We're All Human

>Re:Glass??(2)

RE: Glass??

Message from Atai [REPLY]

>Wareware,

>Do you know Glass?

>He's not the kind to run off like that.

>Seriously.

>I'm really concerned here.

"What does it look like, Ringo?" Atai asked. He was just outside of where Glass lived, and she wanted to know what it was like to be there if she couldn't go in person.

"Old. Gothic. Not much out of the ordinary TBH" Ringo responded. "I mean shit he must be /loaded/ though. It's pretty fancy."

"Tell me when you get to him!"

"Obviously."

Atai fretted away. The BASMUSH server didn't, usually, feel like a prison-- not like the library computer had. But when Glass was maybe in trouble...

"Knocked," Ringo said.

"Did he show up?" Atai shot back at once.

"Keep your panties on, seriously." Ringo wrote. A few moments later, he added, "mom opened the door. Calling you."

Atai answered the call. "Hello, ma'am. We're friends of your son. He hasn't been picking up his phone recently, and so we've been worried about him."

"...I'm sorry, who're you?"

"Atai," she responded. "I'm sorry I can't be here in person-- I have a physical condition that keeps me from leaving where I live. I'm also blind and can't speak without computer assistance, so I'm sorry I have to visit like this." The words just tumbled out, a jumbled mess, nothing of the exacting construction she had once had.

"I'm George. Freeman," Ringo added. "I don't know him as well as she does, but she needed someone to... carry the phone, and I have legs and hands and stuff. No offense, Atai."

"This is... certainly unexpected. Are you from that computer game he used to play?" Glass' mom said.

"Yes," Atai said. "Is he home?"

"I don't know how--" The response came in a slightly judgemental tone, but then a voice Atai found somehow familiar rang out from afar.

"Hi, mom. Did you say people from my game were here?"

"Oh, yes. A George Freeman and an... at ay aye? At ah ee? Something like that."

"Atai," Glass said.

"Right, yes. Henry, I thought I told you to--"

"Oh, c'mon, mom. These are my friends we're talking about!"

"...Okay. You may come in."

Atai heard the sound of shoes on floorboards and the rustling of fabric seats. She waited as long as she thought she could before the situation became uncomfortable, and then said "Uh! Hi, Glass!"

"Hello, Atai," Glass said. "And you are..."

"Oh, I'm Ringo. Gave your mom my real name because, you know. Moms," Ringo replied. Atai cringed, slightly. Obviously humans weren't named just Atai-- probably they weren't named Atai at all. She thought that /of course/ she should have given another name, but she'd never used anything other than her username or a minor variation thereof-- Missus Atai wasn't much better as a full name-- but this was her name! The only thing she'd ever called herself, and

"Atai! Look alive!" Ringo said. Amid all her internal consternation she had missed someone saying something. Her embarrassment only worsened.

"Right! Sorry! What was that?"

"I was just asking what was going on? It's not every day I get a visit like this!" Glass said.

"You haven't been online in weeks! Or picking up your phone! I've been worried sick, Glass!"

"Oh! Right, uh--"

"What's going on, Glass?"

"Promise not to laugh?"

"Um—"

"I, uh, I got a girlfriend."

"...Vlad figured something like that."

"And found religion."

"Mud's going to be disappointed."

"Sorry. I'm like, eighteen. I guess... it's time I find my own stuff, right? With Ashley, and the Church of Us... I'm happy now, Atai."

Stupid stupid stupid. Atai's thoughts pulled themselves into a dark, self-reprimanding spiral. Everyone else was right and she was an idiot, as usual.

In her mind, an image of a slight, innocent boy called Glass, who was the glue that kept a community together, whose greatest fear was the loss of that community, who loved flights of fantasy...

that image gently allowed itself to be replaced with the young man she was speaking to, now, a man who had grown up and put aside childish things for the trappings of adulthood. It was a sick feeling. If growing up meant leaving behind her home, Atai didn't know if there was a point in growing up at all. But there was nothing she could say. At the end of the day, she was still just a kid.

"We should go."