Chapter Thirty-Two

Erik followed Alison's mother up the stairs that were immediately to the left of Alison's bedroom. He felt just as overwhelmed as Alison was. Not only am I in her time and at her house, but she still loves me and she's had a son that's mine who is so beautiful! This is more than I ever hoped for-

He was shaken out of his thoughts at the sight of the room. It was about the same size as Alison's room, but there was a larger bed in the middle, a chest of drawers on one wall, and an upright piano, sitting by the window.

Erik forgot to thank Sadie. He just went to the piano and ran his fingers across the keys. Resonant sound, decent quality. Not as good as my organ or even a grand piano, but good enough.

Sadie saw his absorption with the piano and smiled. He wears a white mask, a black cloak, and he seems to love music. Just like the Phantom of the Opera. Of course Alison would get herself a boyfriend that was like the Phantom of the Opera.

"I'll just leave you alone then?"

He nodded distractedly as his fingers began to move across the keys in random swirls of creativity. Sadie waited a moment to hear the beautiful music, then pulled the door so that it was only open a crack and walked down the stairs back to her husband.

Alison heard the music through her floor and grinned. She had missed his playing. In his time, she had loved it when he played music for her. Now, hearing it again on the small upright in the guest bedroom, it drove home his presence in a way that nothing else had. And so she sat and listened.

After an hour, her son came to her room and pushed open her door. "Mommy, what's that?"

"The music?"

He nodded.

Alison smiled at him and picked him up. "That music is coming from a very special man. He's a genius at everything, but especially at music." She bounced him up and down in her arms. "You'll meet him properly soon, I promise. Because he'll someone very special to you."

His face crinkled up in childish annoyance at the prospect. He didn't like meeting new people. He stayed with her in her room for a while, both of them listening to the music. But he got too fidgety after a while, as little boys do, and went back downstairs to play with his grandparents.

Erik played until well into the afternoon. It was four o'clock until the music abruptly stopped in the middle of a note and Alison heard footsteps rushing down the stairs. Her door was banged open and Erik stood in the doorwell. "Angelique, I am so sorry! I did not keep track of the time and lost myself in the music. How could I do that? I–"

She crossed the room and put a finger to his lips. "I needed a little time to process all this, as did you. It's new and different and exciting. I'm still getting used to the prospect that I might be able to spend a good deal of my life with you. I've spent three years believing that I would never see you again, so it's a pretty big change. It's okay."

He sighed in relief and leaned in to kiss her softly. They stood in the doorwell for a moment, looking into each other's eyes. Then Erik asked tentatively, "Can you show me some of the new things about this age? I have only been here for a short time and already I have seen many strange things."

"What did you see?" asked Alison curiously.

"A road made out of strange black material, odd and inappropriate clothing, glass things hanging from the ceiling, and that contraption." He gestured to her laptop. "What are any of these things for?"

Alison led him to the bed and they sat on it, facing each other. She hesitated a moment, trying to work out what to say.

"The clothing is not odd or inappropriate for this time. The boundaries of propriety have been widened a lot since your time. And what I'm wearing isn't even the limit, either. For summer, this is pretty tame. Showing arms and legs and things like that: all that is okay and socially acceptable now. Actually, if you dressed the way I used to here, everyone would look at you strangely and ask what your problem was. Speaking of that, we should probably get you some clothes that are period-appropriate. Not that a suit isn't, you just probably shouldn't wear one all the time."

Erik looked down at himself. "But the suit is what I wear. It shows class and pride. It is the attire of a gentleman."

Alison sighed. "In your time, maybe. And it still is, to some degree. It's just that there are very few people who wear a suit every day, especially during the summer. People really do dress for the weather here."

Erik paused for a moment to process this. "So the majority of people here dress inappropriately."

"No, because what we wear is entirely appropriate for this time. We're going to need you shopping. But I promise you, we'll try to find you something black at least." She smiled at him.

Erik sighed, resigned. "So I am going to need to change my clothes to fit in. But what about these other things?"

"Well the 'strange' material for the road is necessary for cars."

"Cars?"

"Yes. They're….they're our methods of transport. Like a horse and carriage, just with a motor and no horses. People don't ride horses around anymore, but some people do ride for fun."

"What does this…car…look like?"

"Hold on, let me show you." She turned to her computer and pulled up a search window. Erik stared over her shoulder, enthralled.

"What is that?"

"This is a computer, like I told you before. There is a thing called the Internet that has a lot of things on it. I can't think of an equivalent in your day. The Internet has a good bit of all the information in the world. There are different websites that do different things."

"What's a website?"

Alison sighed, frustrated at her inability to explain the things she had known all her life. She pointed to the window she had up. "This is an example of a website. It's called Google."

"Google? What kind of a name is that for anything? It sounds like some sort of child's toy."

Alison bit back a laugh. "Well it's not. I actually think it's a number. It's one with a large number of zeros. But anyway, Google is a really useful website for everyone."

"What does it do?"

"Its main function is to help you find things. For example, a picture of a car. You type in 'picture of a car' into this box, and hit enter: this key." She showed him on the keyboard. He examined it closely.

"This looks like a typewriter."

"Yes, that's where it came from. But it's infinitely more useful than a typewriter. Especially since there's a delete button for any mistakes you make."

Erik nodded, feeling amazingly overwhelmed. She saw the expression on his face. "I'm sorry. I know it's a lot to take in, and this is only the beginning. To be fair, the computer and technology is probably more complicated to explain than anything else here."

