@keith.kogane

[secondnature]

[Being back is ... strange. Right out of where they went to face Haggar, to get a better understanding of her mind. Keith stood and spoke to a younger version of Zarkon. He told Keith that he took things too far, that he was willing to lead his team into anything. Keith felt certain, felt like he knew what he was doing—but the doubts creep in now. Steadily. Certainly.

Allura was gone when they got back. In a coma, it seemed. What sounded like a good idea at the time doesn't seem like it now.

But if nothing else, he feels ... like he understands things here better. More than ever. Pockets of resistance. People being wiped out. Having to keep fighting. Keith has seen Earth in that position, and he's seen them not give up. Their enemies back home were external, but here, it's ... everything. It's the world that's been built.

(And in timey-wimey stuff, Keith was gone for a week.)]

Hi everyone. I'm back.

This is weird to even talk about. A lot of us don't know what happens when we disappear. I don't even know if what happened to me is what happens to everyone. But I went home.

I lived a year of my life. More than that, really. It was almost two years. I woke up and I had ... I knew what it was like to experience that. But I remembered being here, too. Has anyone heard of something like that happening? My experience with other dimensions doesn't seem to include this.

I look like myself again. That ... might not make sense, actually. But I have all my hair back. All of it. And not just what I was letting grow out because I had no choice to get it back. [This is where Keith puts in a picture of himself. Unlike before, his hair is shaped, rather than growing loosely, and it's long. Like on the verge of being long enough to pull back into a ponytail. It is a Definite Difference in hair growth, even if he got off that bus in that wild accident a couple months ago.]

Anyway. I think we should look into this. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I'm not the guy to look into it. And I don't mean that just to put myself down, so hold off, Jughead. I mean it because I'm not the guy who gets any of this time and space stuff. That's not really my thing.

Oh, and my chest hurts. Kinda like how it did when I got my knife back. Or exactly like it.

Comments

@leo.fitz

[retravel]

Thanks for the ping.
And thank you for sharing these details, Keith. They're extremely helpful.

[ he saw the lad on day one, and he's quite right, the hair has changed, and combined with all the other information, the appearances and disappearances, his own research into natural and unnatural activity in the last year, that means — ]

I'm with you both on this. Our flickering in and out of different timelines doesn't read as intentional. Everything about "the group" who held us for a time points to an orderly modus operandi, at odds with this randomness. Systematic, streamlined dropoffs during times of peak traffic. Agents who step out of line being swiftly terminated.

There's an element of unintentionality in this, even if we've been used with intent after the fact. Does that track?

[ he has a clearer theory than ever, but he wants to be sure this makes sense, that Strange agrees with him to an extent, before he puts the rest out here. ]

[rehandle]

I think so. Unless Keith's a trial run, but the implications of that (discussed above) are huge, and I don't think that's what we're dealing with here.

[ he desperately hopes that's not what we're dealing with here. though, there's been a niggling something that he can't quite pin down - ]

Though we should also consider smaller details, like the specificity of returns. To our beds? Like a save point. To my knowledge the universe doesn't specifically assign individual drop off locations for unplanned interdimensional travel that adjust to an updated billing address.

[retravel]

[ save point, he says, and fitz's fear of being in another horrible vr simulation intensifies. no thank you. ]

I've two ideas, and I'm not sold on either but:
Loki once commented that everything seems to flow from within or through us. Emotions, powers linked to who we are, [ that's a theory he hasn't publicly posited before, though others have touched on it. ] personal items.

I realise this is a half-formed theory, so no one needs to remind me, but for the purpose of this exercise: If we accept my prior statements as true, then it stands to reason that the same interactant that causes all of that is causing us to flicker (hence why our chests ache afterward). And if that's the case, it seems natural that we'd reappear at a place where we've spent a great deal of time, housing our other personal items, like we're following a homing beacon through spacetime.

Alternatively, perhaps our disappearances are unintentional, but we're being "rescued" intentionally. The multiverse may not have our personal addresses, but I'm sure whoever drops us off in batches has been keeping track. Could be they have a measure of control, just not enough to keep us solid all the time.

[secondnature]

Are you using "solid" literally?

[retravel]

Yes, though I think "anchor" might be a better word for it.
I mean to say what's keeping us locked in this specific point in space-time as well as what's keeping us corporeal.

[secondnature]

I never went incorporeal when I crossed dimensions before.

[retravel]

I have, when I've jumped between two dimensions.
And I wouldn't recommend it.

[secondnature]

Yeah.

I think I'll pass on that.

[retravel]

[ at least robbie reyes was there... looking damn fine as they were nearly dragged to hell... ]

Happy to advise you.

