AD 2021.03.28 16:32:21:58

I've been waiting for a while for this now, but it's finally coming out. Steins;Gate Future has gone gold in Japanese and my friend has been working hard at the company recruited to translate it to get it to that state for its simultaneous release in the west. He's been working pretty hard at it so it's nearly finished now. It just needed some play testing, and I would never turn down the opportunity to play it early.

So here I am now, playing through the game. 5pb has somehow done it again; they've made an amazing addition to the series. It's fully animated like Steins;Gate Elite and somehow makes you feel involved to a groundbreaking degree despite our expectations. You can send the characters text messages that you type out yourself, and they actually respond as if they were real people. It feels real too; It must be a level of AI nobody's ever seen before, being used in Steins;Gate of all places.

I think I've found a bug in the translation patch though, my game just froze. The AI must not be able to fully understand the English language yet, which is understandable; English is one of the harder languages after all. Not soon after I begin to feel nauseous. I don't really think anything of it though; I have been playing this game non-stop for over 20 hours now. As my nausea worsens I suddenly get intense headache to go with it, causing me to pass out.

I awaken faster than you can snap your fingers. The headache is gone, and my nausea is going away slowly. I am immediately frightened to see that I am standing in the middle of a sidewalk outside. I accidentally drop something, which turns out to be a bag of some sort. I take in my surroundings. I've never seen this road before, but the big building in front of me looks eerily familiar.

Then I notice who is in front of me. "O-Okabe Rintaro," I say slowly, only to startle myself. My voice doesn't really sound like my voice anymore? He turns to face who called his name and I can only be paralyzed with fear; Okabe Rintaro is standing face to face with me in front of Radio Kaikan.

After taking a second and probably failing to recognize who had called him, he says something I cannot understand: "How is it that you know the name I use to deceive the Organization?" I mentally curse myself for not taking the time to learn at least some basic Japanese. I take a moment to try and figure out how to respond to what he said. Obviously he had spoken as Hououin Kyouma just now…

Shock fading away now, I spot Kurisu next to him looking at me suspiciously now because I must be acting strange. Wait, someone who speaks English! I'm saved! "Kurisu, what did he say just now?" Kurisu jumps in surprise at my causal way of speaking to her; which was a mistake because now she is next to try and fail to recognize me.

"Have we met before?" she asks.

"…No"

"Then how do you know our names?"

"I… It's complicated," I say in a defeated manner.

Kurisu studies my actions carefully, almost as if she's trying to link them to something she's seen before. She then begins asking me some questions.

"Who is he?" she asks pointing at Okabe.

"That's Okabe Rintaro, the leader of the Future Gadget Lab in the Steins;Gate seri-" I quickly put a hand over my mouth. Whoops. I just got baited hardcore right there.

"Where is the Future Gadget Lab?"

"…Above the Braun Tube Workshop," I say giving in. Seeing that my answer was correct, I realize I now have to accept what happened in the game as real when talking to people here.

"What is Steins Gate?"

I glance around before saying quietly, "It's a world line without time travel, created by time travel."

She looks at me in disbelief as I say this, so I say the only thing that I can to explain myself: "Sorry. You've probably already figured this out, but... I don't belong here."

She takes a step closer to me and whispers: "You're a time traveler?"

"…No, I don't think so. It's more like I came from another world entirely," I whisper back.

This shocks her even more, but only for a moment because she has already found a glaring issue with my claim. "If that's true then how do you know us?"

"Like I said, it's complicated… and we really shouldn't talk about it out in the open like this," I say hoping she'll understand.

She sighs and turns back to Okabe who looks like he was able to put together most of what we were saying but was struggling to do so. She explains the situation to him filling in the bits he didn't get, his expression slowly turning frightened. Obviously the fact that I know all about the lab and world lines without him ever seeing me before must be frightening. Maybe he thinks I'm a Rounder or something.

He snaps out of it though, returning as Hououin Kyouma to say in broken English, "Come, we go where the Organization cannot listen." He then dramatically runs down the street leaving us in the dust. Kurisu and I look at each other for a moment and begin the chase after him.

He stays ahead of us, but is careful not to lose us in the busy streets of Akihabara. We are eventually lead to another place I recognize, May Queen Nyan Nyan. Yes, a maid café is definitely not out in the open, I think to myself. Even though I seem to be able to keep up just fine, Kurisu is lagging behind gasping for air. It's surprising because I was never too athletic to begin with; I should be doing way worse than her right now.

"Welcome back myasters- Kyouma!" Feris rushes over to us after she notices who is with us. Okabe and Feris then begin chatting avidly about something, probably something ridiculous as usual judging by Kurisu's facial reaction.

While they're talking we get spotted by Daru who was already eating here. Kurisu asks me who he is and I answer easily, but she doesn't seem to be too surprised by it anymore. We then decide to go sit with him at his table.

Daru waits for me to introduce myself, but I… can't. He starts to get a little nervous because of the awkwardness of the situation. "Okarin who is she?"

"She's… hey what's your name again?" Okabe asks realizing he had never asked my name.

"I'm… Maxine," I say after a short pause. I wonder if that's even what my name is on this world line.

"This is Maxina," he says dramatically, emphasizing the –ina.

