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[The feed clicks on and there's a beat or two of Heather just sitting cross-legged on her bed before she starts to speak. The pause isn't nearly as dramatic as some others this jump, though; more like she's decided she needs to say something without quite deciding what it is she wants to say. Sure, by now there must be more people on board who never knew Hotspur than people who did, but he should be more than a cautionary tale about what happens if you don't get into a grav couch in time. He died trying to help everyone out of this mess, and that should be remembered.

When she does speak it's calm enough, although in a way that people who know her well will probably realize takes a little effort.]

Are we going to talk about what we heard before the jump? I know there's a lot to take in right now, but... something takes that much effort to say and it gets said anyway? We ought to be listening.

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We have enough conspiracies around here without adding with another one. Hotspur is dead. He's dead. He ain't hanging around somewhere between jumps whispering ominous things to us, and he was in a bit of a damn hurry to be wasting his time recording super secret messages to be delivered who knew when to however many of us managed to survive in the meantime. Too busy getting turned into a goddamn man puddle.

[ And then the slightest pause. ]

Besides which he isn't the only ghost in the network.

I never said he wasn't dead. No offense, Senator, but I don't have a stake in whether or not he is a ghost beyond the idea that he looks like he was a good guy. It doesn't have to be defined as a secret message, because beginning is a reasonably clear word that doesn't lend itself easily to secret messages unless you're meaning the exact opposite of it.

[ And a tiny shift of an eyebrow up. ]

You want to clarify that or give everyone else more fodder for the conspiracies?

He was a good guy. Well liked by a lot of people around here, and a daring son of a bitch, but he was good at what he did and it got him killed.

[ But he'll happily move on. Most people are upset at the idea of dredging up old corpses with conspiracy, and Nathan has been there before. It sucks. ]

Do you know about the screaming?

Considering what I heard he was good at, he had a high likelihood of dying not on this ship, let alone on it.

[ It sucks and that's why typically most people leave it alone. ]

Not exactly.

[ Nathan snorts. It's a good point. ]

There are screams. I think Ianto documented them, but their discovery caused a bit of a kerfuffle. [ A massive dip in people's trust in the Communications department, to tell the truth. ] They don't originate from any point, you know. It's like there's...a network full of screaming, and it crisscrosses over ours.

You know it wouldn't surprise me much if this message had came to us the same way, that's all I'm saying.

A bit of a kerfuffle. [ The way he says that means that he's taking it to mean that it was a bit more than a bit, but he moves onto the greater point at hand. ]

Everything— Okay, let me rephrase that, I'm not calling myself a technological master, but most things typically have an origin point. Even if this ship defies a lot of things, it has to be coming from somewhere. The screams had to originate somewhere at some time.

[ Which, perhaps begs the question of who's screaming, if not when are they screaming. ]

Just lost in the shuffle of the screams with no conceivable origin point. Picked an interesting time to show back up.

It's not that simple. We don't know how our engine works, but we know that it can drag us away from practically anywhere in time, send us back, erase our memories. Hotspur recorded what he did exactly when we jumped. For all we know, it spread the whole thing across time and space. You hear an echo in a canyon, it sure as hell is coming from somewhere, you're right--but somewhen applies just as much.

I think it's a waste of time to get too worked up over it.

So he recorded it at the time, and this part managed to find itself in this exact area of space— assuming we've moved in space and this exact time. Probability of both of those things lining up isn't that high.

[ A beat. ] And it's technically my job to at least get a little worked up over it. [ Not his job here, technically, but his home job. Basically it boils down to but case solving. ]

It isn't a coincidence. In the original recording, Hotspur's voice broke to static half way through his sentence. The recording was put up on the network at the exact same time as last time. I agree it's not a coincidence, I'm saying what if time was warping when he recorded the message, and we've just - you know - crossed over his tracks again?

I'm no scientist, but I was a pilot. We had our own phantoms, things that'd play tricks with your head, come of flying faster than the speed of sound.

Edited 2013-06-26 21:08 (UTC)

We could have, but there's— the math behind the chances of that occurring are small. I can't get exact because I wasn't in the habit of studying theoretical physics, but I can tell you that it's not something that has a good chance of happening. Even here. Someone releasing it at the same time on purpose? Still unlikely but has a better chance.

[ a beat. ] I can't claim to be a pilot, but a lot of things can play tricks with a head even if they're not traveling at the speed of sound or light. Ship's proof enough of that.

The math behind the chances of our being here, out of everyone in all the universes, is pretty damn small, but my brother's been brought here three times. My daughter once. Fucking Sylar twice. Mathematically, the chances of that are pretty damn low, too, but here we are.

[ A wry smile. ]

I'm holding to it being one message. You can believe in your conspiracy theories, but honestly-- [ He shakes his head, the smile vanishes. ] Ain't gonna make a blind bit of a difference to us in the long term.

I'm not denying that it's not. This entire thing is mathematically almost impossible and yet here we all are. With no explanation as to how or really why.

[ There's a long pause where Peter almost looks like he's going to say something before he stops himself, pursing his lips. ]

If one of them gets us home, I count that as a difference. Then again, that's just me and maybe my desire to just solve this like any other case that's getting to me.

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