NA1SS Calling ROU65 [Peter]

Peter was pretty certain other people underestimated the amount of math Peter did, even just on a daily basis. Heck, when Peter was younger, he too totally underestimated the amount of math he would have to do in the future. He was pretty certain he did more math than most of the older Nations, too. It was a byproduct of insisting on doing so much himself. Suddenly, he was calculating finances, looking up old formulas to prevent overfishing, calculating the efficiency ratings on each new design of generator, elevator, ventilation system, calculating the best times to put his show on the air, even practicing calculations for things like building helicopters.

It was probably a good thing that he had some inborn like of math, Peter figured, as someone with less of a math inclination would probably have gone mad and shoved a lot of it off to someone who better knew what they were doing. Not Peter! He could do a lot of that himself. As it was, he rarely let anyone else go in any of the areas with high-voltage wires, since he was a bit harder to hurt permanently via electrocution, he figured he shouldn't have anyone else doing the math to figure out what voltage those wires should be. Common sense, right?

...you know, next time his brother tried to convince Peter that he needed a better education or something equally as silly, Peter would just show him one of the scratch books that he had, filled with such wonderful things as calculus and physics! That'd show him. If anything, this independence thing was giving him the most unforeseen and yet brilliant crash course in just about everything. He made a mental note: show work to brother, see if he can understand any of it.

The math Peter was doing at the moment, however, was significantly less fundamental than making sure all of his systems were as efficient and useful as possible. He was actually trying to match up his equations with the ones a friend of his had given him earlier. See, Peter would always be better at math when it resulted in something he could touch and hold. While the math he was trying to replicate had practical applications, they certainly were difficult to hold. It was a good thing that he and his friend (mostly his friend) would figure out the schedule for a while in advance, then.

Peter chewed on the end of his pencil, looked at his result, sighed, and went to go figure out where he'd made the mistake. It did not help that it was three in the morning, of course. Nor did it help that his handwriting, always made in neat little near-perfect boxes, had started to skew sideways on top of itself, overlapping from moments when he wasn't paying attention. He was mostly just trying to pass time (and stay awake) long enough to for the friend he was waiting for to become available.

He still nearly dropped his pencil and jumped pretty high when the radio in the otherwise completely unmanned communications room came to life with a crackle. He rubbed his ears for a moment below the headset he had on. He'd made the volume way too high, considering that there was absolutely no one else awake. He adjusted the volume with the headset off, waited a moment, put it back on, and caught the end of his friend's transmission. Anna! Nevermind the fact that this had been scheduled in advance, he was still glad to hear from her.

"ROU65 hears you loud and clear, NA1SS," he said. His voice was still pitched completely normally, though he found it kind of funny that Anna always tried to sound so professional. If Peter realized that he did basically the same thing, falling into a slightly more commanding voice, maybe he wouldn't have found it quite as funny. Especially since it sounded a bit more like his brother than his voice normally did. "Sorry it took a bit to answer, I had the volume way too loud and jumped about three feet in the air when I first heard you." He's grinning. "So, how's things been with you?"

It was a good thing that his radio was actually working, all things considered, not that Peter would mention that to Anna. There were still wires everywhere, but one of the first things he'd fixed up was the essentials to at least call Anna. What he really did not want to do was make her worry. Or, for that matter, have any reason to bring up the fact that he'd recently met her Papa at all. Because that would be an awkward conversation at best, a very, very painful one at worst, and Peter wanted to avoid that at all costs.

It wasn't entirely Anna's fault, after all, that Peter was currently conflicted on whether her Papa was simply an utter jerk or only mostly a jerk with some inability to tell right from wrong. Which was also a jerk. He sort of just didn't want to think about it. Therefore, topic to avoid. He made a mental note to change the subject completely if it ever got too close to that. (Well, unless Anna insisted, or asked really, really nicely, because then Peter would probably end up venting anyway- he wasn't really prepared to tell her no).

So of course, Peter smiled, opened his mouth, and broke that mental note almost immediately. "I've been doing lots of repairs and maintenance, but I'm always doing that, though I did have to do some work on the radio equipment recently but it's all good now!" He'd said that with absolutely no breaths between his phrases and as though there was no punctuation in the sentence, speeding up towards the end as he inwardly groaned at his inability to use a proper filter late at night. In the morning. Both. Either?

