Cloud Chasers

five | not to be reproduced [pt. two]

a/n: big thanks to my friend danjhd_ for the art of Joyce and Chase above!

When she reached the first floor through the escalator, Joyce immediately entered an electronics store.

She spotted a bin by the entrance and threw in it the can of Bepis she'd just finished drinking.

The elevator music followed her wherever she went.
As soon as she entered the store, a familiar smell she was unable to identify welcomed her.

Unlike the mall's other places, the store was filled with multicolored silhouettes of the same kind she'd seen outside, walking around the aisles.

As she roamed through the store, she realized it was as if it contained exactly what she wanted to see.

At first, when she entered it, she expected to find the latest and greatest TV sets and laptops and gaming devices, as with any other electronics store in Okin, and she saw exactly that.

Flat screen televisions of all sizes, gaming computers with gaming keyboards and gaming mice and gaming chairs. Even merchandising of the latest, most popular videogame among kids. The latest models of smartphones available to try right there, with the screens so big they covered the entire surface of the phones.

When did the present become the future? Joyce asked herself. When did the most unbelievable, spectacular, and improbable sci-fi technology become real and in the hands of all of us?
She wasn't particularly fond of it. She used to like it when the line between reality and virtuality was clearly graspable, but now it seemed as though you couldn't even tell what's real and what isn't.

So, when at first she saw this same old new tech all over the shop, she wasn't exactly excited. But as she roamed around, everything changed before her eyes. Old, bulkier CR-TV sets were sold at unbelievably high prices. Underneath them, actual DVRs were running and showing those low quality images on the outwardly curved screens of those TVs.

When she turned around, she found a collection of great movies on VHS. Something about seeing those movies like that made her more eager to buy and watch them than a virtual catalog ever could.

Right around the corner, she found the computers area. Where she once saw those latest and greatest MacBooks and PCs, she was now looking at these old, heavy, bulky, plasticky computer monitors, not much smaller than the TVs. They were equipped with the most retro-looking keyboards and mice and, of course, the old and heavy tower that made it all possible.

She wondered how valuable these old pieces of tech would be in the real world, but it all paled in comparison when she reached the videogames's section.

All kinds of retro games for retro gaming consoles that didn't even exist anymore were available as if they'd just come out.

She spent about twenty minutes going through all of them, vaping once every two or three minutes.

When she was done checking the last row, she noticed a turned on CR-TV with two chairs in front of it, and two controllers laid on top of them. She followed the controllers' cables and, underneath the TV set, was a Sega Mega Drive.

"Wow," she said and sat at one of the chairs, grabbing the controller. It was heavier than she thought it would be.

The game that'd been loaded was one of those old WWF Wrestlemania games. She remembered playing that game and many others like that one, not on the console, as she never even owned one, but on an emulator on her computer, back in the days when the internet was annoyingly slow.