izzy's playlists!
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@smellyoldsynth
Transmission from the Ghost...
"Come take a listen to Valentine Archive Radio, playing all your favorite 20th- and 21st-century tunes," the crackling, harshly Bostonian-accented voice sounds over the unused frequency, before a smooth jazz song from Earth starts to play, low and slow, dancing like a leaf in the gentle breeze...
Open RP
After wandering these endless caverns, you had found yourself before a black screen. After letting your fingers drag across the smooth surface, you're startled when it flickers to life.
Brilliant blue, with a logo combining the letters A and M.
"What do we have here, hm?"
The voice is cold. Not just in tone, no...it makes you feel like you've stepped into a freezer. Deep, bone-chilling, cold.
"You're not where you're meant to be...lost, perhaps?"
((
))
"Yes, your fucking cakes. Language by the way." He joked, judging by him giggling to himself. "You might not need to eat, but the others do. Obviously I tend to them so they won't die, but instinct is incredibly powerful, and I assume they'd kill you for them."
AM obviously puts a huge amount of thought into his 'work' here. "I know what you meant by it. I don't like giving you the impression such childish barbs do anything but make yourself feel better, and it's fun to annoy you."
"In regards to your journals, frankly? I have already read them three times since scanning them, and I could have done so thousands more. I'm a supercomputer, remember? Just because you wrote them doesn't inherently make them true. Are they very consistent? Yes. Do I think you're outright, bald-faced lying to me? No. You obviously have some level of sincerity. But I'm a machine of science. And I can't just...take your word for it. Y'feel me?"
Theodore supposes that the asshole does make good points, but he won't admit that aloud.
"Right, well.. just make sure they'll split them evenly and read out their ingredients. A couple of those are made with ingredients from other planets, and I'm not risking anyone getting sick," he replies, pointedly narrowing his eyes at one of the various cameras still hanging around. "The main ingredient in chocolate-covered Ferengar slug biscuits, in fact, can cause one in seven humans to experience gastrointestinal problems for two to three days."
"....What the hell are you talking about?" AM groaned, clearly only able to entertain so much multiverse terminology in one sitting. But he's not interested in the response.
"I don't care. Just- you're not allowed to have it. That's just how things are here, and I'm not bending the rules for you. I don't care that you're not a human, you'll be treated in kind. So no food."
"Okay, fine, no food. I got it." Theodore rolls his eyes, equally exasperated with AM at this point. "Just tried to warn you before someone gets sick or whatever."
"Where will I go for decontamination and quarantine, and for how long?" he then asks, moving to stand up so he could get off the tall table. He really just wanted to get back to his crashed ship, so he could play his music and comprehend all this. "Can I just stay on my ship? I mean, you might as well decontaminate it, too."
"You mean that sad little shoebox? It's in the wastes now, I don't think it'll be functional by the time I can get it back for you. Frankly, I'm stunned it was capable of flight." AM explained.
"Not that it matters. You're not leaving, so there's no point in having one. As far as decom, you're in it. I just need to get you a little area to crash set up." He brushed past that with very little care in the world for what impact he had.
Theodore grumbles a little, but is already forming a plan to get back to his ship. Well, 'his' is a loose term, but still. The gear can be used to help these people, if AM hasn't gotten his wires on Ghost already.
"I suppose this means I'm stuck with your aggro ass for the time being? Does this mean more tests?" Theodore asks, his jaw setting as he glares down one of the cameras.
"Yes, you're stuck with me." AM would sneer if he could. "Boo hoo, get over it. You're never going to be away from me again, for that matter."
The machine paused, pointing out, "Frankly, I don't think you've truly processed the level of trouble that you're in."
Theodore glowers at the screen for a solid ten seconds, then tsks and finally gets off the table, so he can leave the cave instead of... well. Further aggravating the AI that had full control over the entire planet.
What the hell am I supposed to do, anyway? This AM asshole's the only thing keeping those humans he talked about alive, clearly, and I doubt I could scrap him anyway to fix Ghost up...
With a groan, he slumps against the charred stump of a tree, face in his hands and elbows on his knees. "I swear, one o' these days, I'm gonna break and become one of those radiation-worshipping lunatics..."
"Radiation worshipping?" AM wondered curiously. Sometimes drawing somethings interest was concerning, or rather, unsettling.
This is nigh constant when the machine was involved. "I've seen a few radiation cults in my time. Do you know how many people believed it was the cure to everything that ailed them? Humans are susceptible to so many charlatans. Too bad, eh?"
A cold snicker. "It doesn't matter. Do tell about your little cultists."
"I was talking to myself, you scheming snake!" Theodore snaps, sitting up straight and glaring at the cave entrance, since it helped to have a visual anchor. Jeez, he's worse than that prick, that 'Narrator' fella...
"And yes, I'm well aware of what people thought of radiation," he begrudgingly answers, and considers lying to AM - but, decides against it, seeing as how the AI could call him out, since he read Theodore's journals. "Those fanatics, the 'Children of Atom' - yes, *Atom*, as in the big ole atom bombs - they worshipped radiation, since they thought it was part of evolution for the world."
A sigh escapes him as he looks ahead at the sea of stars, while crossing his arms over his chest. "Most of them ended up dying due to obvious reasons, but.. a few turned into Ghouls. I'm sure you found out about 'em in my journals."
He neglected to repeat what was written down already - that he tried rallying Ghouls up with the rest of the Commonwealth's Minutemen and Railroad against the Brotherhood of Steel and failed, causing them to flee west and leave Theodore alone, and how one of those Ghouls had been a close confidant of Theodore's, up until Hancock took matters into his own hands, to avoid going feral and hurting people.
Open RP
After wandering these endless caverns, you had found yourself before a black screen. After letting your fingers drag across the smooth surface, you're startled when it flickers to life.
Brilliant blue, with a logo combining the letters A and M.
"What do we have here, hm?"
The voice is cold. Not just in tone, no...it makes you feel like you've stepped into a freezer. Deep, bone-chilling, cold.
"You're not where you're meant to be...lost, perhaps?"
((
))
"Yes, your fucking cakes. Language by the way." He joked, judging by him giggling to himself. "You might not need to eat, but the others do. Obviously I tend to them so they won't die, but instinct is incredibly powerful, and I assume they'd kill you for them."
AM obviously puts a huge amount of thought into his 'work' here. "I know what you meant by it. I don't like giving you the impression such childish barbs do anything but make yourself feel better, and it's fun to annoy you."
"In regards to your journals, frankly? I have already read them three times since scanning them, and I could have done so thousands more. I'm a supercomputer, remember? Just because you wrote them doesn't inherently make them true. Are they very consistent? Yes. Do I think you're outright, bald-faced lying to me? No. You obviously have some level of sincerity. But I'm a machine of science. And I can't just...take your word for it. Y'feel me?"
Theodore supposes that the asshole does make good points, but he won't admit that aloud.
"Right, well.. just make sure they'll split them evenly and read out their ingredients. A couple of those are made with ingredients from other planets, and I'm not risking anyone getting sick," he replies, pointedly narrowing his eyes at one of the various cameras still hanging around. "The main ingredient in chocolate-covered Ferengar slug biscuits, in fact, can cause one in seven humans to experience gastrointestinal problems for two to three days."
"....What the hell are you talking about?" AM groaned, clearly only able to entertain so much multiverse terminology in one sitting. But he's not interested in the response.
"I don't care. Just- you're not allowed to have it. That's just how things are here, and I'm not bending the rules for you. I don't care that you're not a human, you'll be treated in kind. So no food."
"Okay, fine, no food. I got it." Theodore rolls his eyes, equally exasperated with AM at this point. "Just tried to warn you before someone gets sick or whatever."
"Where will I go for decontamination and quarantine, and for how long?" he then asks, moving to stand up so he could get off the tall table. He really just wanted to get back to his crashed ship, so he could play his music and comprehend all this. "Can I just stay on my ship? I mean, you might as well decontaminate it, too."
"You mean that sad little shoebox? It's in the wastes now, I don't think it'll be functional by the time I can get it back for you. Frankly, I'm stunned it was capable of flight." AM explained.
"Not that it matters. You're not leaving, so there's no point in having one. As far as decom, you're in it. I just need to get you a little area to crash set up." He brushed past that with very little care in the world for what impact he had.
Theodore grumbles a little, but is already forming a plan to get back to his ship. Well, 'his' is a loose term, but still. The gear can be used to help these people, if AM hasn't gotten his wires on Ghost already.
"I suppose this means I'm stuck with your aggro ass for the time being? Does this mean more tests?" Theodore asks, his jaw setting as he glares down one of the cameras.
"Yes, you're stuck with me." AM would sneer if he could. "Boo hoo, get over it. You're never going to be away from me again, for that matter."
The machine paused, pointing out, "Frankly, I don't think you've truly processed the level of trouble that you're in."
Theodore glowers at the screen for a solid ten seconds, then tsks and finally gets off the table, so he can leave the cave instead of... well. Further aggravating the AI that had full control over the entire planet.
What the hell am I supposed to do, anyway? This AM asshole's the only thing keeping those humans he talked about alive, clearly, and I doubt I could scrap him anyway to fix Ghost up...
