Coming to the v-cast was getting easier, but the wine was going down easier along with it. Wine was cheaper than it used to be because a lot of Canada had the right climate for grapes in the last ten years or so. Not Newfoundland right yet, but most of the mainland.  

The v-cast was getting more popular too. Park told me the number of views the other episodes had, but I can’t remember. I’m thinking he said hundreds of thousands, but that can’t be right can it? I was going to read the comments and reviews, but Park told me I shouldn’t. 

“Are they that bad?” I asked. 

“They’re horrible,” he said. 

“What are they saying?” 

“Just the usual over-the-top compliments and phony garbage. It’s pointless to read them.” 

“Compliments? I thought you meant they were saying bad things.” 

“Bad? Nah, it’s not worth it to write bad things. If your comments get flagged three times your account is suspended. And it doesn’t take much. Last week a lady commented that she loved our show and thought it was hilarious, but she just wished it was a little longer. It got flagged in five minutes.”

“What happened then?” 

“She apologized.” 

 “Well, good for her.” 

“I think you’re missing the point, Pop.” 

“I think you are, young fella.” 

“That’s not a comeback.” 

“You’re not a comeback.” 

“That doesn’t make sense. Anyway, let's start off strong today. I have some questions that I think the audience is going to enjoy.”

“About what?” 

“I’m not going to tell you now,” he said, as he was putting the headset on. “That would ruin the fun.” 

“I was worried for a second,” I said, picking up my headset, “but I knows you’re not like your father, so I’m sure it won’t be that bad.”

---------------------------

“So I think you need to tell the audience the good news,” Park said when we were on stage. 

“Good news?” I said. “They already knows I’m trying to get the money for the vaccine.” 

“No, the other good news?” 

“Well…I haven’t sold the house…I don’t have enough money yet, so I don’t have a sweet clue what you’re talking about, young fella.” 

“Your new girlfriend!” 

The audience wooed. 

I started to blush, but only in reality, not in virtual reality. Or so I thought. 

“Awww, he’s blushing!” someone from the audience shouted. 

“He is!” Park said, laughing.

“How can you tell that?” I said. 

“Your headset reflects it on your avatar,” Park said. “But you can change that in the settings.” 

“How?” 

“You’ll just have to figure it out, ol’ timer.” 

Everyone got a kick out of that. It was obvious that there were a lot more avatars in the crowd than ever before. So many that I was glad there was a bright light shining in my face. Was it hundreds of avatars out there? Nope, didn’t want to know. 

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I said. 

“Well, okay, your ‘lady friend’,” he said, doing air quotes. 

“She’s just a friend that I goes for a coffee with once in a while. I don’t know why you’d think she was my girlfriend.” 

“Because you were hugging!” a voice shouted from the crowd, and everyone wooed and laughed and honked and meowed. I didn’t laugh, because as far as I knew, no one else had been on the beach that day. Especially no one from this audience. Or maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe they were lying. 

“Who said that?” I said to the audience that I couldn’t and didn’t want to see. I didn’t turn red because I just did, and that’s one good thing I figured out about blushing a long time ago, it’s hard for it to happen twice in a row, so you’re home free for a few hours if you turn red hard enough the first time. 

 “I don’t either,” Park said, “but maybe there’s avatars in this audience that know us. And maybe they saw something? You went for a drive a few weeks ago, did you not, sir?” 

“What, are you questioning me like a cop now?”

“Yes, you’re being charged with first-degree tender holding. Seriously though, where did you guys go?” 

“Nowhere far. We went to see a lighthouse. That’s it.” 

“So would you call that a date or a walk? Or both?” 

“Just a walk.” 

“Is she a nice lady? Is it true she used to be Dad’s teacher?” 

“Yes, she taught your father in grade 6 I think.” 

“Did he like her?” 

“I think he thought she was strict. I can see that. But your father was such a hard case in school I daresay he would have called any teacher strict that didn’t let him get his own way.” 

 “I’ve heard a few stories.” 

“Teachers changed in your father’s generation. It wasn’t normal to be strict anymore, whereas in my time you couldn’t say boo.”

