CHICAGO 4D
TEMPORAL OBSERVATORY HOLDING

Chicago 4D: the Temporal Observatory. Choose a year to visit.

SCREEN 01 · INTERVAL MONITORLIVE

41° 53′ N  87° 38′ W  / WOLF POINT CONFLUENCE

WOLF POINT APERTURE: OPEN

3 destinations online · 1 nominal · 2 calibrating

THIS DEVICE · PERFORMANCE-- ASSESSING

Reading the GPU, cores and memory…

REACTOR87.2%
FIELD COHERENCE0.998
INTERVAL DRIFT±0.4 d
DOSIMETRYNOMINAL
PASSENGERS01

Destination controls

NOMINAL 01 · CALIBRATING 02 · ALL CLEARED FOR ENTRY
COORD 01 / RIVER SETTLEMENTLOCK NOMINAL
1835

River settlement

  • TIME MESHSTABLE
  • STRUCTURESRESOLVED
  • EVIDENCELINKED
  • ENTRYCLEARED
1835.07.01 · DRIFT ±0.4 DJump
COORD 02 / PRAIRIE AVENUECALIBRATING
1904

Prairie Avenue

  • TIME MESHSTABLE
  • STRUCTURESPARTIAL
  • EVIDENCELINKED
  • ENTRYCLEARED
1904.07.01 · CALIBRATINGJump
COORD 03 / FORT DEARBORNCALIBRATING
1812

Fort Dearborn

  • TIME MESHSTABLE
  • FORTRESOLVED
  • PRAIRIESURVEYING
  • ENTRYCLEARED
1812.08.01 · SURVEY IN PROGRESSJump

APPARATUS MK II · FIELD MANUAL · REV. 4D

Operator’s manual

Interval fieldAuthorized passengers only.

01 What this is

Chicago 4D rebuilds the city at set moments in time so you can walk around in it. Every building and road comes from a historical record, and each one shows how sure that record is.

Backstory: a 1965 accident under the Circle campus opened an aperture at Wolf Point, where the river forks. The Apparatus sends you through it. The machine is fiction. The town is real research.

02 Guide

  1. Pick a destination under Destination controls. Hover or focus one to target it on the chronometer.
  2. Click or tap it to jump. Esc aborts the jump.
  3. On arrival, choose Jaunts (short guided routes) or explore on your own.
  4. Move with W A S D, sprint with Shift, look with the mouse, inspect a building with E, release the mouse with Esc. On a phone: left thumb moves, drag the right side to look, tap a building to inspect it.
  5. “All destinations” on the arrival card, or Recall in Jump, asks once and brings you back here.

03 Destination status

Lock nominal
Fully built. 1835 is here.
Calibrating
Partly built and still in progress, but cleared for entry. 1904 and 1812 are here. Expect gaps.
Hold
How steady the lock is. It fluctuates, and sometimes slips before the machine pulls it back.

The console’s readings are part of the game. They don’t measure anything in the town. The one exception is This device (07).

04 Grades

Attested
A source states it.
Inferred
Reasoned from evidence about that specific thing.
Reconstructed
No source states it, so it is built within stated limits and listed on the Liberties page.

Open any building’s card in the town to see its grade and sources.

05 Destinations on file

1835.07.01
River settlement at the forks · lock nominal
1904.07.01
Prairie Avenue and Glessner House · calibrating
1812.08.01
The first Fort Dearborn · calibrating, prairie still being surveyed

06 Appearance

The small dial at the top cycles four machine skins: Control Room, Precision Brass, Retro Future and Deep Space. Your pick carries into the town.

07 This device

The one real instrument on the console. During the cold start the machine reads your device the way the town does before it loads: the graphics chip, its cores and memory, and a one-second drawing test. It scores the result from 0 to 100.

Poor · Low
A modest device. The town opens at reduced detail: Balanced on a computer, Light on a phone.
Fair · Good
A standard device. Full detail on a computer, Light on a phone.
Peak
A strong device. Full detail at High sharpness on a computer; a phone keeps Light detail and gains sharpness.

The bar hovers around the score and dips when this page’s frames arrive late. You can still change Scene detail in the town’s Settings.

CONFLUENCE LABORATORY · CIRCLE CAMPUS · EST. 1965