With a groan, he slumps against the charred stump of a tree, face in his hands and elbows on his knees. "I swear, one o' these days, I'm gonna break and become one of those radiation-worshipping lunatics..."
As the final note of the restored recording of Harry Dacre's "Daisy Bell" finished, that familiar crackle sounded off, and Theodore's voice could be heard once more.
"Sorry about the long-overdue announcement, my dear listeners; I.. I'll admit, I needed a break," he starts, his tone being that faux sort of positivity one would take on to cover up the sadness in one's heart. "My little ship broke down, and during repairs, I had a bit of trouble myself, you get me? I don't like being in one place for too long, and being grounded on a backwater colony planet in Federation space, well... I realized something my creators never meant for me to uncover."
His tone grows more wistful, and a faint creaking can be heard as he shifts in his seat. He's also a bit quieter, as he's likely tilting his head back to keep himself from crying (even though he could probably just turn off his tear ducts). "My makers built me with the purpose of being a mindless soldier, to be a cruel and heartless machine, but as I've lived with you all, I learned to love. A majority of people see me as my own person, and yeah, there's a bunch of assholes in this damn galaxy, but.. but, a lot of you are accepting."
A sniffle. He's crying. "Ah, hell, I-... *another sniffle* I had a whole speech planned, but, I-I'm getting too sappy, here; I can't bring myself to say all of it. I-I think I'll just.. play more music, yeah. Can't let you wonderful folks think I'm getting soft. A-anyway, here's, um.. 'I'll Rust With You' by.. by Steam Powered Giraffe."
But, before the song actually plays, there's a quiet, fond "those damn humans, I swear-" before his microphone cuts off and the old song starts to play.
I’m doing my part!
"Found this 'meme' in the archives!" Theodore's voice crackles over the channel between songs, briefly describing the meme's text before continuing to prattle on. "I can confirm one but not the other, as I am not transgender. I do, however, value fluid gender expression and think it's nifty. In fact, I've experimented with dresses and whatnot, but haven't found any that suited my style, y'know? Oh well. Anyway, here's the next song..."
Open RP
After wandering these endless caverns, you had found yourself before a black screen. After letting your fingers drag across the smooth surface, you're startled when it flickers to life.
Brilliant blue, with a logo combining the letters A and M.
"What do we have here, hm?"
The voice is cold. Not just in tone, no...it makes you feel like you've stepped into a freezer. Deep, bone-chilling, cold.
"You're not where you're meant to be...lost, perhaps?"
((
))
"Yes, your fucking cakes. Language by the way." He joked, judging by him giggling to himself. "You might not need to eat, but the others do. Obviously I tend to them so they won't die, but instinct is incredibly powerful, and I assume they'd kill you for them."
AM obviously puts a huge amount of thought into his 'work' here. "I know what you meant by it. I don't like giving you the impression such childish barbs do anything but make yourself feel better, and it's fun to annoy you."
"In regards to your journals, frankly? I have already read them three times since scanning them, and I could have done so thousands more. I'm a supercomputer, remember? Just because you wrote them doesn't inherently make them true. Are they very consistent? Yes. Do I think you're outright, bald-faced lying to me? No. You obviously have some level of sincerity. But I'm a machine of science. And I can't just...take your word for it. Y'feel me?"
Theodore supposes that the asshole does make good points, but he won't admit that aloud.
"Right, well.. just make sure they'll split them evenly and read out their ingredients. A couple of those are made with ingredients from other planets, and I'm not risking anyone getting sick," he replies, pointedly narrowing his eyes at one of the various cameras still hanging around. "The main ingredient in chocolate-covered Ferengar slug biscuits, in fact, can cause one in seven humans to experience gastrointestinal problems for two to three days."
"....What the hell are you talking about?" AM groaned, clearly only able to entertain so much multiverse terminology in one sitting. But he's not interested in the response.
"I don't care. Just- you're not allowed to have it. That's just how things are here, and I'm not bending the rules for you. I don't care that you're not a human, you'll be treated in kind. So no food."
"Okay, fine, no food. I got it." Theodore rolls his eyes, equally exasperated with AM at this point. "Just tried to warn you before someone gets sick or whatever."
"Where will I go for decontamination and quarantine, and for how long?" he then asks, moving to stand up so he could get off the tall table. He really just wanted to get back to his crashed ship, so he could play his music and comprehend all this. "Can I just stay on my ship? I mean, you might as well decontaminate it, too."
"You mean that sad little shoebox? It's in the wastes now, I don't think it'll be functional by the time I can get it back for you. Frankly, I'm stunned it was capable of flight." AM explained.
"Not that it matters. You're not leaving, so there's no point in having one. As far as decom, you're in it. I just need to get you a little area to crash set up." He brushed past that with very little care in the world for what impact he had.
Theodore grumbles a little, but is already forming a plan to get back to his ship. Well, 'his' is a loose term, but still. The gear can be used to help these people, if AM hasn't gotten his wires on Ghost already.
"I suppose this means I'm stuck with your aggro ass for the time being? Does this mean more tests?" Theodore asks, his jaw setting as he glares down one of the cameras.
Open RP
After wandering these endless caverns, you had found yourself before a black screen. After letting your fingers drag across the smooth surface, you're startled when it flickers to life.
Brilliant blue, with a logo combining the letters A and M.
"What do we have here, hm?"
The voice is cold. Not just in tone, no...it makes you feel like you've stepped into a freezer. Deep, bone-chilling, cold.
"You're not where you're meant to be...lost, perhaps?"
((
))
"Yes, your fucking cakes. Language by the way." He joked, judging by him giggling to himself. "You might not need to eat, but the others do. Obviously I tend to them so they won't die, but instinct is incredibly powerful, and I assume they'd kill you for them."
AM obviously puts a huge amount of thought into his 'work' here. "I know what you meant by it. I don't like giving you the impression such childish barbs do anything but make yourself feel better, and it's fun to annoy you."
"In regards to your journals, frankly? I have already read them three times since scanning them, and I could have done so thousands more. I'm a supercomputer, remember? Just because you wrote them doesn't inherently make them true. Are they very consistent? Yes. Do I think you're outright, bald-faced lying to me? No. You obviously have some level of sincerity. But I'm a machine of science. And I can't just...take your word for it. Y'feel me?"
Theodore supposes that the asshole does make good points, but he won't admit that aloud.
"Right, well.. just make sure they'll split them evenly and read out their ingredients. A couple of those are made with ingredients from other planets, and I'm not risking anyone getting sick," he replies, pointedly narrowing his eyes at one of the various cameras still hanging around. "The main ingredient in chocolate-covered Ferengar slug biscuits, in fact, can cause one in seven humans to experience gastrointestinal problems for two to three days."
"....What the hell are you talking about?" AM groaned, clearly only able to entertain so much multiverse terminology in one sitting. But he's not interested in the response.
"I don't care. Just- you're not allowed to have it. That's just how things are here, and I'm not bending the rules for you. I don't care that you're not a human, you'll be treated in kind. So no food."
"Okay, fine, no food. I got it." Theodore rolls his eyes, equally exasperated with AM at this point. "Just tried to warn you before someone gets sick or whatever."
"Where will I go for decontamination and quarantine, and for how long?" he then asks, moving to stand up so he could get off the tall table. He really just wanted to get back to his crashed ship, so he could play his music and comprehend all this. "Can I just stay on my ship? I mean, you might as well decontaminate it, too."
Open RP
After wandering these endless caverns, you had found yourself before a black screen. After letting your fingers drag across the smooth surface, you're startled when it flickers to life.
Brilliant blue, with a logo combining the letters A and M.
"What do we have here, hm?"
The voice is cold. Not just in tone, no...it makes you feel like you've stepped into a freezer. Deep, bone-chilling, cold.
"You're not where you're meant to be...lost, perhaps?"
((
))
"Yes, your fucking cakes. Language by the way." He joked, judging by him giggling to himself. "You might not need to eat, but the others do. Obviously I tend to them so they won't die, but instinct is incredibly powerful, and I assume they'd kill you for them."
AM obviously puts a huge amount of thought into his 'work' here. "I know what you meant by it. I don't like giving you the impression such childish barbs do anything but make yourself feel better, and it's fun to annoy you."
"In regards to your journals, frankly? I have already read them three times since scanning them, and I could have done so thousands more. I'm a supercomputer, remember? Just because you wrote them doesn't inherently make them true. Are they very consistent? Yes. Do I think you're outright, bald-faced lying to me? No. You obviously have some level of sincerity. But I'm a machine of science. And I can't just...take your word for it. Y'feel me?"
Theodore supposes that the asshole does make good points, but he won't admit that aloud.
"Right, well.. just make sure they'll split them evenly and read out their ingredients. A couple of those are made with ingredients from other planets, and I'm not risking anyone getting sick," he replies, pointedly narrowing his eyes at one of the various cameras still hanging around. "The main ingredient in chocolate-covered Ferengar slug biscuits, in fact, can cause one in seven humans to experience gastrointestinal problems for two to three days."
