i. “the tide is turning” - roger waters // ii. “two suns in the sunset” - pink floyd // iii. “four minutes” - roger waters
( nyle dimarco, cis man, he/him ) — Look who it is! If you take a look at our database, you’ll find that MONTGOMERY “MONTY” ROMANO is a THIRTY-TW0 year old RADIO DISC JOCKEY that’s been in Chicago for TWO YEARS, OFF AND ON. According to the file, they’re a mutant on LEVEL ONE with the power of ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION + TIME TRAVEL. That must be why they’re DEDICATED and OBSESSIVE. If you ask me, they remind me of morse code desperately tip-tip-tapping, the sole with no eyes, the desolate confines of a busy wasteland. They are affiliated with NOBODY.
QUICK FACTS:
full name: montgomery “monty” romano
date of birth: december 5th, 1934
zodiac big three: sagittarius sun, scorpio moon, libra rising
gender & pronouns: cis man & he/him
sexual orientation: straight gay bi queer
ethnicity: white ( may loves italians :\ )
nationality: american
religion: christian (protestant, very loose in his practice), starting to lean agnostic
languages spoken: english (5), asl (5), morse code - technically an alphabet (5)
enneagram: 3w2
mbti: enfp
temperament: sanguine
alignment: neutral good
ability: time travel + electronic communication
affiliation: n/a
alias: sonny/sunny
BACKSTORY:
triggers: war, nuclear wasteland, nuclear tensions, institutionalization ( very brief mention ), VERY brief mention of suicide
monty’s world was silent from the moment he entered it. he would never know it any other way. teachers tried to force him into the mold, deaf educators in the dime-a-dozen oralist schools teaching him English, speech, and as-good-as-it-could-be lipreading, all while restricting the usage of ASL at best, forbidding it at worst.
and, though it made socializing with his peers, understanding his lessons, and connecting with his family much more difficult... in the end, maybe it’s for the best. there would be so many disastrous things to see and smell and feel -- adding one more sensation would tip him over the edge.
despite his parents and hoard of siblings, his eldest brother, jack, was the only one who put time and effort into learning ASL with monty. for that reason, they connected well. his brother would go on to have his first and only child at eighteen, leaving monty an uncle at only six. but it was absolutely poor timing...
because the usa could no longer just sit on the sidelines in silent support of the allied powers. in 1941, his eldest brother enlisted to join the army in the war effort, leaving his wife and family with the baby -- but promising he’d be back.
monty spent much of the time his eldest brother was gone connecting with his brother’s girlfriend, mary, who let monty teach her ASL. so those next three years were spent with her, with baby, and keeping up with the news.
1944, jack was sent to the frontlines in the normandy landings. the story went that he went out blazing, that he at least had that much to his legacy, but who could tell any of the thousands of d-day bodies apart ?
monty didn’t need to hear to know that silence fell over his family. he could feel it, even when they were talking at dinner. life only returned in 1945 as a broadcast celebrating two nuclear bombings played ! and monty... he didn’t know what to feel. this meant the war was over, right ? finally, a sigh of relief ! but how many innocent people had died in the fallout of it ? how long would those effects last ?
he did not wake up in his bedroom the next morning. he woke up when a piece of rubble blew against his forehead. and he was surrounded by complete and utter waste. it was hot -- no, it was cold. he assumed it was loud -- no, he assumed it was quiet. there were a few fires burning in the snow, and there was plenty of rubble to spare. nothing was standing. it was completely empty, completely desolate.
he didn’t know where he was or how he got there. the more he explored, a terrified young boy trying to get home, the more he wondered when he was.
a few weeks in, unsure of how he was still alive -- but not questioning it -- he came across a tunnel that led underground. already figuring he was going to die if he didn’t find something fast, this was the first sign he’d seen of any life since he’d woken up -- he kept going, past extra doors until he reached one that was bolted shut and looked to serve as some kind of vacuum.
he did not know it. he could not know it. but, on the other side of that wall, a radio picked up the first broadcast it had heard in ages -- some sort of morse code. a few hours of sitting against that final door that he could not even begin to open, it opened with a gust of air. he dragged himself in. it was shut with that same gust of air.
a man peered through a slit and, after hours of trying to communicate when all monty could see were his eyes, a sentence of 1s and 0s... he stripped himself of his clothes, scrubbed himself with the water and sponge that sat in the corner, and was swiftly let into that final room and tossed a pair of clothes that were a few sizes too big for him. but he wore them, of course.
