“That Seems To Be A Poor fucking Decision!”
Safe Passage shouted from outside of the other Voice’s ship. He would have stomped right onto the deck and started banging on doors until he got their attention, but Poor Decision was fucking crazy. Everyone knew Poor Decision was fucking crazy, but it was only now starting to become apparently just how true that was.
Also, Calculated Risk had said something about some sort of giant undead killing machine, so it seemed like a good idea to stand at the side and shout and throw shit until he got their attention. He wasn’t going to stop until he did, because he needed some goddamn answers that weren’t coming from a high as all hell Calculated Risk.
“I swear to whatever forces hold this ram-shackled universe together I know you can hear me! Poor Decision!” he shouted again, and this time he could start to hear someone coming over to the side of the ship. There was definitely some relief when he could see that it was actually Poor Decision poking their head over the side of the ship. The Hulstrum had seemed fine, and the Felimiem hadn’t said much, but he did not want to have to deal with the Kii'tre again if he could help it, especially not alone.
“Is that really necessary? People are trying to sleep,” Poor Decision said, the frown on Safe Passage’s face somehow managing to get even deeper.
“It’s the middle of the day,” he said bluntly. He would have gotten here earlier, but Calculated Risk had convinced him that it would be best to blow off some steam before diving headfirst into even more crazy, and it had been a while since he’d gotten that messed up. The come down was worth it, but it took a little while before he could pull his brain back into his body and make his way over here.
“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Poor Decision said, and Passage let out an irritated breath between clenched teeth. PD must’ve been able to see his frustration, not that he was trying to hide it at all, because they added on before he could start shouting again. “So, I’m guessing you talked to Risk?” they asked, all too big, fake smiles.
“That’s one word for it,” Passage muttered, and honestly his head still hurt whenever he thought about it. And also from the hangover.
“Great… have fun with that,” PD said, starting to quickly duck away from the edge of the ship.
“Nope! Poor Decision I will stand here shouting until Shel comes if you don't let me on your ship and explain what the fuck is going on,” Passage snapped, hearing a long groan from the other Voice in response.
“Uuuugh, fine. Sleep was not a part of the plan anyway,” Poor Decision grumbled, waving him on board. He was pretty sure they were doing something in their helmet as he made his way up, probably signaling off the millions of murder traps they had. It seemed like they’d only gotten more unhinged since the last time he saw them.
“Look, Risk wouldn’t tell me everything, so as much as I’d love to go the normal minimum twelve months before talking, this-” he started, only to be interrupted by the other Voice.
“Kraken! Give Safe Passage a hug!” they shouted, pointing straight at him. Immediately a large shape loomed forth on the deck, all dark, lumbering flesh and metal and teeth that came running towards him at speed.
“The fuck!”
He was back in his helm on his ship before at least three hundred pounds of death and decay and eyes smashed into him.
A few seconds of silence passed before Safe Passage realized what just happened.
“Shit.”
“Don’t. Say. Anything,” Safe Passage growled as he stomped back up the ramp about eight minutes later, having jogged over from the other side of the docs.
“Hug!” Poor Decision shouted, once again pointing that beast dead at him. This time, he frantically attempted to fly instead of teleporting on instinct. He wasn't able to get up high enough before this fucking monster crashed into him, knocking him to the deck before pinning him under a single boney claw.
“Why are you like this?” Safe Passage asked once he was sure that the weird fucker wasn’t about to eat him.
“It was this or he eats your face,” they said flippantly, and thankfully the undead abomination took a step back off of him. The Voice immediately scrambled to his feet, making a face as PD patted the thing’s head. “Good Kraken.”
“Yeah, yeah, he’s a gentleman and a scholar. Can you please either tell me what the fuck Risk was talking about or, much more preferably, explain this was all some incredibly disturbing prank and let me go throw a meteor in Calculated Risk’s face,” he snapped. For a moment, the best way Passage would have described PD’s face was ‘tempted.’ They ended up grimacing and sighing soon enough though.
“God, that would be so much easier,” they complained, glancing back towards the stairs leading below deck. “But no, turns out Voices are fucking weird.”
“We all know Voices are fucking weird! That’s all anyone knows about Voices” Safe Passage snapped back.
