japanese hospital while I was in Indonesia.  When Delores called, I replied "What's my mission here. [sic]  I want it done quickly".  She said "Don't be snippy.  I want this done as well".  All other The Company operatives had failed to find out anything about the fallen satellites.  I told her "I came to talk to a scientist, not to go digging for scrap", and Delores "snapped" at me, saying I'll look for the scrap first.


Teacher was still obsessed with taxis, but had to contact tourist services instead.  Choices don't always Matter in this story.  Moti disapproved of my "lying" when I told someone "I have official business collecting the washed up debris", even though it was closer to being true than the other answer.  Moti had been reading religious texts lately, and didn't want to "anger a deity".  They probably weren't Jain or Buddhist texts that reject the concept of a God.  I tried to make my character into a stereotypical scoffing materialist in an earlier Arc, and the computer goes religious on me!


A man called Indigo Milson gave some tourist information, and he explained his name by saying his mom was a hippy.  Nusa Penida was the next stop, which was apparently near Bali since Teacher could see its mountains.  I ate lunch before talking to Delores "just to spite her".  That line was actually in the text, as if the programmers knew I would play this game for the entertainment of people on an obscure strategy game forum.


I threatened Delores by saying she needed me, and even Moti was questioning my behavior at this point.  Teacher's true motivation for hating her:  "People aren't pieces in a chess game, but Delores thinks she can move us as such".  It wouldn't be a thriller without hackneyed chess metaphors.  I decided to continue working because "Delores can sort herself out".  She abruptly told me to ignore the satellites, and The Company had received a fragmented Italian message saying:  "Where are. . . Luke. . .not blind. . .What's happening to me?. . .Is anyone. . ."


Petrus owned a castle hosting many scientists, complete with a drawbridge, a moat, and battlements.  There was an aquarium instead of a dungeon, however.  I asked if the sharks were legal.  A German scientist named Niklas was mainly interested in explosions, since he thought he could restart the sun with enough of a bang.  Moti's opinion was "He may be brilliant with designing explosives, but he seems to have a poor understanding of the sun".  That, or he thinks he's in the movie The Core. 


Teacher called Delores, and found out that two people were killed who could have given testimony against Santiago if left alive:  Mr. Boss and Mr. Dolt from the Canada story!


Niklas's explosions didn't harm the castle much in spite of the loud noises.  Geologists were the only scientists who weren't available at Petrus's castle.  Another non-choice came later when deciding whether to visit Wiryanto Salih the philosopher or Petrus.  I picked Petrus, but the game shoved me towards Salih instead.  Salih was an ancient man who disagreed with materialism:  "But what about those phenomena that cannot be seen, touched, or heard?  That cannot be measured by inches or ounces or tonnes?"  Love and death in particular were favorite topics of his. 

When my Teacher attempted to reassert materialist ideas by saying "How do you look for something that can't be seen or touched or measured?  Or, presumably, extrapolated from living things?", Salih replied "Ach, I'm a philosopher.  We don't find answers.  We find questions."  Sounds like Socrates so far. . ."I'm not even certain of my own existence, so how could I find a practical path to preserve it?"  Now he's more epistemologically skeptical than a solipsist! 


I said "You exist" with a "note of pleading", while Salih said "Probably, in some limited sense.  I have flesh and bone-or at least you and I both perceive that I do".  So he's not a realist, but he does admit the existence of other entities, so now he's less skeptical than a solipsist.  Salih questioned whether or not Moti was a full person, but was intrigued by the AI by the end of the conversation.


After mentioning the Italian satellite message to the scientists in the castle, they were shocked and talked about an astronaut and "aquanaut" named Luca Parmiciano.  (Subnautica combines the two professions in one game.)  Petrus said that the sun wasn't the only star to disappear, which just made Teacher more suspicious in a choice.  None of the characters have so far mentioned the time delay inherent in the observation of stars.


Etienne called and mentioned that a 3-letter word recurred in Professor Sole's writings, possibly a name.  When Moti talked about how easy it was to kill a human, Teacher responded "It's easier to maim than kill, of course".  A furious Delores called to inform me that the sun had disappeared more than an hour.  I just didn't notice because it was already nighttime in Indonesia.  I ran towards Petrus rather than talking to Delores again.


Petrus ordered me to stay behind even though a choice suggested I could leave.  Remembering the toast incident from the previous Arc, I organized generator maintenance rather than meals and supplies.  I then slept until the next afternoon.  By the end of the Arc, the sun had vanished for more than 48 hours. 