Erik looked back at the computer and his eyes went wide. "It looks different!" he exclaimed, pointing at the screen.

Alison stifled the urge to be patronizing. "Yes, that's what it's supposed to do. But look how the first thing that comes up is a bunch of pictures of different cars. That's what a car looks like."

Erik scrutinized the pictures. "It looks like some sort of metal animal. How many types of these are there?"

"A lot. There are different companies that make different cars. When we ride in one, you'll see. But we might want to wait a couple of days so that you can get used to everything else."

Erik agreed wholeheartedly. "What else does this 'Internet' do besides allow you to find things?"

"Well, it's taken the place of letters."

"What? How can it do that?"

"Here, I'll show you." She typed in the web address for Gmail and hit enter. It pulled up her page of messages. "This is how it can do that. It's called email. I think it stands for electronic mail or something like that. But people can send messages to each other if they have their email address and it goes much faster than normal mail. A letter can take days to get to someone else and sometimes it can get lost in the mail. Emails don't generally get lost. Also, you can send emails to anywhere if you have a web address. I can send an email to someone living in Germany and it would only take a short amount of time to get there."

Erik stared. The idea of letters that could go so far in such a short time blew his mind. Even though he was completely overwhelmed, he wanted to know more. "What about music? Can this Internet find music?"

"Yes, it can. I knew you'd ask about that sooner or later. It can find music in lots of different ways. Computers can store music on them so that you can listen whenever you want."

"How does that happen?"

"The music is recorded and made into a certain type of file. I don't know exactly how it works–"

"How can you not know about something so fantastic?" Alison looked a little hurt, and Erik noticed. "I am sorry. These things are so foreign to me that…"

"That's the thing about all of this, Erik. They're not foreign to me. They're such a normal part of my life that I never thought to ask how they work. It's not something that holds as much interest for me, that's all."

"Again, I am sorry." Erik took her hand and smiled at her, and she melted.

"All right, all right. Apology accepted. I'll show you the music." She moved the mouse down and clicked on her iTunes, pulling it to the center of the screen to show Erik. "This is the list of all the music that I have. If you click on a song, it will play. Would you like to try?" Erik nodded. "To go down and up the list of music, press these buttons." She showed him the down and up arrows. "Point out the song you want to hear and I'll show you how to click on it." He scrolled hesitantly through her music. There were so many song titles he had never heard before and so finally he decided to pick one at random. "That one." He pointed to a song on the screen.

"My Happy Ending?"

He nodded.

She shrugged. "Okay. Just letting you know, it's going to be a little different from the music that you know."

"How different is 'a little'?" Erik asked suspiciously.

"Okay, a lot," Alison conceded. "Here goes." She clicked on the song and it began to play.

Erik jumped back a step. "What kind of instruments are those? I can recognize the drums, but…"

"That's called an electric guitar. It's…" Erik shushed her with a gesture so that he could listen to the music.

"This is awfully repetitive," Erik complained. "The vocal range is not very large: this song requires no great skill to sing. Who is the singer?"

"Her name is Avril Lavigne. And all pop music is like that these days. Well, all of it that's not rap."

They fell silent, listening to the song playing.

"You were everything, everything that I wanted

We were meant to be, supposed to be, but we lost it

All of the memories so close to me just fade away

And all this time you were pretending

So much for my happy ending"

Erik noticed that Alison was mouthing along with the words. "You know this song well?"

"Of course I do. It's my music, after all. And besides, I like her music. I'm not going to deny that it's repetitive, but I do like it."

Erik frowned. "This gives a new definition to repetitive. She simply repeats the same things over and over again. I mean no offense to you, if you like her. However…"

"No, I get it. But that's pop music these days."

"Then the quality of music has declined quite a lot."

"But it gets worse." Alison stopped the song and scrolled through the music, looking for another song.

"Wait, what is that song?" Erik stopped her.

"What song?"

"That song. Not Afraid."

Alison stole a glance at him. "Well all right, but I'm just warning you, you probably will like this even less than Avril. The artist's name is Eminem, and he's a rapper."
"What is a rapper?"

"You'll see." She clicked on it.

Erik listened to the intro, head cocked to the side. "This seems just as repetitive as the other one, but not necessarily worse."

"Just wait."

Then the rap started. Erik frowned as it just kept going. "Does he spend the entire song just doing this?"

"Yup."

"What kind of music is that? This is not even music. Ridiculous cursing and random words with music in the background? I need to find the person who invented it and…" He was getting angrier and angrier. "Why has the quality of things declined so much? Why is quality sacrificed for something like this? Why does anyone even listen to this?"

"Because it's catchy?" Alison volunteered.

Erik turned to stare at her. "That is not a reason to listen to anything! I thought that this 'Avril' was bad enough and repetitive, but this is even worse. You say this is popular? This is NOT MUSIC!"

"Calm down a little. It's kind of annoying for me too, but it's not like there's anything to do about it. This new age is more technological but rougher. It has much fewer boundaries and so people do more of what they want. It is freer but more restricted at the same time. It's a list of contradictions. This is the age I live in now. And it's where you live too.

"But there's so much more to see! Just let me show you. You'll love this place eventually, I hope."

"I can love any place as long as you are there with me."

I should probably add a disclaimer: I don't own the Internet, or Google, or Avril Lavigne, or Eminem. Just in case I get copyright problems. Please review!