The Flash

**The Flash** was an event that occurred around January 1st, 2000 -- coinciding with the sensationalist Y2K 'apocalypse'. A common misconception exists in the sense that a singular individual caused the event to happen, which is incorrect: the event was purely supernatural, with no earthly element having any influence on its advent whatsoever.

## Effects of the Flash

### Disappearance of Female Humans

After the Flash, all human women disappeared, having been transmogrified into living shadows; any further attempt to create a female human instead produces a new Shadowy Figure, with populations of these figures residing in the cave before the Melting Village and the Industrial Underground. The origin of the Shadowy Figures is hinted at in-game by chalk writings in the same cave that the figures themselves are encountered in.

### Localized Time Dilation

As a result of the Flash, time flows differently in certain areas compared to others. For instance, it is noon while Alex Churchland and Joel Miller are wandering the Endless Wastes, but it is night once the duo enter Downtown Olathe. Localized time dilation serves as an explanation for how certain youthful individuals in the game, such as one of the Mack children, have managed to stay so young -- time has slowed to a point in their region to the extent that they do not age and remain forever young.

#### Subjective Time

Due to the aforementioned Localized Time Dilation, certain individuals will age at different rates according to where they physically are in the tangible world. For example, Alex Churchland's age **cannot** be quantified due to this phenomenon, because what may 'feel' like a year to him may really only be a month, or vice versa; it is only possible to approximate his age based on his physical ability. The same holds true for everything else in the post-Flash world: **no ages can possibly be quantified**. This means that certain rules that hold true for the world as we know it cannot hold true for the world of the Pointless, such as:

* approximating the time spent in one area
* approximating the length of time that a body has been decomposing for
* finding an exact value for the age of any human being
* finding an exact value for the age of *anything*

Time, for the lack of a better term, has become subjective. To provide an analogy for subjective time, suppose that (hypothetically) Alex and Joel had become separated somehow, and the duo end up wandering to two areas where the flow of time is substantially different: to provide exact values, suppose that Joel stays in an area where what feels like one day is 'actually' one month, and suppose that Alex stays in an area where what feels like one day is 'actually' one minute. After one month of subjective time -- that is to say, that both Alex and Joel would report having stayed in each area for what 'felt like' one month -- the duo will reunite. Joel will nearly be two years older, and Alex would only be 30 minutes older, as the two respective values are what 'actually' came to pass.

## Trivia

* On the "Polska Kaczka" account formerly ran by lead developer Ed, the piece "*Specter of communism looms over free world!*" contains a link to the infamous Timecube, in a passage denouncing the Soviets (or more specifically the 'nekro-bolsheviks') for hiding the "truth of the 4 simultaneous cube days in one earth day as fortold[sic] by GOD in internet": hence, the time-warping properties of the Flash may be derived from what little could be understood of the Timecube page.

## References

1. ↑ "In Pointless the flash is Y2K" - Louise, 10-13-18
2. ↑ "The flash is purely supernatural" - Louise, 07-28-17