Looking For A Lost Friend

[museicalmarty]

Have a confused Marty wandering around the general question area, looking like he's searching for something -- or, rather, someone. "Where the hell -- okay, you know what? Place is for questions -- anybody seen Victor? He said he was going to 'clear his head' about an hour ago, and we thought he'd be back by now."

[For those curious, Victor does happen to be in the Nexus -- passed out on a rather large couch that Marty just hasn't come across yet, thanks to the weird way space and directions work in this place. Maybe it thought he needed the sleep]

Comments

[palmerthing]

*Palmer laughs.* Alright, that's fair I guess. Since I'd win so many and all.

[museicalmarty]

Gotta leave a FEW for the other shapeshifter in the room, even if she can't do more than one!

[palmerthing]

I don't think I can be as shiny as metal anyway. Or car-shaped for that matter, wheels are hard.

[museicalmarty]

Yeah, I don't think there's anything natural that runs on wheels. That's kinda reserved for man-made stuff.

[palmerthing]

Some things evolution just can't do. What use is half a wheel? Or even a whole wheel, unless you have roads?

[museicalmarty]

Yeah, exactly -- I don't see animals paving down parts of the jungle.

[palmerthing]

Thankfully. Humans cause enough trouble . . .

[museicalmarty]

I know we don't have a great track record for taking care of the planet. If the scientists hadn't found you, global warming might have eventually let you out.

[palmerthing]

I mean, eventually Antarctica would drift somewhere warmer anyway . . .

[museicalmarty]

[scrunches up his face] You know, I KNOW plate tectonics are a thing, but they still seem weirder than us just ruining the planet.

[palmerthing]

Probably the idea that we could last that long. For Antarctica to move that far North would take what, 20 million years? Fuck, I don't know, I ain't a geologist.

[museicalmarty]

Neither am I, so let's go with your estimate. And yeah, it seems like humans would do something to screw things up long before then.

[palmerthing]

Yeah, people are good at that. It's one of those weird things, you know? How folks are so much fuckin' better at causing problems than at fixing them.

[museicalmarty]

I think it's just easier to cause problems. You don't need to know what you're doing to cause a problem.

[palmerthing]

Yeah, fixing things does kinda need knowledge about what's broken and what it's supposed to be like. Shame, huh?

[museicalmarty]

Yeah -- I mean, I know people are TRYING to keep us from totally wrecking the planet and all that. . .funny thing is, I think we do better at that on my old homeworld. If you believe the movies, my old Earth has portal nuclear generators that run on random trash by 2015.

[palmerthing]

That's insanely fast. In any case fission is hard and fusion stops working once you reach . . . I think it was iron? Not sure why I know that. But anyway, a home nuclear plant sounds like a bad idea in lots of ways.

[museicalmarty]

Tell me about it. And I'm not sure either, but given I know like nothing about how nuclear power works. . . [he grins] Oh no, it's a lot worse than that -- it's a car nuclear power plant. Or, at least, it can be -- that white thing mounted on the back of Dee when she's in DeLorean form? That's a Mr. Fusion.

[palmerthing]

A . . . nuclear car battery. Yeah, there are several dozen alien specialists in my head clamoring about why a personal transport that any idiot can drive should never be powered by a miniature power plant. And some more who insist that you can't really miniaturize such a thing anyway. Not without the kind of space folding that you also shouldn't give to random idiots.

[museicalmarty]

I guess that's how you know how nuclear power works! Tell them I don't understand how we managed this by 2015 in what was supposed to be my own world either. I mean, I know DOC'S capable of some freaking scientific miracles, but not every scientist is him. . .what do they all think of the fact that said cars can also fly?

[palmerthing]

Without being aerodynamic at all, or are they just very small planes?

[museicalmarty]

First one, they all still look like cars. Apparently they've all got "hover conversion systems," which involve the wheels rotating so the hubcaps point downward, and then they fly thanks to -- I guess glowing stuff beneath them? Look, I don't know how it works.

[palmerthing]

That's just inefficient. Dangerous, too, if it was plane-shaped you could at least glide down if the system stopped working.

[museicalmarty]

I assume they've got some sort of safety system that means you don't just fall out of the sky. . .but yeah, it's the kind of thing where, if you really think about it, you wonder how everyone ain't dead in the Hill Valley version of 2015.

[palmerthing]

Hey, you're not alone with that. Hell, odds are about even that my world won't have humans on it before long. At least yours is managing somehow.