History Headscratchers / InfinityTrain

** It's possible The Cat didn't know back then. It was years ago. Even if she knew, she tends to like being mysterious - she didn't ''know'' she'd be separated from him or that he would become the sociopathic co-leader of the Apex.

* Why do numbers seem to increase or decrease by entire digits at a time when you have a lot of them? Every additional digit requires a shift of 10x more points to increase or decrease your total, yet people with extremely high numbers seem to regularly have their numbers increase or decrease by enough to move it by a digit or more. The first time we see Grace's number shorten by a digit, she's reduced her total by roughly ten times the remaining total she needs to leave the train. That is to say - if sympathizing with Hazel once is enough to reduce Grace's total to roughly 10% of its former value, shouldn't sympathizing with Hazel a second time immediately reduce her to zero and let her leave the train? (And to forestall the obvious answer - if point total shifts are percentage-based or something, shouldn't it be easy for Amelia to get her massive total down, too?)

* Why do numbers seem to increase or decrease by entire digits at a time when you have a lot of them? Every additional digit requires a shift of 10x more points to increase or decrease your total, yet people with extremely high numbers seem to regularly have their numbers increase or decrease by enough to move it by a digit or more. The first time we see Grace's number shorten by a digit, she's reduced her total by roughly ten times the remaining total she needs to leave the train. That is to say - if sympathizing with Hazel once is enough to reduce Grace's total to roughly 10% of its former value, shouldn't sympathizing with Hazel a second time immediately reduce her to zero and let her leave the train?

** Because it doesn't have an infinite amount of ''carts''. But rathee because it runs on a looping railway.

*** Well, [[WildMassGuessing let's see]]. By taking the memories of its passengers and turning them into tape, the train steals their memories. As seen with the cat, through various means such as video tapes, memories can be stored as video tapes. Because of it it should be possible for the train to just give life to reflections as well as give them copies of memories.

** Well, [[WildMassGuessing let's see]]. By taking the memories of its passengers and turning them into tape, the train steals their memories. As seen with the cat, through various means such as video tapes, memories can be stored as video tapes. Because of it it should be possible for the train to just give life to reflections as well as give them copies of memories.

** It’s possible One-One may have had to intervene in some way, seeing as how that car had officially been ‘broken’. Without Terrance(the Toad), the doors to the car cannot open, meaning passengers can’t get past it, so One-One would have to bring the Toad Car in for decommission or to have it fixed.

* Why does One-One/the Conductor allow Grace and Simon to keep Apex going? Think about it: even if the two are acting like jerks now, they entered the train during Amelia's rule, when no passengers had any clue what the train was all about, so it's not unreasonable to think they made the same flawed deduction as Tulip originally did, that when your number goes all the way to zero, you die. Considering how high their numbers are, it's likely they entered the train as kids, becoming traumatised by the whole experienced and coming up with a belief system to explain the whole experience. And even if this doesn't justify their actions now, surely the younger kids they've recruited to Apex are not to blame for joining them? Since it's been only a few months since Amelia was dethroned, most of them probably entered the train during her rule too, and were equally clueless why they were there. So when these kids, who were most likely traumatised and scared, meet two adults who have an explanation for all of it and offer a safe haven, of course they're gonna join them. But because of this, their numbers keep going up, and they'll be stuck on the train for months or years, while their parents and loved ones probably think they have died. So they're basically being punished disproportionately for things that were beyond their control (the real Conductor being away when they entered the train), and for being a bit gullible. Shouldn't the Conductor (or whoever it is who really controls the train) just disband Apex and send these poor kids back home immediately instead of waiting their numbers to go down to zero?
** Simple answer: a passenger getting their number down to zero is the ONLY way back. Once a number has been given, One-One can’t undo it or send them home. Remember when Jessie got back on the train, his number was unstable, because his wanted to save M.T., which the Train could not allow. So why didn’t One-One simply send Jessie back? Because he can’t. The purpose of the Train is to help a passenger solve their problems, which take the form of the numbers. If One-One tried to send them off the Train himself before their numbers hit zero, he would likely get stuck in another logic loop like he did with Jessie.
** And while you are correct about the Apex kids be punished unfairly, remember that even if they were sent back, their underlying issues that led to them being on the Train would still be there. Not to mention any increase on their numbers as a result of Grace will go with them. Imagine if Jessie stuck with the Apex for a while, letting his number go until One-One sends him off the Train. So he’d ultimately be even worse off than when he had started. But that is more on Grace and the Apex than it is the actual Train and One-One, isn’t it?

