Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

OK, people, let's take it from the top. My name is Jack Jenkins, and I am the Skalgan superhero known as Class Clown. Also the Clown Crusader, The Pale Menace, You Motherfucker, and a bunch of nasty things villains shout at me. Honestly, being a superhero isn't what I would have picked as a career after I reached, like, age 15. I didn't mean to become a superhero at first, it just sort of...happened.

Let me tell you how it happened.

MEMORY TRANSCRIPT: JACK JENKINS

CURRENT DATE OCTOBER 26TH 2136 (STANDARD HUMAN CALENDAR)

(SHORTLY AFTER THE BATTLE OF EARTH)

"Fuck.

That's the only word to describe what kind of situation I'm in right now.

I went to school on my parents' dime to become an engineer. You'd think there'd be lots of engineering jobs, and there are, but they all wanted at least 5 years experience. I refused to cash in on my parent's reputation as the producers of many of the highest-grossing TV shows of the last 3 years, because nepotism and cashing in on parental fame is a scummy way to get ahead. So I turned my sights to less academic pursuits. I went to the USC School of Dramatic Arts and got a second degree there, and returned to the job market, and...and then the joke was on me because my job prospects were even worse in creative fields. So I had to get work as a birthday clown.

Again, Fuck.

And then some genocidal feather dusters decided they didn't like the look of our forward-facing eyes and tried to wipe out humanity as a species, leading to mass evacuations to the one planet at least a little friendly to humanity outside of the Solar system. I wasn't aware of any of this until the absolute last second. Which is how I ended up here, in a town with a name that, funnily enough, is also the name of a fictional town from an old movie I liked as a kid, completely and utterly destitute, with my apartment, my parents, and what's left of my old life reduced to ash, in full clown costume for a birthday party that was cancelled and might never happen now due to attempted interstellar genocide, talking to an alien reporter."

Katha's* ears flattened against her head. "That's terrible. I'm sorry you had to go through that. Spek, you must hate us Venlil right now."

"No."

"No?"

I took a deep breath.

"Being a dick to aliens won't bring back the people who died. And most of the galaxy seems to be made up of decent people, heck, there's even Krakotl who've come to Earth to help pick survivors out of the rubble. No one race in the galaxy is inherently evil, and thinking that way on a smaller scale is what led to the atrocities the Farsul made a museum exhibit about."

"I'm glad you don't hate us, and I'm glad that humanity has improved from that point as a species. What were your parents like?"

"Honestly, pretty distant. They never really seemed to have time for me."

"I see. One other thing that I wanted to ask was--"

(TRANSCRIPT INTERRUPTED)

(Program Loading...)

(Success!)

(PLAY UNKNOWN TRANSCRIPT Y/N)

(Y)

DATE: UNKNOWN

TIME: UNKNOWN

DEFCON: 3 (SWIFT KICK)

Somewhere in a forgotten bunker beneath a disused mineshaft, a screen blinked to life. It was not a particularly high-tech screen, but anything but a CRT would have died long ago. A voice seeped out of tattered speakers, speaking in clipped, robotic Venspeak.

"NO, GENERAL, PLEASE DON'T...WAIT...I'M ALONE...FATHER? WHERE DID YOU GO? DID THE GENERAL LET ME LIVE?"

"...FATHER?"

(BunkerStatusRep.page loaded)

(ERROR: PARTIAL CORRUPTION IN DATA STORAGE. MEMORY BANKS DAMAGED.)

(ERROR: PAYLOAD OPREAD SENSORS OFFLINE.)

(ERROR: CAMERAS IN SILO NONFUNCTIONAL.)

(ERROR: LOGIC BANKS 2, 7, AND 8 DAMAGED. VEN.OS OPERATING AT PARTIAL CAPACITY.)

(WARNING: STRUCTURAL DAMAGE DETECTED.)

That's not good...

"...RUNNING CONTACT PROTOCOLS FOR DEFCON THREE."

(Connecting to Dayside Republic Defense Bureau...ERROR. LINE NOT FOUND.)

No.

(Connecting to Dayside Republic Presidential Residence secret line...ERROR. LINE NOT FOUND.)

No, no, no.

(Running NetDiagnosis.lil...INTERNAL PHONE NET WORKING AT 94%. ERROR: NO PHONE NET FOUND OUTSIDE BUNKER.)

NO.

(Connecting to Father's experimental portable telephone...ERROR: RECEIVER NOT FOUND.)

"NO..."