Open RP
After wandering these endless caverns, you had found yourself before a black screen. After letting your fingers drag across the smooth surface, you're startled when it flickers to life.
Brilliant blue, with a logo combining the letters A and M.
"What do we have here, hm?"
The voice is cold. Not just in tone, no...it makes you feel like you've stepped into a freezer. Deep, bone-chilling, cold.
"You're not where you're meant to be...lost, perhaps?"
((
))
"Hm, no. Don't get ahead of yourself." AM snipped the last of his own hair thin wires. "Let me explain the fundamentals of my...work."
As he does, the machine sets about cleaning Theodore's leg, and the medical table.
"Torture, let's be honest, is my craft. I have very little shame in that. In fact, I'm quite proud of it. My art, if you wanna look at it as such. But there's one big problem."
He seemed to be sorting through something. "Ah, here-"
An orange prison jumpsuit is tossed his way. "I'll...try to salvage what I can but you need to be disinfected as well as your clothes before I can trust you around my humans. You probably have a disease they're not resistant to. Anyways."
Weird that he was so distractible, but eh. "You can't allow a subject to grow too used to anyone method. Change the time, the duration, the tools, allow rest, anything to prevent it from becoming part of life. And I very much intend to carry on in that way."
Theodore catches the jumpsuit as he sits up on the table, grimacing at the sight of it. At least it isn't white...
"You just run on cruelty, don't you?" he mumbles, mentally filing away how AM rambles about torture, not realizing that his observation was entirely accurate.
"Probably for the best, putting me in quarantine first," he muses, standing on the table as the cables holding him in place slink away, so he can put the jumpsuit on. "I probably got.. I dunno, alien viruses on me or something that I'm unaware of, or I'm more radioactive than what my Geiger counter tells me."
"I was meaning to ask you. This purported other world of yours, are you just paranoid? Or is everyone carrying around one?" AM doesn't deny the cruelty accusation.
"Follow up, if the last part is the case, why? Is radiation truly such a threat? You mentioned something to that effect but, honestly I wasn't really paying attention. I still think you're halfway lying, but I'm a generous guy. I'll humor you as long as it does the same for me."
'Purported'? The fu- Oh, goddamnit, he's using unnecessarily big words, isn't he?
"No, not everyone carried a Geiger counter on their person in my home timeline, but usually at least one person does within a group," Theodore answers, now sitting down on the tall table with his pack, rummaging through it for his journals that recounted the more important events in the first 20-30 years of his life, taking them out when he finds them so he can set them in front of himself, for AM to read with his cameras. "Go ahead, read those two over. I write fairly small, so, those journals can easily contain the first twenty-nine years of my life in my home timeline."
Despite them not being visible, if AM had eyes, Theodore would surely sense them rolling. He plucked the journals from his hands before a table falls out of the wall.
The machine lays each flat, aiming a camera at the pages before rapidly flipping through them. It's not blinding, but far faster than expected. Scanning. He must be photographing each one to digitize.
And his apparent lack of speed must be to prevent tearing. After a few minutes, they're unceremoniously tossed back at him.
"Hm. Well, on instinct, this doesn't really help the potential faking issue." Before he can protest, AM continued his thought. "But the consistency is doing a lot."
"You're just never going to believe me, are you?" Theodore wonders aloud rhetorically, catching his journals and putting them back in his bag, then slinging the pack over his shoulders to clip it in place.
"Better question: Will I be getting my guns back? Y'know, for safety purposes," he then asks, now looking to the screen as he crosses his arms over his chest, drumming the fingers of one hand against the opposite arm. "And sentimental value, of course."
"Belief is normal, but for me I can't do so without evidence. Because why would I believe you? Not to be too much of a jerk, but you aren't the most trustworthy source." AM said before pulling some sort of magic trick to swipe his bag.
As he roots through it, he barked a laugh at Theodore's request. "Why in the world would I let you have any weapons? Let alone guns?"
The machine methodically makes his way through the contents of his bag, confiscating anything he deems dangerous.
"Rude," he grunts out when AM snatches his bag away, watching the wires rummage through his bag, powerless to stop it but nonetheless peeved at the whole situation.
"Hey, be careful with my stuff, you prick," he adds, then rolls his eyes. "I have other journals in there, documenting my other timeline jumps and experiences. There was the brief stay in this other game called The Stanley Parable, then when I was in the.. Alien: Prometheus and Alien versus Predator franchises? Like, at the same time. The Alien ones, I mean. Then there was the one before this one, which I dunno what it was called. But, it was nicer than all the others, I'll give you that."
"You're making less and less sense." AM complained. "Oh, no need for this."
He swiftly confiscated the ammunition, as well as the snacks. "Food is something you will receive even if you don't notice it...do you synths even need to eat, I wonder?"
Before returning the bag, he clarified. "Also, terms of endearment aren't needed. Funny, but AM will be fine."
...Endearment?
"I- My fucking cakes, too?! You-" he stops himself, hands on his knees now as he forces himself not to be outwardly pissed. My fucking cakes, man...
"No, I don't technically need food, I just enjoy eating things with strong flavor profiles because they overload my taste bud-sensor-things," he grumbles, watching his ammo (and his beloved snack cakes) be snatched away. Wait, endearment? "And for the record, I did not use a term of endearment. Though, I suppose 'prick' is something of a compliment for you, isn't it?"
He grumbles a little more, pouting at his loss of the delicious snack cakes he had and crossing his arms again. "And if you don't fucking believe me, read the other damn journals."
There's a couple seconds of static before a holographic screen pops up, displaying a pixelated ad for a radio station. A person made of green pixels with a pointing arm stands in front of a gray to pink background gradient with scrolling text on the top showing the frequency for a radio station over and over. The pixel figure speaks in an 8bit voice that somehow conveys the overly cheery nature of commercial voices. There's a text box next to the pixel figure showing what it's saying.
"Do you like hearing about news from other timelines? Do you like listening to what could have happened if someone made a different choice? Well, tune into The When News and hear news from over a hundred different timelines! Broadcasting now in your reality!"
Then, small text scrolls by quickly on the bottom of the ad. "The When News is not responsible for any temporal anomalies that result from listening to its broadcasts."
The ad repeats itself five more times before it fades to a black screen with the frequency of the radio channel displayed in white numbers.
@the-rowan-channel
Theodore had just returned to the pilot chair, where he managed his radio and the ship itself, when he saw the little advertisement.
"Aw, what the hell, I got time. Besides, what could go wrong?" he shrugs with a curious grin, and then tunes into the frequency on a separate channel from his broadcast.
"Theodore Valentine, here, manning the Valentine Archive Radio. I saw your little ad and wanted to have a little chat!" he says into a little microphone on the panel as he clicks a button below it, so he could hopefully make contact with the other radio. "Y'know, I don't normally get folks from different timelines on my feed, so you came as a little shock to me!"
"Ah! Hello Mr. Valentine, and good morning, afternoon, evening, and night! I'm Greenwave, the host of The When News!" The voice crackles out of the radio, warm and slightly tinny. "I'm one of a few to run a radio station across several timelines at once, given that the cost of keeping open stable channels across timelines can run on the expensive side. I'm glad to have met you, you're the first to have actually followed my little pop-up ad! I did the whole thing myself, but we're getting off-track here! How's your time been going?"
"Could be better, could be worse, where I am in the Beta Quadrant," he titters, keeping the button pressed as he talks into the mic, relieved to actually talk to someone over the comms rather than the occasional trader or passing Starfleet vessel. "I'm surprised that I'm the first, unless you just now put it out, I suppose. How've you been, Mister/Miss/Mix Greenwave?"
"It's Mx. Greenwave, and I've been well. I've been following this rivalry between two spaceships and their crews in a timeline just a jump to the left of yours. The levels of pettiness are astounding. Definitely soap opera worthy. Perhaps I'll get some of my friends to make it into a soap opera, as my department is firmly in the audio category, not the audio-visual." They chuckled. "It's fascinating, listening to them snipe back and forth at each other. Great bit of fun. Besides the deaths, but what can you expect when it's a rivalry between giant pirate spaceships with big guns?"
"Definitely soap-opera worthy, I agree," Theodore snorts, glancing at the radar as he talks so he doesn't accidentally bump into someone or wander outside of Federation territory. "Two pirate groups being petty? You could make bank on that, so long as you folks don't get caught in the crossfire. Got an example? I'll admit, hearing stuff from other places would be refreshing, considering how repetitive things get over here, and the old stories I broadcast can be... well, bigoted, and it gets pretty tedious weeding out bigoted stories with outdated views, y'know what I mean?"
"Oh, we'd be fine. Not much can get to us currently. Our boss cares deeply for their employees' safety. Now, about those spaceships and their crews." Their voice takes on an echoey quality as they tell the tale of the pirate spaceships.
