Description[]
Taylor's journey within the Lifeline Series continues! Deep in the isolated vacuum of space, trapped in orbit around a strange black hole, our intrepid astronaut must once again reach out for a lifeline - YOU! Inside the spaceship Veridian, Taylor thought it was time for some hard-earned quiet solitude and a little R&R, but a very unexpected guest has other plans…
The story unfolds in real-time, and every decision you make shapes the course of the story. Taylor's life, the fate of humanity, and time itself are in your hands. No pressure!
• Taylor’s epic struggle for survival continues! • The sixth installment in the hugely popular Green Series! • Acclaimed author and fan favorite Dave Justus returns! • Immerse yourself in this sci-fi adventure with notifications from Taylor delivered throughout your day. • Your decisions could change the course of humanity... and possibly time itself!
Praise for Lifeline:
“I’ve played many games that I find engrossing, but Lifeline may be one of the first that changed the way I thought about my daily routine, which leapt off the screen and became a part of my lived experience.” - Eli Cymet, Gamezebo
“For a few brief hours I cared – really cared – about the fate of a completely fictional character. I don’t think any other game I’ve played has made me feel that way before.” - Matt Thrower, PocketGamer
Plot[]
(The previous game, Lifeline: Flatline, can be found here)
Taylor can now communicate with the player after problems interfering from the black hole that Taylor is orbiting. He is aboard the enemy military ship, but now it has a fire aboard. Taylor says that the ship is basically on fire after a piece of tunguskite, which carries negative energy and stores heat extremely easily, was heated up by Taylor to scare off the infected crewmen aboard the enemy vessel from Lifeline: Silent Night. One piece heated up and burnt the ship, and Taylor asks the player whether he or she should use the big Type B & C fire extinguisher or the small sodium chloride fire extinguisher with advice from the player. The Sodium chloride (which is also a type D fire extinguisher) is the correct fire extinguisher since it is specifically used to eliminate magnesium fires.
Taylor reminds the player that at the very end of Lifeline: Silent Night that as Taylor drove the enemy ship towards the black hole and all seemed lost, a person tapped his shoulder, and a stranger's voice said, "Hey, Taylor... you wanna get out of here?" Apparently, Taylor found out that this person was actually another Taylor. Taylor thought the voice was a stranger because Taylor says that people think words differently from how they speak. Taylor is wearing everything from the astronaut suit except his or her helmet. Taylor decides to call this new Taylor T2, short for T2aylor. Taylor and T2 help destroy wreckage going towards their ship either by Waldo (controlling an arm-like mechanism on the side of the ship) or by laser. T2 also predicts when the proximity alarm goes off (although it is off by just two seconds). This second Taylor, which Taylor the player talks to as T2, is wearing a full astronaut suit, and Taylor believes that this is his or her future self due to the crazy nature of black holes and time dilation. However, T2 cannot reveal his face under his or her suit because T2 says that he or she was burned and scarred and cannot reveal his or her face. Upon being asked if T2 can go to sleep, T2 says, "No, I don't need to any-- I mean, I'm not tired right now." However, Taylor doesn't seem suspicious.
