Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dirk writes the message a month before he sends it. He’d kind of meant to deliver it that night, like, it’s more poetic, you stay up all night writing your magnum opus and then you perform it in the dawn’s light. But he’d ended up thinking about the faraday firewall and realizing that even though he’d solidly cracked a hole in it, he hadn’t actually brought the whole thing down. His radio signal might only transmit unidirectionally. Or at least be significantly weakened in other directions. He’s not a radio expert but that just makes sense.

He realized it while he was already up the antenna, fiddling with connection points, and curses himself up and down. He almost electrocutes himself on the transmission current but notices and avoids it smoothly as he de-powers the whole thing. How had he not thought of that before now? It wouldn’t be a slam-dunk in the whole plan, but it reduces the number of possible observers. And it’s less elegant, which, fuck it, elegance is the point of this whole last hurrah, right? 

So he climbs back down, to destroy the firewall. He’d been up there long enough to get cold in the dawn wind and he thinks fuck, fine, I’ll just chill for a second first, and then the sun is setting through the windows and he’s huddled under the dining table wrapped in a blanket. His hands are moist, which, gross. He crawls out straight to the computer, where his prepared broadcast has been deleted. There’s nonsense typed into the terminal.

Amateur. Dirk clears the nonsense and loads a saved copy from the automatic backup.

Whoa, Dirk! A friendly voice cuts through his thoughts, a mix of concern and forced casualness. That was seriously messed up. You okay?

“Shut up, Rainbow Dash,” Dirk tells her.

He has this vague memory of being harassed as he climbed the tower the night before, well SOMEPONY’S got a dark cloud hanging over his head and hey Dirk, knock it off and okay, you’re sad but you don’t have to be STUPID about it! Eventually he’d gotten fed up and made a concerted effort to completely obliterate her from his mind by force of will. It had worked for the night but not permanently, because why would it have. 

He should probably apologize for trying to obliterate her. He acknowledges this would be polite of him. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Come on, Dirk! Keeping it all bottled up is SERIOUSLY un-awesome. Spit it out already!

“No. Fuck off.”

Rainbow Dash leaves him alone.

Still, the whole thing sours his mood. He holds off a little. He goes fishing the next day. A storm rolls in and he stays inside anyhow and programs Sawtooth so he can juggle four balls instead of three. 

He kinda knows it when he’s found the last thing holding him back. He was tidying shit up and happened to poke some parts of the network that he hasn’t poked before, and finds it: years and years of footage from the cameras in the apartment. Like baby photos, except instead of a saccharine or stately or ironic neatly-curated album of polaroids, it’s a complete goddamn baby museum. 

It’s been clogging up the servers for years.  Training data, Dirk knows immediately. The robots – the chassis he upgraded into Sawtooth and Squarewave, the various lesser nursing bots and arms he’s repurposed or thrown into the sea – well, they had to learn, didn’t they? They had to recognize where in the room he was. Where his mouth and hands were. They had to recognize him as he grew. His behavior patterns, when he was hungry or sick or whatever the hell else you need to know about babies. When he was about to fall out of open windows or chew on live wires. They needed a lot of training data. 

He doesn’t know why it was never deleted. Why bother, maybe. If his brother could build an apartment that could stand in the sea for four hundred years without rusting away to nothing, he could afford all the solid state drives he wanted.

Dirk has no clue how he never found this before now. He assumed those bulky files were just, like, lifetime instructions for the robots or whatever. Which, he supposes, they were. He just didn’t expect to find himself in there.

In the final week, folded over in his desk chair, he watches these videos for hours. He can’t see all of them. That would literally take more lifetimes than he’s lived. So he zooms around and curates them instead. He feels a burning, unbearable enmity towards the idiot child starring in them. With half an hour of making a script to speed up the search process and then searching, he pinpoints what he’s pretty sure is his first steps and finds he hates the baby Dirk for teetering on his own, before stumbling into Cal’s floppy arms while robots light up and make positive-reward chiptune noises in the background. 

He watches himself cry with the refined eye of a disappointed art critic: first a lot as a baby, and then less and less but more loathsomely as the child becomes more conscious and recognizable. The child cries over stupid things: a jellyfish sting, a fever, a broken robot, nothing in particular. On the floor, into his arms, into Cal, curling into corners and under things, sometimes for hours. Some of it he remembers. A lot of it he doesn’t. It doesn’t really matter. Every new thing he learns about himself from the videos is further evidence that he was right about all of it.

He hates the babbling baby in a way people aren’t supposed to hate babies. He hates the bumbling toddler, hates the soft-faced young kid with the garbled half-speech that still makes sense to him now (but that he later spent a long time training himself out of, now he can talk movie-star cool when he feels like it, although as with everything else, that turned out to be personal development to no real end). He hates the eight- or nine-year-old fishing and humming to himself, the ten- and eleven-year-olds assembling servos and watching TV and repeating the good lines out loud. 

He almost has one moment of respect at the Dirk of last month for climbing the tower, but he knows the ending, or most of it, and that’s the worst thing he’s done yet: climbing down, cold, then babbling and snotty-nosed and trying to walk it back. You dumb shit, he tells himself. Pussy. Stick the landing.

He deletes all of it. Dirk nukes that shitty kid off the face of the planet. He overwrites the folder so that he can’t come back later and undo it, not that he thinks that’s going to happen. Then he searches every system in the apartment he knows of for backups, easy now, because there aren’t that many places to hide terabytes and terabytes of mp4s. There aren’t any backups. It’s clean.

He’s really relieved after that, kind of floaty. If the Condesce’s drones are curious enough to search this place, they’ll know he was there, but they at least won’t see that. They’ll only see what he’s left them.

Dirk Strider’s first and final broadcast. The place he makes his stand.

He feels good now. He boots up the recorded message into the transmission tower, then cracks a can of orange soda and looks for satellites amid all the stars. He waits for a while in case something tries to stop him, like a message from his bro to autoplay after the deletion of the files. Just in case. It’s happened before, but it doesn’t now. As the messages have told him before, his bro wasn’t omniscient. 

All of his bro’s direct messages have a consistent theme of stay strong, you got this, stay alive. But Dave Strider was never known for the surface layer. Bro’s other works, the ones that got him famous that other people actually saw, had all sorts of messages and motifs: about things like irony and sticking it to common sense and viva la revolucion and the unbearable lifechanging sublimity of sick cool stunts. 