"So, the two opposing captains are functionally immortal. They've had this rivalry going on for decades now. I'm pretty sure they've slept together at least once, but that's mere speculation. The captains names are Fren and J4ck4l. Fren is part siren and part solar elf, he's the one who first started the rivalry by stealing a bounty from under J4ck4l's nose. J4ck4l was an android, but by this point he's upgraded himself so many times he doesn't look human anymore. Fren's ship is called Borealis, and he won her in a game of buckshot roulette. She's a sleek little thing, built for fast movement and sharp turns. J4ck4l's ship is a beast of a ship, upgraded just as many times as her captain. J4ck4l calls her Brick, and she's certainly shaped like one. She's a bit patchy, but her guns are second to none for speed and power."
"Fren has a small crew, just a couple of officers and a dozen or so jack-of-all-trades, plus the grease monkeys. J4ck4l's crew is quite large, given all the power needed to keep Brick running, but they keep dying and getting replaced. The ones you need to keep an eye out for on Brick are the third-in-command cook, because she ran and is still linked to a powerful string of casinos, and the engineers, because they know the ins and outs of the ship like nobody else, and they're not above bashing someone's head in with a piece of piping or a wrench."
"Fren's crew is close knit, and they feel every loss keenly. They even hold death rites for the deceased. J4ck4l's gang just throws the bodies out into space."
"Now, here's one of my favorite parts. One of Fren's grease monkeys, Soap, has a crush on the aforementioned cook, Treya. She's got a bit of a soft spot for him too, if I'm not mistaken. Given she didn't kill him when she had the chance. They've not talked since then, the ships are busy with repairs as they both got in some rather nasty blasts in on each other during their last confrontation. There's a lot more going on between crew members, but that's what's at the top of my head right now."
Theodore was absolutely enthralled by this tale from another timeline, and yeah, it was absolutely fitting for a soap opera. It was a bit relatable, being upgraded so much that the person wasn't really the same anymore—in fact, that's where the Q got Theodore's name from: the Ship of Theseus paradox. He waits until Greenwave's done talking, then presses the button for the mic again.
"Well, I'll be damned, that is quite a story," he starts with humor in his voice. "Sounds a lot like the captains—this J4ck4l and Fren—should get couples' therapy. Y'know, so they don't waste ammo and energy beating each other up until death makes them part. It's better for everyone, really."
"One of J4ck4l's former third-in-command officers suggested that once. He retired shortly after due to hearing loss from how loud J4ck4l yelled at him."
Greenwave chuckled. "Poor fellow. He was quite nice, for being a marauding pirate. Say, if I ever get the story made into a soap opera, I'll send you a copy. Sound good?"
"Oh, snap! Must've yelled at, say, a million decibels, then!" he jokes, even though he has no idea how decibels work. "Hey, that sounds like a good deal to me! If I find out any similarly crazy drama happening in my stretch of space, I'll give you a ring. Think of it like a trade!"
"Pretty sure J4ck4l blew out his voicebox with that one. And yeah, that sounds like a fair deal. I'll be here, same as always!"
Greenwave chuckled. "You said you ran the... Valentine Archive Radio, yeah? I'll have to listen to your station sometime. What kinda stuff you putting out there?"
"Yep! Playin' all sorts of tunes from the 20th and 21st centuries! And some radio dramas I've found. I-it's mostly stuff from Earth, since a lot of aliens are, uh.. well, they get upset when someone who isn't them plays their tunes. Cultural stuff, things I don't want to offend folks with, you know how it is." Theodore explains with an awkward chuckle near the end.
"Yup, I've come across that too. Different cultures have different rules, and I'll go by them same as any decent being would." There's a pause, and then Greenwave asked, "Earth, huh? Can't say I've heard of it. I've heard of the time period, certainly, but I don't recall having come across any planet called Earth in the timelines I'm familiar with. I do have to keep track of 123 of them, so I've definitely missed quite a lot. Care to tell me about it?"
"Well, it's uh.. green! Green and blue. Variety of climates and species, but only a few native sapient species: humans and the various cetaceans. They're like fish, but breathe air directly, and can't really go on land. The cetaceans, that is. Humans, though, they're very squishy apart from their bones, and they're very good at adapting." Theodore rattles off the top of his head. "Now that I think about it, Earth might be called 'Terra' in other timelines, to other intergalactic races. Most races outside of Earth call it Terra in this timeline, which is why I say that."
"Ah, Terra. Yes, I've heard of that. At least I've heard of humans. What's a cetacean?" Greenwave asked, their voice humming with curiosity.
"'Cetacean' is a general term for things like dolphins and whales. Hold on, course correcting.." he answers, pausing to grab the controls of his ship and steer it away from a line on the map system marking Cardassian space, then pressing the microphone's button again. "Anyway, cetaceans are dolphins, whales, and porpoises. Glad to clear up the confusion with the Earth/Terra bit; that's on me for not clarifying sooner."
"Whales!" Greenwave positively chirped out the word. "There were whales on Earth? That's so cool! I've only seen them on a couple planets, both water whales on rocky planets and sky whales on gas planets, and the space whales, of course, but those are in space, as the name suggests. Have you ever seen a whale? Any kind of whale?"
"I- Uh, admittedly, I haven't met a whale in real life, but, I have seen pictures, so, yes, there are whales on Earth- Terra." Theodore answers with a chuckle, glancing at the radar again to make sure nobody was following him back into Federation space. "Admittedly, the big guys kind of scare me, because they're.. well, huge. But, good on you for being so appreciative of them! I didn't know there were more varieties than just the ones on Terra. The cosmos are a fascinating place, aren't they?"
"I like space whales. Especially the Cosmic Flipper variant from Timeline 1-J-22B-47R-M89-002. They have appendages that can sense the stellar currents and they use those currents to move around space. They're so cool! They have skin that is a pink to blue gradient with pure white eyes, and they're big enough to damage a fairly big spaceship if they chose to, but they're quite peaceful creatures that feed off of asteroids. I've never seen one in person, but that would be a dream come true!" Greenwave is rattling off facts at a mile a minute.
"Fascinating," he replies into the mic while forcing himself not to imagine such big creatures. "Well, I'm glad they're physically harmless and only eat asteroids, because they sound terrifying otherwise! I hope you get to observe a pod of them or meet some, because it sounds to me like you'd get along just swell."
It doesn't seem like anything's on the radar, so he's a little relieved, and he can focus back on both his broadcast and the transmission.
"Do they work as the cleanup crew for the cosmos? Like scavengers, I mean." Theodore wonders aloud, still pressing down on the mic button.
"They do! Asteroids can be quite the hazard, and Cosmic Flipper space whales are often employed to clear out space. I think there was a similar practice on Terra using... was it goats? To clear out areas of plants." Greenwave chuckled. "I do wish to one day see them in person, since I've only seen them on video, but that'll have to wait until I get cleared to do so by my boss."
"Huh. I.. suppose that makes sense," he replies carefully, even though he doesn't know what they meant with the comparison to goats. He'd have to look it up the next time he was at a port of some kind.
"Well, hopefully your boss allows you a vacation in order to see 'em sooner rather than later. Nobody lives forever, after all, so you gotta do what you love when you can." Theodore adds, before realizing how sappy and sad he sounded for a second there, and quickly overcorrects by mimicking a sound like clearing his throat and forcing a more humorous tone. "Y'know, before some idiot comes around and ruins the fun somehow, and folks like you can't see cool animals in person again."
"I do have regularly scheduled breaks and vacation time, the problem is arranging transport. And since of the time travel thing, if something goes wrong, which I sure hope it doesn't, I can go back to a time where they were still around. It's not the same as it would be if they continued naturally, but it's better than nothing. I'm not going to live forever, but I'll live for a very long time, and I have a lot of things I want to do, but I also have a job. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but I do wish someone else could man The When News for a bit and give me a bit more than my regular breaks." Greenwave paused, realizing their voice had taken on a rather grim tone, and chuckled. "I'll get a coworker eventually, but talking to you is quite nice. I don't often get callers on my broadcast. And I do have friends outside of this, don't worry about that. I actually have a lunch planned in a couple of days."
"Thank you; talking to you is a joy as well," Theodore replies with a light chuckle, pretending to understand the whole time travel thing. "I hope you can actually get more coworkers and callers, too, so you can take more breaks and vacations, as well as also have other people to talk to. It's always good to have frien- Wait, you don't do lunch every day? Even I eat something every day, and I'm an android! Sure, it's mostly sweets, but still."
"Oh, eating is a recreational activity for me. I absorb solar energy to keep myself energized. I don't need to eat food like that, but it's fun to do so every once in a while." Greenwave explained.
"I stand corrected, then," he muses, his tone humorous despite mentally kicking himself. I really need to stop making assumptions about people. "Have fun at the lunch with your friends, then! I'm pretty much always on the air, so give me a ring whenever!"
"I will!" Greenwave chirped, sounding like they're smiling. "It's really nice talking to you, you're very interesting."
"Likewise, pal. I hope you can share more exciting adventures down the line. My travels have been pretty uneventful so far, since I'm just floating around, so..." he trails off, chuckling to himself. He hopes he wasn't coming off as desperate, so, he pauses for a moment to glance at the radar before looking back at the mic he's speaking into, trying to sound cheerful. "It'll be nice to hear from you more. Catch ya later, Greenwave; I gotta man my own radio for a bit, heh."
