Hello Word! *World, chapter one (Homestuck fic)

[nobrandhero]

Title: Hello Word! *World
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: T
Pairing(s): Gen, but with platonic alpha kid relationships
Warnings: underage drinking

Summary: Your name is Roxy Lalonde and you have never seen another human being.

Read on Dreamwidth under the cut, or over on AO3.

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Your name is Roxy Lalonde and you have never seen another human being.

You know what they look like; you've seen pictures and movies. You know how they talk, how they move -- you have to hope that acting is acccurate to real life anyway -- but you don't know how they feel, what they smell like, how they'd interact with you instead of a script...

Instead you know cats. You know Carapacians, with their hard shells and silence. You know emotional bonds with the characters in your video games.

There is another human being out there -- just one -- surviving on his own just like you are. Your mother left hints about him and she has been right about everything else, so he must exist. He's the family of a famous movie director from the past, your mother's dear friend and fellow conspirator against the batterwitch, but you have no idea where he is.

Yet.

You're young, it's not that long ago that you learned to read and write, but you're fast on your way to being a "leet haxxor," as you decide to title yourself after coding your first successful program. (It just says "Hello Word!" when you run it, and you can code circles around it less than an hour later, but you keep the first executable around out of sentimentality anyway, typo and all.)

Programming languages come more natural to you than English, but English is full of inconsistencies. You can get away with typos and vagueness and mixing up words in English. Computers will have none of that shit. They keep you on your toes and demand only clear, concise, pinpoint-specific commands.

It takes practice and proofreading (so much proofreading), but over the next few months your programs outshine most of the pre-packaged software on your computer. You build things with the aid of open source code, then build them again from scratch. You copycat other software, improve on it, and save that knowledge for projects so unique that there's nowhere to turn for advice.

To your delight, you reach your goal within a year: you have a program that can find the signal of other Internet users and help you track them down. Or so you hope. It's a bit difficult to test and you won't actually know if it works unless it locates someone, but it's been able to track your signal without problem at least.

You let it run in the evening, so it can search overnight if it has to, and it scours the web for another signal, some sign that there's another person out there accessing the Internet. You should go to bed, but instead you wait. You want to look away and stop taunting yourself by watching the status bar, but no matter how many times you minimize it, you have it back open within thirty seconds in hopes of an update.

Your heart flutters. It's found activity: one single user left on the entire Internet who isn't you. It takes you less than an hour to track the source and find his location. Your excitement crashes; he's fifteen hundred miles away, living in what used to be Texas.

You sulk for the rest of the evening with a bottle of liquor, hating the endless ocean that would surely steal your life if you tried to venture away from home. You only return to the computer to read the other statistics on your mystery human after the hangover has subsided the next morning.

Surprisingly, he has active usernames. You've never bothered with a 'net presence, seeing as there's no one to interact with, but he's signed up with a number of sites as timaeusTestified. He leaves ridiculous comments on long-dead forum threads, arguing with morons who probably finished decomposing ages ago and can never defend themselves against endless smug paragraphs that only half make sense. It's almost as if he's turned taking down trolls into an art form. Considering what his relative's movies are like, you can't be too surprised by such an eccentric hobby.

He uses an instant messenger program, for maybe the same reason he argues with empty message boards. Too curious and hopeful not to, you download Pesterchum as well and make an account.

He's online. You're almost afraid to click his username, for fear you'll hate each other or that he died long ago and just hadn't logged out, but you have to reach out to the last surviving human.

-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --

TG: hullo?
TT: Hey.
TT: This Lalonde?
TG: aw hell yes this is the one and only roxy lalonde hacker extraordinaire
TG: howd you know?
TT: Figured you had to be.
TT: Unless you're a time traveler or a drone that's taught itself to type, there's only one other survivor capable of utilizing Pesterchum.
TG: or MAYBE im a time traveling drone dun dun dunnnn
TG: whoops i already said my name :D nm
TG: what about u plz plz plz plz tell me ur human and proooolly a STRIDER yes???
TT: Dirk. And yeah, I mostly identify as human, when I'm not too busy being a god of irony.
TG: close enough omg

You've never been so excited in your life. You've found the person your mom told you about and he knows about you from his bro too. He would have to be the biggest douche to ever exist before you wouldn't befriend him. It turns out he is a bit of a douche, but you enjoy it.

You're finally learning how natural conversations flow, in text at least. You worry that you're awkward from lack of experience, but you feel better when you remember that he must be bullshitting his way through your chats as well -- even if he's better at hiding it under his sarcasm and supposedly purposeful insincerity.

It doesn't matter how poorly you may be communicating. You look forward to signing into Pesterchum every day and he's almost always online. You can tell him all about the twists and turns in your latest video game, and complain when the carapacians are being difficult, and speculate what your family was like, and just talk to somebody who can talk back.

