“Shit!” I slapped my phone down onto my thigh. “I forgot to tell you about cellphones. See?” I pointed at him. “I knew you weren't ready for this.”
Kaspian blinked and looked up at me. “I thought this was a far-speaking device?”
“It is. It's called a cellphone. Don't ask me to explain the name. We say that necessity is the mother of invention and we needed a way to communicate with others over any distance. Thus, the cellphone was born. Then technology advanced, as it does, and now you can use it to connect to the Internet.”
“The Internet,” Kaspian tested the words.
“Here we go,” I muttered and flipped the phone over. “All right, Dragon. Prepare yourself to be astounded.” I let out a heavy breath. “Let's see. Where do I start? I guess we should start with the Internet itself. We discovered a way to store information in machines called computers.”
“Machines to replace books?”
“Yes, basically.”
“Why?”
“The machines we make can store vast amounts of data. Imagine entire libraries stored in a little piece of metal.”
“Impossible.”
“At first, yes. Computers used to be massive. But then technology—”
“Advanced,” he interrupted.
“Yes. We developed more powerful machines. And now, thousands of books’ worth of data can be stored on something the size of my finger.”
“No. That can't be.”
“Oh, yes, it is. And then we figured out how to link the machines through wires. Then we did away with the wires. These days, machines can link through invisible signals.”
“Is this your vengeance upon me for shocking you with my dragon form?”
“My vengeance?” I laughed. “No, babe. I'm not upset about that.” I looked at my phone, then back at him. “Okay, let me try to explain this again. The machines that store information are powerful, but there's a lot of information these days. So, they're still huge. Your average person can't house a computer like that. So, instead, there are only a few of those massive machines, but everyone has access to them through much smaller machines that can link to them. Like cellphones. I can connect to those huge machines and find any information I want through this device.” I tapped the phone. “Look. This is an app for me to read books.” I opened the book I was in the middle of reading. “You see? I got this from a larger machine and everyone else in the world can do the same thing.”
“Everyone on your planet can read the same book at once?”
“In a way. Yeah.” I laughed. “I've never thought about it like that. But yes. And that's just the start. We do most everything through our machines now.”
“Science.”
“Yes.”
“Science seems more and more like magic to me.”
“Maybe magic is just science that someone hasn't figured out yet.”
Kaspian scowled at that. “No. Magic is magic. It is the power of the elements.”
“You mean like harnessed lightning?” I lifted a brow at him.
“You told me that science is not magic. Now, you say it is?”
“No. Sorry.” I waved as if I could wipe our conversation away. “I'm going off on a tangent and confusing you. Look.” I held out my phone and went back to the Doordash screen. “This is a list of restaurants. You have restaurants, right?”
He grimaced at me.
“I'll take that as a yes.” I scrolled down. “We can order food from any of them or even more than one. Look. If I tap the name of the restaurant, I can see their menu.”
“There are pictures of the food they offer?” Kaspian leaned in. “How extraordinary.”