he was given half a can of uncooked sweet beans, half a bottle of water, and half of some... futuristic chip that he was prompted to sit on his tongue. and half of his nutrient requirements were met.
the man would point viciously to the radio, tap on it... all sorts of insanity that meant nothing to monty until he took a sheet of paper and wrote out a cipher: morse code and the related letters. he, the man, couldn’t risk losing paper to the amount of letters in a word -- a few dots and lines were a quicker solution, and, as he told monty, he could hear him over the radio... which would be cause for concern later.
what year is it ? ive stopped counting. i thought every1 was ded. where am i ? used 2 b canada. what happened ? the east. the east ? yes. what do you mean, the east ? ur not from here. no. where? illinois. america. u dont know? i don’t. do u know what yr it is? it was 1945, last i checked.
he and the man spent the next four months together underground, the man eventually coming up with a way to express morse code without the paper. tap monty on the shoulder, make him watch him tap the wall in morse code. but it was far from paradise, and, more than that ? their supplies were running out faster than expected, what with the man only having prepared supplies for himself.
he volunteered to go look for supplies aboveground, but monty realized that he was the one who was communicating through the radio. if something happened to the man, monty would have no way to know ; if something happened to monty, however ? so he left with a walkie-talkie, an extra coat, and half a canteen of water.
it grew colder and the conditions grew worse. by the time he finally found a few non-perishables locked away in a safe, he didn’t know where he was. he couldn’t find his way back to the man. and the signal only worked one way. so he had two options of what to tell the man: he was going to stay where he was, or he was going to keep moving and hope for the best.
if he did the former, there was a good chance the man would have to leave and try to find him. if he did the latter, he was diving further into the possibility that he’d never see that shelter again... but there was also that slim possibility that he’d be saving them both if he could find him... so he sent a signal that he was lost, but he was going to keep moving and hope for the best. the walkie-talkie wave seemed to tap against his mind, to offer the only description possible: ‘goodbye, ed.’ ‘goodbye, monty.’
he was thirteen when he hopped again, this time quick as a flash. hopped just far back enough to watch the missiles fall from the sky, cars ‘screeching’ to a halt, mothers holding their children close, and pulled forward just in time to survive the blast. this time, a different country. this time, closer to the fallout.
there was no one for him this time, though. he was on his own. he sent out frequencies, but saw nothing. felt nothing.
certain his streak of good bad luck had finally run out, turned to simple bad luck, he was only days away from succumbing to his hunger or his dehydration or the elements or all three... but, instead of dying, he woke up in his bed. in 1949. four years after he went missing.
his family had been certain he, too, had died. perhaps ran away first, gotten lost, then gotten himself killed. it had been four years after they woke up and didn’t find him in his bed, after all ! was it a miracle ? yes ! did it also feel like some kind of abomination, like something ungodly ? yes !
after the initial many-a-hug, they grew... frightened ! he connected to the house radio and morse code played, explaining his unbelievable absence... but no one there knew morse code ?! and no one there knew asl ?! and speaking took more effort than he’d like to put in, especially after all those years completely shut up ?! where was mary to translate for him ? where was baby ?
that much, he could express. chicago. as ed taught him how to say in morse code: what a goddamn shithole !
but, only moments later, everyone’s attention snapped to the radio. they understood what he was trying to say. after the initial shock, they were mouthing: we can hear you. with vicious points: the radio. we hear you.
the story he told was completely unbelievable. but so was being able to hear his speech through the radio, so... live and let live...
they did take note of how he began to draw more into himself. he became obsessed with this nuclear apocalypse he claimed to have witnessed, he drew a strange man with dots and lines underneath and hung it up in his room. he couldn’t focus in school and his grades suffered terribly. at 17, seeing he was still as distant as ever, still writing in morse code, still drawing that man and trying to tell everyone who it was and what was going to happen and no he didn’t know the year or the details or- they had him institutionalized.
before he could undergo more than two rounds of electroshock therapy, he was an 18y/o in 1962. just in time for the cuban missile crisis. and this time ? not only had he seen the after effects of nuclear bombings, he understood the magnitude of this threat. and this time ? they were not fighting to free concentration camps and prisoners of war, they were fighting just to prove who was more powerful. they were building walls and sending dogs into space because they had to prove one was better than the other... and if they had to press the button to really show who was who, then they had to press the button.
was this the wasteland monty had witnessed ? he didn’t know. he didn’t want to find out. he could put a stop to it somehow, right ? he was the only person who’d seen both, as far as he was aware...
