SS572S | VOICE | D009

[2199]

[American, vaguely East Coast, female, an adult voice with a harsh cadence; she speaks in the dull tone of someone accustomed to terse military communication.]

This is Sierra-Sierra-Five-Seven-Two-Sierra, requesting Libra. I say again: Sierra-Sierra-Five-Seven-Two-Sierra, requesting Libra. Requesting November-Sierra-Charlie. Requesting... Requesting unknown station.

Possible India-Foxtrot-Tango bleed. Proceed with caution. Do not interact with any nonhuman organic life. I say again: do not interact with any nonhuman organic life, under any circumstance. This priority overrides all other orders. Authentication: Deep Waters.

Report... Report. [A long sigh. Something like fatigue creeps in, but it's quickly banished.] Reporting buildings on the horizon. Will attempt reconnaissance.

Please hail if assist is needed. Location unknown, but... well, if I can hear you on this thing, I should be able to get to you.

Sierra-Sierra-Five-Seven-Two-Sierra, over.

Comments

[hyakuoku]

One-niner-niner-seven?
1997? Huh, I would have placed you later in time than that.

[ He might be misunderstanding, though. ]

Let's see…trilobites would have been extinct in the Permian-Triassic extinction. There was volcanic activity that turned the oceans acidic, which is why things like that couldn't survive anymore. They'd survived other extinctions, but that one got to them.

There was CO2 in the atmosphere during that last extinction, though, and a lot of species couldn't breathe all that, so…yeah, more or less. The air just wasn't breathable for a long ass time.

So the ten billion yen question: what is one doing here, right?

[2199]

Why would you assume that?

[Has there been an intelligence leak- but her worries are allayed, briefly, by his explanation. She's always found it very calming, being debriefed by scientists, and this time, it's not an explanation of why the world is wrong, broken, how she's about to be thrown into the hungry maw of time.]

Or: why can we breathe this air?

[There's no reason to assume they're in the anthropocene, as much as the thought makes her stomach churn.]

[hyakuoku]

Statistically most of us have been from after the year 2000, though not all.

[ He laughs a little, the same habit he always has. ]

I don't think we're the anachronism here, that's why. There are structures here with modern — at least 20th century, I'd say, if not 21st century — writing. There's some implied tech that meets that expectation, though a lot of it is either not working or not yet accessible. We've only been here a few days, though, so we're still trying to figure it out.

The weird animals, whether they're experiments or also pulled through some multiversal hole or whatever it is, I don't think they're native. Ultimately, I think this is universe travel. Not time travel.

[2199]

You've run some kind of survey?

Forgive me if this is a silly question, but... what's the difference between time travel and 'universal' travel?

[hyakuoku]

Nah, nothing formal, I just remember what people have said about when they're from.

[ He thinks for a second. ]

I guess there might be a bit of a semantic question to that, huh? If you change the timeline enough, then on every sort of reroll it could be different enough that we'd all have lived in the same universe in different times, but in a different series of events. But then we're still talking about different timelines. Because it's not as if Martin experiencing a different series of events in 2019 than I did negates my entire lived experience. That timeline still exists. Isn't that a parallel universe rather than just, hey, I went back and screwed around in time?

This is all highly theoretical to me either way. Time travel and multiverse travel, those had never been done in my world. At least not yet. We didn't have the technology to do anything like that, just some quantum physicists sort of poking at shit like that before civilisation got wiped in 2019. I imagine we'll get there again.

I gotta get home first though.

[2199]

[A sudden urgency-]

2019? What happened in 2019?

[hyakuoku]

Probably nothing if you ask Martin.

[ He has no idea what happened in Martin's 2019, only that petrification didn't. But even though he's being a brat for a second just to emphasise his prior point, he'll still answer the question for real. ]

Most people here don't believe me, but since you asked: every human on earth was petrified by an unknown phenomenon, including me. Took me over 3,700 years to revive. We're almost at a point where we can save everyone, or we were before I got interrupted by this unasked for wild ass vacation.

[2199]

There's no reason to disbelieve you.

