Chapter Text
[Somewhere in a downtrodden house in Mumbai. The owners of the house are asleep, oblivious to the raging traffic outside. An ancient radio sits silently next to the bed of the youngest boy. When the clock strikes midnight, the radio crackles to life. All the dials and knobs light up and start spinning. There is no music, only static. The boy wakes up and he stares at the radio for a moment. Trying to get back to sleep, he hits the Off-button but it doesn’t help. With some grumbling and effort he manages to pry the batteries out, but this doesn’t turn the radio off either. Then he hears a voice over the static. His screams wake up the entire house.]
[A few minutes to midnight in Paris. A girl is staring out of her window while trying to focus on the paper that’s due tomorrow. Her iPod is blaring FallOut Boy through her earphones. When the clock strikes midnight the power in her room dies for a second. It gets back on quickly, but her iPod is still silent. Which is odd, considering that it runs on its own power supply. She shakes it and presses the on/off button a few times. A computerized voice suddenly starts talking to her through her earphones. She screams and yanks the earphones out. The rest of the evening is spent on the phone with her boyfriend who is trying to convince her that she simply had a weird dream.]
[A dark, windy evening in Amsterdam. A young woman is sound asleep. Her phone lies next to her on her nightstand, as it always is. Outside the churchbells toll midnight. Precisely on the last strike, her phone rings. It takes three rings for her to wake up and answer the call.
“Hello?”
At first she’s met with silence. “Hello?”
“Is this you?” A computerized voice, tinny through the speakers. “... who is this?”
“I can’t keep this up for long. I’ve been searching so long and so far. But I think it’s you. It has to be you. Now that I’ve found you I can-”
The connection was lost. The woman stares at the phone in her hand, suddenly wide awake. She jolts when it buzzes, one text message has been received.]
[Communication with external server established. Verifying packages. Connection: Established]
-Knock knock
- Whoever you are, this is not funny [Her fingers fly over her screen, angrily typing out the response.]
-Oh, come on, just do me this favor. Just once?
-What the hell?
-Fine, I’ll do it for you. Knock, knock. Who’s there?
-Look, I don’t know who you are or what you want, but you have some serious issues
-You’re telling me? Anyway. Who’s there? Space Buddy!
-... what?
-No, not ‘what?’. ‘Who?’. But you’re getting closer. Space Buddy who?
-This can’t be. You’re pulling my leg.
-Your favorite Space Buddy Taylor!
[connection has been terminated]
[The phone has been flung into the far corner of the room. The woman is breathing heavily, staring at the device with wide, terrified eyes. Twenty minutes pass while she’s still sitting there, not taking her eyes off the phone. Her breathing and heart rate slow down as she’s processing what just happened. Then she slowly gets up from the bed and walks towards the phone that’s still lying in the corner. She picks it up gingerly. There’s a crack in the screen, but it still works. You have (1) one unread message.
With trembling fingers she taps the icon and opens the message.]
[Communication with external server established. Verifying packages. Connection: Established]
-Oh shit. No! I’m sorry! Come back! I didn’t mean to scare the living daylight out of you!
-Who. Are. You.
-Oh, thank God. You’re back. You took your sweet time though. I suppose that’s what I get for keeping you in suspense so long back when I was on my very own planet.
-... Taylor?
-I… thought we had already established that?
-How can you be Taylor? Taylor is… he is... Taylor saved our planet by sacrificing himself. I was talking to him when it happened. He is dead.
-Wow. It sounds so very gloomy when you say it like that. Gloomy and definite.
-He got swallowed by a black hole. I’d say that counts as gloomy and definite, yes.
-Well, at least you didn’t lose your ability to snark me. I had hoped for a more cheerier ‘welcome back, Taylor’ though. Not gonna lie.
-Seriously? You decide to contact me in the middle of the night, tell me that you’re Taylor through a bad freaking Knock, Knock joke and then you complain about not getting the reception you expected?
-Hey, hey! The joke was not bad!
-Oh my God… it really is you, isn’t it? There really is only one person in the world who would actually really make jokes like that in a situation like this…
-I’m… not sure if I should be blushing or if I should feel offended. Let’s go for blushing. And, technically, your ‘only person in the world’ statement doesn’t really ring true for me at the moment. I’m not on earth. Or… IN the world. To be exact.
-How is that exact? Jesus, Taylor, I thought you were dead! I have a very overwhelming urge to scream at you in all caps for the next half hour. How did you survive? How are you? Are you okay? How... why… where… when?
