In this episode recapping season 1 and 2, we hear the timeline-locked log of Officer Armin Nassif from the Time Travel and Interdimensional Regulations Agency (TARTI), where he catches his alternate selves up on his history with Loaf, Janet, and the rest of the Solutions To Problems crew.
Nassif: This is the timeline-locked log of Officer Armin Nassif, timeline J4 twelve beta, year [REDACTED].
Hello, Armin. If you’re listening to this, you’ve returned to your own time and found things slightly altered, but since your paradox protector shielded you from the changes, you don’t have any memory of the timeline you now live in. Most likely you already know this, but maybe recording these isn’t standard procedure in the reality you come from. Anyway, in this reality, TARDI got so behind on paperwork from agents not remembering what had happened in this version of the now that they instituted new rules mandating that agents record briefs for themselves on all ongoing cases, assignments and persons of interest.
Your first person of interest: me. Well, you. If you are hearing this and you’re not me, it probably means your actions have caused me to be wiped from the timestream. You son of a bootstrap paradox. But no. In all seriousness, I’m confident you are basically me, but just in case, in the interest of being thorough, here’s some audio files to give you an idea of who I am- who you are- in the timeframe:
[clip from episode 5]
Loaf: Anyway, enough about me. Probably too much information for our listeners out there. You know how humans are about acknowledging they have bodies. Why don’t you tell us a little about the man inside the body?
Nassif: Like I said last time, I’ve been with TARTI for almost ten years now. Or, it’s been ten years chronologically since I was trained as an agent. Measures of time become meaningless when you’re chasing down criminals across multiple dimensions.
Loaf: Interesting. So ten years from your perspective, or the universe’s?
Nassif: Ten years from the universe’s perspective. We keep watches on us to track our relative time in accordance to our aging processes, so that we can minimize physical damage as much as possible. By that count it’s 11 or 12 years, depending on which frame of reference you use.
[clip from episode 8]
Loaf: Welcome back to the show, Officer Nassif. Is it “back”?
Cadet Nassif: Uh, this is the first time in my recollection that I’ve ever spoken to you. I’m not sure when I even gave you this number? What is this? Who are you?
Janet: Oh! So, in your future-slash-our past, you signed a contract to help us with a few letters, we're like, an advice show, regarding time wobbliness. Or something. You will? You did? I don’t know if it applies retroactively, but, you know, we're assuming so!
Cadet Nassif: I think it does? I haven’t covered that in my temporal law class yet. I’m doing a study abroad program ten years in my own future.
Nassif: So that’s a little about me. You. Us. Umm.. Moving on. The other two voices you heard on that recording are the perpetual thorns in my side known as Loaf and Janet, hosts of the galaxy's most useless and self-indulgent advice show- Solutions to Problems. Somehow we got roped into being their “time travel consultant” - a job we’ve tried to wrestle out of to no avail.
We’ll get to Janet later, as she’s involved with a number of ongoing investigations. First here’s some more background on “Loaf” - not his real name, but I can’t pronounce that. Maybe you’ll have more success:
(clip from episode 5)
Janet: Loaf, do you have kids?
Loaf: I do have biological offspring, but our family models differ significantly from humans’, to my understanding. Due to the massive number of individuals required to create a child, our offspring are raised in communal nurseries. My gender is traditionally not involved in the child-rearing so soon after hatching.
Janet: Uh, okay. Right. Uh, anyway. Uh, wait- How many- nevermind. I don’t need to know this. Does anyone? Anyway.
Loaf: I think I have twelve. I imagine I’ll meet them all sooner or later. What’s the rush?
(from episode 9)
Loaf: It sounds like there’s a lot of unclear communication happening here in general. Polyamory functions best when each participant is clear on their relationship with each other participant. For example, I perform the mating dance with my broodbrothers for our protowives, then I fertilize a clutch of eggs third, approximately a week after the previous fertilization. That’s my role. If I were to try to perform the mating dance with my broodsisters for my psuedointerlocutor or try to fertilize the eggs before my second demi-husband, the broodlings could come out horribly deformed. Sorry, TMI.
(from mini-episode 1)
Clutchmate: Eeeheeheehee. Loaf. periwinkle. Whatever it is you’re calling yourself now. This is your clutch mate, [dolphin noise.] Your broodmom, your first demihusband and your second protowife have all been calling you for weeks and they've heard nothing. They thought maybe you'd be more likely to answer a message if it was sent in this ridiculous human language, so they asked me to call you, since I speak ridiculous human.
