This was a really interesting interactive novel! I enjoyed the conversations with each candidate, and found making the final choice difficult.
Spoiler discussions from here, other players please avoid!!
The character were curious, I enjoyed puzzling through our conversation, and was lead to the following assessments:
Francis certainly seems well-intentioned, his charity speaks to that, but not already having some form of plan for how that charity will or would enact change in the world, nor having thought about how immortality would impact him personally, betrays a lack of practicality.
Julie struck me as the best suited to immortality, with a genuine drive for personal knowledge and an interest in sharing it with the world, but she also has the least life experience, and I was lead to wonder how many hardships her idealism has endured so far.
Bradley appears practical, has clearly thought through this decision, but his purpose seemed narrow. Immortality is often considered dehumanising, and I wonder how a mind so focused on what it means to be human would keep its attachment to its own.
In the end, I chose Bradley, which I was surprised by. I initially thought it would be Julie, but the more I dwelt on it the more I realised what was important to me in the choice was leaving the power with someone I felt I could trust to wield it responsibly, and while I think Julie would enjoy immortality the most, I was the least sure of what her immortal life would entail (despite her clear intentions!).
I was briefly disappointed to not have a summary of how Bradley decided to live his immortal life, but on reflection I think that was a good choice - ultimately we can't know some things, and it's often more important why we chose something than how it turned out.
I love exploring hypotheticals like this, and the writing was great, it provided plenty of character to sink my mind's teeth into. Often we don't see every side of every character in a single conversation, so I felt it worked quite well to have lots of unknown aspects to the characters when making the final decision!
I read the note to the judges on what you would like to add, I agree that audio and text effects would be nice touches, but the extra branches was definitely the part I wanted most, if you were thinking of continuing to explore this project. The ideas here are really interesting, and getting more hints of the strengths and weaknesses of character in each of the candidates to influence the final decision would be awesome.
A good entry, I hope you keep on writing! 💚