Work Text:
It was a silly thing, honestly.
After all, Comicron-1 had detector arrays for particle types and frequencies of radiation that didn’t even exist in this universe. Pretty much any signal Linksano could have possibly wanted to monitor, Nimue was capable of receiving and processing, without any help. Any detectors he built in the lab would, rationally, be for use on the ground, where the atmosphere might block or bounce signals, reducing their strength enough to make reception difficult from orbit.
This detector, though, he kept in the lab. Its construction was flimsy, incorporating a significant amount of actual aluminum foil stretched across vanes of reinforced cardboard. The portion of the electromagnetic spectrum it monitored was well within the scope of the ship’s antennae, but it seemed even more silly to ask Nimue to spend part of her processor time looking for signals on one particular wavelength that would almost certainly never come.
It was just one more aspect of the homesickness that occasionally hit Linksano. He knew his world had been blasted to a barren shell in the conflict between Lord Vyce and the Entity; he’d made the mistake of looking, once, when Vyce thought he was working for him. Whoever still lived there, they certainly wouldn’t waste time and energy sending out a signal, and only one other person in the multiverse would know he might be listening on this particular frequency.
And so he kept the replica of his eighth grade blue-ribbon-winning science fair exhibit in a corner of the lab, with its quartz crystal and its improved battery and its kitchen-foil antenna, and once in a while, when he remembered, he gave it a quarter-turn, to face a different direction.
On one winter afternoon (well, winter in the northern hemisphere, which was the one he usually visited when he was planetside), it buzzed.
Linksano stopped what he was doing to turn and give the detector a puzzled stare. It gave another long raspberry buzz.
“Just random noise,” Linksano assured himself. Still, he drifted over to the gadget, just as it began to rattle off a series of long and short buzzes.
“Morse code,” he whispered. It took a minute for it to come back, just long enough for him to grab a pencil.
- SAY WHEN HE WAS ASKED TO TELL A SODIUM JOKE
Linksano wrinkled his nose, then reached for the transmitter, which had started life as a clothespin.
NA, he typed back.
There was a long silence, then the detector rattled again.
HOW DID OXYGENS DATE WITH POTASSIUM GO
Goodness, these jokes were old! Linksano reached for the transmit key again. OK, he replied.
The next pause was longer.
THE BARTENDER SAYS WHAT WILL IT BE TONIGHT
That one took Linksano a minute and a half to remember. A TACHYON WALKS INTO A BAR
The machine fell silent. Linksano was on the verge of deciding some ham radio operator had discovered this frequency by accident when it chattered to life again.
OSCAR IS THAT YOU
“Oh,” Linksano gasped, realizing who must be on the other end. Yes, the detector happened to be pointing towards Earth today. He reached for the transmitter, pondering. I AM AN OSCAR, he finally typed. BUT POSSIBLY NOT THE ONE YOU ARE LOOKING FOR.
YOU MEAN YOU ARE LINKSANO
CORRECT
The machine again fell silent for nearly five minutes. Linksano had just given up and turned back to the lab bench when one more message came through.
MY SON HAS NEVER MET HIS UNCLE
Linksano pondered that for a moment. IT WONT BE QUITE THE SAME BUT SHALL I FIX THAT, he typed.
This pause was much shorter.
I THINK SO
Linksano turned to the camera above the lab door. “Nimue, can you trace that signal?” he asked.
“Affirmative,” she replied.
He tapped out I WILL BE RIGHT THERE, tamping down the voice in his head that was loudly questioning the wisdom of this course of action. “Teleport me to the source of the signal,” he requested, and flickered out.
---
Insano looked up from what, to all appearances, was a heap of posterboard and tinfoil as the teleporter effect solidified into Linksano. “So, you built one of these, too,” he said, nodding at the detector.
“In junior high,” Linksano agreed. “I’m surprised you still have it. Is this the original, in this universe?”
“Yes,” Insano replied, his voice a bit wobbly. “My brother didn’t take it with him when he - when he left. I’d say I’m surprised he didn’t destroy it, but he’d probably forgotten it was still in the old storage closet.”
Linksano nodded and hoped he was adequately expressing sympathy - he wasn’t all that great with facial expressions that weren’t variations on glee, arrogance, or fear. “The one I have on the ship is a replica,” he explained. “Obviously, I couldn’t take it with me while I was on the run from Vyce.”
Insano got up from the kitchen chair next to the device and looked down at it. “Why did you rebuild it?” he asked, still not looking directly at Linksano.
Shrugging, Linksano replied, “I have no idea whether my Wayne survived what happened to my world or not. If he did, if he escaped the same way I did, I wanted to have a way he could find me, or at least get a message to me. Using our old broad-beam transmitter seemed like a logical place to start; at the very least, we both knew how to build one.”
“I suppose that makes sense.” Insano walked a few steps away from the device, looked around as if he were confused, walked back, and dragged the chair over to a kitchen table covered in burn marks and acid scars. “I didn’t really expect any response,” he said, gesturing at the other chair at the table.
Linksano took the invitation and sat down. “Those jokes must be the same in any universe,” he observed. “We - my Wayne and I - told them over and over.”
“So did my Oscar and I,” Insano replied with a sad smile. “Our parents never understood any of them, no matter how often we explained them.”
“They must not be very different, either,” Linksano chuckled. “If you didn’t expect a response, either from me or from this universe’s Oscar, why were you playing with it?”
Insano traced one of the scorch marks on the table with a finger and said nothing.
This sort of thing was never Linksano’s strong suit, but here he was. He reached over and covered Insano’s hand with his. “You miss him, don’t you?”
“I do,” Insano admitted. “Do you?”
“Always.” The confession made Linksano’s cheeks burn, despite how long he’d had to come to terms with it.
Insano stared somewhere off over Linksano’s shoulder. “I don’t - it’s been - I know it’s not rational,” he started, then broke off to stare at their hands. Slowly, he rotated his under Linksano’s, then closed it, until they were holding hands across the table.
“I know,” Linksano assured him. “It’s still hard.” He squeezed Insano’s - Wayne’s, even if it wasn’t his Wayne - hand gently.
Insano shook his head. “It’s impossible,” he sighed. “But here we are. And - even if we’re enemies, it’s better than not having an Oscar at all.” He flashed Linksano a hint of a smile.
Linksano returned the grin. “You mentioned introducing your son to his uncle,” he reminded his not-quite-brother.
“He’s asleep right now,” Insano noted, “but he should be waking up in an hour or so. In the meantime, I’ve been working with some friction problems in Neutro’s hip and ankle joints, and considering how often your current boss has stolen the stupid giant robot from me, I can’t imagine that he’d be particularly upset at your helping me?” He gave Linksano a hopeful look.
It had been a long time since Linksano had worked with Wayne, any Wayne, on a project. “I could certainly take a look,” he said, smiling.
“Excellent!” Insano chortled gleefully, and the Schlumper Brothers dashed into Spoony’s garage, tools in hand.