Weaver shook his head and walked out. What a day.

“You could have given me more warning,” Mimi said acerbically to, apparently, nothing. “It’s not like we didn’t know it was going to happen. Yes, but you’re not the one that has to convince Aunt Vera. Sure, but you know that she’s going to maulk a brick.”

Mimi Jones was fourteen, short for her age, slight of figure, with long brown hair. She currently lived with her aunt and uncle, her mother having died in the Chen Event, and was in the eighth grade gifted program at Dr. Phillips Middle School in Orlando, Florida. She was actually in two separate programs. Fortunately for Mimi, Dr. Phillips Middle School, which catered primarily to families that were upper middle-class in income, had a very open-minded approach to their gifted program. For most of the children in the gifted program there was a set schedule of classes with some electives and independent study. In Mimi’s case, she was entirely in independent study. In fact, Mimi would have been, in earlier times, ready to graduate. From college.

You see, Mimi had a friend. And the friend was very smart. Smart enough and capable enough to take the child on adventures of the mind far beyond those of the classroom.

When Mimi was six she had lived on Mendel Terrace, Orlando, in a small two-bedroom apartment with her mother, Loretta Jones. Mendel Terrace was less than a half a mile from the center of the Event that destroyed the University of Central Florida and, on that particular morning, Mimi had been watching cartoons when everything suddenly went black.

Mimi’s recollection of the subsequent period had been investigated several times. All that she could remember was being in a black space, then there was “someone,” or more likely something, who was there, for some value of “there.” The person, thing, entity or whatever, comforted her.