: I don't think so. At the end of Things What Kick we get a jump: Durandal is
: about the send the Security Officer to what would be Marathon 2's Waterloo
: Waterpark; Thoth isn't activated yet. The player switches to a dream level
: and a new timeline, but the implication is that the SO's story continues.
Thing What Kicks, terminal 0, Durandal says "My teams have activated the AI, and I am learning much about the final days of the S'pht, but the intelligence is reticent and inscrutable. It expects something, that is clear enough, but what is a mystery. Once you are finished here, I will transport you to an ancient S'pht citadel where my humans are searching for clues."
: My interpretation is that the player and the Security officer do not get sent
: back in time at the same time. The player ends a timeline at a certain
: level (like Things What Kick), but canonically (or at least this is how I
: interpret it) the Security Officer's story continues until he reaches the
: Failure Level of that timeline
I also think that the timeline continues with the Security Officer in it. His body with a version of his consciousness continues on, but another version of his consciousness travels back and across timelines to try something different.
: The only other interpretation I can think of that would explain it is that
: the Security Officer jumps when the player jumps, and only sees the
: Failure Levels as "visions" sent to him through his dreams.
I also interpret this as the way that the Security Officer makes sense of his timeline-jumping. Even back in the M1 prologue, we see signs of his strange feelings of deja vu. I think that that is his perception of his timeline-jumping: a version of him in the past suddenly has memories of an alternate future and because of those memories acts differently, but the normal human mind doesn't know how to easily integrate the sudden acquisition of memories from a future that won't happen now, so they seem like deja vu, visions, or half-remembered dreams.