The "lots of repairs and maintenance" thing was actually something Peter assumed Anna would be doing too, from the moment that he figured out that she was a space station and not an alien. Unless she was technically an alien, since she wasn't entirely born on earth, though she was made on earth... But that was off topic. Peter tended to be surprisingly obsessive over making sure everything was running properly, mostly because it just felt gross when there was a problem. Since Anna was sort of like him, he'd always assumed that was part of it for her, too. Except, you know, more critical, since she was in space.

He moved quickly to the next subject, hoping that Anna did not ask why he had to do work on the radio equipment. "Oh! I saw Uncle Mathias earlier, too! He had a real-life lightsaber! He wouldn't let me take it apart, though... Wait. You might not know what that is. You know what Star Wars is, right? It's like a sword made out of a laser! I have no idea how it works, and I want to know. But I guess it makes sense that he wouldn't let me mess with it too much, since I know for a fact that Uncle Mathias would have no idea how to put it together..." He shrugged- Peter was one to quickly forget that there was no line of sight between the two of them.

The thing about communicating over radio was that neither Peter nor Anna could see each other. They'd both tried describing each other over the radio before, but Peter sort of wondered what they would be like over video communication. Would things still work the same way? There'd be the added layer of body language, of course, but would they still be able to be as close of friends? You know, when Peter would show up like he was now, in oil-coated clothes that wouldn't come clean, filled with tears, the sorts of things he wore when no one would care what he looked like? Would one of them be bigger than the other, taller? They'd both determined they were probably about the same age- how did that work, anyway?

What would she think when, since they had to talk at certain times, he showed up with a few electrical burns, frazzled hair, and wet skin? Or when he showed up tired and still smiling? Or when he showed up not smiling at all, because it was easier to not pretend for a moment? Would she still think the same things of him? Or what about her? What if she showed up, still doing repairs, or showed up and was nicer or older or prettier or stranger? What would he think? Would she get more intimidating?

But this was somewhat silly to think about. If Peter had anything close to the technology required to talk using video, he'd have to be using it for something else. That was a given. Wires were still exposed around Peter from where he was doing repairs, and he kicked one of them, feeling a twitch. Plus, if he tried to install video of some kind, it would probably be really, really disorienting for a bit, since he'd probably be hit with some kind of vision tweak. He didn't like that. It sounded like the sort of thing that would make him trip over his own feet more often than not.

As much as some part of him really, really wanted to see Anna's face, he also had to know that he had to survive first, talk to his friends second. And if that meant losing direct communication with Raivis, well, he'd gained it some with Anna. And if that meant losing Anna, he wasn't entirely sure what would happen. He'd probably just take the blow. He was getting far too good at that sort of thing...

"I'm glad too!" he said, more referring to Anna's repairs, rather than his own, though he was extremely glad he'd repaired as fast as he did. He even thought he'd only have to miss a few broadcasts before going back on the air. Anna's Papa was going to be furious, but Peter had accepted that risk. He hoped Russia hadn't told Raivis that the show was done with. He still wanted Raivis to hear it. He hoped that Russia had. He didn't want Raivis to get in trouble.

"Apollo 13? That sounds like the sort of thing I wouldn't want to watch in your situation, like, uh, how I don't like watching things about fires. Fires are scary. I don't like them. It does sound scary..." He shuddered for a moment. He didn't much like anything about boats sinking, either, or things with a lot of flooding. It hit a little too close to recent fears, to a 'what if' and 'could be' that he didn't want to think about. 

"I'm not sure George Harrison would have been able to act as well in zero gravity. Don't you have to train a bunch to learn to take conditions like that?" he said, seriously considering it. Han Solo was, of course, Peter's favorite. He liked Luke, certainly, who had the Force, but he liked Han Solo better, because he didn't have the Force or anything, was almost less than the people he traveled with, but never really showed it and kept up with them anyway. He liked that idea. Plus, he liked Han Solo's realism. "Plus, would zero gravity work the same in hyperspace? That is faster than light, and that always makes normal physics go all weird, since it's not supposed to work like that..." He shrugged. He chalked it up to movie silliness.

He nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah! A real lightsaber! He apparently got it from the Disney Vaults, something about getting drunk with your Dad? I'm... actually not entirely certain. From the sound of things, he was really, really drunk, so I'm going to take his story with a grain of salt." He certainly took anything his brother said while drunk with a grain of salt, too, after all. "But it was cool! It cut through metal and stuff, and was weird to hold, because you can't feel the weight of the blade, since it's made of light and probably some kind of gas? I'm not entirely sure- like I said, he wouldn't let me take it apart." He gave a purposefully dramatic sigh. "I probably could have put it back together, too..."

The radio room Peter's sitting in might be mostly repaired, but it's not entirely so. For one, there are still exposed wires in places where things were still being worked on, like the one Peter had kicked earlier. Around them, yellow tape and hand-written signs warned not to touch without thick gloves. Shutting the power off to the section was, of course, the other feasible option, but it also meant shutting off power to communications in general, which was significantly less good. So mostly Peter just determined he'd do it. He was less prone to shocking and could handle it quickly, anyway. Perfectly- uh, well, semi-safe...?

He valued his communication in a different way than most people, since it was a voice like no other, a voice that let him really, really give his opinion. More than that, though. He thought what he was doing was important, and feeling important was good for a lot, a whole lot, of reasons. It also did more than that, though! It sort of represented him, in a way. So maybe it wasn't necessary to survive, but it was definitely necessary to live. Besides, Peter hated not being able to talk and especially hated sounding... like that.

Besides, even if communication wasn't important to him, Anna was someone Peter felt might, just maybe, understand him in a way other people hadn't. Plus, she was in space. She couldn't have that many people to talk to. If he lost contact with her, he would... he wasn't certain, but he'd do something! Yeah! Something!

He kicked his feet some more, smiling as Anna started talking on, hanging onto most of her words. It really was too bad he hadn't taken apart that lightsaber. Think of the many applications! In industry! In life in general! In physics! Just imagine the physics behind a device like that, and the chemistry, and the everything! Come to think of it, if Uncle Mathias and Anna's Daddy really had gotten it from Disney, why hadn't Disney started selling it and revolutionized technology? Then again, a war started soon after... Maybe they hadn't wanted to make things worse. Though, could a lightsaber do much against bombs and bullets? Peter wasn't certain.

He certainly trusted Anna's grasp on weird physics better than he trusted his own grasp on weird physics, especially anything faster-than-light, since from what Peter understood physics just sort of broke completely if you passed light speed. Like, actually broke and stopped working. Peter didn't have to use that stuff too often, though. Most of his physics was nice and Newtonian. Not all of it, mind you, but most of it didn't require the type of physics he was pretty sure Anna had to deal with. Plus, he could touch and model most of his stuff if he had to.

Also, huh. Wow. He'd never thought about all of that gravity stuff, but... He frowned. There was no way all of those planets had the same gravity, let alone the moons! There could totally be artificial gravity in buildings, but they weren't in buildings most of the time. The gravity in the Death Star, at least, made since in its uniformity, since the Empire was human-centric and tended to ignore and discriminate against other species, but... hey. Humans lived everywhere! Shouldn't they have evolved differently depending on levels of gravity and environment? They were humans, but still, they should at least have different racial features, depending on location!

...huh. And now something about Star Wars would be a bit broken in his head from this moment on. Well. He would probably be mentally calculating how the Death Star, supposedly the size of a moon, should have had gravity enough to affect the trajectories of the starcraft that flew around it. He thought about this for a moment as Anna kept talking, so when she stopped, he blinked for a moment before looking up. "Eh? No! You aren't talking too much at all! I talk a lot too, you know! Besides, this is sort of interesting, even if I won't be able to stop thinking about it in the movies from now on," he said somewhat rapidly. "I just had a thought, too. Shouldn't even the humans have different racial features depending on planet? I mean, because of evolution and different nutrient levels and stuff? But they all kinda just look the same wherever, except with some differences, but not because of different size planets with different biomes and gravities, but just 'cause they were cast differently."

He paused to think about it for a moment.

