Scratching Records | R.N.A. Melvin Taran | Desert Island Car

Taran

Comedy’s unmistakable “ahaha” could be heard from inside his hut as one of the other passengers set out with them to start a tape. Time to move.

It was nearly sunset, and Taran had spent the last hour or so gathering coconuts and palm leaves solo and bringing them to the gang’s campsite. Ever since the first rumblings of the tapes’ awful, personal contents had made their way around the island he tried to keep watch for this opportunity, and there it was. The videos were unattended and Taran didn’t feel like any self-reflection today, so he thought he’d just skip to the end.

With the others some distance away, he walked into the messy hut and located the VHS with his name on it. Other than in school he might never have seen such things, but with the help of a friend deep in a hipster phase he was now pretty familiar with tape media. All that needed doing was to wind the tape to the end while Comedy was out, and he could breeze through the requirements of the car without… getting ruffled. Maybe leave just a little to watch so that whatever system made the doors work would count it. Taran wedges a small scrap of driftwood into the center of one spool, his pocketknife into the other, and gets to fast-forwarding.

…Hm, it’s a little clicky. He can feel some slight, irregular bumps as he moves the tape from one side to the other. He pulls the top of the case back to expose the tape and as it moves he catches sight of a little ridge. Somebody had physically spliced pieces of of the magnetic tape together, and it hadn’t been done very well.

So whoever made these could extract thoughts from your head, but couldn’t edit them without scissors and glue? Or maybe they were cobbled together by a third party. Neko-Neko was some kind of interloper on the train, but it seemed like a fully sapient robot, it had to come from somewhere. Plus you’d think it could line up the tape better than this…

Melvin Greene

This was so dumb. Wow, there was a thought Melvin hadn’t had about literally anything else so far. It still felt so weird to be awake during hours with natural(…?) light shining down, doubly so in an environment like this. Feeling lost as hell, though? Yeah, that’s familiar enough. Right now, his only real aim is getting out of what’s left of the sun while he can still find his way back to the only thing resembling shelter. That seems like the thing to do right now. Stake out a spot or something.

Maybe after he gets past this interaction first, though. There was Taran, someone who actually seemed decently cool, but seeking out conversation was just such a pain. But what was he doing? Tampering with one of the tapes?

“You can just do that?”

He blurts that out without even thinking. Or saying hi first but at least he seems vaguely impressed under his usual Melvinyness by the revelation that You Can In Fact Mess With These Particular Tapes. All this time he’d just sort of assumed you… couldn’t? And he hadn’t actually tried to, either. And he still wasn’t going to until getting confirmation it Worked. But there was a possibility to avoid ending up on America’s Unfunniest Home Videos, and, well, of course he’d prefer that. These tapes sucked soooo muuuuch.

“… Show me how to do that when you’re done, I’m not wasting any time on this either.”

At least say please man. Cmahn.

Taran

Initially Taran jumps and fumbles his implements, but he relaxes quickly once Melvin’s question registers. Oh yeah, he can work with this.

“O-oh! Hey dude. I’m not perfectly sure that this’ll do anything, but check this out.” He points out the splicing.

“Somebody went to a lot of trouble to stick this stuff together, and I figure that at least means it works like normal tapes, it’s not just some video game prop BS. Maybe we can set it to start right at the end and skip out on some bad memories.”

Melvin Greene “… Show me how to do that when you’re done, I’m not wasting any time on this either.”

That’s a good start, but Taran wanted to… emphasize the cooperative nature of the situation. It’s just more efficient for Melvin to be in on this, after all. It’s a bonding opportunity. It’s teamwork. He picks up his pocketknife and gets back to winding as he talks.

“If you stand lookout, I can just do it now. It was obnoxious waiting for the hut to empty out, and there are gonna be limited chances to do it again. And you wouldn’t want to risk someone sneaking up on you while you did it, right? Someone less cool than you, I mean.”

Winky face.

“If it doesn’t do anything to mine, no harm no foul, but if something goes wrong I’ll help you put yours back to normal before you have to watch it. Sound like a plan?”

Melvin Greene

Melvin glances over the tapes at Taran’s prompting, nodding a bit. Not really his flavour of tech-savviness, but looking at them. Yeah, those definitely look like there was some manual effort involved! Cool. And still very freaky. Probably the masked weirdo’s doing.

Taran Maybe we can set it to start right at the end and skip out on some bad memories.

“Now that would be great. I don’t wanna waste any more time here than we gotta.” Reliving what he could pretty strongly suspect were some of the worst days of his life sounded boring on top of terrible.

At least someone’s finally asking him to do something he’s better cut out for. Standing there moderately inconspicuously to make sure nobody caught them doing something They Shouldn’t.

“Hah, I used to stand lookout for way worse than this.” you what “I’ll keep an eye open for ya, no problem.”

It was the least he could do, since Taran was doing him such a (potential) solid. You would never hear him say it out loud but he knows, deep down, that literally everybody here is cooler than him. Except for maybe Comedy, and even that was a very firm ‘maybe.’

“You got it, man.” It almost seems too good to be true? Taran doesn’t really stand to gain anything from helping him here. But to hell with it, he doesn’t wanna watch this tape, and it’s not like Melvin has much to lose here either. He’ll make sure that nobody gets through to meddle with their meddling.