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If someone had two linking books and used them both at the same time, do you think that they'd be split in half, with one half in each age?

I'd say you'd still only link to the one that you touch first. "But what if you touch both at the same time?" You can't. Reality isn't split into milli/micro/nano/femto/whatever-seconds, there is always a smaller time interval, so in theory you can always look more closely at what happened and see that your right hand touched the panel a moment before the left one. Boring answer, I know, but it's the most likely and realistic outcome IMO.

Unfortunately the answer is most probably.

True, but would the second book be aware you're already using the first book? It seems like it would just grab you too, then fight over which book takes you.

"Hey, that's my explorer!"
"No, he touched me first!"
"No he didn't, I saw it myself!"
"And what makes you think you're right?"
"I'm older than you!"
"How does that make you any better than me?"
"Why do you Linking Books never understand such simple things?"
"Of course. You racist Descriptive Books are always so superior."
"You call me racist? Have you ever heard yourself speak?"
"Look, you're so annoying that you even scared off my explorer!"
"It's not your explorer!"
[...]

What if you placed a linking page on another linking page?

I feel like, loving Myst, I'm torn apart into two ages all the time. It probably would feel like that. Like knowing you are here and feeling like you aren't; all at once.

Ignoring the quantum thing, of course.

My initial geek thought is "Two events can't be simultaneous!"

Which age you end up in though... I'd think it would be not which you touched first, but which you touched last!

My thinking is that you'd quickly link to one age, dropping the book, but bringing the other book with you, and no sooner you barely arrive, you'd link to the second age, leaving that book in the first book's age.

Let's say linking has an effect like what we see in Riven, where your hand is the first to link away and it propagates over a few seconds.

If you do that with each hand, you'd start disappearing from both sides into two different ages. Eventually, one link "wave" would propagate to the other side of your body, which is already in a different age, but my guess is that wouldn't be a problem. It would continue propagating in the other age as well until all of you is in the 2nd age. You'd have no books with you, the first book left in the original age, and the 2nd book left in the first book's age.

I think it just wouldnt work, because you cant activate both at the same moment, one will always be faster

Adeon wrote:Which age you end up in though... I'd think it would be not which you touched first, but which you touched last!

Interesting theory, didn't think of that before, but it sounds entirely plausible that you can link multiple times at once. I wouldn't read too much into the linking "wave" animation seen in Riven and Exile though. In Myst we see linking as getting sucked into the panel, and in all of the present day games you just slowly fade away. (Can't remember how linking looks in Myst IV.) The linking animations in the earlier Myst games are probably just artistic license (like half of the other plot elements from those games) and the fading animation is the "real" one, because Uru Live is reality from an IC point of view. In any case your theory works, you'd be touching the second book mid-link, so you'd link to the second age while inking to the first age.

Another question though - can you actually move while linking? In the first four games you can (mainly because the actors were real and couldn't remain perfectly static), but in the present day games, mainly in Uru, you seem to freeze while linking and only continue to move once the linking process is complete. The only exception to this that I know about is when you link through the shell hologram in To D'ni, where if you jump into it your arms keep waving during the link. That might just be Yeesha magic though