She might not have noticed it there in the shadows, without the unblinking red eye of a security summons button to draw her attention. Every public space she'd ever entered had one. As she entered this area, a ring of sunflowers unfurled sleepily and cast a flickering violet glow over the swingsets and tiltseats. The lamp nearest a climb-frame model of a caffeine molecule blinked badly; perhaps one of its circuits hadn't quite survived a Frisbee or basketball attack. Amy had no desire to climb the molecule, though, or to swing, or pretend like there was somebody on the other end of the tiltseat to make things interesting.
All the equipment seemed so much smaller than she remembered from similar nightly trips to her local parks, less exciting, less dangerous. The real danger was those sunflowers drawing attention; any botflies attached to the park would be here any minute now to investigate the sudden awakening of the playground's devices.
Amy moved outside their glow, now, to a ragged field separating the playground from the bathrooms. The interface stood in this middle ground, carved into a faux totem pole, its screen clutched between the wooden paws of a smiling bear. The screen displayed the park's logo and asked for a campsite number when she touched it, so the ping could go on her tab. But Amy didn't know the number, and she realized now that she didn't quite know what to say, either.
That's easy. Tell your mother that you let me kill her sisters. She'll understand.
Amy leaned against the pole and sank to the ground. Her elbows rested on her knees. "Mom never mentioned any sisters."
Your mother never mentioned a lot of things.
Amy kicked the air sharply, as though that could shut Granny up. Her left foot grazed the rough edge of something hollow; when her eyes focused on it, she realized it was a box of some sort. Crawling over, she slid her hands around its surface: wooden, around five feet by three, slightly damp, splintering in places but otherwise solid. It had two sets of hinges at either of the long ends, and a set of handles in the centre like an old-fashioned cellar door. She yanked them open, and in the flickering light of the last remaining lamp, she saw a sandbox with a crumbling city inside it, complete with the remnants of roads left there by the evening's last visitors.
Amy plunged her fingers into the cool sand and smiled. The last kid to play here had left behind a squat central tower with a tallish building at each compass point and a ring road connecting them. Other roads branched out from these, and they led to a smattering of smaller structures: houses, Amy guessed. Frowning, Amy sat on her haunches and tried to decide what exactly made her dislike the city so much. It was very neat and very pretty, and whoever had shaped the houses had paid great attention to making them uniform in size and placement. But the design itself made no sense; she had no clue what that big central building was supposed to be, or why it needed to be guarded by the other buildings and kept away from the homes. And if those other four buildings were places where people went to work, then they were awfully far away from the places people lived. The citizens would spend all their time on those long, rigid roads and no time at home.
With a sweep of her hand, Amy levelled the city.
"Continuing your rampage?"
Amy turned. Javier dropped out of a tree and joined her at the sandbox. He pointed at the playground. "You know, the real toys are over there."
"This is a real toy," Amy said. "I like building things."
Javier squatted beside her. "Well, right now, it looks like you're destroying stuff."
She shrugged. "I'm just making room for something better." She pointed at the fringes of the city that she'd left standing. "This was all wrong. I have to turn it inside out." She frowned. "Where's Junior?"
"Still sleeping."
"Is it OK to just leave him there?"
Javier rolled his eyes. "I don't think any bears are going to make off with him, if that's what you mean." He nodded at the sandbox. "What are you turning inside out?"
"The last kid's design. I'm going to put all the houses next to each other, with a park in the middle." She drew a circle in the centre of the box with one finger. "There. And then the houses go here," she dotted the ring around the park, speckling the sand to remind herself where the neighbourhoods would go, "and then there should be some places for people to work, so their commutes are short." She drew Ws in the sand near the homes.
Javier raised his brows. "I had no idea you had such a kink for urban planning."
Amy started building her first house. "I just wanted to make it better than it was," she said. "The old way, everyone would be on the road all the time. But this way, people get home earlier to do fun stuff."
Javier smiled. "Wow. You really can't wait to go home, can you?"