Genevieve and the Two Scotties by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Chapter 3

To attempt to find Billy and Jack, it was clear to Genevieve that she’d be making a journey. She’d prefer to do that with some company; especially as being something of a homebody; that journey would take her into parts of Poochville she had never previously seen; and maybe even unsafe places. For her envisioned trip, she’d have fancied someone more close than all excepting Clement, but such a Pacific Laner did not exist.

Genevieve knew what she had to do; but really didn’t feel like it. It was a lot more comfortable for her to be right where she comfortably was and maybe have a nice dream. To avoid any further of the kind of tiring investigations and disturbances she had endured during the Clement affair, she engaged reverie; in hopes it would suggest a logical reason for her to do nothing; while she almost unconsciously countered that by sipping her stimulating coffee.

Genevieve’s thoughts first went to the seemingly simple truth that personally thanking Billy and Jack would not be of much significance to them. Hell, one more or less little thank you was of no consequence. It would be like one of a trillion trillion trillion to the trillionth power of drops in an ocean.

From somewhere a terrible, argumentative voice popped in without invitation. She had been stymied at the cyber level.

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However, having been a pup before the deceptively-harmless-appearing machine took over everything; her natural instincts were still to seek important information without the use of cheap plastic. In fact, due to her experiences with the machine, she had come to assign a high probability to cyber stymie, misinformation, or the presentation of stupid cartoons which were supposedly funny precisely because they were supposedly purposely stupid. Duh? The concept might work for some a number of times. But, for Genevieve, that number was near six; as the sixth time; more or less; the “intended humor” resulted in a repetition of her own; that being one of bored derision. She had decided upon what she considered an alternative to the limitations which seemed endemic to common twenty first century notions of modern communication; personal contact. But, with who?

Unfortunately, Genevieve had limited experience of the distasteful irrelevance now associated with the “archaic”

requirement of the icky personal contact of prior centuries; hers that of long gone Dillon and to a lesser extent, Clement.

She was virtually oblivious to the “advances” made through the cyber sociability which had quickly evolved through the use of the computer, to laptops, to tablets, to cell phones, and to smart phones. Like the highly infectious and deadly “Spanish flu virus,” it was back again and now everywhere, supposedly for

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something akin to up-to-date-death research. But, only if you vibrated the wrong plastic keys.

Today’s tablets were not on any sort of mount. They were flat pieces of disposable insignificance. They were still prone to breakage and replacement; like most every other piece of plastic’s best, yet inadequate imitation of skeletally thin pieces of stone.

Modern tablet; the kind courtesy of Pexels.com under their CC0 license; modified.

Genevieve became confused. She realized that her thoughts might be irrelevant, insofar as they were now possibly just conveniently finding “reasons” to confirm a decision that she had already made; “post-truth” being the fashionably hot word of last year. A minute back she had seemingly decided upon the icky

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personal contact; the only question; “With who?” Now she sounded as if she was reconsidering the option she had just instinctively rejected.

Which voice was her own? ...... No problem; the answer came immediately. The plastic centered do-nothing scenario she had considered and possibly concocted was almost entirely applicable to the “comically” despairing hominids; her “knowledge” of them almost completely attributable to the “The Hominid Family”

program her laptop regularly delivered. The canine and now also feline paws resident in Poochville were not yet that severely afflicted. For one thing, and not to take the overly emotional and perhaps more appropriate path, they simply have too much difficulty with keyboard keys one fifth the size of their paws.

“The Hominid Family,” an online TV show; property of the author.

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“The Hominid Family,” as presented on expanded channel cable TV, as well as certain “cool” websites on the “new” tube, was now right in front of Genevieve’s face again. The first

“joke” offered was another of those standardized, polite, failure ha-ha’s which might have been seen as daring by the nerds who participated in the Nielsen polls sometime before her youthful involvement with Dillon and before half of Pacific Road had been born. The canned laughter approximated the frivolity of a beached whale; or the obligatory mirth a broadly comedic fiction writer effects when unfortunately confronted with the offerings of one not quite up to it of that same ilk; sometimes referred to as genre.

She took her last swig of coffee. The cup now drained, she did exactly what one might have come to expect. The stimulation of the coffee outweighed by the boredom induced by the laptop presentation, Genevieve put her head down on the left side of the “communication module,” and with a fortuitous paw placement shut it off in the rude manner the imposing plastic configuration designed to house an array of zeroes and ones had

“documented” as being something that it doesn’t like very much; though purposeful as well as accidental experimentation had revealed a high degree of tolerance for “documentation”

disregard.

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Through “credentialed” flunkies the plastic had audaciously and lengthily insinuated what is nothing more than a needy desire for flesh and blood, at least those of that classification capable of plugging it in and/or recharging its batteries. Those “expert” operation manual writers and their esteemed colleagial superiors had sought to hide their mercenary mission through their clandestine advertisements targeted at those who choose to wallow in that which is likely laziness finally completely spawned, but nevertheless had become perceived as being successfully sold; Nielsen heir’s the primary determinant of such considerations; a “high” number, ergo fashionable at all times excluding the hindsight correctly seen as aberrant period which roughly ran from 1962-1979.

This might otherwise be said as; “It’s super cool to have a state-of-the-art machine; especially one you can put in your pocket and whip out when in the presence of someone you’d like to impress. Yo, dude, check this out” if one is not yet sufficiently embarrassed to be repeating the phrases the cool junior high school kids profusely said when one was first inclined to demonstrate one’s terminal nerdiness at the age of thirteen, at the current, more “advanced” age of fifty. It is indeed fortunate for some that nerdiness is generally not fatal; even when terminal. Some observers may disagree; but generally don’t say so, preferring to excuse themselves.

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Getting back to the plastic monster in collusion with some flesh and blood dinks; the latter largely unknowingly evocative of a personal ineptitude combined with a thereby illogical over-forbearance, this is that which the dink hates most as being much too revelatory; the largest question to the rest of the generally disinterested populace on a slow news day, perhaps being “Who besides other dinks gives a flying?”

Specifically, rather than making the prescribed series of entries intended to announce polite departure, Genevieve had perhaps accidentally; that possibly judgmental determination only known to her subconscious and her meta, possibly non-existent and definitively incomplete psychologist, neither of which was prone to doing much talking, clarification, or anything else other than be mildly annoying, for that matter; pushed the button which the thing liked for turning itself on, but not turning itself off; that alone an unmentioned indication of a rudimentary, fundamental imperfection. This plastic thought may take on more meaning if and when the thing makes the rules; but that scenario doesn’t seem likely to anyone other than those few inflicted with an egg of head.

Genevieve was a tried and true aficionado of black coffee.

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