theattic | Weird-looking, half blind, spook wrangling world-walkers that smoke.

"Took the words right outta my mouth." He hefted his backpack and trudged onward. With the buildings sinking below the hill behind them, JW finally allowed himself to stand up straight again. "Need t'find somewhere dry. Don't wanna ruin these magazines. How'd the night treat you? Has it been a night? I haven't figured out how time works for this particular tree."

Bla bla bla bla.

Ginko, of course, was as quiet as ever, just replying with a few words when it seems necessary.

"It has. Are there other trees that work differently?"

Curiosity is one hundred percent a reason for talking to be necessary.

"They're all a little different," JW said, being vague on purpose. A grand old maple loomed ahead and JW sped up, eager to get out of the rain. He was going to have a cold before he got home, he just knew it.

He dropped his bag to the roots with a loud plop and paused to look out at the rainy road. It sure was easier to find a place to stop without ditches to worry about. He made swift work of tugging things out. He'd spent at least an hour under Deuteronomy's curious gaze assembling his supplies.

There was a plastic zip bag (empty) two different National Geographic magazines, an unopened can of Dr. Pepper, a handful of rubber bands, bread ties, and paperclips he'd grabbed from the junk drawer, a single key that came with the house and last, but not least, a wrapped twinkie.

JW crouched over the spread like a dragon above its hoard.

Ginko sat down carefully on a protruding root, staring in silence as JW laid everything out.

Then he kept staring.

He had literally no idea what most of this stuff was.

"...wow. What is all this?"

JW...hadn't gotten this far in his plan. He had failed to construct an informative talk about each and every one of the items he may or may not have dragged out of the hallway closet.

"Aah...thingssss." He grabbed up the bag and pulled it open before handing it over. "You can keep stuff in this and it'll never get wet. Ever."

Turning the bag over in his hands, Ginko examined it like one would some kind of archaeological artifact, which might have been appropriate. Or ironic.

"How do you--" He presses the two halves of the top together experimentally, raising his eyebrows when they snap together. "--like that. Alright."

JW beamed as Ginko inspected the ziploc. He leaned forward, hands on his knees, and couldn't wait to see what the white-haired man would pick up next. His ego was eating well tonight and this right here made trudging all the way out of town in the rain worth it.

It also felt nice to bring a little wonder into somebody's day. Ginko gave off a sort of vibe that suggested he'd seen most things already.

"You can buy fifty of those for less than it costs to buy a sandwich."

"Huh... that must come in handy."

After a few more moments of messing around with the bag, Ginko caught sight of something else. He reached out to carefully pick up one of the magazines, flipping it open. "These... wait, how do they get these pictures? Are these photographs?"

They didn't look like paintings, that was for sure. But he didn't sound entirely certain about his guess, either; they were too detailed, not to mention the colors. All the same, he couldn't help thinking of the image on JW's phone last time.

"Yup. From all across the globe. That one's Egypt." He stretched an arm across the treasure pile to point at a page. "Egypt...Africa...that's the Amazon river." He dared to scoot closer. "And that...that's just an advertisement for some sort of hair gel. Ignore that. Yours is fine."

Smooth.

JW's attempt at flirting went so far over Ginko's head that it probably smacked into a (now presumably very flattered) bird. Ginko kept flipping through the pages, not seeming to notice or mind the decrease in distance between them.

"That's... incredible." He paused on a picture of an alarmingly brightly-colored tropical bird, glancing briefly at the article it accompanied. "How do they get these pictures? Is that what the thing you were pretending was a weapon yesterday was for?"

"Oh--we--sort of!" Now the questions were coming and he had to be ready. "They used something called a camera. My phone--the thing I was...threatening you with..." Cough. "Has a camera built into it. It doesn't take pictures as good as those though. They're little and blurry."

Hoo boy, he was kind of glad he hadn't brought up video. That would have to wait for another time.

