Turning the thing over in his hands, Quatre again frowned before looking back up at Abdul.
"What is this?"
Laughing to himself, Abdul began to rummage around in the pockets of his sirwal. "It's a selfie stick, Master Quatre. You use it to take selfies."
His hand reappeared with his mobile phone. Tapping away at the screen, it flashed, lighting up his face in the dim light of the Winner Mansion Library. Some of the colony lights had gone down for the evening.
"Selfies?" said Quatre. He glanced up, at nothing really, more to give his mind space to search his memory. Selfie stick. Yes. No one in living memory had used a selfie stick to take 'selfies'. "Why wouldn't they just use a drone?" he said. It was far simpler. A drone was small, equipped with a stabilizer, and most camera models could fly up to several hundred meters from the remote holder.
"Where's the fun in that?" Abdul said, now pacing around the room, holding his phone up with the camera app open. "No light…" he mumbled.
"It doesn't give you much room to work with." Quatre held the thing out in front of him and tried to imagine a phone wedged in the rectangular frame at the end of the stick. It barely stretched the view by a foot.
Laughing even louder, Abdul padded over and wrenched the thing from his hands.
"It extends," he said, pulling on the stick until it stretched to a meter.
"Ohhhh."
"Aren't you teenagers supposed to know these things?"
"Teenagers of a couple hundred years ago," Quatre said. This was an antique. How was he supposed to know much about it? "Where did you even find this thing?"
"Faruk's sister-in-law is a photography student. She collects this stuff. It's pre-colony, pre-colonial satellites, even."
"Will it still work?" Quatre asked, taking it back. He turned it over in his hands again and noted a small button on the handle with an embossed symbol.
"Yeah, it just needs a wireless connection with the device. Seriously, you don't know this?"
Quatre chuckled to himself. "Photography was never my thing."
"Well, I guess you of all people get a pass."
He smiled at that. It was astonishing just how much he'd unconsciously resisted any of the usual fads people his age indulged in. Growing up in a family such as his, the way he grew up, no doubt helped that. Especially when his only friends had been much older nannies and a group of highly trained military men.
Abdul fixed his phone in the frame and flipped through a few screens, setting up the wireless. He hawked out a triumphant laugh when the devices connected. Quatre shook his head in disbelief and smiled. Amazing.
"Alright! C'mon," he said, grabbing Quatre's wrist.
"What?" he barely managed to get out as he was pulled from the room and down the hallway.
"It's too dark in here, we'll have to go outside."
"Too dark for what? You're going to use this thing?"
"Of course! There's twenty-five of us here, let's try it out!" he said and began to call for the others to follow.
Several voices called back, some closer than others, and soon there was a great crowd of red fezzes bobbing their way to the back gardens of the estate.
"Who's holding it?"
"There's no way we're all going to fit."
"With that phone? It's older than the antique!" A choral of laughs followed.
"You're gonna diss my phone with that hairstyle?"
"Here, use mine. It's got a better resolution."
It took another minute for them to argue over how to fit the newer phone into the stick's frame. Another five was spent squishing together in front of the fountain while Bassem's lanky and long form held the stick aloft. Some of them crouched on the lip of the pool, others sat on the ground or kneeled down and somehow, they all squeezed into the photo.
"Master Quatre, what are you doing on the outside?"
"Get in here!"
"Always the shy one, eh?"
He was jerked into the center before he could say anything. Several hands clamped down on his shoulder and forced him into Auda's lap.
"You guys!" he managed to say.
Auda's muscular arms encircled him, holding him there.
"Tell Santa what you want for Christmas," he said. Raucous laughter immediately filled the garden.
"Who celebrates Christmas here?"
"Adam does, he's a Christian."
"And on the L2 satellite, not here!"
"Let's take the picture, my legs are getting tired."
"Wayyh, jidoo needs his wheelchair."
Another round of laughs.
"Alright, here we go," Quatre said over the noise and pointed up towards the phone at the end of the stick.
"Should we say something or pose?"
"Let's do like Master Quatre's friend."
"The one with the braid?"
"Yeah, Duo."
"Perfect!"
Twenty-six hands flipped the two-fingered peace sign and smiled at the camera, saying the word 'cheese' through their teeth. Another second and the shutter sound from the camera signaled that they could all relax. Twenty-six heads lunged forward view the results.
"Wah," sighed Ahmed, "We look ridiculous."
"That makes it memorable,"
"Definitely one for the scrapbook."
"Scrapbook? What kind of suburban-ness?"
"For my wife!"
"You can recognize Master Quatre anywhere with that hair!" They all laughed.
Sighing, Quatre let it roll off and instead pulled his own phone out.
"Here, send it around, send it around," he said, linking his phone with everyone else's.
The space in front of them was a sea of shining phone screens and fingers tapping and swiping away. When the photo finally made it to Quatre's phone, he took his time gazing at it. The greenery of the gardens, combined with the rosy hue of the early evening light configuration, made for a nice scene.
He felt a giddy excitement swoop through him. Such an impractical device, yet its simplicity and outdated novelty spurred them on like children with a new toy.
The real challenge would be to get all forty-one, including himself, in a photo using the selfie stick. He'd have to do some rearranging of their placements around the sphere to manage that reunion. Easy enough to do, and worth it.
"Master Quatre?" Auda said.
"Hm?"
"This is great and all, but I'd like to get off the ground now."
"Oh."