a_second_idea | (no subject)

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!voice test

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The meeting with Gil had gone as well as it could have, and now Graham's body stands outside The Ghosthouse, listening to the screams of fifty thousand of Joshua's people trapped in the computer inside.

“Do the screams sound different tonight?” Graham asks.

No, Joshua answers. But I know what you mean.

“The thought of just pausing,” Graham sighs, “of leaving them marinating in—”

So what are you prepared to do about it?

The longer Joshua exists in Graham's mind, the less like the devil on his shoulder he feels — but the harder it is to resist the temptations. That's why he's grateful for the out when he hears the military bus rumbling a ways away.

Jamie's back. For a heartstopping moment, they weren't sure she would be. She's always been a changeable person, less a butterfly flitting around and more a honeybee chasing the next flower — and just as capable of stinging at the first sign of a threat. That's what Joshua's always liked about her. She keeps things interesting.

She's come back with waffles, and after weeks of granola following the capture of the soldiers, it's a welcome reprieve.

Neither of them expect the world to shift around them. It tilts and blurs, and Graham's body stumbles as if drunk. And that's when the change in scenery really sets in.

It's both of them that breathe, “What the fuck.”

A moment ago, they'd been standing in the Nevada desert. Now, they're in a city blanketed in winter. Graham's body isn't dressed for this kind of weather, and as they walk the streets looking for any kind of insight as to where they've ended up, they're taking note.

Stop, Joshua commands, and Graham's legs still.

“What is it?” Graham asks, trying not to shiver.

That coffee shop. It's wrong.

Graham steps closer and looks at it. It says Ahab's, but the logo looks like a fun-house mirror of a more familiar one. He wouldn't have noticed it at all if Joshua hadn't pointed it out.

“How did you catch that?” he asks, frowning at it.

Just because our eyes are only facing one way doesn't mean I can't see out of our periphery, Joshua points out, as condescending as ever.

“Good catch,” Graham says.

They move on, and this time they keep their eyes peeled for other strange, not-quite-right things. There are a lot. Everything about this place feels both familiar and deeply wrong, and neither of them know what to do about it. Graham's legs carry them, following faint ripples of suggestion from either one of them, and suddenly they're in front of a police precinct, standing there in a tee-shirt and jeans, shoulders hunched against the cold. Graham has shoved his hands into his pockets, knowing Joshua needs them safe for his work — their work, because Graham has long since come to terms with a lot of it.

Consensus in all things, right?

They have no idea what time it is, but it seems early. The streets aren't busy and the light is still low. Do police precincts have hours of operation?

Joshua ripples impatiently and then finally says, What are you doing? Go inside.

“Look, I'm a little… hesitant… to throw us back into the custody of the US military, okay?”

We haven't seen a single Jeep or Humvee the entire time we've been walking, Joshua points out. No personnel carriers, no soldiers. We've walked past dozens of people who would have said something if they recognized us. You know as well as I do that after that interview with Terry Elder, we're known, Graham. Except no, we're not, apparently, because nobody here is reacting to us. Go inside.

“Okay,” Graham says, still uncertainly. “O-okay.”

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There was someone lurking outside the precinct when Daniel came around the corner from the parking lot. He'd just dropped off a pool car and could have used the garage door, but he liked walking around the building and seeing how the neighborhood was doing.

The man nearby looked uncertain and also cold. Dungarees and a t-shirt weren't a good choice for the winter. He would bet the man had just arrived and decided to look for a police station as a place for information. That made sense.

"Good morning," he said easily. "Can I help you with something?"

They startle, pulled from their surreptitious conversation by the new voice. The man standing beside them is young, but he doesn't look like the kids they'd seen at Red Camp. He's dressed in a nice suit and looks like he means business.

"Uh, yeah, actually," they say, leaning into Graham's gentler, more unassuming tone of voice. Discretion seems like the better part of valor, here. "You don't happen to have any idea where we are, do you?"

This was definitely a new arrival and Daniel smiled a little. He felt like his speech had gotten better over the years, at least.

"Specifically, this is Precinct 1. Generally, you're in Darrow, a city that pulls people from all across time and space. No one knows why or how we got here or why or how we leave. You wanna come inside while I tell you the rest of it? It's cold out here."

It isn't the weirdest thing they've heard even this week, but it is one of the scarier ones. A place that nobody knows how to leave? That sounds an awfully lot like a prison, and Joshua's fear butts up against Graham's own for a moment.

