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Wash and Alpha!Church take an unexpected visit to Green
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The track hits a perpendicular road, better-paved, and they need to turn left, which will dump them in the downtown (such as it is) of Goat Track.

The Goat Track downtown has the following buildings:

- a municipal government tower with emergency dispatch, the mayor's office and a couple of others, the snowplow garage, and the disaster shelter basement underneath it all
- a grocery store ("Basket")
- a vehicle charging station which also has horse accommodations, including a horse treat vending machine
- a school/community center building
- a bed-and-breakfast
- a general-non-food-store
- eight houses
- a small apartment building
- a playground
- a vet's office
- a tiny clinic, attached to one of the houses but with its own signage and entrance

It's still quite early; nobody is out on the street (...there's just the one) of Goat Track yet.

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Church is rattling off facts about this place to him and labeling the signs in VR, clearly very pleased with himself and equally clearly keeping himself very distracted. Once or twice he zones out in a way that makes it seem like he might be having some kind of Problem? 

Wash is... not really sure how he feels about that, but it's FINE, because feelings are not important! What's important is that they're making first contact with an unknown civilization! Wash is ready to do his best to make sure they make a good first impression, because they might be stranded here FOREVER.

...Which would also be FINE. It's not like there's anyone back home who'll miss him, and he got his revenge on the program.

He walks up to the municipal government tower, and looks around for an entrance. Is this place open?

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There is a PULL FOR IN PERSON EMERGENCY TRIAGE - §*500 FINE FOR ABUSE, DISPATCHER'S SOLE DISCRETION - DETAILS SITE^GOATTRACK^MUNI^EMERGENCY** sign on a cord he could pull! The door is not open yet. The posted hours are 9:00-3:00***.

*§ is here being used to represent this region's currency, the wheel. (Etymologically, more like a wheel of cheese than like a vehicular wheel, but some of the currency design is also inspired by vehicular wheels, gears, spinning wheels, etc.)
**This is a translation convention for the actual local method of conveying uniform resource locators, obviously, but the features "site", "goat track", "municipal", and "emergency" are indeed provided in that order.
***This is obviously not just a coincidence in how they keep time, they do something else, but unfortunately if I attempt to write a non-Earthly time system all my fingers will fall off, forever depriving you of the glowfic you love. Please assume translation convention.

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Wash reaches for it, and then pauses.

"Do... we qualify as an emergency, locally?" 

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Church snorts. "No, Wash, they get visitors from other worlds in power armor here all the time, it's like their prime import. I just didn't think to mention it!"

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Wash smirks. It's more comforting when he's being at least a bit of an asshole, somehow? More familiar, at least.

He pulls the rope.

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A window up the stairs opens and a woman with a bag over her shoulder marked DISPATCH KIT slides down a pole that's conveniently located for this purpose and looks at them. She kind of double-takes at the projection, then focuses on Wash. "What's the trouble?" she says, businesslike. She's wearing all white except a lavender scarf in her hair and a lavender wide fabric belt thing and lavender shoes.

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The projection says, in a very weirdly accented and slightly stilted accent, "Hello! We are-"

He's interrupted by the man in the power armor, who says something in a language the woman has never heard before. The hologram responds in what must be the same language, tersely, and the two of them have a back-and-forth that... seems like some kind of argument?

...it sure is taking them a while...

<<Look, I don't care if you outrank me! Nobody here has ever heard of the UNSC and I technically have more experience with first contact scenarios than you!>>

       <<Bullshit! When would you have gotten first contact experience?>>

<<Oh, back when we were simulation troopers, we met an alien once.>>

       <<What?>>

<<Yeah, it had some bullshit quest we got roped into trying to help it with because Tucker bonded with one of their swords. It was->>

       <<Okay, stop, stop. (a) I don't care, and (b) this is making us look stupid in front of the dispatcher! Just tell her I said "we come in peace" or something>>

<<Dude, I'm not saying that, it's ridiculous.>>

       <<It's important that we establish our intentions! Our power armor might be really scary-looking!>>

<<Okay, but I'm not saying it like that. What I'll say is>>

"Hello! We are from a different planet, very far away. We used a strange technology in an emergency and it sent us here. We did not know 'here' existed until recently. We mean no harm."


(Author's note: from here on out, text in <<double angle brackets>> will be used to indicate conversations in Church and Wash's native language, at least when they're around Greens)

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In retrospect, Wash probably should have seen this coming! He's still annoyed, though.

