After many more tries attempting to save Mayushii on his own, Okabe finally decides to tell Christina what’s going on. Fortunately, Suzuha overhears their discussion, and the three work out a plan to save Mayushii. Apparently Okabe was only jumping to nearby world lines, where the future diverged only by a little, and they need to make a larger jump. Fortunately it turns out that Suzuha is John Titor and happens to have access to the crashed UFO which is actually a time machine.

Okabe’s increasing desperation managed to up the notch even more from the previous episodes. He begins to catch on that nothing he does is working, and even tries something different: asking Moeka questions at gunpoint. He probably should have taken her cellphone before her gun, but oh well. It doesn’t seem like Moeka is actually with CERN, but works for FB, whoever that is. I’m not going to speculate much since episode 15 is already out and any speculation would likely be proven wrong in short order.

Okabe finally gives in and talks to Christina too (well, more like she forces him to, but whatever). Interestingly, he decides to attack Moeka head on and alone before he decides to talk to Christina or Suzuha. Okabe and Christina have the most interesting and dynamic relationship in the show, and it managed to become even stronger with Okabe’s breakdown. He calls her by her actual name and even learns that she wants her own personal fork (wtf? why?). The part where as he left for the past, she mentions that in the past she wouldn’t know he called her Kurisu was touching. Christina has an excellent mad scientist laugh too, by the way.

The revelation that Suzuha is John Titor wasn’t particularly surprising. One thing that is somewhat unexpected is that Suzuha appears to have known Okabe in the future, as she has a device he invented and seems to be aware of his Reading Steiner ability. I suppose her coming to work at Mr. Braun’s store wasn’t a coincidence then. This seems to suggest that there is a deeper reason for her presence than recovering the IBN 5100.

We also learned that the Steins; Gate universe doesn’t seem to subscribe to the butterfly effect theory.  There are only a few points where history diverges drastically. The Gulf War, Y2K, and the invention of the time machine. I’m not really sure why the first two are so special: the gulf war seems much less significant, than, say, the fall of the Soviet Union only a few years earlier, and I don’t think Y2K was ever that much of a threat aside from the usual conspiracy theorists who predicted that the world was going to end. They just got more attention for a while. Now 2038 may cause some more significant problems…