Work Text:
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Jax contemplated, breaking Pomni from the comfortable trance she’d been sitting in. “I’ve been stuck here since 2017. What all has happened? What did I miss?”
Pomni blinked at him from the couch. Jax was sprawled across it, one arm slung over the back lazily. He eyed her curiously.
“Oh, like in the real world?” she clarified.
He nodded. “Yeah, what’s been happening?”
He sounded genuinely curious, ears pricked forward and hanging on every little move she made.
Her voice came out careful. “Okay. Uh. Do you want the short version or the long version?”
Jax’s ears twitched.
“There’s a long version?”
Pomni laughed.
“There’s a long version,” she said with a nod. “A very long version.”
He tilted his head. “Hit me.”
Pomni shifted, tucking one knee up. “This is going to sound fake,” she warned.
“Faker than putting on a headset and ending up being a clown in a digital circus?” he asked.
“Touche.” she commented. Then, she held up one finger importantly, clearing her throat.
“In 2020,” she said, “there was a global pandemic.”
Jax’s ears twitched. “Like… zombies?”
“No,” Pomni said immediately. “Not zombies. It was a really bad contagious respiratory illness. It was called COVID19.”
He stared at her.
“The whole world got sick?” he said slowly.
“Not everyone,” Pomni said, “but enough that— okay. So. Schools closed. A bunch of businesses closed or went purely online. People stayed inside, or at the very least 6 feet away from each other. They wore masks. It was… a lot.”
Jax processed that for a second, eyes narrowing.
“Wait,” he said. “Masks. Like… those masks that doctors wear during surgery?”
“Yeah,” Pomni said. “Like, walking into a grocery store felt like a weird medical unit fever dream. Some people still wear them, and—”
She paused, humming in thought.
“—And people panic bought toilet paper. A lot of toilet paper,” she added.
Jax froze.
“…Toilet paper?” he repeated, like he was making sure he’d heard her correctly.
“Yes.”
“Not food?”
“Some food too,” Pomni admitted. “But toilet paper was the main one.”
Jax snorted, then it snowballed into actual laughter.
“You’re telling me,” he said between laughs, “humanity stared death in the face and that’s what did it? Toilet paper?”
Pomni’s shoulders loosened despite herself. “Basically.”
He wiped at his eye with his knuckle, still grinning. “That’s… that’s incredible.”
“It wasn’t incredible,” Pomni said, but she was smiling too. “It was miserable.”
He leaned back, satisfied. “Okay. But that’s already better than any adventure Caine’s ever done.”
She shook her head, “People got really sick, Jax.”
“Did you get it?” he asked.
Pomni looked at him.
“Yeah, once,” she admitted.
“Did you die?”
Pomni shot him a look. “Do I look like I died?”
He shrugged like it was no big deal, but his shoulders eased. “Okay, jeez. Good.”
Pomni huffed and kept going before she could get stuck in how weirdly normal it all felt.
“During and after that,” she said, “TikTok got huge.”
Jax’s ears perked. “Tik… Tok.”
“It’s an app,” Pomni explained. “Short form entertainment videos. People post… everything. Dances. Jokes. Cooking. Jobs. You name it. People go on there to complain or be funny usually. Or argue.”
He stared. “Oh. So like Vine?”
Pomni nodded vigorously. “Exactly like Vine! But… a lot more. And it rots your brain a lot more.”
Jax nodded thoughtfully. “So Vine, but worse.”
“Yes,” Pomni said. “Vine but worse. Monetized.”
He grinned. “Of course it is.”
Pomni hesitated, then grimaced. “Oh. And— you remember Twitter, right?”
His ears flicked. “Unfortunately.”
“Yeah,” she said. “So. Elon Musk bought it.”
Jax paused, looking a bit off put. “Oh. That guy.”
“That guy,” Pomni confirmed. “He bought Twitter.”
Jax stared at her. “He bought… Twitter? Why?”
“Don't ask me,” Pomni shrugged helplessly. “But then he renamed it X.”
Jax froze.
“No,” he said.
“Yes.”
He leaned forward slowly, eyes wide. “He renamed Twitter. X.”
“Yes.”
Jax put his head in his hands, shoulders shaking with silent laughter.
“No,” he wheezed. “No. That’s gotta be fake. That’s so stupid.”
Pomni shook her head. “I wish I were kidding.”
Jax looked up, tears in his eyes. “He really did that?”
Pomni didn’t answer. Her expression said enough.
“Oh my GOD!”
While he laughed his ass off, she tried to skim through the chaos in her head and pull out the funniest, least emotionally devastating facts from the past decade.
“Oh,” she said, “Taylor Swift is still huge.”
Jax’s face immediately soured, the grin wiped off his face.
“Still?” he said, like he could sense the direction of the conversation. He squinted at her disbelievingly. “She… has to be done by now, no?”
Pomni winced, a plaintive denial. “She’s got, like… twelve albums now.”
Jax’s eyes went wide.
“Jesus CHRIST.”
