It will take a moment for him to be situated. He doesn't seem particularly good at existing around other people, but, well. He's been offered coffee. He's grateful. If there's milk available, he's even more grateful, as he arranges himself with his daughter in her sling across his chest with a bottle. Here and there in the recording, there will be the sound of infant burbling.
"Uh...ok, to start off, it didn't begin with me. We're not totally sure when it officially began. Some time mid-twenty-first century, the line between world of the living and the dead started getting blurry. Anyone died, they started stayin' put. Not their bodies. Bodies started decaying faster. Too fast. We called it 'going necro'. Decomp process on overdrive and it made it real important to get 'em out to where they could be disposed of completely. Usually cremation'd do it but you have to be careful of the smoke. It was the chiral matter doing it-
"Lemme explain. When something's a chiral reflection, it kinda works like your hands. It's perfect reflections but only when situated a specific way. Palm to palm, perfect mirror, but if you lay one hand over the other-" A shuffling as he lays the palm of one hand over the back of the other, "-it's not perfect anymore. Thumb on each side, fingers don't like up, you get it. Anyway, chiral matter's a lot like antimatter. You know what happens when antimatter comes into contact with regular matter? Yeah. Big fuckin' explosion.
"So, you get antimatter seeping into the world, through the umbilical tether that keeps people tied to where they passed. Ghosts doubling as big fuckin' bombs. But they only get tripped when they come into contact with human beings, so basically it's not a problem if nobody dies around other people.
"But that's just not how people work. They need each other to survive. Sometimes you can't help when shit happens.
"Thing is, some of us, we can't die. Between the chiral contamination, the Seam letting some of us find a way back, and a persistent tether between the Ha and Ka, the body and soul, we became repatriates. Means even if we get grabbed by a BT- uh, a Beached Thing, something stuck in limbo, and the hand of god comes down and-" A clap, one hand coming down to slap onto the other, "-craters the last of a fuckin' city, sometimes there's just one guy sitting in the middle of it all, wondering what just hit 'em. Don't get me wrong, it still hurts like hell to die. Never gets any easier. But I know like this I won't become a BT. Small favors, huh?"
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Statement of one Sam Porter Bridges re: BTs, Void-Outs, and Repatriation
"Uh...ok, to start off, it didn't begin with me. We're not totally sure when it officially began. Some time mid-twenty-first century, the line between world of the living and the dead started getting blurry. Anyone died, they started stayin' put. Not their bodies. Bodies started decaying faster. Too fast. We called it 'going necro'. Decomp process on overdrive and it made it real important to get 'em out to where they could be disposed of completely. Usually cremation'd do it but you have to be careful of the smoke. It was the chiral matter doing it-
"Lemme explain. When something's a chiral reflection, it kinda works like your hands. It's perfect reflections but only when situated a specific way. Palm to palm, perfect mirror, but if you lay one hand over the other-" A shuffling as he lays the palm of one hand over the back of the other, "-it's not perfect anymore. Thumb on each side, fingers don't like up, you get it. Anyway, chiral matter's a lot like antimatter. You know what happens when antimatter comes into contact with regular matter? Yeah. Big fuckin' explosion.
"So, you get antimatter seeping into the world, through the umbilical tether that keeps people tied to where they passed. Ghosts doubling as big fuckin' bombs. But they only get tripped when they come into contact with human beings, so basically it's not a problem if nobody dies around other people.
"But that's just not how people work. They need each other to survive. Sometimes you can't help when shit happens.
"Thing is, some of us, we can't die. Between the chiral contamination, the Seam letting some of us find a way back, and a persistent tether between the Ha and Ka, the body and soul, we became repatriates. Means even if we get grabbed by a BT- uh, a Beached Thing, something stuck in limbo, and the hand of god comes down and-" A clap, one hand coming down to slap onto the other, "-craters the last of a fuckin' city, sometimes there's just one guy sitting in the middle of it all, wondering what just hit 'em. Don't get me wrong, it still hurts like hell to die. Never gets any easier. But I know like this I won't become a BT. Small favors, huh?"