Posted on January 1, 1  •  2 minutes  • 322 words

I was at school on what felt like an extended lunch break. I was hanging out with some friends who I did not recognise: some short nerdy kid named Fred and a taller guy whose name I never got, I will call him Dred. We were talking about how it’s going to be new years soon and we decided to watch the time change to 2026 on our phones. When the time changed over we said happy new year to each other. Then I mentioned how this is the first year in a while where I wasn’t watching the time on my statusbar on my desktop computer. Fred said, hey you could’ve looked at it over remote desktop. so I checked the time of my computer by remoting in and Fred noticed that I use Polybar. he pushed his glasses back and said “you’re one of them Linux users? that explains why you’re so pretty”. Dred said, “Fred loves Linux because he’s such a fucking nerd”, also he mentioned how he doesn’t use Linux because he’s not a fan of tinkering with his shit. Fred said, “yeah, if you’re a Linux user who doesnt like tinkering then you’re not even a black pot in a sea of kettles, you’re just a black pot” - there aren’t even kettles around, silver or black. We got up and went to the lockers and Fred pulled out his lunchbox, he called it a 5-10 because it was 5x10 cm at the base. “dx/dy 5/10, see it’s perfect. I even have error bars”, he said as he showed us the diagram on the side of the lunchbox which looked like it was pulled straight from a CAD program. I don’t remember what happened after that, I think we went home. also it was bright outside, looked like afternoon by the colour of the sunlight, so no clue how we watched the time tick over to 2026.