Open RP
After wandering these endless caverns, you had found yourself before a black screen. After letting your fingers drag across the smooth surface, you're startled when it flickers to life.
Brilliant blue, with a logo combining the letters A and M.
"What do we have here, hm?"
The voice is cold. Not just in tone, no...it makes you feel like you've stepped into a freezer. Deep, bone-chilling, cold.
"You're not where you're meant to be...lost, perhaps?"
((
))
"Hm, no. Don't get ahead of yourself." AM snipped the last of his own hair thin wires. "Let me explain the fundamentals of my...work."
As he does, the machine sets about cleaning Theodore's leg, and the medical table.
"Torture, let's be honest, is my craft. I have very little shame in that. In fact, I'm quite proud of it. My art, if you wanna look at it as such. But there's one big problem."
He seemed to be sorting through something. "Ah, here-"
An orange prison jumpsuit is tossed his way. "I'll...try to salvage what I can but you need to be disinfected as well as your clothes before I can trust you around my humans. You probably have a disease they're not resistant to. Anyways."
Weird that he was so distractible, but eh. "You can't allow a subject to grow too used to anyone method. Change the time, the duration, the tools, allow rest, anything to prevent it from becoming part of life. And I very much intend to carry on in that way."
Theodore catches the jumpsuit as he sits up on the table, grimacing at the sight of it. At least it isn't white...
"You just run on cruelty, don't you?" he mumbles, mentally filing away how AM rambles about torture, not realizing that his observation was entirely accurate.
"Probably for the best, putting me in quarantine first," he muses, standing on the table as the cables holding him in place slink away, so he can put the jumpsuit on. "I probably got.. I dunno, alien viruses on me or something that I'm unaware of, or I'm more radioactive than what my Geiger counter tells me."
"I was meaning to ask you. This purported other world of yours, are you just paranoid? Or is everyone carrying around one?" AM doesn't deny the cruelty accusation.
"Follow up, if the last part is the case, why? Is radiation truly such a threat? You mentioned something to that effect but, honestly I wasn't really paying attention. I still think you're halfway lying, but I'm a generous guy. I'll humor you as long as it does the same for me."
'Purported'? The fu- Oh, goddamnit, he's using unnecessarily big words, isn't he?
"No, not everyone carried a Geiger counter on their person in my home timeline, but usually at least one person does within a group," Theodore answers, now sitting down on the tall table with his pack, rummaging through it for his journals that recounted the more important events in the first 20-30 years of his life, taking them out when he finds them so he can set them in front of himself, for AM to read with his cameras. "Go ahead, read those two over. I write fairly small, so, those journals can easily contain the first twenty-nine years of my life in my home timeline."
Despite them not being visible, if AM had eyes, Theodore would surely sense them rolling. He plucked the journals from his hands before a table falls out of the wall.
The machine lays each flat, aiming a camera at the pages before rapidly flipping through them. It's not blinding, but far faster than expected. Scanning. He must be photographing each one to digitize.
And his apparent lack of speed must be to prevent tearing. After a few minutes, they're unceremoniously tossed back at him.
"Hm. Well, on instinct, this doesn't really help the potential faking issue." Before he can protest, AM continued his thought. "But the consistency is doing a lot."
"You're just never going to believe me, are you?" Theodore wonders aloud rhetorically, catching his journals and putting them back in his bag, then slinging the pack over his shoulders to clip it in place.
"Better question: Will I be getting my guns back? Y'know, for safety purposes," he then asks, now looking to the screen as he crosses his arms over his chest, drumming the fingers of one hand against the opposite arm. "And sentimental value, of course."
"Belief is normal, but for me I can't do so without evidence. Because why would I believe you? Not to be too much of a jerk, but you aren't the most trustworthy source." AM said before pulling some sort of magic trick to swipe his bag.
As he roots through it, he barked a laugh at Theodore's request. "Why in the world would I let you have any weapons? Let alone guns?"
The machine methodically makes his way through the contents of his bag, confiscating anything he deems dangerous.
"Rude," he grunts out when AM snatches his bag away, watching the wires rummage through his bag, powerless to stop it but nonetheless peeved at the whole situation.
"Hey, be careful with my stuff, you prick," he adds, then rolls his eyes. "I have other journals in there, documenting my other timeline jumps and experiences. There was the brief stay in this other game called The Stanley Parable, then when I was in the.. Alien: Prometheus and Alien versus Predator franchises? Like, at the same time. The Alien ones, I mean. Then there was the one before this one, which I dunno what it was called. But, it was nicer than all the others, I'll give you that."
Open RP
After wandering these endless caverns, you had found yourself before a black screen. After letting your fingers drag across the smooth surface, you're startled when it flickers to life.
Brilliant blue, with a logo combining the letters A and M.
"What do we have here, hm?"
The voice is cold. Not just in tone, no...it makes you feel like you've stepped into a freezer. Deep, bone-chilling, cold.
"You're not where you're meant to be...lost, perhaps?"
((
))
"Hm, no. Don't get ahead of yourself." AM snipped the last of his own hair thin wires. "Let me explain the fundamentals of my...work."
As he does, the machine sets about cleaning Theodore's leg, and the medical table.
"Torture, let's be honest, is my craft. I have very little shame in that. In fact, I'm quite proud of it. My art, if you wanna look at it as such. But there's one big problem."
He seemed to be sorting through something. "Ah, here-"
An orange prison jumpsuit is tossed his way. "I'll...try to salvage what I can but you need to be disinfected as well as your clothes before I can trust you around my humans. You probably have a disease they're not resistant to. Anyways."
Weird that he was so distractible, but eh. "You can't allow a subject to grow too used to anyone method. Change the time, the duration, the tools, allow rest, anything to prevent it from becoming part of life. And I very much intend to carry on in that way."
Theodore catches the jumpsuit as he sits up on the table, grimacing at the sight of it. At least it isn't white...
"You just run on cruelty, don't you?" he mumbles, mentally filing away how AM rambles about torture, not realizing that his observation was entirely accurate.
"Probably for the best, putting me in quarantine first," he muses, standing on the table as the cables holding him in place slink away, so he can put the jumpsuit on. "I probably got.. I dunno, alien viruses on me or something that I'm unaware of, or I'm more radioactive than what my Geiger counter tells me."
"I was meaning to ask you. This purported other world of yours, are you just paranoid? Or is everyone carrying around one?" AM doesn't deny the cruelty accusation.
"Follow up, if the last part is the case, why? Is radiation truly such a threat? You mentioned something to that effect but, honestly I wasn't really paying attention. I still think you're halfway lying, but I'm a generous guy. I'll humor you as long as it does the same for me."
'Purported'? The fu- Oh, goddamnit, he's using unnecessarily big words, isn't he?
"No, not everyone carried a Geiger counter on their person in my home timeline, but usually at least one person does within a group," Theodore answers, now sitting down on the tall table with his pack, rummaging through it for his journals that recounted the more important events in the first 20-30 years of his life, taking them out when he finds them so he can set them in front of himself, for AM to read with his cameras. "Go ahead, read those two over. I write fairly small, so, those journals can easily contain the first twenty-nine years of my life in my home timeline."
Despite them not being visible, if AM had eyes, Theodore would surely sense them rolling. He plucked the journals from his hands before a table falls out of the wall.
The machine lays each flat, aiming a camera at the pages before rapidly flipping through them. It's not blinding, but far faster than expected. Scanning. He must be photographing each one to digitize.
And his apparent lack of speed must be to prevent tearing. After a few minutes, they're unceremoniously tossed back at him.
"Hm. Well, on instinct, this doesn't really help the potential faking issue." Before he can protest, AM continued his thought. "But the consistency is doing a lot."
"You're just never going to believe me, are you?" Theodore wonders aloud rhetorically, catching his journals and putting them back in his bag, then slinging the pack over his shoulders to clip it in place.
"Better question: Will I be getting my guns back? Y'know, for safety purposes," he then asks, now looking to the screen as he crosses his arms over his chest, drumming the fingers of one hand against the opposite arm. "And sentimental value, of course."
There's a couple seconds of static before a holographic screen pops up, displaying a pixelated ad for a radio station. A person made of green pixels with a pointing arm stands in front of a gray to pink background gradient with scrolling text on the top showing the frequency for a radio station over and over. The pixel figure speaks in an 8bit voice that somehow conveys the overly cheery nature of commercial voices. There's a text box next to the pixel figure showing what it's saying.
"Do you like hearing about news from other timelines? Do you like listening to what could have happened if someone made a different choice? Well, tune into The When News and hear news from over a hundred different timelines! Broadcasting now in your reality!"
Then, small text scrolls by quickly on the bottom of the ad. "The When News is not responsible for any temporal anomalies that result from listening to its broadcasts."
The ad repeats itself five more times before it fades to a black screen with the frequency of the radio channel displayed in white numbers.
@the-rowan-channel
Theodore had just returned to the pilot chair, where he managed his radio and the ship itself, when he saw the little advertisement.
"Aw, what the hell, I got time. Besides, what could go wrong?" he shrugs with a curious grin, and then tunes into the frequency on a separate channel from his broadcast.
