Socializing. It had never been something that he had excelled at. Desmond had always been that quiet person in the crowd, the one who looked beautiful, but sad at the same time, and ultimately unapproachable. It was something that he used to his advantage to have people NOT talk to him. If he didn't want to stand out, then he would simply hide out of sight, and then he would have even more privacy to himself. Even now a part of him was wondering if he was taking the right approach with all of this... certainly there was something he could do instead, maybe stalk someone, or talk to someone who would tell him about all of the wonders of this new world.
But that wouldn't help him with the linguistic nature of it. And he knew it. He'd been forced to blend in before, but that was only when he'd lost track of an age or two, only losing a decade here or there. Talking about a new technology. Now technology had blossomed in the short time he'd been asleep. It was something of a fraction of his life, the smallest noticeable thing, but so much had happened. Horses were now no longer a site out on the roads. Instead horseless carriages took people to and fro where they wanted to go.
But they were so noisy! And smelled awful. Yet the people didn't seem to notice. Desmond had never imagined that he would have welcomed so much the old smells of horse manuer in the streets, but at least that didn't smell toxic like the air these people seemed to breathe in on a regular basis. If he weren't a Dhampir, he might have seriously been concerned for his health.
And then there was their odd obsession with their little strange... gadgetry. Everywhere he went, the people tended to have their heads bowed down over some inanimate object, staring into it. Sometimes the murals on their were complex as the big ones, sometimes they seemed dumbed down, like little black and white sketches of the same thing. Some even had little pads on them with letters that he assumed were for communicating with them, but everywhere he went, there was someone who had them, and they worshipped them as if they were gods.
Perhaps though, considering the type of gods that man had used to worship, this was something of an improvement, he'd realized. Though it seemed an alarming trend, and made him wonder if there wasn't some sort of symbiosis between humans and these objects, as if they were a means of control by some sort of higher power, a way of distracting men from thinking about things, or perhaps keeping them thinking about only the things that they wanted them to think about.
Still, the only way to truly know would be to observe, and the most comfortable place to observe was near people like you. Which lead him to the community room. It seemed somewhat self explanatory anyway. If one was out, looking for influence from the community, where better to go than a community room. Desmond had a bit of hesitation before stepping into it though. His particular "house" was one that also was host to vampires. It seemed like a generally bad idea to pair up a species that hated the other and vice versa together, but perhaps times had changed in that regard as well.
Somehow though, he doubted it.
As he stepped in he noted a man on the couch, and Desmond nodded his head in quiet greeting. He didn't appear to be a vampire, or even a dhampir, which left a mystery as to what he was, exactly. Still, pale blue eyes found their way towards the laptop that he had, which caused his brow to raise ever so slightly. He had one of the devices too, which gave him an opening to talk about it.
"Hello, I'm Desmond. Nice to meet you." he said, rather formally, then paused, looking at the thing. "This is going to seem a little odd but... what... is... that... exactly?" he asked as he gestured to the electronic device.