[video]

[highprofilerichkid]

Hey, everybody. I'm turning... twenty one? Twenty two? Have we decided how we're counting that year in the Dreaming yet?

Anyway, I'm having a party at my place. Everybody's welcome. Even if you don't like me, I do have a lot of ice cream. Just putting that out there.

[Attached is his address in the Sky Sector, and the date and time.

Some Foreigners – specifically, Aya, Raine, Jackie, Bucky, Valdis, Danny, Sonja and Miles – will also receive individual texts, consisting of an ASCII art birthday cake, a smiley face, and a link to this video message. Cute.]

Comments

video;

[lasergrenades]

It's totally not fair that you and Gene are older than me than you're supposed to be.

[Because clearly that's the important thing here.]

video;

[highprofilerichkid]

At least it's not because of time travel, right?

video;

[lasergrenades]

Oh, geez, yeah. Can you make that part of your will that all of your ancestors have to avoid time travel? Please?

Or wait, will that cause some kind of paradox again? Or maybe if you say that, your grandkids will take it as a challenge. Man, time is weird.

Anyway. You're old.

video;

[highprofilerichkid]

You've met Andros. Do you really think he'd listen to something like that?

[Then again, his grandson had been a pretty extreme example of the 'lawful' side of the character alignment chart. He might have taken it seriously.

(How Tony's genes could have produced such an uptight prick baffles him to this day.)]

video;

[lasergrenades]

[Pepper snort-giggles.]

Dunno, maybe if you got to him young and instilled the values of anti-time travel like the good crazy grandpa you'd be.

video;

[highprofilerichkid]

Good idea. If I ever have kids, remind me to put 'anti-time travel lessons' on my parenting schedule.

[It'll come right after the unit on 'how not to program malicious computer intelligences.']

video;

[lasergrenades]

That sounds like a smart plan, honestly. You've got enough genius to pass along that you should probably add some life wisdom, too. Just for good measure.

video;

[highprofilerichkid]

Life wisdom... that's stuff like 'avoid zombie gas' and 'centipedes never follow through on their deals,' right?

[You know. The kind of advice that's widely applicable to normal people's lives and common everyday situations.]