But now we must return to Earth, specifically to Prague's South City, where our old acquaintance Dan lived. From there, it was only a few bus stops to the gymnasium he attended, where he was experiencing his first month as an octavan. It was September 28, 2108, which was a Friday.

A few moments ago, the bell rang, and everyone subsequently began to clear out the classroom, only Dan and his friend Norbert did not. While the teacher also left the classroom, Norbert was already pulling a small, beautiful, and iridescently holographic-flashing box out of his backpack. Next to it, he immediately placed his mobile phone, which he immediately began to unfold. He released one switch, and its side rounded sashi came loose, and all that was left was the display and a thin structure composed of even thinner small squares and rectangles.

Someone had taken the trouble over time and brought Project Ara to a successful and economically successful conclusion. Manufacturers of consumer electronics thus stopped producing entire phones, but only produced modules. Everything was governed by standards, to ensure mutual compatibility, and something like the end of software support ceased to exist, many modules were plug and play with drivers inside, and the operating system became just another product, a service, and so there was great competition and there were even free versions created by the community. Like various Linux distributions for computers. Users thus gained fully customizable and sustainable phones, and companies still had something to sell. The consumer electronics market thus transformed into Lego in this respect. All the pieces fit together, and everyone could build what they wanted.

So Norbert ceremoniously opened the box, where there was literally on a small pillow and surrounded by lines of printed circuits a small processor module. He took it and inserted it in place of the old one, which thus remained lying on the desk. Then he reached deeper into the bowels of the package and fished out a cloud of egocentric and promotional stickers. He chose the rainbow one, on which C9-08U proudly stood in the middle.

He stuck it on the phone so that it would shine through the thin transparent sashi on the back, and he began to put it back together. He then handed the old C7-07 processor to Dan, who had been regularly inheriting the best from him for some time. Norbert was richer and preferred to invest in their friendship instead of trying to sell it to someone on the marketplace.

"Thanks a lot," Dan thanked him and also took his phone and performed a processor replacement on it. Unlike Norbert, however, he planned to sell his ordinary P202 to someone on the marketplace. It had enough power for basic things, games, well, the stronger the better, but the rest... it will still serve someone, it served him well, and a little extra money is always useful.

After the successful operation, both of them got up and headed out to join the others. Suddenly, however, they were surprised by an interesting sight in the hallway. A classmate from C4B was running from the right side of the long corridor, pulling a shopping cart behind him, in which another classmate from C4B was sitting, holding a camera in his hand. A moment behind them, a teacher standing on a wheeled hoverboard, completely stiff as a piece of rock, emerged on the same side and followed the cart with the cameraman at a constant speed. The trio passed right by Dan with the rest of his class and disappeared again in the hallway leading further to the left.

"The fourth-year students are really overdoing it with the preparation for the graduation video, it's only the end of September, and they have the ball in February," said Norbert Krejčí standing next to Dan, whose head was adorned with long, black-black hair reaching to his chin. Across his entire T-shirt, he had one huge photo of a cute bat hanging upside down, and under the T-shirt, he had ordinary blue jeans. Next to them, a small bag with a computer hung over his shoulder, which automatically dispensed medication to him day and night via a tube according to the data from a chest chip, so that he didn't have to restrict himself in any way.

"And what's it even supposed to be?" Dan asked uncomprehendingly, whose head, on the contrary, was adorned with a very short, almost marine-like haircut and glasses, which had ultimately remained with him since childhood. Unlike Norbert, he didn't bother with a T-shirt, he had a white one printed with some random, blatant nonsense from a store. Mainly, it served and was cheap. He then had blue and ordinary jeans, just like Norbert. As for their physique, they were both skinny, just sinews and bones. Dan also looked quite young. He was 174cm tall, which was a full 11cm more than Norbert, who, paradoxically, looked a little more mature next to him, because he already had small black hairs of a beard growing on his cheeks, while Dan was still like a child.

"Tadeáš revealed to me that it's a circus. They'll pretend that the teacher is going through depression until he wants to jump off the roof. In the end, he won't jump, but he'll end up at the circus," Norbert explained.

