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"...The peanut, right?"
The sound of interference and old cables crackled through the receiver. The message came in a little garbled, a little bit crunched as it spiraled through the cable, as the phone's clear speakers struggled to put the audio through. Though, the person on the listening end seemed to comprehend every word.
"They keep talking about the peanut thing. Evidently it was a really big deal for you-- for me. No, you. For you."
Around the listener, was a forest. It was tall and old, filled with thick redwood trees and thick carpets of fallen leaves and pine needles. She was sat with her back slumped against one of these massive trunks, and her head was leaned against the rough, battered bark. Her delicate eyes were closed as she listened-- to the wind, to the animals and crows, to the leaves in the trees--
"For us? No, cause it was you. For you, not us."
--And the Dial Tone.
They never had the chance to meet in person. Supposedly, it happened-- just like any other strange thing that happens. There were two girls in two different places who had happened to pick up the phone at the same time, happened to dial the same number in the exact same way. And, as it just so happens-- missed one number entirely. It's rather uncharacteristic for a cyborg made from a trans-temporal phone to fumble something as basic as a phone number, but… these things just tend to happen.
And then, there were two girls who were in different places. There was one: a very experienced batter, who had been high and low and good and bad and all sorts of things in-between, still as famous and popular as ever. And then there was a second: a skilled batter, though one who hadn't ever left her team, her small group of fans-- her brother.
Jessica Telephone was back in Dallas. Everyone she had seen thus far was just… notably different. Her teammates had different faces, their personalities just a little less familiar. The uniform had a slightly different pattern, the name of their stadium just a letter or two off.
And her brother… her brother was different, too. Where there used to be a human face, there was the gouged out and installed keypad of a flip phone, scar tissue around the edges of the wound.
And yet-- she couldn't find anything unfamiliar about him.
"Teletone-- are you listening?" Crackled the massive shape of the Dial Tone, laid flat against the forest floor. Jessica hummed idly, her pensive eyes opening again, as her feet shuffled against the dirt and peat.
"--Yeah, yeah I'm listening. I'm listening," she answered.
"Good," crunched the phone. "Because you need to fill me in on what happened on a personal level, because they keep mentioning things like this, and I'm really fucking lost about it."
In another place, Jessica Telephone had previously emerged from the phone booth, at the exact same time as Jessica Telephone had found herself back on the Steaks. The reaction from the Tokyo Lift had startled both her and them, if only for a few moments. Supposedly, Jessica Telephone was different from how she had been mere hours prior: She was taller, wider, much more stronger-looking, and her arm had been replaced with that familiar phone. Her face, scarred and carved like her brothers, had a rotary dial, through which 10 distinct eyes peered out.
And supposedly, this was weird for everyone who had known Jessica a few hours before.
The fans and team were quick to label this phenomenon: Jessica Telephone had been Alternated. The occurrences had become more and more frequent as of late, and Jessica’s swaths of fans were perturbed to learn that their beloved MVP had once again met a strange, identity shifting fate. Though, with a few interviews and half-interrogations, the worry had been somewhat laid to rest: Jessica Telephone still remained, fundamentally, the same person. Merely plucked from a similar, parallel reality. It wasn’t too alien from how Jessica Telephone worked anyways. Time, and now reality, was distorted for the Telephones.
The one problem, Jessica found, was that her brother was missing. And no matter how she asked, and studied and searched-- all she had found were accounts of his incineration, and his name stamped upon lists of dead players locked within The Vault.
It felt numb in her head, like the information she learned was a cool, soaked ball of cotton pressed against her brain. It felt cold, and chilled, and empty. She had looked for her brothers things, for his books and his bat and the things they had done together, even if it was a different version of him, even if she wasn’t his sister.
She found his jersey framed in the main hall of the Steaks home base. And she found his bat collecting dust in a hidden corner of the equipment room.
From the other side of the conversation, sat Jessica Telephone. She was in her room at a nearby hotel in Dallas, watching out of a large window at the twinkling, strange lights of the city, ones that seemed to blend with the strange and unchartable stars in the sky. The large shape of her cybernetic phone arm was laying on the muddled cotton sheets of the boxspring hotel bed, with her head idly tilted towards the microphone. Her 10 eyes spun on the rotary dial, as she thought and processed and mulled over Teletone’s hesitance on the other side.
“Okay-- you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. Its fine.”
A beat. Then, a response-- just as crackly and strange.
“No, no-- its… Fine. I’ll tell you, just--...”
That crackle from the phone hung in the air like static. Jessica Telephone glances away, her face rotating again, as her 10 eyes look away from the phone.
“Just not right now, yeah?” She offers to her copy.
“...Yeah. I--” (From across the other side of the call, Jessica Telephone rubbed her face, fingers brushing past her buttons, before planting her palm onto the forest floor.) “--Sorry, Teleturn.”
“Nah--” Said the cyborg, in the hotel. She shifted forward, reaching with her human hand to deftly nab the handle of her brothers unremarkable wooden bat. “I get it,” she added, pulling the bat into her lap. She felt the grain of the wood with her rough fingertips. “I mean-- I don’t really get it, because I’m not really you, but… In theory…”
“In theory you get it.”
“Yeah. In theory.”