traveling to the 70s, the country was still together -- and tensions were still high. without any other ideas, he began doing what only idealists would think would work: sending false reports over radios and broadcasts. but instead of bringing people together through shared fear -- and shared gratitude that they were still alive when they learned that the report had been a hoax -- he just scared them, then brought them back to their regular lives (those who didn’t kill themselves or run to their shelters, that is).
he continued moving back and forth within the timeline of the cold war, relentlessly trying to stop the crisis... but he only had so much he could do without making it even worse. he could activate it. if he wanted to, he could activate it.
in 1991, when the announcement that the cold war was over was made, something in his timeline glitched. he spent three days in wwii, the first two being... entirely random to him, the final one being right there in d-day... where he got to see that jack didn’t go out blazing. and he was pulled just in time -- but this time, to three days in the trenches of the vietnam war, a useless side effect of the cold war. about to be taken prisoner, he was pulled forward into the year 1999 in the middle of a countdown to a new kind of apocalypse, just to be pulled even further forward into 2020... and he finally had reprieve.
but if wwii wasn’t the cause of the nuclear apocalypse, and if the cold war wasn’t the cause of the nuclear apocalypse, then it still had yet to come. and the doomsday clock was moving fast.
left in actual civilization and... no immediate peril in 2020 chicago, he spent the next two years starting to cultivate a life. every now and again, he would glitch to a different year for a few days, but the power he had never been able to tame... seemed to be beginning to tame itself as he spent more time in a calm, but focused, state of mind.
he took on a job as a disc jockey, using the walkie-talkie he’d always held onto to transmit his thoughts across the microphone. a very standard american voice. and, so long as he had the walke-talkie with him, one that he could transmit from anywhere in the city. as long as he intercepted at the necessary times, it didn’t matter if he was in the station or not... which has been very helpful for his digging.
the end ?
TIMELINE:
BORN - in late 1934, completely deaf. already had three siblings... would have even more later on.
GENERAL EARLY SCHOOL YEARS?: was discouraged from, sometimes punished for, using ASL at school due to oral education being at its peak. he was taught english, speech, and lip-reading, but that only extends so far. his eldest brother, jack, learned sign to communicate and connect with him. the rest of his family was a little bit busy with the amount of kids...
AGE 6: at eighteen, his brother has a child with his first wife, mary. monty becomes an uncle.
AGE 7: jack goes off to fight in wwii. mary takes up his torch when it comes to providing monty with company.
AGE 10: word is sent that jack died fighting in the frontlines in the normandy landings.
AGE 11-12: atomic bombs fall on hiroshima & nagasaki and everyone is celebrating. this is something that monty both does and does not understand... wakes up in the fallout of a nuclear apocalypse. it’s not 1945 anymore, it’s not illinois anymore. he hopelessly travels around for weeks, unsure of how he’s alive! and, right as he’s sure he’ll be succumbing to the elements, he finds the passage to an underground bunker. after a whole series of events, he manages to get inside a safe place with a man named ed. ed manages to communicate to monty that he had sent morse over the radio. and when monty doesn’t understand, ed creates a morse-code-to-english-alphabet cipher and begins speaking to him using that as monty communicates over the radio. monty learns he’s in canada, but ed doesn’t know what year it is anymore. the cause of the atomic bomb that had hit was ‘the east.’ they eventually devise a strategy that’ll use no paper at all. ed taps monty on the shoulder and has him watch him tap the wall.
AGE 13: they start running out of supplies. ed volunteers to brave the elements, but, ultimately, monty figures that he’s the one who can communicate through technology. if ed tried to send word to him over the radio, he wouldn’t hear it, but the same wouldn’t be said when it came to monty. monty took a walkie-talkie with him and traveled out. when he finally came across non-perishables, he realized he was completely lost. he decided to tell ed that he was going to keep walking and hope for the best. they exchanged goodbyes. monty felt ed’s morse coming through the walkie-talkie. he hops back in time, just a few years, and watches as the missiles head right towards him -- whatever new country he’s in. disaster occurs all around him as women hug their children and cars come to a sudden halt and the timeline saves him by mere milliseconds, jumping him forward a few months. he spends the next year trapped in this side of the wasteland with no one to talk to.
AGE 14: he wakes up in his home, just barely making it out alive. but it’s 1949. after a few mistrials, he communicates with his family over the radio. and they cannot believe their eyes or ears: first of all, he’d just literally spoken through the radio? second of all, he... had been in a nuclear apocalypse? not just missing? hmm...