Ginko nodded thoughtfully. "We've got cameras already... much larger than your phone, though. And the pictures look nothing like this." Sounded like they improved quite a bit in the next hundred years or so.

JW's grin suddenly swapped for a frown--but not one directed at Ginko. "Do you have the ones you have to sit in front of for ages? My grandfather got it in his head once that he needed a photo of us made with one of those. It was the middle of July and we were at the fair. I thought I was going to die."

"Uh-- yes? It takes a few minutes for them to work, I think. I take it the process is faster in the future?"

"Oh, hell yes. They've got somethin' called a Polaroid." He pantomimed holding a camera to his eye. "Snap the picture, it spits it out the front and in a few minutes it's developed. They're expensive though, I don't have the cash to for ten pictures just because they're faster. I spend five bucks on disposable cameras like God and everybody else...only downside is the people that develop them always give you this look when you go to pick 'em up. Like they're judging you. Fuck you, lady, you work at the Walmart photo center you can't judge me."

JW momentarily left Ginko in favor of his own little world.

Ginko sat in silence, the still holding the magazine open in front of him as JW ranted.

Finally, he closed it and set it back down, shifting his attention to the dark red can on the ground. Might as well try and distract him from this particular topic. "What's in here?"

"They have the--hm?"

Oh, right. Reality. He wasn't at Walmart. He was in Nowhere, Japan. He put his showboat face back on and picked up the can. God only knew how much the thing had been shaken during the hike and he did not want this conversation to end with Ginko getting blasted in his remaining eye. So he opened it facing away from them both before handing it over. It only fizzed a little bit.

"A drink!"

He stared at it for another moment, quietly wondering if it was alcoholic or what. Only explanation he could think of for the fizzing.

He took a gulp of soda - and then jumped slightly, spluttering and lifting his free hand to cover his mouth so he wouldn't end up spraying soda all over JW. The texture was totally different from beer or sake, and he turned to James with a look of disbelief. "Is it supposed to do that?!"

For a single horrifying moment, JW was afraid that Ginko might have been allergic to it. He didn't know what all they put in soda these days, just that they'd changed it. Why else would Mountain Dew Throwback exist?

"It's carbonated...it shouldn't hurt you." Shouldn't. "How's it taste?"

"It doesn't hurt, exactly, it was just... kind of unexpected." He stared at the drink suspiciously for a moment, then took another sip. He still looked a little uncertain about the carbonation, but now that he was expecting it, he could actually notice the taste better. "...it does taste pretty good. It's really sweet, though."

JW's grin returned. "It's better on a hot day. Has caffeine in it like coffee, so it keeps you going."

He couldn't honestly remember the last time he had fun talking to someone in another world. Sure showing off was always fun, but the small sounds of approval Ginko made were really the icing on the cake.

Ginko hummed thoughtfully, looking into the can for a moment before setting it down between them again. With all this stuff set out, it was a little difficult to stay focused on one thing at a time for long.

He glanced at some of the smaller things first, reaching out after a moment to pick up a paperclip. "...This doesn't do anything... really strange, does it?"

He didn't know how he would process it if this little bit of metal turned out to be some kind of futuristic audio recorder or something.

The antlered man did not laugh at him because that question was legit as fuck.

"Nah, just holds sheets of paper together...or picks a lock if you know what you're doing."

He picked up one of them and started to unbend it.

"The neat thing about them is that they're made by a machine. Millions of them in a day."

He looked back to the paperclip in his hand, bending and unbending a bit of it experimentally.

"Your time is all about quantity, huh... fifty of those bags at once, millions of these in a day." It's not a judgement so much as an observation. Goodness knows there are times when Ginko would appreciate having so much of something so readily available.

James nodded slowly. Even in the 60's buying in bulk had been a thing. "We're figuring out how to do more and more faster and faster. It's a little scary. One day we'll have too much."

Another thing he was starting to value: perspective. Ginko was providing him with plenty of that. He dared to scoot closer.

"There's still places where people live just like they do in that village back there. They don't want it. Some days I can see why."

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