For a long time, Dirk had felt like he’d be disappointing his brother by doing what he’s about to do, just noping out. But it’s since set in that Dirk’s bro is as far gone as those stars are or will be, just another cool guy like all the billions of dead cool and uncool guys at the bottom of the sea. Coolest guy in the boneheap. Dirk pours one out for him, and by pouring one out he means he throws a mostly-empty soda can into the ocean.

The broadcast goes something like this:

When sunrise breaks, he flips the transmitter on.

The connection point makes some sparks as it starts transmitting, and something starts sparking further up the tower too because everything that can corrode out here is corroding. 

Then Dirk climbs back up to the crow’s nest of the radio tower. His hands are almost shaking because the signal is going out. Even though he can’t hear it. It’s out there. 

He unfolds and tunes his solar-powered radio, and sure enough, there’s his voice, rehearsed but still like reedy and shitty, and no question he hates that guy but he’s also kind of proud of him, a little tender, we’re doing it bro, we’re making it hapen.

He waits. The sun creeps a little higher into the sky. The cold oceanic night warms a little. Dirk doesn’t feel anything. Maybe a little hungry, because he hasn’t eaten in the past couple days. But nothing else. 

Mid-sentence, the voice on the radio changes. Dirk jumps so bad he almost falls off the tower.

What the fuck.

“What,” says Dirk, out loud in his shitty thin voice, that’s how messed up he is by this, that’s how out-of-model it is to him, because he thinks maybe this text-to-speech voice on the other end of the radio can hear him. 

It can’t. It’s a fucking radio transmission. But it is talking to him.

The message does not repeat.

Dirk has his hands to mouth, sideways on the crows-nest, making some kind of noise. His heart has stopped in his chest. He is going to choke to death well before anything comes of any of this. The wind is perfectly silent. 

What the literal fuck, is the only cogent thought he can think. Even that, barely.

Unable to think or hear anything at all, Dirk climbs down the tower. He stops the broadcast. He goes inside to write a white noise program that will broadcast on its own and diminish automatically, over the next ten hours, as instructed. Then because he can feel everything starting to slip, he starts writing down exactly what the response-transmission said, as well as he remembers it. Almost before he can finish, he’s gone.

But he surfaces a while later, headachey and hands a little cut up from fishing line and belly full, and the message still in his terminal. 

Despite this being direct evidence to the contrary, Dirk wonders if he has finally lost it. Full, persistent, palpable hallucinations. That would be new. And if so, if some quiet but devious part of himself actually objects to the whole Final Broadcast thing strongly enough to step in but only at the last moment. Hey, asshat, why didn’t you come to the meetings?

He checks his logs.

After that, there are a few unimportant outputs from the Dirkov Chain.

Dirk sighs. He scrolls up and carefully rereads his recollection of the strange transmission, and builds a timeline in his mind. He accounts for extra time because humans are known to routinely underestimate the length of time projects take. Then he schedules a notification in his calendar for two months out. 

After that, reluctantly and at great personal cost, Dirk goes fishing.

One of the ways in which Dirk is fucked up to a degree that he could never pinpoint via internet diagnosis is that he doesn’t have regular dreams, like, at all. The first fucked up thing is that every dream he’s ever had takes place in a red room the size and layout of his house.

The second fucked up thing is that when he’s there, he doesn’t hate it.

In fact, even awake, he spaces out imagining it. By all rights it should be skull-numbingly boring. It’s emptier than his bedroom, even. It is unequivocally a flaw that his one supposed escape is another stale copy of the only place he’s ever known. But it’s… peaceful, kind of, he guesses? His head is quiet there. Fucked up.

Medically speaking, when Dirk’s looked this up, he reads that sometimes people dream of the same things over and over as a response to trauma. And then he stops reading that because he’s already a grade-A scholar on wire mothers and how fundamentally broken and insubstantial he is as a human being, how impoverished his psychic imagery is. All of that he knows acutely. But even for, like, the traumatized, he thinks there’s supposed to be variety. The surprise nightly return to the worst thing that ever happened to you is supposed to be a standout. Otherwise why would you keep being surprised?

Plus, as mentioned, it’s nice up there. The bed’s comfy. He never has to eat or do laundry. Cal’s there. He just looks out the window there and sees a real skyline.

The best sense he can make of it is Jungian, that it’s his conception of Houston back when it was inhabited. Maybe some kind of fossilized childhood version, because he’s seen plenty of photos of the Houston skyline (not to mention submerged gutted architecture) and it obviously wasn’t this. The architecture in the dream is stylistically Seussian. Dim and red but clear enough to see everywhere, despite the absence of any sun or moon or large-scale lighting. Jaggedy and stone and stripey. Gothic but ornamented beyond the point of utility. It’s inhabited, too. Little scribble-looking people go around their business. He watches them like slow, angular shoals of fish, or cellular automata, their inscrutable lives.

The windows are open, simple, unbarred, but he’s never tried to leave the red room. He doesn’t know why. He’s pretty out of it when he’s in there, and he’s just never bothered. It’s kind of evidence that his dream-self is dogshit too – like that if he somehow lived in actual-Houston and those were real people, if the world were at his fingertips, he’d still spend all his time isolated in his apartment. Not even building cool robots or anything but just lounging in the bed blinking at monochrome skyscrapers and people walking to work.

In the red room, even when he thinks about jumping out the window, instead of actually doing it or even leaning out, he slumps against the windowframe and dozes. His eyes and thoughts blur into nothing. And if he’s lucky he gets to stay there for a while before he wakes up in a tower in the ocean.

The day after receiving that message, at the start of that two-month-long timer, he starts spending a lot of time in that red room, imagined, dreaming, drifting in the mindless embrace of that far-off red world.

Soon, even the sleepy red dream of Houston starts to take on some of his desperation, the realization that he will never want to live anywhere.

One week out, Dirk cannot believe he thought he could hold out this long. He’s an idiot who got too optimistic. He’s never going to make this mistake again.

Two and a half weeks out, his computer sends some sort of notification about networks that he’s never seen before and that quickly deletes itself. Dirk sits at the computer and does not look away.

Two and a half weeks and three hours out, a message writes itself into Dirk’s open terminal before his doubting eyes.

Chapter Text

Two and a half weeks and three hours out, a message writes itself into Dirk’s open terminal before his doubting eyes.

Are they really the same age? Dirk’s probability distribution that this entity is lying to him is completely bimodal: either this is an advanced ruse to unknown ends, or there is another human being alive out there who has no reason to lie to him. His hands are shaking.