“You couldn’t frighten people?” 

“No, I mean you couldn’t say anything without raising your hand first.”

“What does that have to do with boo?” 

“It’s just a saying. You couldn’t just have a chat with the student next to you while the teacher was talking. Or listen to podcasts. Or watch movies. Or do your work from home. Or not go to school at all. We used to have tests too, that you had to spend a week or longer studying.” 

 “What do you mean, we have tests every week that we have to pass in.” 

“That’s not a test, that’s an assignment.”

“Same thing.” 

“How is it the same thing? There’s no time limit.” 

“There is a time limit. I only had two weeks to do my last biology assignment. Man, I was stressed. But didn’t you quit school anyway?”

“No, I didn’t quit. I just didn’t get enough credits to graduate. I don’t know, maybe your way is better. It’s just a lot different is all I knows.” 

“’Knows,’” he said laughing, and turned to the crowd. “Hear the way he pluralizes words? Twentieth century education at its finest ladies and gentlemen.”

“I grew up in a different time than you, young fella.” 

“That you did. So what’s the lucky lady’s name? I mean, I know, but why not tell our audience?” 

“Her name is Delilah, and she’s not my lucky lady.” 

“Well, we all know she isn’t lucky if she’s dating you,” Park said, and everyone laughed. I laughed too, but I felt a feeling I had not felt in a long time. Thank God the wine numbed it. I would put a name on it if I could remember what it’s called.

“Did you go for coffee a few times too?” Park asked. 

“We did once or twice, yes.” 

“I didn’t even know you liked coffee. Or did you have a tea? You must have had tea.” 

“I tried coffee for the first time in years.” 

“And?” 

“Still tastes like dirt a bit. The cream and sugar made it a lot better. I’m a tea man. Like the old-school Newfoundlanders. Your great-grandfather certainly never drank no coffee. I got my doubts if he knew what it was.”

“Isn’t it weird that my great-grandkids might know me just as well as I know you? Or even my great great grandkids. That’s so crazy isn’t it? What kind of relationship will we have? I wonder how many generations it takes of direct descendants before you stop feeling close to them? I mean, could a person be close to their great great great great grandkids? Or would they just feel like distant cousins? Do you think me and your relationship will change when you get the shot?”

“If I gets it. No. Why would it change?” 

“Well, I wont be looking at an old man anymore. That will have to change something in my brain. Some kind of ancient wiring.” 

“I don’t think it will change anything.” 

“So is your lady-friend planning on getting the vaccine?” 

“I got my doubts if she’ll be able to afford it. She’s living on a teacher's pension and her husband died. I mean she done alright, but I daresay she haven’t got millions of dollars kicking around.”

“So…how does that work?” 

“I gets the vaccine and she don’t.”

“No, I mean, well, lets just say this got more serious, and you two started spending a lot of time together. You’re obviously going to outlive her. How do you handle that?” 

“We’re not that serious, so I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“So when you become young again are you going after the older women or the young women that look your age?”

“Well, I can’t very well be after the young girls in their forties. Seeing as I’m old enough to be their father.” 

The audience roared at that. I always seem to make people laugh the hardest when I’m not trying. 

“Forties? I was talking about women in their twenties, not forties. Why would a guy who looks like he’s twenty-five be after women that are in their forties?” 

“Well, I’m no pervert,” I said, and everyone got a real kick out of that too, but some of the female avatars whistled like they were going along with me, like they agreed. 

“Pop! Forty years old is a middle-aged woman. You won't be a pervert for dating a forty-year-old woman. I imagine if you look as young as the vaccine is supposed to make you look then most people probably wouldn’t have a problem with you dating a woman in her twenties, let alone forties. I don’t think people would call you a pervert for dating a girl that was biologically the same as you. They wouldn’t know the difference if they saw you together anyway.” 

“I would!” someone shouted from the crowd and then clucked. 

“How would you though?” Park asked the audience member, shielding his “eyes” from the bright stage lights. 

“I just would,” the person said and clucked again. 

