~=>
ARCHIVIST: “Everything’s broken! Just… everything! The power’s not working, the inevitability deferrers - which should only be used in emergencies, they’re bad for the temporal health of this entire timespace - have been running flat-out for decades! The Archives themselves are starting to gain sentience, which is a whole can of worms in and of itself, and someone’s disabled all the safeguards on it, before putting large chunks of my mind in it! Something dreadful is going to happen, and my idiot siblings were too busy bickering and getting themselves killed to do anything about it! My dear brother, even, I’m pretty sure he kludged most of this stuff into failing so spectacularly! I’d call it suicidal, but he clearly had no idea what was going on when he awoke.”
As the robot-with-Archivist-in rants, the shell of its head creaks and the fleshy substance inside bubbles.
ARCHIVIST: “And, not to mention the worst-case, which draws ever closer!”
SAM: “Uh, what’s that?”
ARCHIVIST: “The shadow of the Location, where we currently are, will burst like a soap bubble, and all nearby Earths will be sterilised.”
SAM: “Wait, Earths plural? That sounds weird, although I don’t remember why.”
ASH: “I’m more concerned about ‘sterilised’.”
ARCHIVIST: “Well, comparing Earths isn’t relevant here. More importantly to you, however, is that if the shadow of the Location breaks, you die, and everyone on the Earth you came from dies, too. Additionally, myself and my siblings will have wasted millions of years of work.”
ASH: “Like I said, more concerned about ‘sterilised’.”