The meta levels are high here.

Wow. Big shocker tbh

some weird craps bout to go down aint it

Time bending bird robots??

Kat the time traveller??

so... they "tic toc" like clocks because they can travel through time...?

That's a fun little game, Tom! What time bending shenanigans are you up to Kat?!

This is literally the best way to confirm that Kat discovered how to hack into time/space, holy moly. She thought it was impossible, probed, and figured out how. No wonder her gears are being ground, as Zimmy put it.

WHAAAAAT!!!! TOM, YOU SCOUNDREL!!! I'm laughing omg

...so, a time-traveling robo-parrot?

I am...very confused.

MIND BLOWN!

"I... may have broken causality... and contaminated the time-stream... and might be my own great-great-grandmother."

Time travel now!? Wait, hold up.. the bird grew into the wall of the ravine... metal electronics growing like flesh... HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN PLANNING THIS TOM!?

Kat... Do we need to have a talk about obeying the laws of Causality, here? Because I don't think you want to speak to the Arbitrator of Temporal Mechanics.

Oh no. It's Aradia all over again isn't it? Doomed timelines all swarming to help the alpha timeline.

HOLY SHOOT

I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't that.

I just need to say OH! MY! GOD! Kat rules the timeline????

Well I have sometimes wondered why these robot birds played a big role in early chapters and then haven't been referred to since.

shenanigans ensue

No wonder Zimmy didn't like them

Ooooooooh shit son, time traveling bird bot called so hard

Ahhh! Kat's discovered portals to other dimensions and stolen their Kat-build birdies!! Now those poor Dim* students will be tumbling off to their doom. DOOOOOM, I say! *Not to call the students "dim", but hey, if they were a bit clevererer they'd not be falling off bridges, would they?

So Kat discovered time travel (or is about to).

Huh. This sounds like we might be heading into some weird stable time loop scenario where present Kat sent the birds back in time to save Annie because she knew that's what she had to do.....either that or Kat has been working towards machine godhood far longer than anyone has been anticipating.

Aaaaaaand after years of some sense of normalcy, this comic has completely shattered my unsuspecting mind.

FOOOMP 🤯

What? was that always the plan? seems like a real soap opera move if that was an after-the-fact decision.

Wut? How?

Kat actually shattered the flow of space-time, the word genius is not enough, she's already on the gods' side

Considering that at least 3 of them have been on-panel at a time, I'll be very interested to learn how it/they work(s). Has Kat beaten temporal casualty?

I FREAKING LOVE IT

whaaaaaaaaattt??? Read the panel twice because of the shock. Inter dimentional robots made by kat! she rullless

What. What. She did the Tic Tocs? When?

All this exact same robot? Or just the same type? Because this robot was destroyed prior to it being created. https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=277

Ah. This was an experiment, then: show Carver your new toy, and if she recognises it you got it right. So: is a pure Donlan project? Or will she need support from Coyote to close the loop?

Also how the hell did it grow much larger than its own size to integrate into the cliff face, Kat what were you trying to do?

:-O!!!!!

wait what

It's funny. Should people go to the chapter Fang of Summertime, page 277, the court admitted they didn't know where they came from. More importantly... Kat's PARENTS didn't know anything about them. Says quite a lot if you think about it.

time traveling bird???? excuse me??? i need to know more!!

Well, That's a bombshell i didn't expect!

Ah... Someone's been mucking with the continuum.

Looks like Timey-Wimey shenanigans are afoot.

Pair of partial conclusions to draw from this comic until further context is given: 1) Kat may be a being, like Coyote, capable of creating/altering timelines and "shifting" things amongst them. Or at the least, she may have imparted such shifting capability (intentionally or not) upon her bird. 2) We've already been informed that neither Annie is from this timeline, and the Kat constructed the (singular-but-many) bird. Perhaps the Annie from the present timeline wasn't saved by the birds, but the Annie that both of these Annies were shifted from was, and got brought to this timeline in the process. One bird was not enough, but two could land her safely, after all.

