2023-08-14:

it was late in the day, and getting hot. the group of us were laughing, getting 
out of the truck at rocket ranch 2.0, almost unable to believe that spacex had 
actually painted their latest starship to look like a space shuttle, but i saw 
it standing on the pad with my own eyes and through binoculars. curious birds 
flew around the cargo cult phenomenon that would actually launch in a few hours.


"this one came out of the old indian mine" nathan was saying proudly.

i closed the screen door of my RV and greeted the new shared tenant, nathan. he 
was standing in front of the stove playing with a big die cast zinc electrical 
switch and talking to my friend superkuh. one old cracked rubber wire from the 
switch was shoved into the end of the electric stove burner, while nathan held 
the switch body to the metal microwave frame.

"woah, are you sure that's safe?" i said, seeing the crazy setup and smelling 
that burned electrical smell that a shitty electric RV stove can make. 220V is 
nothing to mess around with.

"you can hear that it has three internal contacts by the silence when you first 
press the switch," superkuh said to nathan, ignoring my entrance.

nathan pressed the switch, and indeed i could hear a tiny spring contact inside 
the switch go ploink before making contact and going silent. nathan then grinned 
wickedly and pushed the button in all the way. a bright blue arc jumped out of 
the stove burner and nearly blinded me. smoke filled the RV and i ducked back 
out, not sure what was the goal of their little junk experiment but i didn't 
really want to find out by dying in a fire. then i thought maybe they needed to 
have some sense talked into them and went back in. the stove burner was a 
cracked smoking mess, partially burned bakelite pieces from the connector 
falling off into the stove tray, but not as much smoke as i expected. they had 
the exhaust fan running now.

"woah dude, uncool. you're gonna have to fix that you know." i sternly lectured.

"it's okay. i'm doing work around here as a volunteer anyway. what's up, man?"
nathan grinned at me expectantly.

he was the sort of guy you'd take for a typical roadie pot-head. hemp 90s flat 
cap, a faded lavender velvet jacket that was a little too tight, several days 
beard growth and mutton chops. somewhat annoying, and not your typical space 
nerd just there to watch the launch.

"oh you're a volunteer too? i was just gonna do some gardening, any ideas what 
we're supposed to do?" we walked over to his car past the other RVs. 

nathan pointed out the palm front shade fence hastily attached in front of the 
east facing window of the RV, how the window had no view anyway and just got hot 
in the morning. "we could plant some bamboo here to be a less jank solution."

we settled on a plan. nathan got to work unloading his car so he could 
transport the dirt needed for the bamboo containers, and i began taking the bags 
of rocks and stuff inside. six heavy black cotton bags later i sat on the couch 
next to superkuh sweating. superkuh was digging through the bag and pulled out a 
tumbled egg-shaped pink rock.

"i think that's a rose quartz, or maybe jasper. none of these are gemstones. he 
probably starts with a cylindrical stub from a drill core and then it gets the 
corners knocked off in the tumbler. how do you make a living selling this stuff 
i wonder"

i picked up a big chunk of cast lucite that had apparently fallen out of one of 
the bags. it was roughly squared off, about four inches wide, six inches tall, 
and one inch thick, with one rounded corner. two edges were smooth and the rest 
were jagged like it had been broken off of a much larger object. the back face 
was curved slightly, making the chunk slightly thicker toward the broken edges.
the surface was slightly sticky like varnish that had absorbed humidity, and 
there were long strips of bright yellow decal material beginning to flake off. 
the strips repeated "Authentic Product!! Property of Nathan" and his last name.

tom came in and the screen door banged. he groaned in the heat, looking around 
for coffee. "gardening! you guys are mad." he sighed loudly and collapsed in an 
armchair.

the lucite chunk was pleasantly room temperature. at least i thought it was 
lucite because glass has a higher feeling of heat capacity. i turned the object 
over to the other side without decals, which had a smooth cast-in grid texture. 
i tried flicking the surface with the back of my fingernail to see how hard it 
was, and noticed a weird green and black glowing LCD screen pixel effect. have 
you ever pushed on a broken screen? it was like that. i squinted closer and 
flicked it again and got more pixels to move around a litte. weird. then the 
grid squares filled in with tiny icon graphics, small icons of fruit and larger 
squares of monkeys. i looked around to see if anyone else noticed. then i turned 
the chunk over to see if there were any batteries or electronics embedded in the 
plastic. nothing, just clear solid material with some cheap varnish and decals.

i came to my senses and said, "everyone come over here and look at this. and get 
your phones out." it would be a good idea to record this, something weird was 
happening, i just wasn't sure what.

when i looked back at the display there was a low poly image of nathan, with 
groady playstation 1 style textures. the image of him smiled at me in a slightly 
crazy way. although it was clearly and recognizably him, there were some 
differences. screen-nathan was skinnier, and bald, and noticeably dirty. it 
seemed like he was talking, but there was no sound. i looked over at superkuh, 
whose eyes were bulging and about to fall out of his head.

just then nathan came in, and the screen door banging snapped us all back into 
the present.

"dude, were you going to tell us about this?" i asked.

nathan just laughed and said "aha, so you found my shiny rock collection."

"nathan, are... are you human?"