tushanshu | 01

Entry tags:

01 | Video

Hello..?

[Have yourself a twelve year old girl testing the water on the shiny new thing and mumbling to herself a little as she does.]

...I hope I'm doing this right.

[Oh right. The people can hear her. Sarah takes a deep breath and gets to talking.]

I uh, gotta say, this is some real crazy stuff going on. I don't even know where to start makin' sense of any of it. The Kedan people, the ones that work here? I think they work here. Live here? I dunno. They explained a lot of stuff but I'm still trying to wrap my head around even being here.

[Sarah pauses. When she speaks again it's with a little less certainty.]

Do they ever make mistakes with who they bring here? I'm not sure I'm the monster fighting type.

[Not real ones anyway.]

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[Another kid. Still, Bean seems to remain the youngest on the turtle at only eight. He turns on the video feed, slowly becoming more comfortable with showing people who he is.]

Believe me, there are plenty of people here who can do the fighting, and plenty who can't. You can find another way to be useful. [For instance, Bean teaches people to read English.]

[There's no hiding her surprise when Bean appears. She'd been starting to think she was the youngest one here.]

Yeah, I just don't know what. Not yet anyway.

[She tilts her head to the side.]

Are you from around here? A local or something?

[Surely they didn't bring a kid that young here to fight. It's bad enough she's there.]

The locals tend not to use the Network. And you can tell when they do, because they don't look human.

[Meaning no, he got pulled here just like you, just like everyone else.]

R-right. That was pretty silly, wasn't it.

[Way to look dumb, Sarah. She'll just keep on smiling though.]

You're just a lot younger than anyone I've met. Everyone's been older than me even.

To my knowledge, [Which is pretty vast and all-encompassing,] I am the youngest "Foreigner" here.

Have you been here long? What's your name?

[She's picking up that he's not like most kids his age, but Sarah's still got questions.]

Almost eleven months. My name is Bean.

That is a looong stay, geez. Oh um, I'm Sarah by the way. It's nice to meet you Bean.

[Sarah tilts her head to the side.]

Is that a nickname?

[He expected this.]

No. It's the name I was given. [Though not technically his real name. But Sarah doesn't need to know that. Bean is what he goes by.]

Huh. Okay!

[Either way, there's no judgement or ridicule from her side. Sarah just accepts what she's told. After all, everyone is from different places and worlds. It does make her wonder what his home is like though.]

So... where are you from, Bean?

Originally, Rotterdam, in the Netherlands. More recently, FleetCom, on Eros.

[Then, he adds] Eros is an asteroid.

Whoa.

[He's like something out of a movie.]

That's so cool! Um, what year is it, exactly? I'm guessin' you're from waaaaaay in the future compared to where I'm from.

The year was 2171 AD before I came here.

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