He's silent for a few seconds. Considering the vast changes in world and in social structure that Eduardo's hinting at, how different a post-apocalyptic world must be in comparison to the booming one that the two of them live in. It's the sort of thing that you'd see in a film, read in books, but Mark can't help thinking that big changes and disasters like that don't happen in the real world. It's what enables people to move on, to pretend like nothing's wrong, it's what makes it hard to justify getting worked up over personal troubles, because in the end, life moves on. As much as Mark's personal life has changed with the departure of his best friend, facebook hasn't been affected, the progress of technology has only advanced, and maybe it's that forward motion that makes it so hard to slow down, inertia only pushing him ahead, and making it nearly impossible to dig his heels into the dirt and mend broken bridges. The disconnect between this story that Eduardo's telling, of a place where city names are actually used for individuals, sounds so bizarre and distant that even more than before, this doesn't feel entirely real.

Maybe Eduardo's just a memory, right now. Mark blinks, his eyes pressing tightly shut, at the very thought of it. The mind's an amazing thing, more capacity for growth and learning than any computer. Who knows?

Without opening his eyes again yet (he's using the sound of Eduardo's steps to guide him in the right direction), Mark shakes his head, his curls quivering in the air. "Doesn't this all sound like an acid trip to you? I mean, how— how do we actually know that any of this is... real, that people aren't just pulling some crazy stunt on us, that either of us hasn't just gone insane or is suffering from some unprecedented level of hallucination?" he asks, still shaking his head.