TG explains to him how she hijacked the radiowave detection of a series of drones, since they use it for medium-range communication. They have human-speech-pattern detectors at some level, but it only detects relatively clear signals – they would have to be close by, unless there were a higher-sensitivity sweep, which TG figures might be performed sometimes but not often. She, meanwhile, has her own similar algorithm running on ALL signals. She ends up listening to snippets of a lot of garbage that happens to trigger it, plus sometimes the Condescension will blabber into an open channel for a while for reasons of her own. 

Dirk’s voice was the only other one she’s ever heard.

They talk for hours. Dirk is terrified that if he lets her go to sleep, he’ll wake up in the morning and his terminal will be blank; none of this will have happened.

He wakes up. It’s still there. Blearily, he says hi and are you still alive, and Roxy says lmfao, yes, she wasn’t even going to ask, is that fucked up of her, just in case it wasn't real.

Dirk says, no, that’s fair too. He stays at his desk all day, leaving only to refill the solar still or shower, waiting for her to reheat food or ward off carapascians getting rowdy around her house.

She walks him through jailbreaking his network, then gives him a bunch of infosec procedures, because the kiddie locks are now kind of off this network and there are imperial crawlers still checking the old fossilized internet. Dirk copies these down on paper in block letters and sticks them by his computer, because he doesn’t think he’d forget but sometimes he surprises himself with how much of a dipshit he is. He then adds some extra local credential steps to activate write access, too, while he talks to Roxy, for extra security. He doesn’t explain what he’s doing. He doesn’t write these down.

Finally, Roxy downloads him a chat client called Pesterchum. This is a lot easier for her and less invasive for him than writing in his terminal. Also, it’ll be easier to convince himself on a visceral level that it's not just him writing to himself.

She tells him to pick a color and a fun handle. When he freezes up, she says to pick something with the initials TT. She says it’ll be cool. She says it’ll make sense later. Dirk has never been completely in someone else’s hands before. Not once. He does everything she says.

timaeusTestified [TT] sent tipsyGnostalgic [TG] a chum request.

tipsyGnostalgic [TG] accepted your chum request!

timaeusTestified [TT] began pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TG]

TT: Like this?
TG: egggggzACTly :D 

To show off the many capabilities of Pesterchum (not that she couldn’t have just put this in one of his directories before), Roxy sends him a selfie.

Dirk opens it.

He doesn’t know what to make of it, emotionally, of further incontrovertible proof of life. She’s another kid with pale hair waving at the webcam in bad lighting. He tells her she looks like a movie star.

She lmaos. She says all he’s seen is movies. Which isn’t quite true, Dirk’s seen a lot of random selfies and candid photos on the internet, but it’s true enough that he’s embarrassed. 

And that’s new, the embarrassment. He’s shamed himself plenty but never in front of someone else. It’s worse, scary with uncertainty, like a crab clawing in his guts. But he plays it cool and Roxy also seems really flattered that he would say it at all. Dirk wills himself to breathe. It’s suddenly hitting how out-of-control he is. He wouldn’t have it any other way, and it is terrifying to look at.

Roxy demands he send a selfie too. He can’t refuse her. After considering, he strikes a pose in front of one of the corner cameras, then goes to the output and picks a screenshot out of it. He tries not to think too hard about it, because he knows he can have a million thoughts on what that guy in the picture looks like but he doesn’t want to keep Roxy waiting. The enormity of faith is new to him. He wonders if it’s going to be like this from here on out, if he should be so lucky.

Roxy goes OMG. She says he looks SO cute. And the yawning fear recedes, tidally, a little.

Every day after that is the start of something new. 

Dirk tunes in one day to himself in the shower. He turns the water off. There’s fresh fish fillets from something pretty hefty on the counter and he doesn’t know how long it’s been. He checks the terminal and apparently a few hours ago - oh, jesus. Apparently a few hours ago he had this long weepy exchange with Roxy where he told her that he loved her and he’s so glad she found him and he was so scared. 

Jesus christ. He keeps reading.

Roxy, for what it’s worth, responded with an apparent grace and compassion and sharing some of the same feelings. So it’s better than it could have been, except that she had to do all this reassuring, and what else would you say anyhow, and there were a LOT of heart emojis exchanged, and he has no idea how to handle this.

He steams the fish fillets on autopilot while his head is swirling with stress. Afterward - still too worried to actually eat it, but a little settled - he sits down.

TT: Hey Roxy.
TT: Uh, sorry for dumping that on you earlier.
TT: I wasn’t thinking straight and got kind of emotional.
TT: I mean, I mean it. I am actually that glad to know you.
TT: It’s kind of everything.
TT: I just wouldn’t have said it like that. If I were thinking.
TT: So if you want to keep the positive sentiment and maybe forget the details of the declaration, that would be great, for my dignity.

Her response is only seconds delayed. He imagines her hearing the notification, running from another part of the room. It’s what he would do.

TG: dirk dont apologize it was REALLY nice
TG: i was like oshit cool kid with tough exterior has cracked like an egg
TG: in the face of my charmz
TG: knewit
TG: but not in a bad way!!!
TG: i wasnt gonna tease you or anythin 
TG: but if you wanna scoop the eggbits back up put it in the eggshell my lips SEAL’D
TG: mmmph
TG: mmmrrrrghhm
TG: but 4what its worth
TG: was nice to hear you say
TG: :)
TT: Well, I imagine maybe I got something off my chest by saying it.
TT: So. Thank you.
TG: <3
TT: <3
TG: ive never actually had an egg
TG: i mean i know what they are
TG: i know the egglore
TT: I have. Sometimes seagulls lay them on the roof.
TG: :0 you eat their bbs
TG: how are they

They talk until late again and Dirk’s stomach unclenches and he climbs down off of his bad, steep high, into something new and comfortable and a little mindless.

Whoa, says Rainbow Dash. She’s GREAT. She’s so COOL!

Dirk imagines her rolling and kicking her hooves in the air, wings flapping haplessly.

“Yeah,” says Dirk, “Yeah, I think she’s pretty cool too.”

