Intro To Existing Again

Sketchbook

 MePhone3GS was an idiot. Nickel knew that the moment she first saw him, awkwardly shuffling down the halls of Hotel OJ. But now that she'd actually talked to him, she got to see how dumb he really was. Seriously, how does somebody ask a gay man if he's dating his female friend, dump an out-of-context snippet of his trauma on everyone, and accidentally say something transphobic, all in the same breath? And he didn't even know what being trans was!

It made Nickel wonder more about Meeple. She'd been there a grand total of once, and had heard a few horror stories about it from a reluctant MePhone during therapy, but he never got into specifics, and Cobs' tour showed nowhere near the entire building.

She sat in her bed, scribbling absently in the sketchbook she'd gotten for Christmas a while back. She was never really an artist before the whole II thing, but after a million uneventful days fast-forwarded by Paintbrush's art class, she was considered by everyone to be the Grand Slams' official Art Person. Not that she minded; drawing was fun and all, she just wished people would gift her anything other than art supplies again.

Hold on, was she drawing herself again? Yeah, she was. No matter what she was thinking when she started drawing, it always ended up just being her, feeling whatever emotion she was feeling at the moment. There had to be thousands of Nickels on the walls of the art room at this point.

There were a few ugly drawings of the Meeple logo in the corner of the page as well. Nickel didn't remember doing those, but she also struggled to remember anything she drew while zoned out. Those logos were probably a product of her thinking about Meeple. Speaking of which, why was Nickel so surprised that MePhone3GS didn't know what being trans was? Why would Steve Cobs ever feel the need to have The Talk with his robots? What use would there be in telling a bunch of murder robots about the complexities of gender identity? Plus, Steve Cobs was a dick. Not only did he have no use in teaching about that kind of stuff, he had no drive to teach anything besides how to do tasks.

Nickel was forced out of her drawings when the door to her room opened.

"Hey, OJ," She said, not even looking up. Why did she assume it was OJ? Because nobody else dared come into her room without knocking.

"Dinner," Was all OJ said.

"Not hungry," Nickel lied. She was hungry, but she was also too focused on drawing to leave her precious sketchbook behind.

"Alright," OJ left, closing the door behind him and leaving Nickel to her own devices. She continued drawing for a while, thinking more about Meeple.

MePhone was always vague about what happened when he was there. The only times he'd be even a little specific was when he was explaining the details of bad experiences he felt were story-time-worthy. Nickel could only guess what went down outside of what he was willing to share, and it was a complete mystery on what happened to 3GS in his days.

Nickel probably doodled for hours, completely lost in her thoughts. By the time she realized she was actually starving, she had filled three pages with nondescript sketches of herself and a weirdly high amount of Meeple logos. There were a few MePhones and Trophys in there too, plus an unfinished, scribbled over Baseball.

Nickel decided she had been drawing for far too long and she really needed to eat something. Dinner was probably over by now, but hopefully there were still some scraps of food left by the ravenous animals known as the Neighbors. She closed her sketchbook, set it on her nightstand along with her pencil, then left her room for the kitchen. When she exited the elevator on the first floor, she was hit by the sound of some really bad music. Seriously? Fan wasn't even at the hotel right now! Who in their right mind could possibly be listening to Spoiled Lemon on full blast this late at night?!

She shook her head to herself, then continued en route to the kitchen. When she arrived in the lobby, it was practically empty, except for the seat at the desk with the computer that everyone had to share. In that seat was none other than MePhone3GS. What was he doing here? He'd never shown the slightest interest in the computer. Hesitantly, Nickel approached him, looking at the computer screen over his shoulder. He was reading some article about... Zodiac signs? Seriously?

3GS didn't seem to notice Nickel standing over his shoulder, so she decided she'd leave him alone and not try to start any conversations. He was busy, and she really didn't care about what he was doing, so she just went to the kitchen and grabbed some leftovers from the fridge before going back to her room, where she ate. Once she was done, her eyes fell again onto her sketchbook. She was really in the mood to draw today, huh? Lazily, she shoved her empty plate onto the nearest available surface and picked up the book and her pencil. She opened it to an empty page, started sketching, and immediately zoned out.

When Nickel zoned back in, her sketch was complete, and strangely, it wasn't of herself. It was a rough-looking portrait of someone different. Someone very robotic and very bald. Someone in a really baggy hoodie with a nasty scar on their face.

Hey, that was MePhone3GS. Weird. Nickel wondered what compelled her to do that, why her brain defaulted to drawing someone other than herself, and why this was probably one of the more accurate to real life of her drawings.