oo1 | video (intro!)

[frigidaire]

Who: Isaac Lahey & you!
Broadcast: fleetwide; video
Action: Marsiva, hospital deck.
When: now!!

[ the feed flickers on, the camera shaking as the user clearly fumbles with the device. he's not the most graceful of creatures, isaac lahey. when it does finally center on his face, he looks a little bewildered. ]

Okay, so I've had weird dreams before but --

[ he looks around, walking around the hospital deck as though pacing the room might actually get him somewhere. ] I mean, am I dead? Is this what that great white light looks like? Because if it is, it's pretty disappointing.

[ no, really, he's had a lot of weird experiences with dreams, new places, supernatural things, and this? looks nothing like that at all. ]

I thought it would look at least a little more like Star Trek or... I don't know, more clouds? A lake, maybe. Something more scenic. [ ... priorities. ] Mexican food would be nice.

Comments

[feathery]

[Oh my god. He's ok with this.]

Hey, they had the internet at the next city over, it just took fucking days to get there.

I've been here for like five months, I guess. Dimension hopping gets kind of old after you've done it a few times and were kidnapped unawares most of them.

this is cr i never knew i needed. but i do.

[frigidaire]

The next city? You mean in magic castleland or like, here. Does facebook work? I can facebook my friend. They should probably know I'm gone. Er. They probably do. But five months and you haven't gotten back? What have you been doing? Sounds lazy. We're on a spaceship. That flies in space and time apparently. So. It could just drop us off back home.

yesss. i'm sorry for how much he talks btw

[feathery]

Oh, christ. I guess this is where I do an infodump.

[SIGH. Nah, he doesn't mind it that much. If he really minded, he wouldn't do it at all.]

First, it was in magic castleland, so no Facebook. Sorry, dude. Shitty-ship spaceland also doesn't have the internet for some dumbass reason, so get ready to go stir fucking crazy during downtime. Second, I'd say I resent the implication I'm lazy, but that's an untruth. Though I can guarantee I'd be gone already if I could have ditched this tin can for a portal back to hell. Getting trapped in limbo was never on my to-do list.

Lastly. Well, ok, not lastly. The assholes who run this bloated fiasco do their best to stay out of reach. This makes it kind of hard to properly fuck up their shit and there is a long, long, long waiting list of contestants who want to do just that before they jack Atroma's tech to head to lands unknown.

Lastly-for-real, most of these dimension-hopping shitpiles seem to come with the clause that no one in your reality knows you're gone. It's a load of bullshit temporal and spatial logistics that no one really needs to understand beyond "shit's exactly as it was back home". You can decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

no apologies.

[frigidaire]

Okay, so we're on a spaceship, but they couldn't manage the internet. And you're some bird guy from hell, stuck in weird space purgatory, and it's that whole if a tree falls in a forest is anyone around to hear it kind of deal with the people back home.

[ like, no one's going to notice he's gone and probably not even care. he can't imagine there's some weird body double running around, but he's not going to think about that right now. it wouldn't be impossible where he's from. ]

Makes sense. [ nope. ] So no one knows who has kidnapped us and why? I mean beyond the obvious reasons why. Game show or... death. It's looking like it could go both ways.

[feathery]

Nope. For all we know the kidnapping could be incidental. Like they just happened to find us stumbling through the nexus on our way to greener pastures and decided we looked like a hot piece of marketing. I guess it's easier to experiment on people when anyone you try to tell thinks you're bullshitting them.

[frigidaire]

Right, somehow I don't believe that. Happened to find us. Wait. Experimenting? What makes you think they're experimenting on us?

[ okay, bird dave, you need to watch how you say things. isaac can be a very unhappy woof, and the idea that they were brought here as test subjects or lab rats is not exceptionally appealing. especially to a kid with anger problem. ]

You're joking, right?

[feathery]

[Davesprite is a bird with an absolutely shit brain-to-mouth filter. This has already fucked him over.

It's probably inevitable he set off Isaac's temper at some point.]

I dunno about you, but I always thought the unwanted brain surgery had mad scientist written all over it. That and reality TV? I'm not sure if I should believe it because it's such a fucking stupid cover-up or if they were that desperate for an alibi. So I'm just sitting uncomfortably on this shitty fence where all options are equally true, waiting for Tom Sawyer to knock my ass onto whichever side has the more plausible landing.