"Yeah," they say. "Yeah, let's go inside."

They let the younger man lead the way, and as they walk, Joshua says, We need to be delicate here, Graham. If nobody knows who we are, there's a chance nobody knows what Red Camp even is. They might think we're crazy.

"I'm not going to keep you a secret," Graham murmurs, turning his face into his shoulder for at least a little discretion.

Daniel held the door open for the guy and then waved to Sergeant Woodward at the desk.

"New arrival," he told her. "Taking them back for some coffee and explanations."

She nodded and made a note, then pushed the button to buzz the door to the rest of the precinct open.

"I'm Detective Daniel Sousa, by the way. And you don't have to have the coffee if you'd rather not. It's just too cold to try to explain any of this stuff outside."

It's a lot warmer inside, and Graham gives the desk sergeant an affable sort of smile and a nod. They follow Detective Sousa as they're buzzed out back.

Do not tell anyone about me until we're certain it's safe, Joshua warns. None of this 'we' shit unless we think we can trust him.

"It's nice to meet you. Uh, Graham Shapiro." After months of slowly integrating, it feels wrong to exclude Joshua, even at his urging, but it's the right call. They have to be safe more than anything. "W— I really appreciate the help. It all feels a little crazy right now."

I know you don't like this," Joshua says. Trust me, neither do I. But bury it. Our safety is more important than amplifying me for now.

Daniel led the way to his office and unlocked his door, then held it open for Mr. Shapiro and motioned to the chair in front of his desk.

"Of course it does, Mr. Shapiro, especially if you came from a world that was pretty different from this one. Do you know what cars, indoor plumbing, and electricity are?"

He had to ask that question. This guy was wearing what seemed to be pretty reasonable clothes, but that didn't mean anything.

What the hell kind of question is that? Joshua snarks, and Graham has to stop himself from amplifying that. It's become instinct.

"Uh, yeah," he says instead, offering an incredulous little laugh. "I'm sorry, I guess I don't understand. When you say 'world'...?"

I doubt he means 'planet', Joshua points out.

Edited 2026-01-30 23:33 (UTC)

Daniel went over to the little four-cup Señor Cafe pot on the side table. He set it to always make him a pot of coffee so it was ready when he got in every morning.

"Coffee?" he offered, and held up the glass carafe.

"People come from all over time and space here. Some of them are used to spaceships and some of them are used to horse-drawn carriages. It was 1955 Earth for me - Los Angeles, California, which is in the United States."

Does he think we're an idiot? Joshua asks.

"Ah, yeah, I know where LA is, Detective," Graham says. "And yes, please, to the coffee. I was just in Nevada, myself. A little place called Red Camp?"

What does he mean, space and time? Wormholes? Dimensional rifts? Graham clears his throat. Fine, I'll be quiet.

"Never heard of it," Daniel said easily as he poured another cup of coffee for Mr. Shapiro. "Red Camp" sounded like it could either be one of those tiny towns in the middle of the desert or something SHIELD or HYDRA would name. Either way, he hadn't heard anything about it.

"But I'm not very familiar with Nevada. Gambling's not my thing. Cream and sugar?"

"Cream, yeah, please," he answers. "We were a bit further north than Vegas." About six hours north, actually, but there's no need to get into the particulars. "Wait, sorry, I just realized... you said you were from 1955? How do you look so much younger than me? I was born in the '70s and I'd swear I'm almost twice your age!"

Daniel grabbed some half and half out of the little icebox below the coffeepot and splashed some in, then handed it over to Mr. Shapiro. One of his favorite things about having this office was being able to make his own coffee and store his lunches away from the science experiment that was the departmental break room.

For himself, he added just a dash of sugar and stirred, then sat down behind the desk.

"That's the last year I remember before I arrived here. I was born in 1918, so I'm either thirty-seven or a hundred and seven," Daniel agreed, and toasted with his coffee cup before taking a sip.

He takes the coffee with a quiet 'thanks' and curls his hands around the cup. It's warm enough in here that his body doesn't feel the chill anymore, but it's still oddly comforting to hold it close.

"So I take it you found yourself here directly from... 'when' you were, and now you're here, just like us?" Shit. "The rest of us, I mean. It isn't just you and me, right?" he tries. Joshua remains silent, but Graham can practically see the look on his proverbial face.

"That's about the size of it," Daniel agreed. He caught the 'us' and the correction, but didn't make an issue of it. Mr. Shapiro was probably a little off-axis right now.

