♠ audio, 01

[shotinhead]

[ Perrin is still suffering from the nightmares, mind you, with this being the last day of them. So that's why this message first goes out quite late at night. Oddly enough, the message seems quite focused, though. Perrin knows how to handle his brain. But his voice is choppy, each word practiced. There's also a slight echo. (In real life, he is saying each word out loud before saying it in telepathy.) ]

--didn't know being a psyker was something technology could help with. Which is pretty impressive.

I know those were real people. Pokemon? Those guys who vanished. It's not like when I see people and then I'm the only one seeing them.

I know the doctor said they'd keep records, but we should too. Keep our own, I mean - and we can also figure out if there's a connection between us. First thing's first.

Where are you all from? I've heard that not all of you are American. Or from the same time as me - oh, that's right. I'm from the year 2281. [ Oops, his thoughts are spiraling. He's not saying this part out loud in real life, anymore. And sounding more casual. ] You know, it's pretty fascinating to meet people who are pre-War. I would have thought you would have been a lot weirder, but you're just like me. Without the survival instints, I mean. I wonder if it's true that people were just the same, and it was the governments and corporations that wanted to mess stuff up. Oh, but they didn't cause the Resource Wars, the lack of resources did... sometimes wish I'd read more up on history. I mean, pre-War history. Not just shit that happened near to me.

[ He seems to have forgotten this is telepathy and his thoughts are being broadcast for a while. Until-- ] Oh. Right. So I'm gonna be keeping a list of us. Uh, in a book. We don't have terminals here, and terminals could get messed up if some of the electricity messed up or if we forgot the password. And I'm not the best hacker. I'm also not the best at lockpicking, honestly.

So! Guess this is me asking about your home and what year you're from!

[[ This post can also be used as a mingle post, if wanted! The OOC post for the record keeping is here. Perrin will let anybody check it out, which is why he hasn't listed his real name in it. ]]

Comments

P5R spoilers warning for lurkers

[truthdecided]

It's strange. There was another from my world, I'm sure of it. Perhaps she's simply returned home. If so, it's likely for the best.

[Yet there's still a tinge of disappointment in his tone, if only because it was another familiar face who lacked the friction of the other Phantom Thieves.

Well, there are other matters to discuss.]

At any rate, I'm from Japan, circa 2017. I can't say that our timelines will align, but I can't say it surprises me to hear that another great war took place. History comes in cycles, and humanity has developed so many weapons of mass destruction that it's a wonder we haven't experienced World War III.

Then again, we did nearly face an apocalypse around late 2016, to say nothing of the false reality that followed.

no spoilers for fallout here just silliness

[shotinhead]

[ There's a telepathic gasp from Perrin, and a slight flicker of... green? In the thoughts. ] That's a whole 60 years before the Great War - and that's even before House was born! But, like, I don't know if we would have heard of any weird shit happening in Japan, even if stuff had been recorded.

Because of the nuclear war. Which we should have called World War III, except it lasted less then a day, and we still don't know who fired first. Doesn't matter, though, in the end. You know, I spoke to another guy from Japan--

Wait, you thought about the weird green d-- cat earlier, didn't you? That guy.

[truthdecided]

Of course it'd be a nuclear war.

[Unsurprising. They're devastating weapons. Given his country of origin, he would know.

Thankfully, the plume of a mushroom cloud soon gives way to a flicker of Ren's feline form.]

But yes. Ren and I both share a world, and of the two of us, he's the one who had the 'honor' of shooting god in the face.

[offtracks]

I am from a world with Pokemon in it as well! I'm fairly certain it is not this one, but most things I have seen so far seem similar enough. The region I'm from is called Hisui, and the year was...

[A sudden uncertainty cuts his words off. If Emmet sees this, will he perhaps be bothered? Ingo did come here from Hisui. It might as well be the region he's from at this point, right? He can't even picture Unova in his mind.]

...ah, do you mean the year we came here from...?

[shotinhead]

Hisui, huh...

[ He is scribbling this down. But also, thoughtfully: ] That's what I was thinking. To see who's from the past or future or--

--I never asked what year it is here.

[offtracks]

Ah. [welp] Well - it may be a different calendar system, anyway. My clan uses a different one from the people in the village.

ACTION FOR LUM -> 'AUDIO'

[seacub]

[Emporio is not touching that pearl. He knows precisely what will happen when he touches that pearl, it is why there is a faint echo coming from the bedroom. And wow. Imagine that. A bedroom. With a bed.

A Bed, Not A Piano.

Honestly the other two probably watched plenty of that kind of awe on day one, followed immediately by being woken up in the middle of the night by horrible nightmares. Magically induced? Not? Mysteries.]

...Did Polteageist tell you where there's tablets to use? I haven't really seen too much paper-wise, other than on the bulletin board... ...And the archives all use stone. Possibly because of how fragile paper can be here...

[No comment on weirdness scales.

....Oh alright he'll get his pearl.] ...Well, I already told you what you said you'd need for the records, but I guess it would help if everyone had examples...