"...honestly never going to think of Star Wars in the same way at this point. I mean, I know the prequels and the animated shows introduced more and more aliens, too, and they were cool and made sense, but why are humans so ubiquitous? Well, other than the fact that it's much easier to cast humans than aliens. I don't know any aliens, after all, unless you count, but I'm pretty sure we decided you didn't?" He tapped his foot for a moment. "Should people have even been able to walk some places? I'm pretty sure Cloud City was supposed to be on a gas giant, and I know those would have a lot of mass and a lot of gravity... At least some things take place on the Forest Moon of Endor, but that's a moon! It should have lower gravity!"

He paused for another moment before laughing. "Then again, it is a movie, and I probably shouldn't be thinking about it this hard. I'm just really curious now! How did everything work, anyway?" He grinned. "Suppose it doesn't really matter, but if I had time, it would be interesting to try to make something science-fictiony that took into account things like that... It'd be hard, too, though. Would probably need your help. And someone else's. I'm not always the best at writing. If you haven't heard my radio show before, I gave up on pre-scripting a lot of it. It turned out worse than my typical rambles, ahah..." He rubbed the back of his head before adding, in a whispered, under-the-breath noise, "(Wonder how I could get some of that to you..)"

Peter nods. He does, in fact, post his radio show online! It's one of the main ways to get it out to people! "Yeah! I do put it online!" he says, excited. And then he pauses. He definitely put his radio show online, but... "...admittedly, the current episode is probably the easiest to get to, though. It's not... the best organized website? I'm not good at coding so I get Lad to help, but I can't always get his help, and also it doesn't help that we have to keep switching servers because people keep kicking us off and things and at least once- more than once, actually- we had to move to prevent sabotage or a complete takedown of some kind? So a lot of older episodes are hard to find or not there at all... The oldest ones weren't ever posted online, too, so you can't find those very easily... I probably need to work on archival, now that I think about it..."

He pauses to think about that- the fact that he had to keep moving servers like this. In a weird measure, that almost meant that he'd made it, right? That he'd irritated people who didn't like his point of view so much, they wanted to get rid of his show? Sometimes, it was probably just because he occasionally bordered on "not-very-legal" with some of his attempts to stay on air and such, but, uh, just getting his opinion out shouldn't be illegal. Not ever, really. So if people were trying to shut him down, that meant he'd done something, right? That was worth thinking about, really.

He paused. Archival. Wait. "...some of the older episodes are actually really embarrassing," Peter said. "In the beginning, for example, I would get super excited about things and peak the mic, because I didn't know what I was doing yet. Or sometimes they're just embarrassing because I ramble the whole time." He paused. "There were several after I met you, actually, where I ranted about how science funding was still important and wouldn't stop being important," he added, blushing slightly. "I totally believe that anyway, but I do remember some confusion as to what had brought that one on, because I ranted for like half an hour about it and that's impressive." He rubbed the back of his head. What had brought it on was that he'd become friends with the International Space Station, and he didn't like seeing friends hurt, but explaining that would have been difficult.

Peter actually rather thought that a lot of his episodes could be somewhat embarrassing, looking back... or potentially upsetting, in some cases. Like any of the episodes during the invasion of Latvia. Those... those he'd been nothing but a wreck during. He hadn't tried to show it, and some were better than others, but a whole lot of them showed him essentially panicking about a close friend's troubles, really. Peter paused. "...depending on how much news you actually want about the war... it's probably safer to skip the last thirty minutes," he finally added.

The last thirty minutes were normally just numbers and names. Peter wasn't so sure Anna wanted to hear those.

Science fiction movies were probably a safer subject, anyway, because Peter knew Anna was like him and didn't want everyone to keep fighting, and like him in that her heart ached every time that she remembered she had people on both sides to care about. Except for her it was probably worse, because her Papa and her Daddy were two of the giants of the war. In Peter's case, he had some neutrals, his brother, Latvia, a bunch of micronation friends who were mostly in Alliance states, and recently, Venezuela (it didn't take much for Peter to consider someone a friend- just being noticed at all was sometimes enough). Which was, okay, somewhat terrifying sometimes, but couldn't possibly be as terrifying as knowing your parents were fighting each other, even if just through proxy. He couldn't imagine what it would be like, if Momma and Daddy were fighting...

