001 -- voice;

[kutte]

[ there's a click of a lighter, then an inhale, before jax breathes back out. chain-smoking his way through the last couple weeks is hurting his supply, but it's also the best way to deal with stress. and unfamiliar memories. and everything else going on up here. ]

I'm not looking to get all touchy-feely about this shit, but I gotta say it. Some of you people got weird fucking lives, you know that?

[ it's meant to be a joke, but jax ends on a note that's much, much too tense to really carry it off. ]

Anyone figured out how long we gotta put up with the trip down memory lane, or we just waiting till the other shoe drops on this mess and someone's head explodes?

Comments

[mindtricks]

Not everyone. [ she figures there are plenty of people here who are at least somewhat similar to one another, who wouldn't consider each other weird. ]

[kutte]

No?

[ anderson you're so contradictory!! ]

[mindtricks]

[ it makes perfect sense! ]

As far as I'm aware, there are plenty of people here from very similar worlds with similar lives that they wouldn't consider out of the ordinary.

[ and then there's people like her. ]

[kutte]

People from spaceships, right? Like Jayne.

[mindtricks]

There are a lot of people here from earth around the beginning of the 21st century. Their ideas of a normal life seem relatively similar.

[ from what she knows. ]

[kutte]

Beginning. What, you from the end or something?

[mindtricks]

The beginning of the 22nd century.

[kutte]

And what do things look like that far ahead?

[ haha he totally saw but!! ]

[mindtricks]

[ why does she have to say it then?? ]

America is a nuclear wasteland with people living in Mega Cities behind radiation walls.

[kutte]

[ because!! ]

So bleak as fuck, right?

[mindtricks]

It is not all bad.

[ but essentially, yes. ]

[kutte]

I was waiting for you to say that, Pollyanna.

[mindtricks]

[ so she's not getting rid of that nickname, is she? ]

It's the truth.

[kutte]

[ no that is here to stay. ]

Depending on your perspective, maybe. But I'll let you have this one.

[mindtricks]

I'm the one who lived in that world. [ so she's the one who can judge and it isn't all bad. there are good people even in mega-blocks and good memories even if life is bleak as fuck, to use his words.

but yeah she'll accept the nickname. it's fitting, at any rate. ]

[kutte]

Yeah, I know.

[ quietly, because thinking of that being home...

he doesn't pity her, but he doesn't envy her that. ]

[mindtricks]

[ she hasn't had a bad life, in comparison to many others in her world. well, if you ignore being orphaned and a mutant, but her mutation is the reason the hall of justice took more than a passing interest in her, so-- ]

It's never all bad.

[ further pieces of idealism from cassandra anderson, a novel. you're welcome, jax ]