baby, you're a rich man

[zuckered]

Likability. I should have known that everything would come down to that. Years have passed since I last even set foot in Kirkland House, since those days when I shuffled from class to class as that nameless nobody who managed to ace CS problem sets or even gave a crap about getting punched by the Phoenix or the Porcellian— with the money I've made from facebook, I could literally buy Mount Auburn St., I could probably take a crack at University Hall, I could double even the billions of dollars of endowment that Harvard has in its vaults, and people know it. Scratch being the next Bill Gates, now everyone's projecting that I'll make Man of the Year all on my own, no need for help from a trophy wife or a washed up musician. And yet, when it comes down to it, it's still one big popularity contest, and I've got black marks on my record. Like publicly shaming Erica Albright over the internet. Or like comparing people's school facebook pictures to...

"Farm animals," Mark said, his voice tense with resignation, fingers tapping on the side of his laptop.

The deposition room was empty at last, save for Marylin, and why she lingered, Mark didn't really know. It was the first time that he hadn't minded someone bringing him bad news since leaving Harvard. By the time facebook's momentum had started building, most people neglected to let Mark know the full extent that his actions would have on others, preferring to linger at the safety of their desk rather than piss the CEO off. At first, it had been novel. The rewards reaped from a long, tireless effort on the biggest project of his life, perhaps even of his generation. After a while, though, the shine wore off. People seemed disingenuous, kind only for their own benefit, vultures just waiting to descend at first opportunity. As much as he'd come to agree, in his own way, with Eduardo's assessment of Sean Parker as being paranoid, blinded by his own fifteen minutes of fame and the strobe lights of the party he demanded that his life be, sometimes Mark could still understand.

His eyes carefully followed Marylin's slight nod. "Yeah," she agreed.

At least she was honest. Mark rolled his eyes, shook his head, memories from years ago all dredged up in the past couple of months to the forefront of his mind. Some details had faded away with time, some conversations feeling unnatural out of context, but at the bottom of it all, Mark knew. Had always been self-aware. It just hadn't mattered much, what other people thought of him, provided those few steady constants remained in his life. With the barest of exhales, his fingers trailed along the edge of his laptop. "I was drunk, and angry, and stupid," he admitted, not sure if the disdain in his voice was self-directed, or at the inability of others to let such a minor detail go. Maybe both.

"And blogging," Marylin added, shaking Mark out of his reverie.

His expression darkened. Right. The internet's not written in pencil, Mark, it's written in ink.

"And... blogging," he agreed, his eyes traveling along the ceiling of the room, deliberately avoiding Marylin's gaze. It wasn't really the money he was concerned about, it was the pure principle of the matter. One stupid night. One stupid night, leading to one of the most revolutionary networking sites that the world had seen to date, yet a stupid crack about a girl's bra size and putting into practice what guys did on a daily basis on the internet (who didn't compare the hotness of women, it was practically a man's rite of passage) threw all of that into its shadow.

"Pay them," Marylin suggested, her gaze even, expression frank as she arched a brow. "In the scheme of things, it's a speeding ticket. That's what Sy will tell you tomorrow."

As she shifted to stand, Mark glanced over, fingers playing with his laptop, ready to open it again. "Do you think anybody would mind if I stayed and used the computer for a minute?" he asked, thoughts still swirling.

"I can't imagine it would be a problem," she replied lightly, heels clicking on the floor as she readied to leave.

"Thanks," he said, eyes darting from her to his laptop a few times, before he opened it again; her quick exit probably meant that she had better things to do than linger over a case that was, in spite of being connected to facebook, probably an easy close for the firm. The time she'd taken to outline everything for him, that was her own, not part of the job description, and it softened him just a touch. "I... appreciate your help today."

"You're not an asshole, Mark," Marylin remarked, the tapping of her heels coming to a halt. His brow furrowed as he turned, not expecting the statement, or indeed anything other than hearing the swish of the door as she left. The look on her face seemed sympathetic, inexplicably, and Mark wasn't sure what to do about that. Wasn't sure what to say to it, and so only stared as she spoke up again. "You're just trying so hard to be."

The glass doors and walls made it easy to watch Marylin's progress as she left, but soon enough Mark turned back to his computer, gaze distant. He liked that aspect of the room. Wondered if it was a deliberate design, or at least a marked choice on the part of the person who had booked the room for the deposition, putting it somewhere people couldn't hide. Where even outsiders would be able to read every last expression. Revealing. But as he'd never had anything to mask in the first place, it didn't bother Mark any more than the open desks at facebook's headquarters ever had. Hearing every last keystroke echo in the room, he curiously opened facebook up, typing in a single name: Erica Albright.

Huh. Apparently she had an account.

He clicked on the friend request button, not sure if it was a morbid curiosity that drove him there or an actual desire to reconnect. Knowing himself, probably more the former. Regardless, it only took a few seconds before he confirmed the request, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair, expression the very picture of levity, even as his finger reached over to press the F5 key. Twice. Thrice.

She said he could use the room, after all.

It was only when Mark looked up properly, prying his eyes away from the screen, pausing before hitting the refresh key again, that he realized something had changed. No longer seated in a newly purchased Herman Miller chair, no longer surrounded by panes of glass, Mark's eyes met slightly yellowed walls and his hands ran over the grain of an old, worn wooden chair. Shortly thereafter, his eyes flew to the corner of his computer screen.

No wireless signal.

Comments

[pointzerothree]

Eduardo doesn't know how long it's been. The thing about the island is that there are no real obligations, no meetings or anywhere to be, and so it's easy to lose track of time, to let days slide into weeks. He still isn't quite so accustomed to Tabula Rasa's idle lifestyle (truth be told, he wouldn't want to be), but he's much better about it than he used to be these days, and the fact of the matter is, when he has few ways of filling his time, there isn't any reason to sit and count the hours. He has a girlfriend he's crazy about and a handful of classes, and that's been all he needs.

