saveyourbrain | TEST DRIVE MEME

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test drive meme

TEST DRIVE MEME

TEST DRIVE MEME

> The Park. Man, what a nice day out. Why not enjoy it? I'm sure -- shit, yep, there's some echo monsters.
> The Mall. Exactly what it says on the tin! Dodge the hordes of teenage mallrats or take part, whichever suits your tastes.
> Rainy Day. Agh, it's fucking awful out. And is it raining those vermilion things?? Now you've got an Echo to contend with on top of everything else. Find some shelter, quick!
> PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION, HOW FUN
> The most horribly kitschy Arts and Crafts Fair you can imagine.
> NEW YEARS. What better way to start out the new year than to learn that everything you know is a lie? Or if you are already acquainted with the network pass out some resolutions.
> A food fight has just broken out in the cafeteria. Join? Flee? The choice is yours alone.
> Wild Card! Make up your own.

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Julien ducks under the awning, soaked enough that his hair has flattened to his head. If he was more human he'd be breathing hard. He sees the parrot instantly. "Um..."

He's had friends who keep birds like this, and has concluded that they're fascinating but love screaming and biting, and those beaks are entirely too powerful. Right now he's kind of frazzled, and there's no one here who should notice, so he resorts to Elvish. Maybe it'll work, maybe not.

It's a language animals can understand, even though his grasp on the grammar is shaky. Specifics, no not really, but they can pick out the meaning. In this case, "[small individual], [polite request] [not] [raise noise] [not] [attack]? [I-the-speaker] [weary]."

The parrot cocked his head to one side as the human started speaking to him. "I won't do anything if you won't," he answered, in plain English. That was what the humans here spoke, was it not?

At least he wasn't screaming? He'd grown much, much quieter in general once he'd found himself able to actually speak.

Julien blinked, his nearly transparent inner lids showing briefly. Unconsciously he tilted his head the same way.

"Fair enough," he said a little cautiously. "Uh - you wouldn't happen to have a number, would you?"

It was rather safer to ask this kind of thing of animals than people, he felt.

"I have lots of numbers," the parrot answered, "a whole big long string of them." He puffed up his chest feathers a little bit, proud of that big long string of numbers that he could actually remember. He wasn't too worried about this human; if this one meant him any harm, he wouldn't have bothered asking about the numbers.

"Right." This didn't seem like the kind of conversation a normal parrot would hold, though some of those friends had ones that did engage to some extent. "So - you know about this, then?"

Julien touched the damp concrete below with a sneakered toe, then sighed - he was tired - and crouched to use a couple of knuckles to trace his number out, one at a time. His waxy inhuman skin oils gleamed softly in exotic colors he had no names for. When the number was complete letters overlaid themselves over the floor. Someone was complaining about a cake left in the rain, apparently.

The parrot excitedly bobbed his head up and down. "Yes! I know that. I watch that. I just haven't said anything yet. I don't know what to say. It seems like it should be important if I want to say something."

The parrot did not really approve of the complaints that were out there concerning the cake in the rain. It did not seem important enough.

...okay, the bird was cute. He suppressed a smile.

"So you can read, then? We've had animals who couldn't before." Julien glanced at the complaint; he didn't have to, he could see it anyway, but it was polite to show where his attention had gone. "Triviality doesn't seem to stop a lot of people. But you'd rather seem more serious than that?"

"I taught myself while I was in the zoo. I was in there a while before I got out." But he could still quietly access the network and learn things...and read zoo maps...and use the zoo maps to plan an escape...

The parrot gave an enthusiastic bob of his head. "Serious things are going on now because of these numbers. Why should we not be serious too?"

"Ah. And you got out, cool. How long?" Today was warm enough for rain, but it was still winter, and cold. Julien expected a lot of the water would freeze tonight or soon after. And a parrot was a tropical animal.

"Heh. Well..." How to explain this? "Personally, I like to mix serious with not. I can be serious, and that's important, but if I don't take time to have fun and relax too, I have a lot of trouble. We're not in a crisis every day."

"Two days!" There was no mistaking the pride in the parrot's voice. "And I found food and everything." He's gotten lucky hanging around playgrounds where toddlers drop bits of fruit all the time.

"But what happens when a crisis comes suddenly?" Besides, he was a parrot, and he had a feeling no one would want to take a parrot seriously.

Julien smoothed back his soft nothair. "Cool, cool. But don't you get cold at night? And everything's supposed to freeze over in a couple days."

