TekBlade Quest - Vizu Bond Start Ch.2

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity. - Khalil Gibran

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Past:

The girl then proceeds to take off her hoodie and stare at me with the familiar blue eyes I would recognize anywhere, every day for a million years.

“Micah…meet Lane…or as she now wants to be called…Lana.”

WHAT?

Present:

WHAT?

That…that can’t be, he couldn’t be this GIRL! Sure, he wasn’t the most masculine guy ever in the world, but he was a male! He also did not appreciate EDM enough to dress like this, and he was not “rave–like” at all! He was a nerd through and through! Also, just for clarification, in case you missed it, he was a DUDE! Not this “Lana” or whoever she is.

I realize I had been staring at her for a little too much as she snaps to get my attention.

“Hey! Yo, kid! You ok?”

Kid…

FUCK!

That was all I needed to confirm that this truly was Lane…or Lana…or whatever. Kid was the nickname he gave to me as a joke because he was a few months older than me, and it went on to become my actual nickname for him. She said it a rather feminine, yet firm tone of voice that let me tell it was indeed Lane, and she was who her mother said she was.

I just stared, tears forming in my eyes after months of anger. I quickly wipe them away, as I do not want to seem weak to my best friend that I just found again. However, I do believe she noticed them as she looked at me and smiled.

“Hey, Mum. Can Kid and I go for a walk down to a local park? I’m sure he knows one close by.”

Her mom replied surprisingly quickly that it was perfectly ok, and for us to have a safe walk. I looked at my mom, and she nodded in agreement. Had they had been talking about this before today? It makes sense; my parents knew before me that they were coming so they obviously knew about Lana, and what the introduction would be.

I look around, and for the first time in a long time, feel very nervous. I take a small breath and steel my nerves.

“Fine. Can I grab my headphones first? We can go to Riverdale Park, the big one near the Don River. Just gimme a sec to get ready.”

Lana looked at me with a smile I had not seen in a long time and nodded. With that nod, I walked up to my bedroom and got my phone and headphones, and put it into my ear and started listening to some old music. Not that the song mattered, as soon enough Lane...Lana and I would soon be talking about a lot of things that have happened over the past year for the both of us. It would not be an easy conversation, to say the least. I sigh and walk down the stairs quickly.

“Alright, let’s go.”

She gets up from where she was sitting and proceeds to go to the door and get on her runners. That’s is different as well, Lane never wore runners ever, He wore boots regardless of weather. Probably a small detail to notice, but when your friend transforms from a guy to a girl, you see little details. Also the big ones like being a GIRL! Still hard to understand but ok, just take it slow and don’t panic.

We open the door and begin walking outside. However, we get to the end of the driveway before we even start talking.

“S…so, how have you been…Lana?”

She smiles weakly at my attempt to be friendly towards her, because there is a LOT of air to clear between us, and neither of us knows exactly where to start.

I guess, for your sake, we’ll start at the beginning of our friendship. You need to get caught up, and nothing of value happens on the walk there, aside from awkward silence and small chit-chat. So, to make it more enjoyable for you, I’m going to catch you up on all of the compelling backstories.

We first met in elementary school when we had a class together; I think it was in the second grade. Lane and I have been together since I can remember, so it’s hard to remember exactly when we met. Anyways, we met and almost instantly hit it off, and by hit it off, I mean hit each other. We didn't exactly like each other at all. I don…t remember what we did to set each other off, but we both liked computers and were competitive, so probably just wanted to beat each other and wouldn’t back down.

We had many arguments, such as what browser was the best kind: Graphical or Text-Based. I liked the graphical base, and Lane loved the text-based. He defended the Lynx* browser, which is still going to this day. I loved Firefox* because it was as open–source as Lynx and could handle video and images too. Yes, we were total nerds, but it was fun as well. As we grew up, we came to realize that we each weren’t enemies, and started to have respect for each other. We both bonded over our appreciation of the Linux* computer system and eventually, the Ubuntu* desktop operating system. We fell in love with the Xenial Xerus, otherwise known as 16.04 LTS* as we used it a lot in Grade 4. We both fell in love with how it was open-source and complex, yet understandable to us. We managed to talk our school into using it, which was unexpected as we were only in Grade 4. We found that while we were teaching the teachers on how to run it, everyone loved it, and once they understood it, we became the best academic school in the district elementary or secondary.

