It’s been about three days since Blanche started coming to my apartment to deliver me food. Outside of getting some extra food and being forced awake early for it, nothing else has really changed. It’s a bit too early to tell if the food she’s giving me is helping me gain weight or not after all. I’ve also got work today and am on shift. Mildred’s absent, not because she’s out on another expedition, but because she’s been working a lot lately and wants to take some time off for her family. So, it’s just me and Liam today. But given Liam’s typical attitude of never saying more than a single word of confirmation, it might as well just be me and a drone working together. The door opens and a burly man walks in only to trip and fall over himself.
…I recognize that guy. It’s Bernie.
Bernie is a rather extroverted and forward guy, the opposite of me. After the original email exchange we had, I had assumed that would be the end of interaction between us. Bernie however, saw the event as the beginning of a new friendship. He started sending me more casual emails about how his day went and wanting to know about how my day went. Not wanting to make an enemy out of a co-worker, I went along with it. The amount of personal information that he’s exchanged with me since is concerning. Over the past week or so I’ve come to learn far more about Bernie’s home life than I ever thought I would. I now know about life in his crowded house with his pregnant wife and seven children. I also know about his parents, the 3D printed gun store they run, and how they’re currently preparing to retire and have his younger sister take over. All I did was send him one message and now he won’t stop telling me his life story.
Bernie’s told me that he only talks this much with people he trusts. Even though I’ve done nothing worthy of his trust. It’s not like I’ve been giving meaningful replies about my life. All that’s been going on has just been him sending long paragraphs about his life with images to me (which is how I learned what he looks like), and then me just replying with a few simple sentences that don’t really say anything about me or my life whatsoever. Yet despite this incredibly shallow form of interaction, Bernie has decided that he likes me enough that he wants to actually meet me in real life and not just talk via email exchanges. I told him that really wasn’t necessary but it’s obvious that he disagrees given that he’s now visiting the store while I’m on shift. After he gets up from face planting on the floor, he walks right up to me. I’m taken aback by how he has the physique of someone who could pulverize me if he were less friendly. He examines me a bit before introducing himself.
“…You’re Gray, right? You seem to fit Mildred’s description. I can see why she made a joke about you being a vampire.”
I’d appreciate it if Mildred didn’t make dumb jokes about me when I’m not around.
“…Uh, yeah, that’s me. Is there any reason why you’re here?”
I’m not sure what he’s hoping to achieve from this. It doesn’t help that he won’t stop scratching his back, which just makes this feel weirder.
“Like I said in the email, I wanted to see you in real life!”
“…Yeah, but I’m on shift right now, so this isn’t really the best time for chit chat.”
This is of course, total bullshit. Things get boring when there aren’t any customers around, to the point where even an introvert like me needs to find some way to not be bored. I just don’t want to talk to Bernie.
“Hey, that just means we can hang out some other time! Actually, this is a good time to ask, what’s your phone number? Do you have a cell phone?”
I do have a cell phone, but mostly just to use as a clock and occasionally to call a store/business if I have a question and don’t feel like going there. I don’t really like to deal with random calls from people as I’d rather not get my phone bill up too high. I’ve heard too many horror stories of what the PearlCoin Organization has done to people late on their payments and I don’t want any of that to happen to me.
“…Yeah, I do. If I give you my number, you’re not just going to drive up my phone bill with long phone conversations, right? My sister did that all the time when I was young and my family nearly got in trouble over it.”
He laughs at my question as if he thinks I’m making a joke.
“Hah hah hah! No! It’d just be a convenient way to invite you to hang out! Much better than using email.”
That wasn’t a joke. There was an incident where my sister drove the phone bill so high, that my parents were late paying the phone bill and we were threatened by PearlCoin goons. Even my brother was scared. That incident led to my sister being banned from talking to her friends on the phone for six months.
“…I’m not one for casual hangouts, plus I’m pretty sure I’d bore you.”
“Nonsense! I’ve been liking what you’ve been sending me in the emails!”
I have no idea how casually responding to information about his life and then only giving vague details about my own life is appealing to him, but it’s clear that he’s not going to back down. As much as I’d love to be an asshole and find a method to push him off of me, there’s no way in hell I could get away with doing that to a guy of Bernie’s size.