Despite the fact that it's never bothered him, when he catches sight of an all too familiar face in the rec room — one that doesn't belong to some doppelganger named after a city, he knows instantly — the first thing he does is try to calculate how much time has passed since he last laid eyes on his former best friend, since he stormed out of the Facebook office after having been stabbed in the fucking back or since the two days he spent thinking he was back at Harvard, even if he was supposedly here all the while. He doesn't know. It's enough to keep him still for a moment, though, blankly staring, as if he can't quite believe his eyes. (There's a part of him that wants to punch the douchebag right in the face, that thinks he deserves it. The rest of him is disturbingly tempted to hug him. It isn't an easy thing, throwing away two years of friendship.)

"Mark," he says flatly, outwardly impassive, most of the room still separating the two of them. They'll have an audience, he thinks, if things escalate, but that wasn't a problem before, and it's the least of his concerns now. There's nothing he needs to keep secret.

[zuckered]

Everything has an explanation. It's the reason why, several minutes later, Mark Zuckerberg is still seated calmly in the room, trusty laptop in hand (and Erica Albright's page open in a tab of Firefox, if minimized to the start bar), even though the chain of events he's just gone through make absolutely no sense to him. How he came to arrive, in the blink of an eye, inside a rather dilapidated building with a strange smell and a steady drip in the background is unclear. Mark doesn't suspect foul play, even though there's plenty of reason for him to always suspect foul play, having as much money as he does in the bank, having made as many enemies as he has, including the man everyone's come to know as his best friend.

Former, rather. It takes two to keep a bridge intact, and from what Mark's seen in the past few days, Eduardo's probably been ready to burn his end of it for a while now, a connection quickly severed and only distanced over the years. The speed of dissolution has always been fascinating to Mark. The way market trends can leave a soaring corporation suddenly in the red, the way that the stark nature of a click and defriend on facebook actually better compares to real life than most people think. Sometimes, Mark still feels like he's reeling from it all. Others, he wonders how he didn't see it coming.

Regardless, right now, it all comes down to the fact that Mark doesn't understand. His mind isn't clouded, his senses are sharp as ever, and although he's left unsure about how to fill the blanks, there's still an explanation somewhere. So he sits on one of the sofas and starts flipping through channels, as though he expects that one of them will yield some kind of orientation video that explains all.

Nothing.

Well, until he hears steps coming from some distance away, and then a familiar voice that makes him pause, staring at one precise pixel on his screen. He turns. Eventually. Turns to find Eduardo wearing an outfit that isn't quite as flattering as the one at the hearing, and an expression that looks more tired, even though only minutes have passed.

"Wardo," he replies, knowing that the nickname might bother the other man, but not really caring. "We'll settle."

[pointzerothree]

If the use of the familiar nickname grates, Eduardo barely lets on as much, eyes closing in a momentary cringe before he pulls himself together. That one small thing is inconsequential, after all, compared to the fact that Mark is actually here. For about a fraction of a second, it had been almost nice to see him, but that passed quickly, leaving him nothing but frustrated, too exhausted to want to deal with this, with him. It's always been a little difficult, the way Mark says things seemingly out of nowhere, related only to what's going on in his own mind, but Eduardo could manage when they were friends, shrugged it off easily; now, it's downright infuriating, less because Mark is so indecipherable than because he can't decipher it. Not much of a distinction, maybe, but an important one all the same.

(At the very least, it means he won't have to worry about Mark somehow coming from his past. With all the talk of people showing up from different times and places, the notion has occurred to him before, that Mark could arrive having no idea what went down between them. The legal talk speaks for itself, though, and that much is a small comfort, a refreshing change from the way he'd been for those few minutes at Harvard, whether real or imaginary.)

"You'll —" he starts, meaning to echo him, but cuts himself off with a mirthless laugh, instead, running his hand through his hair, expression undeniably puzzled. For now, he stands his ground. He isn't sure how long that will remain the case. He can't be sure of anything, really, except the fact that Mark is here and from his future, actually sitting in front of him like nothing's wrong at all, when in reality, it's all been turned on its head. Eduardo wouldn't even be surprised if all the air had been sucked out of the room for how difficult it suddenly is to breathe, to speak, though he has no intention of letting on as much. He can do this; he has to. That doesn't make it any easier. "Jesus, Mark, how long have you been here?"

[zuckered]

This place, wherever it is, doesn't offer that many answers. Glimpses Mark's had of the outer setting hint that he might be somewhere in the tropics, with balmy weather and appropriate flora, the lack of strong humidity suggesting that there's some kind of coast nearby. But that doesn't tell him much. Narrows him down to an entire band of the Earth, and one that Mark doesn't really have any attachment to, although the arrival of Eduardo in specific makes Mark wonder if he's somehow made his way over to Brazil. He doesn't know the difference between it or any other tropical place well enough to know better, and at least this is a guess with some reasoning behind it. But why the corner of his lip quirks up for a moment isn't because he may be in Eduardo's home turf or that the pickings in clothing must be thin at best (unless there is in fact, some sort of themed party going on nearby, but if he can't hear the music from here then it's a poor party even by Harvard's standards, and that's saying something; he's been to BU's equivalent before). Instead, it's the fact that with Eduardo's entrance, Mark can suddenly glean a lot more answers. A matter of show, not tell.

Eduardo looks surprised. Probably not the one to bring Mark here.

Eduardo looks confused. Could be so caught up in emotion that he forgot the hearing. Could be suffering some impossible memory loss brought on by a crazy Zuckerberg fanatic, or Sean Parker, or even an ex-girlfriend, although that sounds a little too much the stuff of soap operas. And the favorite theory yet, impossible though it may seem, is that some kind of tear in the space-time continuum has thrown Mark into another line of reality entirely, one where Eduardo's pain and anguish has not led him to lawyers, but instead the Caribbean. (Of this, Mark would approve. But it's a little too fantastical. Too good to be true.)