TG: watchu up to distri
TT: Hey, Roxy.
TT: Distribution?
TT: District?
TG: no like dirk-strider
TG: di-stri
TG: its a thing
TG: dont check
TT: I believe you. That’s a thing. No further questions.
TT: I finally fixed Sawtooth up so he can go fishing for me again.
TT: I’m pretty jazzed. Jesus dick but do I not like fishing.
TG: lol NICE
TG: one million fish 4 u
TG: 0 works
TG: im chillin
TG: i found a blog by this cryptography nerd in like 2000
TG: so i was readin that
TG: kinda all day
TG: p good he put jokes in it
TG: brushin up on my ‘cols
TT: Nice.
TG: hey so i was thinking about your network restrictions
TT: Yeah?
TG: they were teh same as mine
TT: That… makes sense?
TG: ok but hear me out:
TG: does it?
TT: … Does it?
TG: now ur asking the right questions
TG: ;D
TG: ok
TG: what i mean is 
TG: thats not a common thing everyone was doin back in the day
TG: everyone and their mom like hey man lets make a robust clientside protocol so our kids can look at the internet but not upload shit even if the internet looks toootally different
TG: like there were child locks NO PRONZ 4U DARLING INNOCENT BB but nothing like what we had
TG: but ours were the same as each others
TG: dirk
TT: Yeah?
TG: do u think our parents nu each other 
TT: … 
TT: Okay, I know you know “knew” isn’t spelled like that.
TG: catch me lookin thru the streets with a lantern for a MAN WHO GIVES A SHIT
TG: thats right i read the wikipedia page on MULTIPLE old greek dudes
TT: You know, pain me as it does to say it - and after you went to such great lengths to interface with me on my level - behold, it’s literally 100% of men and they give a shit.
TG: it doesnt pain you. you love to say that.
TT: I do. I love it.
TT: Now that you mention it, shit, they might have.
TT: FYI I don’t really consider him my father. I call him my bro. I don’t know where I got that from in the first place but it’s kind of cemented in my head now.
TG: yea guardians scuse me
TG: u have it 1 way in your head and yer like oh surely every1 in this sitch thinks about it exactly the same way u do
TT: It’s not a problem. Just sayin’.
TT: I don’t know a lot about him. I mean, I have all of his public output, of which there was a great deal, and he left me messages and stuff.
TT: But I don’t know about… his plans, I suppose.
TT: How and why did he build this place for a baby centuries in the future?
TT: I mean, we’re exactly the same age.
TT: Like – wait, okay, did you have the robots?
TT: Like mechanical arms that would clean you off and stuff. 
TG: YEah!!
TG: theres a room in the basement
TG: where i guess i grew up
TG: arms on some of the wall + sort of a mobile tracking unit
TG: n they could reach a frankensteinlab of toys and just vending machine of presealed milkbottles
TG: i looked at their specs once and they knew how to, like, do surgery
TG: thank GOD i never needed that can you fuckin imagine lol
TG: like i still spend time there but i aint never heardo f such a thing on the webz or movies or etc
TG: or come to think of it autoplaying movies for ur baby for hours a day so they have somethin 2 imprint on
TG: but tthats easy the surgerobotsitters is something else entirely
TT: YES. RIGHT?
TT: People were documenting everything at that point in time, but all of this happened in secrecy?!
TT: It kind of makes sense that they would have needed help.
TT: I have no reason to think my bro was a roboticist or even particularly a tech guy.
TT: But he… got stuff done, at least? 
TG: ye
TT: Like, okay, I once found exactly where my house was in Old Houston.
TT: And I looked up land rights and stuff and my brother had this building extensively renovated in the 010’s.
TT: And I can’t find anything on what was changed on the web, but I looked up the brand name on the struts and they’re this wildly expensive hyperresilient nickel alloy used in spaceships. To preserve the support struts of this one mediocre highrise apartment building.
TT: Why??
TG: yea i wanna say my mom couldve been the tech one but that doesn sound quite right
TG: she was an author but a polymath too and had all these papers but in like weird fields
TG: she didnlt eave me much either direct guidance mostly her long-ass wizardfic and  an array fo stuff she was into
TG: occult history and information theory
TG: idk
TG: i guess she could of
TT: You think there were other people helping?
TG: well im jsut thinking allowed here
TG: but that makes sense
TG: it cant have been THAT many or else someone woulda spilled the beans
TT: Yeah.
TG: but its crazy to think that maybe like there were a few different people who did all this crazy stuff just so wed stay alive
TG: rootin for our very own u&i
TG: …
TG: idk its just cool to imagine
TG: dirk?
TT: Yeah.
TT: Sorry. 
TT: Yeah, that is crazy.

TT: Yeah, so I have calendar reminders through that.
TT: And then I type stuff into it, like reminders to myself or whatever, that's saved as .txt but I interact with it runs through the command line too.
TT: But then the stridoracle dumps in there every couple hours, and all of the robot statuses output through there too, so it's a little chatty even if nobody's there.
TG: cute but hey
TG: tf is a stridoracle
TG: dirk did u build a robot that sees the future
TG: u have to tell me if u can see the future
TG: its the law
TT: No, the Stridoracle is a dumb programming project I did last year.
TT: I wanted to try making a thing to talk to, so I made a markov chain bot.
TG: :0
TT: I wanted the first version to sound like a character from a show I like. So I transcribed all her dialogue from a bunch of episodes because I didn’t think to look for existing transcripts, but like, whatever.
TG: u tried making a girlfriend
TG: lmao
TT: Is it better or worse if I say she’s also a cartoon horse?
TG: …
TG: *steepels fingers*
TG: proceed.
TT: Well, obviously, I don’t know if you’ve played with markov chain text, but all the sentences are weird nonsense, and the whole thing just felt kind of wrong.
TT: But then I was like, wait, you know who has files and files of text data?
TT: You know what would be really funny?
TG: … lmaoooo
TT: Do you want to meet him?
TG: LMAO
TG: yAS
TG: how do I say hi
TT: Well, he’s not very good at actually interacting, so I figure I’ll spin you up some choice Dirkisms and we can pretend he’s the world’s least conversationally adept clinically insane weirdo.
TT: I’ll do batches of 5 and pick the one that seems grammatically closest to an appropriate answer.
TG: lmaooo
TG: HELLO mr. stridoracle
TG: please bless me with ur choice wisdoms
TT: Here, let me do it like -
TT: It seems there is only horror.
TG: (goddamn)
TT: (Yeah, sometimes it’s a little on the nose.)
TG: do u live like this
TT: (You mean me, or the bot…?)
TG: (obvs the bot)
TG: (rip distri but the bots my new bff)
TT: I'm always authorized to speak of the world's population to a clean computer, not any one thing.
TG: authorized by whomst mr markov
TT: As long as I am scared.
TG: fear we luv 2 see it
TG: do u like me mr stridoracle
TG: what is ur impression
TT: You think literally every sage warning we've ever received about those furries was gay as hell.
TG: ????
TT: (Look, sometimes all 5 options are pretty bad.)
TG: (NOT what i was ??ing about)
TT: (Oh.)
TT: (Well.)
TT: (Do you have anything else to say to it?)
TG: okay well what do u think of dirk
TT: Not compete with them or try to pull that off, I would love to have a specific and unsettling result, let alone be able to survive here.
TG: yea?
TT: Can we both existed in the abyss.
TG: damn and what do u think abt that
TT: I have yet to be a really good dude.
TT: Okay, well I think that’s enough of that.
TG: got a lil too real their huh
TT: Nothing it says is real.
TT: All it does is slam grammar and syntax together at high speeds. No semantics. Just some antics.
TG: well i like him
TG: thanks for showing me your nonsense nothingbot hes fun
TT: Do you want one?
TG: lol of u?
TT: I was thinking of you.
TG: heeee sure
TT: I’ll send you my code. You’ll just need a big .txt of context.
TG: u know if u want 2 make a chatbot w/ semantics u should look into large language models
TG: the things they used to right all that jacked up shit that clogged up the internet
TG: except like u can make ur own corpus or whatever that sucks less
TG: and have it say whatever nsted of writin 1 trillion fake essays on the virtues of celibacy 
TT: Huh, interesting.
TG: ill send u some pdfs
TG: ull need a lotta processin power for training but running it after is easier
TG: i got some ideas on piggybacking droneputers for processerz f u need it
TG: ez speedE
TG: just gotta get em to talk to eachother
TT: Roxy, hijacking a bunch of murderdrones for their compute is a buck fucking wild idea.
TT: But as a wise woman once said,
TT: *steepels fingers*
TT: I’m listening.
TG: :D