"Okay but now there's more and it's all just as weird" PD insisted, Safe Passage letting out a suffering groan. "Ugh, listen okay fine, Risk said they were going to tell you, against my advice by the way, and now I'm gonna have to make you take the same promise as Risk and not ever tell anyone where you heard this, alright? I'm not letting her steal another thing off my ship."
"I don't know what you're talking about and I don't have any fucks to care. I won't tell anyone before Risk does," he said, a frown finally hiding Poor Decision's sharp teeth.
"You won't tell anyone," they repeated, and Safe Passage nodded.
"Before Risk does," he added. Poor Decision seemed to stare at him from behind the dark glass of their helmet before shrugging.
"Fair enough,” they said, pausing for a moment before continuing, “barring the fact that he already told you, right?”
“Of course,” he agreed, because honestly, he didn’t want to talk to anyone about this anyway. He was still mostly hoping that it was some terrible joke, even as PD started leading him down into their ship. For what little credit they deserved, it did actually seem like everyone was asleep as he moved through to the hold.
“Let me handle it to start, introductions and all that,” PD said before opening the door. The smell that hit was not what Safe Passage was expecting from a ship hold. It smelled almost identical to a petting zoo.
“Fuck Decision did he take your nose along with your eyes? Clean your fucking ship,” he snapped, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t noticed the strange covering of Zicotal that seemed to be just about everywhere.
“It’s the krabbits! They’re important,” Poor Decision insisted, and he could see the pen of animals that actually took up a good portion of the hold. He started to open his mouth, but PD continued before he could get a word out. “Don’t worry about it. Anyway, hey Archive?” they called, stepping further into the room.
As Safe Passage followed them in, he could see something starting up. Or at least, that’s what he was pretty sure was what happened. A stone he hadn’t noticed immediately started glowing, and then a beam of light congealed into some sort of crazy Voice hologram.
“Here, the ‘trashy news-rag’ we got that info from,” Poor Decision said, gesturing towards the hologram as if he would have somehow missed it. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting it to do, but Safe Passage was pretty sure the answer wasn’t ‘make a perplexed and offended face at the term ‘trashy news-rag.’’
“PD what the actual fuck?”
"I didn't expect anyone else to come quite this soon," the hologram said, and surely it had to be some sort of program or something, right? PD went full Kiii'tre levels of crazy and started programming people. Istmun won the betting pool. Out forty gold, but that was fine. Everything was still fine.
“Yeah, but he kept yelling,” Poor Decision said, not sounding all that bothered one way or the other. Safe Passage was pretty sure the hologram was judging him.
“You still haven’t told me what the fuck I’m looking at here,” he insisted after a moment. He was probably pretty lucky that PD didn’t have eyes to roll. They were all lucky about that.
“You can ask her. She’s not actually that trashy,” PD said, and yeah, the hologram Voice was definitely frowning.
“Look, you didn’t give me a lot to go on!” he snapped, before sighing heavily and turning to face the hologram. “But fine, I’ll bite. Are you something real or did PD go insane and create you? I honestly can’t trust the answer because they could have programmed you to lie, but what else can I do at this point?” he asked. The glowing blue vision of a Voice looked almost uncertain of how to take that, before speaking again.
“I am Optimal Archive Storage Unit. No, That Seems To Be A Poor Decision did not create me, I can safely assume that I’ve existed for far longer than either of you. Proving my authenticity may be slightly more challenging, but also manageable,” the hologram said, and that explained why PD had called her Archive earlier.
“This Might Be A Safe Passage,” he said, because even if she wasn’t real it felt kinda rude not to introduce himself. Which yeah, not usually his top priority, but these kinda felt like extenuating circumstances.
“We found her on a rogue planet,” PD cut in, obviously excited to share that little fact, and Passage whipped his heads around to look at them.
“Bullshit,” he called instinctively, before groaning as a memory came back to him. “Fuck! Risk did say you found a rogue planet.” PD nodded, all grins again.
“Dude, I swear for once I’m not actually fucking with you. Well, I’m fucking with you, but in this case that means telling the truth,” they said, and it was with a feeling of horror that Safe Passage was starting to actually believe them. PD honestly wasn’t that great of a liar, despite their everything.
“Shit, okay, so the shit with the Dyson sphere that Risk was ranting about, true or not?” he asked, already rubbing the sides of his head. He swore their goddamn helmet goggles somehow managed to glint with excitement and incredulousness at the mention.