Eduardo looks angry. Facebook is a still a thing.

On the bright side, Eduardo's words also suggest that he knows where the both of them are, and Mark trusts in the fact that his best friend, former or otherwise, will let him in on the scoop sooner or later no matter how mad he is. He's Wardo, after all. So Mark turns away, looking at his computer screen and trying to find a wireless connection again. No dice.

All of this happens in the span of a couple of seconds. The human brain is, after all, a faster processor than any computer server can ever be, even if there are usually enough distractions to make the opposite seem true.

"A few minutes," he replies in earnest, then looking down at the clock on his screen. "Seven, to be exact."

[pointzerothree]

It just figures. Eduardo had almost expected as much, really, seeing Mark just sitting on the couch with his computer — because who needs a laptop around here, when there's no wifi to be had? — and having his initial suspicion confirmed, he can only think that it's just his luck. The only thing worse than Mark being on the island (a place he's actually managed to craft a life for himself, away from this and away from Facebook) that he can think of is having to be the one to explain the island to him, knowing full well how unbelievable it sounds and more than likely not having the patience to put up with him. Because, at the end of the day, he can't hate Mark, not outright, not enough to turn his back and leave him to whatever poor soul comes along next. Unlike his erstwhile best friend, it isn't so easy for him to just cut people out of his life, and regardless of how fucking furious he might be (and he is, there's no doubt about that), more than anything else, it hurts, looking at him and having to consider the fact that someone he trusted so wholeheartedly could really have betrayed him, that supposed settlement or not, Mark will never really relent, and in the end, he'll have come second to some lines of code and pixels on a screen.

"Great," he sighs, lifting his hand to his forehead as he tips his head back, eyes shut. He doesn't even have the first idea of where to start with this, his head too muddled by Mark's very presence to try to piece together a decent explanation. "Of course. This is just — This is perfect. Exactly what I needed." It's nothing of the sort, but even in speaking entirely to himself, he has no doubt that Mark will pick up on that much. There isn't, on his part, any attempt to veil the sarcasm. When he looks at Mark again, there's a weary sort of resignation to his gaze, though the set of his mouth still shows him to be displeased at best. "And let me guess, I'm the first person who's talked to you, right?"

[zuckered]

And there it surfaces again, one of the things that Mark's always had to deal with in Eduardo, how often the other man bemoans his own situation. Like having to sit through an hour-long dinner with Sean Parker, founder of Napster no less, is the greatest imposition on an afternoon he would otherwise probably be spending attending HRSCA events (which, when stripped of all the pomp and circumstance the students try to lend them, are nothing more than gatherings with the Kong's or Yenching's awful Chinese food, the only salvageable parts of which are the fortune cookies, which aren't Chinese in the first place). Like having his shares diluted should matter all that much when the portion Mark left him with still amounts to a whole lot more than the money Eduardo put into the company in the first place, millions outweighing thousands— making what was almost solely a business decision into a personal slight. Like Mark arriving wherever this place is should be so much of a big deal when all that Eduardo has to do is tell him longitude, latitude, and point out a phone.

It's not like Mark's asking him to stay.

Then again, given how much Mark feels like he's practically going through a divorce settlement and fighting for the custody of a (brain)child, maybe that's something Eduardo wants. Proof that their metaphorical marriage meant something.

Mark hates metaphors.

"No, that would probably be my mother," Mark replies with a slightly exasperated tone before he snaps his laptop shut and stands up, offering his same direct look and a slight shrug. He wonders if he looks as defeated as he feels right now. "Look, a place with running water and electricity, with cable television, is bound to have a telephone. A telephone is bound to solve our problems. Gets me out of your hair and returns me home in one fell long-distance swing. I can have them... wire your money over or whatever." He waves his hand in a fluttering, dismissive motion.

[pointzerothree]

"Look, as much as I would love to have you out of my hair right now," Eduardo says, hands gesturing absently in front of him, "and believe me, I really, really would, it's not that easy." Chances are, he's picked the worst, most roundabout way to start explaining this place, but it isn't his fault that Mark has just assumed he can go home. In the moment, it seems simplest, beginning with what he knows to be fact — that he would very much like Mark gone, a desire that comes second only to the one he won't acknowledge, for things to somehow turn out alright — and work from there, instead of dealing with what he knows Mark will probably have too many unanswerable questions about. Hell, for all he knows, he'll assume that Eduardo himself is somehow behind this, and that's a possibility he wouldn't even know how to begin to deal with. None of this is, really. He'd liked it here, thinking the whole mess with Facebook was behind him, found that he was even happy in the life he's been beginning to build. But no, of course it could never be that easy. He wouldn't get a clean break like that, not where Mark is concerned.

There's a lot he's thought of that he's wanted to say, in the time that's passed between now and the confrontation in Palo Alto, but in the moment, he forgets most of it. (Probably, that's for the best; more important than reminding Mark that he was his one friend is getting this stupid welcome to the island speech taken care of.) "There's no phone. And if there were, it wouldn't work, there'd be no signal. You've been lucky enough to find yourself on the pocket universe island of no return, which sounds crazy, but is one hundred percent real." He pauses, takes a breath. "Also, I don't know what money you're talking about."

[zuckered]

When searching for the right course of action, sometimes paths diverge to form a tree. Every juncture and fork in the branch is a question. Mark's eyes close for a second, gathering everything Eduardo's said in those few sentences, positioning them in a way that might lead to the why, the how, and most importantly, the things Mark must do to get back to his office in Palo Alto. Or at the very least, away from all the discomfort that hangs in the air between the both of them.

Either Eduardo is telling the truth or he's gone mad, because Eduardo is not the type to lie and certainly never to Mark, no matter how much they've gone through and, Mark predicts, no matter what they may come across in the future.