[And so-

Through the Pearls, comes the following-]

Uh...hello. I'm going to try and keep this short, so that everyone isn't mixed up; these pearls seemed to grab onto thoughts easy, so it'll probably take a lot of practice to get used to. I remember, Anasui commented on talking through his Stand...

[Ah, already distracted-]

...Well, that isn't important. My... ...My name is Emporio Alniño. I lived in Florida, in 2012, in a world...mostly inhabited by humans?

[what does one qualify a colony of plankton? That's a question that might faintly echo in the background.]

I didn't see a lot of it, [He finishes. End pearl transmission!]

action!

[shotinhead]

Well, no. [ Perrin said, looking at the bundle of scraps he'd gotten together for now. ] Turns out that when you hang around the mail center, you find other guys who leave half-finished shit around. Just gotta trim off what they wrote, and you've got fresh paper.

[ post-apoc thinking. ] Used to have a machine that'd take all the ink off of books. Never figured out how he worked, though - but he'd be handy to have here. More handy then Muggy. Or the toaster. [ Said with a snort, but it's all playful. He's seeming rather calm, even if he looks beyond tired. ]

[seacub]

[Unbidden, with a squeak-]

You strip ink from books?!

[aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa] D- Do you record what was on the books somewhere first at least..!?

[As a matter of fact yes he's discarding everything else that came up just now to focus on this.]

[telewarped]

[This is a lot of information to take in on so little sleep, but if she focuses, Shoka swears she can hear a voice behind those thoughts—and it's a voice she recognizes, too. Maybe because of that, she barely hesitates before answering with her own voice.]

From Shinjuku. But it's gone now, so... guess I'm from nowhere, technically. Shibuya's home. It was 2021, last I checked.

[A series of thought-images are sent to him then, in rapid, disorienting flashes: a city intersection, lively and teeming with people, another city crumbling to dust, then a person—a woman with long, dark hair—crumbling in the same way. The images abruptly cease with a hiss: Seen that enough, thanks.]

Don't you sleep?

[shotinhead]

[ He is trying so hard not to show images, but one does flicker though. Standing inside a large spire of a building, a half-destroyed city below them, the desert spreading out endlessly beyond it - blocked out by artificial light. Before his thoughts clear again, and it's just his voice. A little quiet. ]

Well, the Mojave ain't where I'm from, but it's my home right now. And it's better awake then asleep right now.

[telewarped]

Yeah... I get that.

Never been to the desert. [Let alone a post-apocalyptic one, obviously. It looks rough to her, but...] You miss it?

[not_damned_yet]

Record-keeping? Good idea. Count me in. And terminals- terminals. If we find or make one, I've got a good sense for technology.

[There's a couple stray thoughts in the background that seem to be him rotating ideas on how to hook up a input/output system to the grumpearls. Nothing concrete or even anything he's certain works off principles that exist.]

Whatever. Here from Nevada. I'm not telling you my home region because I don't have one. The year is sometime after 2002. No, I don't know the exacts. Look, you try tracking time without a day/night cycle and tell me how it goes. It's after 2002.

Never heard of America being a place, though. Looks like we're not from the same universe.

[The transmission cuts off fairly hard. Not violently or anything, Doc's just trying to make sure nothing goes through past what he intends to go through.]

[shotinhead]

[ Perrin is glad that this other guy is fine with just Hanging Up Thoughts because he's the same way currently. ]

Nevada? Really? Y'know, that's what people called the Mojave before everything. But-- yeah, timekeeping is a bitch sometimes.

But-- what do you mean, different universes?

[not_damned_yet]

We're in this place. World. Whatever. We're here, and unless you're telling me you think we got magically displaced and turned into pokémon but we're just across the ocean from wherever the hell we used to live, we've got to be in a different universe.

[There's a quiet thread of the fact Doc knows he doesn't have an ocean in his world, but it's not really an intentional transmission.]

Also, I met a guy who claimed to be a cat. Cats are extinct- for me, anyway. I could assume it's time-related, or I could assume that since this universe exists and isn't the one I'm from, he's from a third, separate universe.

I could make a point with you and I, too, but we've both got Nevada. So it's not as good a point.

FF14 spoilers in this thread just in case - but also potential WoL OC backstory woooo

[bladeofnymeia]

I do not know what an American is, but I'm sorry they had to go through such a war.

[She doesn't know what kind of war, but like, governments fucking about, lack of resources? None of that sounds great. The governments bit pings a flash of a decimated metropolis from Firoza, while the resources bit...well, her mind cycles through flashes of ruin and despair, alien even to her own mind. Before it starts spreading to tangential memories, she puts a clamp on it - mostly to be polite. Stuff like that is a lot to put on someone else out of the blue.]

I...do not think we hail from the same star. Er, world. But I can start from as far back as I know, if you're curious.

[shotinhead]

Oh, well. It's what us people from America call ourselves. Uh. Fuck, let's see if I can--

[ And then he gets the flashes - and his eye closes. That second one from the Dead Ends seems to get a soft grunt from him. Something that reminds him of his own home, and there's a bit of a sad sound at that. (hey this man is traumatised by nuclear hellfire already) ] --really gotta figure out how to control our minds, huh. But, yeah. America, American. It was a bit of a global war, though.