TG: hey dirk
TT: Yeah?
TG: do u think the condesce is alone too
TT: Like, metaphorically…?
TG: no literally
TT: I have no idea.
TT: What makes you think that?
TG: well so a lot of the larger drones have faster than light capabilities
TG: superc communication
TG: (pronounced like superk)
TG: (jot that odwn)
TT: I’m jotting it down.
TG: so i think they have superc comms so they can communicate with homeworld way out in space
TG: or other spacebases maybe
TG: the smaller drones coordinate fine without em so they dont NEED it solarsystemside
TG: but they never use them
TG: like not ONCE in all my watchin stargazin days have i seen a drone or satellite fire off an ftl signal out of the solar system
TG: so im thinkin
TG: maybe they dont have anyone left to talk to
TT: …Huh.
TG: cause the condesce is out there somewhere and we can tell from all the spamoganda that shes talkin up like continuin her great empire etc whatever
TG: or that she was
TG: but we dont really have anythin new from her after that
TT: I figured she must have other trolls for, like, serving her or carrying out her commands, even if the grunt work is mostly automated.
TT: But now that you mention it, I don’t know if that’s true.
TG: well there could be other trolls somewheresorother
TG: but the empire is kaput
TG: that’s my theory N E how
TT: I guess. Given her whole thing I’d think she’d want to find and establish dominion over any remaining members of her species.
TT: She doesn’t really seem like the kind of witch who “goes rogue” or “leaves survivors”.
TT: Present company notwithstanding.
TG: lol 
TG: yea :/
TT: I hope you’re not feeling sympathetic to her.
TG: oh hell no she can go fuck herself
TG: i hope she dies alone
TG: also like if shes all by herself its probably her fault
TG: bet she blew em up or whatever
TG: or ate em
TT: Troyllent Green.
TG: l m a o
TT: God, imagine if she is, though, and she’s in this dumb empire for nobody and there’s like 3 people alive tops.
TG: L M F A O
TT: And on the radio, these words are said:
TT: My name is Condescencion, Queen of Life,
TT: Look on these works, ye ape-beasts, and despair! 
TT: Nothing beside remains. Midst the silence
TT: From that colossal land, the other two survivors roll their eyes and go 
TT: “Shut up already, holy shit, what a bitch.”
TG: LMFAOOOOOOO
TG: im crying omg
TG: DIRK!!!!!!
TG: do u know what this means
TT: What does this mean?
TG: HUMANITY OUtNUMBERS HER
TG: WERE WINNIN
TG: WERE WINNING DIRK

Dirk is laughing so hard he can’t breathe. 

He thinks, delirious and unable to put it into context, but sure that it’s true, that this is as good as it possibly gets, better than he ever knew.

TG: dirk my frendo
TG: ive been holding out on you
TG: i have a secret i have kept from u
TG: but its not bad for u in fact its good and i had a v good reason 4 not sayin shit earlier

Dirk is, like, 70% sure this is the start of some kind of companionable joke, the setup to which is designed to get his goat, and 30% oh jesus he is terrified, his goat is got already. He tells himself she said it was good.

TT: Alright.
TT: Well, don’t keep a bro hanging.
TT: What is it?
TG: I have… a tHIRD FRIEND.
TT: …Start talking.
TG: lmao
TG: ok
TG: i dont know her name
TG: but shes awesum
TT: How did you find her?
TT: Or did she find you?
TG: okay so this might not make m uch sense
TG: its hard to explain or even like understand what happened even tho i guess i could recount the steps
TG: just
TG: hear me out ok

Dirk would slit his own throat if she asked him to.

TT: Yeah.
TT: Of course.
TT: I’m listenin'.
TG: o shit casual dirk is here now we no this shits legit
TG: so.
TG: a few months ago
TG: i was really sad
TG: like thinking about my mom and  how the chess guys werent really like family to me
TG: and i spent all this time lookin at partso f the internet and scouring radio waves and monitoring transmissions n shit
TG: and i told myself it was to keep an eye on what they were doing
TG: like dont try anything you sticky bitch
TG: but really
TG: it was because i wanted someone to answer
TT: Roxy…
TG: distri i love you but stfu and lemme get this out
TG: i was realizing
TG: that nobody ever would answer
TG: that even if i lived to be 100 and then I saw someone a new fuckin idk tweet 
TG: like hey guys just woke up from cryosleep where is every1
TG: whats with all the clickbait lol
TG: and i could reach out to them
TG: then it would be worth it!
TG: i would hold out 4 that
TG: but when i think of all those 100 years of listenin to signal static just for nothin to ever break through
TG: no mr. randocicle thawin out no nothin
TG: well those years start looking like
TG: kind of a bad deal
TG: kind of not worth sticking around for
TG: now OBVS im remembering this now 
TG: n being like
TG: (like even if the rest of the story im bout to tell u didnt ever happen)
TG: id be like ROXY you CHUMP stick it out for a FEW MORE MONTHS u r gonna be FINE GIRL theres a guy out there tryin to find u n EVERYTHINGS gonna change
TG: OBVS!!! <33333
TG: but i didn’t know that then
TT: Yeah.
TG: n id been listenin for a long time and had no reason to expect anyone ever would
TG: in a way thats not either of our faults just how it happened timingwise ykwim
TG: i mean can u imagine
TG: wait tf am i saying don’t imagine that
TG: shits darker than a barrela drowned monkeys
TG: lill scratchmarks in the wood
TT: Ahaha, yeah. Jesus.
TG: but n NE CASE!!!
TG: none of that ever happened cuz
TG: im sittin lookin at my intertubes fucked up on 4sakenness
TG: just lost in the desperate sauce
TG: and id been studying the drone protocols for a while now so id had this idea
TG: for a transtemporal networking protocol
TG: and i was like
TG: fuck it
TG: wrote the program
TG: it was NOT good
TG: for it to work both parties would need the protocol
TG: like i configured it to work for stndrd chat client but i could NOT figure out away around the protocol thing
TG: :(
TG: i was thinkin
TG: about ways to shoot it backwards in time through 
TG: i think u could do it
TG: the bigger drones have ftl communication capacity
TT: Superc? 
TG: ye
TG: do a lil math
TG: & u could string time travel outa thatno problemo

