genessia | 1st Byte ~ [ Video/Action ] ~ I just thank for the life, for the day, for the hours and another life

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★ kaoru hitachiin

1st Byte ~ [ Video/Action ] ~ I just thank for the life, for the day, for the hours and another life

[ Video ]

[ A good-looking guy, about eighteen, is sitting outside in the grass. He's got his shoes off, and he looks like he ought to be taking a header off the foot of some other clean-cut looking kid, or tossing a frisbee around, and maybe he will be when he's done here, if he can find some. ]

Hey, I'm Eli. New in town. So far this place seems not bad. A little short on mountains and red rocks so far, but there's gotta be somewhere to hike, right? Also, I'm gonna need new music real quick. I'm guessing Kendrick Lamar and DJ Khaled aren't hanging around Genessia City, so what's hot?

[ Action ] - Cake Town, Attleton

A couple hours later, Eli found a cake and coffee shop on the network that looked like the kinda place no one would get shitty if he hung out for awhile, drank coffee, and listened to the music he had with him. Turned out they had pretty great cake, too, which didn't do much for missing Gran's cooking, but made him smile anyway. So did the blonde sitting around like she was waiting for her shift to start. He flashed her a quick smile and a little wave before he settled in with his earbuds and the tunes that'd made the leap with him.

With a network device in front of him and headphones on, he should've been sending out the fuck off, I'm busy vibe, no bullshit. But he wasn't slouched down in his seat all sullen and hoodie like some kinda TV hacker. Half the time he didn't seem to be looking at the screen at all, and he had smiles for people coming and going. Either someone raised the kid right or he was already working on his first Oscar.

When you approached, he looked up straight off, always met your gaze, and said a friendly, "Hey."

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The blonde girl was in fact waiting for her shift to start. There was only so much she could do in her Commonspace room before she got bored, only so much time she could spend wandering the city outside before that got old fast. This whole stuck in one place thing? Not her favorite. But Cake Town was amazing. Cake Town and her boss made her feel like she was a part of things.

And then there was this guy. Her age, roughly, she's guessing. Smiled a lot, and it was a nice smile. It was kind and open, not like Charlie's own guarded and mildly confused smile and wave back. What on Earth was this guy doing?

She was curious enough about him that she finally stood from her table, leaving the book she'd been reading behind and with a bookmark firmly tucked inside. She wasn't sure what she was more curious about, the guy...or the weird device in his hand.

Any other teenager would ask what he was listening to, because they'd all know what iPods and music devices were, but Charlie wasn't from then. She was a decade or so shy of iPods and MP3 players. So when she finally gets to the guy, it's not his name she asks for, or the name of the song he's listening to.

"What's that?" As she points at the device in his hand.

Depends on what you mean by how? Do you mean on fire hot or what's popular?

[Kaoru had no idea, but there was in part a little joke.]

Good to know you, Eli--name's Neil.

[Excuse the gross looking guy that appears on your smart phone: having just gone for a run, Neil is a sweaty wreck with flyaway tendrils of black hair having escaped the knot it was pulled into to cling to his temples and cheek, face and neck not just glowing but dripping. The video feed is a little shaky, mostly because he's heading back to his room in the Commonspace and he's a little bit exhausted.]

Never heard of those names--but I also haven't listened to any modern music since the Nineties, either. Only bands I can really remember are...Collective Soul and...oh! Everclear--now they were cool. Least when I was fourteen, anyway.

[Well then, wasn't he just a happy ball of energy. Dove's only half paying attention as she tidied up her living room, but the two familiar names catch her attention proper and she moves back to switch on her own video feed to respond.]

Well now, those aren't names I've heard in a while,[she grins, picking up her phone and pushing her hair out of her face. She's just in a tank and some sweats, but... well.] Going to go ahead and guess you're from some version of Earth, hm?

Edited 2018-08-31 00:51 (UTC)

She'd been watching him, not her book, on and off for awhile, so it didn't surprise Eli that she came over to him. But it not being a surprise didn't make it any less welcome. She's pretty and interesting, guarded, not like the privileged set at the school he'd left without graduating. More like the kids he knew who'd been at the Ranch for too long, and didn't have the kind of support he got from Gran.

He was busy wondering what made her that way when instead of saying hi or asking about his music, she asked about the iPod. It was...kind of sweet, actually. "It's a music player. Called an iPod. They don't have them where you're from?" he answered, friendly and not judgmental. Hard to be judgmental when it was such a switch. Most people still thought Indians lived on tobacco, alcohol and peyote.

[ Eli gives him kind of an odd look, but he's more amused than anything. ]

Be pretty cool if you could set tunes on fire. I mean, you can set the media on fire, but that's just a trashfire. Got enough of those.

Cool.

[ Eli gives the guy a grin. He's not bothered by the sweat. It means exercise to him. He does kinda wonder why the guy answered, but it's 'cool' that people are friendly. ]

Funny how hot and cool mean almost the same thing. Collective Soul's all right. I listen to some of the older Indie Pop. Ever heard Wide Mouth Mason, Live, and Seven Marty Three?

[ Belatedly, he's pretty curious about what the guy's been doing besides running that he hasn't listened to 'modern' music. But Gran would say it's not his business to ask. Not until he knows the guy. Since Gran actually listens to him, he tries to listen to her--and will, even if she's not here to give him a death-glare if he's being a dick about something. ]

[ Well, hey there. She's pretty, and she knows the music he's talking about. That's a switch. So far no one else has known them. ]

It's pretty weird to hear 'some version of Earth' when you know my jams. I mean, I get that's a thing. String theory and multiple universes and all, but I just got here, so it's Kaku and Hawking and theory still to me.