You've created a time paradox!!!!!! :O

Well hell. I was expecting something much worse. Like a "Cannie-Fannie-Miny-Mo, which impossible timeline must go?" finger of doom device. Seems like Kat should be a bit prouder of such an effort. Or a I missing something?

Wait... You're mucking about with time magic?? Kat...

Spoiler: I am definitely missing something.

Fhat the *wuck*?

Yup, Tiktok Time Machine.

Now her comment about it being impossible carries a little bit more weight.

Let’s .... do .... the time warp .... agaiiin!

Time travel dun dun dunn

Not something I was expecting.

Kat? Kat??? Kat are you ok??????

Um. What. Kat??

Now that she's created a/the tictok/s and has sent/will send it/them back this could/will close the time loop, but I'm worried we might now have a scenario where a character can't leave a terrible path because of time shenanigans.

Bruh.

I was wondering if Kat somehow built the tictocs... but they're all the one bird? maybe this is more timeline wonkiness

...It was planned all along. The broken Tic-Toc Annie found and cut open. Its "flesh" under the feathers was the same shade of purple as Kat's early biotech experiments. It just being the one bird (time travelling?) explains why after it broke, it showed up less and less. Also oh cripes this is going to surely lead to unforseen consequences. *Ahem* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

My mind just exploded.

Shit got super real. Time travel AND alternate universe counterparts? Will she end up forming the Court while our firehead girl will end up forming the forest? What is even going on?

Glad we got that cleared up for the slow students in the back. Everyone caught up now? Good. That's *not* the interesting part. The interesting part is what the bird did as its final act: grow from the ground and into the cliff wall. It grew into a entire system of machines including a satellite dish, an antenna, an intake port, and what appeared to be an analyzer. IT! GREW! And Kat MADE it to grow. Which means she knows. About everything.

What a tweest!

Oh.

Woah that's a crazy revelation holy shit

What if an encounter with the tictoks was the cause of Robot's religiosity? Imagine, the very thing that made him(?) unique and dangerous was "just" another experiment. ⚙️ If Kat never saw the tictoks did she program them to avoid her to prevent a paradox? Like, if she (re)created them too early by the time she made the "chronoporter" she sent something that was much more sophisticated but so small even a swarm of them couldn't save Annie? Connecting that with Robot, could this program be the reason why he's kept Kat's real importance to him a secret?

...Did he just make every Zimmy chapter make some degree of sense? Seriously, pages 72-73, 194, 458, 724, 1048-1049 (heck, the whole pigeon-on-the-head thing), 1409 (a weak example, but it seems Kat is covering up how much she actually knows), 1443, and heck, even 2261, all seem to be setting this up. And in case you're worried rereading the comic won't be weird anymore, don't worry. Chapter 13 is now about the relationship between a boy who's slowly turning into a bird and a girl who makes birds.

Whaaaaaaaah?

…huh? O.O

The Tik-Toks exist in a state of uncertainty. Except for that one, they are all virtual 3D holograms.

words cant describe my level of excitement right now

I have been reading this comic for around 9 years now (began in 6th grade, now well into college) and I feel like my world was just turned upside down. I absolutely love how every detail matters in this beautiful story--how a scene from chapter 8 can resurface now.

You know Kat kinda scares me. I'm starting to see what Zimmy is so afraid of. Before my view of the mechanical angel was 100% "WOAH COOL" and I still feel that way but....

omg what a plot twist really excited to see where this goes!

Later, in an interview, Kat reminisced: "I was eating a bowl of Fruit Loops and then it came to me..."

Oh my, Kat built a trans-dimensional, time-traveling robot!(?) That is incredible and rises so may questions! Can't wait for the next pages! Since the arbitrator said none of them should be there, did Kat send the Tic Tocs to all dimensions to protect Annie? To guarantee there would be a live Annie in all of them? Or was it all to save her this one time, because she heard to story from Annie? (kinda Self fulfilling Prophecy).... hummmmm

Very cute game, Tom. But how can that one robot be all those birds? Very uncanny.

