You might think working a phone repair kiosk is a waste of my skills. Yeah nah.

Today, this kid came in with an iPhone that was more than cracked, it was banana-fied.

“What happened?” I asked, turning the wreckage over in my hands. I don’t think there was a single salvageable part. “And have you considered just upgrading?”

“My novel’s on there”, the kid said, wringing his hands anxiously. “It got ran over by a hauler bot.”

“Got a backup?”. The tears in the kid’s eyes were all the answer he needed to give. “Okay, event rebasing is the only way to fix this”, I gestured at the price board, “can you afford that?”

He gulped. “Uh, just.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Can you really fix it?”. Hope flickered in his eyes.

“Let’s see, no win no fee”.

I held the smashed and bent phone-ana in my hands and turned it over, feeling its shape in space and time. With my /other sight/ I saw its lifeline leading away from where the kid had been, a shimmering trail of history leading back in time. With the fingers of my mind, I felt back along the lifeline until i felt the bump, beyond which the device had been a flat rectangle. Exploring the shape of the damage event I twisted the lifeline into a loop. Now here’s the tricky bit; if you have the knack, and you dig your nails in /just so/ you can pinch out a moment in time and detach it. I rubbed the lifeline with my mental fingers, smoothing out the join where the excised moment had been.

Blinking back to the present, I powered on the phone and handed it back to its owner. “All good?”

The kid’s fingers flew over the screen as he checked on his preciousss, and breathed a huge sigh. “All good. That’s incredible, can you fix *anything* like that?”

“Almost. Like?”

He avoided my gaze, staring down at my hands on the counter with their iridescent nails, matching the highlight colours in my hair. He made eye contract briefly, wide eyes again a bit teary. “Even…..me?”

Oh, that. “Absolutely not. *wink* Such things are not done and definitely not by me. Clear?”

*nod*

“Okay, hold still.” It’s a different technique than rebasing, especially because i like to spread the change over a few years to conceal the edit.

“All done”.

“Oh wow”, she said, reaching up to feel her shoulder length mauve hair (clearly I’d nailed that detail), then taking a twirl. “How, how much do I owe you?”

“On the house and you weren’t here. “

The tears were back. “Thank you thank you, this is the best. “

“My pleasure, have a great life”

“Thanks, you too” she said. “Bye!”

“Wait! Don’t forget your phone!”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot