Book 5: Chapter 39: A Civil Discussion
Bob
June 2343
In Virt
Theresa had invited me to her place—in VR, that is—and since I hadn’t seen her in a while, I was unreasonably excited. She had recently discovered the UFS Federal Library and had jumped in with both feet. She hadn’t even answered messages for several days. Now, it looked like she was finally coming up for air.
We didn’t have a need for tokens, being on the same subnet by tacit agreement, but it was still polite these days to knock first. I received an ACK, then popped in. I was taken aback, though, to find the layout considerably changed. I was in what I’d have called a home theater room back on old Earth. Theresa was sitting, in Quinlan form, in an easy chair reminiscent of the furniture in the Heaven’s River transit system. She patted the arm of an empty chair beside her, so I converted to Enoki and took the hint.
“Are we going to watch a show?”
“A couple, actually. Just short clips. A few are from your YouTube site, and a few are from our own version, which for some awful reason has been dubbed QuinTube.” She paused. “You do understand there’s no cultural justification for that name?”
I smiled at her. “Remember what I said about the English language? Turns out it also infects other languages. Kind of like an STD.”
Theresa looked confused for a moment, then said, “We don’t have those. Different mating strategies and all. But I get your point. Anyway … ”