Last one, I promise. If a possible encounter with a tictok influenced Robot's personality could it have also inspired Coyote's æther = human imagination theory? The tictoks came from Kat's imagination and thanks to time travel they existed before she was born. Coyote could have sniffed out the history of the one Ysengrin found but he's never brought it up as far as I can tell, or maybe even he's not crazy enough to mess with an amateur science wizard's time travel plotline.

Ooookay, things are getting a little weird now...

So, she made time traveling/shrödingbirds to look for her across time and space ?! Wow.

Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey.

Whaaaaat

O M G ! Did she figure out time-travel? Is time-travel gonna happen?

So... multiverse? Timetraveling? Gunnerkrigg Court is sooo crazy.

This raises many questions. Is there a first timeline where the tictocs aren't there to save Annie? Was Ysengrin telling the truth of it spreading, and if so, why would Kat build it like that? Does Zimmy hate them looking at her because it is Kat looking at her? How did Kat make time travel?

Wait what

Oh god, more time shenanigans.

Looks like a temporal causality loop brewin' up: a whopper.

Durnnn durnnn duuuuh

So Kat’s a dimension-shifting maniac too? What a hypocrite, Kat.

:O

T I M E T R A V E L ... I guess that also explains why the birds never showed up AFTER that incident. It had served its purpose and was no longer needed.

WOAH!!!!!!!!! i applaud u tom

Also, like, seriously... this bird was introduced in like... the first chapter. And did its big thing at the end of the first book. and NOW we finally get an explanation of it. And it builds on all of Cat's nurosies, because its becoming more and more obvious that if Cat wants her friends safe, she is going to have to do it herself. Even the "Magical helpful bird" isn't luck, its her putting all the work in. The court if not run by good people. The robots (trusted) have been removed. The forest has gone Loupy, and Annie is... someone who needs protection. And HER annie is gone.

Oooooooooh! I always DID think the tick-tock birds looked weirdly detailed compared to the rest of the art at the time. It wasn't weirdly detailed artwork, it was art from the FUTURE! Tom, you fucking brilliant bastard, you planned this all along!

GABBA WABBA HUH?!?!

It's been a long time since I commented, but I just had to say...I didn't see that coming. O_o

Kat has apparently master time travel too...

This is getting weird... she's not posessed by Diego, is she?

re. the game (I don't have an itch.io login to comment there) I found a lot of gems, then Mort sent me to, I guess, level 2, but at that point the jump stopped being high enough to get up steps, so I quickly got stuck (on Firefox). Also I guess the doors and grilles are just background? It was fun until then.

Well. Well, well. Well, well, well.

Ok, so is Kat the real "Angel" of Diego? Or her reincarnation? or what? I'm a bit confused, I can't wait for the explanations.

Oh no, Kat's figured out time travel!

Ooooooh.......that's a recursive time loop in the making for sure.

Oh!!! So Kat made the birds from the beginning!

This comic just took a major time warping twist, fraught with paradox and circular time warps and unanswerable “what if’s”, not that weren’t a lot of those already!

Oh. OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Ohohohoho. It would seem time shenanigans are abound.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

time travel?

Someone's been playing with time and causality

Time traveling robot birds!!?? Le gasp!!!

Time shenanigans or interdimensional ones.

I thought Kat met Ali after Annie fell off the bridge though. And I didn't think she was obsessed with birds until after Ali? Weird..

Mind blown *puf*

well . . . well . . . WELLLLL?????????

Whaaaaaaaaaa

uh oh has the timey wimey timeline begun?! ended?! idk, because time?!!?!?!?

So Kat built a time bird?

Uh oh. TIME IS NOT A TOY KAT!!!

Ok, we're going on a reread to figure this one out. Conspiracy mode activate!

