Month: January 2020

It was a quiet Christmas morning for a certain girl and her family in the southern United States. They were unwrapping presents and enjoying each other’s company in general — nothing out of the ordinary, really.

But after no more parcels remained under the stout fir — and ribbons and bits of paper littered the floor — the father, with a mischievous look on his usually placid visage, rose from his chair and approached his daughter. “One last gift,” he said, and he pulled out of his pocket an object of otherworldly material about the width of a Saltine cracker. “I’m sure you know how it works.”