two: video

[punk_cute]

[Kanji looks a little awkward when he comes onscreen, shifting and nervous.]

The hell with knockin' on doors. This is quicker and it ain't like those bastards don't already know. Anyway! I got dropped here and find out about this poisoning shit in the food so I figured this was something I could do for the people stuck here. Someone I talked to and I figured, they couldn't be poisoning all the stuff we can get at, so I went out lookin'. Took a while to get everything together, but if it helps people out, it's worth it.

I made curry and I'm sure that the ingredients didn't come from them. Should be enough for everybody, as long as nobody hogs. It's in 109 if anybody's hungry.

[Kanji does indeed have a large amount of curry made, and anyone near 109 can probably smell it.]

Comments

[checksum]

[Osprey smiles wryly as his helmet collapses down and stows on his suit's belt.] I am being careful - that's why I came through the window. If I were being especially careful, I wouldn't be here at all, but some things are worth a little risk, and curry is definitely among them.

[punk_cute]

I meant, careful 'cause I coulda hit you or something.

[He's stiff for a moment more but then shrugs and waves his arm over to the kitchen area. There's pots of steaming curry, rice, and...not nearly enough plates for a lot of people but it was all he could find. Osprey is in for a treat if he likes Japanese-style curry, because Kanji is an excellent cook.]

I hope you like it! You can serve yourself up a plate.

[checksum]

I was well out of reach when I turned off the cloak. [Osprey continues talking as he finds a bowl, fills it with rice, and then ladles curry on top.] And if you were fast enough to close with me before I could react at that range, I was already screwed.

[Snagging a pair of chopsticks, he digs into the curry.] Mmm. I'm not big overall on pleasures of the flesh, but curry is the thing I miss most when I'm not sleeved in a biomorph. Even in simspace, haven't found one yet that has curry tasting as good as it does in a body.

[punk_cute]

[There's a pause, but this guy is one of the good guys, and maybe there's a little pride involved too.]

Not outta reach of my Persona.

[Nevermind that he probably wouldn't have tried that right away. Kanji shrugs that off and settles down with some of his own. He tries to listen, but his expression goes more and more confused.]

...Sorry, but I think most of that went way over my head.

[checksum]

[Osprey looks like he's about to say something for a moment, but decides against it and puts more curry in his mouth instead. No need to make this into a 'mine's bigger' sort of thing. He smiles at the look of confusion on Kanji's face.]

The tl;dr version - curry is one of the perks of being human.

[punk_cute]

[It's probably good, because Kanji is mentally groaning at himself for saying it. But... Old habits and insecurity bringing up his hobbies to new people.]

Oh. I didn't realize! Wait--

[Give him a minute to process that. He's not human but... Maybe he wasn't human? That's reasonable!]

Okay. I think I might get it now.

[checksum]

Thought you might. You look like you're not all that far back on the singularity curve - when are you from? Early digital revolution, right? Late 20th, early 21st century?

[punk_cute]

Yeah, that's right. 2012, last I was home. When are you from?

[He chuckles] Feels weird, asking when instead of where.

[checksum]

It is odd, I agree.

I'm from about a hundred years ahead of you, give or take a decade. It's hard to say exactly, because of the Fall of Earth and all the crap surrounding that.

[punk_cute]

Fall of Earth? What the hell?

[That gets him extremely worried, and he shoots Osprey an uncomfortable look.]

[checksum]

In the timeline I come from, Earth gets rendered uninhabitable by global war and high-powered AIs going rogue and turning on humanity in general. About 90% of humanity died in the Fall, and it's debatable whether it's even possible to make the planet safe for human habitation again.

[Osprey takes another bite of his curry.] I'm not gonna lie, the chunk of history you're up to live through if we get home from this is not one of humanity's shining moments.

[punk_cute]

What the hell got the war started? Everything is real peaceful as far as I know!

[He's very concerned, and a little confused.]

[checksum]

It's not clear what finally pushed things over the edge into active war - digital records get unreliable the closer you get to the Fall, and the people who survived and know about what went down and the people who are talking are two separate sets.

As far as historians can tell, the stresses of limited resources, resource disparity, old-school memetic tensions - ethnic, religious, that sort of thing - and whatever else finally hit a point of no return. Then bootstrap-capable AIs were deployed as weapons, and things really went to hell.

[punk_cute]

Shit. That's just awful. I just--

[He cuts himself off with an unhappy sigh. What to even say to information like that. They didn't save everything after all...]

[checksum]

If it helps, anecdotal evidence from others here suggests that not every timeline for Earth leads to the Fall - it seems to be a fairly rare cocantenation of events that leads to that particular near-miss with extinction.

[punk_cute]

Oh. Oh, that's a little better. Not better for the people in that timeline, or whatever, but better.

[It's a big relief to hear, even if he's not sure he understands how different timelines could happen.]