"There's about thirty thousand people in the city itself and maybe a hundred of us are 'immigrants' as you might call it."

"Immigrants," they echo, and if there's any of Joshua in Graham's tone, it's only because they're both thinking the same thing. Red Camp has 'immigrants' too. "In a city you say we can't leave. What's stopping us, exactly? We didn't see any military installations."

There's that plural slip again, but they don't concern themselves with it this time. Their focus is entirely on Detective Sousa and what he says next.

Edited 2026-01-31 09:45 (UTC)

"You're welcome to try, and if you find a way out you'll be the most popular man in town, but so far it doesn't work," Daniel replied. Mr. Shapiro had suddenly gotten more tense, but that was understandable. Daniel was telling him things no one wanted to hear, probably.

"The roads loop you back around, boats turn you around, even people with planes or whatnot can't leave. Supplies come in and go out, but people don't."

He's bluffing, Joshua decides, and Graham shakes their head and leans back in their seat.

"Why would he be bluffing about something like this?"

To scare us, obviously. And it's working. Calm down, I need to think.

"Don't tell me to calm down," Graham says, eyes falling to the coffee he still hasn't sipped yet, "this guy just told us we're not going to see our families again."

He hadn't expected Mr. Shapiro to start arguing with himself, but that wasn't the worst reaction he'd ever seen to someone hearing the news that they were in Darrow until whatever controlled the place changed its mind about them being in Darrow.

It seemed polite to wait for that argument to end and Mr. Shapiro wasn't actually talking to him anyway, so he just raised an eyebrow and sipped his coffee.

Don't be an idiot, Graham, nothing is going to keep us from getting back to Red Camp. You know what I'm capable of.

"And you know we both have no idea what we're getting into here," Graham points out.

Doesn't matter. Give me a day and— stop. Graham's body stills again, even though technically he was barely moving. He's just sitting there letting us argue with each other.

Graham looks at Detective Sousa, and a new sort of dread crawls through their body.

"It's, it's not what you're probably thinking," he says, lifting a placatory hand.

The SSR, SHIELD, and then years in Darrow had set Daniel's This-Is-Weird-O-Meter pretty high, so he just shrugged.

"Sounds like you're having a good conversation with yourself. You lemme know when you want me to chime in. One of the lab types here has a little plaque next to his desk that says 'Of course I talk to myself. Sometimes I need expert advice'."

Ha! Joshua says, and Graham shakes their head.

"Of the two of us, Joshua's the expert in a lot of things," he admits. "It's him I'm talking to. Joshua. It's a... long story." His voice gets low and cold, suddenly, and he continues, "Joshua speaking: it's really not that long. I'm an alien consciousness grafted onto Graham Shapiro's mind. His body is my body, his voice is my voice. Story done. See?"

Graham doesn't roll their eyes, but only just.

That actually made Daniel blink. The voice of Joshua was much less warm than the voice of Graham and Daniel wondered if that was because his personality was just like that or because it was a way to distinguish himself verbally. He was pretty sure he'd seen at least one file in the SHIELD archives that had involved separate consciousnesses or personalities or whatnot in the same physical body. They'd never been his cases so he'd only been able to read the redacted details.

"Somehow I'm thinking there's a little more to it than that, but that's your business, not mine," he noted. It would become his business if one or both of them decided to start causing trouble in Darrow, but just having two people in one head wasn't a crime.

"Joshua speaking: you could make it your business by helping us get home." Graham sighs, and when he next speaks, his voice is the warmer, gentler thing that Detective Sousa has become accustomed to. "Graham speaking: I really don't think he was bluffing about that.

"Joshua speaking: of course he was bluffing, geographical paradoxes don't exist. That's a fiction.

"Graham speaking: you know what else was fiction until it wasn't? Alien spaceships landing in the Nevada desert!"

That seems to shut Joshua up, at least for a second or two, and Graham sighs.

Edited 2026-01-31 19:04 (UTC)

Alien spaceships landing in a desert definitely sounded like SHIELD or the SSR would have been involved, or at least would have wanted to be involved. Daniel sipped his coffee again, still relaxed and still leaning back a little in his desk chair.

"I don't have any way to help you get home," he said, since that was the part of that conversation he could actually say something about. "Like I said, if you figure it out, you're gonna be pretty popular, but so far no one's been able to do that."

