#60
It's… directionless and meandering, to me. None of the individual parts are particularly strong by themselves, and they make even less sense when put together and in context of one another. And not the good kind of no sense, the kind that makes me think it wasn't caused by authorial vision, but by the lack thereof.
The description is… poor, clinical-tone wise, but that's honestly never been a massive deal for me, so whatever. The bigger problem is that it fails to like, effectively or adequately communicate any worthwhile information about the anomaly beyond the fact that it's a time machine, which you could've done in a lot less space. It doesn't even describe the machine so much as it describes what astral projection is, which is fair enough but like… not done in a particularly engaging or creative way.
The IRC addendum contributes basically nothing to the article. The dialogue is stiff and awkward, but text can be that way, so lets focus on the content. Okay, the operators experience different astral planes! Awesome… but that ends up being almost wholly irrelevant, beyond the references to it in the next set of test logs. Test logs which… are also irrelevant! You've already explained the manner in which the anomaly works, so it's not like it gives us any new information there, and besides that it's… literally just predictions. It's not even like the Foundation later saw these things happen or had them avoided, thereby confirming them, so there's no reason for the reader to even think they're accurate. They're just tossed out, and not followed up on. The researcher's note poses a neat idea of whether there's a single unified astral plane, but it's just an open question — but it makes sense, sure. The email logs don't make a shred of sense — again, the dialogue is stiff and wooden ("I'd pursue this further if I wasn't busy administrating other projects and dealing with the twins. I'm sorry Davis but you'll have to leave this proposal alone."), but the larger issue is that why are they worried about a paradox looking into the past, but not when looking into the future? They're obviously not changing the events, they're just knowing them before they happen - which would indubitably change the future but learning about events after they happen… changes nothing.
The security log does start to get interesting but you have three addenda there when honestly one would suffice. The computer log one is completely irrelevant — we already know what he's gonna try to do from the emails, so the reader learning that he made a typo is kind of pointless. The last addendum is finally where the article develops a bit of forward-moving story on its own, but it's marred by awkward dialogue of this guy expositing to himself while he shambles around without any particular goal or motivation. Then the article ends.
It's surprising to say this in an article this long, but this… barely has a narrative to it. like 75% of the article is wasted space contributing to no particular story or plot threads. I reiterate that the last addendum is the only one where anything actually happens or any new information is revealed to the reader. Aside from that, it's just events occurring that aren't strung together by an overarching narrative or theme.
