Chapter Text
One of the many perks of having Annabeth as a roommate, as Hana had come to learn in those first weeks of school, was the possibility of studying with her. Hana herself was a good student, but Annabeth’s knowledge and memory never ceased to amaze her. The girl could remember particulars from lectures she had heard years ago or perfectly recite passages from incredibly complex books.
That made sense though, from what Hana knew about her upbringing and her family, her renowned historian father probably fed her brain stimulants when she was a baby and taught her to read before she knew how to walk. Annabeth was conscious of her intellectual superiority over her peers, and while she didn’t flaunt it, she didn’t exactly hide it either.
While another person might have been intimidated or envious by Annabeth’s skill, Hana didn’t have particular qualms about using her roommate’s preternatural predisposition to academic success as way of bettering her own grades. She studied with her new friend as much as she could, and sought her help whenever she had trouble with a particularly complex equation or exercise, and before tests the two girls spent hours quizzing each other. Living with such a study freak was gonna do wonders for Hana’s GPA, and her being such a likable person made studying even her least favorite subjects (cough, English literature, cough) enjoyable.
Consequently, when the art history teacher assigned a joint presentation about a renaissance painter of choice, Hana wasted no time in asking her roommate to pair up with her. After the end of the school day they met up in their favorite spot in the library in order to get started on it. Annabeth took charge, selected an artist that she knew they both liked, and split up the work. Hana had to immediately fight back, since Annabeth had assigned to herself most of the actual research. After explaining to her overachiever partner that 80-20 is in fact not a fair way to divide the material, and vetoing Annabeth both introducing and concluding the presentation, they could finally get to work. After four hours of intense research and no less than three coffee breaks, Hana was more than three fourths of the way done with her portion of the work. Sadly, her laptop must have took that milestone as permission to shut down.
Hana tried to press the power button, but her dinosaur computer wouldn’t turn on. Immediate cause of death: run out of battery, nothing to do outside of feeding it some electricity.
To add insult to the injury, she left her charging cable in her room, so now she was unable to complete her research.
Annoyed, she lifted her head to look at what her roommate was doing, and to her surprise she had already stopped researching and was immersed in reading one of the excruciatingly boring books they had to struggle through and write essays about in order to pass English literature, which counted as a cruel and unusual punishment in Hana’s book, but the constitution didn’t seem to apply to high school students, so they just had to go along with it.
“Already finished?” Hana asked.
“I’ve finished my portion of the work fifteen minutes ago, since someone didn’t let me do as much of the presentation as I would’ve wanted, so I started up on the latest book Ms. Monotone has assigned,” Annabeth answered, not lifting her eyes from the book. Giving nicknames to professors was kinda mean, but their English teacher had a lecture voice so soporific she had it coming.
“I’m sorry for being so mean, next time I’ll let you do all the work. Anyway, I was almost done as well,” slight lie, “but my computer decided to die on me, and I forgot the cable in my room. You don’t happen to have one of those with you, right?” Hana asked hopefully.
Annabeth was still wearing her typical reading face, looking at the words on the page as if they were her personal enemy she was trying to crush. “I don’t have one, I’m sorry.”
“No. Way. I have never seen you forget anything, that’s a first.”
Annabeth gasped, feigning offense. “Oh no, my reputation has been permanently ruined, whatever will I do?” Returning serious, she added: “I didn’t forget it, I really don’t have one, my laptop doesn’t need it.”
“Okay, it’s no big deal, I’ll just go grab it from the dorm, you need anything? Like the charging cable your laptop definitely doesn’t need, and that you definitely don’t have just forgotten in our room?” Hana replied sarcastically.
Annabeth finally looked up from the book. Her gray eyes betrayed the annoyance she felt at the allegation of forgetfulness and at her roommate’s skepticism. “Or I could just lend you my laptop that doesn’t need stupid cables to work.”
That was actually a good idea, why hadn’t Hana thought of that? “Thank you, I promise I wont take long.”
Annabeth pulled out of her pocket a thick silver rectangle, probably her phone. It was of the same brand as her laptop, since it had on the back a similar blue triangle. Annabeth tinkered with it for a couple of seconds, and then put it on the table, pushing it towards Hana.
“I have a phone as well, but researching stuff on it is a pain in t-” Hana started, but as she was talking the silver phone started folding outwards, getting gradually bigger until it became the size of a tablet, then even bigger, becoming a full-fledged laptop.
Annabeth looked at her smugly. “Were you saying?”
“Wha-!? How!? Wha-!?”
Hana looked along the borders of the newly appeared computer, and effectively there was no hole where a charging cable could have been inserted.
