riverviewlogs | a fish music player should be called an iCod

Entry tags:

a fish music player should be called an iCod

who: Llŷr & Cain
what: Phone nerds
when: Some time after this post.
where: The river
warnings: Android vs Apple

Floating in the water as close to the populated area as he could without risking being seen by too many people (it was still ingrained in him), Llŷr waited for the man he had been speaking to.

His phone was already on low battery despite how little he had tried to use it, so there had to be at least one mobile battery charger worth of fish in his net by now. If not, he would have to start using the pretty jewels he had found in the river as well, and he wasn't keen on that.

The mer was thinking of giving Cain a call again, but hesitated. Would that mess up his trade chances if he looked too desperate?

Sighing, he turned in the water and pushed his tail, gliding towards the river bank so he could see if the man was coming.

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It took a few days. Cain wasn't going to ask for an advance on a paycheck, and he had to sit down pretty soon after arriving to figure out finances. Considering how many unknown variables there were, that took him the better part of the day. It wasn't the math so much as the research into how much he would want in savings to get out of community housing if he needed to, cash for his own hobbies and interests, all the things he'd otherwise need here.

So getting those external batteries for his friend in the river had taken some time. Not too long—he's made a deal and he wasn't about to back out on it—but probably longer than someone at the top of his priorities would have waited. Whatever, Llŷr could handle it.

He came up to the river, glanced out over its surface, and waved out at the water. Just in case the kid was somewhere he couldn't see yet. He had a bag with a handful of chargers, not to mention the smaller tools he'd grabbed to inspect the phone as promised. S7, huh? Weird.

Someone was at the water's edge, waving. It was slightly blurred to his eyes, currently focused to the underwater view, but Llŷr figures it has to be someone looking for him... or being really weird.

Nope, definitely for him.

He grins and swims upwards, breaking the surface in a mess of ginger hair and deep black eyes. Taking a breath to push the water out of his gills, the merman smiles up at Cain.

"Hey there. Jacob, right?" It sure looked like it. That meant phone chargers, and a deal.

Throwing up the net of fish on the river bank, the merman then pulls himself up as well so that he can sit on the ground with his tail still in the water.

Cain stepped to the side automatically when the net came up, even if it wasn't right in his space, and waited for Llyr to surface. He had to admit, seeing it in person was definitely different than through a water-splattered recorded image. He was trying to keep his reactions purely internal, though, since he knew making a fuss about it wasn't going to help anyone.

"Got it in one," he said with a smile and a nod. Nodding toward the catch, he asked, "You been busy?"

The merman nods a little, opening the net to show off the fish inside. "They look kind of similar to salmon? They taste fine and they're really fresh." One even wiggles a little bit.

"I have five of those and some smaller fish, as well as odds and ends I found in the river." Mostly trash, lost broken items and a tacky necklace.

"Do you go after them or just keep moving the net to better places?"

Cain used to fish a lot when he was younger, sometimes when he lived on the coast or near a river-fed lake. It had been a while since he'd given into the urge to actually put in the time — there were a lot of ways to get the same kind of calm in between bites now, and he certainly didn't need to do it for food...

He sat down, reaching into his bag to hold up an even smaller bag, wrapped up and tied off at the handles. "Got what you asked for."

"I hunt them, of course! It wouldn't be fair otherwise." A half-truth, perhaps. Some mer did catch their prey with things like nets and javelins, but he didn't like that. It felt like cheating.

Llŷr looks over at the net and wiggles it a bit. "This is just for carrying them after they're caught."

...the mention of the battery packs makes him perk up, and he reaches for the bag.

"Guess you've got an advantage there," he said with amusement. It was something most humans had gotten past, hunting for their own food, but the ones who still went the extra mile did tend to have a market. This was probably the same idea.

Handing the bag over obligingly, Cain sat himself back to watch. There were at least four different types of packs in there, all micro-USB compatible. "Grabbed a few different companies and models so you could see whichever you like better."

Opening the bag, Llŷr carefully takes out the packs and then reaches to grab the phone where he had stored it between a few rocks at the river edge. Curious to see if they worked, he plugs it in to one pack and breathes a sigh of relief as the phone starts charging. 3% left had left him a little nervous.

