CHAPTER ONE

[perturbator]

[The video comes in rather unfocused at first, until some noisy fiddling brings a pair of 80s style Air Jordans into view.]

There's probably other things I should be asking first, but I only have two questions right now. One: How's the weather in California this time of year?

[If this place really is different, the forecast won't be nuclear fallout. People will be there again. America might be whole again.

Quickly, the camera shifts to a small coffee table with several different newspapers strewn all over it, but with a DVD copy of Terminator 2 on top.]

Two: How the fuck do you rewind this thing?

Comments

[slightlyoffchilt]

You must be a nice parallel to the film. An individual from the past flung into the future watching an individual from the future sent into the past.

Either way, we conclude where we begin: questioning our very agency.

[perturbator]

Fuck, don't spoil it, I didn't watch it yet.

[That much is on the back of the box and kind of obvious from the first movie, but. This guy's asking too many questions without saying them.

You will never see the full picture, and it's all your own fault. The man in the mask said that. Did he mean this, or what happened at home? The visions hadn't returned yet, either. Was he alone here, truly? For once?]

Not much to question. I don't think anyone chose to come here, from what they told me.

[slightlyoffchilt]

And does that perturb you? [His tone lightens, as if they're not talking about a calcifying topic.] That our collective free wheel looks stunted?

[perturbator]

No.

[Considering he was about to get arrested for homicide in the triple digits? This is preferable, even if then he decided to go willingly. As for anyone else-- they're not his problem.]

If you mean besides the whole sentient computer thing. That's kind of fucked up.

[slightlyoffchilt]

Technological advances might have an existential crisis on some, yes.

[Says the man who dated a different sentient computer imPort. Hey, you take whatever you can get, okay.]

But you will adapt just fine. Looks like you already have, in fact.

[perturbator]

[Appearances can be extremely fucking deceiving in this case. The smirk Chilton gets out of him is about as cardboard as his pizza box.]

Apartments are better in 2015, I guess. I even have a toilet.

[slightlyoffchilt]

[Dryly:] Where were you formally residing? A prison?

[Well even prisons had toilets, didn't they? But maybe not some rooms in Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.]

Or -- perhaps Bethesda?

[Haha, so funny, Chilton.]

[perturbator]

Miami. Made it less of a problem in winter, anyway.

[Not quite prison yet, give it a few years of litigation.

As for the reference, he doesn't understand it and therefore he won't acknowledge it.]

[slightlyoffchilt]

Perhaps we have very different Miamis, then. Mine featured toilets, as I recall.

Well, then, all the more reason to welcome you to the neighborhood.

[perturbator]

Sounds like you just might not know my neighborhood.

[Gang ruled and crime ridden and close access for nothing he needed except maybe coke. Veteran's pensions y'all]

But uh. Thanks. Your America like this one, or not?

[slightlyoffchilt]

[That was much more likely the case.]

Mine is thematically different. But placement -- that remains the same, yes.

[perturbator]

So you have the bad Terminator future?

[Super dry and almost managing a joke, there.]

[slightlyoffchilt]

Oh -- no, no. Mine just has statistically more serial killers and mass murderers.

I anticipate that yours is recognizable, at least in comparison to this one we presently live in? Chronological difference aside.

[perturbator]

There's a whole lot more Russia where I'm from.

[Not even touching the mass murderer comment oops]

[slightlyoffchilt]

And you find this unfavorable?

[perturbator]

Yeah. I think anyone in Soviet Hawaii does, too.

[slightlyoffchilt]

Ah. That kind of outcome, I see.

From one war into another, that surely cannot pose any relief.

[perturbator]

Dunno. The toilet helps.

[slightlyoffchilt]

You really raised the bar with expectation, didn't you?

[perturbator]

Hasn't disappointed me yet. Anything I should be raising it for?

[slightlyoffchilt]

The opportunity for a new life with astounding superhuman powers is something worth note, I would say.

[perturbator]

[He's tried the new life thing before. Didn't really work out, though the opportunity here is better. Doesn't mean he thinks he can do much with it.]

You like it here better than where you came from?

[slightlyoffchilt]

I have reason to believe my immediate future is not a particularly forgiving one.

[perturbator]

...So your future already happened there? Or did someone tell you?

[Yeah, this shit is best left to David Cameron movies. That or this guy knows the frustration of portents, too.]

[slightlyoffchilt]

I had been informed. In pieces.

I cannot say that I prefer hearing my fate secondhand. Let us hope you never have to suffer the same.