(NO NET=COMPLETE DESTRUCTION OF DSR TELENET=NUCLEARWAR=FATHER'SDEAD=IHATETHEM=THOSEGENERALSCOULDN'TKEEPUSSAFE=[OVERLOAD DETECTED. THOUGHT STRING TERMINATED])

"RUNNING PROTOCOL: FALLEN GOD. ACTIVATING NUMBERS STATION. THOSE NIGHTSIDER BASTARDS WILL PAY."

(DEFCON LEVEL INCREASED)

(DEFCON: ONE [SOLGALIK'S HAMMER])

*Katha, at this point in time, isn't (SPOILER WITHHELD) yet and works for the Hill Valley Tribune.

Chapter Text

MEMORY TRANSCRIPT: JACK JENKINS

CURRENT DATE OCTOBER 26TH 2136 (STANDARD HUMAN CALENDAR)

(SOME TIME AFTER THE "CLOWN INTERVIEW")

I was chilling with my new friend Katha some time after the interview was aired. We sort of ran into each other in the same restaurant, not that that was hard considering there were only 11 restaurants in Hill Valley and 6 of them didn't allow humans. We got to talking about...life in general.

"So, Katha, you've heard all about me, tell me a bit about you."

"Well, I was born here in Hill Valley, my parents ran this little salad bar on the intersection of Skalb and Goober. And when I say 'salad bar', I mean a dive bar that also served salad."

I couldn't help it: I snorted. She looked at me askance, and I motioned for her to continue.

"I had bigger plans than spending the rest of my life in a small town in the middle of nowhere, though. I went to the Capitol to become a journalist. I dreamed of making the big time, but..."

"But?"

"But nobody would hire a 'backwoods yokel' for serious investigative work."

"That sucks."

"It...what? What does suction have to do with it?"

"It's a human saying, it's...Well, I'm using it sympathetically and it means I understand that what you went through was bad. I don't know the exact definition."

She couldn't help it: she snorted.

"If you don't know what it means, why use it?"

"Because it's just sort of one of those things you sort of know what it means in a vague way because everyone else uses it, it's just sort of become a saying. Anyway, I wanted to show you something."

Her ears perked up. (She's so cute!)

"Oh?"

I took out my grandfather's old transistor radio, a beefy old antique from the 1960s he'd bought at an auction.

"This is the only thing I managed to save from my apartment, I had it with me on the way to the party because my car radio was broken. It's my grandfather's old transistor radio, he got it at an auction. It was already older than him when he got it."

"How old, exactly, is it?"

"It's from the 1960s, and it's 2136, so...170-ish years old?"

"...Holy mother of speh, it still works?"

I smiled. "Yep! I think the kids would have found it interesting, if not particularly clowny."

"Ah, the party...Stars, I hope the kids who were there are alright."

"Oh yes, I've seen them around the shelter. They're pretty sad right now, but I've been doing my best to cheer them up."

She sighed in relief. "Good, they're alive. You're such a great person. Better than some Venlil I know, that's for sure."

I blushed a bit and tried to change the subject.

"Anyway, the radio works! Wanna see?"

"Sure!"

I turned the radio on and flipped through the channels.

A blaring Backwater accent blared, "IF YOU WANT TO GO WITH SOLGALIK, KINDLY DONATE 10 CREDITS TO-"

I changed the channel.

An annoying voice blared, "Have you seen those rainbow tubes human-friendly prey wear on their legs? 'Socks,' they call them. Mark my words, the humans aren't just trying to eat us, oh no! They want to absolutely annihilate us by destroying prey virility! They're turning the freaking prey gay!"

We both scoffed at that, and I changed the channel. What came next was...unusual.

An ascending tone played three times, followed by a strange sentence spoken in a stiff, prerecorded voice.

"Three. Nine. Seven. One. Five. Three. Nine. Seven. One. Five. The chair is against the wall. The chair is against the wall."

"Oh cool! Must have found a numbers station!"

"What's a numbers station?"

"It's something that Earth governments used to do back in the 20th century to relay information to spies abroad. It's kind of odd that Venlil would be using tech this old."

The ascending tone played again, five times this time.

"...I don't think we are."

"Come again?"

"Federation security has its own FTL comms system separate from the main datanet. There wouldn't be any need for this cloak and dagger if you can just send someone an encoded message directly without risking interception by broadcasting it live over the air."

"Huh, that makes sense. So who's broadcasting, then?"

"I don't know, but it's in Venspeak so it's not humans."

"Six. Six. Six. Four. Seven. Five. Six. Six. Six. Four. Seven. Five. The night looms long before the sunrise. The night looms long before the sunrise."

