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Chapter 1

Paranoia / Leaping Through Time
時間跳躍のパラノイア

Date: 7/28/2010
Current Divergence: 0.571024

Rintarou tries to confirm with Mayuri whether the people had just disappeared, but she mentions she hadn't been looking, and rather that there was no one where they were in the first place. They briefly talk about the satellite, but the circumstances they know regarding it differ, and Rintarou feels as if he might have gone insane. They're promptly told by a police officer that the premises are currently off limits and that they should leave. Rintarou also inquires about the girl that was stabbed, but the officer says no such thing happened. Eventually, they return to the laboratory an hour later.

They go over the Future Gadgets they have being built; 7 of them are currently listed on their official website, and the eighth one is called the "Phone Microwave (Temp)", which they've been doing a bit of tinkering with. They try microwaving a banana with it, but it ends up in a jellified state. Despite the results, Rintarou and Itaru head off to the Akihabara Techno Forum (ATF) to see a seminar. Taking the elevator up, they bump into Makise Kurisu. Rintarou immediately recognizes her as supposed to have been dead. Itaru thinks he's going on about a mail he sent a week ago, but Rintarou says that the incident only happened three hours ago. Not only that, the mail seems to have been split up and sent in three parts, and given the timestamps of the mails, Itaru thinks the mails came from the future.

The three discuss the events revolving around the strange mails, but then Kurisu is interrupted and begins the seminar. She goes over eleven possible theories to time travel, and notes that the wormhole theory is the most practical/plausible. After the ATF seminar, Rintarou parts with Itaru and visits the Yanabayashi Shinto Shrine to receive purification, since he feels he's been possessed by an evil spirit after seeing Kurisu still alive. He receives the purification form Urushibara Ruka, who, despite looking like a young girl, is actually a guy (and Rintarou keeps reminding himself of this fact). Mayuri is also there, so he asks her if she heard a scream at the Radio Hall, but she doesn't recall it. Mayuri goes off to her part-time job, and Rintarou returns to the laboratory.

Before coming to the lab, he visits the CRT TV Workshop below. The owner is Tennouji Yuugo, often called Mr. Brown by Rintarou, and is actually the landlord of the place. Rintarou got a TV from Yuugo before, and came to have it fixed, as it had gone bad in the laboratory. At that moment, a girl by the name of Amane Suzuha comes for a job interview, and after mentioning that she likes CRT TVs, she's immediately hired (much to Rintarou's surprise). Upon hearing Rintarou's name, Suzuha says that he can consult her should he have any problems.

Date: 7/29/2010
Current Divergence: 0.571024

While Rintarou is strolling around Akihabara, he checks @ch [1] on his cellphone and notices that someone by the name of John Titor has been posting information. He recalls that John Titor came from the year 2036 to get an old machine, the IBN 5100 [2]. However, Rintarou is skeptical, since John Titor is supposed to be American, and had disappeared for 10 years. He finds it very suspicious for him to start posting information on @ch. Not only that, this John Titor says he's come from a dystopia in the future, rather than a world war that ravaged the planet.

While strolling around, he ends up bumping into Kiryuu Moeka, who is taking pictures near the satellite crash site. He initially thinks she's taking them for the "Organization", and is worried that these pictures might leak to them. However, she claims she's taking pictures of where she goes, and she's interested in the IBN 5100. He doesn't know about it, but mentions Itaru might, so she becomes interested and asks for his cellphone number so she can get more information. Rintarou initially refuses at first, but then eventually gives up as she keeps following him.

Rintarou ends up at the MayQueen+Nyan2 cafe, and Mayuri is working there as her part-time job. She's also working with Feiris NyanNyan, who is the most popular maid there. He finds Itaru at the cafe and inquires about John Titor and the IBN 5100. However, Itaru doesn't know anything about John Titor, which Rintarou finds odd. However, he does know about the IBN 5100. During the conversation, Moeka mails him with information about the IBN 5100, hoping it might help her find the computer.

Returning to the lab, Rintarou looks at the @ch forums some more regarding John Titor, but decides it's too much and instead works with Itaru regarding the jellified results with putting the banana in the Microwave (Temp). After some tinkering and putting some bananas in, they find the bananas actually disappear from the microwave. Soon the bananas reappear, but only one of them returned in a gel-like state. Kurisu interrupts the laboratory experiment, and after some brief chatter she ends up becoming part of the lab group, though Rintarou attaches the names "Christina" and "Assistant" to her.

They run the experiment on the bananas again to find that it disappears from the microwave, but 4 seconds beforehand it reappeared elsewhere. Itaru then recalls that on August 28 at 12:00, the microwave had sparked a massive electric surge for at least two seconds. This was around the same time Rintarou had gone to Dr. Nakabachi's meeting. Itaru says that he was connecting his own cellphone with the microwave and seeing potential functionality with the computer hooked up (X68000). In doing so, the microwave caused a massive electrical surge.

Mayuri also comes back at the same time, and just as they are about to try recreating the same conditions and send a cellphone mail, Mayuri opens the microwave door, creating a massive electrical surge. The microwave breaks through part of the floor, and Itaru remarks that a microwave shouldn't have enough weight to do so. Everyone is okay, and they find that the mail was received by Rintarou at least a week into the past. Rintarou concludes the bananas returned to the past in a jellified state, and declares the microwave a "Time Machine".

Notes

  1. @ch is a spinoff of 2ch.
  2. The "IBN 5100" is a spinoff of the IBM 5100 which exists in real life.

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