Moti suggested going to Egypt with Etienne instead of Italy with Sharon, since the AI found out that the 3-letter word was indeed a name.  An Egyptian named Umi had "predicted each sun-outage correctly to the hour" and was connected to a website called "Phantom Happenings".  Teacher suspected it of being pseudoscience in an accidental in-character moment, but if your hypothesis always holds true, then. . .


ARC 7, COMPLETED


"You and 14% of players will be heading to Egypt after staying at Petrus' castle in Indonesia".


(It wouldn't be a good pulp story without Egyptian curses, right?  Maybe Akhenaten made the sun disappear out of spite when people weren't worshiping Aten anymore.  A more likely possibility is Apep, the snake who fights against Ra.  There was one other CYOA I've played about the disappearance of the sun, and that turned out to have a mythological cause.  It was much worse than And The Sun Went Out!)


BEGIN ARC 8-4


EDIT:  Forgot to mention that Victor Santiago is flying to Italy instead of Egypt.  Guess he wants to kill the Italian astronaut more than the Teacher.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

And The Sun Went Out Part 8 (Arc 8-4)





Etienne wasn't used to long flights ever since he moved to Quebec.  According to Moti, the sun had been out for 62 hours, and 3 plane crashes were connected to the long night.  It took longer to get into the country than normal since Egypt was under "marshal law" [sic].  The game Pandemic made the same homophone mistake.





To keep some children happy for a while, I handed them "a tablet as a distraction" rather than look after them directly.  I'd probably do the same out of character!  Given my character's history with women, I sent Etienne to talk to a female official rather than have the Teacher cross her. 





Umi had seemingly been mute in the orphanage until the first sun disappearance.  His predictions were vague, such as "It will be over very soon, you'll see" regarding the second disappearance.  Umi's response to a question about how he knew so much about the sun was "Because I asked her".  Teacher took a taxi as usual rather than what Etienne called a "rent-a-bomb", but the driver was a robber!  He was a reluctant robber and only needed enough to support his family, so I gave him some contingency money rather than let him sell our passports on the black market.  This pleased the Teacher because Delores would be "annoyed" at this option.





A woman named Kesi took us near the Pyramids of Giza, where Umi's orphanage was.  (Because of course you build an orphanage close to a major tourist attraction.)  Kesi mentioned that one of her brothers saw the Loch Ness Monster in the Nile, "forced to leave its homeland by global warming".  But Egypt is hotter than Scotland!  She thought it would be the "monster who will return the sun".  There was no rational response to this, only two sarcastic options.  Mine was "I prefer to think it's Nessie, given the options".





Etienne was dismayed that the Great Pyramids weren't "in the middle of the desert" like every picture had led him to believe.  Where are they relative to the nearest towns in Egypt, I wonder?  This sequence reminds me of a trip to Washington D.C. in 2007.  The White House was surrounded by businesses from what I recall, and the lawn was much smaller than the news on TV made it look.





Etienne thought a trip to the pyramids should involve "days and days of riding the flea-infested giant rodents", i.e. camels.  We did ride camels, and they were almost runaway camels at that.  Umi recognized Moti despite never having interacted with the AI.  The two quickly became friends, and I insisted on staying with Umi whenever possible just in case Victor Santiago showed up or something.  Sharon said there was no sign of Santiago in Italy.





Moti was keeping some secret relating to Umi from me.  Umi disappeared, so I looked for him, only to run into Etienne's mother Amala.  Amala knew where her son was at all times because Professor Sole had secretly inserted a tracking implant into him.  Teacher was not pleased by this invasion of privacy.  At the moment, Etienne was looking for Nessie, and he claimed he found a monster, but he would need a flashlight to investigate further.





Several choices required me to explain the concept of figurative language to Moti, which makes me wonder how they understood the religious texts from an earlier Arc.  Maybe Moti's secretly a Biblical literalist?





No, it wasn't the Loch Ness Monster in the Nile, but "debris and junk", and icebergs.  The sun going out for so long had caused significant global cooling, and the ice caps on both poles were expanding.  You'd better be thankful for greenhouse gases now, Al Gore! 





A blizzard was beginning in Egypt. . .





ARC 8, COMPLETE



"You and 18% of players met Amala at the orphanage and are now going after Umi".



BEGIN ARC 9-6





(And The Sun Went Out isn't the 1st Choose Your Own Adventure I've played about a frozen Egypt.)

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

And The Sun Went Out Part 9 (Arc 9-6)


"A Scottish accent floated to me in the dark, and soon a bearded man was standing next to me, grumpy and covered in the rapidly falling snow."


"What ar' ya doing out here, pipsqueak?' he demanded, narrowing his eyes at me".


