Madelyn's Nephew by Ike Hamill Page A

the system. Those rations were depleted.
    She hovered over the option to query the ether. In the distant past, she had made a resolution—she would never pull anything down into her system. There were viruses out there. Electronic pathogens could take over her entertainment system and render it useless.  
    “What do I care?” she asked herself. She never used the thing anymore. It was spent.
    She hit the button.
    The list populated slowly at first. Once it gained steam, it exploded. People—the few who were left—had been busy. Madelyn put a sort on the list so the system would predict which of the movies she would like the most.
    A title bubbled to the top—“Cause for Desperation.”
    She clicked.
    The movie began to stream from the ether into her screen. The notion was unsettling. Invisible hands were reaching out from the world and meddling in her business.
    The screen went blank.
    It opened to a beautiful field, filled with wildflowers.
    The camera narrowed its focus to a single purple and yellow blossom. Everything else became blurry and then faded to black, until only the flower and its stem were visible. The music swelled and then turned menacing. The flower transformed into the shape of a child, huddled down in the dark. When the clicking started, the girl raised her eyes and looked every direction.  
    On the screen, the girl ran.
    Madelyn pulled her legs up and gathered her knees to her chest. She had never seen a movie like this before. All the movies on her system showed happiness and young love.  
    The girl pressed herself against a brick wall. The camera swung around and Madelyn saw the long alley. There was nowhere to hide. The clicking rose in volume and sped up. Suddenly, Madelyn saw the world through the girl’s eyes. The camera swung around and shook as the girl ran. She dodged around a dumpster and under the metal ladder of a fire escape.
    The clicking became a buzz. The buzz became a low tone. The tone broke into harmonics that seemed to play a rudimentary song. Madelyn wanted to close her eyes. The girl was just seconds away from death and Madelyn didn’t want to watch it happen.
    A door slammed open and bright light spilled out into the alley. The girl ran for the light.
    “No!” Madelyn yelled at the screen. Going towards the light was the perfectly wrong thing to do. If the girl got lucky, the light would distract the Roamers and she could sneak away. Instead, the girl was converging on the exact spot where they would go.
    The camera pulled back and the girl kept running. Madelyn’s heart thumped in her chest as she watched with fascinated horror. Just as the girl ducked in through the doorway, two adults popped out. It was a man and a woman. They each held black boxes.
    At the same time, the man and woman opened their boxes. Green light flooded out from each box. The edges of the light flowed like mist, curling and rising from the heat. The clicking tune of the Roamers climbed until it sounded like a scream. The sound was deafening. Then, at precisely the same time, the man and woman slammed shut their boxes, cutting off the sound of the Roamers.
    The couple looked at each other and nodded in satisfaction.  
    The little girl appeared in the doorway.
    “Can we make dinner now? I’m hungry,” the girl said.  
    The mother laughed.
    Madelyn watched the rest of the movie without moving a muscle. She was transfixed as the family worked their way through the city, clearing out all the danger and leaving behind peace. At the end, with the city safe, the family retired to the countryside and their beautiful field of wildflowers.
    When the screen went blank again, Madelyn reached up and wiped away her snot and tears.  
    Her heart felt too big to fit inside her ribcage.  
    She made her way upstairs and opened the front door.
    The rain had cleared. The day was bright and beautiful. The breeze from the forest was rich and clean.
    Madelyn smiled. She was full of energy and knew exactly what