Tera was wielding what she liked to refer as the "magic wand." Far from magic, an ordinary tv remote, not even with a lot of the fancy extras that come with fancy televisions and other gizmos, the wand did allow her to control the huge set she had inherited from her parents when they'd died, one of the few appliances she had kept. She sat curled up in the other big piece of furniture, the overstuffed couch that was so comfortable, she occassionally considered moved a fridge next to it and setting up camp for weeks. So far she had resisted that temptation, and she usually resisted the temptation to spend hours half-awake with the vast screen providing mild entertainment and minor outrages.

But it was 6:07 p.m., and that meant the news hour. Wand raised, held in place on her knee, her thumb flicked skillfully through the many evening news programs she watched, flipping from channel to channel, trying to avoid the most inane moments and catch anything that was either news or meaningful. She saw the hour she spent chasing madly through the channels as a game, a challenge: recognize in only a few seconds that one item was fluff, switch to another channel just as they began a piece on the economy, or what the police were doing, or perhaps the spread of a new flu. Click click, up to channel 7, the local CBS station, but they were at some strange pet show (ferrets in costumes, from what she could tell), so another click-click-click, skipping channel 8