video, backdated to pre-plots

[thebioticwoman]

[Shepard has settled into her quarters, and the background to her transmission is a thrilling expanse of undecorated wall with a little bit of couch cushion visible near the bottom of the frame. She herself is a red-haired, pale-skinned human woman with green eyes and a calm, no-nonsense demeanor, wearing what looks like it could be a military or merchant marine uniform, though it has no obvious insignia or rank.]

My name's Shepard. I just got here, obviously, and I have a question. The staff was polite about it, but considering one of them nearly dropped his datapad when I floated the idea, there's obviously something they're not telling me...why is "Spectre" a bad codename?

[She could just freakin' Space Google it, but this is a good icebreaker. Besides, she doesn't have her omni-tool and she finds the omnicomm interface unreasonably clunky and inflexible.]

Comments

[unrecovered]

There's currently a wrath-of-God entity running around the galaxy and dispensing whatever they consider to be justice in...interesting, creative ways. Not something you want to be associated with.

Also, Google still exists. So you know.

[thebioticwoman]

[Oh, uh. That actually does kind of sound like her job. She's a merciful special agent with near-unlimited extrajudicial authority, at least.

Maybe best not to mention that just yet.]

"Google?" Like the number?

[Unspoken question: what does that have to do with what she asked?]

[unrecovered]

Like the search engine.

[No sarcasm; turns out dimensional differences are A Thing, and he occasionally needs a moment to remember that.]

It might not exist in your dimension.

[thebioticwoman]

["Search engine" she can figure out, even though they don't use the term where she's from.]

Oh. We just call it an "extranet search."

[Shepard's nose wrinkles a little in distaste, but she's looking just enough down from the camera that it's clearly not at Wash himself.]

Gotta get used to a new interface, I guess.