[ but also, ]

The bit you said about looking through other realities. I think it could play a role in all this. Not necessarily as means of control over us, but as a potential motive for messing with the fabric of reality in the first place.

[secondnature]

I think so. I was pulled back before we saw that person put that plan into action, but I trust my team. If they say it can destroy all of reality, that could impact things.

Either way, this world is messed up. It's not on the verge of being dead, but that's because it's obviously trying to reverse course.

If someone had a way of changing that, they would. Right?

[retravel]

Right on both counts. Someone had to consider it — to look for a better way.

[ he turns over the coin that Connor gave him. no, that's not the only option. humanity seeks advances, regardless of the cost. ]

Or for more valuable resources.
The government and corporations already attempted to use the colonies to do just that, outsourcing land, relocating undesirables. Spacetime's only a few steps further than, well, space.

[ maybe it's about change, survival, pioneering. maybe it's the dark obverse of those things: a want for greater resources, edging out competitors or simply seeking power, like the energy suffusing the displaced. ]

Interuniversal surveying. Perhaps even interuniversal mining and fracking. They're all on the table, different prologues with the same end result: When someone starting exploring spacetime, they cracked open a faultline in the process.

[ that's one theory, anyway. an intentional pursuit with unintended consequences. ]

[secondnature]

I think whatever they did, they didn't do it on purpose. Maybe they wanted a better world for the people here. Maybe they wanted to control how people go. My world isn't that different from this one, but it isn't as advanced. After World War III, everyone united under one government. But that government isn't as questionable. It doesn't invade people's homes at night, trying to stomp out anyone bad. Some higher ups make mistakes, but you can't deny that it's for the greater good.

[Cartoon Earth is a lot rosier, essentially.]

Interdimensional travel was an accident in my world. Some of what we brought over hurt the entire universe for thousands of years. But I guess you could try it a different way, too.

I guess the real question is whether we assume they have control or if this is new. I don't think they do. They brought the wrong person over from my world. I can't help. So I think it's an accident.

[rehandle]

[ thanks for doing that brain work fitz, now he can move on with his life put a temporary pause on starting to seriously consider the hyper-digitized nature of their lives to be anything other than a by-product of the times. ]

Both plausible working theories. Going forward, it may be best to account for the likelihood of the latter when trying to figure this out, until we can eliminate it completely.

We definitely weren't an accident in that there has to be an origin point for the arrivals, or we wouldn't need dropping to specific locations by a shady organisation who've already shaved us down and planted a chip in our heads. We'd just show up all over the city, heads empty of implants, starting little uproars as the numbers of unimplanted were seen to rise or scared people started lashing out at the natives. Of course, it's also possible that they're able to trace us - maybe they've got tech that can sense whatever it is that's granted us the empathy bond, the abilities, etc, if they weren't involved in setting us up with that too - and pick us up immediately for our random arrival points. But why would they have developed that technology, or known how to, without first having some link to the phenomenon?

So although we specifically may not have been the point, something was. Or something was discovered and has been made the best of subsequently, as you said, but somewhere on this Earth, presumably in this city, is the place we really arrive. Or the place they go to find us. Taking into account jacked Godzilla, on top of all of this, poor control seems an inevitable conclusion.

[ tl;dr, do go on. ]

[retravel]

Yes, okay, exactly.
I'm with you on this, Stephen. Could be that we give off a specific tell, like an energy signature, following our exposure to the interactant, or the openings in spacetime themselves have precursors, like how a seismograph predicts quakes. Perhaps the unknown entity can even boost the signal, so to speak, strengthening the connection from this universe to the others and controlling the openings for short periods of time.

[ unstable overall, but capable of being temporarily stabilised by internal or external forces. ]

Regardless, I think this Earth was rattling long before we got here, providing ample time for our unknown entity to either fuck with spacetime themselves, or notice the warning signs of instability and formulate a plan to combat it — or capitalise on it.

As you know, on June 27 2511, shortly after the first wave of us were retrieved by Morningstar, earthquakes preceded the arrival of a large creature. At first I thought it was the creature's footfalls shaking the earth, but my subsequent research provides grounds to consider a more complex hypothesis.

The June incident with the creatures marks the second unpredicted quake in the last year. Seeing as it's bloody 2511, most others are identified in advance or retroactively show evidence of quake precursors. However, in September 2510, the seismic event in question hit a number of large megacities, including New Amsterdam, New Oslo, and New Venice, despite their disparate locations. Furthermore, there were massive power outages across all the affected cities.

Now, that sounds more like an EMP than separate, latent infrastructure and electrical issues, to me.

Quakes, blackouts, decaying creatures, flickering individuals. We're all aftershocks.

[ Symptoms of a faultline pried open by natural or unnatural forces. ]