You stretch out on your beach towel and feel the sun settle down warm beneath your skin. You hear the waves, the faraway birds, the gently rustling palms. It's times like these when you appreciate just how lovely your island is.
You close your eyes and drift for a while.
DING!
Your nearby lunchtop brings you back with the familiar sound of a chum pestering you. You pull the lunchtop closer and check the blinking chumhandle: turntechGodhead. You smile.
- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] -
TG: jade
TG: guess what i got
TG: no its not two tickets to anthrocon god keep it in your fursuit for one minute here harley
GG: hi dave!
GG: and believe it or not i do not spend all day running around dressed as an animal
GG: no matter how fun it may be!
GG: i save that for special occasions ;)
TG: the worst part is that i have no idea if you are kidding or not
GG: i am! :D
TG: good because im sending you something and if the first thing i see when i run the goddamn thing is a load of polyester fur and plastic anime eyes im going to have to reconsider just about everything in my life
TG: you dont want to be responsible for crisis of faith do you?
- turntechGodhead [TG] sent gardenGnostic [GG] the file " " -
Oooooh, video conferencing! You download that sucker and install it right away. You add his chumhandle and check all of the relevant boxes and bluh bluh bluh. Your mouse hovers over the connect button. You flip back over to Pesterchum for a second.
GG: smile Dave!
Connect
And suddenly there's Dave. Sitting at his computer. You've seen him before in some pictures he's sent you all, and he looks much the same; there's his light hair and the particular shape of his jaw and the aviators that cover up half of his face. Wow, he really does wear his sunglasses all of the time!
But really it's not the same at all. Your lunchtop's holographic display blows his face up to life-size and does its best to give his image some three-dimensionality. You can see the small rise of his chest when he breathes and his fingers fiddling a little bit on his desk, and when he turns his face directly at the camera it almost feels like he is here with you.
There is a big difference.
You snoop on what little you can see of his room over his shoulder. There are lots and lots of posters all over his walls and you can just barely see part of his rumpled bed over in the corner. There's a clothesline hung with home-developed pictures, you would really like to see those!
"Hey."
You hear his voice for the first time and you have such a wide smile that your eyes are scrunching up. It's been so long since your island has heard a human voice besides your own and you are so so glad.
He's looking at his own screen and his eyebrows raise a little.
"You put that on just for me?"
You look down at your bathing suit, it's bright lime and polka dotted, and kinda small (pfft, it's not like there's a mall right around the corner). Honestly you had forgotten you were wearing it. "Nooo, I put it on for that," you turn your lunchtop and its built-in webcam towards the ocean. You wonder if the water looks as wonderfully blue on his monitor as it does from the beach.
"You really do live on some Land Before Time primordial island, huh?" but he's got just a hint of smile at the corner of his mouth and you think he liked the ocean.
"Want to see a little more?"
You abandon your sleepy spot on the beach in favor of giving Dave a guided tour of the shoreline. You angle the computer over a tidal pool to give him a good look at some sea anemones. He dares you to touch them like that is some sort of big deal and that's when it is basically confirmed to you that Dave knows nothing about animals. You wander on and set your computer on the ground near the tree line so he can watch you shimmy up a palm and grab a coconut; when you crow at him from the top holding your prize high above your head you think you get a laugh out of him, but it's hard to tell from this height.
You whistle for Bec but he doesn't come; sometimes he is camera shy.
The sun is just beginning to set when you finally get a chance to turn the tables and see how Dave lives. It's hard to imagine what his life might be like, you really only have the stuff you see on the internet and in movies to go on. You know about school and cars and grocery stores and such, though you doubt he has an overly dramatic soundtrack following him around all the time. Well, probably not.
He turns his webcam on its base so you can get a view of his whole room, but aside from his turntables and shitty swords there's really not much more to it than what you were able to see earlier over his shoulder. You ignore the sloppy, finger-painted drawings of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff all over his walls. You know better than to mention them.