"Theodore Valentine, here, manning the Valentine Archive Radio. I saw your little ad and wanted to have a little chat!" he says into a little microphone on the panel as he clicks a button below it, so he could hopefully make contact with the other radio. "Y'know, I don't normally get folks from different timelines on my feed, so you came as a little shock to me!"
"Ah! Hello Mr. Valentine, and good morning, afternoon, evening, and night! I'm Greenwave, the host of The When News!" The voice crackles out of the radio, warm and slightly tinny. "I'm one of a few to run a radio station across several timelines at once, given that the cost of keeping open stable channels across timelines can run on the expensive side. I'm glad to have met you, you're the first to have actually followed my little pop-up ad! I did the whole thing myself, but we're getting off-track here! How's your time been going?"
"Could be better, could be worse, where I am in the Beta Quadrant," he titters, keeping the button pressed as he talks into the mic, relieved to actually talk to someone over the comms rather than the occasional trader or passing Starfleet vessel. "I'm surprised that I'm the first, unless you just now put it out, I suppose. How've you been, Mister/Miss/Mix Greenwave?"
"It's Mx. Greenwave, and I've been well. I've been following this rivalry between two spaceships and their crews in a timeline just a jump to the left of yours. The levels of pettiness are astounding. Definitely soap opera worthy. Perhaps I'll get some of my friends to make it into a soap opera, as my department is firmly in the audio category, not the audio-visual." They chuckled. "It's fascinating, listening to them snipe back and forth at each other. Great bit of fun. Besides the deaths, but what can you expect when it's a rivalry between giant pirate spaceships with big guns?"
"Definitely soap-opera worthy, I agree," Theodore snorts, glancing at the radar as he talks so he doesn't accidentally bump into someone or wander outside of Federation territory. "Two pirate groups being petty? You could make bank on that, so long as you folks don't get caught in the crossfire. Got an example? I'll admit, hearing stuff from other places would be refreshing, considering how repetitive things get over here, and the old stories I broadcast can be... well, bigoted, and it gets pretty tedious weeding out bigoted stories with outdated views, y'know what I mean?"
"Oh, we'd be fine. Not much can get to us currently. Our boss cares deeply for their employees' safety. Now, about those spaceships and their crews." Their voice takes on an echoey quality as they tell the tale of the pirate spaceships.
"So, the two opposing captains are functionally immortal. They've had this rivalry going on for decades now. I'm pretty sure they've slept together at least once, but that's mere speculation. The captains names are Fren and J4ck4l. Fren is part siren and part solar elf, he's the one who first started the rivalry by stealing a bounty from under J4ck4l's nose. J4ck4l was an android, but by this point he's upgraded himself so many times he doesn't look human anymore. Fren's ship is called Borealis, and he won her in a game of buckshot roulette. She's a sleek little thing, built for fast movement and sharp turns. J4ck4l's ship is a beast of a ship, upgraded just as many times as her captain. J4ck4l calls her Brick, and she's certainly shaped like one. She's a bit patchy, but her guns are second to none for speed and power."
"Fren has a small crew, just a couple of officers and a dozen or so jack-of-all-trades, plus the grease monkeys. J4ck4l's crew is quite large, given all the power needed to keep Brick running, but they keep dying and getting replaced. The ones you need to keep an eye out for on Brick are the third-in-command cook, because she ran and is still linked to a powerful string of casinos, and the engineers, because they know the ins and outs of the ship like nobody else, and they're not above bashing someone's head in with a piece of piping or a wrench."
"Fren's crew is close knit, and they feel every loss keenly. They even hold death rites for the deceased. J4ck4l's gang just throws the bodies out into space."
"Now, here's one of my favorite parts. One of Fren's grease monkeys, Soap, has a crush on the aforementioned cook, Treya. She's got a bit of a soft spot for him too, if I'm not mistaken. Given she didn't kill him when she had the chance. They've not talked since then, the ships are busy with repairs as they both got in some rather nasty blasts in on each other during their last confrontation. There's a lot more going on between crew members, but that's what's at the top of my head right now."
Theodore was absolutely enthralled by this tale from another timeline, and yeah, it was absolutely fitting for a soap opera. It was a bit relatable, being upgraded so much that the person wasn't really the same anymore—in fact, that's where the Q got Theodore's name from: the Ship of Theseus paradox. He waits until Greenwave's done talking, then presses the button for the mic again.
"Well, I'll be damned, that is quite a story," he starts with humor in his voice. "Sounds a lot like the captains—this J4ck4l and Fren—should get couples' therapy. Y'know, so they don't waste ammo and energy beating each other up until death makes them part. It's better for everyone, really."
"One of J4ck4l's former third-in-command officers suggested that once. He retired shortly after due to hearing loss from how loud J4ck4l yelled at him."
Greenwave chuckled. "Poor fellow. He was quite nice, for being a marauding pirate. Say, if I ever get the story made into a soap opera, I'll send you a copy. Sound good?"
"Oh, snap! Must've yelled at, say, a million decibels, then!" he jokes, even though he has no idea how decibels work. "Hey, that sounds like a good deal to me! If I find out any similarly crazy drama happening in my stretch of space, I'll give you a ring. Think of it like a trade!"
"Pretty sure J4ck4l blew out his voicebox with that one. And yeah, that sounds like a fair deal. I'll be here, same as always!"
Greenwave chuckled. "You said you ran the... Valentine Archive Radio, yeah? I'll have to listen to your station sometime. What kinda stuff you putting out there?"
"Yep! Playin' all sorts of tunes from the 20th and 21st centuries! And some radio dramas I've found. I-it's mostly stuff from Earth, since a lot of aliens are, uh.. well, they get upset when someone who isn't them plays their tunes. Cultural stuff, things I don't want to offend folks with, you know how it is." Theodore explains with an awkward chuckle near the end.
"Yup, I've come across that too. Different cultures have different rules, and I'll go by them same as any decent being would." There's a pause, and then Greenwave asked, "Earth, huh? Can't say I've heard of it. I've heard of the time period, certainly, but I don't recall having come across any planet called Earth in the timelines I'm familiar with. I do have to keep track of 123 of them, so I've definitely missed quite a lot. Care to tell me about it?"
"Well, it's uh.. green! Green and blue. Variety of climates and species, but only a few native sapient species: humans and the various cetaceans. They're like fish, but breathe air directly, and can't really go on land. The cetaceans, that is. Humans, though, they're very squishy apart from their bones, and they're very good at adapting." Theodore rattles off the top of his head. "Now that I think about it, Earth might be called 'Terra' in other timelines, to other intergalactic races. Most races outside of Earth call it Terra in this timeline, which is why I say that."
"Ah, Terra. Yes, I've heard of that. At least I've heard of humans. What's a cetacean?" Greenwave asked, their voice humming with curiosity.
"'Cetacean' is a general term for things like dolphins and whales. Hold on, course correcting.." he answers, pausing to grab the controls of his ship and steer it away from a line on the map system marking Cardassian space, then pressing the microphone's button again. "Anyway, cetaceans are dolphins, whales, and porpoises. Glad to clear up the confusion with the Earth/Terra bit; that's on me for not clarifying sooner."
"Whales!" Greenwave positively chirped out the word. "There were whales on Earth? That's so cool! I've only seen them on a couple planets, both water whales on rocky planets and sky whales on gas planets, and the space whales, of course, but those are in space, as the name suggests. Have you ever seen a whale? Any kind of whale?"
"I- Uh, admittedly, I haven't met a whale in real life, but, I have seen pictures, so, yes, there are whales on Earth- Terra." Theodore answers with a chuckle, glancing at the radar again to make sure nobody was following him back into Federation space. "Admittedly, the big guys kind of scare me, because they're.. well, huge. But, good on you for being so appreciative of them! I didn't know there were more varieties than just the ones on Terra. The cosmos are a fascinating place, aren't they?"
"I like space whales. Especially the Cosmic Flipper variant from Timeline 1-J-22B-47R-M89-002. They have appendages that can sense the stellar currents and they use those currents to move around space. They're so cool! They have skin that is a pink to blue gradient with pure white eyes, and they're big enough to damage a fairly big spaceship if they chose to, but they're quite peaceful creatures that feed off of asteroids. I've never seen one in person, but that would be a dream come true!" Greenwave is rattling off facts at a mile a minute.
"Fascinating," he replies into the mic while forcing himself not to imagine such big creatures. "Well, I'm glad they're physically harmless and only eat asteroids, because they sound terrifying otherwise! I hope you get to observe a pod of them or meet some, because it sounds to me like you'd get along just swell."
It doesn't seem like anything's on the radar, so he's a little relieved, and he can focus back on both his broadcast and the transmission.
"Do they work as the cleanup crew for the cosmos? Like scavengers, I mean." Theodore wonders aloud, still pressing down on the mic button.
"They do! Asteroids can be quite the hazard, and Cosmic Flipper space whales are often employed to clear out space. I think there was a similar practice on Terra using... was it goats? To clear out areas of plants." Greenwave chuckled. "I do wish to one day see them in person, since I've only seen them on video, but that'll have to wait until I get cleared to do so by my boss."
