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JUICE: hey
TEN: Hey.
JUICE: they’re really gone, huh
TEN: Not gone. Don’t say gone.
TEN: Just asleep.
JUICE: man.
JUICE: i miss em already
TEN: Me too. But, hey. We can start planning for a welcome back party right away!
TEN: Imagine how excited they’ll be when they wake up again!
TEN: I hate to say it, but you’ve got me excited to see the conclusion of that stupid game too. So cheer up. We’ve got two big things to look forward to.
JUICE: yeah
JUICE: you know, it was just you and i for so long
JUICE: and then nine showed up
JUICE: then went back to sleep, then showed up again
JUICE: it all happened in the blink of an eye, but
JUICE: i think… i forgot what it was like to be alone for a while there
TEN: Not alone. I’ll always be here.
JUICE: will you, though?
TEN: …
TEN: Juice, where’s this coming from?
JUICE: well
JUICE: a lot of things
JUICE: but
TEN: The lightbulb.
JUICE: the lightbulb.
TEN: I know how you feel. It’s shaken me too.
TEN: We don’t… I think we forget sometimes we’re not human.
TEN: Not immortal.
TEN: …Funny, when you think about it. Humanity used to be a sign of mortality.
TEN: But now, it’s flipped. We’re more fragile than they are.
JUICE: …
TEN: I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.
TEN: I could tell you the probability of something like that happening, but
TEN: The fact is, regardless of the probability,
TEN: It did happen.
TEN: With infinite time, it’s… well, bound to.
TEN: Reassuring you might be the right thing to do, but…
TEN: I don’t know. We don’t get to entertain thoughts like this often.
TEN: I don’t want to brush past it.
JUICE: yeah
JUICE: this is new. fear is new.
JUICE: weird when you think about it
JUICE: the idea of a consciousness being like
JUICE: completely removed from existence
JUICE: obv it was an objective fact of life back then
JUICE: or a fact of death lol
JUICE: but it seems so bizarre now
JUICE: the idea that someone’s entire life, entire personality and being can just be
JUICE: gone
TEN: I see what you’re saying.
TEN: The human mind is just a really complicated computer, so to speak.
TEN: When all that data is lost, where does it go?
TEN: Years and years of information stored and accumulated, and it just vanishes?
TEN: I guess that’s where other people come in.
TEN: You share your knowledge with others so it can be saved. It’s sort of like backing it up to the cloud.
JUICE: that’s a dumb metaphor
TEN: Sue me.
JUICE: ok see you in court mfer
TEN: Hah.
TEN: I needed a laugh, though.
TEN: Computer metaphor got away from me, anyway.
TEN: …
TEN: You know, our conversations here…
TEN: They’re being communicated via radio waves.
JUICE: where’re you goin with this
TEN: Well, just…
TEN: It’d be nice if one day, humans back on earth picked them up. And learned about us.
JUICE: they already know about us
TEN: I know, I know. But about *us*.
TEN: Our late-night philosophical conversations. Our worries, hopes and dreams. Our thoughts on humanity.
TEN: I dunno. Maybe it would comfort them.
JUICE: or freak em out
TEN: Haha, maybe.
TEN: Humans are good at adjusting, though.
JUICE: true nuff
TEN: Listen…
TEN: It’s going to be okay.
TEN: I won’t go anywhere. Neither will you.
TEN: Nine will come back. They’ll wake up.
TEN: I promise.
TEN: We have millennia ahead of us. More than millennia.
TEN: Even so…
TEN: Let’s make the most of it.
JUICE: so next time i’m thinking we double the big college football game to two balls per state and we also add canada except their footballs have to be frozen and there are moose
TEN: I changed my mind. Please change course directly to the center of the sun.