You have an audience to send your code to and he, in exchange, shares his raps with you. You're not always a fan of his music, but you listen to it all anyway and try to discern his speaking voice from it. You want to have an audible conversation, maybe even a video chat to see how another human moves in a natural environment, but he's not easily convinced. He doesn't see the point. He, as it turns out, has seen you sleeping on Derse and already knows exactly what you look like, the sneaky son of a bitch.

As time goes on, the novelty wears into the mundane. Not that you would ever stop valuing your friendship, but sometimes you wonder if you'll ever see Dirk in person or if he'll be orange text on your screen until you're both too old to remember your passwords. He sends you a photo finally and you study it in detail, trying and failing to imagine his image moving and breathing and typing his messages to you. It's not the same.

You have a drink.

You wonder if there really are two Prospit players out there. Your mom and Dirk's bro were certain there would be more than two kids involved in the game their offspring would play years from now, but what if this is the one time they got it wrong? What if the game is a farce altogether and you'll never leave this waterlogged lab?

You drink some more.

You wonder what it would be like to share space with another human or to kiss them. You wonder what it would be like to kiss Dirk. You wonder if you're in love.

You have another drink and you're suddenly certain that your puppy crush is a pure love the likes of which even the cheesiest romcoms would be jealous.

TG: hey dirk
TG: diiiiiiiiik
TG: *dirk but w more fucking i
TG: didja ever think about yknow
TG: what it means
TG: us beinh the last teo humans on earth
TG: *two
TT: In what way?
TG: isnt it like our duty to
TG: omigoood ~blush blush~
TG: repopular the planet???
TG: *repopulate
TT: I don't see how.
TT: While we're both resourceful enough to concoct a way to physically meet if we ever needed to, two people can't repopulate a goddamn planet.
TT: One uterus can only produce so many kids, not to mention the fucking brutality that can accompany childbirth that I'd prefer not risk on you.
TT: And even if we somehow managed to produce a healthy dozen brats, then what? Start the next generation off with incestuous orgies?
TT: Of course, the above is all a completely moot fucking point, since it carefully sidesteps the fact I couldn't get it up for a woman even if I wanted to.
TG: wait wha
TG: OH
TG: oh no
TG: ur gah?
TG: *gat
TG: *fucking GAY
TT: No.
TT: I'm just exclusively attracted to men.
TG: dirk
TG: thats gay
TT: That's an antiquated label based on a concept that's not even relevant, what with the severe lack of human society around here. I'm just not romantically interested in women, no need to stop the fucking presses.
TG: gaaaaaaay
TG: and alsp
TG: laaaaaame
TG: no reppulating the planet or even tryin out the frisky i guess
TT: Sorry, but you guess right.
TG: :(
TT: Don't give me that look. It's not like it was a conscious decision on my part.
TG: 8(
TT: Adding shades does not change my initial reaction to your digital expression.
TG: theyre not shaddes theyre wider sad eyes and you know it u jerk 8C
TG: *douche
TT: Please don't make a big deal out of this.
TG: fuck u youre not th e boss of me 8'C
TT: You're just trying to see how much you can exaggerate one emoticon, aren't you?
TG: 8'CCC
TT: You can do better than three mouths and we both know it.
TG: shhh we only speak in faces now
TG: oops
TG: *>8O
TG: *:X
TT: I'm not joining in on your emoticon party, Rox. Even the Japanese couldn't come up with an emoticon that perfectly encompasses my permanent chill expression. I assure you, though, it is cool as shit.
TG: couldnt u IRONICLALY settle for a less than perfect emoticom
TG: eh?? irony? cmon strider you gotta bite at that
TT: It's not ironic if there's no way to include my badass shit shades.
TG: psssshhh ur so unimaginnatvie
TG: hows about <>_<>
TT: Oh my god, no.

The worst part is that his orientation doesn't do shit to change how you feel. No, actually, the worst part is that you keep fucking flirting anyway. You're so mortified by the previous night's chatlog the next day that you start drinking earlier than usual to alleviate the guilt. Then you flirt with him some more, to your hungover future self's chagrin.

He puts up with it with more grace than such actions probably deserve. You hope it's not because he's just as lonely as you are and would rather put up with your clingy, drunk self than risk losing the only friend he can ever have on this watery wasteland of a planet.

You've known Dirk a couple years and you still don't know what a human looks like in real life. You don't know how they break into laughter or grow tongue-tied or stutter when nervous. You don't know how it feels to hug someone or even just shake hands.

You have your mother's promise that you'll find out one day. You have Dirk's bro's word to back that up. You have Dirk's reassurance that, if both your parental figures somehow turn out to be wrong, he'll find a way to your house and you'll just live together as best friends until the batterwitch comes to claim your lives someday.

You take comfort in your cats and your carapacian neighbors and your computers that demand perfect syntax. And you drink. And you wait.

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