fandomhighdorms | Third floor common room, Tuesday afternoon

After getting thoroughly drenched and rather spattered with watermelon bits in class today -- that crinoline was never going to be the same -- Raven came back to the dorms in search of a shower, and decided to forgo her still-mostly-packed clothes in favor of shifting into an outfit right out of the shower. This meant that she could go for an outfit that wouldn't look quite so out of place in this futuristic (to her, at least) world.

It also meant that she was technically lounging around the common room naked, but it wasn't like anyone could tell.

She'd spent the last few days picking out all the things that the future didn't have -- flying cars, colonies on Mars, a cure for the common cold, all meals in pill form -- so now she was looking for some of the neat things it did. Color television! With all sorts of different people on it! Some of them had brightly colored hair! And there were women playing doctors and lawyers and police officers and even soldiers and things!

For a girl who came from a pre-second wave feminism world, this was remarkable.

[ooc: I dunno, open common room! Come save me from the Australian budget]

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"Hey," Tony said, making a beeline for the pantry. Where he might find more coffee and microwaveable food items.

How he was still alive was a mystery to all.

"Raven, right?"

Raven looked up from the TV -- it was kind of like some of the shows she watched at home, with mom and a dad and some kids, but they were all loud and kind of hilariously angry and almost none of them looked like they'd walked out of a Sears catalog. "Hi," she said. "And you're Tony?" Her first thought, admittedly, was "the guy who made us run yesterday", but she knew better than to say that much out loud.

"That'd be me," he assured her. "The fitness guy."

"That's a terrible nickname," Raven decided. "You're going to need a new one."

"It could be worse," Tony replied, starting a pot of coffee. Yes, at this time of day. "Want a cup?"

"Yes, thank you." Raven didn't drink much coffee back home, but when in Rome -- or the future, rather. . . .

She stood up to come over and look at the machine. It didn't look much like the coffee maker Charles' parents used, but it wasn't so different that she couldn't recognize the parts.

"So this is the future," she mused. "I would have thought there'd be robots doing all this stuff, by now."

That got him to snort. "Not cost-effective," he replied. "But you can program the pot to start brewing it at a specific time."

Raven sighed. "That's what I heard about moon colonies, too. And I guess jet packs and flying cars and holographic TVs and things. Seems like the only things the future is getting right is not going to war with Russia."

"Only economically." And there was that time with the Crimson Dynamo... "How far back are you from?"

"Sixty years," Raven said. "I almost didn't believe it at first. So much is still the same."

It honestly hadn't totally and completely set in until she was flipping channels on the TV -- with a remote! -- and had seen all the different types of people on the different channels -- hundreds of channels!

It was maybe a little sad that television was the most impressive thing she'd seen so far.

"Has anyone shown you the internet?" NO, TONY. NO.

"Is that some kind of protective grid?"

That would be a no.

"..." You hurt him, Raven. You hurt him inside. "No. It's... like. Picture a big library that anyone can access or add to. Even the dumb people whose just want to post about how the government is trying to stomp on their gun owning rights or whatever."

"Huh," Raven said. Charles would be all over something like that. "Where is it, then?" Maybe there was some sort of special island or something. If there were portals in the future then it could in theory be anywhere, right?

STOP HURTING HIM WITH THIS.

Tony held up a finger, making his way out of the room. Only to quickly return with a laptop. Well, it was his, so it was laptop shaped, but possibly better than something she'd find on the market now.

"Just stay away from the comment section of anything. Ever."

Raven, having absolutely no idea what that meant, just nodded seriously. He seemed to get a little agitated when it came to information about this "internet" thing.

"It's kind of small," she noted, actually a bit excited by this fact. Future stuff! "Show me how it works?"

"Of course," Tony replied, setting it down on the table so that she could see. "Um."

He should have probably grabbed a more normal laptop for this.

"So, this is a computer. It's not the size of a room anymore."

"Clearly," Raven confirmed. She'd thought he'd said this was an internet, but refrained from saying such. "This looks like a much more useful size."

MAGICAL, RIGHT?

"Well..." Now wasn't the time to talk about smartphones. "Right. So, we use this to access the internet," he said, getting her online with a tap. "You'll probably like Wikipedia for now."

Which was already loaded. Look at that.

Raven reached out a hesitant finger towards the screen, then veered back down towards the keyboard instead. "So you can type things in here," she mused. The keyboard was familiar enough, though flatter than any of the typewriters she'd seen. "But where does the information on the screen broadcast from?"

She assumed it worked like a television or radio, since she didn't see any wires. Or an antenna, for that matter, but neither did her big sib's "cell" or the TV she'd just been watching.

"Hey Raven, how's the 21st century treating you so far?" asked Anya as she poked in the common room. "Found any terrible TV show to obsess over yet?"

"Hi, Anya. Why would I obsess over a tv show?" Raven asked. She'd only just discovered the internet, after all. "And how would I even choose? There's millions of them!"

"The Internet. Wireless is the best invention ever." That he didn't come up with. "It's like the TV picking up channels."

Raven nodded. See? The future wasn't that hard to figure out.

"So how do I get to all the information? And where can I get one of these things?"

If it was more than the pocket money she had, she'd just have to get Charles to wire her more. He owed her, after the classes he'd signed her up for.

"Oh, it's a thing people do," Anya said as it was the most obvious thing in the world. "You'll find something sooner or later, don't worry."

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Third floor common room, Tuesday afternoon

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