"Stop adding –ina to our names!" Kurisu says glaring at Okabe.

I become more and more visibly defeated as the conversation continues. Not being able to understand what anyone's saying is a huge barrier I hadn't thought of before. As my mind wanders I start to think about what the me from before I got here was like. I bet I used to be able to speak fluent Japanese…

"Hey, what's wrong, nya?" someone says to me bringing me back to reality. I look to who spoke and it's none other than Feris. It seems like she was the only one to notice me staring off in the distance.

"Feris-" I start to say but then realize she won't understand a word I say beyond her name. I slump down somehow even more defeated than before.

"Nya?" she says surprised at my reaction.

"She doesn't speak Japanese, Feris," Okabe says quietly.

By now the whole table has noticed the state that I'm in. "Sorry… I forgot you couldn't understand us," Kurisu says apologetically. "…It's not like you missed anything though!" she says glaring at Okabe.

"It's okay Kurisu. I should probably learn some Japanese since I'll probably be stuck here a while."

"I can recommend you some classes if you want…" she offers.

"…This sounds weird, but... I don't actually know what my name was, so I don't think I can register."

"Your name's not Maxina?" Okabe asks.

"I know my name is Maxine, but the me that was here before was probably called something else. This world is so different from where I came from; I wouldn't be surprised."

Kurisu suddenly remembers why we came here in the first place and a curious look takes over her face. "How did you get here anyway?"

"Well, I…" I pause for a moment to collect my thoughts, "In my world there was this video game called Steins;Gate, where the main plot was Okabe's journey through the Alpha world line."

"Wait, are you trying to say we're in a video game right now?" Kurisu asks looking a little frightened.

"I don't think so. We couldn't possibly have the technology for something like that yet," I reassure her.

"A viewport to other world lines…" Okabe says thinking out loud.

Kurisu ponders whatever he just said for a moment, before saying "But if that's true then that means that you or whoever played the game would be controlling Okabe. Surely that can't be the case!"

"Well, the first two games are just visual novels. There isn't really any meaningful control to be had there. The third game gives you a lot more freedom in how you interact with the characters though still being a visual novel," I say feeling awkward describing these real people as video game characters.

"Freedom?" Okabe says nervously.

"You see, text messages were a part of the game where you could get some extra interaction with the characters. In the first couple games they were prewritten, but in the latest one you could actually type out what you wanted to say. I was actually play testing one of the first English builds of the game when it froze up on me. Then I suddenly felt really dizzy and I think I fainted. When I woke up I was standing in front of the radio building."

"Reading Steiner…" Okabe says.

Reading Steiner? Could this really be described as time travel? I guess since the theory is that the universe is infinite it might be possible. Even then, I must have come from a divergence somewhere in like the thousands for this much to be different. What could I even have done to trigger such a massive change?

Looking around the table, Kurisu looks like she's thinking pretty hard about the suggestion Okabe just made, while Daru and Feris are waiting for someone to tell them what's going on. Okabe notices it quickly now that it has happened once before and begins to fill them in while we think.

"I guess it's possible," Kurisu says admitting defeat, "but we don't even know the cause. What made her jump from such a different world line to this one?"

To: Mayuri

Sub: Re: Stay Safe!

This will be no easy task Mayuri. I'm %22 sure that the Organization will be up to no good today, but they are no match for I, the insane mad scientist Hououin Kyouma!

About 12 minutes have passed now and we have come up with nothing; we're stumped. The only clue we have is the fact that it seemed like that last text message crashed the game. The problem is that the contents of the text message was just me roleplaying as Kyouma since he was supposed to be the sender.

We decide to head to the lab since Mayuri is there now. On the way I see something, or rather someone, I was hoping not to see. The fact that she exists in this world line can only mean one thing: this is no longer the Steins Gate world line. Okabe follows my frightened stare only to have his gaze become frightened as well; he's thinking the same thing.

"Suzuha…" we both say slowly at the same time.

Okabe then makes a sudden dash up the stairs to the lab. "Okabe!" Kurisu calls after him. Daru begins the chase after him, but Kurisu hasn't recovered from the last time so she instead turns to me, immediately noticing the look on my face. "What's wrong? What's going on?"

"Suzuha is back," I say in a somber tone.

"Suzuha… the time traveler right?"

"Right."

"Okay, what's so bad about that though? Weren't they friends?" Kurisu asks confused.

"The fact that Suzuha travelled back in time means that this is no longer the Steins Gate world line. My mere existence must have somehow negated all the work Okabe did to get here," I say feeling guilty.

"Don't say that! It's not like you wanted this to happen…" Kurisu comforts me.

"You're right, but I can't help feeling like something really terrible is going to happen soon now. Every time she was here it was to prevent either a dystopia or World War III…"

Kurisu suddenly looks frightened; she must have forgotten that detail. "M-Maybe I should go ask her why she came back then. Surely it can't be-"

"Ooh can you ask her what the divergence number is too?"

"…The what?" Okabe must have left out that detail when he told her.

"She had a meter used to measure the divergence of the current world line in the Alpha attractor field. Steins Gate should be 1 . 0 4 something something."

"Okay." She says determined to prove me wrong. She begins the walk over to Suzuha. I hope I am wrong.