[VIDEO] post-event

[axemeaquestion]

Hey, so... whoa.

[A bruised and bandaged woman nearly drops her device.]

Shit, sorry. Still getting used to this thing.

[For anyone who met Rochelle before but missed her at the Archives event, she's finally out of her bloodstained clothes. The shirt she's wearing today was crisp white with CRYSTAL BEACH cut out of an iridescent square print in bold letters.

The video straightens out, and Ro attempts to recover gracefully as she sits on the floor and smiles. Her back is against a coffee table littered with history books and moonblessed-aimed welcome pamphlets.]

Name's Rochelle. You can call me Ro. Sorry if I'm still kind of a mess. Better than before, trust me. I worked in TV news before things kinda went to hell back in my... world? World. Shit, that's still weird to say.

I'm kind of coming out of what you'd call a... zombie apocalypse. [AWKWARD GRIN GOES HERE??] And now I'm on a whole other goddamn planet. Still... processing that part. Compared to my life before, though, this is actually... kind of normal. I mean, not REALLY, but seriously. Not looking over your shoulder every damn second of your life makes ANYTHING seem normal. Even getting turned into a mermaid by a hunk of screaming rock.

[That's a weird thing to call Osse, Ro, but okay.]

So I guess my point is... I wanna ask. What does a fresh-out-of-the-apocalypse girl do to adjust to semi-normal life around here? I'm looking into TV network sort of work around here, actually, but otherwise...? I'll give shit a shot.

[Then - she hesitates. The casual attitude disappears, and her smile fades. There's no smooth way of transitioning into this, but...]

And on a more serious note... if anyone here finds three guys going by Coach, Ellis, and Nick... let me know?

I know that's not much to go by, but uh... Coach is a big guy in an FHS school polo. Good guy... NEVER stops talking about food if you give him a chance, though. Ellis is a real yee-haw Georgia type boy. Should have a shirt that says "bullshifter." Don't ask me why. [She laughs weakly at that - then shakes her head.] And Nick... well. You'll know Nick if you meet him. He thought bringing a white suit to a zombie apocalypse was a GOOD idea.

Long story short, they're my friends. We survived a hell of a lot together, and I'm worried about them. I've been looking around everywhere, just in case, but. If you ever meet some guys that vaguely match that description, just... point them my way.

And if it helps... all three of them probably smell like shit.

Comments

[mucked]

[ —actually, 2009 seems rather early when compared to so many others she’s met. perhaps she ought to check… ]

And you’re talking about 2009 on Earth, are you? It’s worth asking in these parts. You never know when or where someone might be from.

[axemeaquestion]

... right. 2009 on Earth, yeah.

[Simon had literally just told her that timelines and time travel were a thing around here.]

Sorry. That part's still new to me too.

[mucked]

It’s tough to swallow—at first, at any rate. My own adjustment took longer than I’d like to admit.

[ it just also didn’t happen here. ]

It was still 1947 when I was last home. Televisions aren’t all that popular. Wireless, on the other hand.

[ a low, demonstrative whistle. everyone had a radio. ]

[axemeaquestion]

Nineteen forty... [Wow. She shakes her head.] Damn. So guys like William Randolph Hearst are still a thing for you, huh?

[That's... honestly crazy interesting.]

If it helps anything, my dad still has a radio. And television was already popular before he was born.

[mucked]

[ —goodness, yes, hearst is a familiar name. peggy never fails to be fascinated by which names do or don’t persist throughout history. ]

2009, however. [ peg points out. ] Most people that I’ve met from the 21st century are a little further along than that. Fully into the 2010s, at least.

[ a pause. ]

I believe you’re the first person from 2009 I’ve ever met. The first television news personality, too.

[axemeaquestion]

I can't tell if that's a good or bad thing.

[She's joking. It's still... kinda wild to her, but talking about it helps. She grins a little.]

I dunno if I'd call myself a personality, being a producer. You help the people on screen dress up all the same, though.

[mucked]

[ she's not on screen? does that mean... ]

—So you do all the work and get little of the credit?

[ oh that she knows a thing or two about, regardless of the context. ]

[axemeaquestion]

Oh, no. Producers get plenty of credit. Associate producers, not so much. That's what I was for a while.

I actually got my dream job actually PRODUCING not too long ago, but... that was mostly due to the zombie thing. Which kinda cut into the job not long after.

[mucked]

[ zombies had been a fringe fiction, really, until she’d landed in wonderland—the pocket dimension she’d been kept in before arriving here. but back in wonderland, the fortnightly events often brought zombie-like creatures into their midst. she’d learned to feel a healthy horror surrounding the word. ]

How did it happen?

[ —the zombie thing, she means. although she sounds remarkably calm when asking about it. ]

[axemeaquestion]

Mmh.

[She frowns a little.]

Two weeks in and nobody really knows yet. The infection started in Pennsylvania. Everyone thought it was a flu until people started mutating and attacking each other.

[mucked]

[ only two weeks? christ—it must all be so fresh. and because peggy isn't keen to pick at a stranger's fresh wounds... ]

Peggy, by the way. Pleasure to meet you. [ ... ] I'll admit that I haven't paid much attention to the television programming here on the planet—but I imagine it's nice to know your skills are likely transferable to this different sort of crisis.

[axemeaquestion]

[Tell her about it.

She huffs, expression reading grateful for the subject change.]

You too, Peggy. I'm Rochelle.

[She already said as much in her initial video, but it felt odd not to not introduce herself.]

From what I've seen so far, it sounds like it. Even aliens need the news, right?

[mucked]

And I, for one, might feel more inclined to trust the news if I knew a fellow Moonblessed had her hand on it.

[ she worries about the propaganda baked into what's available from the planet itself. ]

[axemeaquestion]

Anything Moonblessed-based around here?