24 September, 2050
Harry has taken the burdens of the world on his shoulders or so it looks … I'm having fun watching for now.
Hunched over the table, on that put-together thing called laptop, every part of which has been recycled in the last five years, Harry thinks he's gonna solve the puzzle at one go and win the game.
I have already rehearsed in my mind the juiciest nugget, the only one that his focus would fall for, but I'm biding time in sympathy.
I've already tired of staring at the yellow circles all across the montage of those homeless row pics that his MolarTM projects on the wall. He let me help create that montage in the FluidPhoto App so that was fun. Then he plugged in the Molar, a tiny tooth like projector, so we could see a magnified image of the whole montage on the wall.
Having circled with an epen whatever features on every person's image that he found worthy of attention, he is now sitting back at the table, poring over the laptop view, his temples sandwiched between his palms.
At last, I lose my patience.
"Roxie had a similar set of pictures."
He lifts his head as if from a haze. The expression of his eyes is pained, that's how much he's stressed his aching head already.
"What?" he asked befuddled.
"Main Street, Corkscrew Colony, she said. She uploaded them to Homeless Tracker, just like you did."
"That's only forty minutes away from Medusa," Harry mutters and kills the PhotoView.
I can see his activity on the wall as he hasn't detached the Molar. As he navigates The GlobeTrotter - that ancient page-based browser - I instantly feel sick in my tummy.
Even Jaffer has 3D web in his father's laptop. Why can't Harry convert on his? Like, how can you live without 3D Web in this day and age? Well, Harry has pretty old bones beneath his skin if you ask me. Older than his parents probably.
Disgusted, I instantly fall back in step with the grand opening of a new branch of the Weasley Brothers's jokeshop: Fred's Fickle Frivolities.
"There! Look, Brian, look! What does that remind you of?"
It takes me some time to refocus from the new pranks performed by a Fred Weasley puppet to a part of the wall projection my brother was pointing to. I find fresh pictures and more yellow circles. He must have snagged Roxie's uploads from the Tracker and collated them into his montage.
He looks wild with excitement and is pointing at one spot in the middle. The picture is an enlarged crop of the right hand of a person, elbow of that arm probably resting on the person's knee. The hand is held up in front of a sleeping (or fainted) head that has swung low like a flower bulb on the tip of a plant, facing the ground.
Harry has circled the fingers. They are poised in a fanned pattern, each finger slightly curved as if the picture has been taken when the person was in the midst of an argument.
I understand Harry's question now but dismiss the answer. He's told me a hundred times about Jorge's fingers but I liked the point his boss made better. And the image of the fingers on the wall looks too casual.
"So what? It's a coincidence." I love speaking like a wiseguy to irritate him so I do.
"A co-- You must be kidding, boy. Jorge died yesterday, Bri. Yesterday. And now this. These are fourteen people in total, Bri."
"They're not dead, Harry." The image of the person lying with splayed limbs on the reed mat emerges in my mind. I try to scan my memory if he was the one missing when we passed again later. But I can't be sure. There was no one prone on the ground when we passed again, so maybe it was him.
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