The Talos Principle Alexandra Drennan's Time Capsules

Time Capsule

When i was a little girl, one of our teachers, Ms. Higgin's, told us to make a time capsule. Write letters to the future so one day we could remember what it was like to be children. I thought it was stupid, so I didn't do it, which i really regret. So... I guess I'm gonna make one now bury it in the archive instead of under a tree. I don't know if anybody will ever find it, but somehow it seems important to keep talking, to keep thinking, for as long as i can.

Problem Solvers

The answer that came to me again and again was "play". Every human society in recorded history has games. We don't just solve problems out of necessity, we do it for fun! Even as adults. Leave a human being alone with a knotted rope and they will unravel it, leave a human being alone with blocks and they will build something. Games are part of what makes us human, we see the world as a mystery, a puzzle, becuse we've always been a species of problem solvers.

The Talos Principle

I was in school when i first read about the Talos Principle. I think it disturbed me at the time, made my hyberaware of... my body as physical object, the material reality of the brain. Ideas that made me uncomfortable at first but, I think in the long run it helped me understand how frail human beings are. And how precious. It's not a comforting way of thinking about the world, but i'd rather face the truth than lie to myself.

Pompeii

When i was in ninth grade my parents took me to Pompeii. At first I was amazed by the feeling walking through an ancient city. But then i suddenly got scared. I realized that I was walking through a real place where real people had lived. People like myself with mothers and fathers and lives and hope and dreams. And now it was all gone forever. I ran to my father crying and told him about this and he said... I remember so clearly. He said: "Yes, but we are here. So long as there are people in the streets, the past isn't really gone."

We Built All Of This

I keep having these dreams. Great empty cities, silent roads stretching for miles. The Earth from space, all dark. Not a single light to guide me home. But if someone really came from another world, what would the Earth look like to them? A wilderness? A wasteland? I don't think so. Even after thousands of years they'd see a world shaped by our hand in every aspect of its being. They'd see the cities and the roads, the bridges, the harbors and they would say: "Here lived a race of giants." These dreams, they scare me but... they also remind me that we built all of this.

DNA

DNA is information trasmitted across time. The living and the dead are part of the same chain, bound together by chemistry. That's true of all speices, but humanity has taken this bond further. Thanks to technology we have access to the thoughts and ideas of people who's physical bodies are long gone. Like you listening to me now, even though I'm definitely dead at this point. You're part of that chain. You have the capacity to remember.

Beyond Your Own Lifespan

How do you solve a problem that expands beyond your own lifespan? That question may be the essence of civilization. The only answer I can find is: To initiate a process, to create an environment in which the solution will occur independently of yourself. But, that requires a difficult sacrifice. Letting go of your desire to bear witness, to exist at the center of the cosmos. To participate in the project of civilization, is to accept death. Oh Alex, you're such a fun person!

Live Forever

On the first night, when i knew it was over, i went out to look at the stars. And i thought: Somewhere up there are the stations we build and the probes we sent out, Voyager 1 & 2, beyond the edge of our solar system. Continuing their long journey through interstellar space, like memories of our ambition, ambassadors who have outlived their homeland. And then i thought - If they still exist, are we really gone? If machines are an extension of the human body, then so long as they continue to function we're still here.

The Middle Ages

Sometimes i think about the Middle Ages and about what it must have been like to live in the ruins of a great civilization, to know that so much has been lost. But then I remind myself that while the West sank into darkness, others picked up the pieces. That civilization always survived becuse the great insights of philosophy and science are not bound to any one culture or people. They belong to all of us. And one day they will belong to you.

Too Simple Answers?

Sometimes I worry that the answers I embrace are to simple. Can we ever truly fullt understand the divide between our biology and our intellect? How much is nature? How much is nurture? If my intellectual capabilities and my knowledge were replicated in a machine - would that machine be me? Would it be human? And what would be more humbling to my ego? If the answer was Yes, or if the answer was No? What if I'm making too many assumptions? But there's no time to worry about my ego now, there's work to be done.

Knowledge

When the scale of it all overwhelms me, this is what I tell myself: We can calculate the age of the Earth, the size of the universe, the future of the stars. Sure, we are minuscule momentary flashes of thought on a grain of sand drifting through the cosmos. But our minds can recreate the past and predict the future. On say, Friday, a million years from now, we'll all be dead. But right now we know what the night sky will look like on that day. And so, in a way, we're not entirely bound by time. Knowledge is a... a kind of "freedom".