We formed a Linux club, where many students found their love for the systems. It did get tense when our club had arguments between KDE*, Unity*, and Xfce* lovers. Lane and I were both KDE fans, but we also wanted to keep our group together, so we went to work to find a solution that would satisfy everyone’s unique tastes. We discovered that Ubuntu had a version for each of those environments and access was easily attained between versions. It wasn’t the most current version, but it was enough to satisfy everyone. Oh, people still went back and forth on them, but it not longer threatened to pull our group apart. It went from heated arguments to poking jokes and having good-hearted fun.

Our parents were so proud of both of us, even if his parents did not quite understand Linux and Ubuntu. We managed to set them up with Lubuntu which has a simple interface so they could run it as easy as Windows, which they migrated from. It did take them a while to understand, but last I heard, they were loving it and were able to upgrade the core things like the Linux kernel and version of Ubuntu.

My parents, however, were a constant source of knowledge of new things we could do with Linux and various programming languages. We learned C*, C++*, Java*, Lua* and Python* in our spare times. Yes, it was a lot, but it was more fun than work. We were a duo like Bill Gates and Paul Allen, only we didn’t argue or make money off our simple little programs. This is because our programs were small bugfixes in the KDE environment submitted in our parent's name. We never did anything more than regressions, but we felt like we were always helping make the world a better place.

I still do bug fixes, but I’m doing it in my name now, and not my parents. I have also seen some by a “Lana” in similar categories, but I had never put two and two together. The idea that she was still doing what we did is enough to make me cry. How can she not think of me as an asshole?

So here is the big one, why did we move? It was a big move from Winnipeg to Toronto. We moved between provinces in my junior year, and it was a terrible move. However, due to my success in academia, I was able to make fast friends with many people. However, I did something that was cowardly; I just left without telling my best friend. I could never find the nerve to talk to him, and I just left. I didn’t even answer his FB messages the week of the move and the week after. He then blocked me, and I felt I rightly deserved the punishment.

I can tell you why I acted the way I did though. I loved him like a brother and couldn’t stand saying goodbye to someone that close to me, so I just didn’t do it. I left without saying goodbye because I thought if I disappeared, it would be easier than having to go through the pain of saying goodbye to me. Was it rational? No. However, was I rational at the time? No, as well.

However, now I have a chance to fix the mistake that I made a year ago. Maybe not exactly with Lane per se, but with Lana…who supposedly is Lane. I would never have guessed that Lane…Lana is transgender. They never showed any sign of being transgender, he was never super macho, but he always seemed male. Maybe I missed something small? Maybe they were showing hints, and I completely missed it? How could I let my best friend down when they needed me the most?

As we were walking, they see me starting to shake in fear and sadness from the questions running through my head.

“Hey, you ok? You cold?” They could see me starting to get near tears again. I tried to wipe them away before she would see them further, but they keep forming and start falling from my face.

“N…no,” I say this very quietly, as I shake more and more from the fear of Lana hating me. I am such a horrible friend, I left them at such a necessary part of their life, and I can’t take it back.

“Look, let’s just sit down.” They guide me to a bench, then I sit and start shaking and crying as I realize just how much of a total shithead I have been.

We stay silent for a few minutes as I cry and finally pull myself together.

“So, do you weep because you have lost your friend forever?”

I know what she is referring to, even if it sounds obscene and blunt. It relates to the psychological effect of transitioning, where in essence, the person you were before is “dead.” This effect is due to the fact you are taking on a new identity, so legally and mentally, you are saying that you are a different person despite inhabiting a very similar body to the person mentioned above. So, the brain takes the easiest route and claims the first person is dead, so as to allow it to understand the dissociation, and goes into a sort of grieving process even though the person didn’t die. Depending on the person, it can be non-existent or incredibly intense. Not much beyond that is known, but it is a theory on to how the brain handles the dissociation between pre and post transition.

It makes sense that she would ask such a logical question because we have both dealt with things in a very logical manner. So, getting right to the heart of the issue fits her character.

“No, I’m crying because I know you are mad at me,” I say this very hesitantly, as I have to be careful with my words to ensure this fragile chance at getting my best friend back does not get ruined, even if she is different from when I left.

“Well, I can’t say I blame you for thinking that, or that a few months ago you were wrong. You were a huge dick.” She chuckles with a mixture of mirth and sadness. I could tell that she was sad and missing me but wanted the air clear first, or maybe that was just my baseless hope; it’s rather hard to read her now that we have been apart so long.

“Heh, I was wasn’t I?” I chuckle as well, trying to light the situation as well. Lana giggles as well, which makes me smile. However, she then looks down with a sad look on her face.

“Look, we have a LOT to talk about before we can be friends again.” She says it solemnly like she had a lot of thought behind that statement.

