first bite ☣ video

[epundemiology]

[Hello imPorts, there's a little girl on your feed today. She looks a bit scrawny and grungy, as if she hasn't had a decent meal in a very long time and only just gotten acquainted with the concept of running water.]

Hey, soooo. Hypothetical question for you guys. Say a bunch of space aliens landed on this planet like, tomorrow, and you had to convince them not to blow it up into a million pieces by showing them all the cool shit they'd be wrecking. Where would you start?

[Hypothetically. It's just a thought experiment and the aliens are totally not supposed to be a metaphor for her feeling totally lost and overwhelmed in this place and how much it has, when she’s used to so very little. She's way too subtle for that, obviously.]

Lists are acceptable and highly encouraged. It's um….for a school project. Yeah.

[She looks totally convincing. Even as she scrunches up her nose a little at the thought of school. Totally.]

Comments

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[knaval]

Hi, I'm a space alien. Let's try this now. Convince me not to blow up this planet.

[riptide won't mention he's been here for ages, nor does he have the means or desire to blow it up.]

1/2

[epundemiology]

[...]

[Not as planned.]

[epundemiology]

...Holy shit.

[THIS IS REALLY FUCKING COOL? BUT ALSO TERRIFYING. please don't blow up the planet she'd feel very bad about that.]

Well, first of all, no fair turning my question back on me. I only just got here, dude.

[...]

I guess I'd go with the food, though. I mean, why would you blow up deep fryers, am I right?

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[kanyounot]

[ Look, hypothetical or not, Kanan still has a lot of questions about this. So, uh, hi, have a guy with a mask covering half his face not actually looking at you because he's blind. ]

I assume you mean non-humans, but there are already quite a few of them here and... why would they want to blow up this planet?

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[epundemiology]

[She tries not to stare overly much at the mask; it's kind of cool, but also weird. What's the deal with that, guy. (She hasn't even realized he's blind; it's not something you see a lot of, in the quarantine zones, where even children can be thrown out if they're not useful enough.)]

Uh. I dunno, isn't that just kind of a Thing? Aliens coming to a planet and taking it over or blowing it up or whatever? There was this one comic I used to read like that, anyway.

[She just sort of assumed that all alien fiction from before the outbreak was like that. It's not like she has had access to much of it.]

[versusseeker]

pkmn

[epundemiology]

[...okay, give her. a moment to figure out how to even text.]

pkmn? what's that?

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[looseleaves]

Umm... can the aliens eat?

[ Important questions. ]

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[epundemiology]

Yes, absolutely.

[Give her all the food recs. All of them.]

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[micycle]

[Hey, have an only slightly less grungy (though definitely less post-apocalyptic) child.]

You mean, like, this planet? [Yes, Mike. This one, not the one you're from, which means no Star Wars trilogy.] I mean, I guess everyone having superpowers is pretty cool. Unless the aliens already have those.

video.

[epundemiology]

Yeah, this planet.

[If aliens came after her planet, she's not so sure there's anything left worth offering them.]

The superpowers are pretty fucking badass, but let's say the aliens already have them.

audio :

[deosil]

[ There is some sputtering on the other end as she tries to even guess as to what exactly they were teaching at school nowadays. She hadn't dropped out that long ago, had she? ]

Why is that a school project?

audio :

[epundemiology]

[...ooookay, she wasn't expecting this person to sound so scandalized.]

Uhm.

We're supposed to...come up with theeeee....things that make the city what it is. The uh, culture and shit?

[That sounds vaguely legit, she thinks.]

Y'know, the stuff that'd...be lost if aliens were to uh, blow it up.

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[am_i_a_monster]

I don't know. I'd be tempted to show them something in nature, like a beautiful forest. But maybe it would be better to show them something we built?

That's an interesting project. Good that you're working on it. Are things going okay, outside of school?

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[epundemiology]

[Nah, things are not okay. She isn't okay. But she doesn't know how to begin to talk about any of it, so she just....doesn't.]

I'm fine. But yeah, that'd be better. We can definitely assume the aliens have forests.

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[lasersounds]

That's one hell of a specific question.

Don't think any aliens I know would be impressed with the "cool shit" we have. [He laughs, obviously having a bit of fun with this.] But I hear the food is always a good place to start--win 'em over with our delicacies, or kill them with incompatibility I guess...

I'd probably be partial to showing 'em a beach myself though.

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[epundemiology]

Wait, seriously? You know aliens? That's so cool.

[Even if the aliens aren't the point of this hypothetical. But whatever.]

So, tell me, what're your planet-saving food recs?

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[bookkeeper]

How'd you land that for a school project?

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[epundemiology]

[She shrugs.]

Teacher's way into scifi, I guess.

[answer her questionnnnnn]

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[littlemissfutility]

[That's, uh. Okay, that's kind of a weird question, but hey, she's willing to play along. It's not hard to see something of Carl in the girl, even if it's only age and general filthiness--her hypothetical reminds Beth more of her brother-in-law than anyone else.]

Am I still in North Carolina, or can I take them anywhere? [She's still thinking about it, biting into her lower lip.] Because there's a lot of cool stuff in Atlanta.

video.

