(no subject)

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen will be going back to the Capitol soon, but she's had to stay at the Bar for a bit to get some maintenance and repairs done on the suit of recon armor they gave her at the Citadel. When you're accustomed to taking bullet hits and high impact strikes on heavy power armor, you wind up wreaking havoc on your poor recon suit; it's lighter and less resistant to damage. That means a lot of repair, and that means staying in one place until it's done.

It occurred to Ellen as she came downstairs to work on her armor today that it might go faster if she had some music playing in the background to block out conversations and keep her mind focused, so she stops to ask the Bar for a holotape that'll fit into her Pip-Boy's reader.

Five minutes later she's back at the Bar to ask for something to write on and something to write with.

Two Free Drinks
For Whoever Can Please Explain This Song To Me
Bar Gave It To Me And It Makes No Sense At All

A passer-by might note that the holotape next to the stand-up sign is marked 'Billy Joel- We Didn't Start The Fire'.




[OOC: Open until it scrolls off the page!]

Comments

[not_his_pa]

"Hello, Ellen. What's so confusin' about the song?"

He's getting ready to go home, Milliways feels odd without Bill even though he knows Bill's going to come back.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Hi, William," says Ellen, looking up. "Um. The lyrics. I've listened to it once or twice and I got the lyric sheet from the Bar and it still... well, maybe you'd better listen yourself, you'll see what I mean."

[not_his_pa]

"How do I do that?" He's never seen such a small thing play music.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

For answer, Ellen picks it up and slots it into her Pip-Boy. A moment later, the unfamiliar instrument- Ellen still doesn't really grasp what electric guitars are supposed to sound like- crackles to life....

[not_his_pa]

William leans closer to hear, its such a small thing,

"It meant to sound like that?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"As far as I know, yes," says Ellen, "although the only instrument I recognize is the drums..."

And then the words start coming, and she gets the frustrated look.

"Out of the first four names in this stupid song the only one I recognize is 'Red China'."

[not_his_pa]

"Don't know any of them. Are they meant to mean somethin'?"

[ladyfirestarter]

The sign catches Charlie's eye as she passes, and then the person sitting nearby.

"Hi," she says. "Ellen, right?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"That's right," Ellen says. "But no Deathclaws this time. Charlie, I think?"

[ladyfirestarter]

"Yeah. What's this song that doesn't make sense?"

(She may be secretly hoping it's "Birdhouse In Your Soul", having been enchanted with the explanation ever since she first heard it.)

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Um." Ellen looks down at the tape. "'We Didn't Start The Fire', it says. I'm... assuming that's metaphorical, somehow."

[ladyfirestarter]

Charlie's eyebrows make a leap for her hairline, and she very carefully muffles a laugh.

"I think so, yeah. Let me see ... yeah, I remember this one."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Okay," says Ellen, "because I only recognize a few of the things that show up in the words and some of them just don't seem to make any sense at all in context. I mean, I know it starts around 1949 because that's when China went Communist but...."

[tesla_bot]

"This one I know, but I'll have to pass on the drinks," says Robo, "Hello Ellen."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I'll get you something else then, if you like," Ellen says. "Hi, Robo. How've you been?"

[tesla_bot]

"Nah," says Robo, "I'm good for now. But I've got to ask, did any parts of the song make sense?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"A few words here and there," Ellen admits. "I mean, everybody who knows any history at all back home knows about Red China, and the H-bomb... um, and Einstein of course, that was part of both history and science class... oh, and the bit about the space monkey. And I remember thalidomide from Dad's medical texts, since that's where he taught me to read. But the rest... not so much. You'd think there'd be more Chinese names."

[tesla_bot]

"I'd lay money that what's going on is different histories," says Robo, "This probably came from one closer to mine than yours."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I keep running into that here," Ellen says with a sigh. "Just when I think I'm used to the weird alternate universes, something like this comes up."

[claudiometer]

"...Well," Claudia says, after she finds the label on the holotape, "most to all of it's stuff that happened before my time. But I can fill in some of the gaps."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"That'll work," Ellen says. "It's all long before I was born anyway, if it really is a history study guide."

[claudiometer]

"It is and it isn't. It covers a lot of major events and people from 1945 through the '80s, but I always kinda thought the point was that things change, his generation didn't change them first and they won't be the last one to change things. Either way, it's a fun one to try to keep up with."
...At least Bar didn't give her "It's the End of the World As We Know It"?

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Oh," says Ellen. "Okay, I... guess I could see that. Sorry, we don't really have music like that back home."

At all.

[claudiometer]

Claudia blinks a few times, but rallies before she can say the obvious and dumb thing of 'you don't?'
"O...kay," she says, "I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say it's not remotely accurate to your world, since if you bypassed rock and roll entirely that's a good eight or nine references down the toilet right there. It's accurate to mine, or at least Artie hasn't told me otherwise so far."
That's the thing about the Warehouse: You can't ever rule out the possibility that something wacky was going on behind the scenes.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"As far as I know we did," Ellen says. "I know that there's a man here who swears up and down that James Hendrix played electric guitar somehow. I wouldn't even know how that works, but James Hendrix was the father of the classical and jazz guitar renaissances where I come from."