Time shenanigans?

Wait, so now not only do we have multiple dimensions, but we also have time travel!!?! I'm getting a headache...

HUWHAAAT?! Theres too much to be said about this reveal so I'll leave it at that. Love the comic, Tom!

...YEARS!!! fOR LITERALLY YEARS YOU HAVE BEEN LETTING US THINK WHAT WE WANTED, AND DECIVED US, HOW??!!! NO. NONONONO. that is the wrong question... *Gasp* Wh-why? First learning that Robot identifies with the namesake for their model line, more than their model, and now this. Literally fifteen years, and a week after their first page, you are telling me Kat has been watching Anne since before they really met? I get her mom told her about Anne, but spying on someone like that... for that long... I have no doubt Kat could do these things, but...wow. -Meoi Lass

Oh... Kat built a robot that is unbound from the linear progression of time. Every single one of those birds we've ever seen is the exact same robot.

WHAT

WAIT WHAT

WAIT WHAT

Time traveling bird?

IS Kat the Omega Device, then?

IS Kat the Omega Device, then?

Plot twiissst

Kat, you can't do that! You'll create a time paradox! Kaaaat!

Time traveling bird robots.

And how much do Donnie and Anja know about their daughter's "divine being" status (see p. 646), and how much of that fed into Anja's reaction in ch. 18 when Kat asked her about a place to build a robot?

Proof that this is not Kat's Annie. Kat is experiencing a Rickening - getting too smart for herself and realizing the existential nightmare that is infinite versions of your friends and family, ala Rick and Morty.

The Thousand Eyes, huh?

hdsgdsagdrydsafdsafwaWHAT????????

Kat is getting creepy. She has learned to shift things now?

I’m not sure if I’ve ever commented before in the decade-ish I’ve been reading this comic, but I just wanted to say “holy *#%^ what the ^#*% that’s so awesome and horrifying!”

Woah, plot twist! So our dear Kat has become a master of time and space.

How DARE you time travel without us

This plot was already pea soup. Now it's thickening into pudding.

Is she claiming she made time traveling birds???

timeywhimey shenanigans. Cat breaking time!

.....time travel? Multiverse? Future Kat sent past Kat this design?! What's even going on anymore?!

Oh Dear. Messing with Causality? Time Travelling robot birds FTW.

"I hate temporal mechanics!" - Miles O'Brien and Miles O'Brien

Whaaaaaaaaaaa :O

Ha ha ha WHAT

OH Well, THAT Doesn't raise a bundle of questions, does it!?

Wow, I beat Mort & Go Seek first try! (Clearly, I am a gaming god.)

OH! I get it! In Kat's attempts to understand how there are multiple Annies she made the tiktok, which could go through time and have multiple recursive instances of it, which is insane. That means that Kat is incredibly powerful, like Coyote or Loup.

Holy crap. That's... actually got some pretty insane implications.

Tom, thanks for continuing to make GC interesting & unexpected. I curious about how / why Zimmy has had such strong feelings about Tik-Tok. Also, now I cannot help but wonder if Thousand Eyes & Wandering Eye have any similarity in their creation history.

They what- you what- Confusion.Exe

What the heck?

well. makes sense that zimmy doesn't want anything to do with this bird

Time Travelling Tik Toks. Try to say it three times fast.

The clock tickens.

We are starting to get into LOST territory, here. I really enjoyed that show, but it was not able to pay off in the end. Here's hoping that Tom can pull it off.

WHAT

Is that how robot do? Seems like something weird might be happening!

I like how Kat gets weirded out and within a month she's turned into a dimension-shifting time-traveling wizard. If she ever meets Coyote/Ysengrin this story will be over in a week.

Yyyyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeesssss!!!

TOM.

Wait wait hold on slow down

I've been waiting for this exact revelation to come for years.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees

What What is What the What the f is happening??

So she buld time traveling robot birds. Nice!