[Purely pragmatic, of course.]

What did the sky look like, when it happened?

[hyakuoku]

Of course there's not, but if you haven't lived through it, I guess it's a lot to hear.

[ He's gotten used to it, but he is a little surprised she doesn't just call him a liar or a crazy person. He is neither one, though, so...good! ]

The sky was normal. The petrification came with a green light that spread across the planet. You could see it on the horizon but it moves too fast to escape or really do anything about by the time you see it. And anyway, it's not like anyone knew what it was. The only warning we had at all was a slew of starlings turning up petrified, and most people on Twitter thought that was a bullshit conspiracy theory.

It wasn't.

[2199]

[Twitter... is that a bird watching forum? Seems likely, moving on-]

What about the weather? Cold?

[hyakuoku]

Completely normal summer day. The Americans I know who have been revived had the same experience we did, though they got hit a little sooner than we were, being closer to the origin point.

[2199]

Where was the origin point?

[hyakuoku]

South America.
In Manaus, Brazil, more precisely. But to be clear, the technology that caused the petrification isn't something that humans had advanced enough to develop. I'm still trying to solve that piece of the puzzle. Can't do that as easily from here, so...gotta figure this shit out and go home.

[2199]

Alien technology, you mean?

[hyakuoku]

Or future technology. I don't know which one yet. Neither is more or less plausible in my mind, but I can't prove it either way just yet.

[2199]

How could future technology come to your present? [How preposterous.]

[hyakuoku]

[ He laughs, almost a genuine sound and not his little habitual one. ]

Really? That's the thing that gets you? How could someone invent something that petrifies the whole world for thousands of years? How could aliens exist and come to Earth after billions of years without proof that there was other life out there?

That's the ten billion yen question, isn't it? Aliens seem slightly more likely, but only slightly. Especially now that I've seen proof of the multiverse coming here...the possibility of time travel or even multiversal crossover bringing us that tech...I can't write that off.

[2199]

[Moss keeps her voice even, but she lets it warm slightly at the edges-- inquisitive, the sound of a woman who wants to listen to a man talk.]

You're aware of the Fermi Paradox? Aliens seem more and less likely, simultaneously, as time travel. I thought it was impossible to travel backward, anyway. Isn't that due to... relativity?

me trying so hard to understand wild ass quantum physics after 10 mins on wikipedia

[hyakuoku]

Of course I am. Which step of the Fermi paradox is humanity on earth actually at, if it's really a thing? Which of those steps is where other life must actually break down or stop being able to exist? We don't know. We never found out.

Maybe we can go back to trying to answer that question when I revive everyone. But there's the imminent threat of everyone just being petrified again, so I gotta solve "where did this come from and why" before I just go waking everyone up. I only wanna do that one time, not repeatedly. Being petrified over and over is a pain in the ass.

[ He should know! He's done it a couple times. ]

Yeah, spot on. Ten billion points to you. General relativity doesn't allow for it. Some sort of difference in how spacetime is shaped or formed would have to happen for us to travel back in time.

Though there's Hugh Everett's many worlds interpretation, which goes back to something you brought up earlier, right? What's the difference between time travel and universe travel? Could just be semantic. We don't know, since neither one is "possible."

[ You can hear the air quotes here. ]

If a "time" traveller really just arrived in a parallel universe, then they didn't technically travel back in time.

This is all me spouting bullshit based on shaky quantum physics, though. I know what it sounds like. It's a little psuedo-science. But a lot of modern science sounded like sci-fi before someone proved it.

Basically, I don't have the real answer. Alien tech seems more likely, but…is it? Dunno! It's exciting to think about!

[ And you can hear the exclamation point there, too. ]

This whole situation is exciting to think about! It's a shame there's almost no one back home actually awake that could appreciate the whole multiverse thing.

Either way, the endgame here is the same.

Figure this stupid ass island thing out. Get everyone back where they came from without accidentally nuking us all in some wormhole or…whatever.

Then for me, solve the answer of where the petrification tech came from and revive the rest of humanity.

[ He makes it sounds so easy. ]