AGES 14-17: he is constantly preoccupied with this ‘fallout.’ he’s drawn into himself. he talks about it, he draws pictures of some guy with some symbols underneath... wtf?
AGE 17: his family decides to institutionalize him.
AGE 18: after going through two rounds of electroshock therapy, he is transported to 1962, just in time for the cuban missile crisis.
AGES 18-28: the timeline decides it wants him right in the middle of the cold war. he’s certain that this is what will bring the nuclear apocalypse if he can’t stop it. he goes about it by sending false broadcasts, hoping to unite people under gratitude when they come out with their lives... or maybe fear... or maybe love... but nothing seems to work. everything he tries tends to just make things worse. he could activate it if he wanted to.
AGE 28: he’s in 1991 and the cold war is over. with that news, the timeline fritzed. he was in wwii for a few days. the final day, he was by his brother and saw that he did not go out blazing. then he was in the vietnam war for a few days. about to be taken as prisoner, the timeline yanked him to a party he was not invited to on december 31st, 1999. it was in a bunker with a group of people counting down to the end of civilization. when the clock was one second away from hitting january 1st, 2000, he was pulled forward to 2020. nothing seemed to be immediately off, unlike his past three destinations...
AGE 29: he decides it would be best to stop relying on homeless shelters -- the timeline has not interfered in a while, so he pools together some money and eventually gets a shoddy apartment in chicago.
AGES 30-32: he builds a life in chicago. he still travels every now and again, but he hasn’t spent more than two days in a different time in years. although he still can’t quite tame his power, it seems to be taming itself. he becomes a disc jockey. due to the main requirement being, you know, working through radio waves, so long as he has his walkie-talkie to communicate over, he can run the job from anywhere in the city. this is in the headcanons section, but it’s important to note that he also uses his walkie-talkie to talk to other people. ever since it started translating morse into direct words, he doesn’t have to rely on sign, and what they say gets translated in his mind through the walkie-talkie.
HEADCANONS:
I’M GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE AN OFFICIAL REQUEST THAT, IF YOU KNOW SIGN LANGUAGE, IGNORE WHAT HE’S SAYING IN ALL OF THE GIFS.
much like his fc, he is completely deaf. he is familiar with and fluent in ASL, but carries a walkie-talkie to communicate his thoughts and translate the words of others into morse code to ensure the general ability to communicate with anyone he comes across. (yes, it would probably work with other devices. no, he is not going to give his walkie-talkie up to experiment with that.)
identified as straight until he was 15 (...i mean, the 1940s-50s + four years spent without other people, save for a few months with a guy closer to a father figure than anything else...). identified as bi until he was 20. identified as gay until he was 25. identified as bi until he was 27... has always really relied on the decade... doesn’t fully know what to label himself as, simply uses queer.
moving back and forth in the timestream has its pros and its cons. one pro ? he can survive for weeks, even months, after traveling forward without food and water. traveling backwards ? he better get to some water damn fast.
his father had some sort of dormant mutation related to bad luck, hence why monty only seemed to travel to shitty historical events. a secret his eldest brother kept was that he had telepathy... and used that to understand what monty was saying, not ASL.
his on-air persona is ‘sonny/sunny,’ inspired by the ‘sunshine units’ & project sunshine ; the station is radio KONT - aka, radio contingency (with a ‘k’ because all american radio stations have to either start with a ‘k’ or a ‘w’ and actually chicago is based in the ‘w’ region, but... i came up with that name before i knew that so... pretend with me!)
has also kept the clothes that ed gave him to change into. is not an artist, but does have a picture of a poorly-drawn ed hanging in his apartment with morse code for ‘goodbye’ beneath it.
uses 40s-80s slang like any of it is still applicable. but with most of his childhood spent in the 30s/40s and most of his early adult years spent in the 60s-80s... look at that tubular dish! she sure is groovy!
CONNECTION IDEAS:
relatives ! as i said, he had a hoard of siblings and should, technically, be 88. plenty of time there ! could even have a child ! who’s older than him...
exes/flings/ons/etc ! you have to be careful when you have an untamable power that’ll put you in peril one second and drag you out the next. although he loves the company of others, he’s never gotten very close to anyone due to this... but...
regular listeners/callers ! eye think that could be fun.
people whose relatives he knew ! the 1940s-1990s were a wild time !
plenty of other things ! my mind is just getting fried from my cormac mccarthy novel :\