"Can I see the rest of your apartment? Can I talk to your bro? Oooh, wait! How about the roof? So I can finally see where the big strifes hapen!" You hope he can hear that lack of a 'p'.
He shakes his head, "My webcam's attached to my desktop and my bro's not home. I'm afraid this is all you're gonna see of my own personal playboy mansion."
"Oh," you can't keep the disappointment out of your voice.
You notice his eyebrows furrow just a bit. "Hold up, maybe I can install this real quick on my bro's laptop. I'm not really supposed to mess with it, but whatever. I know his password, we're tight. I'll be back in a few minutes."
The feed goes dead.
You are left staring at a blank window. You lie back down on your beach towel and wait. You can still hear the waves and the birds, but the beach seems so quiet now without his voice. You watch the sinking sun. You wiggle your fingers in the sand and wonder for the hundred millionth time where all your pumpkins are disappearing to.
DING!
Yes! Dave's back!
You reestablish the connection and when the feed pops up you are momentarily thrown off. Dave's there, but the picture is super shaky. It looks like he's... in a hallway? Climbing some stairs?
"Sorry to deprive you of a tour of my place, but the living room is full of smuppet business right now. I mean, it's cool. They're so totally cool..." Dave trails off and his face takes on a haunted expression for a moment before he snaps out of it, "But that's some high-level irony. Little island dweller like you has got to work up to this shit."
You roll your eyes. You think those smuppets are weird and you know that Dave thinks they're weird too, if he would ever just admit it. You wonder if he would believe you if you told him that you've been further than he's ever travelled; that you've flown over golden cities and have attended a royal court.
Probably not.
This thought, while not new, gets you a little down until Dave reaches a dingy looking grey door, when he pushes it open you think of nothing other than what you see before you.
The only city you've ever seen is the capitol city of Prospit, and it looks nothing like this. The buildings are dark silhouettes against the purple night sky with pinpricks of light at the windows, but the streets look bright and alive. The yellowy glow from the streetlights and storefronts dims the stars, and even from the height of Dave's towering apartment building you can hear the occasional car horn and the faint strains of faraway music. Dave walks over to the ledge and pans the camera across the city skyline; there are lights as far as the eye can see.
You feel a wave of longing for all of the people and the food and the roads and everything that is outside the tiny realm of your island.
"Oh! It's beautiful. I would very much like to be there with you right now." you trace your finger around the outline of a purple-black building.
"Hey it's not like you're gonna be on that island forever. You'll turn eighteen and break out your Daddy Warbuck-style sacks of money with huge dollar signs on the side and fly out here first class. We'll get some barbeque and you'll be like 'remember when I was stuck on that island full of malaria and dinosaurs? hahahaha' and then we'll laugh and laugh."
"Maybe, Dave!"
You do know that you will leave your island eventually. It just won't be in the way he thinks.
"Anyways, look what I got. I think I want to catch some sun too."
He sets the laptop down on the ledge and disappears off screen for a moment, he returns a moment later with a fluffy bath towel that he spreads out on the roof. He sits down and pulls off his shirt like he really is going to get a tan. The moonlight glows pale on his skin and his light hair looks almost silver.
You feel... interested.
Dave reaches over to grab something again, "Check this out. So fucking tropical."
He has an open bottle of apple juice with an orange slice on the lip, like it was a lime. The bottle opening is too small to comfortably fit an orange slice and it hits his nose when he takes a drink, but it makes you laugh and he smiles. You watch the breeze ruffle his hair.
"Not too cold?" you ask.
"I'm hurt that you don't know by now that I am chiller than liquid nitrogen, but other than that I'm fine. This is the only time that it's bearable to be outside. And besides," he says, running his fingers over the towel, "the roof is still giving off some sick heat."
Dave is your friend. He is hundreds of miles away.
He leans back on his elbows and sips his apple juice while you break open the coconut with a knife. You both drink as he stretches out beneath the moon and you feel the last rays of sun leave your skin as it disappears below the horizon.