Eliza had pulled herself out of her sleeping bag and was rummaging around in a duffel, looking for her repair kit. I swear, if that bag full of metal and plastic had been a person I would have some serious jealousy issues. As it was, my wife spent more time than I’d like on keeping the thing maintained. It was like each of those tools were her children. She pulled a complex looking screwdriver from the kit and set about her task, carefully removing the four screws that appeared to secure the tablet’s shell. After setting the screws onto a magnetic strip, Eliza wedged a plastic spudger in the seam of the device to break it open and hissed suddenly.
“Fuck!” She stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked.
“Cut yourself?” I looked over, concerned. Eliza removed her thumb and shook it, prodding at the wound gently.
“Yeah, weird.” I saw blood ooze from underneath the skin, the fluid a perfect orb against her flesh. She ignored the cut, feeling around the edge of the tablet for the sharp edge to avoid making the same mistake. “I can’t find the spot where I sliced myself though. The whole thing is smooth.”
“Huh. Well, better leave it alone for tonight, sweetie.” I was definitely interested in checking the tablet out further but I was having trouble keeping my eyes open.
“Hm.” Wordlessly Eliza replaced the screws on the tablet and set it on top of her bag. She turned to embrace me and we slept.
The next morning, nothing about the strange device had changed. Eliza spent a few minutes longer tinkering with it but resolved to relinquish the device as soon as my father came to collect it. No doubt Dad had spent the night worrying that the palm-sized tablet was going to somehow going to leap up and strangle us in the dark. As expected, I heard a rustling outside our tent door as soon as light crested the horizon.
“Dad.” I whisked the door to the tent aside. “It’s five a.m. I realize that you’re an early riser, but the rest of the world likes to sleep in once in a while.” He was, predictably, already dressed and groomed. It looked like he had bathed, too. I had to wonder if it was in the stream about half a klick away. We had rudimentary showers, but ever since Dad got locked out here by Gabriel he had developed a fondness for eschewing modern convenience. Some getting back to your roots thing. I usually just rolled my eyes about it. He stuck out his hand.
“I need the tablet, honey.” He stuck his hand out in an early morning approximation of politeness. “There’s something I want to take a look at.”
“Good morning Fiona, how did you sleep? Oh, I slept fine Dad, thanks so much for asking!” I mocked and rubbed my eyes. I was a shelter born kid, and no amount of adjustment would make me understand my elderly father’s preternatural ability to wake up this quickly.
“Is he here already?” Eliza’s voice floated out to us from inside the tent.
“Yup.” I heard a rustling as she groped in the dim of the dawn for the tablet and felt it brush my fingers a few times before she handed it to me correctly.
“Go ‘way Jacob. The sane people are still sleeping.” I heard a thud as she flopped back to the sleeping mat. It didn’t take much imagination to know that she was already wrapped back up in the covers.
“Did it do anything last night?” Ever the protector, Dad’s eyes shone with aloof calm. If it weren’t for the persistent drumming of his fingers on his thigh, one might mistake his anxiety for eagerness. It was a habit he picked up from Grandma. She died when I was pretty young, but it made me smile to know that a part of her lived on in her son.
“Not a thing. Be careful if you’re messing with it, though. Eliza managed to slice her thumb on it last night. She’s perfectly fine, but something on that tablet is sharp.” Dad’s fingers beckoned, impatience warring with his instinct to be polite. “Are you going to talk to Marcus today?” Since Dad was forced to kill a man when Gabriel had taken over his body there was a vacuum of power within the population. An election had been called and my son was named among the top candidates to lead the shelter.
“Yeah.” He took the tablet from me and stuffed it into the pocket of his pants.
“You feel all right about it?”
“No.” I could understand why this was a less than happy occasion for my father. Marcus had a good head on his shoulders. He was smart as anything, compassionate, and determined. During our time in the virtual world he had positioned himself as one of the foremost political and civil minds available. He would make a great shelter leader…in another five or ten years. My son’s fatal flaw was his temper. More than once as a teenager his mother and I had to punish him for getting into brawls at school, in the mess hall, on the recreation fields…thankfully he hated being punished more than he liked fighting to the conflicts eventually stopped. He still had a tendency to get hotheaded when provoked. I loved my boy with all of my heart but exploding with anger wasn’t a great characteristic in a leader. Dad had been more then cooperative with Alexander Fang, the man who had taken over since we left the shelter, but the responsibility to approach the candidates fell to him.
“He’ll get over it.”
“I know he will, I just…” he trailed off. “I don’t want to fuck things up worse for the boy.” Since our reunification