“Yeah, it’s very handy”
“How much did you pay for this? This is not technology available on the market”
“It was left to me by my older half-brother three years ago, he built it himself.”
As if this explains anything
“So, what is everyone in your family a super-nerd of some kind? You are the smartest person I know, your father is a university professor who has written tons of groundbreaking books, and now you have a genius engineer older brother that can build better laptops than every single mega-corporation active right now combined despite no one ever hearing of him”
Annabeth smiled cryptically “I’m willing to bet that you have heard about him.”
“Fine, who is it?” Hana sighed, exasperated.
“What fun would it be if I just told you?”
“Whatever, keep your secrets.”
Hana reached for the keyboard, and started typing on the search-bar of the browser installed on the device, her fingers automatically moving on the keys.
Except that when her brain actually connected with what she was appearing on screen, she couldn’t read what she had written, like, at all. In place of the familiar letters, on the screen there was a bunch of weird symbols. She recognized them after a second glance, it was the Greek alphabet. Looking down at the keyboard, same story, Greek symbols instead of Latin letters. Observing more closely, on the keys there were Latin letters as well, written small on the corner of each key. She deduced that each Greek letter could also activate its Latin equivalent.
Other than the weird alphabet, the order of the keys was also unusual, instead of the standard QWERTY keyboard, Annabeth typed on a completely different disposition.
After a bit, she managed to switch to writing in the Latin alphabet, and by looking at the keys before pressing them, like she did when she was little and still learning how to use a computer, she was able to complete her research. It didn’t even take that long, her old computer was frustratingly slow, so the silver laptop’s instant loading times were a much appreciated change of pace. After finishing, she decided to snoop into the specs, out of curiosity for what this thing could do. Apparently the processor was proprietary or, if what Annabeth told her was true, exclusive to this model, neither Intel nor any other company she had heard of. It was named after Daedalus, the mythological inventor, for some reason. The statistics she could recognize were insane, this thing had more memory than all other computers in their school put together, the RAM was measured in terabytes, and the battery was estimated by the system to last another 80 years without needing to recharge, which would be incredible enough, had it not been recharging right now, despite not being connected to anything. Did Annabeth have access to wireless electricity? Was her older brother named Nikola Tesla?
Hana didn’t believe in the supernatural but she was sure Annabeth had sold her soul to the devil to obtain this device, it was a technology at least fifty years ahead of current possibilities, if not more.
She decided to give the magic laptop back to her roommate, who had just put down the book and was watching her with a satisfied expression.
“Have you finished?”
Hana would die before letting her have the last laugh, so she pushed it to her side of the table and summoned her most nonchalant attitude.
“Yeah, your laptop is decent, a bit slow for my taste though.”
Annabeth shot back, “Oh, really? And to say I had another couple of similar models laying around, since your laptop gives you so much trouble I had thought of gifting you one for Christmas, but if you don’t like it…”
Hana panicked, “Wait, no, I was just joking, please let me have one, I swear I’ll do all our chores for the rest of the year, don’t let me suffer with my old shitty computer, please, plea-”
Yeah, one of those was worth her pride.
Annabeth was now laughing full-throatedly. “Sadly, I was joking too. This laptop is unique, and the other stuff my half-brother made was all burned on the day he passed.” Her expression suddenly turned sad, remembering her dead brother.
Hana wanted to comfort her friend. “I’m sorry for your loss”
The look on her face hardened, “I’m over it, he was an asshole anyway, even if he did the right thing in the end.”
“It was still family, you are predisposed to love them.”
Annabeth, always a fan of rational arguments over emotional ones, nodded. “I guess. Even if I can’t gift you one of these, if you want I can lend it to you for doing homework”
“I’d really appreciate it,” Hana smiled “May I ask something about the laptop though? Why the Greek?”
Annabeth looked relieved at the change of argument. “I find it easier on my dyslexia.”
Okay, now, that was mind-blowing information. Annabeth Chase, smartest girl in New York, who had read and could quote by heart a billion books, was dyslexic.
Hana tried to dissimulate her surprise, but she clearly failed, considering the glare that Annabeth shot at her.
“You got a problem with that?”
Hana tried to explain herself, but Annabeth cut her off, “Chill, I was just messing with you. When I was young I did struggle with reading quite a bit, but then I discovered that Greek, especially ancient Greek is just so much easier on my eyes, so I read most books in translation. A friend of mine is currently developing a program for my laptop that will instantly translate every book, but until then,” she looked down at the book she had been struggling with for the last part of the afternoon, “moving letters and migraines it is, if the book isn’t available in Greek”
Hana nodded, if anyone had the “you have to read in abstruse languages no one has spoken in thousands of years” kind of dyslexia, it could only be Annabeth Chase.