If Eduardo is telling the truth, then presumably his money won't make it over to this pocket universe. Even if it does, Eduardo won't be able to make any use of it. Meaning that there is no point talking to Eduardo in specific unless Mark is secure in the belief that his best friend's managed to secure some information or way of getting by on the island that no one else has. (Doubtful.)

If, on the other hand, Eduardo has simply gone insane, then the solution is to find someone who can fix that in of itself, someone other than Mark himself, who would more likely drive a person to greater depths of madness.

Add onto all of these lines of reason the fact that Eduardo is unarguably angry with Mark, and Mark sees no more point in staying, walking around the couch and toward the entrance of the rec center, before he stops after a few steps to turn around and face Eduardo. Brow furrowed.

"Meaning we have both fallen through rips in the fabric of space and time, you surely coming from before you've had the enjoyment and catharsis of hiring lawyers to settle what we apparently couldn't on the playground," he plays along, not entirely believing it, but having no grounds to completely discount the story either. "Assuming that we are not the only two currently on the island, I see no reason why you should be forced to be my tour guide."

[pointzerothree]

"Because I'm not you." It isn't exactly what Eduardo means to say — he was going to get around to something to that extent, of course, but not quite in those words, not so soon — but there's no taking them back now, and he probably wouldn't even if he could. Maybe it's just the sort of thing that needs to be said. Mark's screwed him over, fucked his whole life up, and yet Eduardo still has an innate sense of loyalty, the feelings manifested from two years of friendship not anything he can turn off so easily, however much he may want to. (If he were able, he thinks, he might be a whole lot better off, and certainly not so conflicted right about now.) If Mark leaves, he sure as hell won't stop him, but otherwise, until someone better comes along, he has to take care of this, because he just can't fathom doing otherwise.

Letting Mark's words sink in, he exhales slowly, an attempt at maintaining some composure more so than anything else. He can't flip out like he did in Palo Alto again, mostly because he isn't sure he could handle it, though he has no intention of telling Mark as much. It had felt damn good in the moment, and he wouldn't have had it any other way, needed to finally stand up for himself, but it was draining, too, an exhaustion that he feels again now, facing Mark like this. "And that's exactly what it is, as far as I've been told," he continues, in a tone remarkably dissimilar to his from several seconds ago. "People show up from different times, different places. I definitely hadn't hired a lawyer yet; I'd only just found out." He doesn't think Mark will need any more specifics than that. "There are about 250 people here, but none of them here, right now, so..."

[zuckered]

Maybe he should be using his time right now to glean every last bit of information from Wardo, get it in a way that he can understand, put in plain terms that don't just swim around the subject and never land (that's something that Mark expects from most of society, flailing around in their incompetence, but Eduardo can do better than that). Then again, information about this island can be tugged out from any one of those two hundred and fifty others living on it, and without the internet to keep him occupied in the interim, time isn't something Mark should mind sparing. Because if Eduardo says they'll be on the island for a while, then Mark's sure that he will be, if perhaps not as long as his best friend (former?) is expecting. What Mark's quickly running short of, so aware of it that the fact digs into his skin, is time with Eduardo.

After all, Mark doesn't think that Eduardo will stay, not really, once he heads back to Palo Alto. The scars have healed over, the walls built high during the deposition, and what leaves Mark with now is a choice. Does he want Eduardo around for any amount of time?

Well, that's an easier answer than he expects. Yes. And that means that the functioning of this island doesn't matter one damn bit right now.

"Great, I'm sure I'll be able to make something piecewise out of them all," Mark says, still in that dismissive tone of his, rolling his eyes before he tilts his head and stares. Just stares. Stares in a way that hopefully keeps Eduardo's words at bay like they had for two years, before he speaks up again. "I'm glad you're not me," he finally decides on saying. "It means you make a good friend."

He turns then and goes to peer curiously in that fridge that's been sitting only a few yards away, one that he's been vaguely wondering about since arriving... wherever this is. The only reason why his nose has stayed out at all is out of the fear that it actually belongs to someone, perhaps even Someone Important, but Eduardo's description is more than enough to push that worry out of his mind.

[pointzerothree]

It's surprising enough to stop Eduardo in his tracks. The first comment, he'd been about to take as his cue to leave, and he would have been fine with that, too, knowing that it had been done at Mark's behest, after having been the one to try to make an effort. Even that was more than Mark deserved from him, anyway, but maintaining the distinction between them is important to Eduardo, even if he doesn't expect Mark to care, or even notice. (He hasn't usually seemed to in the past.) So the fact that the words, unintentional as his own first statement was, actually seem to have some impact comes as a shock, so much that Eduardo can't hide it, eyebrows raising and mouth falling slightly open. That Mark has turned his attention elsewhere is infinitely relieving. He can't imagine that acknowledging something like that would be easy for Mark, anyway, given that it's the first time Eduardo can recall him ever having said as much.

"You son of a bitch," he sighs, shaking his head like he can't believe what's going on. In a way, that isn't far from the truth. He made a decision, storming out of the Facebook office in Palo Alto, came to the realization that there was nothing in that room he had to go back to. Mark had chosen the site, and he, in turn, chose his own fucking dignity, finally, after all he'd put up with. There is, though, a reason why he dealt with as much as he did: at the end of the day, he's unable to shut out people he cares about, and there are few who have ever meant so much as Mark Zuckerberg, one-sided though their relationship may have turned out to be. It's a stupid inclination, one that makes him question just how much self-loathing he's developed, but he can't walk away, not after that.

Rubbing tiredly at his eyes, he exhales slowly, and resignedly crosses the few steps to the refrigerator, leaning against the top of the open door so he can look over it at Mark. "C'mon, man," he says, something about his voice sounding more tired than would probably have been the case before the debacle with Facebook. "They don't keep any in here, but if you want to go grab a beer or something... I can show you where to get one."