Hey, what the fuck, Dirk thinks.

TG: so i was mulling it over
TG: planning to like hack a million drones to do something really drastic
TT: Oh, shit.
TG: well dont get too impressed cause the protocol woujld have doxxed me straightup
TG: like even if i figured out how to send it to the old internet or something that was kinda the plan
TT: Yeah, that
TT: *Yeah, I figured.
TG: i had the program written and was swirling around thinking about that and everything
TG: didnt know if i had another miracle in me
TG: like
TG: REAL sad
TG: but
TG: then
TG: on my client
TG: i got a message!
TT: ...
TT: What?
TG: i got a chat request
TG: from an alien
TT: …
TG: shes a troll but not with the condesce
TG: and shed been watching me through some kinda feed 
TG: but she didnt no how to talk to me
TG: until she saw my protocol
TG: then she wrote it on her end and she could
TT: She was watching you?
TT: How?
TG: yeah she doesnt know how just that she has feeds
TG: a little video a little audeo and no its NOT through drones 
TG: its its whole own thing
TG: and like. TB q H she doesnt have much to do.
TG: i think shes alone like us
TG: thats why i was saying i think the empire is dead but not every troll
TG: cuz she is 100%%% not with the condesce
TT: I don’t think adding more %s makes the number bigger.
TG: no each % represents two decimal places so every wideyed crookedy slanty owl lookin guys represents 100fold increase in precision
TG: representin how sure i am
TG: keep up DIRK
TT: I’m sorry I doubted you.
TG: she wants to talk to you too
TT: Really?
TG: YEAH DUMMY
TG: she can see you too but she didnt know how to say hi!
TG: she didnt have your hookups
TG: but i doooo
TG: ;)
TG: and i wanted to like see that both of u were cool with it & wait for her to be around
TG: (shes afk for a long time sometmes)
TG: and theres the really crazy part.
TT: ...What?
TG: i guess her terminal has the sysinfo of some people from the past
TG: and
TG: shes not time anchored
TG: the system shes in
TG: its like
TG: ok fuck if i know what its like
TG: i have no idea
TG: i assume its running through timeshenangigans like the ftl comms
TG: but however shes got it she used my protocol hooked me up with a couple people in oldearth
TG: 400orso years ago
TT: ...Which two people.
TT: You’ve talked to them?
TG: dont gets ur hopes up nobody we know or everve heard of
TG: but. yeah for abt three months now. their our age
TG: their nice.
TG: yer gonna like em dirk.

Dirk starts typing, then deletes it, then types, then deletes.

TT: Yes. I want to talk to her.
TG: yeah i figured :) 
TG: hang on
TG: i gotchu
TT: I know you do.
TT: I trust you.

uranianUmbra [UU] sent timaeusTestified [TT] a chum request!

Chapter Text

TT: Hi.
TT: Are you Roxy’s friend?
UU: yes!
UU: yoU’re dirk!
UU: i’m so glad to finally meet yoU!
TT: Me too.
TT: Roxy says you’re cool, although I admit I’m still very confused about who you are.
UU: that’s very nice of her ^u^
UU: and
UU: also fair on yoUr part
UU: i am something of an oUtcast. via mechanisms Unknown to me i am able to view the lives of a few hUmans via a program on my desktop.
UU: Until rather recently i despaired of ever actUally making contact with any of yoU.
UU: thoUgh despaired in yoUr troUbles and took joy in yoUr triumphs and appreciated this small bUt meaningfUl look into the lives of these alien kids, i simply had no way to reach oUt!
TT: Until Roxy’s program.
UU: jUst so!!! :U 
UU: what a sUrprise that was!
UU: i had hoped only that one day she woUld find a way to contact yoU. only in my wildest dreams woUld she have found a way to reach out to *me*.
UU: and of coUrse once she had i was sUre that getting her program to yoU woUld only be a matter of time, and how lUcky we are that she did.
TT: Wait.
TT: How much can you see?
UU: well, the feeds are not reliable, and i am not always at hand, so by no means everything
UU: and i have tried to avoid spying on any particUlarly, errr, private moments u_u;;
UU: bUt, er, rather a great deal.
TT: Holy shit.
UU: U_U
UU: hence why, well, sUffice to say i am *really* glad to meet yoU alive and well.
TT: ….Uh. 
TT: Thanks.
TT: I don’t know how to respond do that.
UU: u_u;; alas, i note again that my cUstoms are not hUman cUstoms and so please forgive me if i ever say anything off-coloUr. i promise i do not mean to offend!
TT: Oh, hell naw, you’re doing fine.
TT: A) It’s not like I’ve had much immersion in human customs either.
TT: B) Honestly even that, I don’t know that that’s an alien thing. If my computer inexplicably was configured to let me just, like, watch some people, no way in hell I wouldn’t keep an eye on ‘em. Like my own little sims.
TT: Like, let’s see where this is going.
UU: sims :U? 
TT: It’s this game, uh…
TT: https://web.archive.org/web/20240419043015/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_sims 
UU: aha!
UU: yes, not Unlike that.
UU: althoUgh i have less excUse since i have been well aware that yoU all are thinking feeling people.
TT: I imagine that adds to the appeal.
TT: It would to me, I mean.
UU: indUbitably U_U

TG: so wut do u think of her???
TT: UU?
TG: WHO ELSE NUMBNUTS!!!
TT: Whoa, calm down!!!
TG: hehe
TT: Roxy, I don’t know.
TT: I’m still, like, very confused and kind of reeling about whatever the hell is happening
TT: But…
TT: She’s kind of great?!
TG: :D
TG: :D 
TG: :D 
TT: :D
TG: :D

UU, Dirk learns, has a brother.