"Okay..." Dan remarked cautiously, who thought it was absolute nonsense.

"Well, C4A isn't messing around with it either. They'll pretend they got drunk and are picking up people along the way to the cultural center," Norbert added.

"Probably anything is better than nothing. When we don't have any idea yet, and the prom is approaching," Dan finally summed up.

"Yeah, probably," Norbert replied.

"And what about mine?" a certain Kristýna Troufalá interjected with her fuller cheeks and slightly wavy light brown hair on both sides of her head.

Norbert put on a pained face and said to Kristýna: "I've already read it, great, but how do you want to film it?"

"I wrote it deliberately directly for Honza and his car and also for Nikola and David to a T," Kristýna defended herself.

"And have they read it yet? It's nice that you made a whole movie script, but they also have to agree with it," Norbert objected to her, already on the way to lunch.

"So should I put you two in there?" Kristýna was interested, already slightly desperate.

"Well..." Dan replied, "I haven't seen it yet."

"So do you want me to send it? I need at least a few people to look at it properly and think about it. If it's not better than having nothing or having a depressed circus performer."

"Well, okay," Dan suddenly agreed. Then Norbert said to Dan: "You'll see what it's like. BUT I think it's TOO complicated for a graduation video. You'd better finish it, Kíťa, and try to sell it directly as a short story on Google Books, you can easily upload it there yourself and even earn something from it. But for a graduation video, it needs something much simpler."

"If you think so... but I don't think it would be that complicated. Well, Dan, you'll see," Kíťa wriggled.

"I'll see, well. If it's good, I'll try to suggest it again in the class group, even though they've already clearly rejected it," Dan concluded.

Kristýna disappeared slightly to the back, and Dan remained standing in a pair with Norbert in line for lunch.

Then Norbert opened a new conversation topic: "Hey, it probably makes sense to wait with buying my laptop until October 13th, when MMT releases new processors, right? So they might get cheaper."

"Well, they might."

"Well, I'll see how it turns out."

"Well, sure. If you're not in an extra hurry, of course, you can still try to hold out, right."

"And what about you? Don't you want to buy something new?"

"No, it's enough for me. My good five-year-old machine still works well for everything essential. It could be better, of course, but mainly I'm saving for a car."

"So ask for one of them for your birthday."

"Well, sure, only at our house, cars and computers aren't given for birthdays. And besides, please, Mom is raising me alone, and yeah, Dad gives her money, but it's not like when they were together."

"Okay, but then again, you'll have a car. I don't even have a car or a driver's license yet. I have..."

"Gaming laptops, yeah," Dan said.

It was their turn for lunch. They grabbed their food and went to sit at a table where two more of their classmates were already waiting. Dan's phone buzzed in his pocket while they were all sitting there, eating. It was Rodger Wilson, his father, calling.

Dan answered right there at the lunch table: "H-hello..."

"Happy birthday! I'm waiting in the parking lot. Don't let me interrupt anything, bye," Rodger said quickly.

The whole story surrounding Dan's mother, Klára Hedgehog, and Rodger Wilson was a bit strange. They had Dan together and tried to make it work, but it just didn't. There was some tension between them, though not outright hatred. Whenever they tried to be together for a while, they'd inevitably start clashing again. The whole thing had been odd from the very beginning, which is why Dan had the surname Hedgehog, after his mother, and not his father. The birth itself had happened without the father present. Only afterward did Rodger finally show up and try to be a dad to Dan, though he couldn't manage the role of husband. As his name suggested, he was a Brit living in the Czech Republic, and so when he spoke, his pronunciation was a bit off by Czech standards, and he had a slight, almost hissing quality to his speech, which made him sound a little…untrustworthy.

Immediately after lunch, Dan headed out to meet him. He was searching for Rodger's car in the school parking lot when he spotted him climbing out of a silver one. "Aren't you at work right now?" Dan asked.