[frigidaire]

[ well, he hasn't set it off yet. but that doesn't say much. isaac is pretty unpredictable on occasion (read: always).

he should worry a little bit more about a place like this, about a guy who claims to be a bird, about much of this place but Isaac still has seen weirder things happen, like the Nematon and Darach and Scott McCall's morning hair. ]

What the hell does Tom Sawyer have to do with anything about space ships and reality TV? Are you sure something's not wrong with you. Because If you say there isn't, I won't believe you.

[feathery]

I'm part bird. There's a lot wrong with me.

[It's deadpan, in a way that straddles the line between dead serious and eye-rolled indifference.]

How's the verdict coming along on that.

[frigidaire]

I guess you could be part-something worse. I mean, better bird than a fly or an opossum.

[ but hey, there's a lot wrong with a lot of people so he's not exactly going to get fussy over that. he spent a good part of his life locked in a freezer, so... ]

But I guess you're okay. I've seen worse. [ No, really... ]

[feathery]

Thanks.

[It's so dry that it's starting to crack and peel.]

But I guess we can't all be part wolf.

[frigidaire]

[ whoa. wait. what. Isaac just sort of half stares at Dave, because he's pretty sure he didn't tell him about being a Werewolf, but. he did know another version (??) of him. however that worked. ]

Right. I'm gonna guess you know that from your other weird time travel place, because I didn't tell you that and you don't know that for sure, so.

[ werewolves in space. it sounds like a bad movie title. ] And I'm not really part wolf -- it's just a type of wolf, I guess, but it's not like I walk around with claws and dog ears all day. Better than feathers, anyway.

[feathery]

There is definitely a girl here with dog ears. And cat-people. Only don't call them cat people or they might shank you with a fishing pole.

[frigidaire]

With a fishing pole? How does that work? They bend -- it'd break before the shanking could actually work.

[feathery]

Don't question the logistics of a world where a girl can beat you to death with a steel-reinforced book.

[frigidaire]

A book makes sense. It's heavy, it's solid, especially steel reinforced. But who reinforces their books with steel? I've been beaten up a lot and stabbed a dozen or more times but never beaten with a book. Sounds like you have bad friends, Bird Dave. I don't want to meet fishing pole shanking lady. They're flimsy, which I bet makes it hurt worse.

[feathery]

Oh, come on. I just told you the secret to not getting shanked.

She probably wouldn't do it, anyway. She'd rather catch a starshark or whatever detritus they've got floating around in the vacuum of space.

[frigidaire]

A starshark? Is that a thing that actually exists?

I mean we're on a space ship, so I guess I can't count anything out in the realm of possibility. I'm also a werewolf, so. I guess starsharks could exist.

[feathery]

They probably do. If not here, somewhere else.

She's like a five-foot nothing furry who can reel in a forty foot long serpent, though, so it sounds like the kind of thing she'd be into.

[frigidaire]

A five-foot furry? Like that's impressive what she can do but --

What exactly do you mean by furry? That has -- I mean that could be a lot of things.

[feathery]

First, don't tell her I ever called her that. Second, I just mean she's like—

[There's a pause as he tries to convey what he means by furry.]

You know what, there's no good way to explain this. I fucked up.

[frigidaire]

I mean I don't even know her name how am I -- wait.

[ ... it's like it's all slotted into place for Isaac. ]

Does she seriously wear one of those freaky animal costumes? I remember hearing about those.

[feathery]

Oh my god. No. Please, can we not go there.

[He's just imagining what might happen to him on the off-chance a cat-person or dog girl sees this later.]

I left those torturous fortifications of furry porn behind on the dead internets of Earths past. Don't send me back. I'm a free bird.

[frigidaire]

Uh, you said she was a furry. And one of the doctors. I don't want to be examined by someone in like... a giant bear costume or a cat or something. Or a wolf.

[ sorry, he's just gonna look grossed out. ] Seriously do not even mention furry porn. Like really, why -- I mean, uh, why would you even watch that? There's more wrong with you than I thought. But I mostly want to listen to Free Bird now. You know, "and this bird you cannot change." It's like it was written about you and your weird porn.

[feathery]

Oh my fucking christ. —Don't take that literally.

How about we, uh, just let Free Bird monopolize the rest of this conversation and pretend the Sherman Antitrust Act never came to pass. [What the fuck kind of reference even is that.] Sounds good, right.