From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
The Mechanic and the Ten Layers
At the service station, Leif confronts a figure behind the counter—the same police officer he tackled in Newcastle, now wearing grease-stained overalls. Or is he? The anime fractally splits the image: one mechanic speaking, then two overlaid transparently, then three, then ten, each slightly out of sync, each wearing a different expression of the same face. Leif: “Which version are you?” The mechanic's response comes from all of them at once: The Mechanic: “I'm the one you've always needed to ask.” The doubled vision Leif suffered at the radio igloo has followed him; the layers don't resolve. As he leaves, the camera pulls back to show the mechanic collapsing into a single figure—but which one? The Karman line hums outside, a frequency the robots cannot hear.