T2, the Viridian crewmate, and Taylor depictions
Taylor then goes to bed but cannot go back to sleep and listens to one of the before-infected enemy crewmate's music playlists of up to 20 songs. Taylor gives commentary on such songs, those of which are space-related, and goes back to sleep. Taylor wakes up, and T2 says that he or she tranquilized and tortured the infected crew and uncovered the nature of this black hole and the mission of the Green. T2 gets into the theory but says that the Green managed to accidentally summon an artificial black hole that can allow the green to control everything in the past, present, and future. A Tipler Cylinder process where a hypothetical construct to make time travel achievable was attempted but seems like an impossibility. Frank Tipler in the 1970s proposed that a cylinder, if spun on its longitudinal axis, could achieve time travel because it creates a closed time-like curve. The creation failed under an attempt by the Green. Still, the Green managed to accidentally create an unreal artificial event horizon due to a fractured space-time instead, causing the same effects as the tunguskite crystals. This tunguskite possesses Hawking radiation of particles made to exist for a concise amount of time but are preserved because the crystals are so close to the event horizon. T2 also says that the green is a hive mind (SIMILAR TO DELILAH'S DESCRIPTION IN LIFELINE: FLATLINE), where they are all controlled by the Green's leader, its Queen, or the queen of the hive, something like that of a bee or ant colony. The Green's queen asked the hive to collect all the tunguskite or to pull space ships throughout time to crash on 31U00W (Desert Moon). The Green do anything the Queen instructs, even if it's life or death. Death of the Queen may lead to the end of the Green, but doing so would not be an easy task. The Green possess everything of their prey except their memories. Taylor talks to the player as usual, but T2 says that he or she never had a lifeline partner to get where he or she is now, and T2 urges to ignore the player, despite T2 saying that he or she is an identical future of Taylor one week into the future as a consequence of the black hole, and should have theoretically also had a player advising T2 on what to do. Taylor asks the player to remind Taylor to bring up the code "cat" later on. T2 also says that he or she tortured the enemy crewmen, something Taylor cannot relate to, but T2 says Taylor will eventually resort. T2 mentions that these infected marines are named Corporal Balthazar de Ley, Corporal Casper Cruciger, and Wing Commander Melanie Chior, of the Ninth Battalion. Part of the mission is to go to T2's future spaceship, blow up the spaceship Taylor is on, and escape with the help of the blown-up ship to escape the black hole's grasp. Upon going into T2's ship after T2 enters first, T2 jokes about a helmet, and Taylor insists on getting his or her helmet back on Taylor's ship. T2 insists on doing anything but that, but Taylor goes back to Taylor's ship to find the helmet on the player's insistence. Trying to find it, Taylor starts to think that T2 is suspicious because a strange instrument is set alongside the tranquilizer. The player tells Taylor that this is an EpiPen, and it counteracts the tranquilizer. Taylor cannot find the helmet in his room and checks in the cockpit. Taylor checks on the monitors and finds T2 injecting the EpiPen into the tranquilized enemy crewmates. Taylor realizes that T2 is infected with the green and locks the door with a glitchy code that prevents anyone from typing the correct code to enter the cockpit. Taylor has some chicken for food and falls asleep. Taylor wakes up and finds another vessel in space and realizes that this vessel contains onboard Mari Lee, formerly of the White Star, on an escape pod heading towards him or her and communicating via shining lights to each other in the form of Morse code. However, her vessel is approaching the black hole.
Taylor realizes that he or she can only save Mari and her vessel by using the Eva suit, which he or she can find in the Ready Room. Taylor narrowly escapes from the cockpit to the ready room and finds an Eva suit and a cracked helmet. Having also been aboard the White Star, Taylor was informed by Mari that she is pregnant, so the pressure for Taylor to rescue her is even more important. The Eva suit is a suit designed to be used in space, and Taylor has a SAFER unit (or Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue, similar to jetpacks in space) that allows him or her to wrap the ship Mari is on with the spaceship Taylor is on with wires. Taylor says that he or she will feel a lot of pain because the nitrogen content cannot adjust easily towards the vacuum of space. Upon exiting, when the player reminds Taylor of his or her "cat," Taylor remembers to mention that he or she could communicate to a player breaks the chain of T2s because Taylor can do something that breaks the black hole cycle. When T2 never had a lifeline partner, the cycle of T2 getting infected would happen the same way repeatedly forever. The concept is Schrodinger's cat experiment. However, since Taylor has a partner, the partner's advice breaks the chain and allows the future to be broken. Taylor also brings up how back on Earth, Taylor remembers one day how at a pet store Austin Pets Alive!, one of the animal shelters in Austin, while just looking for a cat, Taylor's "folks'' were interested in getting a hound dog puppy, while Taylor's brother and sister played with kittens. One particular cat was older and in all black, having bright golden eyes. He was hardly looking like a cat, his fur was patchy and matted, and he was severely underweight. Taylor suspects the cat had been there for months, although Taylor couldn't tell how old this guy was. Taylor opened the cage, and the stink seemed to hit Taylor like a fist. He had horrible stomach problems, and they hadn't found food that worked. But he walked to the edge of his cage and put his two front paws on Taylor's shoulder and then laid his head against Taylor's cheek and started purring. And that was it. Taylor was in love. Taylor and the player suspect that the cat was waiting for Taylor, and while other people passed him by because the cat was sickly or smelly or not looking like a kitten, the cat was looking for someone who would open his cage and accept him for who he was. The decision rewarded the cat with Taylor's unconditional love. Taylor's family got him on the right diet, got him healthy and smelling good, made his cat shiny, but aside from the pills and supplements and specialty foods aside, all the cat wanted was a lap to fall asleep in. He just needed to know that he was cared for. Taylor advises to take some time to hang out with a pet, or perhaps a friend, and give some attention. To make sure that the player loves them. To make sure they have tons of happy memories of the player, and vice versa. Taylor excludes goldfish since they don't really have stellar memories. Taylor says to make all these happy memories because, to take it from Taylor personally, "you never know when you might get stranded in outer space... and you'll wish you had just one more day with them. Oh... and thank you again. The player asks why, and Taylor responds "for - man, this is probably gonna sound dumb, but I'm pressing forward with it - for being the one to rescue me. Because I'm clearly Tom Haverford in this metaphor. I'm smelly. I'm underweight. Space travel has treated me unkindly. But none of that mattered to you. You saw that I needed help - needed someone to care - and you answered. You came to my rescue. So... thanks."
