Man I am on a roll! Three chapters in less than 2 days! Wew!
So this is a follow up of 'Hearing Voices' and a collaboration of the requests from NorthernMage and SonYukiGoku'sSister who wanted to see iPads and iPods respectively.
Disclaimer: IDORotG
...
Jack vs. Technology
...
Unfortunately, Cupcake had kept her word about the whole 'modernising thing'. Well, unfortunate for Jack; Cupcake, Jamie, and all their friends looked like they were having the time of their life. And they hadn't even started yet. Why he was putting up with their sympathetic looks and explanations that he wasn't stupid, just 'technologically challenged' was a mystery even to him.
"Here, we'll start with something easy," Jamie was saying and he forced himself out of his thoughts of thrashing them in their next snowball fight to pay attention. Jamie was holding something rectangular out to him and he took it with a raised brow. "This is a calculator," Jamie continued.
The other brow rose to join its brother.
"You use it to do hard sums and things," Monty explained.
"Yes, thank you for that, I do actually know what a calculator is," Jack said dryly.
"Do you know how to use one?" Cupcake asked with an air that suggested she was expecting the answer to be 'no'.
He had known about calculators for a long while. They had been quite popular ever since they came out, now found pretty much everywhere. Had he ever used one? No. Did he know how to use one? Well… he was leaning more towards yes. He had always needed to do mathematics in his head or on paper, not that he really knew all that much about maths. Nor had he ever really needed to. He probably would have if he hadn't fallen through the ice but that was a bit redundant now.
"Let's see…" he said, pressing the 'on' button (and being thankful that it was clearly labelled). "Um, fifty two multiplied by seventy…" he pressed each button in turn successfully. So far so good. "Equals… three thousand, six hundred and forty." He grinned triumphantly, holding the device up for the teenagers to see.
"Now clear it," Cupcake challenged.
Jack blinked. "What?"
"Clear it."
Jack let his gaze slowly drift back to the small device and stared at the buttons, trying to find one with 'clear' written on it. His eyes eventually landed on a 'C' and, hoping he was right, pressed it. The screen went blank, which meant he'd either achieved what he'd wanted or he'd broken it. "Haha!" he cried victoriously, waving it in her face. It was a fluke and a lucky guess but he wasn't about to tell her that.
Cupcake looked suspicious but didn't say anything.
"Okay, try this one," Claude broke in, holding out a cable connected to two weird bulby things.
He'd seen people walking around with them in their ears all the time so he was fairly confident he knew what to do with them. When no one laughed when he put them in his ears (noting the little L and R to tell him which was which) he assumed he'd done it right.
Caleb leaned over his brother's shoulder and pressed something on the little device. Sudden loud music blared in Jack's ears and he jumped so badly he fell off the bed with a yelp that he would deny making until the end of time. He tried to cover his ears to muffle the offending sound but it only made it worse.
"Make it stop!" he yelled, sighing in relief when Jamie reached over and yanked the little bulby things from his ears. "What were you trying to do, deafen me?" he shot at the twins. The music could still be heard from where the 'earphones' were lying on the floor.
"Sorry, I forgot how loud it was!" Claude apologised. "Here, I've turned it down. Put them back in."
"No," Jack said instantly. "Those things are never going near me again."
"Here, Jack," Pippa passed him a large, flat version of Jamie's button-challenged phone. "It's called a tablet, or specifically an 'iPad' in this case."
This… this was not a tablet. Tablets were things you swallowed. Or those stone things people engraved. This was a flat piece of metal and plastic that looked as though it could be snapped in half with very minimal effort. He didn't voice any of this, of course.
"What does it do?" he asked warily.
"It's like a small, touch screen computer," she said, pressing a button at the top and lighting up the screen. "These things are called apps, short of applications," she pointed to the little colourful squares dotted across the screen, "and there are heaps of them that do all sorts of things."
Jack cautiously touched one of the 'apps' and instantly the screen changed, bringing up more little squares, but this time depicting the faces of Pippa and her friends. His first thought was 'how the heck did she get copies of herself on this thing?!' but then he remembered cameras and supposed one of those must be in the device.
"Hey, I have an idea!" Jamie called out, looking over his shoulder.
He pressed the button under the screen and then selected another app. Jack tried not to freak out when he suddenly found himself staring at himself and part of Jamie and Pippa like it had become some kind of mirror. Jamie pushed himself closer until his whole head fit into the screen before touching the screen. There was a clicking noise and Jamie expertly navigated the iPad again until the image of the two of them was back on the screen, this time not moving.
"It worked!" he cheered.
"Yeah, but to some people it will probably look like you just took a really bad selfie of yourself," Pippa said.
"What else can it do?" Jack asked, fiddling with buttons and on-screen directions.
"What do you want it to do?"
Jack shrugged.
"Probably the biggest part of modernising you would be to introduce you to the internet," Caleb said, moving over to them and pressing an app with a picture of a blue compass on it.
Jack wanted to say he knew exactly what the internet was but then they would come back by pointing out that he had no idea how to use it so he kept his mouth shut. After a brief tutorial, they'd left him to his own devices in exploring the World Wide Web while they'd gone downstairs to get a snack.
By the time they got back Jack was frustrated to say the least.
"Are… you okay?" Jamie asked cautiously, putting a plate of cookies down on his dresser.
"The stupid page keeps moving when I go to press something and I end up on some other page that I never wanted in the first place!" Jack raged, jabbing at the screen like he was trying to stab it. "And why are there so many pictures of cats?!" When they started seeing lines of frost creeping along the edges of the iPad Pippa hurried forwards and took it from him.
"What about a video game, then?" Claude suggested.
...
...
Jack was torn between whether he loved video games or hated them. On the one hand they were quite fun and some of them allowed you to play with/against your friends, but on the other… well… he sucked at them. No matter what game they played his character would always meet an untimely end and by the end of an hour his eye was twitching.
The others exchanged looks, silently agreeing that maybe they shouldn't have made Jack play games when he was already slightly wound up. Especially when they'd realised just how bad he was at them.
"Um… we could try phones?" Monty hesitantly suggested. Jack's gaze snapped to him.
He remembered phones alright. Cupcake looked like she wasn't sure whether to laugh or run away. "No," Jack breathed. "Just… no. I'm done. Forgive me for being born and raised in the 18th century. I don't care if you call me old or 'technologically challenged' or whatever, I'm done. I'm just gonna go… freeze… something."
None of them liked the malicious glint in his eyes and decided they'd rather not know what that 'something' was.
"I'll see you guys later when I'm calm again," Jack said in way of parting before jumping out the window and flying off.
I'll leave the 'something' to your own imaginations ;)
Guest Review Responses:
WEast: Yeah. Those two break my heart : But they're so cute! So I have to put myself through feels to love them. Woe is the life of a fangirl. Haha yes, silently judging. Who can tell what a penguin is thinking? I doubt even the penguin itself really knows. Glad you liked it!