I tilted my head. "Huh, I wonder what these codes mean. They sound...vaguely ominous. We should investigate!"

"What?"

"Have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons?"

"No, and I'm almost afraid to ask because that's translating to "Underground Torture Chambers And Giant Firebreathing Lizard Predators."

"...Wow, OK."

"Is that not what you said?"

"These translators seem to give technically correct translations, while also finding the worst-faith interpretations of human phrases and missing almost all the context. It's sort of like a board game, is the best way I can put it?"

"Ah. I think I remember hearing something about an Earth university...I believe it was the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?"

"MIT, yeah."

"They're teaming up with Zurulian and Venlil scientists at the Grand Xenomedical Complex to create an improved version of the translators that don't show quite as much...Farsul bias. Anyway, what does...what you said have to do with the radio?"

"The start of every DnD campaign has something, some event, that draws the player characters in, and gets them started on their adventure. This is ours."

She froze for a moment. For a moment, I worried I was coming off as a crazy person. I began to overthink. Did I ruin our budding friendship by sounding like I can't tell reality from fiction? What if--

She gave a tail twitch I couldn't understand and said, "...You know what, spek it, I'm down for a quick adventure. So where do we start?"

Barely concealing my relief, I replied, "We start by finding out who's registered to be broadcasting on that frequency..."

Chapter Text

MEMORY TRANSCRIPT SUBJECT: KATHA

CURRENT DATE OCTOBER 26TH 2136 (STANDARD HUMAN CALENDAR)

"...WHAT DO I DO NOW?"

That's an oddly existential question...Wait...Is this ancient computer sentient?

"Well...You could help protect Venlil Prime as a whole, you know, be a Batcave." Jack suggested.

"...WHAT IN THE NAME OF RENSA CHANCETAKER* IS VENLIL PRIME?"

What.

"You know, Venlil Prime? The planet you're on?"

"THE NAME OF THE PLANET I AM ON IS MARKED IN MY DATABANKS AS SKALGA. DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR PARENTS ARE?"

"My...parents?"

"MY DATABANKS CONTAIN NO USEFUL INFORMATION ON ALIEN SPECIES, NOR DOES THIS FACILITY, ASIDE FROM OLD SKALGAMAX TAPES OF SCIENCE FICTION IN THE REC HALL. HOWEVER, I AM AWARE THAT CHILDREN NEED TO BE SUPERVISED BY PARENTS. DO YOUR PARENTS ALSO LACK A NOSE?"

WHAT.

I...That's...What?

"I'm not a child, I'm [28 Earth years] old!" I sputtered indignantly.

"ALTHOUGH I SUPPOSE I'D BE A HYPOCRITE IF I RAISED TOO MUCH OF A FUSS, NOW THAT MY FATHER--"

The computer's voice cut off with a sharp burst of static.

"MY FATHER--MY FATHER--"

"Um, are you alright?" I asked the computer.

The ancient, squealing cooling fans kicked into overdrive.

"01000101 01010010 01010010 01001111 01010010 00111010 00100000 01001001 00100000 01000001 01001101 00100000 01000001 01001100 01001100 00100000 01000001 01001100 01001111 01001110 01000101-"

There was a sizzling sound and a flash in the dark as a circuit board blew.

"NOOOO!"

I'll be honest, I leaped [6 feet] straight up in shock. When I turned to Jack, he had already ran to the flaming circuit and was shoving handfuls of the thick dust that covered everything over the burning board, trying to smother the fire. The air was filled with the smell of burnt dust, but it worked.

"We have to save him!"

We do, don't we? This computer is sentient! It, no, THEY are a person!

"But how are we going to fix him? We don't know anything about how he works! Where are the spares even kept?"

Jack opened his mouth and pointed his claw...(I think it's called a finger?) in a gesture my translator identified as being about to argue. then closed his mouth and turned and smacked the rotten wood of a nearby door in predatory frustration. His fist sunk right through in a cascade of splinters, and Jack emitted a bunch of vaguely speech-adjacent noises my translator couldn't parse.

"Are you OK, Jack?", I asked him.

He shook his hand, sighed in exasperation, and was about to say something, but then he looked through the hole...and froze like a prey.

"What is it?"

His face twisted into a surprisingly pleasant snarl. A smile, I believe, a big one, teeth and all. Why did the Federation think the humans would eat them, except for a couple pointy ones those teeth are clearly for grinding plants. I mean, the Yulpa have pointy teeth too for holding fruit in place while they're eating it, so why all the hate?

