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>Stay with Squid. She seems like she wants to say something, and you don't know how much time you'll have to discuss it with her. She's in a good mood after your conversation, to the point where she didn't even get distracted by Phascomon entering.
“Sure, go ahead.” You say, fidgeting in your chair. “What’s up?”
She seems satisfied that you’re staying.
“I wanted to know more about what you’re chasing! I’ve just gone on and on about myself, but I don’t know that much about your goal yet. You want to get out of here, right?”
You nod. You recall mentioning this to both her and Wind before, but you’ve never gotten to share. She didn’t dig through the book.app either, back when she was decrypting its name.
You’ve been staring at it more often lately. Whenever Phascomon is asleep, you’ve spent late nights peering at the pages that are just out of reach, pining for the day where you climb through the portal and leave it all behind. You open it up and present it to her, allowing her to get a good look.
“Oh, wow! This is far better than what the simulation comes up with.”
“That’s always something I’ve been thinking about, right? They have the resources to make buildings and everything. Why are all the graphics so… Terrible?”
“They are? I didn’t know things could look that nice. I mean, there are some higher resolution assets lying around in certain places, but things always just look the way they do.”
Even Squid seems unsurprised by the ugly, low-poly masses that attempt to emulate real grass. It finally hits you that to most of the people living in the City, this is normal. There’s nothing to compare it to when they’ve never seen anything better. You’re left all alone to bemoan the soulless expanse of the city, and to plant that longing in others by sharing the sights that you’ve seen are possible.
“Hmm…” Squid muses. “I’ve looked into parks and stuff before. They do have a lot of processing power left over sometimes. So I don’t think it’s for any kind of scarcity reason.”
“Then what?”
“I think they just don’t care to make it all beautiful. What’s the difference anyway? I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it. Grass is grass, y’know?”
“It’s not just the grass. It’s pretty much everything. And that’s why I want to get out. There’s a whole world out there that we’ve left behind, full of the most beautiful sights I’ve laid my eyes on. It’s more real than this… Playground.”
She nods slowly.
“I wish I could lend you the holodeck, but it’s in use all the time nowadays… I do have some nice simulations in there you might enjoy!”
“It’s okay. I saw how busy the trainees were. I wouldn’t want to hijack it just to smell the flowers.”