“…Fine, I’ll do it.”
And so, the two of us exchanged cell phone numbers. I’m probably going to regret this, but I don’t really have any other choice. I cannot emphasize how much I don’t understand what the hell Bernie sees in me.
“Well, I’ll see you later then! I need to head to the drug store. I fell into a poison ivy bush earlier and the itchiness is driving me crazy!”
He gives his goodbyes as he leaves the store. At least I understand why he was scratching his back now. Even though I’ve only recently started any form of interaction with Bernie, I’ve been aware of him before. He’s kind of famous among workers at the store and Mildred’s talked to me about him several times. For whatever reason, Bernie seems to have been born with an incredibly bizarre streak of bad luck. He struggled with a weak constitution as a child, was and still is extremely clumsy, and has a tendency to wind up in the wrong place at the wrong time. He has been threatened by random hooligans and PearlCoin Organization members (apparently, he resembles a high-ranking member from their main rivals, the ConchDollar Group), has suffered an injury in just about every body part you could imagine, and has gotten the brunt of all sorts of nasty illnesses. It’s to the point where he’s a regular at the clinic and everyone who works there knows him by name.
Yet despite all that, Bernie’s still standing. His existence is strange enough to make Mildred question if he’s actually human or just a joke made up by God. The joke hypothesis does make more sense when you consider that his family owns a 3D printed gun shop. To his family’s credit, they have banned Bernie from ever stepping foot in the store presumably because of his bad luck, and I imagine it’s also why his sister is taking the reign of being the current owner instead of him. My thoughts are interrupted by me getting a text message from Bernie saying “TEST”. To which I promptly send a confirmation reply to. Liam comes up to me with a duster.
“…Mildred wants you to dust the front counter.”
Right, Liam only talks when I have to do something, I’ve never worked alone with him before and this current shift is teaching me that working alone with Liam is unbearable. A customer (or someone else) comes in, I talk with them, they leave, Liam gives me a single sentence telling me to do something, I do that thing until someone else enters the store, and the cycle repeats. Look, I may not be one for making friendships out of a single email, but I still need someone to keep my shifts from being boring. But that’s not how Liam works, and several more hours go by with this torturous cycle of working with him continuing.
It feels like I’ve been stuck with Liam for a week, but no, it’s still the same shift and it’s getting near to closing time. The later hours of the night shift tend to be quiet outside of the occasional drunk or drug addict, of which there appear to be none showing up tonight. In short, this is quite possibly one of the most boring shifts I’ve ever worked and I demand conversation from Liam, who has somehow managed to make me look sociable by comparison. How the hell do I get a conversation out of him anyways? I know Mildred has had conversations with him, with her claim that “he’s willing to talk to me because I too was a socially awkward otaku”, but it could also be that even Liam knows it’s a bad idea to not respond to your boss. But whatever, I’m bored and I’m tired of Liam never saying anything, so I decide to come up to him while he’s in the midst of stocking video games on the shelves.
“How’re you doing?”
“…Fine.”
A typical, short reply from him. That’s no good.
“Nah, I mean. How’s life going?”
He looks up at me irritated.
“…If you have the time for idle chit-chat, you have the time to help me out.”
…You know what, that works. If I managed to get an actual sentence out of him from that, surely I can start a conversation while helping him out.
“Sure, okay.”
I go to get some games out of the box by Liam to put on the shelves. All of the video games sold here would be referred to as “bootlegs” in the old world. Due to the fact that game emulators have become so powerful in recent years (even including emulation of old PCs), most people don’t really bother with original copies of video games these days unless they’re collectors. As such, people like Mildred tend to repackage games into emulated versions with new changes implemented to make games look and run better than the original releases. Add in some bonus games, and even some sprite swaps, and you have a product people are willing to buy over the original. Of course, there are those collectors who not only want the original game in the original package, but also with the original console. So, we have a few of those as well, but since collectors don’t frequently come here, those items tend to collect dust.
A common type of release that gets made are multiple game packs containing several games centered around either a common theme, developer, franchise, and so on. This 5 in 1 farming sim game pack I’m holding on to is a good example of the average type of game release from a store like ours. But of course, people don’t have to buy gaming packs, they can just download ROMs and ISOs online, however those come with the risk of being infected with malware. Specifically, the type that uses another person’s computer for cryptocurrency farming thus causing even the best computers to burn up while playing a game.