Pomni nodded. “She re-recorded a bunch of her old albums. They call them ‘eras.’ There was a massive world tour where she performed all of them back to back.” She paused. “It felt… cultish. It was strange.”
Jax leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “So she’s immortal, essentially.”
“Functionally,” Pomni said.
He made a low noise of disgust and admiration. “Terrifying.”
Pomni shifted again, warming up now.
“Also,” she said, “in 2019 we got the first real image of a black hole.”
Jax’s ears shot up. “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. That’s sick.”
“It was… kind of lackluster,” Pomni admitted.
Jax stared at her, insulted.
“Excuse me?”
“It was so blurry,” Pomni insisted, complaining. “Everyone hyped it up and then it was just this orange smudge. Like a burnt bagel.”
Jax sat up, offended on behalf of space. “That blurry orange donut was history.”
“It was so overhyped! You’d agree if you’d seen it,” Pomni defended weakly.
Jax hummed. “I bet scientists lost their minds.”
Pomni rolled her eyes. “They can have it.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t even know that was something I could miss. Now I’m curious.”
Pomni huffed quietly. “I don’t know. It didn’t really live up to the hype.”
He stared at her. “You’re wrong, but continue.”
She ignored his retort, continuing on. “K-pop got even bigger too.”
Jax’s expression went blank.
“K pop?” he parroted inquisitively.
“Right. It’s Korean pop music,” Pomni explained. “The choreography's insanely impressive, the songs are aggressively catchy, and the fans are really intense, albeit a bit terrifying.”
Jax scoffed. “So like boy bands.”
“Yes,” Pomni said, “but like… on steroids."
Jax leaned back, ears angled backwards. “Huh.” was all he said.
Pomni watched him for half a beat, and then took a chance. “You’d like it.”
He snapped his gaze to her immediately. “I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”
“You would,” Pomni repeated immediately; half because it was fun to poke him, and half because she genuinely believed it. “They make catchy hit songs and then the choreography is insane but so fun to learn, and then suddenly you’re learning the names of seven guys you’ve never met that live halfway across the world.”
“I would never indulge such a concept,” Jax said, voice tight.
Pomni’s smile widened even further. “You’d be a menace in a K-pop fandom, I just know it.”
He pointed at her. “Stop talking.”
“You’d pretend you hate it,” Pomni said, leaning in slightly, “but you’d know all the lyrics to Dynamite.”
“I don’t even know what that means, but I would literally rather abstract.”
Pomni snorted. “Sure.”
Jax crossed his arms like a petulant child, tail twitching irritably. “Ok, what else? Before I regret asking.”
Pomni abandoned the idea before he completely shut off and took a breath, then hesitated, trying to choose something that wouldn’t spiral. Something safe, stupid.
“Okay,” she said. “This one is going to make you mad.”
Jax brightened. “Good.”
Pomni stared at him. “Cryptocurrency became a thing.”
He blinked. “…Crypto what?”
“Cryptocurrency,” Pomni repeated. “Like… digital money.”
Jax squinted. “Like credit cards?”
“No,” Pomni said. “Not like credit cards. It’s— okay. It’s like money that isn’t real money, but people treat it like real money because it’s on the internet.”
Jax stared harder. “So… Monopoly?” he guessed.
Pomni hesitated, tilting her hand back and forth. “Ehh... sort of?”
“Okay,” he said, leaning in. “So you have fake internet money. Why?”
Pomni tried to do the mental gymnastics without losing her own grip on reality. Explaining crypto to someone eight years out of date was bad enough, but explaining it to Jax of all people felt like asking for trouble.
“Because it’s decentralized,” she said slowly, carefully. “There’s this thing called a blockchain. It’s like… a public ledger. People ‘mine’ it—”
Jax’s ears went up.
“Mine,” he repeated.
“Yes,” Pomni said. “But not with pickaxes. With computers.”
He stared.
“With computers.”
“Yes.”
He leaned back, looking genuinely offended now. “So you’re telling me people are using computers to dig for imaginary coins?”
Pomni’s face went hot. “Kind of.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Jax said, confidently.
Pomni opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“…Yeah,” she admitted.
Jax sat up straighter. “Okay. Great. Humanity invented a new form of stupidity. A shock to, let me check, no one.”
Pomni lifted a hand. “Wait. It gets worse.”
Jax’s eyes lit up. “Oh?”
“There were also these things called NFTs,” Pomni said, already wincing and guessing how he’d respond. “They’re like… digital ownership receipts. For images.”
Jax stared at her like she’d started speaking in a whole different language. She may as well have.
“Why would you need a receipt for an image?”
Pomni made a helpless noise. “I was never into it, but people spent real money on them.”
He blinked. “Real money.”
“Yes.”
“For a receipt.”
“Yes.”
“For an image.”
“Yes.”
He went silent for a second.
Then he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, voice low and reverent. “Pomni.”
“What.”
“The world is a burning trash can.”
Pomni laughed, sharp, because she couldn’t help it. “It is still a burning trash can. Don’t act like it was better before. Are you really shocked?”