“That’s not an answer,” Park said, and the chicken got up and left. I don’t mean they were afraid, I mean it was literally a chicken. Well, it was a person in the real world, but its avatar was a chicken. Or maybe it did identify as a chicken in the real world too? So I guess it was a real chicken. I don’t know, I’m just an old fart who don’t understand all this stuff, so forgive my ignorance.  

“Actually, you know what?” I said when the chicken lady left the building. “I take that back. Some people are an old soul, as they say.” 

“I agree.” 

“Like you.”

“Like me?” Park said. 

“Yes, like you. You knows too much.” 

“You mean I’m a smartass?” 

“You’re that too, but that’s not what I means. I mean you had more common sense when you was ten than some people have when they’re sixty. And I don’t know where it came from. It didn’t come from your mother, and it certainly didn’t come from your father. Is your mother watching this?” 

“If not now, she will be later.” 

“I don’t mean to be rude to your mother. You didn’t get your wisdom from me either, so I got no room to talk.”

“Too late to backpaddle,” Park said, grinning. The crowd chuckled. 

“How old are you now?” someone from the crowd shouted at Park. 

When he answered they were shocked. He had a deep voice too, which helped. That and the fact that he started puberty when he was ten. His mother thought there was something wrong, but apparently that’s a normal age these days for boys to start puberty. God only knows what kids are putting in their blood with all that fake meat they're putting in their guts. I won’t even get into his allergies. Half the reason the price of fresh fish went down so much is that most of the kids from Park’s generation can’t eat it anyway. Imagine, fish is poison now. Poison! Moose meat or nothing for me, I says. Other than a scattered slice of Low-Cust Baloney.

“So does Dad have a problem with you being in a new relationship? Sorry, friendship?” 

“I got my doubts. Your father is pretty carefree.”

“Did he say anything?” 

“Nothing other than poking fun like he always do. That’s one thing you and your father got in common.” 

“How do you think he’ll feel when you take the vaccination and you’re bringing around spry young forty-somethings? Or dare I say even younger?” 

“I don’t have a clue. I’d say he’ll be best kind with it. I can’t see why he wouldn’t.”

“Here’s the thing that I wonder. Okay, first how long does the process take? I mean, when you take the vaccine, how long is it for you to actually look like a biological twenty-five-year-old?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Seriously, Pop? You don’t know? You haven’t researched it?” 

“Nope.” 

Everyone thought this was hilarious too. 

Park looked out into the crowd. “Has anyone here researched it?”

“About a month for the cells to completely regenerate,” someone with a familiar voice said. “It lasts for about a year, and then you start aging again. From what I’ve read.”

“Okay,” Park said, “so here’s what I wonder. Dad can probably remember you looking as young as thirty?”

“Probably.” 

“So when you start looking young again, will it make him feel young again too? And will he even start acting young again when he’s around you? I wonder is there a word for that?” 

“Regression!” someone shouted from the audience. 

“Yeah,” Park said, “regression. Maybe he’ll start acting like a teenager again. Maybe it will screw with his brain a bit. You know?” 

I didn’t get it. “I’ll still be me.” 

“But you won't though, will you? You’ll be a different version of you.” Then he turned to the audience. “What do you think, Dad?” 

“He’s here?” I asked. Melvin. Now it made sense. He was the one who made the hugging comment, about when Delilah and I were on the beach. I figured. 

“Yes he is,” Park said. “So, Dad, what do you think? …Dad?”

No response. He put his hand over his eyes to shield the light. “Dad? My father is supposed to be amongst you somewhere. Dad! You out there?” 

Not a peep. 

I said, “Either he’s here and he’s too crowd-shy to speak, or he didn’t show up.” 

“Well this is embarrassing,” Park said. “The biggest turn-out yet, and half of the show is screwed up. I’m sorry everybody. I should have known better anyway. Dad’s generation don’t have the attention span to sit through something like this anyway. Was Tiktok the name of that app that turned people into zombies back then?”

“Turned people into zombies? I don’t remember that.” 

“The lost generation,” Park said, grinning, but inside I knew he was hurt that his Dad wasn’t there. But the thing I wondered, was that if Melvin wasn’t there, who made the comment about Delilah and myself hugging on the beach?