* In "The Tape Car" and "The Number Car" we see that all the passengers of the train are humans... Yet the train is made with technology far beyond human understanding, which would suggest it has an extraterrestrial origin. Why aren't there any passengers from other planets, then? Does every planet have its own Infinity Train?

* Why why was the train unable to give Jessie a proper number when he re-boarded to save MT? The train isn't here to solve peoples problems, its here to help people cope and grow. Tulip's number reaching zero wasn't contingent on her parents getting back together, it was contingent on her learning to move past their divorce and forgive them. As cold as it might be, if the train truly saw MT leaving as an impossibility (which One-One makes pretty clear it did, even if there was a loophole in the end) then the lesson Jessie would have to learn upon returning is that sometimes, even when your intentions are good and you try your hardest, you can't help everyone, and you can't dwell on those failures, or else you'll hold yourself up to impossible standards and let that self doubt consume you. The problem the train needed to fix shouldn't have been the physical absence of his friend, it should have been to fix the psychological stress the absence of her caused him. Otherwise... wouldn't Amelia using the train to bring her husband back from the dead also have brought her number to zero?
** In Amelia's case, she wasn't trying to bring Alrick back from the dead; she was trying to create a facsimile of him, which, leaving aside the fact that she couldn't do it, would have been impossible anyway, since she could only recreate his outward actions; she had no true knowledge of his inner life. As far as Jessie's number goes, well we don't know enough yet, but from the way things played out it seems that the train has some kind of connection to potential passengers. They call the train as much as the train calls them. The train doesn't so much offer a lesson as allow you to learn what it is your subconscious is telling you you actually need. Jessie called the train back and his subconscious need was for MT to be with him.
** A big part of Jessie's problem was that he was something of a doormat. He would let other people walk over him due to peer pressure, as in with his friends back home and with the Apex. We saw his number go up when he gave in to other people's wishes and we saw it go down when he refused to. His number hit zero when he stood up to Grace and Simon, because he finally was being more assertive about what he wanted as opposed to what others wanted from him. It wasn't really about accepting his limitations in helping others. Every passenger has different problems. Tulip and Amelia's just happened to be similar, in that they both couldn't accept change and or loss. Jessie on the other hand was about gaining self-confidence. But once Jessie had that self-confidence, he only thing he cared about was helping Lake. Not because someone was pressuring him into it, but because that's what he wanted more than anything and he couldn't have any closure unless he saved her.

*** Supposedly the number represent's inner turmoil and Simon thinking Grace, the [[LivingEmotionalCrutch only person he could trust and confide in]], was leaving him was enough for his psyche take a massive hit.

* Why was One-One quarentining the cars in book 3? Was it Because They were all created by Amelia and he is trying to collect them for destruction (despite Tulip teaching him that This is out of his control) or is it because Of Hazel's presence being an anomaly in the train, which One One is attempting to detect and thats why he collects all the cars Amelia made so that he can detect it better?
* I think I discovered a potential plot hole in the end of season 4. In The Pig Baby Car, the exit to the next car is in Pig Baby's mouth, making it almost impossible to leave his car. But in a later episode, Pig Baby is shown chasing after Kez, alongside all the other denizens Kez agitated. This begs the question: With the exit to the next car being in Pig Baby's mouth, how did Pig Baby even manage to leave his own car?! Did someone just take the exit out of his mouth and stick it somewhere else?

** It does seem like the mirror universe is actually real, since Lake had memories of being Tulip's reflection even before she came into the Chrome Car. Not to mention that there's an entire police dedicated to capturing 'rouge reflections', despite the fact the Chrome Car is not designed to allow reflections like Lake to escape. She only did so because Tulip cheated the system. The Chrome Car itself may just be a means of accessing the mirror world to test the passenger.

** WordOfGod confirms that there is no TimeDilation. Season 4 seems to imply that time passes at the same rate between the train and Earth, as [[spoiler:Amelia]] got on the train in the 1980's. It might be explained by time having passed since Tulip's getting back, as she seems to be going to game camp another year, if in the near future - her parents may have had time to grieve and celebrate since.

** WordOfGod confirms that there is no TimeDilation.