[zuckered]

Son of a bitch isn't exactly accurate. Not that these types of descriptors ever are, but son of a bitch kind of grates because really, it's not like Mark's mom has ever done anything to merit that kind of negative name-calling. She's... normal. Not a bitch. Not a genius. Just a normal, encouraging mother, the type who stayed a fair amount of the time in the kitchen and believed very strongly in keeping house. If she's ever contributed to Mark's perception of the world, it's only by encouraging his belief in third wave feminism, in the fact that it's perfectly acceptable for women to fit into the molds that stereotypes suggest, and that maybe more women should try it if they feel the inclination. Demanding pure equality is crap. Not because one gender deserves more than the other, or because one's more capable, but instead thanks to biology. Everything is a gradient, everything is about those minute differences in chemistry. But that's a train of thought for another day, and one too often traveled (how many times has anyone called him a son of a bitch, after all) to be interesting to Mark as he reaches into the fridge to pull out a small pitcher of juice. Too lazy to look through all of the cabinets, he simply presses his lips to the side and takes a few deep gulps, before holding it out in offer to Eduardo. Who's probably taking issue with the bacteria or the swapping of spit. Whatever.

Wardo's loss, if he doesn't want the pretty delicious and no doubt freshly-squeezed juice.

But this is good. That all of the walls can start to come down again after such a simple statement, a true statement despite not being the sort of thing Mark would usually say, suggests that it should only take a few more tips before the scale works back in Mark's favor, an exercise that is as much intellectual as it is practical. The co-founder of facebook doesn't need to get along with people, really.

Mark's not the co-founder of facebook anymore, though. Not functionally, not here. It's more chilling than he expects. Like he's just a useless, socially inept nerd all over again. Eduardo never seemed to mind, back in the day. But the rest of the world does.

"Not going to have a beer with me?" Mark asks, pointedly, still testing the waters, pushing further and further. Inexplicably, Marylin Delpy's voice still resonates in his mind. It's all about the hints and subtlety.

[pointzerothree]

"You really want to press your luck with me right now?" Eduardo asks, a question meant in earnest, his eyebrows shooting up. Ordinarily, after any other fight (not that there have been many), this is something that he would expect from Mark, something easy, simple, to bring them back to the status quo, with Mark calling the shots and Eduardo following along. Now, though, especially after he's apparently gone through with his threat and actually sued, it's almost hard to believe that Mark could actually think this is okay. Then again, it's the same line of thinking that got him fucked over in the first place, underestimating Mark's ability to be a dick who takes other people for granted. He's seen it several times, now, and not just in what happened to him. Erica Albright is walking proof of it, that he should have seen it coming, should have known better than to expect too much of Mark.

He takes the pitcher of juice anyway, sipping carefully and already wishing that it were something stronger. Maybe he'd be better equipped to deal with this if it were. It's that line of thinking (not, he tells himself, any lingering affection for his former best friend) that leads him to shrug, throwing his free hand up to his side. He has to wonder if maybe he's really snapped — what is a crazy person, after all, except someone who does the same thing over and over expecting different results? — but if he has, surely it was a long time coming. That has to be a point in his favor. So does, for that matter, the fact that he's trying to keep a distance, even if something about it doesn't sit right with him. "I will go with you to get a beer. I will probably have a beer. That doesn't mean... Things have changed, Mark. I'm not just going to pretend like everything's magically okay. Jesus."

[zuckered]

Eduardo says he'll go with Mark to get a beer. And probably consume one as well. Assuming that Eduardo doesn't plan on leaving Mark's side between those two steps (which is a big assumption to make by words alone, fair, but Mark's pulling together all he's ever known of Eduardo these past few years, and the conclusion that brings him to is the fact that Eduardo will linger more likely than not, so fresh from the laptop incident), all this serves to do is confuse Mark completely, his brows furrowed and forehead wrinkled. His lips part, noiseless for a few seconds before Mark just comes out and says it. "But if you go with me to get a beer, then proceed to have a beer, that isn't functionally any different," he points out, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world, before grabbing a grapefruit from the fridge and trying to stuff it into his pocket.

Not entirely successful, at which point he begins to dig into the peel instead, and once again gives in after a few failed attempts with blunt fingernails. At that point, the grapefruit just gets tossed from hand to hand.

He should probably be saying something right about now. Certainly offering an apology, at least, if Mark was the type to cave to popular opinion and peer pressure. But Mark thinks that an apology from his lips, anything including those two words (I'm sorry), would sound so little like Mark and so insincere that it'd be doing Eduardo nothing but a disservice. Everything needs to start somewhere, but better to trust baby steps at this point.

"I could drop a paper umbrella into your beer, if that helps at all," he shrugs, stance dismissive in spite of the way that his gaze is anything but.

[pointzerothree]

"What I was saying, what it doesn't mean is you getting to ask me if I'm not going to have a beer with you like nothing's wrong," Eduardo clarifies pointedly, words slowed down and eyebrows raised, hands gesturing in front of him. It grates more than it typically would, not least because he does have every intention of having a beer with Mark, unconscionably stupid though he knows it makes him. The difference is, though, that it's at his own incentive, not any prompting from the person he used to consider like his brother. If he has to spell it out for Mark, all the reasons why this isn't okay, he has no trouble doing so. It isn't difficult in the slightest to recall how fucking angry he was (and, in all honesty, still is, though not with the same sort of fervor, time and space leaving it at something akin to a simmer), especially not when Mark apparently can't grasp it on his own, unsurprising though that much is.

Sighing, he lets his gaze wander briefly to the grapefruit before he looks Mark in the eyes again. "You were functionally my friend for several months and lying to me the entire time. I don't think functionally has much to do with anything. If I have a beer with you, it will be because I decide to, not because you expect as much." He shakes his head, tone lessening in intensity before he speaks again. Although he's trying, there's only so much he can do at once when this contradicts so many old instincts, ones threatening to rise back to the surface now that Mark is here. "I couldn't care less about a paper umbrella."

