Los Angeles, 2020
As a high-speed rail transported him from one end of Koreatown to another, Akio Hashimoto was speechless.
"I thought we were supposed to be the efficient ones.." Abdul chuckled at that, motioning for Akio to walk along with them as they exited the train station. "This could never have been done without you, Akio." They wondered, for a moment, if that other world's Akio might have been as great a friend as this one.
As they walked across a small campus, a robotic janitor bumped into Akio. He flinched, to which Abdul laughed at him. "Woah! What is all this for?" Akio exclaimed, taking a step back. "Don't ask me how, but apparently my father managed to convince Stonehearthe to build a campus here. A small one, mostly for all sorts of tech-related research. A student made these robots. An, uh, old friend of mine, even." After some small talk about the intricacies of the university, they moved on to the café that'd opened on the outskirts of Koreatown, near the fully intact part of Los Angeles.
For the first time since what was, to them, six years ago, Abdul felt clueless. What were they and Akio? For a moment, they wondered whether they could use their father's Alexandria to figure it out. "What's funny?" Akio somehow noticed their very subtle smile, bending forward over his coffee to interrogate Abdul. "Uh.. it's nothing. Just thinking about, you know," their silence was a millisecond too long as their eyes took to the ceiling, "birds." "Alright, keep your secrets. I'll find out sooner or later, Abdul. That awakening I got in Lyon was cool and all, but there's times where I wish it would just let me look into your head and finally figure out what you're thinking instead."