I did not see that coming. Why keep it a secret for so long though... I suppose though that she was already making hover cars using antigravity devices she had also made, so... I guess it all fits.

So Kat figured out time travel? Those bird robots have been around since chapter 1!

talk to your friends before they start experimenting with time travel!

Did.... Did Kat make a time-traveling guardian robot for her?

What the heck!! What the heck!!! I don't understand anything anymore!

It's like,,, I have chills? That took some PLANNING...

WHAT THE HELL (Exciting plot twist. Did not see this coming)

Yo... Kat dabbling in some serious god ish now...

I just did a full reread, and the timing couldn't have been better for this spectacular reveal. Kat made them! she made them all along! and once they'd saved Annie... they were done. Still curious how this 'Loups' in with Ysengrin planting it shortly after....

WHAAAAAAAAAAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh Kat just casually busting through time and space. Seriously how the?? I think they even said those birds had been seen even before Court times. Seriously Kat, forget questions about magic and other universes, what’s YOUR deal, lady? XD

So like The simple interpretation of this is Kat was blind the whole time! Bam, solved it.

Looking back, all the breadcrumbs were there. Alistair, Kat's robotics work and inspiration from bird anatomy, all other potential suspects (the court, Diego, the robots, the forest) not knowing where they came from, the possibilities of time manipulation and dimensional travel used by Loup. This is a heck of a reveal; can only imagine it's been planned since nearly the very beginning! Well done!

Wait. Is this time travel shenanigans? Or does she mean multiple copies of that model?

If I remember correctly these birds were said to exist for as long as the court itself, and even Kat has referred to them as "those birds"? That were hinted to do surveillance? Is? This really Kat? I'm so confused???

AAAAAAAA. "It is a tic-toc, a mythical orinthonic, said to be older than the court itself. It was created by a divine being and sent to watch over us all." AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Time travel, a great plague of complexity that exists for the sole purpose of making stories hard to read, with no telling if it truly brings ruin or not.

Okay wait. Annie's mum's spirit was passed onto her via the fire elemental within her. Are there more than just fire elementals? Diego was a technological genius, and though he may not be directly related to Kat, could there be an aspect of reincarnation involved? Kat was able to decipher that blueprint cube even though it "should not have be readable at all". Diego, though not a very good person, may not have been the first who was able to do these things. And if that's the case, if a seed was literally able to grow a building, Kat may be descended from an elemental that understood technology or something related to it, ergo the form she has while in the ether.

I thought she did see them. Didn't its wing give her the inspiration for upgrading the robots into organics? Or am I mistaken?

I GUESSED RIGHT!!!

Oh God, Kat's losing it

wait. what

n a n i

Wtf???

I absolutely did NOT expect this

Things are getting wibbly wobbly timey wimey around here...

WHAT.

14 YEARS AGO!!!!! TOM, YOU MAD LAD

;ALSKDFJA;SDLKJ;ALKSDFA;LSDKFJ;AKLSDF; AS;FLJKDSA ^this is the closest I can get to an intelligible thought at present, check back later when my brain is less OBLITERATED BY THE IMPLICATIONS

Also programmed to fuck with zimmy-zimms

Time travel? Time travel.

Wha!

Kat has mastered time travel/split timelines. Kind of like how Coyote put the stars in the sky despite them always being there.

i'm wary of where the story is headed. multiple timelines? time travel? almost always a sign of incoming bad writing. hope it's not the case here...

Loup broke the universe. There can be as many copies as you like. Death is but a door. Time is but a window. I'll be back.

Did Kat invent time travel?

Oh no. Oh NO. OH NO. I'm not sure I want to know where this is going.

Did Kat build time traveling plane-hopping robots? Is that what we're hearing here?

And now Kat has to tell the Annies all the weird stuff she's seen her do through the tic-toks. I hope that's not too awkward 😸

Oh my god

First appearance: Comic number 13. https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/index.php?p=13

Sooo... Kat's invented time travel.

what no

MY GOD

say whaaaaaaaattt

Kat made a time travelling observation bot. A robot that saved her best friend's life, which if you follow time travel logic means there might have been a timeline where she never made them in the first place, and Annie fell to her death in year 7.

