Its easy to love Cradle for its dense sci-fi world and the societal reflecting aspects of its themes but then it seemingly introduces what might as well be magic and then immediately ends.

Telepathy

Introduced with the Morphophobic children seemingly having a "linked hive mind" by their consistent consensus on the aesthetics of shapes. But I like to interpret this as the children having some form of autism that has been exacerbated by the aesthetic obsessed society. With beauty and ugly having literal values as a common truth the children could very well have been trained even more so than the "functional" citizens to observe aesthetics as absolutes removing their own taste and understanding of the world with that of society. They're consensus is arrived at individually but their "tastes" are all the same.

But then there is the "feeling" between Mark and Old Ida, that seems to imply some kind of mental link?

Time Travel

A common sci-fi trope but feels totally out of place in a world built around themes of societal worth, aesthetic values, reincarnation, and trans-humanism. When reading the "Sphere" article that is one of the 3-MAJOR NOTES it immediately reminded be the epicenter from Darker Than Black and seemed like wishfurld when parred with the Dr. 3515 interview snippet. Also adding further mystery to the destructive nature of a Bitter Passium explosion and the darkness that arose from the aftermath.

But then the ending seems to be based entirely on a telepathic signal (or Ida's network link broadcast) being sent back in time to save the world from that first explosion?

Would just like to get some forum chatting on. V

First, I'd like to link the Steam forums discussion about the ending.

Second, I'd also like to link this imgur album of text logs within the game, including several well-hidden ones that explain things in more detail.

The children's aesthetics might be related to their latent telepathy, but I think their revulsion towards the human form is also rooted in the HQ, which has become a numeric measurement of an object's "beauty", and a hidden theory that Nature Itself suddenly found the human form revolting millenia ago and that the bitter passium explosions are somehow related to Its attempts to wipe out humanity. I also think there's a relationship between those children and Ida's mention of people purposely spreading the bitter passium explosions, in effect trying to wipe out the "blight of humanity".

I'll admit, the telepathy & time travel seem out of place here, except as a deus ex machina to give humanity a way out of this mess, but it does fit the Buddhist concepts of rebirth and reincarnation which are also reflected in the robot bodies. I also feel the confusion might result from translation issues as well; the team has Russian as their native language, I believe. I'd actually like to interview them about why they put in telepathy & time travel without really doing much with it.