[ He might not be literate but he's not stupid. ]

So if you haven't heard those names in a while, how does that work? Because if you've just been here that long, you're missing some awesome tunes.

[Neil blinks a little, then smiles as the name strikes a chord.]

Live, yeah--I remember them! Lightning Crashes, right? [His tongue runs over his lower lip in a thoughtful gesture before he starts to hum a few bars quietly to himself, shutting his eyes for a second as a wave of nostalgia sweeps over him.]

Ember's Balls, I just about drove my buddies at school crazy borrowing their CD Walkmans to listen to that song just one more time after I wore out...probably my second cassette copy of the album.

Would be pretty impressive if one could set it on fire.

[He gives a small shrug for a moment.]

But I think we will all avoid the trash fire. Sounds like no one needs that.

She people watches. It’s a survival thing. Curiosity, however, is her downfall. So the device in his hand is what pulls her over and certainly not the guy. Not even if he was pretty good looking. So, there.

...okay maybe it’s him, too. Shush.

She shakes her head at his question, standing near his table and glancing at the clock on the wall. She has seven minutes before she has to be on the clock.

“People have portable CD players and headphones,” she replies. People have. Not her. It’s a matter of eat or waste money and Charlie can’t waste money. Not entirely.

“Nothing quite do pocket-sized.”

Cassettes. [ Eli shakes his head, laughing. He's glad for a lot of reasons they don't do cassettes anymore. ]

Throwing Copper's ancient but it was a good album. Secret Samadhi's boss, too. If you haven't heard it, you should. I've got them both on my iPod. I can probably figure out how to get them onto the network.

[ By probably, he means definitely. There's not a lot he can't do when it comes to bits and bytes. ]

Yeah? Cool.

[A long, telling beat.]

...what's an eye pod?

I don't think I've ever heard of Kendrick Lamar or that other name you mentioned.

[ And yet, she probably looks like a girl who could easily fit in his time period. ]

[ Eli doesn't blink at the question. It's not even the third time today. He can't help grinning a little though. ]

Portable media player. Like a next-gen Walkman, but a lot smaller and with no mechanical parts.

But--how do you play the tape, then? Or--or the CD?

[ Eli smiles, chin up at the girl on his screen. She's pretty, but that blue hair is asking for trouble when you're trying to stay off the radar. He guesses that means she probably isn't. ]

I'm getting the sense no one's heard of them. Or almost no one. Which is weird. Even Gran likes them back home. What do you listen to?

Eli's heard the spiel and he buys it, mostly because he's been surfing the datastream since he got here and there's nothing out of place. Not nothing nothing, like the kind of seamless fakejob from The Truman Show or The Matrix, just nothing that matters. So she's probably from some other time.

He pops out his earbuds so he's not being rude. "That puts you back, what, fifteen years from me in 2018?" Without access to Earth-only data like wikipedia, he can't be sure. "I mean, assuming you're even from Earth." His smile says he's pretty sure she's human and he's happy about it, but it's casual. If she's not and she's whatchacallit, humanoid? It's all the same to him. He holds out his hand. "I'm Eli."

"Roughly," Charlie replies, the smile on her face nothing more than a twitch. But she's at ease. Nothing about Eli has her wanting to run away, no sense of danger telling her he's not to be trusted and that she shouldn't be around him. So she reaches out to shake his hand.

"Charlie. Absolutely from Earth," she answers, smiling a bit more. "I've only been here a couple weeks. Before that, I was on a bus to Maine."

[ Evie has no reason to want to stay off the radar, and has no problems with standing out. It's what she was made for and her confidence in herself is ridiculous. She will gladly stand out if it means people underestimate her. ]

I haven't, no. My current favorites aren't even from my world, but I enjoy Imagine Dragons, Muse, Bowie and X Ambassadors. Are they from your world?

Edited 2018-09-03 03:16 (UTC)

No analog media. [ Was that what they called it? Eli honestly doesn't know. ] It's all digital--like computer files?

I mean, technically, there's some mechanical parts, but they're so small, they don't really count. Basically, the internal mechanism reads the file and produces sound direct to these. [ He holds up the earbuds. ] It can play out loud, but it's pretty quiet without speakers.

Pretty smile, Eli registers immediately. He can't help it. It's been awhile since he could talk to pretty girls without worrying about what happens to either of them when he gets up to walk away. He's still subtle about paying attention to how pretty she is, because he's not down with guys being dogs.

"Any special reason? I don't know anything about Maine except Stephen King and a fairy tale TV show." He pushes out the other chair at his table with his foot and gestures to it, inviting her to sit down.

Charlie sits with no hesitation, tucking her legs under her chair and smiling a bit more at Eli before slowly shaking her head.

"I was moving," she states, keeping this topic casual. What he doesn't know won't scare him off. What he doesn't know won't bring her sympathy she won't know how to handle, sad looks that make her want to shout at people.

[ There's something in how she talks that reminds him of the NDN girls who were all about the leadership of tomorrow. He can't put a finger on it, but it's kinda interesting. Maybe she's like student council president or something. She seems nice so far, though, so he's not bothered by it. ]

Yeah. They're from home. Indie pop and alternative rock. DJ Khaled and Kendrick Lamar are more hip-hop and rap. If that means anything.

Edited 2018-09-04 05:52 (UTC)

[ Eli nods, but he's not really sure what he's nodding at. The guy's kind of... off? He's not scanning danger off the guy but he's not sure what he is scanning. ]

Yeah, no. Where I'm from, 'trash fire' means something really messed up. Like, uh, a guy who keeps trying to scoop girls from other guys, getting called on it, and then going right back to it. We'd be like, "that guy's a rolling trash fire."

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1st Byte ~ [ Video/Action ] ~ I just thank for the life, for the day, for the hours and another life

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