[zuckered]

Uh-oh. Mark can feel the problems boiling already, the retort that's just on the tip of his tongue, and the desire to grab Eduardo by the shoulders and shake him a little to knock sense into the guy. Maybe, maybe Mark is at an extreme end of the spectrum, calculating to a fault, and Eduardo will never have to deal with that type of person again at such a close distance. But Mark doubts it. While Mark can't claim that this entire ordeal has been him trying to teach his best friend a lesson— because it hasn't, and the irritation and outright anger he felt at those ridiculous hearings is enough proof of that— there is still a lesson embedded in here and it's one that Mark is now much more able to drive home, away from facebook as he is and no longer quite so enamored with Sean Parker. The fact is that Eduardo signed up for this. He's signed up for a life that requires for him to be on his toes at any given point in time because that's what money does to people, and why Bill Gates' fortune has never been what Mark first thinks of in association with that man. Mark refuses to walk down that line, wants to be more about the inception of ideas than a cash flow, but Eduardo is a businessman, and the first rule of business is to never mix it with the personal. This shouldn't be about friendship. Shares of a company can't measure that.

"No," he finally goes ahead and says, the grapefruit falling smack into his left hand and staying there, fingers curled around the peel, while he looks Eduardo in the eyes. "No, you are my friend. And have been for years. If you get to say what this means to you, then the full picture has to include my perspective as well, and from where I'm standing, you are my friend and everything else is... a separate matter."

It's true enough. Even while he was planning to send a harsh message across to Eduardo, it was never with the intention of severing the friendship. There was jealousy. There was a chance to prove to the world that Mark deserved more. There was a puzzle. He was tired of feeling like nothing he did was good enough for people as people, and that the only thing he properly knew was strategy. Ultimately, it turned into a game.

And apparently, Eduardo doesn't like that. Mark turns sharply away and heads a couple of steps toward the door, before waiting for Eduardo. "If I expected you to come have a beer like we did for those two years back then, I wouldn't have even asked if you were interested; it would have been an assumption. You know that. I know that. So yes, something is wrong, something is very wrong, but that doesn't mean that everything has to be."

[pointzerothree]

It doesn't make any sense. Or, it does, in the way that the words form coherent sentences, and that when Eduardo stops to consider the speaker, he can't say the point being made is all that surprising, but the logic behind it, he still doesn't grasp. Maybe the wound is still fresher than he thought, not yet fully healed even after months of having been on the island, but that Mark could see it that way honestly hurts. Then again, as time and distance have let him acknowledge, things always were a little one-sided. He was just always able to deal with it when it didn't involve what could only seem to him an outright betrayal, Mark's way of saying how little he cared about him, how inconsequential he'd become. Coming into it with that framework, there's no way for it to be any less than puzzling, what Mark has to say now.

"I think you and I have a different idea of what being someone's friend means," he says, half to himself, with a short, mirthless laugh, a hand resting on the back of his neck. Being here has been fairly exhausting, but that's nothing compared to the weariness he feels in this moment, looking at Mark, to whom he'd once thought himself so close, and not knowing what the hell to make of him. It was almost easier when Eduardo could outright hate him. "Maybe it's a separate matter to you, but I'm the one who was lied to, and set up, and — and stabbed in the fucking back, while you — You couldn't have said anything?" For a moment, a fraction of a second, his voice falters, sounding as pleading as he had while standing in front of Mark in the Facebook office. He doesn't expect to be met with anything but the same typical stoicism. It's not a trait in Mark that's ever really bothered him, but now, it's downright infuriating. He sighs, swallows hard, shakes his head. This is hardly how he meant to say any of this, what's becoming a recurring pattern in this conversation that still seems completely surreal, and when such high emotions are involved, he can't help feeling a little self-conscious for it. "Yeah, I definitely need that drink."

[zuckered]

Even without as much of a right to complain (a right that's always been rather hard to quantify, given that true complaints can never be limited to a time frame nor prevented from tumbling out of an earnest man's lips), Mark can't help but look upward in frustration at being caught in the volley, once again, of Eduardo's many inner voices. Some of them are most likely telling him to ditch Mark right now, because there's no way that Mark's going to come up with anything to redeem himself in the face of the months and months of deceit, lies, asshole behavior, etcetera. Some of them are probably believing in love, in loyalty. And then there's that one voice that Mark hates more than any of the others, because it's self-righteous, the one that is trying to rise above the rabble, the rabble that now includes one Mark Zuckerberg, the populace that generally fucks each other over and thinks nothing of aged notions like loyalty, chivalry. It's part of the Wardo package that Mark admittedly thinks is better to have by his side than to face against, but above many things, Mark also prizes honesty. And there's something about Eduardo putting up with Mark for the sake of principle (or, for a while, Sean as well by extension) that always feels duplicitous.

At least Mark has never tried to pass himself off as a good guy.

(God, but Mark also hates the way that the slight break in Wardo's voice gets to him. It does. Deeper than anyone probably thinks possible for a jerk like Mark, but really, the only saving grace for that image is the fact that Mark's emotions rarely surface in ways that people can read. Only one person in that deposition room seemed to catch it at all.)

"It's on me," he says tersely, shrugging off the hoodie that's a bit too warm now and draping it over his back. Because what else is he supposed to say?

[pointzerothree]

There's a moment where Eduardo lets himself hope that he might get an actual response. It is a lot to ask for, and he knows it, but despite the fact that he's done giving his former best friend the benefit of the doubt and knows how utterly tactless Mark can be, there is nevertheless a part of him that thinks that maybe Mark won't be able to ignore this, just maybe they can actually work through this instead of Mark expecting him to be able to let it go. Then the answer comes, and it's like a defeat somehow. Eduardo brings a hand to his forehead, letting out a heavy exhale, and the disappointment is as much with himself as it is with Mark. He should fucking know better, after everything, too much credit given to Mark being the very thing that got him in so much trouble in the first place (well, that, and Mark turning out to be a lying bastard, but they've been over that. The point is, Eduardo can't fully rid himself of any blame, but he should be able to, because he should have been able to trust his best friend). He should have been done a long time ago. It's his own damn fault that he isn't, not yet.