"...I don't think it will completely ruin the movie," Peter said at last. "It's actually sorta fun to think about! It's always good when movies are scientifically accurate, but it's probably hard to do when it's something as big as Star Wars, where we probably don't even know all the science that would have had to be made up for it!" Peter shrugged. "Besides, the Force is basically magic, so we clearly aren't dealing with a completely logical universe, anyway- don't try to say it's midichlorians I'll take it but that still doesn't adequately explain the magic," he said, though he was giggling slightly by the end of his statement. Clearly, he was not taking this as a terribly serious affair.

He grinned. "Yeah! Maybe at some point we could write a space story, together!" he said, excitedly. "Ooh- wait, no! Maybe it could be a radio show! If we could get some good actors for it, those can be cool! Like- uh, what's a good one that has to do with space- have you ever listened to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio show? It came before the books. It's pretty awesome, I think, and that's only partially because it was on the radio. It's also very silly, and I don't think any of the science would work at all, but that's not really the point." He grinned. "You might like it!"

Peter grins. He does like the Hitchhiker's Guide. There's a certain fondness, of course, that he'd always have for radio shows, especially successful ones. Radio remains dear to his heart, after all, given that the original intention of Paddy Roy Bates in coming to the abandoned Fort Roughs was to set up a pirate radio station. It was part of why he chose to call his show a radio show and broadcast it on live airwaves, even if more people listened to it more like a podcast and it would probably be a little easier just to make it one (Peter's lack of programming skills notwithstanding). There was just something about the radio that was wonderful, or at least, Peter thought so.

And the Hitchhiker's Guide really was a radio show first. "The books are pretty good, too," Peter said, "but they're a little different from the original show. And then they made a game that really had nothing to do with anything and that I kept dying in before I could get out of my bedroom- it maintains the sense of humor- and then the movie-" he paused to make a face. "I didn't like that as much. Then again, a bit like the books, it really wasn't quite like any of the others, or supposed to be, I bet." He shrugged. "I find them funny! It's just that sometimes their humor gets a little... what's a good word... nihilistic? Yeah. Because Arthur Dent, no matter how he tries, just can't make up for his rotten luck and the universe's sheer randomness." 

He paused for a moment. "...that almost makes the humor a little sad, when put that way..." He thought for a moment more before shrugging. "Doesn't make it less funny, though, and I figured I could ignore the science about when people started putting fish in their ears." That was a fairly good way of putting it, he thought. 

"...huh. Maybe quantum would help," Peter finally said to the Star Wars things. "Though my understanding of that was that it only did much to really, really small things...?" Like electrons and stuff. Quantum was why electrons could be refracted like light, and quantum tunneling was the effect that allowed electrons to cross twisted wires, since otherwise they couldn't travel through the air, and why light was weird and could act as a particle and a wave, and had complicated math that was somewhat calming to do because it took a lot of focus and fancy math to do things like the Schrödinger equation. He wasn't very good at it, though, partially because it wasn't terribly useful to him, since everything he worked with could do just fine with classical physics, most of the time.

And then Anna pauses for longer than a typical moment. If it weren't for the sounds the radio was still making, Peter might have started worrying. Instead, he let her think- and then she started talking. Peter immediately felt guilty. She was completely right, of course. Peter shouldn't have any say in what information she got. The information she got was probably already somewhat limited, since she was in space and had two protective fathers who likely didn't want her to know the extent to which they seemed to want to murder each other.

(Seriously, Peter couldn't tell sometimes if it was their continued rivalry or if they actually wanted the other one to die. It was disconcerting, especially since he now had a vested interest in both of their wellbeings, and in them getting along. Whenever he mentioned it, though, someone would just remind him how bad he was sometimes at reading relationships like that, mutter something about sexual tension, and just leave him more confused.)

But still... Peter sighed. "You're right. Sorry," he mumbled. "I just- uh- the last bit, it's normally just names and numbers, and..." A brief shudder ran down his back. "...well, used to be names and numbers but more and more lately even if I just break it down to family members and important people there are always too many names and there are always more and I hate this stupid war," he said. He didn't want to talk about the numbers, the half-complete reports he'd find from areas neither side of the war wanted anyone talking about...  "...it just hurts a little and I didn't want you worrying about me, or, or- or getting stuck because all you're doing is listing figures and it never gets less terrible..."