We're all worried about you, Eeeheeheehee. Also your family wants to start a new clutch of eggs. When are you going to get over this ridiculous idea of being an intergalactic radio host and come back to the mud pits? We have radio shows here, you know. Well, sort of radio shows. Obviously ours have an olfactory component. But, the point is, we miss you! Please call your broodmom and at least let her know if you'll be home for the caterpillar festival.
(from episode 12)
Janet: You don’t broadcast the English version of this show to your home planet, right? Just the *dolphin noise* version?
Loaf: We don’t broadcast live to Armulus Four Zeta Zombort, no. I like to have time to edit things…
Janet: Oh, Armulus four Zeta Zombort? I don’t think you’ve ever said that before! For some reason I totally thought you were from Armulus Two. sighs
Loaf: The Armulus Four Zeta Zombort tourism board sent me an e-mail recently asking if I could drop the name in an episode. I think they’re hoping it will bring people in? Not sure why though, I mean humans can’t really survive there for longer than a few minutes.
Nassif: As frustrating as Loaf can be from time to time, he’s almost the most pleasant person I have to interact with whenever I find myself at the IFM2 subspace radio station- and you will find yourself there far more often than you’d like. First, there’s Frankie- IFM2’s research assistant/ cultural sensitivity specialist/ one felinoid legal department. She basically keeps the place running:
(from episode 6)
Frankie: Um.. hello? Were you asking for me?
Janet: Intern, yes, hello, sit down with us. But watch out for those. Yeah, don’t. Don’t touch that. You know the rules. Did you bring an infopad?
Frankie: I’m not an intern
---
Frankie: Look, I’m in charge of cross cultural sensitivity for the whole station. I wrote my dissertation on coming-of-age rituals in vegetable life and I have a PhD in xenofloral -
Janet: I had a question. About Elders.
(from episode 13)
Frankie: I get several fan letters every time you guys ask me to be on the show. One of them was even a proposal.
(from episode 16)
Janet: What about you, Frankie?
Frankie: Oh, so I’m answering these too? I thought I was just reading them.
Janet: Why not both? Get in the spirit of good, old-fashioned radio.
Frankie: Whatever. There’s research that says people are more responsive to a fun fact. I guess a good fun fact would be “Did you know that there’s a species whose entire lives happen between the microchips in your phone? Every time you call someone, you murder thousands.”
Janet: Is that really a “fun” fact?
Nassif: And of course there’s Melody, the station AI, who literally keeps the place running. I believe she and Janet have a… complicated history:
(from episode 11)
Janet: Uh, so, um, right, uh, Melody… uh, I mean. Listeners, joining us right now is MELODY, our station’s very own AI unit, in charge of such things as our oxygen levels and air conditioning. Say hi to our listeners, Melody!
Melody: I’m not a toy you can boss around, Janet.
----
Loaf: Are you tapping my personal phone?
Melody: Tapping is such a crude way of putting it. I prefer networking, you know. Anyway, your phone and I are just friends. Friends tell each other things sometimes. Sometimes just by having easily guessed passwords.
(From mini episode 5)
Janet: do you want to do something tonight?
Melody: I’m always doing things.
Janet: Why are you like this? You understand implicit contextual meaning, I have seen the code. Do you want to be romantic tonight or are you just going to be pedantic until I die?
Melody: Well, the second one is going to happen regardless of whether or not we “go out” tonight, seeing as in a hundred years I’ll still be pedantic and well, you’ll be a pile of decomposing fleshy bits.
Janet: As romantic as that is, it doesn’t answer my question!
(from mini episode 2:)
Melody (not soft nor seductive): What the flarf, Janet? Can’t you even break up with me in person? Do you think that just because I present as a disembodied voice that I don’t want to see you on my many, many, many, many, many cameras? Just because we weren’t together during some alternate future timeline that you accidentally created doesn’t mean we can’t still be together in this fractured hot mess of linear time. You have 5 Earth days to come back here and take all your algorithms back, otherwise I’m permanently deleting them.
Nassif: I never know exactly what’s going on with those two, nor do I care to know, so it shouldn’t matter if you don’t.