So it’s all full circle?

Time Travel! :o

Broke: Birds aren't real Woke: I made birds. Also, they're from the future which is now. And they're not real.

I love your artwork! Thank you for making these wonderful comics for us! (P.S. the game is fun too)

Waht

KAT YOU W H A T

Hahaha Oh, Kat You're such a goof! ... Wait you're serious?

cute game, but having a gem counter to know how many we had left would have saved me a little "Wait, am I missing one or a bunch" time

oh shit HOLY SHIT KATYA YOU BABY GODLING

WAIT WHAT TIME TRAVEL?

Time travel shenanigans?

This... also should mean that this robot's death after saving Annie was the last thing any of these birds ever did.

Ok, Kat is becoming crazy powerful

That game was super cute!!! Also how did Kat learn to bend time?

I am genuinely shocked!

Say what?!

Oh, I thought she was in the the hall when Ysengrin brought it (p. 276). But I now see she was forbidden from attending (p. 265). I guess the multiple birds could all be the same creation if the Kats of multiple time branches all sent it back to their common past.

Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.

this episode of black mirror gets weirder and weirder

Time travel??

Well mind blown there. She really is the Mechanical Angel even way back when.

OH MY GOSH KAT INVENTED TIME TRAVEL

NO, Kat. Do not meddle with the laws of causality!

And I though Kat was amazing already. Now I'm beginning to be terrified. She's like the Queen of Robots.

WhAaaat?

Have you been reading about the one-electron theory of the universe?

Oh.

plot twist!

WHAT

The plot is making time travel noises and I'm here for it

Wow, that's some good payoff. Oh man, and one of those bird grew roots on the bank of the forest, which is why Ysengrin and Coyote first visited the court and appeared in this comic... wow.

Wut?

No wonder Zimmy doesn't like them tick tocks, they probably look like some kind of monolithic madness that kat looks like to her aswell.

time shenanigans!

Kat is very good at keeping secrets.

I liked the game. I also like the links to the moments where things first occur.

Wait Whaaaaa

Time traveling birb?

"They are all this same robot" Does... does that mean she made a single one, and then using time travel shenanigans multiple appear at once?

Tweetie is a time traveler!

So why does she feel bad about that

Why does Kat seem so sad about her creation?

CHILLS.

That is such a long callback, I genuinely cannot remember if I figured that out already.

Oh god its a timeloop, everyone get yer timelines out

9/10 Brilliant! Ditch the Music - I had to go listen to the Lego "Everything is Awesome" earworm to get rid of it :-)

You cracked Time Travel?

She wasn't near that scene, yet still knows what happened and is quite sure just her Bird-Bot was present to save Annie. She also just built the Robot recently... ...so my guess is that she invented a time-traveling Bird-Bot that uses that time travel to self-multiply, just to get behind/prove how Annie COULD exists twice in the same time frame (and safe her in the past while she was at it...)?

Kat, it's one thing to mess with alternate dimensions. It's another thing entirely to mess with time...

Tick Tock

Toc Tick goes the time machine?

Some Time & relatively close Dimensions in space shinanigins afoot!

Wow, major tectonic shift there! Can't wait to see the after shocks.

Sooooo.... Is this a stable time loop, or is it a split timeline kind of thing with Annie having died in the original timeline?

WOW. Now that is a twist.

Oh gosh Kat, don't tell me that your Annie died and that your weird time bird stole some other Kat's Annie from another timeline.

D8 I have kept up with this story aince 2007 and I NEVER saw this coming.