(Peter was still too young at heart for this. He did it anyway.)

(Peter hadn't listened to the Hitchhiker's Guide in forever because he'd like to think things could change.)

It took Peter a moment to realize that he'd probably said a bit too much, but not in the way people would complain about because he was rambling. In an entirely different way. "Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to say all of that, I mean, uh..." He felt sort of guilty again, now. He didn't want to upset her...

Peter blushed slightly. Even as Anna reassured him that he'd done nothing to make things worse for her, at least as far as his babbling went, he was thinking that he'd probably ought to work on actually using his mental filter. He had one, he swore he had one! He can hold his tongue! Sometimes, at least. The problem is, once he starts to talk, saying absolutely everything starts to seem like a wonderful idea, and his enthusiasm or worry or and anger or emotion in general take control, and before he knows it, he's said about three gazillion more things than he intended to. This was especially glaringly obvious when he was talking to Anna, 'cause all they could do was talk, and he didn't have Anna's facial expressions and actions to put a limit on his speech.

He also didn't like worrying Anna. She had a lot of things to worry about herself, after all. She was in space. Space was dangerous. Peter didn't have to know much about space to know that- all he had to do to know that was watch movies! And Peter knew more than just watching movies, too! He had trouble getting enough clean fresh water occasionally- he was surrounded by it, but making salt water into something drinkable was only theoretically simple, especially once one took harmful pollutants into account. He couldn't imagine having to worry about just having enough air, or more correctly, enough of the reactants that were stored in order to create air. 

And it was her parents who were fighting, too, so he should probably stop talking and thinking and just sort of listen, shouldn't he? And he did. Beyond the crackling static that ate the background of the feed and Anna's voice, everything was fairly quiet. It was late at night, and the radio room was designed to be a bit more quiet, no whirring air vents and no background noise where there didn't have to be. Peter could hear the water. He liked hearing the water. It made him feel better- actually, that was something he always missed when he was elsewhere. He had trouble sleeping when he couldn't hear water.

Peter waited until Anna was all the way done speaking before talking, just listening, and then was a little quiet for a moment. The first thing he said was: "It's weird to think about me being older than you, even if it's true. You don't sound older than me, and you've even said you're growing- which isn't fair, by the way, I don't think I've grown more than two inches in the past fifteen years." He paused.

The second thing he said was: "I think that's a really good dream, and I don't think it's all that silly at all, if that means anything." He grinned. "It's not all that different from me, anyway- I want everyone to get along like a family, and even if it's ridiculous, I maintain that it's possible. You just gotta keep on thinking these things are possible, and then someday, they just have to be!" he said with conviction. "If there isn't a good guy, or a bad guy, all we have to do is get them to realize that." Maybe it was the ocean, maybe it was the lateness of the hour, maybe it was just the hope that came from talking to Anna at all, maybe it was the fact that he'd not grown up yet, but every part of him really, really believed that. Besides, people always acted like cynicism was more mature, more adult. Why did it have to be, though? Seeing a world full of darkness and finding light in it- that was where the real people came from, the real people to admire. 

Peter was very glad he got to talk to Anna. He wasn't sure why, but he felt a bit better now. He didn't really want to talk about it more, but he felt better anyway. He probably should keep on working on that mental filter, though.

So he gladly fell back to the subject of science fiction and quantum theory. "The problem is that quantum does apply to big things, sorta, it's just a negligible effect, so classical physics works just fine," he said. "...I think. To be fair, it's... hard to really tell... I mean, the math still works, but the effect isn't exactly observable..." He shrugged.

Peter frowned at Anna's next statement. It was getting late. He'd just been noticing that. "I didn't realize we'd been talking so long already," he mumbled. Time flies, doesn't it? He looked down at the radio. A sheet of paper with dates neatly printed on it in smudged pencil was taped to it. "Before I start talking a lot again, because I do that, can I make sure you haven't changed any times you'll be avalible. I haven't! I'll be here." At one point, Peter had gotten Anna to help him work out a bunch of times and dates that they could be available. That way, they didn't have to worry that they'd keep missing each other, since they knew when they'd be around. The one downside came in the form of worrying, as in, missing a time was worrying and didn't necessarily make it easy to get back in contact to explain that missed time. It was easier than guessing, though.