[epundemiology]

Hmmm. Let's say you don't have a lot of time to go places before the kaboom, so you have to stick with the cities with teleporters.

[Which is still fucking surreal to say out loud, honestly. It's like being in a comic book.]

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[lempereur]

An art museum, obviously.

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[epundemiology]

Huh. Why's that?

[It doesn't sound like she's disagreeing, exactly, but she's also never really been in a museum--other than a few minutes wading through the ruined husk of one while escaping Clickers. Tell her the wonders of museums, Yusuke.]

permatext

[deadtective]

I dunno, probably an animal shelter or something. We totally deserve to get wrecked but they should at least give the puppies and kittens a shot.

permatext

[epundemiology]

....huh
they have shelters specifically for animals?

[What a world. She can't imagine anyone taking the effort, back home, unless those animals were specifically for eating. It's amazing, the kind of resources people had, before the outbreak.]

that's kind of cool

[video]

[glassfall]

What are space aliens?

[Guess who still needs to learn how to internet.]

[video]

[epundemiology]

[That's okay, the internet doesn't exist anymore in her time, either.]

Uuuh, like, outer space? You know...from ~beyond the stars~?

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[khajidont]

...so you wanna know all the cool stuff you can do here, right?

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[epundemiology]

[Congratulations, Jaime, you are officially the first person not to take this question literally.]

Hmmmm, a solid theory. But is it true.....

[She's just teasing now]

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[unbreaker]

can i start with punching them?

no?

okay okay so...shit...that's a tough question. kinda makes you think about how much we take for granted!

but i think the stuff i'd most wanna share and see preserved that an alien might care about would be like...food. there's so much awesome food from all over the world to try. and music. shit, can i make music #1 instead? you can get full and not wanna eat but you never really stop wanting to listen to good shit, right?

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[epundemiology]

oh man, yeah
sweet tunes never get old

[ She still has her walkman with the one mixtape from Riley. Not that she's ever really....experienced not wanting to eat, either, considering there's never enough food, but she basically concocted this story so she didn't have to talk about the state of her own world.]

so what kind of music would you show to the aliens?
i might need an example or five
for my project

[And definitely not to just listen to herself, nope.]

Video

[drivesadesk]

Well, iced mocha lattes would be a good place to start. And microwaves, those are pretty awesome. And then there's mozzarella sticks and hush puppies.

Okay, I'd mostly go with the food.

Video

[epundemiology]

Hush puppies....?

[Okay, so it's not that she wouldn't eat a dog if she was desperate, but still. She would Rather Not.]

VIDEO.

[handycapable]

Tough one. But, think I'm gonna have to go with the winter Olympics, chocolate mousse, and the collective filmographies of Marilyn Monroe and Veronica Deane.

[ Which is probably a different answer than he'd give were it not a child asking this. ]

Hypothetically we're assuming these aliens are extremely easy to convince, obviously.

[epundemiology]

[....so many questions.]

Obviously.

...I don't think I've ever thought about what a moose would taste like with chocolate on it. [has she ever even had chocolate, who knows] Is that really a thing, here?

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[itssacrifice]

One, you're a terrible liar. Two, you know you're probably insulting like half the imPort population with this, right?

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[epundemiology]

[Ellie just gives this guy an (unsure) sort of look.]

I'd say they could take it up with whoever wrote the alien-invasion themed comics I read, but they're probably dead, so. I guess the imPort population can just deal with the hypothetical aliens. Or, you know, tell me to fuck off themselves.

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[heisenbitch]

Easy. I'd start by taking 'em go-karting, introducing 'em to video games, and letting 'em eat all the pizza they could possibly want.

[ Hey, kid. It's the guy who introduced you to your first ever pizza. ]

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[epundemiology]

[Hey again, pizza guy. Sorry she probably puked on your shoes.]

Video games and pizza are definitely a solid place to start.

[She's yet to play one but given the job the military gave her, THE TIME IS NIGH UPON HER, she's looking forward to finally getting to experience that.]

What's go-karting?

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[phoenixleader]

I mean, I've found Ice Cream to be pretty delightful. That definitely goes on the list.

[ Because hey guess what have a short list from an actual alien. ]

... though I'm curious why everyone thinks Nom-humans want to blow up the planet or enslave the human race. In my experience it's the other way around...

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[epundemiology]

[She shrugs, mildly.]

I dunno. I just had this comic book where it was a whole thing. I figured that's how it was in other alien stories too. [A beat] Iiiiii'm gonna guess you're the partner Kanan talked about, right? We um, don't have actual real aliens where I'm from. Just humans.

[And trust her, she definitely knows how awful her own kind can be.]

I guess people just liked to think a lot about what'd happen if their whole way of life got fucked over. Before it actually happened, anyway.

[She looks off to the side, a little uncomfortably...before she just switches tracks entirely.]

....I'm looking forward to trying ice cream, though. Do you know if they have the kind that gets sold out of a truck playing a creepy jingle?

[She remembers Joel talking about that, and it's an experience she feels she needs to have firsthand, tbh. It still seems surreal in her head.]