A Borrower's Anthology

Technology

The Henderson family leaves the house unattended. Michelle takes the opportunity to try the World Wide Web.

...

Philip had made the one fatal mistake that a human should have never made around their tiny tenant: he had left his laptop, open, on his table. And with it being Elizabeth's performance night, the Henderson family wouldn't be back until late--very late, usually around ten or eleven. Meaning the borrowers got to nab all of the supplies they'd been missing, even explore for a new pathway.

Meaning Michelle finally got to use his laptop again.

She'd been waiting for months now; the first time she'd ventured up to the monolithic, silver beast had been an endeavor not so fruitful. She'd only ever seen Philip navigate through white documents filled with text, blocks and blocks of it. Endless and boring, really. But she'd also seen him play video games on it, and those looked like a ton of fun. That had been what her goal in mind was until she realized using the contraption was far more difficult than it looked.

Clearly, its interface wasn't very conducive to a four-inch tall person. She could only get as far as the search engine until her process slowed down from physical exertion. By the time she'd managed to string together a sentence, Nicholas' aunt had warned her she'd heard the Henderson's car outside. That had been half-a-year ago.

As it stood, Philip didn't part much with his laptop. He took it everywhere and was working on it constantly, all hours of the day. She'd know he was up in the early morning when she heard the tap-tap-tap of his fingers against the keys. He was extremely proficient with it too, dancing around the board without needing to look down at what buttons he pressed. Because he was on it so much though, Michelle rarely had the opportunity to explore it. When he left it, it was packed away in his bag or closed on his desk. The thing was too heavy for her to open, so she never bothered with it.

Elizabeth's interest in ballet, however, had forced him to leave his laptop behind. Very rarely did he stay home on those days. Ever since she'd seen the date of the performance marked on the calendar, Michelle had been mulling over possible ways to use the machine. Stepping on the keys with her feet was troublesome when the gaps between certain letters were too wide to hop across, and then there was the touchpad.

This was why--as she reached the desk and grabbed one of the pencils from the metal holder--she came prepared to strap the writing aid to her body and use that for an extra limb with better reach. Secured tightly with a circle of tape on her waist, first Michelle waddled her way over to the silver strip of a button. She'd seen Philip press it countless times, and like magic, she watched as the screen faded from black to a glowing white. Michelle stepped backed until she reached the touchpad and space bar then nodded, pleased with her handiwork.

On the white canvas of a screen, there was a tiny dinosaur in front of her. It didn't move, it didn't speak, and it most certainly didn't look like fresh paint of any kind she'd encountered before. It was black and blocky and had two dots for arms, so tiny they almost melded with the body. She hadn't recalled ever seeing it before-it had always been a white screen with a blinking line and a letters whenever Philip worked.

It did have words though she could read: No internet connection. The phrase sounded familiar, something she heard Darius yelling across the hall. Whatever it was seemed to power-up their electronic devices. Other than that and the name 'wi-fi', she'd never heard of any other term, and neither of the two had ever been explained to her.

Her foot stepped back, brushing against the touch pad, watching the white arrow move by her will and jitter against the screen. She stepped harder on the button meant to select things, but nothing happened. With the soft end of the pencil, she pushed it against the space bar.