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]

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.

[perturbator]

[Jacket actually laughs at that. An ironic, empty laugh.]

Yeah. Sounds like a nightmare.

[slightlyoffchilt]

[There's a brief pause -- of the many reactions he had anticipated, hollow laughter wasn't one of them.]

Ah. Do you like living alone?

[Based on the pizza boxes and general demeanor... Chilton anticipated that this youth lived alone.]

[perturbator]

[He can't be sure if the masked figures had merely been a delusion of his comatose state at the time or truly prophets. He's only sure that he'll never know.]

Easy to get used to again, yeah. Had someone at home, though.

[slightlyoffchilt]

Family member? Friend?

[He hesitated to inquire girlfriend -- or boyfriend, as the case may be.]