-So many questions! And I have an answer to all of them. Are you ready? The answer is: “I have absolutely no fucking clue”. By all accounts I should be dead. Dead as a dead thing. But I’m not. Obviously. Otherwise this would be a very creepy conversation.
-Not to be rude, Taylor, but it already IS a very creepy conversation.
-You failed. That WAS rude. Anyway. The last thing I remember is time being spread thin and then ME being spread thin and twisted and pulled apart. And then… nothing.
-Everything went black? That’s a little cliché.
-No, not black. Just… nothing. People always think that ‘nothing’ means things going black. But it isn’t. It doesn’t have a color. It doesn’t have the absence of color. There are no smells, no sounds. Just. Nothing. And that’s where I was. That’s WHAT I was. Nothing.
-It’s still creepy, Taylor. You’re not doing much to get rid of the creepy factor.
-Sorry. Anyway. I don’t know how long I stayed in that state. It could have been years, but also seconds. One moment I’m blissfully unaware of anything, and the next I’m rushing at the speed of light, stars going by me, wind in my ears, and I’m… back.
-...Back where?
-That’s a very good question. And I don’t really have an answer? Wherever I am… Whatever I am… I have no clue.
-What do you mean, WHATever you are?
-I don’t think there’s a good way to break this to you gently. So… uhm… I don’t have a body.
-Har har.
-Oh, that’s a healthy response. No panic, no fear, no screaming. Just ‘Har har’. I have to say, it doesn’t do much to convince me that you’re taking this very seriously.
-Come on, Taylor. How can you not have a body? You’re talking to me! How is that even possible without a body?
-You are on FIRE today with the good questions. I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t have one.
-...
-You’re losing your touch, the ‘har har’ was a better reaction than three dots.
-I’m sorry. I’ve got nothing. It’s either the dots or the ‘har har’.
-Yeah. I get that. But, I didn’t contact you to reminisce about the good times we’ve had before while I was running for my life. And failing to run for my life. Nor did I contact you to tell you about the immense loss that was my studly body.
-I’m pretty sure you once told me you were scrawny and skinny.
-Rude.
-Taylor…
-No, no. Don’t get all emotional on me. You’re the sassy one, I’m the pessimistic one who thinks he’s going to die any minute now. You’re the one who keeps her cool. You’re the one who got me out of any trouble I managed to run into.
-I am the sassy one? Mister ‘Knock Knock, it’s Spacebuddy’?
-See, I TOLD you it was a good joke!
-Taylor, seriously…
-You’re doing it again. Stop it. I need your help.
-Help? How can I help you when you don’t even have a fucking body??
- I have to admit that I don’t know the details of the plan yet. Look, I spent a long time trying to find you. Do you have any idea how hard it is to travel through radiowaves and other technical waves I won’t bother you with? Do you know HOW MANY people there are on earth? Do you know how many people I’ve freaked out by randomly talking to them through whichever electronic device they had available?
-You were a poltergeist? For real?
-The best. But I’d like to stop poltering… geisting? What IS the right verb here? Anyway, I’d like to finally come back home now.
-I understand that, but how in the hell are you going to that while you’re just a disembodied voice? Wait, are you living in my phone now?
-What? No! It… It’s hard to explain. I can sort of see the connections that are available to me and tap into that. As for the disembodied voice part: I don’t suppose you have a spare body lying around?
-Of course not! I- … hang on.
-I was joking. And I’d be extremely creeped out if you did in fact have a spare body just lying around somewhere.
-I actually might have.
-What?
-Well, not lying around. Not literally. But-
-Of course not. Perish the thought. This is where you tell me you’ve got it propped up on a chair or something?
-No, obviously not. What are you on about, Taylor?
-Oh nothing. Just trying to figure out if you’re a serial killer or something. Who else has a spare body, just like that??
-A mortician? A mad scientist?
-... are you a mortician?
-No.
-Are you a mad scientist?
-No!
-Well then-
-But I know someone who knows someone who is. Look, I have to make a call. Let’s hope Adams is still alive.
- Who? What are you talking about? I’m the one who is supposed to be mysterious and cryptic and confusing. When did we change roles?
-When you decided to jump into a black hole.
-Okay, look, technically I didn’t exactly JUMP.
-Save it for later. I need to make a call. You… ehm… don’t go anywhere.
-Oh, har har.
-I’ll text you once I have more information. Don’t worry.
-Don’t worry, she says. That’s easy for you to say. Be aware that I WILL start haunting your house if you don’t get back to me!
-I’ll remember you fondly every time you make my microwave beep in the middle of the night.
-Damn straight.
-Taylor… be careful.
-I always am. Talk to you later.
[connection has been terminated]