The wooden chair creaked, the sweet, soft sounds of a fire soothing my mind as my back ached. The old wood of the chair proved to be just the remedy I needed, and I was beginning to doze off in my seat.
Noises greeted my waking moments, and I noticed the soothing sounds of a fire were gone. I looked forward, making note of the warm tones and sleek design of the apartment I lived in. Children were bustling about, seems there was a "trip to Grandpa's" that I forgot about. My daughter greeted me with a joyous smile, reminded me that she was dropping her kids off for a few hours while running errands, and hurried out of the door. The kids were barreling throughout the house. My poor and oh-so-very old computer sat on the desk to my right, playing the familiar sounds of Half-Life 2. The kids were sitting around, staring at the ancient graphics as if they were but twelve pixels of fat Italian plumber, or a classic, monochromatic game of Pong.
"Gran'pa, gran'pa. Your house is booooring!" Shouted one of the kids at the monitor, tweaking the mouse with both a smile of amusement and a arched eyebrow of disbelief. "And your stuff is so old."
"Gather round, kids, give your old grandfather some ears to talk to." The children sat down on the couch, material molding around their bodies and positioning them for maximum support and comfort.
"I'm sure this may seem so alien to you kids, but in my day, these computer graphics were new."
The children stepped back, aghast. "No way!"
"Nuh-uh!"
"Gran'pa's lyin'!"
I shook my head, "I'm not. In our computers, we have processors that only went up to about 4 Ghz."
"No way!" repeated the child, features scruntched up in concentration. "Did graphics always look that bad, gran'dad?"
"No," I said, with some visible relief from the children, "when I was your age, they looked worse."
"Really?" All of the children leaned forward, rapt. "Like what?"
"You know how that computer's 'resolution' only has two numbers, like the 6,400 x 4000 it's set to right now?"
They replied, "Ah-huh."
"Well, them numbers stand for pixels, little colored dots."
"We know, gran'pa."
I rocked softly in my chair, "Well, they used to only go into the triple digits, like 128 x 96."
"Were the screens that small?"
"Nope," I replied, "The machines couldn't render that many pixels at once, so the pixels were bigger. An' we never dreamed of that third number ya'll kids are always goin' on about, that there z-axis."
"You didn't have 3D games, gran'pa?"
"We did," I said, "but we could'n see the third dimension, so we had to render distance."
The kids were silent, contemplating the time when men wore loinclothes, and marveled over fire. Or, at least, what it seemed to them. I still had trouble imagining when Half-Life 2 turned into how I remember E.T. the game looking compared to modern machines. Quad core was a new thing. These days, each core of their Omnicore systems was stronger than the combined value of our Quad cores. Scary days, I thought to myself, as the children booted up Crysis to marvel at how far programs had come, graphics wise, I miss the feel of a real fire. The MP3 player in my aural sensors kicked to life, and I once again heard the relaxing cackling of a fire.
Sleep came, and I welcomed the unconscious. Wondering just how confused the kids would be if I told them we, too, were waiting for Duke Nukem Forever, and that they are not alone in that.