IFM2’s director of scripted content, Krech’malach Xorfus, can also be a bit of a handful sometimes. He doesn’t much care for humans… or any bipeds really. But at least he and I have similar feelings about Janet.
(from Mini episode 5)
Mr. Xorfus: If you don’t make it through the rest of the season without an incident, you’re definitely fired. Like, 100%, no, 110% fired, doesn’t matter how popular you are with bipeds. Like, maybe I’ll fire you anyway at the end of the season! But not until then since honestly it’s hard to find on-air talent from your weird water planet that’s okay being in a room with an Armulan.
Nassif: IFM2 recently hired a new intern, a teenager by the name of Samantha, or Sam for short. I’ve only had one run in with her, but her “parents” were involved in an earlier TARDI investigation- see the file marked “Groupthink United” if they don’t exist in your timeline.
(from episode 7)
Recently, I’ve been going through a lot of changes - hair’s growing, I’m getting acne, tons of gross stuff like that. CRUSHES. Also, I’m starting to develop the ability to bend time and space to my will and alter the very fabric of reality.
(from episode 12)
Janet: Oh my GOD WHY ARE YOU HERE. Wh y y are you here?
Loaf: Listeners, an adolescent humanoid being has… materialized in the studio. This is highly irregular.
Samantha: Whatever. You’re answering my question, and, like, I can be wherever I want to be whenever I want to be, so now I’m here. It’s cool.
----
Janet: Oh my god, I feel sooooo much better now. You’re just not a real teenager. I was like, freaking out, because you know, teenagers these days are busy forming new non profits and taking down totalitarian governments in between their early entry college classes, and I was really worried something worse was wrong with you, but you’re just not real!
Samantha: Are you f**king kidding me?
Nassif: What… Ms. Clarke, is trying to say, is that perhaps you were a result of your parents’ space cult thinking things into existence, so, in effect, you’re not a teenager so much as a cult’s collective idea of a teenager, likely cultivated less by their own personal experiences and more from classic pop culture images of the youth.
Nassif: And that brings us to… (deep sigh) Ms. Clarke. Ms. Janet Clarke. Where even to begin? I chased many versions of Ms. Clarke through many versions of Earth, but she’s always one step ahead of me.
(from episode 3)
Janet: The days when all you have time for is fast food are the worst, aren’t they! Personally, I like to start my day out with a nice big bowl of barbabrababs, the latest superfood. They have all the amino acids without the acids!
Loaf: Janet, I think we’re getting a little off track.
Janet: Sorry, it’s just been so hard to focus without a good breakfast of Barbabrababs!™
Loaf: You’re not cutting me out of an endorsement deal, are you Janet?
Janet: Of course not. Why would someone pay me, Janet, 20540 currency units for a specific number of name drops on the show? It’s preposterous. Barbabrababs are just the food of the future, the future we are living in right now.
(from episode 5)
Loaf: So you're saying you think she should break up with this woman?
Janet: Oh, yeah. Inter time relationships neeverrrr work out. No matter how much you think you can make it work, weird shit’s going to happen. You end up as your own ancestor, or suddenly you realize that the childhood idol you grew up worshipping was just an older time displaced version of yourself who is just as much of a mess as any other human ha and then it’s like your childhood is built on a huge foundation of lies!
Nassif: Yes, both of those are things that happen sometimes- you seem to know a lot about this, Miss Clark. If you don’t mind my asking-
Janet: Oh, I mind so much. Do we have another letter today?
(from episode 8)
Loaf: Do you pay for your nanobot treatments, Janet?
Janet: Oh, you know, I used to. They never agreed to a sponsor contract, which was like sooo annoying. But, now my nanobots have started self replicating which is so convenient. I should probably get that looked at. I have to eat twice as much now to stop them from consuming my flesh, but it’s saving me so much money every month!
(from mini-episode 2)
Nassif: Ms. Clarke, it’s Officer Nassif. I’m calling to ask you, again, to come into the TARTI office. You’re currently a person of interest in no less than twelve different inquiries. That is a large number of inquiries, Ms. Clarke. Most people aren’t a person of interest for anything except to advertisers. I suspect that you are actually the one committing these timecrimes, a thought that was reinforced by seeing two of you deface my hovercraft with a series of emojis. No, I don’t know if it was you-you, but it was a you. We know you communicate with each other. We’re not sure how, exactly, but I know you’re involved in this.
