ataraxion | mark xv suit ❦ [ text ] ❦ they say i only think in the form of crunching numbers

[ it's perhaps a side effect of how he hadn't been sleeping as well as he should have been before the jump, and how there's been a mess of nervous energy with him that he practically jolts out of the medbay after seeing that pepper and natasha and— everyone else, except jaye, jaye wasn't there. he should check that. but first he needs to check the numbers, check the data of everyone who's here, see the numbers left. that'll kill two birds with one stone, won't it. because he'll see her number, and it'll be fine.

it doesn't take long for him to get to his room and look at the program connor and him had set up once upon a time to track numbers of people, to make sure as soon as they were gone, you'd know for sure. it's faulty, he knows that, you don't have names to go with numbers, but he knows the important numbers for him. there's jaye, just fine and then he looks down, toward the later numbers, making sure none of the people he saw were just doubles with the wrong number and then he notices.

018 has people he already knew were there. 019 seems like it only has one person. and then 020 looks like a normal jump where people come. they shouldn't be on twenty. they had just done the nineteenth jump, he hadn't been asleep again, had he? had they had a coma and no— someone would have stopped him when they were stumbling about and he was rushing. it's another moment before tony scrambles to look at the network, hand shaking a little before he sees hotspur and jaye and other people, and he should say something to jaye, but that doesn't point to them not skipping a jump. why wasn't there talk about the nineteenth jump. why hadn't— he just needed to ask everyone the simple question. in text, because okay no, he is definitely not feeling like talking. ]

Anyone remember the nineteenth jump? Going through it, anything that happened? Don't tell me it's the one we just went through, because you might want to check all the new batches numbers, seriously. Actually you know what, 019 » 034, you have a name, don't you? You want to shed some light on being a 019er?

[ like how it seems like you're the only one maybe? ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I see Josh made a friend who likes his jokes.

[ :') ]

Not like this sort of malfunction. Even the coma back in the day wasn't like this.

[ he didn't copy josh shut up okay. HIS JOKE WAS ORIGINAL. ]

From what i've seen so far, the ship doesn't care about what it's done before, and whether or not it's methods are exactly orthodox. Not that i'm knocking your need to figure out why it's doing what it's doing, but shouldn't we be expecting the unexpected at this point?

[ UH-HUH THAT'S WHY HE MADE IT FIRST. ]

That all depends on what you call unexpected.

[ he didn't read through all the comments first okay, SHUT UP SO MEAN. ]

What do you call unexpected at this point?

[ MEAN IS HIS MIDDLE NAME. ]

The expected. Sort of. You talk about all the unexpecteds, and all of us spontaneously dying counts as unexpected.

[ FINE. ]

So if the unexpected is your idea of expected, it means you're expecting the worse already. Which makes the expected - whatever you want to call surprising - actually surprising. That would imply you expected this, then. Which makes me wonder why you're asking about it in the first place.

All it really boils down to is the fact that weird things happen around here. And that not enough people have any idea why.

[ peter? you are not helping. ]

You talk almost as much as me. Christ.

Okay, this wasn't actually in the realm of expected. Because so far the only people from this universe we know have existed in their own areas. Were here on the ship before us, or came on another ship and got shot because of Ward being insane. Having someone from this universe appear on the ship with the only number of his kind. Not in the realm of expected. Which makes it an unexpected, which means, I didn't expect it. So. No implication that I expected this because if the expected is surprising, then this isn't because it's not an expected.

Are you just now noticing that? You think that's a revelation to me?

Didn't even remotely think it was a revelation to you. Been here longer than me, checked the numbers before almost everyone else got there -- believe me, i'm pretty sure you're at the top of your game.

With the expected and the not-so.

Which, really, just means that this is the last thing we should be talking about. Whether or not this came out of left field, figuring out what happened in the interim should be a top priority. Do we know if the grav-couches have any way to store data? Or is that just another one of those mysteries floating somewhere way above our pay grades?

I'm taking that as a compliment. What can I say, you get bored and do things after a while. I get bored a lot.

Above the paygrade. If it hadn't have been we'd have solved the coma mystery right after everyone was awake. I hate the paygrade because it's a dumb paygrade considering everything.

You and me both.

Aren't paygrades usually useless? Especially when you don't even know who's hanging around at the top, standing behind the figurative curtain. Always seems to me like they aren't always the ones who should be making the decisions but hell, what do I know. [ fucking fbi, ruining his life. grumble grumble. ] Doesn't matter when we're still in the dark.

I can name about ten different people who will hate you already just for that.

Classification levels are the same way. Restricted access is bullshit, anyone can hack into it, blah blah shut up and just have some transparency here. Been trying to shove a light on it since I got here and shit started happening. I poked a hole or two. Air holes.

Why, because I get bored? Didn't know that was a crime.

Transparency only ever seems to happen when people want something. But it's always after the fact-- after when they should've asked for help in the first place. Just makes things that much more difficult when people're refusing to pass down information that everyone needs to know. [ feelings. peter has them. sometimes. ] Might be time to start poking a few more holes.

Because of what you do when you get bored.

I'm not even arguing that. Seriously, at home, I love it, find the government to be a bunch of hacks who do dumb shit and then ask for help too late. And that's saying something when they used to pay my bills. Sort of.

[ ...tony no. ] Give me a bigger hammer to do it with and your wish is my command.

mark xv suit ❦ [ text ] ❦ they say i only think in the form of crunching numbers

text so you can just imagine his

jkdls; rude

you love me don't lie

its not true. YOU CAN'T MAKE ME SAY IT.

THERE'S WAYS TO MAKE A ZO TALK

THIS IS A LIE THERE ARE NO WAYS

THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS. THERE'S A BOOK OF THEM.

THERE IS IN NO A WHOLE BOOK, NOT EVEN CLOSE

JUST BECAUSE YOU SAY THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT TRUE.

IT DOES SO. I WOULD HAVE THAT BOOK IF IT EXISTED

LIAR YOU WOULD NOT HAVE.

I WOULD SO. BECAUSE I KNOW THE WAYS.

WHAT ARE THEY THEN. OHHHH.