[video/action]

[candothat]

Enterprise? Do you read?

[A curly-headed boy, almost certainly not out of his teens, frowns at the screen. His words are rendered somewhat incomprehensible by a thick Eastern European accent in spite of his obvious attempts to annunciate.]

Ensign Chekov to bridge. Uhura? Sulu? …Mr. Spock? Chekov to engineering. Mr. Scott, can you hear me? There may have been a... ah, a malfunction with the teleporter.

Can anyone hear me?

[He sighs and fiddles with something on his device. The video feed distorts momentarily before returning to normal. When the teenager speaks again, his tone is low and words less painstakingly produced as if he’s speaking himself.]

Ai, what is this? There shouldn’t be interference this far out from the magnetic anomaly. Eto piz`dets…

Comments

[candothat]

Ah.

[Sorry if he seems less than enthusiastic.]

[totallyinaband]

Yeah. If if makes you feel better, that seems to be on the long side for here.

[Normally this is where he'd offer to buy him a drink, but he looks under-age and he did get in trouble for buying Knives all that beer that one time.]

[candothat]

So a year is not typical?

[He's Russian, dude. They drink vodka from birth.]

[totallyinaband]

[Hey, he doesn't give a shit. But he's gotten reamed out for sneaking teenagers into bars before.]

People can be here from a week to four years, seems like.

[candothat]

["Four years" makes this teenager wilt. This is what a sad puppy would look like in human form.]

Do they remember their years here, si--Stephen?

[totallyinaband]

[Oh god. That just broke him.]

Not when you go home, no. I went home for a few months this summer, didn't remember any of it.

[candothat]

[Sorry, Stephen. No one else has bothered mentioning the downsides to being in the City.]

So anything that is done during time spent here--weeks or years--is, to us, undone when we leave? And our absences are not noticed while we are here, whether it is for weeks or years?

There is no point to this dimension.

[totallyinaband]

There might be. We just haven't figured it out yet.

[candothat]

Do you believe there is?