[Backdated to 9/9] @silent | open

[callada]

IMPORTANT: I need someone with medical training to meet me at the shoreline near the river. I've found what looks to be my own dead body.

Please hurry.

[Attached is a photo, lit dimly by his lantern, of what does indeed look like his recognizeable corpse floating in the water, hooked through the cheek and attached to a discarded fishing pole lying some feet away on the pebbles.

This is of course in reference to this exploration thread.]

Comments

[lunchbreaks]

Not quite. I think it's just... very similar to pictures I've seen of a place on Earth. America, perhaps. I haven't been in quite some time, myself.

[ By that he means close to a hundred years. But who's counting? ]

Well, I'm glad you're taking control of the project in any case.

[callada]

It's no big deal. I'm hardly doing anything, just noting down what's already there.

[Will is the one doing the real work, running the numbers, trying to make sense of what they're seeing. He's just providing the images. Maybe some of the ideas. More than he would have expected to but as the doctor says, he's not used to seeing the stars from the surface of a world.]

So, if you're an angel that visits Earth, you're actually from Heaven, right? What's it like there? Where I'm from, angels and Heaven and gods are all part of a religion, but not one I know much about.

[lunchbreaks]

Oh yes, that's very common, people who don't know much about us. It's-- white, and very sterile. Lots of paperwork, very exclusive, not terribly much music, no little restaurants... Just... celestial harmonies and prayer.

[ That sounds terrible, Aziraphale. ]

But I don't visit the dead - I was stationed on Earth for a long time. Actually.

[ He hasn't told anyone this yet so even though no one's listening, he drops his voice: ]

I haven't been back for an extended time for six thousand years.

[callada]

[Sounds awful. At least at Marineford there was food and drink and fun conversations to be had with interesting people, if he felt like seeking them out after the paperwork.]

Oh.

[That is... a long time. That's more time than he knows how to comprehend. Huh. His eyes get a little wider just trying to conceive of it.]

That's... So you must have seen a lot in all of that time. Entire kingdoms rising and falling.