004 - Mincemeat

[deadly_ned]

Hello, Barge. My name is Ned, and I have a completely arbitrary and unrelated question to ask.

If you had a minute - 60 seconds - with any person currently dead and could talk and interact with them as normal, alive people would...

What would you say or ask them?

I suppose this question goes to the people who are currently...dead....and have alive people back home they're separated from as well.

It's an odd question, I know. But I've been...curious, lately.



Also, would the elf who took my wallet please give it back now? I hope you remember me; I was the piemaker dressed as a Franciscan monk. I hate to treat the network as my own personal Lost Connections newsletter but I really didn't know what other way to get in touch with you.

And if you're not actually an elf, I'm sorry for calling you one.

Comments

[deadly_ned]

I did. I sort of did. This is my first inter-dimensional experience but since I've never been much at home in my own universe it wasn't much of a change from not being much at home in someone else's.

You take...what back?

[itstopped]

I wouldn't tell them.

[deadly_ned]

You'd let them die.

[itstopped]

Not everything can be set right by one action. They would have died anyway.

[deadly_ned]

Not everything can. But some things. Some things can be turned right around with a wish or a touch or a thought. It's possible.

Would you have tried to stop the inevitable?

[itstopped]

Oh, I did. This is my reward. You'll forgive me if I don't hold much truck with wishing.

[deadly_ned]

Death isn't much of a reward. Death is like an anti-reward.

[itstopped]

This isn't death. [Which is annoying, because he was really completely fine with death.]

[deadly_ned]

You're right. This is being alive again. A supernatural second chance.

[itstopped]

[His voice hardens slightly.] And one isn't always enough. It wouldn't have been for them. There is no setting it right. So, no, Ned: I wouldn't tell them. I would... I don't know. Speak to one of the great scientists of the past. To my favorite actor. Maybe I'd ask him to record my outgoing message.

[deadly_ned]

There's no rule against non-philanthropic minutes.

But I agree. There's very few things you can set right in under a minute.

Your outgoing message?

[itstopped]

[Now he settles, slightly, back into his more typical hard-edged cynicism.] Sure. Why not? Felix isn't available right now. He's sleeping it off on the so-called ferry to Elysium.

[deadly_ned]

And that's what you'd like to leave humanity with?

[itstopped]

I meant here. I've already left... [No, he doesn't like to use the h-word there.] ...my world.

[deadly_ned]

That's two places you'd be leaving.

Can I ask where you think you'll be going?

[itstopped]

Honestly, I meant my voicemail.

When I left here before, though, it was to... I don't know, the ether, I suppose.

[deadly_ned]

Descriptive, and yet...not.

[itstopped]

There was nothing about it to describe. I was dead.

[deadly_ned]

Do you remember being dead.

[itstopped]

Not especially. [There's a subtext, here, a note in his voice that maybe only someone with Ned's particular talents would pick up on... although admittedly, it's not as though Felix hasn't been vocal about this in the past: the fact that he dearly misses being dead.]

[deadly_ned]

What do you know about being dead.

[itstopped]

I was dead. Do I need to know anything else?

[deadly_ned]

Everyone dies.

Not everyone feels the same way about dying.

[itstopped]

You asked what I know, Ned. That's what I know. I died, I was brought back here, I died again... now I'm here again. I expect someday the Admiral will get bored and I'll go back to being dead. [Seriously: make it happen, Admiral.]

[deadly_ned]

I know. I know I asked what you know. I should have asked how you feel.