Taylor gets what he or she believes is sufficiently pressurized enough and exits the vessel, and feels the pain of not properly adjusting to the vacuum of space (which Taylor says would take 24 hours but needs to do this to save Mari Lee). T2 intercepts the communication and says that T2 plans to commit harm to Taylor and Mari. Taylor manages to round himself or herself around Mari's ship and can communicate to her, incorporating spacetime predictions of past and future Taylors, to change the will-be future Taylor and to make this future Taylor good and under the wing of Mari, thereby breaking that time loop. Taylor reaches back to Taylor's ship with the Sleeper set up, only to find that T2 is waiting for Taylor in a fully functioning suit and one that is fully adjusted to the vacuum of space. Taylor does not have much left other than to set the thing connecting Mari's ship to Taylor's ship, whereby the enemy vessel can tug on Mari's vessel and stabilize both vessels around the blackhole. T2 just showed up just before Taylor can escape back to the vessel and punches Tyler hard. But, unexpectedly, Taylor intentionally lets go of the Sleeper (the Sleeper having been connected to both ships), letting Taylor and T2 (who was grabbing hold of Taylor) fully in the grasp of the black hole and without any way to reach the ship. T2 first gets into spaghettification through the intense black hole's gravity and gets sucked in first. Taylor says that he or she does not know what's next (if there even is a next) but that he or she'll try to communicate with the player if he or she regains consciousness. As he or she begins to be spaghettified, Taylor says, "Thank yooouuuu aaaaannnnnnddddd ggggggooooodddddddbbbbbbb" (probably meaning to say Thank you and goodbye). The connection between Taylor and the episode ends.
(The next game, Lifeline: Beside You In Time, can be found here)
Characters[]
Taylor[]
Formerly part of the Varia and White Star vessels, Taylor is now on an enemy ship called the Viridian outside a black hole.
T2[]
Potential future, Taylor one week into the future of Taylor, says that future Taylor has a damaged face from the fire that went wrong and that T2 cannot show his or her face.
Enemy Infected Crewmates[]
Infected crewmates by the green, T2 mentions that these infected marines are named Corporal Balthazar de Ley, Corporal Casper Cruciger, and Wing Commander Melanie Chior of the Ninth Battalion. Taylor listens to Melanie Chior's leader in her 20 song-playlist because he or she is restless and cannot sleep.
Mari Lee[]
Companion on the White Star Ship, who is now in an escape pod, Taylor attempts to save her on his or her ship. According to Lifeline: Silent Night, the previous episode of this game, Mari Lee is pregnant.
Music[]
Taylor listens to 20 songs from one of the former leaders of the Enemy Vessel, Melanie Chior before she got infected. They are ordered in this order:
1) Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space - Spiritualized
2) Lost in Space - Aimee Mann
3) How To Fight Loneliness - Wilco
4) Subterranean Homesick Alien - Radiohead
5) Space Oddity - David Bowie
6) Disassociative - Marilyn Manson
7) Apollo - Hum
8) Leave the Planet - Galaxie 500
9) Across the Universe - Fiona Apple
10) Space Walk - Lemon Jelly
11) Moondust - Jaymes Young
12) Stars - Noctilucent
13) Galaxies - Owl City
14) The Fall - Cat Like Thief
15) Apollo XI - Orchestral Manoeuvres In the Dark
16) Space Lord - Monster Magnet
17) D'Yer Wanna Be A Spaceman - Oasis
18) Souvlaki Space Station - Slowdive
19) Spacetravel - Bush
20) The Commander Thinks Aloud - The Long Winters
Dave Justus, writer for much of this series, posted a link for anyone to hear: