Meanwhile

Meanwhile is a comicbook by Jason Shiga.

One day, Jimmy goes to eat some ice cream. Afterwards, finding himself in desperate need of a bathroom, he runs to the nearest house and asks to use the facilities. Then the owner introduces himself as Professor K, and asks Jimmy if he would like to help test one of his inventions: a machine that can travel back in time ten minutes, a machine that can read memories, or a box that can kill everyone on Earth.

Jimmy says yes, and the results aren't pretty.

Meanwhile is a branching storyline that unfolds differently depending on Jimmy's choices, and the bizarre branching panel layout reflects this. And most of these branches end unpleasantly: death, endless feedback loops, or the discovery of a very dark secret about Jimmy's world. The reader is pretty much required to read every branch in order to get the entire picture--and the one happy ending can only be reached by cheating.

Meanwhile can be read here on Jason Shiga's website. Or bought as a book with full-color art. Or as an iOS app.

Not to be confused with the trope "Meanwhile Back At The..."


 * Choose Your Own Adventure
 * Depopulation Bomb / Doomsday Device: At face value, the Killotron is a device which inexplicably kills all human life in the universe.
 * Easter Egg: Page 41 and page 47. There are links (tabs) that go to these pages, but none of them are reachable from the start.
 * Mad Scientist
 * Mundane Utility: The Doomsday Machine also makes ice cream.
 * It controls entropy, which allows it to reconfigure matter.
 * Shout-Out:
 * Temporal Paradox: Averted.
 * Time Machine
 * Time Machine