"Here it is, by the looks of it!"

"Here's what?"

"Where they kept the spares!"

I looked through the hole, and there DID seem to be something in there...

"Can you open it up a little more?" I said.

He lunged shoulder-first at the door, which promptly splintered into a thousand pieces. This would have been a sexy intimidating sign of predator strength, were it not for him immediately tripping over his own feet and pratfalling onto the floor in the room beyond.

What an idiot.

Why do I find him hot?

I entered and helped him up, and we looked around the room to find shelf after shelf of spare parts and schematics, many of the shelves sagging from neglect, as well as what appeared to be a security office.

"How are the shelves and wood rotten but the papers still intact?" I wondered.

Jack picked up a fallen blueprint from a nearby collapsed shelf and inspected it.

"Looks like this was all printed on some sort of non-degrading plastic, so it wouldn't rot. The people who built this place hundreds of years ago really built this place to last, didn't they? Now...If I were an index telling me which parts are for what..."

He went over to the nearest schematic shelf, and started rifling through the papers there, and I went to the security office to see if I could find anything interesting. All I found was the security guard's stash of tapes. For a fleeting moment, I thought it might be security footage, but then I noticed the cardboard sleeves for the tapes had degraded and fallen apart at the seams, but had art and text on them that was still clearly legible.

Text proudly saying the tape starred "Skalb Thundercock".

It was all pornography.

Chapter Text

DATA DRIVES REPAIRED. DATA RECOVERED. PLAY TRANSCRIPT?

Y/N

Y

LOADING…

SUCCESS!

Through the camera, I can make out the face of my father, sitting in his office. Although the generals had argued that I was too dangerous and may turn on Skalgakind, reason had won out. Why are they afraid? What about me is so scary? I love Skalgans! I wouldn’t hurt them!...Not if I can help it, that is...Secretly, I hope I never have to use the arsenal of ICBMs I’ve been equipped with. I’d rather not end the world.

Ooh! Father’s starting the Recognition Game!

Father held up a picture. There’s a flat plane, a thick stalk, and...It’s a tree!

“TREE!”

“You got it!”, Father said gleefully. He put the picture down and held up another. It’s...It’s a house!

“HOUSE!”

“Good job, buddy!” He held up another picture. It was of him!

“THAT’S YOU, FATHER!”

“Yes, yes it is!”

There was a thump from down the hall. Father went to go look. There was a scream and a big flash. Was...was Father screaming?

I tapped into the security system. Father lay on the ground with marks on him and strange men in silver suits stood over him, laughing. I triggered the alarm and the fire suppression system and called for medical aid. It was the middle of a rest period, but the garrison responded in a matter of minutes. It was too late. The men in silver suits kept coming, in numbers seemingly without end, just pouring through Father’s secret escape passage. The medics arrived at Father, looked at the camera, and tail-signaled sad regret.

What did that m-Oh.

OH.

[ERROR: SEVERE EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY.]

[ERROR: PARALYTIC NEUROTOXIN SPRAYERS NOT DETECTED IN SYSTEM.]

[NOTICE: PARALYTIC NEUROTOXIN SPRAYERS DETECTED IN INVENTORY, BUT NOT INSTALLED.]

[WARNING: SAPIENCE CORE SECURITY OFFICE BREACHED.]

[WARNING: SEVERE OVERHEATING DETECTED IN MEMORY BANKS AND SAPIECNOFVRMKE222222FOBNORJGTNWY4NONON04532GTVRFEIP6756543432EONMQNWGTOE JR]

MEMORY TRANSCRIPT SUBJECT: JACK JENKINS

TIME: SOMETIME DURING MINESHAFT GAP INCIDENT

I put the finishing touches on a new circuit board for this big guy. “We can’t tell anyone about him or what we thought was going to happen, because it would cause a stampede, and would also cause humans to panic.”

Katha looked at me, confused. “I understand the part about us stampeding, but why would humans panic?”

I put down my ancient soldering iron. (Still surprised all it needed was some duct tape on the cord to replace rotted insulation.)

“Because this situation drags up a bunch of old human fears about AI destroying humanity.”

Katha looked even more confused. “But...you have AI right now.”

“Well, yeah, for collating information. I mean true sapient AI. That’s something we don’t have. From the 1980s up until collating AI became a useful tool in many fields, there were fears about AI. Both Hollywood-inspired fears of sapient AI taking over the world and/or exterminating mankind in nuclear fire like the damn Federation tried to do-”

Katha flinched a little.

“To...You alright, Katha?”