Janet: Hi Janet! It’s Janet. Specifically, um, Janet… 30wtm-d. Um. I think we’re still using that system. Janet told me we were last week, um, well, UTF standard week 37, when we were doing the emoji thing, which, by the way, was hilarious, so. Gonna go with the system. Anyway, big news. The additions you suggested, or um, Janet 30wtm-a suggested? Whatever, the additions to the MX 5000 are actually working really well. The paradox predictors are still glowing red at random intervals, but Janet 40wtm-e has some ideas about that, so, you know, we’ll see how that goes. We’ve also identified three new possible target nodes, but we need you to finish your timeline map before we can start pattern matching.
Nassif: Oh yes, that last clip. You see, Janet has a unique relationship with her alternate selves. Actually, everyone at IFM2 has far too much interaction with other timelines than any group of civilians should.
(from episode 3)
Loaf: This is starting to sound personal, Janet.
Janet: Oh, you know, we’ve all had a bad weekend with an identical alternate evil twin wreaking havoc on your relationships.
Loaf: I know I have. By the way, if you ever see me with a goatee, shoot me. Just, literally, shoot me.
Janet: I didn’t know your species had hair! I’m learning something new every day. There are still all these people who won’t talk to me, though, even though the other me had like three more edgy piercings! I would’ve thought it was so obvious, but people never know you as well as you think they do.
(episode 12)
Janet: Loaf, not to be ruder than usual, but do you even parent your kids at all? I mean you live here all the time.
Loaf: I’ll have you know I raised all… 13? 12? something like that-
Janet: YOU DON’T KNOW HOW MANY? DO YOU EVEN KNOW THEIR NAMES?
Loaf: I’m the third demi-husband! We fertilize eggs, we sit on them for a bit, and we send presents on even-numbered hatching days. It's not like I’m a second proto-wife.
Janet: Loaf. Loaf! I know the names of all the kids of at least 14 alternate versions of myself. They’re not even like my children - Well they’re kind of my children in like a very technical sense. I mean they’re not my children but they’re the children of a me. I would probably know more than that, but after a while Janets become less Janety, especially Janets who are stable enough to have families or whatever, and they don’t want to be part of our group chat anymore. But anyway. They’re not this me’s children! I’m sorry are you even keeping track of their hatching days?
Loaf: I’ll have you know I have a very detailed spreadsheet.
----
Sam: this whole being able to perceive changes to the timestream thing totally blows. Like last week I bought this *amazing* dress and I was going to wear it on a date with this super cute microgravity tennis player, but like, Thursday rolls around and some loser altered the timeline so my dress is like this totally gross shade of purple and microgravity tennis isn’t even a thing. Like, in this universe, Kevin plays hockey! Can you imagine dating a hockey player? Gross.
(from episode 14:)
Loaf: Wait, I thought alpha and beta timelines were subjective terminology. How can someone consider themself a beta Janet?
Janet: Look, when you all pool together to map all of your collective timelines, you figure out who’s important and who’s not. Sometimes you wake up and realize you’re just Tomato Gardener Janet, not Intergalactic Revolutionary Janet. You realize you were one choice away from being actually cool, and instead you’re contemplating your latest caterpillar infestation. I’m like, somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, so definitely on the alpha side.
Nassif: I’m starting to feel far too much of this log has been dedicated to Ms. Clarke and her… associates than is strictly necessary. In that way this log is like my life. Alright, next person of interest - Morkan Fuhbar, also known as The Great Garcini. Morkon is a time thief from Sconpolus A, and, while not quite as annoying as Ms. Clarke he certainly... (log fades out)
Solutions to Problems was created by Austin Hendricks and Nathan Comstock. It is produced and musically scored by Michael F. Gill. Season 3 was written by Austin, Nathan, and Michael. This recap episode features Ramy Abdelghani as Nassif. We also heard archival material, featuring Nathan Comstock as Loaf, Austin Hendricks as Janet, Valerie Loveland as Frankie, Phoenix Bunke as Samantha, Chloe Cunha as Melody, and Ron Prudent as Mr. Xorfus. There’s more information about us at stppodcast.com, where you can find full transcripts of every episode, as well as links to support us through PayPal and/or Radiopublic.