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"Chronophasia" is the seventh episode of the third season. It depicts Aeon trapped in a mental time loop, struggling to retain her sanity.

Synopsis[]

Opening title[]

These are the last things Aeon remembers: a baby's photo, a set of coordinates, Trevor's troops approaching.

Act 1[]

Aeon awakens to the sound of her own screams, wearing a gray/grey outfit.

Earlier, Aeon monitors Trevor Goodchild as he searches for something in the wilderness. She drops her monitoring radio, giving away her location. As she is cornered by Trevor and his troops, she falls through a hole in the ground. She awakens next to an underground river, welcomed by a primitively dressed boy. The boy leads her past mummified corpses to show her the underground base of Coloden, which Trevor was looking for. He offers her a gray/grey outfit to replace her wet clothes. Aeon tells the boy that she is looking for a laboratory in Coloden. The boy shows her the lab, which has been ransacked. He responds obliquely to her questions but recognizes her photo of a baby, and they leave the lab.

Trevor finds the lab. He is surprised by its condition and the mummified corpses, and suspects that Aeon may have taken a sample vial. The boy takes Aeon to a room in the cave littered by bones. She sees the baby there, swollen and disfigured. The baby roars and Aeon screams.

Act 2[]

Aeon awakens to the sound of her own screams, lying on a stone table at a junction in the caves. She heads down one of the passages while fighting dizzy spells. Trevor's soldiers seize her and take her to his camp. Trevor tells her that she has been exposed to a virus that causes insanity, though he believes that at one time it also caused collective happiness. Aeon tells Trevor that the baby was a test subject that she was trying to rescue. Trevor returns to the cave to investigate. Aeon escapes the camp and catches up to them. By the time she reaches the baby's room, Trevor's troops are dead. A dying Trevor tells her that "time is in our minds" and shows her a vial from the lab, which he drops near the baby. The baby roars and Aeon screams.

Aeon awakens on the stone table. She heads down one of the passages while fighting dizzy spells and ambushes Trevor's soldiers. She finds the boy and takes the vial from him, and they return to the baby's room together. She approaches the baby while it sleeps. Trevor arrives and begins talking nonsensically. He chokes her and she screams.

Act 3[]

Aeon awakens on the table to the sound of her own screams. She waits there and eventually the baby comes to her. A series of memories pass before her, then she blacks out and awakens in Trevor's camp. Trevor tells her that she has agreed to submit to him in exchange for the cure. She blacks out and comes to in the cave, with the boy and the baby. The boy tells her that he wants her, but she walks away. Trevor looks through the lab's records and concludes that its research was a sham; there was no virus. Aeon is brought to him as a captive, suffering from flu. As she rides back to Bregna in Trevor's walker vehicle, there is an attack.

Aeon awakens on the stone table. The boy's body is suspended above her, dripping blood. A drop of blood falls on her and she begins experiencing hallucinations. She heads down a passage and sees the boy there alive. Seeing no escape from insanity, she smashes the vial against the wall and submits.

Closing[]

Aeon parks a car. The boy, sitting in the passenger seat, grabs his baseball and mitt and goes out to play ball, and Aeon comes over to watch the game.

Trivia[]

  • The title combines the words "chronos" (time) and "-phasia" (speech disorder).
  • While episodes in the series tend to use elements without any explanation, "Chronophasia" is one of the most perplexing to the extent that not even the series creators can give a straightforward explanation of the events.
  • The episode script called for extensive on-screen blood imagery, including bloodied corpses and blood on the table where Aeon awakens. MTV censors objected, so the corpses became mummies and the blood on the table became a mysterious purple liquid. Only the blood drop exchanged between the boy and Aeon was allowed to air.
  • One of the boy's remarks, "everything that rises must converge", refers to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's concept of the Omega Point, a state of ultimate consciousness freed from time and space. It refers to a Flannery O'Connor novella of the same name.
Episodes
Season 1 Pilot
Season 2 GravityMirrorLeisureTideWar
Season 3 Utopia or Deuteranopia?Isthmus CrypticusThanatophobiaA Last Time for EverythingThe DemiurgeReraizureChronophasiaEther Drift TheoryThe PurgeEnd Sinister
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