Audio; UN: evan

[evantuality]

Hey, uh...

[Just Evan's voice comes through the network, and quietly at that. It's some terrible wee hour of the morning, that liminal time when no one should really be awake. The moon has set, not that Evan has his curtains open to let the stars interrupt his small bubble of quiet.

At home he'd pop on a tablet, see if any of his friends from other timezones were online, shoot the shit before sleep took him again. Here, there's no such such luck for an easy distraction, but perhaps the ALASTAIR recruits can make use of the same principles.]

Anyone else awake?

[Insomniacs unite: surely there's got to be one or two other night-birds out there.]

Comments

[evantuality]

Only the one, but then, apparently our branch has only been in operation for two full missions. I suppose you could say I've been here half of the functional lifespan of the team.

Actually, you chose a good time to fall through a hole in reality. You get to get your sea legs a little before they inevitably thrust us into another sociopolitical quagmire.

[hyperverbose]

So this whole outfit is pretty new? Or just our branch of it?

[evantuality]

Just this branch. I think less than a year for us. The whole organization? Much, much older.

[hyperverbose]

Makes you wonder if they've had a hand in shaping our worlds before.

[evantuality]

Actually, that's a theory that bounces around now and then. I assume you stumbled through a rift like the rest of us? Wouldn't it make sense if those rifts were just, like, bad clean-up jobs from previous ALASTAIR missions? They've got all the time in the universe, after all; they've probably been most places.

[hyperverbose]

So you think the only reason we're here is because they're not great at what they do.

[evantuality]

I think it's not a possibility we can rule out.

Ugh. I mean... don't get me wrong. I think we do important work here. But there are some pretty well proven managerial problems down the line. Have you heard much about what happened in Nalawi?

[hyperverbose]

Just what I noticed on the network. Nobody's really filled me in on the meaty bits.