WHO: Tate Langdon and the Hauptman household WHEN: After this, Tuesday WHERE: The Hauptman's house WHAT: Tate needs to use a computer. Now. RATING: TBC STATUS: In progress
Tate needed to find out whether he was real or not. He felt real. Sometimes he did, anyway.
He wasn't completely sure why it was so important. He didn't want people knowing everything about his past, true, but that wasn't why he didn't want to be fictional. More than anything, he needed to know that he was valid - that his love for Violet was valid and real and true, not just some fucked up reality-tv horror show.
Spiderman had said it wasn't always a good idea to look yourself up on the internet, but Tate needed to know. What if Violet did show up? What would he tell her?
Google. He needed Google. He'd searched for things on Google when Violet had taught him how to use the internet and Youtube. You just typed in whatever you wanted to search for and Google found it for you - usually hundreds of thousands of answers. This time, however, he was hoping it wouldn't find any search results. This time he would be very happy not to find anything at all when he typed in the words "Tate Langdon".
Tate didn't have a computer. He had watched other people to work out how to communicate on the mobile phone device, after returning from LA without Violet, but he couldn't quite work out how to get to the internet on it. He was sure it was possible, but he didn't know what button to push or what picture meant what. He needed a laptop, like the one Violet had owned. He knew how to use that. They'd spent hours surfing the internet together on that machine. If Tate could just find a laptop like that, he'd know how to get to Google.
Tate scouted around a couple of houses, unsuccessfully, finding first a new, shiny looking computer that he didn't know how to work then a laptop with a complicated password, before he finally found what he'd been looking for. The laptop was lying on a bed, plugged in and dormant. When he pressed the little power button, it whirred into life, welcome him in without having to input any password or code.
Settling himself, crosslegged, on the bed, Tate began to tap away on the keyboard, first locating Google, then searching his own name, Violet's, Ben's, his mother's, his old high school's then even "The Murder House". There was nothing - nothing directly relating to him or his past. Each search returned a few results, but not the ones Tate feared would be there.