…Hmm, this game pack I’m holding could make for a good ice breaker.
“…You play video games? I only really play sim games myself. I actually remember being big on these sorts of farming games as a kid.”
Liam remains silent, but he looks my way.
“…”
“Yeah, so what I liked about these games was that along with making something like farming surprisingly fun, you also had the whole town of characters to talk to and even get married too. My brother used to make fun of me for playing them, and it gave me kind of a complex about it during high school.”
“…That was mean of him.”
Okay, I managed to get another sentence out of him. A simple sentence sure, but a sentence, nonetheless.
“I also like business sims. There was this theme park one I was really into back in the day. Mostly ‘cause I enjoyed making extreme roller coasters that would kill the visitors or just picking them up and dropping them into lakes. My sister would call me barbaric and disgusting over that, which also lead to a complex for a short time.”
“…That was mean of her.”
…I’m just getting minor variations of the same sentiment. This isn’t working. I’m going to force conversation out of him even if it kills me.
“Enough about me, do you play video games? Or do you just have any stories about your siblings?”
“…I’m an only child.”
I need to bring up something that’ll guarantee me more than just simple one sentence responses. But to get that from someone like Liam, I would need to bring up something that would cause him to go on a tangent. But because he’s so tight lipped, it’s difficult to get a read of him. Mildred did mention him being a “socially awkward otaku”, so perhaps I could bring up CLOCK, the greatest anime ever made. The only issue with that is that I cannot talk about the scene where the main character and his daughter finally bond together as parent and child over his dead wife without getting emotional. I need casual conversation, and discussing emotionally powerful anime will just make me have a teary breakdown in public. Maybe I should just give up on this.
…But I’m still bored, and that’s a problem. Sure, putting stuff back on the shelves is giving me something to do, but I feel unsatisfied with how things are going. Perhaps I should just accept my inevitable fate of death by boredo-
“…Hey, could you go to the backroom? …There’s one more box that needs to be taken out… You’ll see it under a sign that says ‘boxes to empty’.”
“Sure, but weren’t you getting all the other boxes out?”
He explains in a surprisingly direct manner, and without pausing.
“Because you were at the front counter and not helping me, now could you please get that box?”
Interesting. He’s one of those types who’s quiet and doesn’t speak much until you get on his nerves. Granted, it’s really not that shocking, but still worth nothing.
…Actually, that gives me an idea. I’m going to play a prank on Liam. Nothing too crazy, I’m just going to spend a long time in the backroom until Liam decides to check on me and then startle him. Is it mean? Maybe just a little. But I’m at a point where I’m desperate to get anything from Liam. I walk back into the backroom as requested, and see the box as instructed, located just to the right side of the door. I can make this work. I just need to keep the lights off and hide myself behind the side of the box not by the door. Of course, I’m going to need to wait a bit, and I don’t know how long that’ll take. But I figure while I’m waiting, I can look through the stuff in this box. Sure, I’m keeping the lights off for the sake of my prank, but there’s a nightlight right by me that I can use to examine the products in here.
This box seems to be filled with DVDs of various movies and a few TV show episode sets. The concept of TV has radically changed since the old world ended. Since all of the big corporations are a part of LOVE, all television outside of LOVE is owned by the local cryptocurrency group. I suppose the old world term “public-access television” is the most accurate description for shows produced in the territories. Whatever is on TV will differ greatly depending on where you live and how much your local cryptocurrency group gives a shit. PearlCoin kind of gives a shit, mostly because helping produce entertaining shows can entice people into joining their ranks. I don’t really watch TV these days, but from what I remember as a kid…There was the daily news segment, talk shows ranging from boring people talking about boring things to conspiracy theorists getting into fist fights with each other, random documentaries that looking back I’m pretty sure were mostly fabricated, and the occasional cartoon that appealed to child me.