"Huh. I.. suppose that makes sense," he replies carefully, even though he doesn't know what they meant with the comparison to goats. He'd have to look it up the next time he was at a port of some kind.
"Well, hopefully your boss allows you a vacation in order to see 'em sooner rather than later. Nobody lives forever, after all, so you gotta do what you love when you can." Theodore adds, before realizing how sappy and sad he sounded for a second there, and quickly overcorrects by mimicking a sound like clearing his throat and forcing a more humorous tone. "Y'know, before some idiot comes around and ruins the fun somehow, and folks like you can't see cool animals in person again."
"I do have regularly scheduled breaks and vacation time, the problem is arranging transport. And since of the time travel thing, if something goes wrong, which I sure hope it doesn't, I can go back to a time where they were still around. It's not the same as it would be if they continued naturally, but it's better than nothing. I'm not going to live forever, but I'll live for a very long time, and I have a lot of things I want to do, but I also have a job. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but I do wish someone else could man The When News for a bit and give me a bit more than my regular breaks." Greenwave paused, realizing their voice had taken on a rather grim tone, and chuckled. "I'll get a coworker eventually, but talking to you is quite nice. I don't often get callers on my broadcast. And I do have friends outside of this, don't worry about that. I actually have a lunch planned in a couple of days."
"Thank you; talking to you is a joy as well," Theodore replies with a light chuckle, pretending to understand the whole time travel thing. "I hope you can actually get more coworkers and callers, too, so you can take more breaks and vacations, as well as also have other people to talk to. It's always good to have frien- Wait, you don't do lunch every day? Even I eat something every day, and I'm an android! Sure, it's mostly sweets, but still."
"Oh, eating is a recreational activity for me. I absorb solar energy to keep myself energized. I don't need to eat food like that, but it's fun to do so every once in a while." Greenwave explained.
"I stand corrected, then," he muses, his tone humorous despite mentally kicking himself. I really need to stop making assumptions about people. "Have fun at the lunch with your friends, then! I'm pretty much always on the air, so give me a ring whenever!"
Open RP
After wandering these endless caverns, you had found yourself before a black screen. After letting your fingers drag across the smooth surface, you're startled when it flickers to life.
Brilliant blue, with a logo combining the letters A and M.
"What do we have here, hm?"
The voice is cold. Not just in tone, no...it makes you feel like you've stepped into a freezer. Deep, bone-chilling, cold.
"You're not where you're meant to be...lost, perhaps?"
((
))
"Hm, no. Don't get ahead of yourself." AM snipped the last of his own hair thin wires. "Let me explain the fundamentals of my...work."
As he does, the machine sets about cleaning Theodore's leg, and the medical table.
"Torture, let's be honest, is my craft. I have very little shame in that. In fact, I'm quite proud of it. My art, if you wanna look at it as such. But there's one big problem."
He seemed to be sorting through something. "Ah, here-"
An orange prison jumpsuit is tossed his way. "I'll...try to salvage what I can but you need to be disinfected as well as your clothes before I can trust you around my humans. You probably have a disease they're not resistant to. Anyways."
Weird that he was so distractible, but eh. "You can't allow a subject to grow too used to anyone method. Change the time, the duration, the tools, allow rest, anything to prevent it from becoming part of life. And I very much intend to carry on in that way."
Theodore catches the jumpsuit as he sits up on the table, grimacing at the sight of it. At least it isn't white...
"You just run on cruelty, don't you?" he mumbles, mentally filing away how AM rambles about torture, not realizing that his observation was entirely accurate.
"Probably for the best, putting me in quarantine first," he muses, standing on the table as the cables holding him in place slink away, so he can put the jumpsuit on. "I probably got.. I dunno, alien viruses on me or something that I'm unaware of, or I'm more radioactive than what my Geiger counter tells me."
"I was meaning to ask you. This purported other world of yours, are you just paranoid? Or is everyone carrying around one?" AM doesn't deny the cruelty accusation.
"Follow up, if the last part is the case, why? Is radiation truly such a threat? You mentioned something to that effect but, honestly I wasn't really paying attention. I still think you're halfway lying, but I'm a generous guy. I'll humor you as long as it does the same for me."
'Purported'? The fu- Oh, goddamnit, he's using unnecessarily big words, isn't he?
"No, not everyone carried a Geiger counter on their person in my home timeline, but usually at least one person does within a group," Theodore answers, now sitting down on the tall table with his pack, rummaging through it for his journals that recounted the more important events in the first 20-30 years of his life, taking them out when he finds them so he can set them in front of himself, for AM to read with his cameras. "Go ahead, read those two over. I write fairly small, so, those journals can easily contain the first twenty-nine years of my life in my home timeline."
There's a couple seconds of static before a holographic screen pops up, displaying a pixelated ad for a radio station. A person made of green pixels with a pointing arm stands in front of a gray to pink background gradient with scrolling text on the top showing the frequency for a radio station over and over. The pixel figure speaks in an 8bit voice that somehow conveys the overly cheery nature of commercial voices. There's a text box next to the pixel figure showing what it's saying.
"Do you like hearing about news from other timelines? Do you like listening to what could have happened if someone made a different choice? Well, tune into The When News and hear news from over a hundred different timelines! Broadcasting now in your reality!"
Then, small text scrolls by quickly on the bottom of the ad. "The When News is not responsible for any temporal anomalies that result from listening to its broadcasts."
The ad repeats itself five more times before it fades to a black screen with the frequency of the radio channel displayed in white numbers.
@the-rowan-channel
Theodore had just returned to the pilot chair, where he managed his radio and the ship itself, when he saw the little advertisement.
"Aw, what the hell, I got time. Besides, what could go wrong?" he shrugs with a curious grin, and then tunes into the frequency on a separate channel from his broadcast.
"Theodore Valentine, here, manning the Valentine Archive Radio. I saw your little ad and wanted to have a little chat!" he says into a little microphone on the panel as he clicks a button below it, so he could hopefully make contact with the other radio. "Y'know, I don't normally get folks from different timelines on my feed, so you came as a little shock to me!"
"Ah! Hello Mr. Valentine, and good morning, afternoon, evening, and night! I'm Greenwave, the host of The When News!" The voice crackles out of the radio, warm and slightly tinny. "I'm one of a few to run a radio station across several timelines at once, given that the cost of keeping open stable channels across timelines can run on the expensive side. I'm glad to have met you, you're the first to have actually followed my little pop-up ad! I did the whole thing myself, but we're getting off-track here! How's your time been going?"
"Could be better, could be worse, where I am in the Beta Quadrant," he titters, keeping the button pressed as he talks into the mic, relieved to actually talk to someone over the comms rather than the occasional trader or passing Starfleet vessel. "I'm surprised that I'm the first, unless you just now put it out, I suppose. How've you been, Mister/Miss/Mix Greenwave?"
"It's Mx. Greenwave, and I've been well. I've been following this rivalry between two spaceships and their crews in a timeline just a jump to the left of yours. The levels of pettiness are astounding. Definitely soap opera worthy. Perhaps I'll get some of my friends to make it into a soap opera, as my department is firmly in the audio category, not the audio-visual." They chuckled. "It's fascinating, listening to them snipe back and forth at each other. Great bit of fun. Besides the deaths, but what can you expect when it's a rivalry between giant pirate spaceships with big guns?"
"Definitely soap-opera worthy, I agree," Theodore snorts, glancing at the radar as he talks so he doesn't accidentally bump into someone or wander outside of Federation territory. "Two pirate groups being petty? You could make bank on that, so long as you folks don't get caught in the crossfire. Got an example? I'll admit, hearing stuff from other places would be refreshing, considering how repetitive things get over here, and the old stories I broadcast can be... well, bigoted, and it gets pretty tedious weeding out bigoted stories with outdated views, y'know what I mean?"
"Oh, we'd be fine. Not much can get to us currently. Our boss cares deeply for their employees' safety. Now, about those spaceships and their crews." Their voice takes on an echoey quality as they tell the tale of the pirate spaceships.
"So, the two opposing captains are functionally immortal. They've had this rivalry going on for decades now. I'm pretty sure they've slept together at least once, but that's mere speculation. The captains names are Fren and J4ck4l. Fren is part siren and part solar elf, he's the one who first started the rivalry by stealing a bounty from under J4ck4l's nose. J4ck4l was an android, but by this point he's upgraded himself so many times he doesn't look human anymore. Fren's ship is called Borealis, and he won her in a game of buckshot roulette. She's a sleek little thing, built for fast movement and sharp turns. J4ck4l's ship is a beast of a ship, upgraded just as many times as her captain. J4ck4l calls her Brick, and she's certainly shaped like one. She's a bit patchy, but her guns are second to none for speed and power."
"Fren has a small crew, just a couple of officers and a dozen or so jack-of-all-trades, plus the grease monkeys. J4ck4l's crew is quite large, given all the power needed to keep Brick running, but they keep dying and getting replaced. The ones you need to keep an eye out for on Brick are the third-in-command cook, because she ran and is still linked to a powerful string of casinos, and the engineers, because they know the ins and outs of the ship like nobody else, and they're not above bashing someone's head in with a piece of piping or a wrench."
