💾 Archived View for unix.dog › ~oaktal › drive.gmi captured on 2023-11-14 at 07:35:52. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-07-22)
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Oak sits on a granite boulder, cross-legged, and watches as Sam drives a sledgehammer once, twice, and again into the Lumidrive at his feet. With the third strike the drive breaks, shattering into thousands of pieces and sending shards of glass into the air with a puff. Sam steps back and watches as the dust settles, brushing glass out of his bushy brown beard. He looks over to Oak.
"Where are you gettin' these things?" he asks in a low drawl.
Oak stands and strolls over to the ruined drive. "Abandoned spacescrapers, office floors generally." They kick at the dusty grass. "Any of the multitude of husks that venture technofirms leave across Sewile after their vicious life cycle has run its course." Oak reaches for the sledgehammer, and Sam hands it off.
"And why are you smashin' 'em?"
"They're proprietary," Oak replies, pulling another Lumidrive from the pocket of their green hoodie and tossing it onto the grass at their feet. "Not just encrypted, like some, but entirely useless unless you've got the twenty-thousand creds to shell out for a modern Lumitech reader." They raise the hammer. "Problem is," they continue, bringing the hammer down with their words- "you can't" TINK "tell" TINK "which ones are good" TINK "until you grab them-" CRUNCH, and the drive shatters. Oak looks up at Sam, their fluffy grey ears pulled back and flicking. "The Hacker's Union reverse-engineered the storage format on the last generation of readers, but they've got us strung up with these new pieces of crap." With the last drive broken, they drop the sledgehammer and fall back onto their tail.
"I see," Sam says, also lowering himself to the grass. He tries to look as if he understands what the cat is saying. "So, if that's the case, why is it you stay up there anyways?"
"I don't entirely know, Sam," Oak replies, glancing off toward the floating city in the sky. "It's the people, I guess. All the life up there. The bigshots have their own little economy of capital, innovating and upselling and scaling and always looking to the next big thing." They look back at Sam. "But at the end of the day, Sewile is home to a lot more than just big capital. There's artists, and chefs, and buskers, and composers. We all depend on the city to keep us afloat. And somebody's got to keep the city running."
Sam ponders his cabin just down the hill for a moment. "Damnit, cat." He says. "For once you say some words I can understand, but everything about the way you put them together doesn't make sense."
"I didn't expect them to, friend." Oak smiles. Their jowl fluff twitches slightly.
"Of course not. Some tea, before you head back?" Sam asks, rising.
"Please," Oak answers. The two friends walk down the hill, toward the cabin.