Our new companion conveniently found Umi, and held him "by his scruff".  Of course I befriended him rather than "make a quick getaway"!  Daniel MaCrae reminded Teacher of Sharon, and wondered why we were in "the land of cat litter".  Teacher half-jokingly said "It's end of world times, just want to have some good memories, you know?"  Moti objected to "pipsqueak" because "Teacher is of perfectly average size!"  The player character in a CYOA has to be as nondescript as possible.


Etienne greeted Daniel MaCrae with a demand, only to be jokingly warned "I'm the bloody tooth-fairy if you're gonna take that tone.  But I won't be leaving you any money when I knock ya teeth out!"  Daniel MaCrae affectionately called Etienne "princess" before leaving.  It was obvious that the Scot was flirting with him.  Moti was confused by the concept of being gay:  "Teacher, Mister Etienne and Mister Daniel are unable to reproduce".  For an AI with an Internet connection, Moti hasn't spent much time on the Internet if they're still confused by the idea of sexual attraction!


Etienne asked me about how Professor Sole treated me, and there wasn't much new information here.  Moti asked "Could we use magic to bring back the sun?", which sounded like the most realistic option for a scenario where the sun disappeared, yet Earth's orbit remained the same.  Teacher was allowed to remain in the character I envisioned with the next choice:  "Magic isn't real Moti".  Moti was confused due to the fiction and articles written about magic, and was fond of A Midsummer Night's Dream. 


I recruited Daniel and said "I need some unlawful work done.  You interested?"  Daniel was interested, and we violated the "marshal law" curfew by setting out for the pyramids rather than the Nile in order to look for Umi.  Moti wondered how the pyramids were built, and could come to no conclusion.  Daniel thought it was aliens, just like the History Channel.  Some lines seemed to perfectly fit my character, even though they weren't part of a choice: I ignored that, and hoped Moti did the same".  "Loch Ness monster, aliens. . .most sane people don't believe in these things".


(Ancient history always confuses me when I read it.  The authors tend to make fantastical and seemingly absurd claims, even though they're presumably observing the same world as modern humans.  But then there's the concept of "magic" or "miracles" decreasing over time, as seen in lines like 1 Samuel 3:1  "The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread".  It's not just Abrahamic religions:  read Zosimus's New History if you want to see some extravagant pagan miracles.  Was the distant past more "magical"?  If it is propaganda, why would it take on such a different form?  Most Americans would probably dismiss someone who said George Washington resurrected the dead, even though it's not like we're less gullible today.  It's just idle speculation for me, but. . .)

 
The Egyptian authorities caught us, and I spent 13 days in jail.  Daniel was released before me.  Daniel once had cancer before one of the solar disappearances, and claimed to have seen the Loch Ness Monster as a child.  He asked if Etienne was single, and the next choice suggested I could have followed a romantic subplot with Etienne if I responded in a jealous manner.  (Etienne's crush on Matron in Japan is likely meant to reassure the player that he's bisexual rather than strictly gay, if they're imagining Teacher as a female character.)


I called Etienne, and he said Umi tried to run away, but fell off the roof and injured himself.  In true telenovela fashion, there had to be hospital scenes.  Teacher revealed that the true purpose of the investigation was that The Company's clients were solar power firms.  Maybe they should have invested in fossil fuels to keep the Earth warm for these nights that last over half a month! 


Daniel's sister believed the world would end in 2000, and left her family destitute after getting rid of all her possessions.  Teacher told him he should get to know Sharon (probably for friendship), only to hear "If this Sharon's a she, then I can guarantee she's not my type, pipsqueak".  I stayed with Umi in the hospital.  In one scene in this episode, it was implied that Umi could have saved the sun by sacrificing himself:  "The earth is sad.  It needs a friend.  If I let go of my body, I can be its friend".


Many fireflies had gathered around Cairo, and Umi mentioned the owls from previous Arcs.  "They are wise creatures.  They pass through the barrier".  I insisted that Etienne was a friend rather than a lover.  Umi said "She is returned", and the sun came back!  I told Daniel to stay with Umi as I tried to rescue people from a fallen cement slab, but one woman in a car died because I tried to help her after the "crowd".  The damaged hotel collapsed, but there was a more dramatic story on the news:  the Sphinx had been beheaded!  This should have prompted everyone to read the poem Ozymandias, but somehow that was never mentioned in the story.  At least now I can make more gratuitous jokes about the movie Supernova. . .


Space junk had fallen from orbit, which was likely responsible for the hotel incident too.  Was it all solar powered?  Moti was curious:  "An object moving through our atmosphere would have burned up before reaching the ground, or travelled at speeds which would have leveled the city".


