002 ♌ [video]

[fundemetal]

[Once again, Leo's face appears on the screen, his eyes looking full of energy as always. He's tapping his fingers on the desk in front of him, tapping out the alphabet in morse code.]

Hey everyone, Leo here. So, uh... [He scratches his head with his other hand, trying to think how to explain his idea.] I noticed that there's not really any sort of protection put on these like cellphones back home to keep you from butt-dialing people. It's bad enough that the curse is making people tell others things they don't want to... [A pained look.] Can't do anything about the curse, but I thought it might be a good time to do something that might help against those accidents.

I made an application that I can program onto your starfish communicators that will give you a sort of lock on your device. Unlocking won't automatically post anything, you'll have to get at that the same way you do now. Locking it will keep you from accidentally calling anyone or making a video that everyone on the network can see when you're not intending to.

If you want to meet me to get it, I'll be out in the park the next few afternoons. If you're busy while I'm there, but want it, just let me know and we can work something out. I'm asking for 5 starfish coins in exchange for the installation. All things considered, it's a really good deal. [With that, the recording ends.]

[ooc: there will be an open log post going up soon, so you can reply here or there, depending on if you want to talk over the SFC first or jump right into action. Action can be hand waved via commenting here, but you gotta talk to Leo in some form IC if you want it installed. The app is completely optional and has mod approval. So if you or your character doesn't want/need it feel free to move along. He's just trying to help people out.]

Comments

[findsrisks]

...you know, the whole 'buying her food' thing doesn't work quite as well when everything is free anyway.

[But she will take her vanilla cone anyway, because ice cream.]

[fundemetal]

Huh? [Leo looks confused.] Oh. I was just making things easier. No need for both of us to show our marks.

[findsrisks]

...oh. Right.

[Excuse her she'll just look embarrassed for a second. She really needs to stop assuming that all guys do stuff to try to impress girls.]

[fundemetal]

[He finds a table for them to sit down at and begins eating his ice cream.]

[He has no clue what to talk about now, so he's going to wait on Nanaki to start a conversation. Or they can just sit and awkwardly eat their ice cream in silence.]

[findsrisks]

[She does eat quietly for a bit as she tries to think of what to say.]

So...where are you from?

[fundemetal]

Short answer is Houston, Texas. It gets a little more complex after my mom died because of foster homes and running away from them. Then I was shipped of to The Wilderness School before I wound up at Camp Half-Blood in New York. [This stupid curse. He hadn't wanted to talk about all the foster homes and his mom dying and all of that.]

[findsrisks]

[Oh right truth curse. Her face falls at the mention of a dead mom, but she fights the urge to ask about it, because that seems really personal. Instead, she's going with the path of conversation that's least likely to bring up bad memories, or so she thinks.]

Those are all places in America, right? I've actually never heard of Texas before, just New York.

[fundemetal]

[He appreciates that she didn't ask him about that.]

Yeah. Texas is the biggest state. Well, one of the biggest anyway. How have you not heard of it?

[findsrisks]

I'm from Japan, and they don't really teach us American geography there, at least not at the level of school I'm in. I know where New York is because it's in movies all the time, and Hawaii too because Japanese people go to Hawaii for vacations all the time, but that's about it.

[fundemetal]

Texas is in the south bordering Mexico. It's somewhere in between Hawaii and New York if you travel like a check mark.

[findsrisks]

[It's still not something she can visualize, unfortunately.]

I think I might need a map to understand it. Though I guess it doesn't matter much here, it's not like we can go visit any of those places anyway.

[fundemetal]

I doesn't matter, but I can still sow you. [He pulls a map out of his tool belt and a pen which he uses to mark each of the places they've talked about and then draws a check mark connecting Hawaii to Texas to New York.]

[findsrisks]

[Oh wow suddenly map.

She'll look down at it, following the line Leo drew. Then she looks in the corner to see the scale of the map, and she lets out s gasp.]

Is America really that big? It's like ten times the size of all of Japan!

[fundemetal]

Yeah, it's really that big. [He laughs.]

[findsrisks]

How do you guys even travel across it? Even with a magnet train it would take days to go from one side to the other!

[fundemetal]

There's a lot of ways. Depends on how quickly you want to get across it. Some people drive, others take buses, trains or planes. Planes are the fastest. You can get from California to New York in a matter of a few hours.

[findsrisks]

Planes are pretty expensive, though, Driving or taking a car would be cheaper, even though it's longer.

[That's still a long trip, though.]

[fundemetal]

With gas being what it is these days? Planes are much cheaper for cross-country travel. Plus there's having to stay at hotels and stuff along the way.

[findsrisks]

Has gas really gotten that expensive?

[She lives in a big city and doesn't have a driver's license anyway, so she never paid attention to the price of gas.]

[fundemetal]

Yeah. Depends on where you are, but you're talking $3 or more per gallon.

[findsrisks]

[She frowns, since that number doesn't mean much to her. So she pulls out her cell phone from home and powers it on. There's no real use for it here, since there's no cell phone towers, but it does have a handy-dandy currency exchange on it.

Thirty seconds later, she finally looks shocked.]

That's a lot!

[fundemetal]

[He watches her figure out the exchange rate.]

Yeah. And it's a few thousand miles across the country.

[findsrisks]

...okay, yeah, flying is definitely cheaper.

[Curse you America, why do you have to be so big?]

And going from Texas to New York, that must've been a long trip, unless you took a plane.

[fundemetal]

[Seriously.]

Oh. I actually was at the Grand Canyon when Annabeth and Butch arrived in a chariot pulled by pegasii to take us to Camp Half-Blood. So we flew there. Took a few hours but we made it.

[findsrisks]

[She sort of just stares in disbelief at Leo for a moment, until she remembers all the god stuff.]

Oh right, there's magic stuff like that in your world.