Miles giggles and waves. "Hi."

"And I'm Mark," says Mark.

"Totally starts with an M, I have a mind like a steel trap." She has a key to the car. She puts her stuff in the trunk and hops in the passenger seat. "How'd your adventure go, was it adventurous enough?"

"Maybe a little too adventurous, honestly, but I have my soul back and that's the important thing. I cannot overstate how much I needed my soul back," says Miles.

"Hey, you know, good for you, most people don't remember they were using those things after they drop 'em."

Bella starts driving.

"I was using mine for some really important functions, it turns out! It's really uncomfortable to suddenly lose the foundation of all your best skills. I don't recommend it at all. Of course, I guess most people aren't building all their best skills directly on top of their soul."

"Yeah I dunno how that would even work for me. 'I am a vampire, I have lost my ability to play DDR'?"

"Ooh, what's DDR?"

"Oh right you're too ray gun to know DDR it probably doesn't age super well in ray gun future land. It's a dance game, there's arrows and they fly up the screen in time to a song and you step on them at the right moment!"

"That sounds like fun!" he says. "My favourite game is definitely Plasma Rain. You have a bunch of sources of coloured fluid and a bunch of items that affect the flow and the objective is to get all the fluids streaming into the correct destination points. In three dimensions, as quickly as possible. There's a competitive two-player mode but there is no longer anyone willing to play Plasma Rain against me."

"Awww, poor you. I'm good at DDR but I'm not, like, insane-youtube-video good. But we're not allowed to let vampires into the house so I can't show you."

"Damn," laughs Miles. "A fully understandable rule, though, from what I hear."

"Yeah. Oh also don't go on our porch I dunno if Bella warned you."

"Motion-activated sunshine lights."

"- You okay?"

"...Weird, uh, thing, tell you later."

"I was not informed of the motion-activated sunshine lights," says Miles. "Thanks for the warning. I was not planning to catch fire tonight and it's so nice when things go according to plan."

"Well, I've never had reason to even tell you where the house is before."

"Yeah," he says. "And: clear."

"What? Does somebody need defibrillating."

"No," he snickers. "God, that brings back some memories."

"They still defibrillate people in ray gun future?"

"When you need somebody's heart restarted abruptly I guess there aren't that many options!"

"S'pose not!"