"Thank you so much! I thought my only contact with the rest of this place was going to turn useless." Smiling brightly, the mer hands over the phone to Cain so he could look at it.

Cain grinned when the phone was passed over, thumb automatically swiping at the screen to work off some dust and dirt and started to fiddle with it. While it charged, he would take a look at the software. He'd save cracking it open literally for when it could be handed over as soon as he was done.

"Rechargeable batteries have been so ubiquitous recently that I kind of forgot not everyone has access to an outlet," he admitted. New OS updates were expected but still nice, and he found himself fiddling with the app store to see what kinds of things this phone could run that his couldn't. "Come to think of it, some kind of solar charger might work for you? If those even exist."

Mers, vampires, and magic did. Why not sufficiently advanced technology? Don't crush his dreams, alternate universe. That would be really mean.

Llŷr's lock screen is a picture of what seems to be a shipwreck. It's clear enough to not have been taken by a barely waterproof phone, so it's probably from the internet. Inside, it changes to a seamlessly tiled water background.

Pretty much what you'd expect from a merman's phone.

The apps are pretty simple - weather app, a few addictive but generic games, Friendr, an album full of blurry and wet pictures of coastlines, a murky and dirty river that might be the Hudson, and then a few pictures of people. Some have pointed ears, and another is of a floating cup and someone hugging the invisible person holding said cup.

Outside of that he has a few apps that do not work any more, such as the actual Tinder, news apps, Skype, YouTube and a Chrome web browser.

Meanwhile, Llŷr is watching with a slightly amused look. "Solar power? That would be awesome. I haven't seen anything like that back home, but who knows. Maybe I just haven't heard of it, like the otterbox!" he chuckles again. "Either way, it might exist here."

"Solar power exists," he said easily. Swiping through all the apps and surfing a bit before diving into the settings and reading off all the specs listed inside. It was one thing to know the names and how they functioned, but he was soon going to pull the thing apart and see it for himself. That part was always better.

He shifted to something more comfortable, intending to stick around for a while, and fiddled. That was about the only word for it.

"Whether it's advanced enough here to use for phone batteries is another thing entirely, though." As if he was the one who would put in the legwork, as if he was the one who usually got everything done when there wasn't an easy way, he added, "I'll have to look into it."

"So why isn't everything using solar power? It sounds a lot better than all the other shit that keeps messing up the sea." And, you know, the earth in general.

The rest of the phone was pretty much straight-forward with nothing completely unheard of. Quick charging, fancy camera, a lot of storage space, quad HD display and an OS named Marshmallow. Who knows why.

The merman watches Cain fiddle with the phone, amusement turning a bit more thoughtful. "So is the fish going to be enough for these packs?" Business was business, as they say. The human might have given him the one pack as a taste, after all.

"Having to remake a ton of infrastructure is a big one," Cain said. He was moving now to pull out his tools and power off the phone, took the charger off and set it aside somewhere the dirt wouldn't get into it. "Corporate greed being another. If solar power could be harnessed well enough, electric companies and the like would have to change a whole lot to stay competitive."

Huh? Cain paused, glanced up at the merman, then down to the net he'd brought. Oh right, fish as currency for now. That was the trick, wasn't it? Not like he couldn't use the fish and the chargers were relatively cheap for how much they were likely worth to someone who couldn't otherwise keep his phone powered. Right. Okay. "Don't worry about it, you're good," he assured.

Humans are damn weird, that's all Llŷr can think when he hears about the problems of humanity and their endless greed. They really destroyed everything around them even though they had better alternatives.

It really makes him feel better about trading rather than using currency. Not to say that he wasn't utterly fond of shiny things such as jewels and gold, but it had little to do with the actual value. The fact that his trade was acceptable lessened his concern, though, and he'll just hoard the rest of the bag, picking out a pack and thinking of a good place to hide it.

Then Llŷr watches Cain start to pick apart the phone, and it makes him a little nervous. The man worked with apps, though, so he imagined he knew what he was doing. Hopefully. "Can you think of any other apps I could use?"

It was with a lot of careful poking and prodding that Cain got the back of the phone off with no damage. Weird that this one didn't have a regular back like earlier models but he was fairly confident he could get in and out with no damage to the casing or the innards.