I look down as in my mind I am terrified I will never have my best friend back. Remember how I said I was very close friends with Lane? Well, this is no longer Lane, but Lana, an entirely different person. The whole trans thing is hard to fathom as well, so that doesn’t help either.

She could tell I was feeling down after what she said. So, she put her hand on my back and started rubbing my back soothingly. I start crying at how much care she is showing to someone who was a complete asshole and just seeing them for the first time in a year after cutting them out of my life.

“Why? Why are you so kind to me?” I’m amazed at my ability to get the question out between my cries. I don’t deserve a friend who is so understanding and is a much better person than me.

“Why? I realized something during my transition. I need my best friend back. I…I had admittedly been stalking you a little bit over the past year, I saw you were still the same nerd as before, and that you were trans-supportive. So, I talked to my parents and took a chance coming here to Toronto and hoped you wanted to be my friend again.”

I look at her in confusion, shock, and horror. “Y…You left EVERYTHING…in your SENIOR YEAR…on the OFF-CHANCE I would be friends with you? Granted I want to, but you couldn’t have known that!” Saying that I was stunned was putting it mildly.

She chuckles at my reaction, “Yeah, I know it sounds crazy. My parents said the same as you, but I somehow knew you needed me. I don’t know why I thought this, but I did. After my parents talked to yours…”

AH-HA! So that explains why they were there, and why my parents agreed to me to go with Lana! Now things are starting to piece together.

“…we agreed to come to Toronto, and you are not gonna believe this, but your parents are gonna start a company of some kind and hire my parents.”

I’m sorry, but what? They did move to Toronto to work on their pet projects, but they have never mentioned anything about starting a company or hiring Lana’s parents. My mouth just drops like a rock at the news.

She notices my reaction to hearing the news and chuckles.

“Heh, I take it this is all news to you?”

“My parents haven’t mentioned anything about it! Not a word!”

She chuckles yet again. “Well then, I won’t mention anymore, as it is their job to tell you. Although, I do know the supper was an excuse to finalize the contracts.”

My mouth drops again, that explains it perfectly why it seemed so short-notice to me, it wasn’t! It also explained why there seemingly was no explanation for the visit. My parents have got a lot to explain when we get home, but I need to let Lana finish first.

“So yeah, I guess it wasn’t completely out of the blue and without hope. Your parents had mentioned how you had withdrawn and just gone to listening to music and doing computer programming, which while to the average person wouldn’t strike them as weird, you also had fewer people you trusted at all. I felt like you needed someone to trust again.”

“So basically, you are a lovelorn stalker,” I say with dripping sarcasm and a huge grin.

She smiles and laughs heartily, “Oh yes; I couldn't live without you! I could not bear to go on without you!” As if to cement her “love,” she raises a hand to her head and pretends to faint on the bench.

“Oh great; now I gotta bury you, do you know how inconvenient you are?”

We both start laughing like the past year hadn’t even happened, and we were back to being best friends. Lana and I continue to laugh, but slowly she stops and looks at me with a serious expression.

I realize that while we had had a good laugh, we had only discussed why she was here, not the previous issues still in the air.

“So…I need to ask something.” I got a sense of dread spreading as I knew one of the big questions was about to come up.

“Why did you leave? More specifically, why did you leave me without even a single word?”

I look at her with a sense of conflict. I want to be honest, but it could wreck any chance we have of becoming friends again. However, if I lie, I WILL lose my friend forever, and I couldn’t withstand that.

“Why? Because I was afraid of you.”

“Of me?” She looks confused, and who can blame her?

“Yes…of you. I trusted you more than anyone…and…and when faced with the thought of leaving…I just panicked. I couldn’t face you, and tell you that I would probably never see you again. I knew how much we both depended on each other, so I thought just cutting you off would be better than making you suffer.” I started to cry because I knew how irrational it sounded.

She just sat there in silent as I sobbed my eyes out. She did something I would never have thought she would ever do, she just reached her arms around me and hugged me as we sat, and I wept. I let out over a year of hurt in a couple of minutes as Lana just held me. I finally started to stop as I came to my senses and started wiping away my tears.

“So…”

I knew I need to hear what she thought of me, even if it was the worst thing I could think of right now.

“I can see where you are coming from…it is extremely irrational&44; but from knowing who you are, it is a thing you would do.”

“Isn’t she pissed anymore?” I think to myself&46; “Wow&44; thank you so much.” I say out loud&46;

She looks me directly in the eye, and I shudder a little.

“Sorry.”