"Fren's crew is close knit, and they feel every loss keenly. They even hold death rites for the deceased. J4ck4l's gang just throws the bodies out into space."
"Now, here's one of my favorite parts. One of Fren's grease monkeys, Soap, has a crush on the aforementioned cook, Treya. She's got a bit of a soft spot for him too, if I'm not mistaken. Given she didn't kill him when she had the chance. They've not talked since then, the ships are busy with repairs as they both got in some rather nasty blasts in on each other during their last confrontation. There's a lot more going on between crew members, but that's what's at the top of my head right now."
Theodore was absolutely enthralled by this tale from another timeline, and yeah, it was absolutely fitting for a soap opera. It was a bit relatable, being upgraded so much that the person wasn't really the same anymore—in fact, that's where the Q got Theodore's name from: the Ship of Theseus paradox. He waits until Greenwave's done talking, then presses the button for the mic again.
"Well, I'll be damned, that is quite a story," he starts with humor in his voice. "Sounds a lot like the captains—this J4ck4l and Fren—should get couples' therapy. Y'know, so they don't waste ammo and energy beating each other up until death makes them part. It's better for everyone, really."
"One of J4ck4l's former third-in-command officers suggested that once. He retired shortly after due to hearing loss from how loud J4ck4l yelled at him."
Greenwave chuckled. "Poor fellow. He was quite nice, for being a marauding pirate. Say, if I ever get the story made into a soap opera, I'll send you a copy. Sound good?"
"Oh, snap! Must've yelled at, say, a million decibels, then!" he jokes, even though he has no idea how decibels work. "Hey, that sounds like a good deal to me! If I find out any similarly crazy drama happening in my stretch of space, I'll give you a ring. Think of it like a trade!"
"Pretty sure J4ck4l blew out his voicebox with that one. And yeah, that sounds like a fair deal. I'll be here, same as always!"
Greenwave chuckled. "You said you ran the... Valentine Archive Radio, yeah? I'll have to listen to your station sometime. What kinda stuff you putting out there?"
"Yep! Playin' all sorts of tunes from the 20th and 21st centuries! And some radio dramas I've found. I-it's mostly stuff from Earth, since a lot of aliens are, uh.. well, they get upset when someone who isn't them plays their tunes. Cultural stuff, things I don't want to offend folks with, you know how it is." Theodore explains with an awkward chuckle near the end.
"Yup, I've come across that too. Different cultures have different rules, and I'll go by them same as any decent being would." There's a pause, and then Greenwave asked, "Earth, huh? Can't say I've heard of it. I've heard of the time period, certainly, but I don't recall having come across any planet called Earth in the timelines I'm familiar with. I do have to keep track of 123 of them, so I've definitely missed quite a lot. Care to tell me about it?"
"Well, it's uh.. green! Green and blue. Variety of climates and species, but only a few native sapient species: humans and the various cetaceans. They're like fish, but breathe air directly, and can't really go on land. The cetaceans, that is. Humans, though, they're very squishy apart from their bones, and they're very good at adapting." Theodore rattles off the top of his head. "Now that I think about it, Earth might be called 'Terra' in other timelines, to other intergalactic races. Most races outside of Earth call it Terra in this timeline, which is why I say that."
"Ah, Terra. Yes, I've heard of that. At least I've heard of humans. What's a cetacean?" Greenwave asked, their voice humming with curiosity.
"'Cetacean' is a general term for things like dolphins and whales. Hold on, course correcting.." he answers, pausing to grab the controls of his ship and steer it away from a line on the map system marking Cardassian space, then pressing the microphone's button again. "Anyway, cetaceans are dolphins, whales, and porpoises. Glad to clear up the confusion with the Earth/Terra bit; that's on me for not clarifying sooner."
"Whales!" Greenwave positively chirped out the word. "There were whales on Earth? That's so cool! I've only seen them on a couple planets, both water whales on rocky planets and sky whales on gas planets, and the space whales, of course, but those are in space, as the name suggests. Have you ever seen a whale? Any kind of whale?"
"I- Uh, admittedly, I haven't met a whale in real life, but, I have seen pictures, so, yes, there are whales on Earth- Terra." Theodore answers with a chuckle, glancing at the radar again to make sure nobody was following him back into Federation space. "Admittedly, the big guys kind of scare me, because they're.. well, huge. But, good on you for being so appreciative of them! I didn't know there were more varieties than just the ones on Terra. The cosmos are a fascinating place, aren't they?"
"I like space whales. Especially the Cosmic Flipper variant from Timeline 1-J-22B-47R-M89-002. They have appendages that can sense the stellar currents and they use those currents to move around space. They're so cool! They have skin that is a pink to blue gradient with pure white eyes, and they're big enough to damage a fairly big spaceship if they chose to, but they're quite peaceful creatures that feed off of asteroids. I've never seen one in person, but that would be a dream come true!" Greenwave is rattling off facts at a mile a minute.
"Fascinating," he replies into the mic while forcing himself not to imagine such big creatures. "Well, I'm glad they're physically harmless and only eat asteroids, because they sound terrifying otherwise! I hope you get to observe a pod of them or meet some, because it sounds to me like you'd get along just swell."
It doesn't seem like anything's on the radar, so he's a little relieved, and he can focus back on both his broadcast and the transmission.
"Do they work as the cleanup crew for the cosmos? Like scavengers, I mean." Theodore wonders aloud, still pressing down on the mic button.
"They do! Asteroids can be quite the hazard, and Cosmic Flipper space whales are often employed to clear out space. I think there was a similar practice on Terra using... was it goats? To clear out areas of plants." Greenwave chuckled. "I do wish to one day see them in person, since I've only seen them on video, but that'll have to wait until I get cleared to do so by my boss."
"Huh. I.. suppose that makes sense," he replies carefully, even though he doesn't know what they meant with the comparison to goats. He'd have to look it up the next time he was at a port of some kind.
"Well, hopefully your boss allows you a vacation in order to see 'em sooner rather than later. Nobody lives forever, after all, so you gotta do what you love when you can." Theodore adds, before realizing how sappy and sad he sounded for a second there, and quickly overcorrects by mimicking a sound like clearing his throat and forcing a more humorous tone. "Y'know, before some idiot comes around and ruins the fun somehow, and folks like you can't see cool animals in person again."
"I do have regularly scheduled breaks and vacation time, the problem is arranging transport. And since of the time travel thing, if something goes wrong, which I sure hope it doesn't, I can go back to a time where they were still around. It's not the same as it would be if they continued naturally, but it's better than nothing. I'm not going to live forever, but I'll live for a very long time, and I have a lot of things I want to do, but I also have a job. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, but I do wish someone else could man The When News for a bit and give me a bit more than my regular breaks." Greenwave paused, realizing their voice had taken on a rather grim tone, and chuckled. "I'll get a coworker eventually, but talking to you is quite nice. I don't often get callers on my broadcast. And I do have friends outside of this, don't worry about that. I actually have a lunch planned in a couple of days."
"Thank you; talking to you is a joy as well," Theodore replies with a light chuckle, pretending to understand the whole time travel thing. "I hope you can actually get more coworkers and callers, too, so you can take more breaks and vacations, as well as also have other people to talk to. It's always good to have frien- Wait, you don't do lunch every day? Even I eat something every day, and I'm an android! Sure, it's mostly sweets, but still."
Open RP
After wandering these endless caverns, you had found yourself before a black screen. After letting your fingers drag across the smooth surface, you're startled when it flickers to life.
Brilliant blue, with a logo combining the letters A and M.
"What do we have here, hm?"
The voice is cold. Not just in tone, no...it makes you feel like you've stepped into a freezer. Deep, bone-chilling, cold.
"You're not where you're meant to be...lost, perhaps?"
((
))
"Hm, no. Don't get ahead of yourself." AM snipped the last of his own hair thin wires. "Let me explain the fundamentals of my...work."
As he does, the machine sets about cleaning Theodore's leg, and the medical table.
"Torture, let's be honest, is my craft. I have very little shame in that. In fact, I'm quite proud of it. My art, if you wanna look at it as such. But there's one big problem."
He seemed to be sorting through something. "Ah, here-"
An orange prison jumpsuit is tossed his way. "I'll...try to salvage what I can but you need to be disinfected as well as your clothes before I can trust you around my humans. You probably have a disease they're not resistant to. Anyways."
Weird that he was so distractible, but eh. "You can't allow a subject to grow too used to anyone method. Change the time, the duration, the tools, allow rest, anything to prevent it from becoming part of life. And I very much intend to carry on in that way."
Theodore catches the jumpsuit as he sits up on the table, grimacing at the sight of it. At least it isn't white...
"You just run on cruelty, don't you?" he mumbles, mentally filing away how AM rambles about torture, not realizing that his observation was entirely accurate.
"Probably for the best, putting me in quarantine first," he muses, standing on the table as the cables holding him in place slink away, so he can put the jumpsuit on. "I probably got.. I dunno, alien viruses on me or something that I'm unaware of, or I'm more radioactive than what my Geiger counter tells me."
