Adapting to Society

Mercury had been starting to wonder just how far along technology truly was on Earthland. Almost everything here seemed to be more reliant on magic, though in the planet’s defense the amount of magic the place radiated with was off the charts. At least, in comparison to where she was from. Her own culture was heavily based on computers and electrical synapses. Magic existed, of course, but it was more secondary -- or at least evenly keeled with technology as an integrated part of it.

But she’d been starting to wonder if they had much technology at all here, since nearly everything seemed to run off of magic. The cars, the lights, cameras… She hadn’t even seen anyone with a cell phone until recently when she’d made her way into the more populated areas of Fiore. When she’d asked a stranger about them, she had learned that these devices, called iLacs, were a fairly recent invention. So much so that the company making them was actually handing them out for free as part of a promotion to increase their popularity. One still had to pay a fee for the service, of course. That was where they would really make their money. But it was a great marketing strategy.

So here she was in this place referred to as the neutral grounds, where apparently magic did not work. The city was wholly technology based, and even though the tech was fairly antiquated compared to what she was used to, it at least made her feel a little more at home. Mercury took her time browsing through the selections at the warehouse, interested in seeing every model and every color, as well as digging into the specs of the devices. There were a lot of upgrades she could, and probably would, make to these but unlike her current gadgets these iLacs would help her communicate more readily with the people here.

Ultimately, she selected one that had a sleek white casing around it. Ultimately, she planned on pulling the thing completely apart to inspect its parts and reconstruct them. She would duplicate the card and integrate it with her systems so that she technically wouldn’t need the device itself to make calls, but that was really only a failsafe. Other things she would do is upgrade the battery so it would last longer, as well as integrate a chip of her own making into that would extend the phone’s range and data processing capabilities. She also would remove pieces of the device that served no purpose other than to allow its location and usage tracked, replacing it with similar tech of her own so that she could track it herself without worrying about others hacking into it.

All this work surely would break the warranty on the thing, but she wasn’t too worried about that. If the phone ever broke, Mercury was entirely confident in her ability to fix it herself. Electronics were a phenomenon that she understood on a uniquely personal level, the ins and outs of it being a first nature to her. All she needed was to finish setting up her work station at her new home, and she’d be all set to get this thing performing at true maximum capacity.