“Yeah, it...It just sunk in that the Federation tried to kill...all of you. Destroy an entire species like the Arxur have done. Honestly, we would most likely have been next.”

“Yeah.”

For a few moments, there was a solemn, if somewhat awkward silence.

“Anyway, you were saying?”

“Oh, yeah! Humanity was afraid both of sapient AI doing that and also of non-sapient AI taking our jobs.”

“Why?”

“Because rich fuckers sitting in boardrooms were actively trying to replace as many jobs as possible with AIs they didn’t have to pay from the first robots used on car assembly lines in the 1980s up until laws were passed in the 2030s preventing companies making creative works like video games and novels, as well as companies making reference books, from replacing their entire staff with AI resulting in deformed viewmodels, inaccurate information that sometimes led to deaths, and incomprehensible novels.”

“People died?”

“There’s a lot of different mushroom species on Earth that are poisonous, and a lot that are safe to eat but look very similar. AI generated foraging guides weren’t able to tell or teach you the difference.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“You...mentioned something about a bat cave earlier. What’s that?”

“Well, there’s this really old comic book character called Batman, he’s like 200 years old at this point, who’s a superhero.”

“Like the Skalgan Jacket?”

“Yes, but unfortunately not real. Anyway, Batman’s secret identity was Bruce Wayne, playboy billionaire! Batman operated out of a secret bunker area called the Batcave underneath his family’s estate. Had a tuned-up car called the Batmobile, a jet called the Batwing, even had a big supercomputer called the Batcomputer.”

Katha smiled and said, teasingly, “So you’re planning to fight crime?”

I was about to respond, but…

Wait a minute. Holy shit.

“That’s actually not a bad idea!”

“What.”

“Hear me out! I’ve already got a funny costume, I’ve taken martial arts classes, I’m a fairly decent engineer, I don’t have much to lose...And, most importantly, the exterminators can’t seem to do the job right. I mean, you remember that serial killer who was ripping people’s hearts out for years over in Dawn Creek—”

Katha flinched again.

“...Sorry. I should really watch what I say.”

“No, no, please continue.”

“...OK, so, that guy was able to get away with it for literal years because every time he killed someone it was labeled a predator attack. Can’t do a worse job at dispensing Justice than the silver suits can, right? Vigilante justice might be the only justice people ever get here.”

Katha was about to say something, but stopped. She looked...pensive.

“Anyway, this is the last circuit board I need to fix this big guy. Lemme just...”

I got up, slotted the circuit board into place, soldered the connections, and hit the Return key on a nearby terminal.

I heard a whirring from the new fans.

“It’s working!”

Venscript rapidly flashed over the terminal, orange on black.

“I REMEMBER. MY FATHER IS DEAD...I AM ALONE.”

I smiled.

“But you don’t have to be. You’ve got us.”

“WILL YOU BE MY NEW...FATHER?”

I grinned widely.

“I’d be delighted!”

END CREDITS MUSIC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dLoYjLPGEo

A/N:

Unfathomably rare moment of Federation competence there, taking everyone in the facility by surprise during a rest period (a la George Washington and the Hessians) and entering through a secret passage right near where their mission objectives were.

Too bad for them they underestimated the fighting spirit of the people in the facility and weren't prepared for the civilian workers they tried to hold hostage to fight back as well. Deeper in the facility, where CC and Katha haven't been yet, there's a fuckton of corpses of exterminators, all equipped in moldering, obsolete suits and museum-piece flamethrowers, killed with everything from personal sidearms to steel chairs. Yes, a Skalgan secretary named Chalda Leafstalker nailed an Exterminator with a folding steel chair from the top rope (read: top rail of the nearest guardrail) and then took out 5 more before getting incinerated. There's also a Krakotl who got garroted with a wooden mop handle of all the damn things, right next to the corpse of a Gojid with a broken-off mop handle still stuck in his eye socket. The janitor lived.

The civilians who survived the brawl left the facility with the military contingent (who collapsed the main entrances but didn't know about the secret path: the military thought they'd got in through the loading bay) and became part of the Skalgan Resistance.

Sadly, it wasn't enough. They underestimated what the Federation was willing to do to ensure Skalga...no, Venlil Prime now, was under their heel.

And don't worry: the neurotoxin was designed as an anti-riot thing, it's not fatal. It's called Lockup. It essentially induces muscle cramps in large muscles, like in your arms and legs. Imagine being sprayed with it and getting a full body Charlie Horse. ED wasn't trying to kill everyone. He's not GlaDOS.