“Look, I’m still pissed off from it being a year, and it is NOW just coming out, but I forgive you. I’m still going to be angry for a while, but I believe you. You aren’t someone who would lie to me. I cared about you too; you were my closest friend. Someone I could trust without question, and I want to make that happen again. I don’t know if it’ll happen though. All I know is to take things day-by-day.’

I was amazed that she did not hate me and wanted to be friends. There were many ways she could have just ended our friendship, or tried to get me back for basically stabbing her in the back. She didn't want to do any of that though and still wanted to be my friend. What did I do to deserve someone as amazing as her?

She hugged me quickly one more time and stood up.

“Come on, Time to go home.”

“Wait, don’t we have more to talk about?”

“Not today, today was already really emotional as it was, and all that is left to tell is how I went from Lane to Lana. That can wait.”

I stood up pouting a little bit, but I still hugged her tightly.

“So that you know you being trans is ok with me. I may not understand everything right now. However, I’m willing to learn and listen.”

She sighed as I said that and looked visibly relaxed.

“That’s all I could ever hope to ask from you. You are something special.”

She released me from the hug and started walking towards home, and called for me to follow.

I jog quickly to catch up, and we rush back to make it in time for dinner. We keep joking about the old days and even some new coding things as if we had never been apart at all. We keep coming back to this new thing we both saw online: Riftnux.

It is a virtual reality product we had heard rumors about everywhere. It seems to be in Canada, so we have home-field advantage in getting it, but we have no idea where or when it is coming out.

We got so caught up in our talk; we barely realized when we got to the front door of my house. We almost walked right into it; we were so unaware of it. We are klutzes, and we both had a good laugh about it.

I open the door, and we walk inside, our parents greet us and tell us that supper is ready. We run upstairs and wash our hands for dinner like little kids, and we walk downstairs ready for a feast. We walk into the dining room and smell the many great aromas of our great feast! Our Swiss Chalet dinner! None of our parents can cook very well, so we are having a pre-made meal. Still excellent though, their chicken is amazing.

We sit down and pop the lids off the take-out lids of our feast. We then grab our utensils and start eating. It is amazing food; you should have it as often as you can. We get a few bites in, and our parents start asking us about our walk went. We said it went well, but then I asked the question that would come to change my life entirely:

“How long have you wanted to start a company, and how long have you known you’d be hiring Lana’s parents?”

To be continued

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Appendix

Lynx - A free and open-source text-based web browser developed by a school group, within the Academic Computing Services of the post-secondary University of Kansas, more specifically by Lou Montulli, Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac in 1992. [back]

Firefox - A free and open-source graphical web browser developed by The Mozilla Foundation in 2002 to replace their Mozilla Application Suite. [back]

Linux - An operating system released as open-source to help people have access to robust applications. It is placed in many distributions as a base and allows for open development on those operating systems. Started development by Linus Torvalds in 1991. [back]

Ubuntu - A very popular Linux-based operating system used on computers, servers, and mobile devices. Developed by Canonical Ltd. in 2004 to have a secure and complete operating system at installation. [back]

LTS - Stands for Long-Term Support. In this case, it is meant for Ubuntu, for the versions that instead of only nine months of software support for the version, it gets five years. [back]

KDE - Stands for K Desktop Environment. It is an open source community that develops many different applications, frameworks, and a desktop environment (Plasma). It was founded in 1996 by Matthias Ettrich to allow a consistent look and feel across open-source computers. [back]

Unity - A graphical desktop environment designed specifically for the Ubuntu operating system. Developed by Canonical Ltd. in 2010 to improve the experience of using Ubuntu. [back]

Xfce - A graphical desktop environment developed to be modular, fast, and lightweight. Consists of various separate modular parts to form the desktop environment. Designed by Olivier Fourdan in 1996. [back]

C - A programming language made for a general population, while maintaining complexity. Developed by Dennis Ritchie in 1972 to use all the features of computers at the time that previous languages could not access. [back]

C++ - A programming language made for a general population and to improve on C. It uses classes and high-level programming while allowing for low-level programming. Developed by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1979 while working for AT&T Bell Labs. [back]

Java - A programming language made for a general population and high-level programming, with as few dependencies as possible. James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, and Patrick Naughton began development in 1991. Sun Microsystems released 1.0 in 1995. [back]

Lua - A programming language that is lightweight and customizable to allow developers to use the language however they please. Construction started by Roberto Ierusalimschy, Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo, and Waldemar Celes in 1993. [back]

Python - A programming language that uses high-level programming for general purposes, with a structure that allows idea-expression in fewer lines of code than Java or C++. Developed by Guido van Rossum in 1989. [back]

© 2017 Michelle Watkins