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Bernon grinned. "Hip-hip hooray, it's cleaning day! Hurry up, Mike!"
Mike followed him out of the cabin, rolling his eyes. "Do you guys act like little kids sometimes on purpose just to annoy me?"
"I do," Bernon replied cheerfully, starting down the hill.
Tanrial snorted, “Oh, we know you do Bernon. I mean… possibly?” She said dragging out the word and giving her best innocent look, “He’s not wrong though, I feel like I stink like a pig.” She frowned at the thought.
"I grew up on a farm," Bernon said reassuringly. "trust me, you don't smell as bad as a pig. But we all probably look pretty barbarous right now. Who wants to go first when we find a good spot?"
“Ladies first, so….Bernon? Going first?” She said, trying to hold back a massive grin.
Mike chuckled, and Bernon made an outraged noise. "How dare you insult women everywhere by calling a hunkish man like myself one of their kind? Shame on you!" He sniffed. "….I will go first though, if nobody minds."
“Go ahead, I don’t mind… Lady Bernon.” She said with a shrug and a smile.
"Thank-you," Bernon replied with dignity.
By now they had reached the river, and Mike nodded at a copse of willows leaning over the water not far off. "That looks like a nice sheltered spot. Don't take too long. We'll set up a little fire here and boil some water to wash clothes in."
“Cool, let’s get the water boiling then.” She made her way over to the spot, “Bernon, the clothes are in here.” She said throwing him the bag.
Bernon caught it and headed over to the trees. "Thankee. I'll be back soon."
Mike knelt down and started gathering kindling. "We'll have to be careful not to make the fire too large or smoky, in case there are soldiers nearby. Fill this pot with water? It's not very big, so only one thing will fit in at a time. Let's just use it for the extra dirty stuff. Everything else can soak in the river itself."
She nodded and headed over to film the pot up, humming a little while she did and walked back, being careful not to spill too much water.
Mike sat down stiffly, nursing the small flame with more kindling and some larger sticks. "Did you know that way back in the old days, people used to have machines that would wash their clothes for them?"
Tanrial nodded, “A washing machine? One of the best inventions…” She sighed, “I miss those days.”
"Oh yeah, I forget you've been around for a couple centuries already. In that case, maybe you can explain a couple things that have been bugging me. One time I found a landfill, you know, an abandoned one. Some of them have colonies of scavengers living in them, and those are missing most of the interesting stuff. But this one was untouched. So anyway, I go in there and there's rows and rows of big metal boxes, like bookshelves but with big heavy doors on them. There were wires on the backs like they might have run off electricity or something. I couldn't figure out what they were for, but I did see one that said it was a 'first-class icebox'. Does that ring any bells?"
She frowned a little, “Well, I mean before they had refrigerators they had icebox’s. If that’s what you mean then, they are used to store food, keep it cold when it’s not being eaten. Sometimes for a month or so,” She shrugged, “That’s all I can think of right now about iceboxes…”
"Cold food storage? Man, that would be useful. They thought of everything back then, didn't they?" He paused a minute, thinking. "What about this: a small, flat metal box with nothing in it except a panel of buttons. Most buttons had letters on them, but there were numbers and symbols too. The lid had a panel of black glass on the inner side, but it was cracked. I couldn't make it do anything. The underside was pretty corroded and burnt."
“Could be a laptop? They were used like a bigger version of a phone. You could do anything really. Talk to people on the other side of the world, search anything you wanted with a click of a button…” She shrugged, “Then people got fancy with virtual reality.”
Mike tilted his head. "Virtual reality?"
She smiled, “Virtual reality or V.R, If you put on this… headset, It could take you to another world. Like a video game but it was all around you, like the real world but… not.”
Mike frowned skeptically. "That was fun for people? Sounds weird to me. The real world's trouble enough without bringing a fake world into it." He sighed. "It sounds like the people back then were surrounded in so much luxury that they got bored and started making up problems for themselves. I was only six when the worst of the disasters happened, and even before that my family was relatively poor. So I don't really remember those days, let alone miss them. What about you, do you miss anything about….back then?"
“How easy it was. You could go to into a supermarket, grab what you needed and leave in under ten minutes. You could contact a friend who was in another country with a click of a button… it was simpler in some senses…”
(Sorry gotta go, seeya later!)
(Okay seeya ^^)
"Huh." Mike considered that for a few moments. "I guess it does sound like it had its upsides. I wonder…I wonder how the people in other countries are doing. (XD) There's not telling how the disasters affected them, whether it's better or worse for them now compared to here." Mike shrugged. "Maybe Ryker would know. He seems like the type to stay involved in global matters."
“Possibly, who knows.” She replied leaning back on her arms.
Just then Bernon appeared, wearing fresh clothes and looking significantly cleaner than before. "Okay, someone else's turn. Man, that felt good. It's real cold though, fair warning."
“Dibs.” She said, taking the bag from Bernon and heading off in the direction he came from, quickly undressing and walking in, glad to finally be able to clean off the dirt.
The boys sat by the fire, talking quietly. Bernon's voice was light and cheerful, while Mike's was almost inaudible but still fairly good-natured. It seemed as though they had gotten over their original distrust of each other at some point during the journey. After a moment, Mike even laughed aloud at something Bernon said. He'd never laughed like that before in their time together.