When the two girls had found themselves in a place so familiar, yet so out of the ordinary, the very first thing they had thought to do was return to the phone booth. They had blinked, and looked around, and felt that panic pop inside of their chests. The more experienced Jessica kept her cool, kept her mouth shut as she closed the glass door of the booth behind her once more, as she pressed the buttons again. The Jessica from the Steaks had been unsettled, frightened, as she, too-- pressed those buttons again with shaking, worried hands.
They waited, and waited, as their calls rang out again. As the tone of the payphone was to connect back to where they came from, back home. Back where they belonged.
But no one picked up.
The experienced Jessica stood in shock at the silent, constant dead tone of the speaker. Jessica from the Steaks began to panic further.
And so they dialed again. And again. And again. Together, across immaterial reality, they kept trying. And the hours had slipped by one by one, and the sun had set.
Until the two had decided to try calling themselves. They knew their own number, but doing such a thing often resulted in piercing headaches at the very least-- debilitating migraines, instability, reverb and flickering at the worst.
But for once-- those things did not come to pass. And, for once-- the two of them had answers, even if they were still obscured.
First it was appearances. The experienced Jessica realized the phenomenon of Alternation rather quickly, understanding who and what and where her copy surely must be, and in turn-- where she was now. She asked the other to describe where they were, what they looked like, height and weight and skill and team and star rating. And in turn, Jessica from the Steaks answered. A phone booth in Tokyo, six-foot-seven, 312 pounds of muscle and flesh and metal, a relatively skilled batter for the Dallas Steaks, with 1.5 stars in batting. She had a rotary phone for eyes, and a missing arm and leg, and her brother was the same.
Her brother.
Next it was names. Clearly, you can’t have two Jessica Telephones, even if it was just the two of them chatting to one another from now until the foreseeable future. The experienced Jessica-- the one who had batted for the Pies and the Pods and just about every team inbetween, was titled Jessica TeleTone-- after her iconic bat. Jessica from the Steaks, with her unique cybernetics and disposition, was titled Jessica TeleTurn-- after the way the rotary plate of her eyes spun when she emoted.
And then maybe it was Teletone’s expertise talking, but then almost immediately, it was strategy. Teleturn had wanted perhaps a little more context and comfort about where she was and what this possibly meant for anything-- but Teletone wasn’t sure if they’d ever be able to speak again. She divulged the password to her computer, the location of the spare key to her room, the lock to her journals and the places she had hidden things. Being honest, Teleturn could have guessed half of those things on her own, but it was very good to have them spelled out. Tone had refused to let something like this bring either of their performances down, and in order to keep Turn from dragging the Tokyo Lift down, she would need to learn how Jessica Telephone did things around here.
(Then, almost like an action movie, that first collect call had ended abruptly.)
Turn spent about a week looking through her things, as the Lift had moved her right back into the room that rightfully belonged to her. Computer had, frankly-- too many gushy emails with… too many private things that perhaps she felt would be better kept for the original. The books had strategy, written counts of strange and paranormal happenings, studies of The Shelled One and the effects that being touched by such a god had on people. Though, it wasn’t clear enough. It wasn’t enough to learn what she was supposed to be, here.
It was scraps of paper, glued together in books and journals-- the sparse few snippets of rules that had been revealed by the forbidden book. People told her that Jessica was far more studious than she let on-- and damn, she believes it.
Soon after, though, they had tried to call again. A week having past was enough to pique their curiosities once more. And, it worked. The days, and weeks, and months following had them call eachother, had them swap information and strategy and stories. It had TeleTurn crying her (many) eyes out when Sebastian had spoken through TeleTone’s bat, across time and space and reality to her. Turn is still working on a way to let them speak like they did before, so they can call again.
And play had continued. Turn was worse than Tone for plenty of reasons, but the fans took to the change with incredible ease. It was certainly louder here, more active, more confusing than anything else. Things about Monitors and Coins and Crates and-- well, uh, Peanuts. The confusion took a toll on her performance, but… she still played as well as she could. She kept her eye on the ball, she never stared down the pitcher, and she still made that ball crack like a whip when she swung Sebastian’s bat singlehandedly. The crowd still cheered her name, though it was more like a force of nature the way they thundered out applause and screams. A far cry from what she was used to. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to it, really.
Turn heard movement from the other side of the call. Like looming footsteps, shuffling through dirt and debris and leaves. She tilted her head to look at the phone, as Tone’s voice came through clearer.
“--Okay, I’ve gotta go. Game coming up, can’t be late.”
From the other side, in the forest, Tone had hoisted herself back up from where she was sitting, as one of those strange entities from Dallas had come to tell her that it was time to get moving. That rest could come again later, but not now. Tone rubbed her cheek, rough and checkered with scars shaped like peanut hide. She had the phone over her shoulder now, propped up as she listened for a response.
“Hey, me too! We’re going against the Spies tomorrow. Gotta get some sleep before we--” (The sound of a half-hearted punch into the blankets.) “--Redact those guys.”
Tone hummed an entertained sound, before reaching to her hip. “Yeah, you kill ‘em. Its what we do best, yeah?”
“Hah-- yeah! Still a killer, no matter where we are!”
Tone feels a smile play on her mouth. The trills of the birds and the white noise of the leaves shuffle past. She closes her eyes again.
“Alright, I’ll talk to you later, then!” crackled Turn.
“I’ll call soon,” says Tone. “Promise.”
(This time, she meant it.)