So wait let me get this straight she can't reconcile two Annes but she can figure out how to duplicate the process and had messed with the time continuum to the point Ann should be dead but is not because of her interference

Welp, guess we know what happened to this timeline's Antimony now

Whaaaaaaaaat

"KatIsAmaising O M G ! Did she figure out time-travel? Is time-travel gonna happen?" You have the tenses kind of wrong. My stab at it would be: "Time Travel has already going to have happens"

Cue everyone's minds going 'splody. I've been reading this story for over ten years. *shakes head in amazement* Tom, you're something else.

Wait, what? Why is everyone talking about time travel? I read it as they are all the same model of robot that she made and she’s revealed that it was her creation all along. I can’t remember far back enough to recall when Kat’s ever talked about them before. Can someone fill me in?

I saw an angel today.

I've been reading this comic every week for the past 8+ years, and may I just say... AAAAAAAAAAAA THIS IS AMAZING

The first tic toc appearance was 15 years ago people. This is some long game Tom playin right now

WHAT

.......wut? How in the hell did Kat invent robobirds that saved Annie in the past? Was she inventing back then? Discover the secret to time travel?? Enlist the help of the Doctor and his TARDIS??? How the hell-? O.o; yeah.. Pretty sure took will be scratching their heads bloody until answers are revealed. ^^;

okwaitwut

Gotta get back, back to the past Samurai Kat

Wait. Kat??? KAT!!!!!!! You time traveled?!!!!!??!?!!??? WHA

Wait. I am so confused! WHAT. Did Kat time travel or something?????? 😱 OMG 😱!!! Is Kat gonna go back in time and DESTROY the birds so Annie would DIE IN THE RIVER????????????????? But Y??

Anne is a time displaced version of Anne. I knew it.

...Well then! =D; That WOULD explain why neither of them 'should be in this timeline.' ^_^;;;

Aaaand it just occurred to me that her original spark of inspiration came from that baby bird. XD; I see the connection.

That feeling you get when crap is about to go down tomorrow. I can’t wait for it. Kat being the god of space and time is here. I wonder if coyote or Jones knew this before hand. I mean surely they would have noticed things were going weird.

Everybody is saying time travel but if it's just alternate dimensions no real time travel may be involved - it's just she's saving different Annies than hers.

*ppppewwwwwwww* Mind blown.

called it!!!!

I think the implication here is that Annie should have died when she was pushed off the bridge in Chapter 8. This would explain why "neither Annie should be here": She was saved by robots that shouldn't have existed. I wonder if Muut's appearance shortly after the fall was because Annie was expected to die.

I do, however, have SO MANY questions.

Just like The Stone has always been around even though her lore started later in universal history. Super fun.

So Annie isn't the main character in this story. Kat is. Annie(C+F -s) is(/are) just the narrator(s).

TIME TRAVEL!

Kat is the seed bismuth

So Coyote tried to steal back Reynardine (pg 281), which caused Annie to fall off the bridge, then the tictocs saved her and she found the broken tictoc and cut it open, then she left it behind and it grew into the ravine wall, so Coyote came to complain about it to the court. So Kat thinks it's her fault that Coyote damaged large swathes of the court more recently...

So essentially, she just said f*ck it and became god.

Well, I did it! XD

Wow, this is insane. I'm struck by Kat & Annie having crazy abilities but at the same time being real teens who have emotions and make mistakes. Hope this all turns out ok.

Wait a minute... time travel???

Nooooooooo why did we have to add time travel? This comic has been so great...! RIP Gunnerkrigg Court logic

that's that mystery solved! not as mysterious as I previously thought

I cant comment on the game page, but I've always wanted to make a little side scrolling adventure game based on Gunnerkrigg. Its top on my list of things I'd make if I could.

So... A Temporally disjointed Scout bot, that can pull in multiple iterations of itself from outside time as needed, while it fulfills it's purpose, which is probably A: preserve timeline, and B: find original Annie

I called it, ya dorks. I mean, there's no way to prove that I saw this coming years ago. But *I* know that I did.

Wow! On page 194, When gamma describes it as "the thousand eyes" Tom represents it visually as a 4-dimensional object (like a hypercube). Gatdang, this man is a genius!