I remember there was this one show about talking fruit characters re-enacting stories from the bible. The creator of the show also had a strong stance against censoring the bible. I know this because I will never forget watching the episode about Sodom and Gomorrah as a seven year old and witnessing banana Lot being taken advantage of by his strawberry daughters and the daughters giving birth to raspberry Moab and Ammon. There has been much debate with people my age over whether the show was made by an extremely devout Christian who didn’t give a shit about traumatizing children, or an atheist who wanted to take the piss out of Christianity by traumatizing children.
“…Hey, are you still in there?”
Liam’s starting to get impatient. It’d be best to not reply so that he can come to the room faster and I can get to freaking him out already. I keep browsing through the DVDs. DVDs aren’t the most high quality video format out there, but after the world split, they became the most popular format in the territories if only because the more high-quality video formats were owned by companies that became part of LOVE. On that note, since the territories have no copyright laws, bootleg DVDs of all sorts of media are always being made and sold. If I were to wager a guess, I’d say that 8 out of 10 DVDs sold in all territories are bootlegs, especially if they’re from something that was released near the split due to everything being only available on streaming services at that time. That’s not to say that streaming still isn’t a thing, it’s just all that all streaming websites are either what people in the old world would refer to as “piracy websites” or they’re the official streaming sites of whatever territory they’re from. It’s usually the former as most cryptocurrency groups can’t be bothered to do the latter.
That isn’t to say that “legitimate” releases of movies and the like don’t exist and that people don’t seek them out. It’s just that the “bootlegs” are much easier to come by, are usually just straight up copies of the original “legitimate” releases and may even come with extra bonuses that make them of even greater value to a collector than the actual “legitimate” release. Sure, they’re not in HD, but there are HD torrents for many famous movies available, and AI has gotten quite good at upscaling old movies from the old world that never got HD re-releases. The current box I’m looking through seems to be filled with releases of the various type of shows that were shown in this area…There’s even a DVD of the Christian fruit cartoon, with a cover of pomegranate Jesus on the cross.
I can finally hear the sound of Liam’s footsteps. I put the DVD I currently have in my hands back into the box and close it up, right before crouching low enough that I can be hidden from view. As his footsteps get closer, I can hear him grumbling to himself as well.
“…I tell him to do one simple thing and he just disappears on me…Why are the lights off?”
Now the door’s opening and here’s my chance. As Liam fumbles around looking for the light switch, I jump out to him.
“…EIYA…”
I had no real plan of what to say when jumping out of him so all that came out was the first random thing to pop in my head.
“Aaah!!!”
But it doesn’t seem like whatever noise came out of my mouth would matter in the end, because my prank appears to have been successful. I turn on the lights and I can see that Liam’s clinging on to the door frame and looks like he suffered a heart attack.
“…W-Why did you do that?”
He asks me with a shaking voice. Although I’m aware of how bad this’ll make me look, I have no real choice but to answer honestly.
“…I was bored.”
Liam looks at me as if I just admitted to burning down orphanages.
“…A-Are you a psychopath?”
“I’ve never been diagnosed with anything, but I’m fairly certain that I’m not a psychopath. That said, I’m pretty sure I’m a high functioning retard.”
While that self-deprecating comment managed to calm him down, it did nothing to lessen Liam’s newfound negative perception of me. The rest of the shift went by with an awkward atmosphere between the both of us. Neither of us exchanged anymore words with each other until it was time to lock up the store, to which Liam said to me;
“…I can’t tell if I despise or pity you.”
Well, it’s not like he’s fully confident in hating me. So that’s something.
Author’s Note: The beginning of a new arc. I should note that this arc is seven chapters long compared to the four chapters of the previous one. This chapter is also a bit of a filler chapter as this arc is going to center around a certain ginger girl more. I get that filler is usually a bad thing, but I do plan on fleshing Bernie and Liam out more in future arcs, so I’m fine with them getting small cameos here…Just ignore the fact that I haven’t written anything more beyond this second arc. But ideally, I’m just trying to engage in some mild character building even if certain characters aren’t important to the current arc.
Oh another note, I do wonder how my way of doing pop culture references will come off to others. I have characters who are nerdy and work in a store related to nerdy things, so pop culture references do feel kind of necessary. But I also don’t really want to directly name anything either as this story doesn’t take place in the real world, so parodies of stuff people aware of those proprieties can easily recognize works for me. But does it work for other people?
