🦺 History on the Internet

Welcome to the seventeenth edition of Safe For Work. We conclude our exploration of the digital revolution with a some history of the internet, or history on the internet depending on how you view it.

Robert is in Japan-- Kyoto. He’s on a business trip with his office-friend, Michael. They are visiting a gorgeous forest of cherry-trees, blossoms falling all around in that way they do in the movies or in paintings. 

Robert spies a gorgeous dress walking along ahead of him, pink-and-black stripes, blue silk, lovely shape. Robert spies the woman wearing the dress, and then he spies the dress again, and then he spies the woman again, who is spying right back at him, now. The two of them pass each other, turning to stare at each other as they pass in that certain way that people do when they don’t mind someone noticing them noticing someone. It’s cute, is what it is. And then it’s over-- it’s past, they’ve passed each other and carried on. 

Robert doesn’t turn around and chase after her, call after her. He just looks at her as she passes, like she looks at him as he passes, and then he carries on; he doesn’t have it in him right now to make more of a move than that. It really hasn’t been that long since things ended with Amy. 

And the woman, she carries on walking, too.

The rest of the week passes. Robert and Michael get on a plane and fly back to Michigan, and that’s that.

Three months later, Michael takes another trip to Japan for the company. Robert stays put-- he’s changed jobs, he’s consulting for a competitor, now, and making twice the money, but obviously he doesn’t get invited along on trips to Japan anymore-- but that’s fine, he’s recently moved into a new house, and he’s enjoying just sort of settling in, there. 

When Michael comes back again, he meets Robert for coffee. “I saw that girl,” Michael says. 

“That girl?”

“The one in the cherry-tree forest. The one in the dress. Remember?-- you guys had a moment, the two of you-- you don’t remember?”

Robert sort of loosely remembers-- it’s been three months, and three-hundred other things have happened, and it was really just a moment in a forest, passing some woman, then it was over and done with. But he does sort of loosely remember. A watercolor sort of sequence, running through his head. A nice feeling, the memory, loose as it is. 

“I ran into her again,” says Michael-- and this is the first moment when Robert starts to feel like his friend is lying, because Michael has always been the type to play jokes, and moreover, what are the chances of that? Japan is a small country, but it has people on people on people on people. But-- “No, really,” says Michael, “I went for another afternoon walk in that cherry-tree forest in Kyoto, and I guess walking there is part of her daily routine or something-- she goes walking through there on her way to lunch every day. She didn’t remember me when I came up to her-- I think I scared her a little bit, actually, coming up to her like I did-- but she definitely remembered you.”

Really, what are the chances of that?

“Hey, you remembered her, didn’t you?” Michael pushes, and that’s true enough-- sort of, loosely. “Anyways, she gave me an address where you can send her letters, if you want. Her name is ‘Kimiko’.”

And now Robert is absolutely sure that Michael is lying, because “Kimiko” is exactly the sort of name that somebody would make up for a pretty Japanese woman in order to prank their friend, and Michael really has always been the type to play jokes like this. 

But for some reason, Robert has always been the type to walk into them. The next day, he sits down to write a letter.

A month passes, and here is what happens.

Robert is in the United States-- Detroit. He is sitting in his living-room, in his house. He is reading a letter that he has just gotten back from Japan-- supposedly. “Kimiko” introduces herself, says a little about her life and what she does, and explains that she sort of loosely remembers Robert-- in the same loose sort of way that he’s pretty sure he remembers her-- but she’s only pretty sure, not entirely sure, so she asks him to help remind her.

“What were you wearing?” she writes.

“I was wearing a business-suit, navy-blue-- but you probably wouldn’t remember that. It wasn’t anything worth remembering,” he writes back-- he’s already started drafting a response on the coffee-table as he reads and re-reads. 

“What was I wearing?” she writes. “Maybe if I remember the dress, I’ll remember which day it was, and I’ll be able to remember you a little better. I want to remember you a little better.”

And now Robert is absolutely sure that this isn’t a prank by Michael. There is something so human and earnest about this that Michael could never just make up-- or even if he could, he wouldn’t have the heart to do it; writing this sentence right here is the point where Michael would have stopped himself and given up on it if it had all just been a joke. 

“You were wearing a dress with pink-and-black stripes,” Robert writes. “Green silk. A lovely shape-- or a lovely shape on you, I mean. It was a very beautiful dress, I mean, but you were why I noticed.”

He wonders for a moment if this is maybe too bold a thing to say in a letter-- or, certainly, so early in a conversation-- but then again, who does fortune favor? And hasn’t it already favored him by connecting these two people again, across such distances, against all odds?

He seals the letter and sends it. 

“I don’t have a dress like that,” she writes back a few weeks later. “Not one with green silk. But one with blue silk-- maybe that’s the one you mean?”

“Maybe that’s the one I mean,” he writes back.

Months pass. Years pass, and here is what happens:

Robert is sitting in his kitchen in his house in Detroit. He and Kimiko have been exchanging letters every few weeks since he first wrote to her-- more and more frequently as the postal service has been improving. They’ve been talking about their lives-- what it was like growing up where they grew up-- Seattle and Hokkaido-- similarities and differences. Parents. Work. Hopes. Worries. Today, there is something new in the letter from Kimiko-- a phone-number. She wants him to call her. 