<<I'm Agent Washington; the overgrown calculator handling translation calls himself Church>>

      <<Oh, right, introductions! Good idea.>> "My name is Church, and I'm an artificial intelligence! The idiot who's main function in life is carrying me around and complaining is called Agent Washington. It's good to meet you!"

<<...That was way too many syllables for what I told you to say.>>

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The emergency dispatcher does not really look like she gets this all the time. "...is it safe for you to take your helmet off?" she tries.

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"It would be safe, but he doesn't speak the language and it would disconnect the hologram projector and speaker I'm using to talk to you, and he doesn't speak the language. He could open his visor?"

      <<...not sure I want to open my visor right now?>>

<<Why not?>>

      <<I haven't shaved or had a chance to freshen up in a while and my face probably looks kinda fucked up? also->>

"...He says he's reluctant to open his visor because his face is ugly."

      <<Also I could be allergic to something local! I get bad seasonal allergies on some planets!!!>>

<<You couldn't have led with that???>> "...He's also worried about allergies."

      <<Maybe let me finish before you decide what to translate, asshole!>>

<<Holy shit, can you chill a bit?>>

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Wash takes a deep breath, opens his mouth to say something, and then decides to save it for later.

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"It's not going to bother me if your face is ugly and I just want to check to see if you look like a human or if you look like you're from another planet," she says patiently.

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"...So the thing is, he totally does look like a human. Humans, where we're from, have faster than light travel and are one of many known species. You could even say that  I used to be huma-" 

The hologram projection flickers out. 

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Oh, fuck. <<Church? Church, it's not real, it's just a memory! You're not there anymore, buddy, snap out of it!>>

The man in the armor gives an apologetic shrug and reaches a hand up to flip up his visor, revealing his freckled face and his concerned and stressed expression.

Since he comes from a rather different genetic environment, he probably looks extremely foreign! 

...He sneezes, sighs, and puts his visor back up.

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-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

There was another incident; security failed.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

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Yup that's a foreign dude! "Okay. Apart from being - time traveled? - are you having an emergency right now?"

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      <<Church, it's not real, it's just a memory!>>

-AAA oh. Right. That was a long time ago. 

<<Fuck, sorry, I>>

      <<Yeah. I know. Sorry.>>

He replays the audio logs and translates back to Wash.

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<<Uh. You're having an emergency?>>

      <<No, I'm not.>>

<<Are you for real right now?>>

      <<I was having an emergency. I'm not anymore, so it's fine.>>

<<Church...>>

      <<You can bitch all you want but I'm not going to tell her I have mental health problems!>> 

<<...Fine. Tell her I need food and water.>>

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The hologram pops back into existence. He's much less animated than he was 10 seconds ago, and his voice much less expressive.

"Agent Washington hasn't had anything to eat or drink in a while. We don't have other immediate problems."

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"Allergies*?" she asks, opening her kit. "I have peanut butter, sealed omelet, granola bar, and electrolyte drink."

* A broad term covering both medical and strong nonmedical reasons to avoid a substance

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Church has Wash's medical records in the data they stole from the Project. He consults those (carefully, avoiding the surrounding data like it is full of bombs (which it kinda is, when you think about it, which he's not doing))

"No allergies to any of those. I'd recommend the omelet, granola, and electrolyte drink."

      <<Can you ask her if I can eat inside? Don't want to start sneezing from pollen again.>>

"He does seem to have an allergy to some local plant, and would prefer to eat inside, if that's ok" 

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"Uh - yeah, sure," she says, and she opens the front door with a tap of her badge. There's benches inside. She hands over an omelet and a granola bar and a bottle of clear liquid.

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Wash sits down, flips up his helmet's visor, and scarfs down the food. Neither he nor Church seem immediately interested in talking.

He's trying to think about what to say, and also trying to review the things he already knows about AI stability, but he keeps getting stuck thinking about Epsilon. Which isn't very helpful, and is also pretty ironic, all things considered. 

...He hopes Caboose and the others made it out okay.

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The emergency responder watches him for a while, then says, "I'm not really equipped to deal with the time travel thing and I don't think the doctor* is either. Is it okay with you if I call the city hospital and have them pick you up?"

*The doctor of Goat Track is mostly equipped to perform first aid and triage anything of ambiguous concerningness. For things more complicated than "how long should I wait for this to go away on its own before I worry" and "help me get this splinter out", residents of Goat Track and its environs travel to a larger town.

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