"I would be fine with that," he starts, because really, after all Mark took from him, he owes him a lot more than a beer, "except that there's no money in this place. Nothing, none at all, everything's free and people do things just because they feel like it. It's — it's completely backwards. Six months from getting an Economics degree, and I land in a place with no economy." The subject matter doesn't serve much in the way of distraction, but it's one that has bothered him since he first arrived here, and somehow, he doesn't expect Mark to be that much more thrilled with it. He heads for the doorway, towards where Mark is standing. "If you want to pretend it's on you, though, by all means, I won't stop you."

[zuckered]

All of what Eduardo has to say, in that hurt puppy tone of voice, starts sounding a little like white noise in the background. Which, to be fair, isn't entirely Eduardo's fault, although it certainly can't be said that he's providing scintillating conversation right now. The real reason why Mark can't focus on anything at the moment, from his best friend's approach to the fruit fly buzzing around the both of them in a hopeful manner, is because he's stuck on one key thing. Lack of economy. It's a phrase so terrifying that he's only ever come across it in dystopian fantasy novels and world history books, and the latter he's long since abandoned, ever since his high school growth spurt him a fair bit above Napoleon. (Life shouldn't be about physical stature, and yet first impressions, skin-deep or otherwise, always matter. This is yet another reason why Wardo makes a better economist than Mark. Mark's face isn't catered toward negotiation.)

(Also, Wardo is taller. In case that wasn't obvious.)

But it isn't any level of avarice or care for cash that has Mark's jaw dropping — metaphorically, anyway; on a practical level, it's more of a lock. It's the fact that the proper mark of any civilization is a system by which efforts are rewarded and everyone is paid their due. It's the only type of incentive that works not only in calling people to action, but also gives property its value.

"No economy," he repeats, slowly, disbelieving. "Everything is free. Public property. The private sector does not exist. People do whatever they want. There is no structure, people have grown complacent, progress has come to a screeching halt or— given the fact that I very much doubt that a fully effective schooling system can be set up without funds— perhaps has even begun to reverse itself. Assuming that cannibalizing a chicken is not enough to earn one a trip downstairs, this can't be Hell."

After a pause, he furrows his brow in confusion, looking up to meet the other man's eyes. "Wardo, this is some fucked up shit."

[pointzerothree]

"Jesus, always with the fucking chicken," Eduardo sighs, exasperated, eyes closing briefly as he tips his head back. For a moment, he thinks, that one moment, things had been alright, the two of them in agreement. Maybe it had been over something simple, something that, in Eduardo's opinion, anyone sane should have agreed to, but it had been something, and he'd been grateful for that, a reason to believe that this isn't a mistake. Of course Mark has to go and bring the chicken into it, ruin any fleeting notions of the two of them making progress that Eduardo foolishly let himself buy into. At this rate, things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get any better, but that isn't really surprising, given the state in which he left. Whatever Mark's had to say about considering them friends, about business being a separate matter, it doesn't make half as much difference to Eduardo; he can't so easily let go of the past.

The mention of the chicken only makes it worse, bringing up memories far too vivid from their fight. Eduardo wants to ask, still unconvinced that Mark isn't the one who planted the story, but for now, he's calm enough to know better. He isn't going to be the one to start anything, at least not yet. "Mark, the chicken is irrelevant, you don't think that your mentioning the chicken might not also be some fucked up shit?"

Of course he doesn't. This is Mark Zuckerberg, and while Eduardo has been known to hope for — to expect — too much from him, this is one area where he won't delude himself. Shaking his head, he begins walking again, gesturing for Mark to join him. "There is a school, actually. I mean, there are no degrees, there's no way of standardizing any kind of system when people come from all sorts of places and times and universes, but there are classes, and good, smart teachers, who teach just because they want to. And no, just for the record, I highly doubt that feeding chicken to a chicken and not knowing that you couldn't do that would get a person sent to Hell, that would be absurd." How he's supposed to break the news to Mark now that he has the chicken here, keeps it like a pet in a pen in his yard in a surprising show of domesticity on his part, he hasn't the faintest fucking idea.

[zuckered]

Several times, Mark tries to open his mouth to speak, finds that his words are cut off by Eduardo actually taking the time now to work through his frustrations. And Mark doesn't get it. There are moments, usually in retrospect, when he can see the effects of his actions and wonder at how he should have acted differently, how he could have avoided the landmines that he never seemed capable of spotting. But this is just another of a long line of triggers that Mark's pretty sure he can never fully anticipate. Even now, even after hours of sitting in that room across from Eduardo, with that annoying saggy-faced lawyer by his side, Mark isn't entirely sure what he had done to deserve Eduardo freezing his damn accounts all those years ago. He still thinks of it as a childish move. Upfront, perhaps, and that's certainly one of the key differences between Eduardo's move on the board and Mark's own, but all Mark can think is that it must have been some kind of tantrum and that this is another one of those, the many topics and behaviors that go on the X list. Someday, Mark will sit down. Try to make a pattern out of them all.

Now that he doesn't have facebook to occupy himself with.

"Okay, okay, I get it," he finally stammers, quick and terse as he stuffs his hands further into his pockets. His lips press together; they're a bit dry, and he probably needs chapstick. "Mentioning the chicken was mean. I'm sorry. I meant it as— as a joke. I thought... you'd know that."

He looks down, brows pulled together in frustration, at how strangely it hurts that he doesn't get those easy responses from Eduardo anymore. Doesn't get a smile, a laugh. Admittedly, the chicken was probably a poor choice in subject, given how upset Eduardo was about potentially smearing facebok's name, given the panic he felt about what his father would say— but part of the problem is that Mark doesn't know what else he can even make light of. It's just been too long. (Yet he still thinks of that night they were hiring facebook interns, about that soft huff of a laugh from Eduardo over the ridiculous nature of final club hazing.) "I don't like this place," he decides, quietly. "I don't like this place, and it— it doesn't make sense, and I... I can't fix things, here."