A character named Penny adopted Umi and wanted to take him to England, and I gave her some phone numbers that could help.  Sharon called saying she was in Switzerland near the German border.  Victor Santiago had been killed by his own Hundredth Day cult after some fighting with "the mafia and the Catholics".


Umi insisted to Moti that Earth had a soul, along with the stars.  Moti said Umi had no proof, but then again Moti believed in magic for a bit because it was in A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Umi warned that the sun would be gone for good in the 4th disappearance starting in the Southern Hemisphere's winter solstice "unless someone heals her".  You have to think of the seasons like Mafalda does, I guess.


"The south's winter solstice was only a few months away.  We had more time.  But not much of it".


ARC 9, COMPLETED

"You and 5% of players was imprisoned for weeks in Cairo and heard Umi's latest prophecy".


BEGIN ARC 10-2


Wow, only 1 in 20 players went on this path?  Arc 6-3 had a small majority of players.


EDIT:  The problem I have with And The Sun Went Out is that society is functioning too well for this kind of apocalypse.  The sun disappears, in a way predictable only to some random boy in Egypt, sometimes for over half a month at a time, and everybody hasn't either frozen to death, joined some doomsday cult, or fallen into nihilistic apathy.  At least in Heart of Ice everyone knew it was the computer that froze the world, and the decay was more gradual.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

And The Sun Went Out Part 10 (Arc 10-2)


Commercial flights had mostly been shut down by now, so we took a boat to Europe.  Moti became fond of Guy Richie movies, to which Teacher responded:  "Cut back on the movies, Moti.  They are fantasy, not fact".  The other response was "I don't think those are strictly mobster movies".  You can play Teacher as a movie genre pedant if you like.


I pulled over to call Sharon because Moti suggested it, and confirmed the next destination was Geneva.  The French drivers called Teacher "spawn of a goat" according to Moti's translation.  (Is this a real French insult?)  Sharon spotted Teacher without clothes accidentally, which my character responded with "And deny you all of this?  You know you love it".  Sharon had lost weight since the previous Arcs and was now wearing an eye patch.  Hopefully not with the purpose of faking an eye injury to make a stepson feel guilty.


Sharon had angered the mob by paying them to kill Victor Santiago, then realizing she spent the last of her money on her daughter's MotiCon.  Neither Sharon nor Petrus found Luca the astronaut.  Sharon wondered if sacrificing Umi really was necessary to save the world, which I disagreed with.  (More because my character would scoff at "superstition" rather than out of compassion.)


Amala had helped Etienne decipher Sole's diary in the meantime, and discovered that the "cog" was a symbol of Children of Gaia.  A car with dark tinted windows threatened Sharon, so I was about to drive away when it blocked my path.  "It was Delores".  Teacher despises Delores in this playthrough, but not actually in a homicidal way, so he declined to "ram her car anyway".


Sharon thought Delores was a "prissy" based on previous conversations, and she had "imagined horns".  Delores knew the mafia wanted Sharon for $2 million.  She was shocked when Moti was talking to her, and was surprised by how human they sounded.  No other MotiCon communicated or behaved in such a sophisticated way.  "Sharon, we're going with her.  She's a snake, but I trust her".


Etienne told us that the Choose Your Own Adventure map looking symbol was about "another place in time and space that we also exist in", a world where souls exist.  Moti tried to hack into NASA, but couldn't because of the firewalls.  It was impossible to do so, in fact, without being in their server room.  The mafia threw a rock through the window in the place in Croatia where Delores had taken us.  They said they wanted the "whore's head".  The award for "Line That Would Never Appear In A Children's CYOA" goes to the option I didn't take:  "My mother?  She hasn't been a whore since the sixties!"


(This incarnation of Teacher has problems dealing with women sometimes, but isn't a complete misogynist.  Or a standup comedian.)


I stalled for a while until Delores could transfer the $2 million to the mafia's preferred bank account.  They left politely, warning Sharon never to come back to Italy. 


Delores wanted us to return to America on a private jet to infiltrate NASA to find out what they know about the sun, but this plan was cancelled before it could begin.  Someone had destroyed the "primary and backup data banks" as well as "several artifacts of enormous historical importance".


ARC 10, COMPLETED


"You and 39% of players saved Sharon in Croatia, and were flying home when NASA was attacked".


BEGIN ARC 11-1


These wildly varying percentages of paths taken suggest that much of the story remains similar regardless of what you do, since the paths must converge multiple times.  How many people let Sharon be killed off somehow?