“She has so. Much. information.” they insisted, and well, at least Safe Passage could figure that his initial instinct to immediately be terrified of Optimal Archive Storage Unit had been accurate.
“About Voices?” he asked, because honestly for some reason that was the hardest part to imagine.
“Yes. And other stuff, but the Voice shit is weird,” they said. There was a moment where Safe Passage couldn’t do anything but stare as he tried to process that. There were so many things, so many directions that it felt like choice paralysis had overtaken him.
“...what the fuck happened then?” he finally managed. Archive’s expression went from a quiet and inscrutable assessment of him to a deep frown. He wouldn’t say she looked sad so much as she looked discontented.
"Unfortunately, before Poor Decision and the crew of this ship happened upon my planet out of orbit, I had not encountered anyone for approximately 6.7 billion years, so that is one thing I do not yet know," Archive said, and Passage felt a little bit like his eyes were going to go the way of PD if he opened them any wider.
"Was that with a fucking B?" He asked, because surely that wasn't accurate. Well, he could believe it if it was actually a rogue planet, but the rest of it. Nope. Did not compute.
"We live longer as rocks, apparently," PD helpfully chimed in, and Passage glanced down at the glowing blue gem the form of light was projecting from. It just looked like some sort of weird extra chunky crystal drive or something.
"You are near about subscribing your soul to eternity if you do, so a rather committed stance to take, and as such not a very common lifestyle choice," Archive said.
"Okay that'll be in my brain forever. Whatever, I'll contemplate eternity later since apparently I'll have some time. I just- the hell are we supposed to do with this?" he managed after a moment, and it still felt like his brain couldn't make up its mind, looking at an ever expanding menu.
"With what, exactly?" Archive asked, a suspicious edge to her voice clearly indicating that she believed he was talking about her. Passage started shaking his head at that, explaining immediately.
"With the knowledge that apparently Voices used to be some sort of mighty empire or shit according to Risk, and now we're just like, maybe fifty assholes in this entire arm of the galaxy?" he said, and god, somehow it sounded even weirder saying it out loud. Hell, even saying ‘we’ when talking about Voices as some sort of collective felt almost wrong. Disjointed.
“Man, how the hell am I supposed to know?” PD asked, and honestly Safe Passage couldn’t even blame them. Still, he’d been more so talking to the apparently ancient person… tech… thing in front of him that had decided to dump all of this on them in the first place. Thankfully Archive seemed sharp enough to pick up on that.
“I for one would quite like to find out the cause of our decline,” she said, which again, seemed pretty damn reasonable to him.
“Yeah, we’re working on that, I think? Yeah no for sure, we’re getting to that,” PD said, not sounding as sure of themself as everyone else would probably like for them to be.
“When are you heading out?” Safe Passage asked, the question seeming to surprise Poor Decision a bit. It was kind of a jump in topic, he would grant them that.
“Dunno, a couple of days more, at least,” they said, and Safe Passage mentally filed that away for now.
“And Shel’s got one of your tokens, right?”
“Riiight?” PD asked more than answered, but he didn’t really need to check with them, since it was clear that they had a way of contacting Shel when they needed to.
“Alright. Alright. I’m going to go and process some things. I’m going to write a list. Shel’s got one of my tokens too, I check in pretty regularly when I’m not on base. If you ever need anything just have her pass on a message, alright?” Safe Passage said, and it was pretty clear that this was not the reaction Poor Decision expected. Which, yeah, it was weird, but everything about this was fucking weird.
“Unlikely, but sure,” they said, which was about what Passage expected. He just nodded, turning back towards Archive.
“I’m going to be back with a fucking list,” he insisted, because if he just started asking questions right now it would never end. The hologram seemed a little bit perplexed, but nodded all the same.
“I look forward to it,” she said, and it was hard to tell if she was being sarcastic or not. It didn’t really matter one way or the other if she wanted him to or not; he was coming back as soon as he had a brain about him. That might be like, another day or so at least, but that didn’t matter.
“Later Decision,” he said, not bothering with any other goodbye as he intentionally teleported back to his ship this time. It was easier than walking and meant that PD wouldn’t have the chance to sick that hellbeast on him again.
Heading to the helm, Safe Passage quickly pulled up a private server and started writing down his list of questions.
The first 57 of which were just ‘what the fuck?’ written over and over again in any and every language he knew, but he’d get to the rest of them eventually.
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