capeandcowl | [video]

[There is a blue-eyed child looking at you. She can't be more than three. She is, however, wearing a very grown-up expression of dissatisfaction. And some kind of superhero outfit with a big "6" on the chest.

Ordinarily, Val would be cagier about immediately going public in a strange place, but, well, she has A Problem. When she speaks, it's with fully adult syntax and no hint of a lisp or any other childish speech impediment.]

Hi. I'm Valeria Richards. Assuming no alternate timeline stuff--not a safe assumption, I know, but sometimes you gotta live dangerously--it looks like there are a few people out there who're friends of my parents. You've got a couple of hours to come get me before they [she turns the phone to show a pair of what are presumably social workers, looking simultaneously put-upon and patient] try to stick me in foster care and things get sketchy.

[Anyone who knows Val will know that's more for the prospective foster parents' protection than hers. No one wants her turning some unfortunate family's appliances into her robot escape army.]

...'Bye.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It protects itself somehow... or the one who built it was able to make sure it could.

Sure, but there are better ways to do it than electrocution.

[She's just sort of professionally offended at how half-assed that sounds.]

Excuse me? [ Oh no, he's met another sociopath or something. ]

[She's three. Everyone's a bit of a sociopath at three. Val just has the capacity to do worse than lie about where the cookies went.]

What? Electricity's really easy to block.

How is that -- no, that's not the point! It could probably do more, but it's better to stay away from it. That machine is our only way back home so far.

Given the description of what occurs, "we" don't get to go home via whatever method the machine uses. Our personal continuity of memory is unidirectional to this universe.

[nbd she'll just figure out a better way to do it]

You think it's something else that sends us back?

Not necessarily. I think that we only remember this universe exists when we're in it, so functionally we don't ever go home.

What do you mean by that? That we don't go home...

[Ugh, talking to normal people.]

Okay. Everything that happens here, in the City and this universe, we don't remember when we're in our original universes. The clock back home stops for us when we're here and starts up again when we return as though nothing here ever occurred.

As far as you, now, are concerned, you'll only ever "go home" in that you'll remember it when you get back here. When you're home, it's as though this universe doesn't exist, and never existed.

[Which is why she'll have to invent a better way to get back.]

Oh. [ Wait, he technically already knows this.

She's making everything so complicated...! ]

Right... as far as we know no one who's been brought back has been able to remember this world in theirs. [ There's always the possibility someone who hasn't returned remembers this one. ]

[All she can work with is the evidence she has.]

And since "we" is a function of our experiences, not remembering vast chunks of time changes that function.

I suppose that can change eventually... the Porter is unpredictable.

If I could get a look I could fix that.

[And then Val traumatized everyone by getting herself horribly killed. It was the best day ever.]