Day 021
Other than soccer, Carter Cameron cared about few things. He cared about music and art in a sort of nebulous way anyone in Stereoport would care about music or art. It surrounded him constantly, in the bright lights and inspired evenings. He cared about it in the way people cared about the news, about once-popular celebrity gossip. In a way, vaguely unimportant and he paid attention when someone asked him to.
One thing he did care about, though, was history. It was a strange interest of his. Mostly pop-culture history of the place that inhabited the land before Stereoport did. There was something about the world, before it’s wars and before the disasters, a world where they was a national soccer team and enough cars for all the people around.
He cared about the history of America before it was torn to pieces.
Dean found it strange. There were small books on Carter’s bedside table, all stacked up like he had been looking through them. Old picture books and well written histories.
He never was sure how to bring it up, but one night, when Carter had his body laid out beside him, sighing, he turned to him.
“Why do you care so much?”
“Hrn?” Carter tilted his head. “About you?”
“No, about the way the world used to be.”
There was a long silence.
“You don’t have to answer that,” Dean said.
“No, I want to. I’m just thinking.”
Carter turned on his side and regarded Dean with a lift of his eyebrow. It was sandy brown, like his hair, in the low light of the bedroom.
“I think,” He started, “I think that it’s because I never got to see it. Because it has everything I like all rolled together. Music, movies, television…Celebrity and sports figures? It’s so interesting. It’s somehow entirely less organic than what we have now. What did we keep? What did we lose? Why?”
Carter gave an embarrassed shrug and burrowed into the side of Dean’s shoulder.
“I guess,” He said, “it’s because we’ll never know anything if we don’t know where we came from.”
Understanding that, Dean never brought it up again.
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