text | username: apollo2

[solarcharged]

Hi everyone. Apollo here. I don't think I've met even half of you yet but I thought I’d share this:

IMG TRANSFER COMPLETE: exterior.jpg

Just in case anyone wanted to see what our new home really looks like.

Has anyone had any luck opening the locked doors? This place looks like it’s way bigger than what we have access to so far. Please do share with the rest of the class if you find anything interesting...

Comments

[solarcharged]

[ Oh, shit. ]

Only two? What happened? If you don't mind telling me, I mean...

[splinten]

The entire story of humanity's long descent into Extinction Classification is about as long as it is stupid.
To give you the briefer version, an alien tyrant used Crocker Corp to get a foothold into humanity's psyche and, with corporate influence and a facade of an external threat, incited the collapse of human civilization into a fascist self-annihilation spiral. Violent suppression of dissenters, concentration camps, water supply replaced by Faygo, that kind of thing. That got rid of the vast majority of the population without Her Imperial Condescension even needing to get involved.
After that, she finished the ice cap melting for us, made the majority of the planet uninhabitable to humans, and engaged in experiments and disruption of human social groups, before eventually neglecting us for a more easily managed species. Humanity just couldn't make it at that point. There was no chance of rebuilding.
So it's just me and a friend of mine.

[solarcharged]

[ ...He can't believe that was the briefer version. ]

Well, shit. That's awful. I'm so sorry.

So you've got no home to return to?

[splinten]

[He is lucky he gets to miss out on the longer version. He is lucky he gets to miss out on Guy Fieri.]

It's just how things are. There's nothing to do about it at this point.

[No home to return to? He should have had one. But they messed all of that up. Some other version of him will make a home to go back to. He'll go to the Dreambubbles with everything else that Paradox Space has discarded.]

Yeah. This is kind of it for me.
Seeing this many people around is pretty cool.

[solarcharged]

[ jfc you're breaking his heart here!! ]

If we manage to find a way off this thing and back to our home worlds, you can come back to mine. I think you'd fit right in. We could do with some better rappers.

[ Apollo literally could not name a single rapper ever BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT ]

[splinten]

[Dirk, being an idiot who has literally never interacted with an adult who wasn't trying to kill him, does not fully understand what is happening here. This is why he kind of stares at the communicator for a while, attempting to process this.

Eventually, he manages,]

That feels like a really generous offer.

[He can't quite articulate how it feels like that. But it does, and it's confusing.]

[solarcharged]

[ It's too heartbreaking, the idea that everyone else is trying so desperately to get home while Dirk doesn't even have one any more. What else was he going to do? ]

Well, you might revise that once you see it. It can be kind of terrible at times. But we wouldn't say no to having more help in making it a better place.

[splinten]

It would have to work hard to be comparatively terrible to the post-apocalypse.
Would you have room for two more?

[He isn't saying yes, but. Jake and Dave need somewhere to go too.]

[solarcharged]

Uh I think we've got space, yes.

My team and I navigate through alternate realities all the time. You wouldn't have to stay in ours, we can drop you off in any world you like.

[splinten]

A choice of universes.
That's both familiar and completely novel.
Thanks for the offer. I'll let them know it's hypothetically on the table, magic space physics permitting.