He hadn't tried to get out of here in a long time since this place was better for him in more ways than it wasn't, but he also knew it was something people did try every few months.

"Joshua speaking: then what do you propose we do, Detective? If the stakes don't matter, if the weight of our responsibilities means nothing, then what are we supposed to do?"

Biochemistry won't get them out of this, if what Detective Sousa is saying is the truth. They can't open a closed biosphere; they can only remove extraneous material from it, and if they're the extraneous material then they'll die.

And that isn't acceptable.

"Most people try to make a life here," Daniel replied seriously. "What that looks like is different for everyone, obviously. There are some things that help with that. You'll have an apartment assigned to you, although you obviously don't have to live there if you don't like it. And there's gonna be a bank account for you too. All of that is going to be in your Welcome Packet at the train station."

If there were two of them in that head, which one ended up on the ID card? Daniel suddenly had no idea. Probably Mr. Shapiro rather than Joshua, he'd guess.

"Graham speaking: wait, w-what?" They huff a confused laugh and shakes their head. This is a lot, and neither of them really know what to think about it. What sort of city government gifts new, unwilling arrivals with, what, everything they need to get by? Will they account for Joshua as well, or only Graham?

It doesn't matter if they account for me if we can't leave, Joshua points out. We have to figure out how to get back to Red Camp.

Joshua's right, but his impatience is too much right now. Graham gets it — he wants to get back, too — but they need to think, regroup and make a real plan. Even if planning apparently-impossible grand escapes isn't Graham's strong suit, together they might be able to figure something out. So, for now, they might as well make the best of this, so they aren't arrested for ranting and screaming in the streets.

"Yeah," he says softly. "But until then, we have a place to live, anyway. Um, thank you, Detective. The train station? Do you have a map we could use?"

"Yeah, that's the thing that startles people the most. If they didn't know they were coming, how did anyone else? And I don't have an answer for that either, but it's nice to not have to worry about where to sleep the first night or how to buy food on the first day."

He nodded when Mr. Shapiro said he wanted to go to the train station. That was the next best step for any new arrival.

"I do, but it's pretty easy to find. Leave the precinct through the door marked Parliament Street Exit, turn left, and it's about six blocks that way on the opposite side of the street," Daniel said. "There's an Information Desk that'll have a manila envelope for you. Oh, and don't worry if the person behind the desk isn't friendly. I don't know how they get hired, but none of em are actually welcoming."

Graham nods as they take in the directions Detective Sousa gives. It's straightforward enough, but even so, if Graham doesn't remember all of the steps then at least Joshua will be able to find them in his mind.

"Thank you," they say. "Really, we appreciate your help.

"Joshua speaking: I'm moderately impressed you handled my existence inside Graham so well, Detective. We were... concerned that revealing me in a world where nobody recognized us by sight would have been a dangerous move for us. Yet even despite knowing nothing about Red Camp or the Nevada Project, you barely flinched at the idea of alien life, let alone two consciousnesses in a single body."

As every time before, Joshua's tone is cold and hard, but there's a modicum of respect in it as he speaks.

He was starting to think he could tell which one was Joshua and which was Graham by the voice tone. Joshua always sounded more flat and less soft. He wasn't sure if that was an indication of personality differences or just that it was a way to distinguish the two voices. He still appreciated the identification, though.

"Well, I've gotten used to strange things," Daniel replied. That had been true before Darrow and it was true in Darrow. "There are people here who have magic powers, people who are ghosts but you can still see them, even vampires. We had a whole vampire turf war a few years ago, which really sounds like someone's playing Horror Movie Plot Mad Libs."

Detective Sousa has a way of speaking that makes it hard to tell if he's joking — but Graham is fairly certain he's not, any more than he's bluffing about being unable to leave. But of all the things he's said just now, it's the mention of Mad Libs that has Graham huffing out a disbelieving chuckle.

"Graham speaking: I haven't heard that one in awhile. I used to do those with my kids."

"They're old-fashioned by now, probably, but I've been told I'm a 'retro square' more than once," Daniel agreed, but his tone clearly indicated that he didn't have a problem with that. He and Tom sometimes enjoyed playing Mad Libs in the evening, which was certainly a square thing to do, but he was content with that. Crosswords and Mad Libs and reading books together was a kind of peace he tried not to take for granted, especially since Tom's week as a teenager recently.

"Joshua speaking: what the hell kind of absurdist insult is 'square'? He's clearly the same basic structure as any other human."

