The moment after Ander finished vomiting into a potted Chusan Fan Palm, he felt much, much better; his head, having suffered three hours of dizziness, near incoherence, patches of memory loss, was clearer and ready to process information again. He even recognized the fact he may have poisoned the tree with his voluminous regurgitated material, spiked â most likely â by those skanks he had met at Zha-Zha. His face continued to point down at the mess in case of an after-event, arms following the rim of the substantial terracotta bowl in an awkward hug, legs out straight on the sidewalk of wherever he was. His logic when he had leapt off the bus that was taking him to who-knew-where and then targeting his expelled stomach contents into a planter was that it would be less barbaric, more contained, than simply spewing all over the inside of a public carriage or the street â after all, it had roughly the same shape as a toilet bowl. It was a reflex he learned at university.
Relaxing a bit, and taking into context his new found surroundings, Ander thought to himself that in his earlier incarnation as a full-blown dick-head â a status he had unilaterally downgraded since he took that God-forsaken temporary job to cover bills and rent in an act of humility â he might have, in such circumstances, messaged Fauster with their cliquey initialism, RBPC â or, Rather Be Playing Console.
Back in 2005, the two friends had pre-ordered the latest generation of interactive graphical power as special edition packages costing in excess of six-hundred dollars each. But Ander, being at the time embroiled in exams and general ambition, had put it in a cupboard to gather dust for nearly seven years. Then the mistake-that-should-never-be-spoken-of occurred, he fell into his nine-month regret-gestation period, and during it he committed to exceed Fauster's gamer hall of achievements. It was one of Ander's few successes of that period.
Now he really did wish he were comfortable and warm and in front of a high definition screen. A short time after their Caribbean sojourn, when Ander was getting into a wizards and trolls game, they had developed RBPC as code for ironic dissatisfaction during what should have been remarkable occasions. Like Fauster's great-grandmother's one-hundred-and-tenth birthday party; or when Fauster's girlfriend had dragged him to Alaska and across ice fields for four days because it had been her childhood dream; or when Ander had ascended one of the Sierra Nevada's most famous peaks, and at the top, somehow got reception.