For a second, even after these months and years, all these letters back and forth and back and forth, Robert thinks again that maybe this whole thing is some joke by Michael-- the phone number, the digits, strict and neat, look so out-of-place, buried in Kimiko’s loopy, relaxed handwriting-- like a man in a tuxedo playing in a ball-pit. But there they are, like that, and obviously, she wanted to make sure he’d be able to read them right. She wanted to make sure he’d be able to call her. 

These months and these years… she could have sent him her phone-number before. There’d been nothing stopping her, really-- and nothing stopping Robert, either, from sending her his, aside from the strange feeling that it was somehow outside the spirit of what this was, whatever this was. But now, whatever this is includes phone-numbers. And that’s not so awful a thing, is it?

Robert takes a moment to look up the time in Japan relative to Detroit-- what’s the time-difference? He’d never had to think about that, just sending letters. 

It doesn’t seem like a rude time of day to call, if he’s worked it out right, so he calls.

Four rings-- and then someone picks up-- he can hear the click. And before the other person even has the chance to speak, Robert’s nerves take over, and his words come spilling.

“Um-- hi, hello,” he says, and then “Hello,” he says again, just to make sure, and then “Hi. This is, um, this is Robert-- you know, Robert, from the letters? Robert. And… well… you… am I speaking to Kimiko?”

“...yes,” comes the voice from the other end. 

It’s exactly as he’d imagined it. 

Here’s what happens:

Robert is sitting at his dining-room table in his house in Detroit. He and Kimiko have been calling three times a week, give or take, for the better part of ten years-- or really, it’s been the best part of Robert’s ten years, his phone-calls with Kimiko. 

But for all the talking they’ve been doing, back and forth and back and forth, there’s something that they just haven’t been saying-- neither of them. In Robert’s case, he just hasn’t worked up the courage. But as for why Kimiko hasn’t said it?-- he can only guess. Maybe because she doesn’t feel it. She probably doesn’t feel it, Robert tells himself, silently, in between his words to her. “You’ve been a really great friend to me,” she says, and the way she phrases it… no, she definitely doesn’t feel it, Robert is sure now.

And why should she feel it? Or really, why should she feel it strong enough to say it? They’ve only ever met just the one time, and barely that. He’s just being silly. 

“Here, I want to send you something,” she says. “What’s your email address?”

Robert tells her. 

“Okay, here it comes. Let me know when you get it.”

Two years pass, and here’s what happens:

Robert is sitting on the toilet in his master bathroom in his house in Detroit. He and Kimiko write each other an email every single day. 

A love-note, every single day. Thoughts and feelings. Waking up from dreams. Going back asleep into them. A picture, every single day, back and forth and back and forth. Faces-- smiles. “Look, here is what my living room looks like”-- “This is what my kitchen looks like”-- “This is what I ate for breakfast”-- “This is what I made for dinner”-- “This is what my bedroom looks like”-- “This is what I look like”-- two more years pass, and here’s what happens:

Robert is laying in his bed in his house in Detroit. His thoughts are in Kyoto. His face is in Kyoto-- or is it Kimiko’s face which is here in Detroit? It’s right here, on his laptop, in front of him-- and his face is right there on her laptop, or no, it’s her tablet, right in front of her, in Japan. High definition. They can see every wrinkle and laugh-line in each other’s face. Every gray hair. Every one of these years-- every last month, week, day, minute, they can see it as clear as if they were standing together. 

They’re smiling-- they’re always smiling when they’re talking, just from seeing each other-- but there’s a problem. A death in the family. Kimiko isn’t going to be able to make the flight. She’s so sorry. Robert doesn’t mind. It’s not her fault. They’ve waited nearly twenty years, what’s a few more weeks before they’re able to see each other?-- or months, or whatever it ends up being? It’s fine. What really matters is that she’ll be able to get a refund from the airline-- right?

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, as clear as if they were standing together, “but it wasn’t easy. You know how they are.”

Yeah, Robert knows exactly how they are. How they’ve always been. This is the first time in five years that he or Kimiko has managed to save up enough for a ticket. Businesses fail. Markets change, after all. A million things can happen, and here’s what happens:

Robert is laying in his bed in the hospital in Detroit. Robert is walking through a cherry-tree forest in Kyoto. Kimiko is walking beside him. Kimiko is laying in bed in her childhood home in Hokkaido, where her younger sister and her nieces and nephews live now, helping to look after her. They are wearing headsets and headphones. Haptic gloves let them feel each other, holding their hands-- it feels just like they’d imagined. They go walking together through the cherry-tree forest. They are each twenty-five years old, none of the wrinkles or liver-spots. None of the grays in their hair. All of their teeth-- upright, strong backs and legs. Bright smiles-- but that’s not the technology, that’s the real them. 

“What were you wearing?” Kimiko asks.

“I was wearing a business-suit, dark gray,” Robert answers-- and just like that, his outfit changes to match it-- a dark gray business suit. 

“And what was I wearing?” Kimiko asks. “Maybe if I remember the dress, I’ll remember which day it was, and I’ll be able to remember you a little better. I want to remember you a little better.”

It’s just a thing she’s saying, of course-- it’s not like she could ever forget. 

“A pink-and-black striped dress,” Robert answers. He knows the one. “Blue silk.”

And that’s how it is. Just like that. 

See you next week as we continue to explore power and energy, specifically renewables. Stay safe.