01 | anonymous text/untraceable | sunday morning

[thefourteenth]

Hello, Siren's Port. I come before you with a desperate plea.

[Visser One is no fool. First she takes a few hours to scan the networks and sort through enormous amounts of archived data. What she finds is interesting: evidence of Earth mythological figures, inhuman creatures proudly identifying as alien. People obviously from worlds far more advanced than Earth.

Still, she chooses anonymity. No sense in publicly humbling herself and exposing her Achilles Heel.]

I am a new arrival to this world in serious need of help. My species needs a certain kind of sustenance that we can't find outside of our home world.

I need help, or I will die.

I need someone with highly advanced technological capabilities to help me. Fortunately, I have the means to feed myself temporarily, which you can adapt for your purposes in creating a larger generator. Without it, I will starve to death painfully within a week.

Please, I beg you. Compensation will be given in whatever manner I'm capable, once I can concentrate on anything other than survival. I assure you, I am far from helpless, and will pay my debt in full. Anyone who chooses to assure my long-term survival stands to gain much from the bargain.

Comments

video;

[mulletrock]

Like I haven't heard that one before.

I'm not buyin' it.

If you can't be up front with what you need why should anyone help you?

permatext;

[thefourteenth]

I'm up front with people who have enough compassion to offer help, not come in with guns blazing.

permavid;

[mulletrock]

Okay, well what kinda compensation are you askin' for?

[thefourteenth]

Nothing, can't you read? I ask that someone save my life, and offer anything they want in return. I am truly desperate, and you're doing nothing but preying on someone at their weakest hour. Truly, a banner of humanity.

voice;

[mulletrock]

[He's just gonna ignore the insults. They don't know a damn thing about him.]

You said somethin' about food.

voice;

[thefourteenth]

[Nothing except his actions, which she's reading loud and clear. She knows about predators- she is one.]

Sustenance. Do you remember high school chemistry?

voice;

[mulletrock]

I remember enough.

voice;

[thefourteenth]

There is more to the maintenance of life than just food.

voice;

[mulletrock]

Yeah, and?

Get to the point.

[thefourteenth]

No. I don't want any one person having the ability to rob me of my life and sentence me to a horrible, screaming death. Imagine being asked to tell a city of hostile aliens that oxygen is what you breathe, or giving them the key to the only water reservoir.

audio;

[mulletrock]

So, you're an alien?

[Dean looks surprised. Mostly because those definitely don't exist where he's from.]

Are you a friendly? Y'know like ET and those kids on Race To Witch Mountain.

[thefourteenth]

[You can practically read the sigh in her text.]

I am not E.T. I am not Casper the friendly ghost. I don't have pointy ears and green blood, and I can't leap tall buildings in a single bound.

All I want is what every other life form wants: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

[mulletrock]

[Meanwhile Dean just looks amused.]

Not sure every other form of life knows about our constitution.

[thefourteenth]

I'm familiar. They have Americans in my world, too.

[mulletrock]

Well, don't speak for everyone.

Kinda cute you thought t'use that line when it's the one thing that isn't absolute in pretty much the whole damn thing.

[thefourteenth]

Are you joking? It's the only absolute truth in that document. Laws are designed to have loopholes and practiced to wield power only insofar as the enforcer wants. That statement is pure philosophy, a truth that cannot be denied.

[mulletrock]

Well, yeah, the government's corrupt but philosophy's not truth either. That line is like a promise that-

Why am I even arguing this with you?

What do you eat?

[thefourteenth]

To think, we nearly had a decent conversation.

I eat many things. Eggs, gazpacho, and potato salad come to mind.

[mulletrock]

[Then why all the anonymity? Dean's confused and it shows on his face. He's never been good at masking it.]

I can get you that.

Don't know why it took this long for you to say that you ate what the rest of us did. The way you led into it made it sound like you ate brains with a side of urinal cakes or somethin'.

[thefourteenth]

I've tried to explain it. There are certain biochemical processes my species needs- the same way humans have digestion, cellular respiration, the citric acid cycle. All require certain input and chemical components. I eat what humans do, with no urinal cakes in sight, I assure you, but I have certain biological needs that humans don't have.

Besides, if I ate brains and urinal cakes, don't you think I could get those for myself?

[mulletrock]

Not without me puttin' a bullet between your eyes and, uh, feelin' bad for you.

[No one should survive off of urinal cakes. That's just sick.]

Guess this is a conversation better left to people that weren't gettin' handsy with their lab partners under the chemistry tables.

[thefourteenth]

Ah, a true intellectual. How stimulating.

Would you deny a lion the right to eat antelope?

[mulletrock]

That's different...

[thefourteenth]

How?

Other than the fact that you aren't an antelope. Your opinion is inherently biased.

[mulletrock]

You're... inherently bias.

[He doesn't know how to reply to you anymore. You keep running circles around him.]