Okay wait Inky i might be a genius.
I was rewatching The Martian to get a feel for Watney's voice to write Martian Stan better, and I got smacked in the face with an idea.
In the Martian, at least in the beginning, Watney can only communicate with Nasa through these very short, basically coded messages, and it adds a layer of separation of communication
I was thinking how on earth is Ford gonna communicate back to Stan that's not just straight letting them talk to each other over the radio (cause that's no fun)
What if. Ford can only communicate to Stan via cuts between radio frequencies. You ever used a ghost spirit box? It cycles through radio frequencies at a high speed, and hypothetically, the ghosts can manipulate the frequencies together to produce words. One to two words at once usually, though occasionally a fuller sentence.
What if thats how Ford is able to communicate with Stan?
Stan is just listening to the radio and Ford manages to tear apart and rebuild a spirit box (i figure he'd have one for ghost hunting) and be able to manipulate the radio on Stan's end to get in short, crackling words or sentences out into the multiverse.
It wouldn't SOUND like ford, obviously, it would sound like a mishmash of words made up of different songs and sounds, but it would be super interesting!
YES???? YOU ARE A GENIUS OH MY GOSH OH MY GOSH
taking notes as we speak, and contemplating the void bc holy fucking this this au is just. It’s taken over my life. I need to start a journal notebook for these epic ideas and then figure out how to turn them into an even epic-er fic
canon now. Stan would freak tf out when it first happened I know that for sure, or he just think he’s hallucinating and brush it off until Polly starts also responding to it in her mimic-sounds-and-voices way, and THEN he’d freak out. And contemplate the fact that ford was actually getting the messages Stan meant for him (was Not supposed to happen) (starts googling ‘how to erase brothers mind of all my epic fails I accidentally shared to him’, except he can’t bc 1. 1982, 2. terrible idea, 3. nightmare realm)