"We have a flexible lunch break. And it won't be a big deal if I get back a little late," Rodger explained, standing there in his slightly faded black trousers and a wrinkled blue shirt. His face was lightly stubbled, and his light brown hair looked like it only had a few years left before it started to fall out. For a split second, Dan wondered if Rodger had actually lost his job. It had been a while since he'd seen him, and anything was possible. But probably not, he'd give him the benefit of the doubt.

Rodger immediately explained the purpose of his visit: "I don't want to be in the way tomorrah. I'll give you somethin' from meh todaey."

He bent down into the car and pulled a large cardboard package with a handle on top from the passenger seat. The contents of the package clinked with a distinct, glassy sound as he moved it.

"The cheapest 'tasting tour'. 8 countries, 8 of their leading beers. All from the comfort of your own home," he presented the gift.

"Thanks, that's interesting. Very interesting," Dan began. He definitely hadn't expected this. To keep the conversation going, he asked, "So, which countries are they from?"

Rodger's eyes lit up, and he started listing them: "Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Taured, and the Netherlands. You'll see, the one from France is supposed to be very fruity. Each one is supposed to be unique."

"Oh, uh-huh," Dan tried to keep up the conversation. Rodger then sensed that Dan probably wanted to get going, so to avoid holding him up, he said,

"Right, well, I should get going so I can get back to work as soon as possible."

"Yeah, okay, bye."

"Bye, maybe we can catch up properly sometime when there's more time." And Rodger got into his car, waved to him through the window, and drove off. Dan was left standing in the parking lot, holding a cardboard package of beers. Later, he joined the rest of his classmates at the bus stop and described the gift he'd received to Norbert. Just then, the bus arrived and began taking the students to their homes.

Just like his classmates, Dan lived in one of the many concrete apartment blocks in Jižní Město (a large housing estate in Prague), and the fact that each block had a different colored facade did little to help. They were still old concrete boxes, crammed with hundreds of people living side-by-side. A short walk from the bus stop towards home, there was even a bit of low-cut grass, where sparsely planted trees struggled to survive. But the greenery was abruptly interrupted by a long and wide parking lot, which had to be spacious enough to accommodate all the people in the nearest apartment block. After a short walk, Dan was finally in front of his building, and somewhere on the eighth floor, his apartment was waiting for him. Well, his... his mother's apartment.

As soon as he walked inside, he was greeted by his little canine friend. The tiny, playful dog, with great enthusiasm, was pawing at his trouser leg, overjoyed that his master had returned home. "Jack, calm down," Dan tried in vain to calm him down, immediately reciprocating the affection with a series of strokes. The little Jack Russell terrier, named, unsurprisingly, Jack Russell, then spun around lightning-fast, accidentally slapping Dan's leg with his nimble tail, and ran back into the living room to his bed. He hoped Dan would follow. But when Dan didn't come, he went back to the hallway and went to get Dan in his room. He stopped in front of the door, tilted his head to the right, then to the left, and finally let out a sad whimper. When Dan let him in, he already had Kristýna's script open on his monitor and was carefully studying it, with the first beer from Rodger already opened. Later, his mother arrived, and from that moment on, they began to clean the house together before tomorrow's visit.

The next day, in the late morning, the relatives actually gathered to celebrate Dan's 18th birthday together. There were two extra cars parked in front of the block today. One belonging to Robert and Tereza, and the other belonging to Tom, who had shown up again after 3 years since he last stopped by to celebrate Klára's fortieth birthday.

At lunch, everyone sat at the table in the small living room. The conversation, of course, revolved around how quickly time flies and how fast Dan had grown up. Occasionally, someone would add something interesting that had happened to them since the last meeting. So nothing unusual. It was a typical, informal family gathering.

The mood at the table was very relaxed the whole time, and Tom, who constantly contributed his best stories that he had collected during his 3-year absence, was largely responsible for it. In between conversations, Klára and Robert, of course, warned Dan not to overdo it with the alcohol, now that he was allowed to drink. As everyone was finishing their second course, old family stories began to be discussed between the last bites.