"…What do I do now?"
"Well, we have an apartment for you. There is a temporary one nearby because we thought you'd want to be nearby because we thought you'd want to be near Sergeant Barnes in case he wakes up. You can go take a shower, eat something, we'll get you some new clothes, food for the apartment, you know, the basic things, and we have people to help you catch up with history and popular culture when you're ready. Yours and Sergeant Barnes' finances have already been taken care of. You've been paid for your services in the armed forces and adjustments have been made to account for inflation. There is also interest on your accounts that has been added in and whatever the country decides to give you for crashing a plane into the ocean to keep us from getting blown up," Hill explains.
"Okay…" He isn't quite sure what he's expected to say.
"What do you want to do?"
"I don't know, I honestly don't. There's just … there's so much…"
"I know. I know this is a lot. And honestly? This is just the beginning."
"How much more could there possibly be?"
"Well you have seventy years of history to catch up on. You can skip the disco music. There has been a lot of presidents, a lot of social movements. We can start with current events, such as the current president and some of the major events of the past couple years, and you'll need help adjusting to the new technology."
Steve just stares at her.
"Well, for example, do you remember hearing about a Turing Machine? It was created in 1944 to break the enigma code."
"No."
"Okay… okay you know what a phone is, right?"
"Yes."
Hill pulls her phone out of her pocket. "This is a phone now." She offers it to Steve.
"…Where are all the buttons?" Steve looks at the small rectangle she's offering, with a round indentation at the one end and curved corners.
"They're on the screen." She pushes the button and the phone screen lights up. She unlocks it and Steve stares with amazement. But there weren't any buttons!
"I don't understand…"
"The screen has sensors underneath it that can recognize when someone is touching it." She swipes the screen to change the page.
"How are there different screens? And where's the phone part? And how is it so small?" His questions rattle off, one after another.
Hill presses the phone button. "Here's the phone. We've been able to make it smaller through advancements in technology. I'm not entirely certain how they do it, but they do."
"Where's the part you speak into?"
"At the bottom here." She points them out.
"Why are they there?"
"Because you hold the phone like this and that's where your mouth is closer to." Agent Hill displays the way a phone is held.
"If it's supposed to be a phone, then why do you have to press a button to get to the phone part?"
"Well, it does other things too. I've got a calendar on here, and a calculator, even music." She presses the respective buttons, showing Steve.
"Why does a phone need a calendar or a calculator?" Steve just looks confused.
"Mostly because we can. People always have phones on them, so it's convenient to have the calendar and everything else on it." She exits the apps.
"Everyone has one of these?"
"Most people do. Or they have something similar."
"How do you fit so much stuff in there?"
"People smarter than me can answer that better."
Steve frowns, wanting to know how the tiny box phone thing works. "Why is it a box?"
"Because that makes it look sleek."
"…But it's a box," He says as if it's the most confusing yet obvious thing in the world.
"Buts it's a smaller box than the mobile phones of your time."
"Well…yes." Steve thinks back to a few days ago, communicating with his team through the mobile phones of his day. The difference was like night and day.
"Mobile phones just stayed box shaped."
"But…Why? And where's the antenna?"
"We don't need the antenna anymore. Got it to work without one."
"But how?" Steve is just getting more confused. This was only giving him more questions.
"We've made it so it can work without one. Like I said, you'll want to talk to someone else for details. I don't know how all of it works. Sorry."
"How is it that everyone can afford one of these? I didn't have a mobile phone until I started doing real missions in the field. They seem really expensive and…breakable."
"Well, with advancement in technology it eventually became less expensive. Like how the radio became common in your time."
"Oh…Is the radio on the phone too?" He asks curiously, remembering when he and Bucky would listen to the radio in their tiny apartment. For Steve that was only a year or so ago.
"Sure, if you want it to be."
"Why wouldn't you want it to be?"
"Well, there's different kinds of radio. I have one that's just music and not much talk radio, or there are comedy radio stations, or talk stations. Or you could just buy the music and put it on here, or movies or videos."
"Videos? Do people still go to the cinema? Where do you get your news? Does it all go to the phone too? Does the other side of the phone do anything? And what does this part do?" Steve says pointing to a small circle on the back of the phone in the corner.
"Yes, we go to the cinema, we get the news from the radio, television, newspapers, and online. I'll explain what online is later. And that is a camera."
"It's so small... So the news doesn't go to the phone? "
"It goes to the device, yes."
Hill starts to play Journey on Pandora.
"What's this?" Steve tilts his head. He supposes it was probably the sort of music people just listened to now. An entire song, all inside of a very small telephone. He isn't quite sure what to think of it just yet. At the very least he didn't dislike it.
"Radio. The song is called 'Don't Stop Believing' by Journey."
"...When is it from?"
"The eighties."
"That's thirty years ago then... This must be a classic to you…I can't believe I'm in my nineties…" Steve says quietly, his age suddenly hitting him.
"If it makes you feel any better, biologically, you're still in your twenties."
"Before the serum I didn't think I'd survive to my forties…" He thinks back to cold nights with Bucky in the small apartment that they shared, most of which he was certain would fit in this room, he remembers keeping them both awake with his coughing. Bucky insisting that it was fine and it wasn't his fault every time he'd apologize.
"Well you've still got a long life ahead of you."
"That depends on a lot of things. If I join you, then for all I know I'll get shot in the field and die." He remembers signing up to do exactly that several times not terribly long ago. then he thinks again, and supposes that technically it was quite a long time ago indeed. Decades ago.
"That's a little morbid but yes, there's always that. You should have a long life ahead of you," Hill qualifies.
"I'm going to be the oldest man in the world…" He isn't sure how to feel about this.
"No you won't."
"What do you mean?" Steve shakes his head. Surely scientific advancements hadn't been that great?
"He's older," she says, pointing to Bucky, still unconscious beside Steve.
"Whatever it is that kept him alive in the ice isn't as powerful as what I have. So…so even if he does wake up… If we die a natural death, then I guess I'll likely end up outliving him." Steve's gaze returns to his comatose best friend.
"You are morbid today aren't you?"
"All of my friends are either dead or comatose or laying in a bed, ancient, and I'm here on my own after having expected to die, and for me that was just yesterday. What do you expect?" Steve raises an eyebrow. He was honestly slightly surprised he was holding it together this well, though part of him was slightly convinced that this could all be an incredibly strange and elaborate dream.
"Point taken, Captain. Anyway, Medicine has had a lot of breakthroughs. We have vaccines for most everything now. Got rid of smallpox entirely."
"Chicken pox?" He'd nearly died of chicken pox when he was a kid.
"There's a vaccine for that. Also polio, measles, mumps, and pretty much every pox or fever you can think of."
"Your medical advancements are very substantial." He can't help but think of how many of those he'd had at one point in his youth or another, how many of them had nearly killed him, or had killed or disfigured someone he'd known
"Yes they are. Are you sure you don't want something to eat? It's been seventy years since the last time you ate."
His stomach grumbles at the suggestion of a meal. "In all honesty I'm starving." Even rations didn't sound too bad.
"I'll go get you something to eat." Agent Hill stands to do just that.