Egoism

This is all ego, isn't it? Recording these random thoughts, these letters to the future. Just a desperate grab for immortality. But you should know. Yes this was my idea, my project, but so many people helped. People i don't even know, people i haven't even met who can do things I don't even begin to understand. That if we succeeded, if someone's listening to this, i really can't take credt for it. What we achived - we achieve together. And if we failed... well, it doesn't matter.

There's No Time!

God, there's no time. Just not enough time. We're trying to buld the future out of old video game code and half finished research projects. We should have had years! Maybe decades. But the kind of money they use to put into building bombs. Ah, if i stop and think about how crazy this is, i will have a nervous breakdown. So I won't. Yeah, ok. Back to work, Alex.

Intelligence

Intelligence is more than just problem solving. Intelligence is questioning the assumption you're present with. Intelligence is the ability to question existing thought constructs. If we don't make that part of the simulation - all we'll create is a really effective slave.

The Next Generation

I look at this inert shape and i wonder, who you're gonna to be. Will you hold the same value as we do? Will you love us from having to created you? Will you resent us for having put you into an uncertain and dangerous world? Looking back at our history, our achievements, our crimes - what will you make of us? Will the world you create be like ours, or so different that we can't even imagine? Either way, I hope that you'll find this little blue planet to be as beautiful as we did. I hope you'll take care of it a lot better than we did. And i hope one day you'll look up, and reach for the stars.

Earth And Humanity

Nearly everything on this planet, from the surface of the Earth to the compisition of the atmosphere itself has been shaped by life. It's a process that takes millions of years. But we humans with our technology, with our understanding and manipulation of systems, have change everything in just a few centuries. I think that's also part of what makes us human. We reshape the world, in our image. It's how we create ourselves. And how we destroy ourselves.

Curiosity

Is there anything that we associate more closely with intelligence than curiosiry? Every intelligent species on Earth is attracted by the unknown. Our methodologies are full of riddles and mysteries and divine knowledge. Even the word "apocalypes". Even the word "apocalypes" mean revelation. It seems like our ancestors always imagined that even at the very end, we would solve one last mystery.

Loss

My best friend died today. In the abstract a human death is nothing of course. An insignificant blip in a sea of billions. But the world is not abstract. Reality is always... specific. Painfully so. That one specific human being. Who existed only once of all the infinity of time and space. That human being... was my friend, but he's not coming back. No matter how much I want him to. So, all I can do in the end is keep working. Because that specicity, that uniquness of people of real people is worth preserving.

Life

I look in the mirror sometimes and i see myself like some alien being. I think, "Who am I? Why do I have these eyes and those hands? Why do I see the colors that I see? Why do I think like I think?" I did not choose to exist. I was created. Every single part of my body, every strand of my DNA - is part of a story that stretches back billions of years. I exist only because of the choices and sacrifices made by so many others, but... I don't know who they are. And what effect will my choices have on those who come after me? Maybe that's what it means to be human. Every species is part of the story, but we're the only ones that know that.

Wasted Time?

There are flaws in the system. I think sometimes it accesses the wrong databases. Pulls random data. I don't know, I don't know how bad it is. It all seems to be stable but, can't I tell what kind of impact this is going to have on the process and... ah. I just don't have the strength to go over all of the code again. I just... I just don't want it all to be for nothing. I spend all my time here. I didn't visit my parents, I didn't see my friends. I did nothing but work, and I'm so scared that it didn't mean anything. That I just wasted it all, becuse i thought we could... we could save the world.

The End

I can't keep my eyes open anymore. I... think this is... This is it. The end of... me. I don't believe that I will continue to exist. I would like to think that there is a... a soul or spirit. Some part of my conciousness that will presist. All the evidence says that when my brain dies, I will be gone. I've lived my life, never turning away from the truth even if it scares me and... I can face this. Face my own end, and... and say with absolute conviction... that it was good to be human.

Audio Version By BulletNG

If you would like to listen to the Time Capsules, then check out BulletNG's video down below.

I would like to add that BulletNG and I have not worked together. Give him the support for making the video, not me.

A Few Words From Myself

I've been working on this for quite a while now. I wrote the text as in the way she tells becuse i wanted it to have some empathy, instead of just a boring plain text. But the reason i did this is becuse I have always liked the dialoges. But what I found strange is that the dialogs hasn't been written down in easily accessible places. Still, the game has been around since 2014. I'm a little surprised that no one has done this here on Steam. I felt that i could do it, so that's what I did.

I've put the capsules in chronological order, in other words "Time Capsules" is #1, "Problem solvers" is #2, "The Talos Principle" is #3 etc.

If you enjoyed this guide, please consider leaving a like on it, because it would really help me out a lot. But that's it from me. Have a nice day. Thanks so much for reading.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2378756869

Alexandra Drennan's Time Capsules