texted during the meeting, displaying as being from Nova Barnett

[petridish]

[Those who check the contact list may notice there is now only one Jane Shepard listed, but this user looks almost identical to her, just mad.]

Suggestions for ways to change your appearance? Long term but not as permanent as that asteroid's genetic modification, both things that can be done on the trip and recommendations for service providers for when we get back.

[All Nova's replies will also be in text unless otherwise specified.]

Comments

[toservelife]

[She definitely appreciates the nerdery...but she's not really able to indulge it very well.]

it's from some ancient armor i found
that armor was too heavy, but i managed to sew the shield generators onto mine
don't know anything else about it

[Slight pause, then another message.]

could you work it out if you took a look

[petridish]

Probably not [she can acknowledge her areas of little knowledge], but I'm curious.

[Rereading 'ancient'...]

What year/planet are you from?

[toservelife]

[Oh well. Worth a try.

She wouldn't have been able to answer a question about planets mere days ago, but now:] earth

does the year 3040 mean anything to you

[It's not how the Nora count years. Nobody here is Nora, though - they all look a lot more like the Old Ones.]

[petridish]

Huh. Further on from me. [Possibly the furthest she's seen!] 2186.

[toservelife]

we're definitely from different worlds
there were no humans in my world in 2186
not for 200 more years

[What would humanity have been like if the Old Ones had existed for another century? She's wondered before, but she never thought she could actually find out.]

[petridish]

Where were they?

[Off colonizing somewhere else?]

[toservelife]

[... She should have known this question was coming, but it's a sad thing to have to type it all the same.]

they died in about 2065
they made machines for war, but they glitched and nobody could control them

[petridish]

Ah. Yeah, that's always a mistake, especially if the machines have artificial intelligence.

[toservelife]

they were just war machines that malfunctioned, and the corporation that made them closed all the back doors so no one could fix it for years.
not much help when you have ten months before they grind you up for fuel.

[OK, that's a full stop. She can use those. And commas. Typing is hard, ok.]

[petridish]

Why did the corporation do that?

[She vaguely understands the concept of profit, but self preservation, she believes, tends to rank higher than that, and if everyone's dead you can't profit off of them.]

[toservelife]

their rivals could have used a back door, or the machines themselves if they were fighting each other on different sides. They didn't want to leave one.

But if something happened, neither could they. They didnt think of that

[Sometimes the smartest people can also be really stupid.]

[petridish]

Stupid of them.

So how are there humans in your time again?