3.

     It was nearly 6 am when Joe awakened, his back stiff from a night on the couch. Jessie had covered him with one of Amy’s frayed old quilts from the closet. She could be a sweet and thoughtful girl, and he probably should give her some slack. It’s just that the world has changed, he thought. It’s so much more dangerous than when I was a kid, before the bombings, and the soldiers on the street corners, and the disappearances. It seemed to Joe that anarchy and fascism were just two sides of the same tarnished coin; they needed each other to thrive. When society has rules, and people agree to the rules, then there is peace, and stability.
 
     He folded the quilt with care, and laid it across the back of the sofa. Then he began his morning routine. After cleaning up and shaving, he changed his clothes. Then, on a whim, he decided to cook some breakfast. Normally, he would have cold cereal, and Jessie could fend for herself. But, this morning he felt like doing something special for her. A real family breakfast. Maybe a couple of those rare and precious eggs he had saved in the fridge, and some toast, made from what passed for bread these days.
 
     He took out the eggs and pulled the little chemical cooker from under the counter. He hardly ever used it, anymore, since most of their meals came in self-heating cartons. After he laid everything out, he knocked on Jessie’s door. “Hey, little girl,” he called, “breakfast’s cooking.”
 
     No sound came from the room, so he pushed the door open. Jessie was sprawled on top of her bed, sound asleep. He watched her for a long moment with something that felt a little like sadness. He saw a pretty young woman with long, dark hair like her mothers. Growing up too fast. In a few years, he would be alone, and what would that be like? It wasn’t something he wanted to think about just now. He surveyed her room, still in transition from a little girl’s, teddy bears and childhood games mingled with posters of pop stars and the paraphernalia of teenagers. On her desk, the screen of her virtual journal still glowed. He walked over to turn the veejay off, and he picked up her gamer glasses. What did she call them? Sit specks? He pronounced it slowly in his mind. Then, with a little twinge of voyeuristic guilt, he tried to peer into her world. He saw only blackness, so he put the citspecs gently back on her desk. He noticed a slip of scratch paper there, “Gretel deVoid” written on it in Jessie’s scrawl.
 
     He smiled with nostalgia, trying to remember what it was like to be a teenager. Things never really change that much, he thought. He shut down the veejay, then roused Jessie from bed. She seemed more groggy-eyed than usual.
 
     “Up too late playing on the grid again.” he complained.
 
     “Oh, Dad, do I have to get up?”
 
     “I’ve fixed breakfast, believe it or not.”
 
     She buried her head beneath her pillow, pulling the quilt over her. “I choose not to believe,” came the muffled reply.
 
     “I have a riddle for you,” he said. “What has five bare toes, and is connected to a silly bone?”
 
     Jessie giggled, and pulled her exposed foot under the covers. “Don’t you dare, Dad. I’m not seven anymore!”
 
     “Okay, sweetie,” he said. “No feet tickling today. But come have breakfast with the old man.”
 
     “You know, civilized people consider tickling a form of barbaric torture.”
 
     “Just preparing you for life,” he quipped. He regretted the words before they left his lips, but he was unable to stop them. Maybe in another time they would have been humorous, but now, in this world Jessie would soon inherit, they sounded cruel and cynical and whining.
 
     Jessie must have sensed his despair, because she sat up in bed and took his hand.
 
     “Better times are coming, Daddy,” she said. “Don’t you always say that?”
 
     “Yeah, sweetie,” he said, “better times will come.”
 
     But, Joe couldn’t see how that was possible. Maybe in another life.