He glanced up at the question and quirked his lips. "Yeah, a battery-saving app could do a world of good," he offered. Not that he would need to hoard the power now that he had the charger packs, but it would certainly make them last longer.

"There are apps for saving battery? That sounds like an oxymoron." He'd say catch-22 but that wasn't really part of the mer curriculum. Llŷr is curious, though, sitting up a bit more as if that would help him see Cain fiddle with the phone.

"I wish there were apps for measuring depth, PH levels and temperature, but phones are not really made for the sea." He shrugs slightly. "As long as I can speak to people and not be stuck alone here, I'm really relieved. I was getting a bit worried."

He wasn't part of a pod or a non-human underground here. Just a dude in the river.

"Yeah, it monitors what apps might be running in the background to regulate them, keeps your screen from unlocking by accident, things like that," he explained. There were plenty of useful things but this one seemed like the best idea overall for his needs.

He tilted his head at the comment however and looked at the merman speculatively. "There are no apps for that sort of thing that I can think of, but there are watches that do stuff like that."

"That's pretty cool. I'm so impressed with human technology!" At least the good things. He's much less impressed with the shitty ones, but hey. Between nuclear bombs and phones, you'd have to choose the good things sometimes.

The mention of watches with the abilities he had mentioned, Llŷr groans. "I'm going to be so broke here. Good thing I don't pay rent."

"Humans do some pretty great things."

He couldn't be more in agreement about the balance of good and bad. There were so many little goods that tended to be eclipsed by ginormous bads that it really took some perspective to keep all of it in sight. Cain wasn't one to let all that pass him up, at least.

Laughing, Cain soothed, "You don't pay rent, you might have a job, you'll be fine. Budgeting might be a problem, though. You ever have to deal with that before?"

"Like phones and corn dogs," the merman says with a thoughtful and happy little nod, running his webbed fingers through his red hair - knots and braids getting a little less tangled.

However, the mention of how to deal with money almost has Llŷr groaning again. "Not really. We barter underwater with other mer, and when I was in the underground society I traded ocean stuff. I've only ever held a few dollars. Money is a really weird concept. Just cloth pieces with numbers on them that are said to be worth a specific amount." He shrugs. "It's a little less tangible than trading you something to eat for something else you can provide... or even sea glass and gems."

Those two examples got a laugh out of Cain and he nodded along. "And cotton candy and rollercoasters, and basically theme parks in general," he added after a moment of thought. They were describing theme parks. He was, anyway. They were fun, exciting distractions with terrible-and-amazing food and wow, he hadn't been to one in a while, had he? Maybe once he got home he would pack up Abel and Holly and the Yates twins and take them somewhere.

"It's a placeholder system and useful for people that don't otherwise have skills that result in goods but are worth their time and effort," he said reasonably. Still tinkering away at the phone. It wasn't hugely different from his own, but the small differences had him picking out bits and pieces and getting real close to inspect them without breaking anything inside. "Doesn't go back if left alone too long, either."

"Theme parks sounds amazing," Llŷr says with a sigh. "I've seen them on the internet and there's one at the shore near where I was born." Bright lights drew mer attention, okay? They're essentially underwater magpies.

Still, the money thing is a mystery. He technically understands what Cain means, but it seems to convoluted to him. "If you don't have the skills in a craft then there are options like delivery and many other tasks," Llŷr says thoughtfully. "Besides, who decides how much a piece of cloth is with? Only you do. The piece is even worth less and more in other countries, but food on your table is universal."

"Bit of a limitation having fins instead of feet for things like that," he said with a dip of his head in acknowledgment. Somehow he doubted the underwater world had anything quite as grandiose and pointless as theme parks to try out. "Too bad there aren't any here."

"Usually those things are decided by the materials used, the quality of the workmanship, how far it has to travel to get to the market, the demand for that product, and general availability, among other factors," he said in amusement. "It isn't as arbitrary as you think. There's science and math, and studies devoted to those kinds of decisions."

"Exactly!" He turns a bit, picking a couple of pebbles under his tail since they were starting to chafe his scales. "Good for swimming, less great for ferris wheels."

The discussion of money is kind of starting to go over his head, but Llŷr makes a few mental notes to find out a bit more on his own later. From what Cain is saying, though, maybe it does make a little more sense than he had earlier thought.

"So what do you think of the phone?"

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