"Well, when there's a sudden crisis most people drop the silly stuff to address it. Or if they can't address it they fall quiet for a while. But it comes back. It makes people feel better." He pursed his lips for a moment. "It gets stressful when everything is too serious for too long. You lose hope."

"It got cold," the parrot admitted, "but I found a building that was giving off hot air." He'd huddled by a vent somewhere atop some apartment complex, and it had worked well enough for the past two nights. "What's 'freeze'?"

He considered what Julien said. "Hope is important," he said finally. "It helps you be brave. Bravery. That's...important. Somehow." Even if he didn't really know why yet. But he liked the word well enough, and he liked the concept, and it seemed to resonate with something deep inside him.

This reminded Julien of explaining things to his niece - the challenge of trying to put things simply without being horribly condescending. "Freezing... is when it gets so cold that water goes hard. You ever... uh, seen people with drinks full of solid blocks? Or ice cream? That's partly frozen. In the winter it's sometimes freezing outside, and then it's dangerous to be out in if you're not ready."

"It is." He regarded the parrot with his head a little to one side. "It's hard to go on without both, when things get hard. So we try to enjoy life when we can - this rain cake thing is pretty stupid, but for a lot of people complaining about stupid things is fun."

"How is it dangerous when it just makes water hard? I don't stay in the water." Yet there was something nagging the parrot at the back of his mind, something about great lizards and danger with this sort of cold...

The parrot tilted his head to the side, mimicking Julien. "Stupid things for fun? That's strange. Flying's fun. Watching the humans is fun. But it's not stupid."

"Part of you is water - part of me, too. Our blood has a lot of water in it. When it's been cold, haven't you hurt and felt stiff? It can get a lot worse." He paused, then shrugged. "If you want you could come home with me, for the night. It's safer. I promise I don't have any cages, and if you wanted to leave any time, that's fine."

Flying did sound... nice. Julien didn't let himself dwell on it. "Fun's complicated like that. It's different for everyone - you'll find people who think your fun would be boring, or they'd need to be in a particular mood to like it."

The parrot made a sad noise. "Like the dinosaurs all froze, then..." He did not know why he was saying such things. What something like that really meant. But it was a fragment of a memory, and it felt important. "I don't want that to happen..."

"So there are different kinds of fun...if I tried other things, would I find other kinds of fun?" The parrot hopped back and forth a little.

"Uh... sure, I guess." Asteroids...? Well, it had been complicated, he'd guess. "Well, the offer's open, if you want."

It was kind of weird how natural this felt. Julien had done his best to seem casual about conversing with cats and horses, but it had always taken some practice to actually get used to it. Talking with a parrot?

He refused to think about it.

"Maybe! There's only one way to find out."

Really, when the parrot remembered more, he'd be talking about how the dinosaurs were really killed off by an ice age monster; he'd seen the whole thing once upon a time. But for now, it was just a vague snippet of memory. "I would like that. I don't want to freeze."

He hopped up on Julien's shoulder. "Is there fun at your place, then?"

"Oh! Hi." Careful not to jostle he rose up from the crouch he'd been in. "I think so! There's things to read, music, I have some toys you could take apart, there's food you won't find at a zoo-" he'd have to check what was toxic to parrots first -"some mirrors, and there's TV, but I barely watch that anymore."

Since his eyes had changed and he'd started seeing faster, video had lost some appeal. "And I can try introducing you to the Internet on my laptop. Of all that, TV and the Internet can probably have the most stupid, but they can be pretty serious, too."

The parrot was at least good at maintaining his balance. "That all sounds good! Do you have fruit?" At least that was a hint as to what the parrot liked to eat. "And mirrors and TV and the Internet sound like they might be interesting!"

Julien kept himself from stroking the parrot's breast or telling it was a pretty bird, but it was a near thing. He told pigeons things like that sometimes.

"I do! And some nuts. Oh, my name's Julien. What do you want me to call you? Name and... he or she, or what?"

"I'm..." there was a pause here, a bit of hesitation. "I remember them calling me Torin. And I'm a he!" It was an unusual name, but it was his. Somehow. "It's nice to meet you, Julien!"

"Okay. Hi, Torin!" Moving to the awning's edge Julien held a hand out. Water still dripped off the cover, but the rain had lightened up. Permanently or not, he couldn't tell. "Think we should run for it?"

"Hello!" Torin peered out at the rain. "Running might be good. It could get worse before it gets better."

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TEST DRIVE MEME

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