[pointzerothree]

It's the way things always seem to be with Mark. One step forward and another (or several) back, any hope for progress defeated almost immediately. The tiring part, Eduardo realizes, is less that it makes Mark so frustrating, and more that it prevents him from being able to do anything like say things are alright, try to forgive him, move on and try to rekindle the friendship they'd once had, being as they are in the absence of Facebook, even of money. The apology, surprising as it is, is hindered by the expectation that he would have understood the comment's intent, when the fact that they're even speaking at all is more than Eduardo imagines most would do in his position. They haven't moved on to joking yet, especially about something he remembers too well having mentioned the last time they spoke, before he wound up here. The chicken isn't funny, not after the way Mark reacted about it, not when Mark might very well be the one who planted that story.

"How am I supposed to know anything, when it comes to you?" he asks, the question a bit quieter, more earnest, than he'd like, though he shows no signs of it. It's easier, at least, to address that than the comment about fixing things; he can only assume that Mark means something with computers, or even giving back the shares that were diluted, because if it's true that Eduardo, in his own future, followed through on suing him, then surely he isn't referring to the two of them, on an emotional level. "Obviously I can't read you. I wouldn't have even thought that we were on joking terms, after —" He cuts himself off, having no desire to rehash what Mark did to him, not for Mark's sake, but for his own. He might have been here for months, has even told several people about what happened, but time hasn't made that level of betrayal hurt much less, and it's different here with him than with Olive or Annie. "You're not the only one who doesn't like this place."

[zuckered]

He almost walks out. Because that's how Mark does things. When he's upset, he leaves. Walks out into the open, where no one can touch him, hold him back, keep him contained, where he doesn't have to expend such efforts into trying to understand the way others think when it varies so greatly from his own calculus. Instead, he pours himself out onto the internet, which is limitless, boundless, where accountability becomes an afterthought and the flow of words is never stemmed. Even when experiencing moments of elation at having found a better way to streamline code, Mark escapes from reality, wired in and only caring about efficiency. He almost walks out right then, because Eduardo keeps on talking about not knowing Mark, in spite of the way Mark's pretty sure he's never hidden any of it, his frustration at how Eduardo's good enough with people to get punched and accepted into the Phoenix, how he landed a girlfriend who— albeit crazy— was willing to do just about anything for him, and the tipping point of it all, when Eduardo both acted the part of and treated Mark like a child, freezing an account which was tantamount to keeping facebook online. Mark knows that Eduardo doesn't think much of his ventures. Doesn't understand the beauty of code, the philosophy of open source, how it gains more credibility and respect than turning to the private sector and turning into the next Microsoft.

But Mark's never tried to hide his thoughts about it all. So why, he wonders, why is Eduardo still confused?

What stops him is the empathy, so rarely shared between the two of them, but absolutely crucial when it is. All friendships need that equal ground upon which both can stand upon. Maybe, in its own way, this is what they've needed for some time. No Sean Parker, no Phoenix Club, no facebook. Of course, given the choice between the two sets, Mark would return immediately to Palo Alto, try to make everything work for him there, but.

He knows saying that would tear Eduardo apart even more, and Sean's already been too hard on him. His eyes roving, swimming about, unable to hold on a single spot, Mark turns to the side and mutters, barely audible before he turns around and determinedly walks to the entrance and hopes nothing else will distract him and keep the two of them in that room with air even more stale than the Science Center on a muggy summer day. "I shouldn't have diluted your shares."

[pointzerothree]

"You —" Eduardo starts, not because it's something that he thinks bears repeating, but rather because, for a moment, he isn't sure he's heard right. It isn't that he doesn't think Mark can be apologetic — on rare occasions, when absolutely called for, he can, and anyway, there's no apology in there — but it's still just about the last thing he expects to hear. It's something. And, in a way, that hurts, too, simply because it's so surprising. He has every reason to be done hoping for the best from Mark, but at least he seems to mean it, the forced, uncomfortable way in which it's said making clear enough that this really an unusual thing, they aren't just pretty words trying to make the situation better. (At least, Eduardo believes that to be the case. He has to reserve final judgment, still, the damage done by Mark still too raw for him to dive into anything, to suddenly want to pick up where they left off. There's no doing that at all, not here, because there's nowhere to pick up from. In retrospect, he doesn't know how he didn't see it, the slow decline he tried to smooth over with a hefty sum of money and support even when he thought Mark's decisions weren't especially sound ones. He isn't overly proud, doesn't like to make too much of himself, but most people, he thinks, would consider what he did going above and beyond. He just considers it friendship. Not the dollar amounts, but what they meant, what they allowed. All of that was taken for granted, and he's put up with a lot in the past, but this time, he's learned.)

For a long few seconds, he's too stunned to really respond, staring at the back of Mark's hoodie as he heads for the doorway. That's when it hits him: this is the only chance he has to do something, and he won't disregard it. It's a big step for Mark, after all, and beyond that, it's a moral issue for him. Mark shut him out before. He won't do the same, means to be the bigger person, even if all careful efforts wind up being futile on his part. At least he'll know that he tried. It is, after all, the only thing he could really ask for, remorse on Mark's part. The money in itself, the percentage of shares, has never meant a damn thing to him, and Mark, he's sure, has to know that by now. It's what it stands for that makes all the difference to him. That it hurt on a business level on top of the personal was really just the icing on the fucking metaphorical cake.

"Hey, man," he calls, right around the time Mark gets through the door, pace quickening to close the distance between them. He still needs to figure out how to answer something he's so not prepared to deal with, Mark's arrival in itself surprising enough, but Mark's made his move; the next one has to be his, and he isn't letting Mark just walk away. "Wait up."