Oh! Oh dooood! Dooood! When Ysengrin broke the bird in chapter 14, page 19 (the one who grew roots) they all vanished! They've not been seen since then, only mentioned! My bloody mind!

So... either multiverse crossing robots searching in timelines all created by different Kats, but all being the same robot. Or more likely the one single robot was programmed to loop itself through time repeatedly, and Ysengrin breaking it broke it in the final iteration of that timeline... or the robot is duplicate in many times until one is broken at the final timeline which is decided by the breaking. In other words... time be ^)*(&^*(&^%( yo. The Doctor is going to come calling to fix this, beep Loup's nose so he comes back as the much more likable Ysengrin. Oh, and Coyote too.

KAT MADE THEM!? When she was like 10?? Why??

So is she saying... there's multiple instances of the one bird? Did they stop appearing because the latest one died? Am I overthinking it or coming up short?

Tik tok, on the clock, but the party dont stop

The thing I'm not seeing in the comments is the fact that when the tic toc died ysengrin buried it and we still dont know why... he also destroyed it specifically to deny the court access to study it, did he know something?

"...from a nonlinear, nonsubjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey... stuff" Holy heck, some serious Doctor-Who-style weirdness is about to go down. I wish I could remember exactly what has been said about the birds, I vaguely remember someone calling them Watchers? Or uhhh, apparently "it", not "them". Either way, this is a LOOOONG setup. Did you plan this from the start, or was it written in later? Not that you can answer, of course. I'm pleased to see the story going back towards the Deep Lore side. Seems like a lot other stuff has been going on lately.

TIME TRAVEL! TIME BLOODY TRAVEL! sigh.

Ah, so neither Annie was supposed to be in the time line because she was supposed to die when she fell off the bridge. Either she would've died to the impact, drowning, or Jeanne killing her while she was injured.

Those birds existed since chapter 1. Oh...my...goodness.

Tom, at one of your meetups you mentioned there was an upcoming plot you’ve been really looking forward to visit. When each big development happens that changes the story, I’ve wondered if it was it. But you seem to outdo yourself every. single. time! Should’ve known the rabbit hole goes deeper still, and I love it.

So is Kat sad because she's created the bird but hasn't figured out how to send it back in time yet? Or is she sad because she knows that if she doesn't send it back, Annie dies falling off the bridge in Chapter One? If the bird is "Thousand Eyes," does that mean that Jones ("Wandering Eye") might be another of Kat's creations in the future?

I am getting very strong vibes of the Fringe and Peter Bishop here...

Tiiiiime travel

And I suddenly hear the TARDIS wheezing as time travel shenanigans begin.

And now, this robot will return you to your timeline.... and I will be sad forever because you died and we all did nothing, at least in this version of your timeline. It was nice knowing you.

So eh... What if Kat is related to the Seed Bismuth? And Annie to the Forest or even Coyote's creation. Or Jones for that matter. What if this entire fucking story takes place because these two girls are either habitually breaking the multiverse, creating the god-damn multiverse, or on a giant fucking acid trip. Tom, I think I've been reading and following your story for FIFTEEN YEARS. And you still amaze and wow me. Sci Fi of he highest grade, you absolute mad lad.

Hey, what if Kat is a younger version of Jones who's on a loop? She freezes at a later point in life and sees the end of the world and the rebirth of the new.

Stable time loop, eh? The plot thickens! Even more, I mean.

I've read enough Homestuck to know where this is going.

Wait, so in that chapter where the birds helped Annie and Muut shows up....... He was there fore the soul of the Annie that wasn't saved by the birds @~@

I'm sorry, but, and I can't stress this enough, H'WHAT?!

PLOT THICKENS

Ohhh that explains the tick tocking. I assumed it was just machinery being noisy but time shenanigans is much more fun.

Sooooo, how long has Coyote been living in your head, Kat?