video;

[flightforfreedom]

[ Poe is sitting in his own living room, for the first time in two months, not that many people watching this would know that. On his lap is Beth's dog Polly, and he's petting her head as he sets up the video. ]

So, I'll tell you straight up that the beaches are better on the west coast. They don't even compare. And there's nothing more hilarious than watching people's faces when you go from surfing to flying before they can compute what's happening.

[ His tone is light, but the smile isn't reaching his eyes. He rubs Polly's head a little more vigourously. ]

Anyway, two things for a head's up. One - uh - I don't usually do this, but I don't know all her friends, so - Beth's gone. She came out to Cali with me, and just - yeah. Ported out. Usually I'd let people know in person, but. [ That was kind of impossible, when he didn't know everyone she knew. ]

I'm gonna try to keep all her affairs in order until she comes back, so let me know if you need anything that way. [ Not an if she comes back. When. Even though part of him was already assuming she was gone for good, he was at least trying to pretend to keep his head up about it.]

Number two -

Something weird is stirring up. I follow a lot of the imPort chatter on the Native internet, and heard a couple rumblings from my squad - just be careful out there when you're dealing with Natives, I guess. Sounds like they're getting on edge again.

Remember that if they get put down, they don't get up like we do. They've got a lot of reason to be afraid of us - don't add to it, however annoyed you might be when they give you grief for being here at all. We're on their turf, and we owe them, not the other way around.

[ It's weird, saying this. He would have said the opposite, a year ago. Raged about being kidnapped. But. Well. It's been a long year. He clears his throat. ]

Alright, Dameron out. [ The feed winks off. ]

Comments

[flightforfreedom]

It wasn't exactly an easy achievement. Took me demonstrating my capabilities on a - uh - national scale, to convince them to look at my application. And if you're talking about Mitch, as far as I know he's been around forever. He's about as Politician as they make them. [ It's hard to tell if that is praise or damnation. ]

Look. You missed the whole Heropa-blew-up-every-day-for-a-week-in-a-nuclear-time-loop, and you didn't die six times in six days trying to stop the thing, so I'll cut you some slack. But it's real easy for people to completely lose sight of consequences, when they don't have a hell of a lot of them.

[notgood]

Extremely easy, apparently. I saw an advertisement on this Network two weeks ago, for a cult that takes assassination requests, as long as you worship their fake gods.

Consequences isn't even a word half the people on this network know the meaning of.

I know we got off on the wrong foot, but you seem to care more about the 'natives' here than others, so I'd rather we didn't have hostility between us when we both share an interest in keeping the population safe.

[flightforfreedom]

They're advertising again? [ He sighs. He was hoping they'd just - go away. ]

It gets to people. You know how many times I've died, here? Ten. It gets in your head, makes it seem like nothing is real and nothing you do matters. Sometimes it takes being reminded to remember that it does.

Look, that's fine. You want to - what the hell is that earth saying - bury the hatchet? I'm not going to fight it. But maybe learn to make better jokes.

[notgood]

Ten times. ...Did someone have a vendetta?

[Yikes. Doesn't envy that.]

Or just don't tell you them.

[flightforfreedom]

Four times in a fucked up house designed to torture us, six times in a nuclear strike that in this time line never happened.

So no. Haven't been outright murdered. Yet.

Can't say the same for everyone.


That would also be an improvement.

So when you say you have an interest in keeping the population safe, what do you mean?

[notgood]

[Yeah, who goes and outright murders someone, POE?]

I mean that clearly, a decently large amount of ImPorts have no respect for the lives of the civilians. The amount of 'native' population death, either by direct or indirect ImPort interaction, is obscene. There's clearly a lot of concern among the ImPort population about representing themselves in the government, but who's actually representing the natives to us? Who here knew they were upset, before you told us you've been reading their status updates.