Ah, hello. I'm the man behind the curtain. I'll come out, just keep that damn yappy dog away.
This really was intended to be a story. Unfortunately, the volume of material involved in the presentation and structure of it became rather overwhelming, and so the plot's been stripped a bit, like a fir with no branches.
Instead of make a text which actually had significant branches, I found it more appealing to make a parallel text structure and write something that could be non-linear within documents. In this respect I think I've accomplished a little something. Unfortunately, one of the biggest cuts to the story was to have been the book case present alongside the TV, which would, naturally, not have changed with the hours. The time required to implement this does not exist.
That gone, the most interesting technical feature of this loose collection of documents is the "context box" which pops up on the bottom of the screen. The basic principles, without any actual code, run so: Using spans or divs, nest one inside the the other such that the innermost contains the material for the context box. Remember that no block-level elements such as divs, lists, or paragraphs are permitted inside other block-level elements. Have the the innermost span (the inside one will need to be a span; I used spans almost exclusively throughout this document) set to default to display:none, and change this to display as a fixed-position element when the parent is hovered over. This should be rather clear in my source, if you wish to see it.
The other trick I use repeatedly, usually in combination with the above, is the mouse-over image switch. This is very simple, though it's usually done via javascript or with CSS images that aren't really in the body of the document. The main trick is two equal-level children of a parent and some z-index fiddling. Again, the source should provide all the assistance you require in that regard.
I need to engage in some attribution now. Rick Dikeman provided the picture of the restaurant; Frederic Pasteleurs provided a photograph of a jukebox from which the "Music for Millions" tag was taken; Christopher Waclawik provided the slightly more complex illustration of Schrödinger's Cat; Morio provided the original picture of the 24-hour clock; all of these "provided" photos were found on the Wikimedia Commons and are licensed under the terms of the GNU FDL. Most of the movie stills were taken from Archive.org public domain copies of the films. Thanks to the good folks at the Internet Archive for donating massive quantities of storage and bandwidth to nobody in particular. The title page photograph of Erwin Schrödinger may be copyrighted by someone; the hand illustration paired to the photo was provided by an anonymous, unwitting accomplice to this project on 4chan.org's /b/ (Not a place for the weak of heart, stomach, liver, Internet connection, or, in fact, the sane or living). Should the copyright holders of these or any other photos or any other materials object to my use of their things, please don't sue me. I will with any reasonably substantiated removal requests.
As to the copyright status of original portions of this document, consider my rights in the matter forfeit; it's under Erisian Kopyleft, All Rites Reversed, at least as good as public domain. Not that I imagine you'll find anything particularly useful here, and it's not as though you can claim to have written it (much as that might take the burden off my hands).
As to other notes, the science behind this is reasonably good, as I'm just going from the Quantum Suicide thought experiment and taking the Many Worlds theorem. Do note that while this makes anything possible, it makes the possibility of being maimed for eternity very high. Don't try it at home, kids.
Kato's name is flimsy, backwards Esperanto which you can look up if you're bored. Other characters are pulled from a very old novel about a magical land in the mountains of Asia and are being parodied, so I probably can't be sued for that. That and I turned a location into a person, but eh.
Statistics relating to odds of death are from the United States National Safety Council and are based on statistics from 2003; Statistics not relating to death are generally self-evident; Lottery information is based on information provided by the South Carolina Educational Lottery; the vending machine thing was an educated guess based on two or three unbacked statistical values that varied greatly. So yes, you are more likely to flip heads on a coin twenty-four times in a row than win the lottery.
That's all, that's more than enough, that's far too much, I'm out. Enjoy that crazy Internet.
--POLM