[ audio ]

[signifies]

Who: Clark Kent and you.
Broadcast: Fleetwide.
Action: Aboard the Marsiva.
When: The week of his arrival.

I don't suppose I could click my heels three times. . . [ Only Clark gets his little joke. ]

I'll keep this brief. My name is Clark - I'm from Kansas.

[ He's been the new guy at work often enough to sound chill about this, but he is feeling a little shaky having woken up here in the middle of his workday. To top it off, not being able to hear his mother's heartbeat is jarring.

There's some stress baking in Clark's future. ]

What do you make of this place? I'm curious to know how it compares to where you come from.

Comments

video

[bi_otic]

I hate to tell you, you aren't in Kansas anymore...but I'm pretty sure someone's told you that already.

[And yet, he still couldn't resist. He smiles sheepishly.]

[ audio ]

[signifies]

You can never have too many. [ He'll never get tired of bad jokes. ]

What's your name?

[bi_otic]

[Good, because those are almost the only ones he has]

Kaidan Alenko. And to answer your question...it's actually pretty close to home for me. Home in the uh...galactic sense, anyway. We have space travel. And the tech level is similar too. More advanced in some areas and less in others, from what I can tell.

[signifies]

Oh? [ That sounds wonderful. ]

Which planet are you from, then?

[bi_otic]

Yeah. I guess that makes a bit less fish out of water than some folks. But just barely, really.

Oh, I'm from Earth. In 2189...since that seems to be a consideration.

[signifies]

Wow, really? 2013, over here.

What's the future like?

[bi_otic]

[He lets out a breath of a laugh] Complicated. But what isn't?

I mean...if there's something specific you want to know, but I'm not an expert on anything.

[signifies]

[ He has so many questions.

Clark thinks on it for a moment. ]

Is space travel common?

[bi_otic]

Fairly, yeah. New, relatively speaking, but we have multiple off-world colonies, mining operations, space station, and businesses. We're not ones the waste time. It's one of the thing annoys most of the other races about us. [His smile is fondly amused at that thought, however]

[signifies]

[ Oh, good, a natural segue to aliens. He can't deny being desperately curious. ]

Sounds like it. How many are there?

[bi_otic]

Oh, uh...[A pause while he calculates, mouthing a few names silently to himself and probably counting a little on his fingers off-screen]...thirteen or fourteen, maybe, that we know of? I might be forgetting a few.

[signifies]

[ He whistles. ]

Wow. I wonder if that's the future I'm headed for.

[bi_otic]

Hard to say. I've actually met a few people here that are from a bit further down the line than me, and other than spaceflight nothing else really matches up. The Milky Way in general seems like a magnet for parallel futures.