But hey, I am pretty curious. I mean, I heard there's some space stuff around my slice of the world. I even met some aliens once. You know, since stars are those things in the sky and all, and I didn't know things could live on them.

[ There is a slight flash of an alien spacecraft, with an alien shooting at Perrin. You know, nice and first-person. ]

[bladeofnymeia]

Ah-

[There's an overwhelming sense of embarrassment at the memory bleed.]

Apologies! I - this is hard. It's almost like an ability of mine, but instead it flows back and forth between peoples...

[She can, at least, keep a personal clamp on the musing, "Did the Ancients have to deal with this? No...they wouldn't bother talking if they could just speak in each other's minds all the time."]

Mm...well, "star" is a...a common term, for what we'd call a world. And it is also the stars in the sky. Travel between them is not exactly viable - the great expanse is too big to traverse without considerable power and the cooperation of many. But...it has been done before.

[Perrin gets to see a cool starship, just the outside. She's trying to keep things more focused.]

[firealone]

Twolegs number their years?

[There's a lot of Six's explanation of his world that is just fully sailing over Firepaw's head, but that's the only bit he can grasp well enough to question.]

Um... we don't have a name for the place where my Clan lives, everyone just calls it the oak forest. We don't have a number for our years, but Bluestar was the eighth leader since ThunderClan started living there. A few cats remember the leader before her, some of our elders remember the leader before him, but no one was alive to meet the leader before that. I hope that's helpful.

[Cats live very short, difficult lives in the forest, so that really isn't a long time, but no one tell Firepaw that.]

[shotinhead]

Yeah, we number our years - and oak forest is more then fine! I know people who just say they've grown up over there, and then you gotta figure out how far-- anyway! We number our years. But then there's the case when our years need to go back before 0, which has always been weird t'me. Like... if that's the case, why didn't we start at 0 again when the world began again?

[ you have got him pondering Deep Questions. Actually just his thought process is happening out loud now. ]

[firealone]

[For a moment there's no words being transmitted, just a very strong feeling of being overwhelmed. What... is he talking about??]

Um... yeah, I don't know what number I would call our years. Maybe one of the older cats would have a better idea, but... "Bluestar's leadership" or something like that should be fine. At least, if someone else says Bluestar is their leader, they're probably someone I know.

[Granted... he doesn't actually remember the names of the other Clan leaders. If someone from another Clan came here, they might have trouble figuring out their timeline.]

[quirkynote]

[No...no, none of that sounds right. As someone who has read plenty of pre-war history books from her own world.....maybe that's why this all sounds wrong? Clearly she'll need to educate.]

Electronic devices were abolished long before the war even began, the idea that you would even consider using one when there are much more efficient energy sources is shameful at best.

[Oh, wait, she's a terrible teacher.]

...books are sufficient, so I suppose there's no reason to carry out punishment. Although I clearly recall the year being 2187.

[shotinhead]

I dunno, terminals are pretty power-effective. Most of 'em have been running for centuries. Which is sorta weird, but hey.

[ Mental shrug, probably making a hn sound. Before: ] Either you're from another one of those universe like that other guy mentioned, or you're just from-- hang on a sec, let me think-- [ he should have paid more attention to history ] well, that's a year after th'beginnings of the NCR and they still used terminals, so I think it's another universe thing.

Or you're far from America. Maybe th'other side of th'world is just better.

[outbounds]

Terminals... Clarify, please! Just to make sure we are talking- thinking?- about the same kinds of things. Like a PC, or a tablet? Xtransceiver? Rotom phone? ... BlukBerry? Pokegear?

[ there's an accompanying burst of visual for each rapidfire thought, though maybe they might or might not linger around long enough to get a good grasp of. the image of the PC, in any case, is the image of the typical wall-mounted ones accessible to the general public that you'd find in most public facilities like the Centers, league buildings, and battle facilities as opposed to the personal desktops people might have at home. ]

Even if we did find something like them though. Some of us don't even have hands or paws, just wings. Some of us have claws. If writing is hard for some of us then devices like that might be even harder.

But like Ingo, I am Emmet and I am also from somewhere that already had Pokemon. The region I am from is called Unova.

[ there's a moment where he tries to call up an appropriate map to illustrate, though it blurs jarringly before slowly filling in the blank parts with something a little more detailed, starting with the city in the center.

(in real life he just shook his head like an etch n sketch because probably, a topographical map might be more useful than just the subway lines). ]

[shotinhead]

[ Perrin listened, and then gave a little internal nod to himself. That looked like a nice place! Almost a bit like home, he thinks for a moment. And there's a small blip as he sees the machines, a thought of 'huh, those are pretty neat.' ]

I'm talkin' about terminals. Hang on, I'll--

[ What he thinks of is a very old-style computer, isn't it. ]

--I've got one in my suite back home. But these claws are so fucking hard to write with - but I gotta learn. What sorta Courier can't correct a fucking address? [ Oh. There is anger entering his voice, his thoughts drifting. ] Do you know how fucking annoying it is when you need to correct somebodies' handwriting because you need to figure out if they really want you to go somewhere dangerous or not? [ #justcourierthings ]