Jax leaned back, shrugging helplessly. “Not particularly.”
They sat for a second, and Pomni rocked her heel against the couch leg. Jax watched her, pupils darting back and forth.
Pomni thought. Her thoughts started going places she didn’t want to follow.
“Okay,” she said, clearing the bad thoughts with a firm shake of her head. “Food has change some too.”
Jax narrowed his eyes. “Oh?”
Pomni nodded. “Yeah. Like, you know ramen?”
His expression softened slightly. “Yes.”
“They came out with a new kind that got really popular, and that I really like,” Pomni said, the last part an admittance, “it’s called buldak ramen.”
Jax blinked. “The %$!# is that.”
“It’s really really spicy ramen,” Pomni explained. “Like… famously spicy. People do challenges with it.”
Jax squinted. “Challenges. For ramen.”
Pomni swatted at his ears. “It’s less stupid than that cinnamon challenge, or the tidepod one.”
He laughed, ducking from her offending glove. “Okay, okay!”
Pomni looked satisfied. “Anyway, it’s really good. It’s so spicy.” Her nose almost burned with the memory. “They also made the original styrofoam cup noodles safer.”
Jax’s face snapped up. “Safer?”
Pomni nodded, suddenly realizing where this was going. “Yeah. Like… microwave safe.”
Jax stared at her.
“…We weren’t supposed to be microwaving them???”
Pomni slapped a hand over her mouth, already laughing. “Jax. They had chemicals in them.”
He went still, ears slowly drooping as the realization crept in.
“You’re telling me,” he said disbelievingly, “I’ve been speedrunning cancer?”
Pomni’s shoulders shook. “You were absolutely not supposed to microwave styrofoam. Ever.”
Jax looked personally betrayed. “Then why did they put them in the shape of a bowl?!”
Pomni laughed, wheezing. “You were supposed to dump it into a bowl, Jax.”
“What do I look like, a man who owns fine cutlery?!” he said, horrified. “Oh my GOD.”
Pomni wiped at her face, trying to calm down. “Anyway. Now they’re safe. So you can microwave them without poisoning yourself.”
Jax stared at the air like he was mourning his own immune system.
“Wonderful,” he muttered. “The future is so bright.”
Pomni exhaled and tried to keep the momentum light. Almost as if she said it fast enough, it wouldn’t feel like she was listing years he didn’t get to live.
“And,” she added, “AI became a… thing.”
"AI?" he said, confused.
She hit her forehead, almost envious of the blissful ignorance he had. "Artifical Intelligence."
Jax’s ears twitched again, his eyes widening and immediately forgetting about his ramen plight. “They really made sentient robots?”
“No,” Pomni said quickly. “Not like robots. It’s like… programs that can generate writing and images. Sometimes really convincingly.”
Jax narrowed his eyes, looking disappointed. “So… literally just a computer?”
Pomni winced. “Yeah. Kinda. But it thinks for itself— like.. they taught it how to, I guess.”
“Cool. So when it kills us, it’ll feel justified. Like Caine.”
Pomni hesitated.
“You aren’t far off,” she admitted. “It’s complicated. It’s also… wrong a lot. It’ll confidently lie straight to your face.”
Jax’s grin returned, sharp. “So it is like Caine.”
Pomni laughed before she could stop it, but didn’t disagree. “Yeah. Unfortunately.”
Jax’s face wrinkled. “I hate it already.”
Pomni leaned back, letting her head hit the couch for a second. Her bells chimed in tandem with the movement.
“Do you want more?” she offered.
Jax tapped his fingers against his knee, deep in thought.
“Yeah,” he said. “Do we have flying cars yet?”
Pomni snorted. “No.”
“Do we have a cure for cancer?”
Pomni’s smile faltered, softening at the edges. “Not exactly. There are better treatments. But not… a cure.”
Jax nodded, eyes on her.
“Did we end world hunger?”
Pomni stared at him.
“No.”
Jax was quiet for a second.
Then he huffed a laugh, rubbing a hand over his face. “Wow. Eight years and you guys really phoned it in.”
Pomni snorted. “We tried!” she hesitated, then added, “—ish.”
Jax hummed thoughtfully, not quite believing her but not pushing.
“…Thanks,” he said after a beat. “For catching me up.”
Pomni nodded. “Yeah.”
He shifted on the couch. “You definitely skipped some stuff.”
“I skipped a lot of stuff,” she admitted.
“Good,” he said. “Tell me more, I'm dying to know.”
Pomni huffed a laugh. “You’re going to regret that.”
“Probably,” he said easily.
She eased, and they both laughed. She scooted closer to where he was sitting on the couch. Then, she immediately perked up with a gasp.
“Oh! I’ve got a good one! Can I tell you about Barbenheimer?!” She said excitedly, grabbing his arm.
“Knock yourself out, Poms.” he said, amused.
"Okay, so they made a Barbie movie, right? Not one of those %$!# animated ones either. And then..."
They kept talking, filling the quiet with everything and nothing from the years he’d missed.