Graham chuckles again, and then shakes their head, smiling wider. "Graham speaking: No, Joshua, it's a way of calling someone a nerd or, or a dork. It's just a sort of insult. I didn't realize people used it, actually."

It's possible they're both stalling at this point; it's easier to sit and talk with Detective Sousa than face the possibility that he's telling them the truth: that they can't leave, that they'll find an ID card and other things waiting for them at the train station. It's also possible that they're just gearing themselves up to go back out into the cold without a jacket.

Daniel wasn’t exactly the same structure as any other human, not anymore, but he wouldn’t mention that either. It wasn’t Shapiro’s business.

“I mentioned that the last year I remember is 1955. Sometimes my language is stuck in that decade and the decades before it.”

He wasn’t apologizing for it. It was just how it worked for him. At least his text messages sounded less like telegrams these days.

"Joshua speaking: I'm going to ask the question that Graham here"—and there's only a little derision in his tone, like he's clearly judging Graham for a coward—"is clearly too afraid to: if you're a so-called 'immigrant' like us, then how long have you been here?"

As soon as the question is out, Graham sighs softly and lifts their coffee to sip it. Joshua wants to collect the data, and it's not Graham's place to stop him. That's sort of the whole point of Acceptance. Graham is afraid to know the answer, but that doesn't mean they don't still need to know it.

Daniel had been waiting for that question, to some degree. It was one of the most common questions that new arrivals asked, which made sense. He sipped his coffee as he did a little mental math, since that wasn't a number he kept in his head at all times.

"Almost nine years," he replied. It's the end of January 2026 and I got here in mid-February 2017."

"What."

That's still all Joshua, despite the lack of the preceding announcement, and it's barely a question as it is.

"Uh," Graham says, blinking like he's reorienting himself. "Uh, G-Graham speaking: what, what do you mean nine—

"Joshua speaking: nine years is not acceptable. We have things to do, I have people I need to save." Joshua's voice doesn't raise, but a fresh, steely determination enters his tone.

Edited 2026-02-03 23:14 (UTC)

"I'm not saying you're going to be here nine years," Daniel clarified. "Some people are here a lot less than that. It's just that no one knows when they get here how long they'll be here."

He wasn't sure about "people to save" but he also wasn't going to ask. It was, once again, not his business.

"Joshua speaking: what matters here is that it's possible, it matters that there's precedent, and that's not acceptable. Who is in charge of this ridiculous joke of a biosphere? I want to meet them."

Graham shakes their head. "Joshua, you know we can't," he says, and holds up a hand to Detective Sousa. "Sorry, Graham speaking: we can't— no Joshua, we're not going to do that.

"Joshua speaking: then you're condemning everyone we love." To Detective Sousa, he says, "Tell me who is in charge."

The argument was interesting to watch and Daniel waited patiently for either of them to actually talk to him again. He couldn’t even imagine having someone else living in his head like that.

“I can tell you who the mayor of the city is, but he’s definitely not in charge,” he replied wryly. “There’s no one person in charge here, or at least there’s no one person that controls who stays and who goes, as far as I’m aware. On the other hand, I don’t know if they’d make that public if they were. They’d be the most loved and hated person here at the same time.”

"Joshua speaking: that's absurd. Someone is running this city. We just need to know who.

"Graham speaking: what we need is to get a jacket and find somewhere to sit and think," he reasons. Fine, Joshua pouts. They sigh and say, "Detective, thank you for... your time and understanding. We'll get outta your hair."

"Sorry I couldn't answer more of your questions," Daniel replied honestly. He wanted to try to help as much as he could, but he couldn't answer any of the questions about why they were all in Darrow. He just didn't know.

"Let me walk you back to the front lobby so I can let Sergeant Woodward know you're leaving."

He put his mug of coffee down on his desk and pushed up from his desk chair.

Graham and Joshua's cup joins it, still mostly full, and they stand.

"Look, we appreciate the answers you have given us," they say.

They follow Detective Sousa out and nod again at Sergeant Woodward as they're checked out. Then they offer Detective Sousa a hand.

"We wish we could say it was nice to meet you," they add, a glimmer of amusement in their eye.

He shook Mr. Shapiro's hand and half-smiled.

"I won't take it personally. You need anything as you're getting settled, though, come back here. If I'm not in the office, the desk sergeant will know where to find me."

He'd offer that to anyone, but especially new arrivals

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