Owl’s mouth went tight. ‘What kind of something?’
‘I don’t know.’ Jane put the work gloves back on and pulled out the purple stuff. It was banged up and crushed flat, but still in one piece. She held it up toward the camera.
‘Hmm,’ Owl said. ‘That looks like some kind of mushroom. Or something similar to a mushroom, at least.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s like a plant. A plant is a . . . a living thing that isn’t an animal.’
Jane had thought maybe the purple stuff was alive, but knowing it for sure felt weird. She held the mushroom a little further away from herself. ‘Is it bad?’
‘I don’t know. We should check it out. Bring it to the bathroom.’
‘Why?’
‘There’s a tool in there I can use. At least, I think it’s in there. It should be in there.’
Jane walked to the bathroom. Owl bounced along the walls beside her. Jane had to help Owl push the bathroom door open because something in the mechanism that pulled the door in and out of the wall was junk. The lights flickered, eventually staying on. Jane saw the dry shower. She scratched behind her ear. She scratched and scratched and scratched. Gross.
The girl in the mirror did not look like the girl she was used to seeing. This girl had a red gross face, and gross hands, and gross clothes. Dirt all over. She looked like someone new. She wondered if Jane 64 would recognise her. Would have recognised her.
‘What am I looking for?’ she asked Owl, wanting to think about something else.
‘Here, let me show you.’ Owl’s face went away, and a picture appeared: a small machine with a round flat tray beneath some kind of lens.
Jane opened the cupboard. There it was, right in front. She held the machine up to the camera.
‘That’s it!’ Owl said, and Jane felt good, even though she hadn’t done much. ‘That’s a scanner for medical samples. You can probably use it to analyse what’s in that mushroom you found. I can tell you if any of it is bad for you.’
Jane set the scanner on the edge of the sink. ‘How do I . . .’
‘Put the mushroom in the tray. Okay, good. Now wave your hand by the interface panel to turn it on.’
Jane waved her hand. She waved, and waved again. Nothing happened.
‘Damn,’ Owl said. Jane didn’t know what that meant, but Owl had a wrong sound in her voice. ‘It must be out of power.’
Jane took the mushroom out of the tray and picked up the scanner. She turned it around and around, looking close. ‘There’s a power jack here,’ she said, pointing. ‘Do you have any charge cables?’
‘Probably, but I don’t know where.’
Jane went back to the cupboard and dug through all the stuff. She found a coiled black cable with the right kind of coupler. ‘Where can I plug this in?’
‘There’s a power station in the kitchen. Next to the sink.’
Jane went to the kitchen, hooked up the cables, and plugged in the scanner. Nothing changed. ‘Does it have a timed charge?’ she asked. ‘Does it need to sit for a bit?’
‘Probably, but make sure it’s actually charging. Has anything lit up?’
Jane flipped the scanner around again. There was an indicator patch, all right, but it was dark. She unplugged it and thought real hard. She went to the table where she’d built the weapon and got some tools. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s see how it works.’
It took her no time to get the case open, and only a little bit longer to find the problem: a rusted conduit connecting the power source to the motherboard.
‘Can you fix it?’ Owl said. ‘What do you need?’
Jane scratched behind her ear with the tip of the screwdriver. ‘Something . . . something metal. Something that will fit. And binding tape. Or glue. Do you have those?’
‘I don’t know,’ Owl said. ‘Check the drawers.’
Jane had to check lots of drawers, but she found some sticky tape that would work okay. As for the conduit, she didn’t know where to find one of those, but there were plenty of metal things in the kitchen. She got one of the forks. The pointy things on a fork might work. She bent them like she’d bent the ones on the weapon – putting the pointy things under her shoe and pulling the handle up – but this time, she wiggled the handle back and forth and back and forth and back, until snap! The pointy things broke off. She bundled them up in tape real good, so that they wouldn’t spark into the machine, and then taped the bundle into the empty space. She plugged the scanner back in. The indicator patch turned green.
‘Look!’ she said, turning to Owl’s camera. ‘Look!’ Fixing things always felt real good, but it felt even more good knowing somebody else had seen her do it.
‘Oh, wonderful! Great job!’ Owl said. ‘Let it charge for a while, and then we’ll see if that mushroom is something you can eat.’
Jane put her chin on her hands and watched the scanner. It wasn’t doing anything, but seeing the green light was good. She’d done a great job. Owl had said so.
‘Jane,’ Owl said. She spoke kind of slow, like she was thinking about something. ‘You’re very good at fixing things.’