She rarely sees him and spends most of her time trying to avoid him.

It strikes Dirk as terrifically karmically injust. But even then he knows’s not supposed to complain about that, not to her, that it wouldn't be cool, so he exercises a great deal of mental energy to Be Cool and Understanding, until the hot angry jealousy tempers into a cooler observation that the universe is cruel and hateful. By that point, he’s glad he waited. He’s glad he didn’t say anything stupid.

TT: I don’t know, honestly. 
TT: Like, I used to think that I was here for some purpose.
TT: But now I’m like, okay, that was a fat load of rationalization.
UU: bUt yoUr brother arranged for yoUr sUrvival in the present, did he not?
TT: Yeah, but like, there’s “something a film director 400 years ago thought would be important” and there’s “cosmic fucking destiny”, and there’s a lot of space between those two in terms of magnitude.
TT: It is weird that the other human alive out here is Rox, who’s such a badass that she can outthink an alien empire and wire all of us together.
TT: That’s my answer, actually. Obviously I’ll make a boat and get to her.
TT: I mean, my life is happening right now. Technical adulthood isn’t going to change anything, I can’t be living for that.
TT: We’re two random-ass humans that time forgot and we have to figure out what happens next.
UU: oh!
UU: I thoUght yoU knew.
UU: dirk, yoU *do* have a cosmic destiny.
TT: …You have my full attention.
UU: this is not something i can explain fUlly at the present time
UU: bUt yes there is something special aboUt yoU and roxy!
TT: Can you tell me why you can’t say more?
TT: I mean, anything at all. It sounds like you have restrictions there too. But anything at all. I mean. You have to get how frustrating this is.
UU: i really do. U_U
UU: i sUppose i can say that there are mUltiple compelling reasons and it does pain me very mUch.
UU: one them is temporal.
TT: Right, Rolal mentioned you weren’t quite in our timestream.
TT: Well, I can’t recall exactly how she put it. She also mentioned that time travel was possible which was, like, news to me, shit.
UU: :U
TT: So you don’t want to cause devastating time paradoxes or something by influencing our actions?
UU: jUst so!
TT: But there’s not such a thing as a major or minor paradox, right? Butterfly wings and all that jazz. Shouldn’t any change to the past be somehow catastrophic, if any of it is?
UU: yoU might think so! bUt no, it really depends. and it will eventUally matter even less
TT: It sounds like we’re counting down to a specific point in time.
UU: er…
TT: At which point things will change, so maybe we’ll be removed from the main timeline, or something.
UU: …
UU: dirk, please Understand. 
UU: when i say there are things i cannot elaborate Upon, i mean it, i am exposing myself to danger.
UU: if yoU pry, the safest recoUrse for both of Us will be for me to stop talking to yoU.
UU: i will do this if i mUst to keep Us safe. 
UU: bUt i do not wish to!
UU: dirk yoU mUst know that i live a solitary existence, and not by choice.
UU: i woUld really enjoy having another friendly person to talk to.
UU: …as long as yoU wish it, in any case.
TT: That’s… fair.
TT: I guess.
TT: I’m going to keep being curious. And I can’t promise I’ll never try and get information from you. But I will try not to push you on things you can’t tell me.
TT: Okay. I have one question. And it’s kind of a big one. But it’s been weighing on me since we started talking and I can tell it’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life if I don’t hear what you have to say.
UU: …jUst one >_>
TT: Yeah.
TT: Promise.
UU: alright U_U;;;
TT: Are we in a simulation?
TT: Are you, like, the puppetmaster of our simulation, we’re AIs running in your computer program or anything like that?
TT: I guess I mean to ask: are we real?
UU: oh!
UU: yes.
UU: both of Us are completely real, so far as i’m privy to know.
TT: Huh.
TT: Okay.
TT: Okay, that…
TT: I kind of didn’t expect you to answer that, to be honest.
UU: :U 
TT: …
TT: Roxy said you had other friends.
TT: That you could introduce us to.
UU: ah yes. i do.
UU: and i will! bUt i do not want to overwhelm yoU.
UU: we both have plenty of time, after all.
TT: What? I’m doing great.
UU: err U_U;;
UU: are yoU sUre?

Dirk wonders how she thinks she knows that, then remembers she can see him, maybe, and zooms out and takes a look at himself too. His legs are drawn to his chest, tight as a crab, and his hands are shaking over the keys. The moment he unfolds his legs and drops them to the floor, white fog surrounds his vision and he feels nauseous.

UU: dirk?
TT: Yeah, okay
TT: Maybe let’s give it a few.
UU: of coUrse!
UU: i imagine having all this flUng at yoU is a little overwhelming.
UU: i at least have had the lUxUry of time to process.
TT: Yeah. I mean, I don’t see why it would be.
TT: I type shit and read shit at the computer every day. It’s not like a materially new thing is happening to me.
UU: ah bUt the immaterial is jUst as important
UU: perhaps moreso! :U 
TT: Perhaps.
TT: Can you tell me something else about yourself?
TT: Doesn’t have to be nothing hardcore. Just anything.
TT: About you as a person or whatever.
UU: hm, well…
UU: Um…
UU: i like to draw!
TT: No shit? 
TT: Me too.
TT: Digital?
UU: i UsUally Use pencils or pastels!
UU: bUt i like to experiment…

Once, UU asks him why he locks himself out of his computers sometimes.

Dirk loses his shit immediately, because oh, wait, shit, she can see him, at least sometimes, she can, she knows how dysfunctional he is constantly. While he spirals, she asks if that’s, like, a regular human thing.

Dirk writes, stalling:

TT: I don’t know, is it a regular troll thing?

After a moment:

UU: well
UU: i woUldn’t say it’s common…
UU: :U 

Dirk cannot think of anything to tell her. He just shuts up. He doesn’t talk to her for a day straight. 

30 hours or so later, as he steadfastly Does Not Respond, UU messages him and says she won’t ask anymore and that she’s sorry to pry and she mentions something else entirely she noticed, something unrelated. And he responds, without mentioning the other thing. But it feels like a misstep. Some deeply uncool failed maneuver he attempted, to cover a rotting something even deeper and uncooler. Dirk’s only impressed that he got away with it.

UU drops that she’s never met her ancestors, or more of her species. Aside from her brother, Dirk figures. They seem to have that much in common. She says she often dreams of them but that the dreams scare her, for reasons she doesn’t elaborate on.

She asks if it’s the same with him.

TT: I don't think it would?
TT: I don’t really dream.
TT: I kind of just have the one dream. I’m always in a monochrome version of my apartment in a monochrome version of Old Houston and too sleepy to actually do anything.
UU: !!!
UU: really? :U 
TT: Does that… mean something to you?
UU: well, it’s very interesting!
UU: that yoU woUld dream of that particUlar thing!
TT: …Is it?
UU: are there other people in this pUrple hoUston, for instance?
TT: Yeah, on the streets. It’s predilluvian. Not that I can talk to, though.
TT: I didn’t mention a specific color.
UU: ...ah.
TT: Which makes me think that whatever you think this means, in your esoteric worldview, isn’t actually what’s happening, because that’s a weird-ass guess and it’s not purple.
UU: ...really?
UU: i mean. yes, sUrely, i Understand this is yet another instance of my more lUdicroUs-soUnding claims to privileged knowledge over yoUr existence - which yoU have historically (and qUite reasonably U_U) been skeptical of
UU: so i hope yoU excUse my implication of some kind of jUrisdiction
TT: It’s not really a problem. I think I must be getting more out of this than you, every time we have one of these incredibly weird conversations.
UU: yes i do worry aboUt that U_U
TT: But dreams are weird.
TT: I don’t think anyone from Earth completely figured out what was going on with them.
TT: I don’t think it’s as interesting as you think, though.
UU: very well then.
UU: thank yoU for hUmoUring me
UU: ...so yoU have dreams of sleeping in yoUr apartment, or a version thereof, in a city occUpied by far-away people, in monochrome?
TT: I guess. It’s all kind of abstracted but that is the jist of it.
UU: and it’s NOT pUrple?
TT: I’m afraid not.
TT: Actually. Would you excuse me for a minute.
UU: of coUrse!

Dirk lies back in his chair and closes his eyes. He relaxes, and imagines the red room in dream-Houston, the comforting red apartment of his mind. He’d be in bed, he thinks. On his back, a way he never sleeps in real life but always finds himself in in his dream. He stares at the red ceiling. With great deliberation, trying his best to perform the action in both the dreamworld and waking, he slowly removes his shades. 

The ceiling is red. Hah, he thinks.

To confirm, he lifts his weary head, just high enough to get a glimpse out the open-frame window, just enough to see the built skyline, without the tint of his shades.

It’s fucking purple.

Dirk lays his head back down in the dream-world. In the real world, he sits up, and puts his shades back on. 

Outside, the shell of the world is cracking, just a little. Without explaining itself or anything.

TT: Okay.
TT: What the fuck is going on?
UU: :U

While he might otherwise gladly space out in it for days, Dirk now finds the purple-red room unsettling. He takes his glasses on and off and frowns at it. And so it wavers, whether he’s here or there or nowhere. 

And he finds himself with headaches, sitting at his desk. Disoriented, with things like “ *** Talk to ROxy ! You  HAVE to talk to Roxy every day.” written in his terminal. The sun setting. 

So he ponies up and talks to Roxy. Every day, he talks to Roxy, so far as he can manage it, doing his goddamn best. 

Faith is big, and it hurts. Sublimity is scarier than the top of the radio tower or the sharks in the rubble. When the world changes, it shifts this way and that without moving an inch, towering psychic waves over the psychic ocean, forever threatening to swallow him. 

The name of the ocean is Things Dirk is Wrong About. He can’t stop looking down at it, its strange colors, its troubled and hungry surface.

TT: Hey, you around?
TT: Have something to say to you.
UU: afternoon, darling!
UU: what can i do for yoU?
TT: Roxy said you could talk to other people.
TT: Like, that you knew other people from old earth.
TT: I’m kind of assuming from context clues that maybe they’re tied into our destiny too, and that’s why you can reach all of us. Though I can’t fathom how or why it would shake out that way.
TT: Or maybe you’re the thread tying us together. I have no idea.
TT: I don’t expect you to confirm or deny this. You’re cagey, destiny reasons, and I need to know so bad that it’s eating me, but whatever. I’m not going to pry.
TT: But if you can introduce me to them, I think I’m willing to stick around long enough to find out the regular way.
TT: That’s my deal.
UU: oh dirk!
UU: i was going to introdUce yoU anyway!
UU: yoU coUld jUst have said “i’m ready now.”
TT: …
UU: really, thank yoU for Understanding…
UU: and for trUsting me!
UU: i know well how difficUlt it is U-U
UU: to wait and work toward an Unclear end with no gUarantee that what yoU hope for will come to pass at all
UU: or if yoU’ll have done enoUgh.
UU: thoUgh i clearly do have some knowledge of yoUr fUtUre i don’t know everything, and mUch is still Up to yoU.
UU: and of coUrse i can say very little.
UU: bUt dirk i think it’s going to be worth it.
TT: …
TT: Thanks.
TT: Can you introduce me to the others?
UU: yes! let me get the link set Up.
TT: Wait.
UU: ?
TT: Wait, sorry, shit.
TT: I think I need another day.
UU: that’s fine!
TT: Fuck. My bad.
UU: take as mUch time as yoU need ^u^

TT: Okay, gotcha.
UU: and remember i am jUst speaking as a friendship strategist here!
UU: if yoU feel the sitUation merits otherwise, no need to hold back on accoUnt of the timeline.
UU: yoU can play it by ear.
TT: I mean, I think if I told them the whole truth, they might just not believe me.
UU: that is a distinct possibility. U_U
TT: Alright. No, it makes sense, I can work with that.
UU: anything else on yoUr mind?
TT: No. I don’t think so.
TT: I think I’m ready now. I feel ready.
UU: are yoU anxioUs?
TT: I’m fucking terrified.
UU: don’t be!
UU: my friends are lovely people 
UU: yoU don’t have to be perfect for them
UU: jUst be yoUrself ^u^
TT: …
TT: Yeah, okay. Yeah.
TT: Thanks. Really.

uranianUmbra [UU] at nA:nA opened memo on board ~*~*__NEW FRIENDS ^u^__*~*~.

gutsyGumshoe [GG] responded to memo.
GG: Hello!
golgothasTerror [GT] responded to memo.
GT: Howdy madames!
GT: Whats the occasion?
UU: i have someone to introdUce yoU to! he is a friend of roxy’s.
GG: Sure! Hoo hoo.
GT: Any friend of you or Roxy is a friend of mine!
GG: Add him already!
TT: timaeusTestified [TT] responded to memo.
TT: Hello.