april's hot shitty apartment turns out to be a room in a boarding house run by a chill lesbian couple. her room has a closet with budget-only clothes, an art workspace, some books, a diary, a toy monkey that prefers to be called an ape, and a view of the neighboring building's brick wall. leafed through her on-again-off-again diary, which also had her timesheet at the cafe folded into it. april left her hometown and family with a letter but no way to find her because they were all pretty much dogshit, deadbeat caustic dad, mom who maybe loves her but sucks, brother who sucks and could not suck but chooses to keep sucking and much younger brother who she hopes will turn out okay but doubts since her dad had control. she brought all the money in her bank account, $2912ish and i have no idea if this is supposed to be a lot or a little. it's more than i've had for longer than a month, more than i will have, but not enough for a place to live. i choose not to analyze it.

a free access terminal in april's hallway tells her that it doesn't have voice activation, only touch screen, and pitches its upgrade. she catches it in a lie when she mumbles back and it understands. it continues its pitch about upgrades, then, upon finding out that she's not the owner, tells her that the office in charge of fair use of such things has deadly arms. april decides that computing is not worth it. i scraped some leaves from a fake plant that respirates despite not being alive which april finds unnerving.

her english inner-city landlady fiona shoots the shit with her about her bff emma having terrible taste in men, drops heavy hints about how she totally ships april with another boarder/tenant charlie, probably to the chagrin of cross-room fuckboy neighbor zack who invites april to drop "raptures" and "close dance" the boarding house is in venice which may or may not be SoCal venice since it's on the border of major city "Newport"-hence, "The Border House." Fiona also mentions that she thinks there's a border shared by science and magic. fiona met her wife(?) mickey when she (f) was 19 and charlie was in her late 30s which probably hits 2024 audiences differently than it did in..(checks notes) 1999 but the game is set in 2209 so also whatever, she's clearly extremely happy with her life and the satire-fueled art student barista 18 year old thinks she's cool so she's cool.

a post-it on the shared room cork-board alerts april that fiona has found a gold ring that april suspects is her own missing ring. (it is!) it's the only thing and certainly only pretty thing her apparently deadbeat dad ever got her and says "sweet 16." the corkboard also has a picture of san francisco where she hopes she'll go somewhere and a football man who april rejects because she wants a NERD not a sweaty hulking jock - lol k 1999 game devs. television is streamed through black holes in the fabric of reality or some shit; april does not understand it and finds it disconcerting and tbh same girl. snagged a matchbook from the coffee table. fiona's wife(?) is out fixing the pipes, and she makes it Very Clear Repeatedly to april that they bang it out on the reg and that it's awesome. fiona has more fun in her life than april does and urges april to take some time to smell the flowers but april is real stressed out about a painting for her art school's exhibition

2209's newport apparently used to be industrial but was replaced with housing for students and the homeless and its culture is mostly young alternativos so, like april wants to go to san francisco, i want to go there. gen x's alternative dreams of art and slackers as a rise against the machine clearly fell through and to be a poor art barista now is very different from that lineage but i can't help but carry some of the torch in fantasy

uhh did anything else happen
idk prolly not