Self Help

Chapter 1 - device in the ravine

"You will have until tomorrow to finish this assignment." Mr. Davidson announced.

Mr. Davidson's voice was not what Sam Howland liked to hear. Not that Mr. Davidson's voice was awful. In fact, his deep voice rivaled that of the most chocolate-voiced actors. It was just that Sam did not like math and it was probably an understatement. On top of that, he did not find math very useful. In the age of "everyone has a smartphone", there's an app for everything, including a calculator app. To him, math was just a chore. No fun. Not entertaining. And the games on his iPod Touch was always a distraction.

"At least the lesson is over now. I can deal with this when I get home." Sam thought while packing up. It was the last lesson of the day. After packing up, Sam was rushing out of school. At the school entrance, Sam accidentally bumped into Pamala, the mid-twenties waitress who worked for the restaurant right next to the school. Pamela came from Canada originally. Canadians were known to be very nice people, but Pamela was always grumpy. Very un-Canadian.

"I am so tall. How could you not see me?" Pamela stared at Sam with her buggy eyes. With her long and curly hair, Pamela was not someone whom one would like to see at night. Fortunately it was in the afternoon.

"Sorry." Sam apologized to Pamela without any eye contact to her.

"Long day. I need a break." Sam murmured.

***

Sam always enjoyed walking home alone. His home was a 30 minute walk away from school but he liked to take the short cut through the ravine. While saving 10 minutes under the hot sun was a good excuse, Sam could always find interesting animals, insects and plants in the ravine. After all, biology was far more interesting than the one that used meaningless Greek symbols.

"Last night's thunder storm has definitely made this difficult." Battling with the mud, he should remember how bad the weather was. He was supposed to go out with Derek to watch the meteor shower. The once-in-a-hundred-year event was completely spoiled by the unexpected thunder storm.

All in a sudden, Sam saw something sparkling in the mud, which certainly grabbed his attention. He had never seen anything man-made in this ravine, let alone something that looked like the remote control of an Apple TV. But it's definitely not an Apple TV remote. As an Apple fan boy, he could instantly tell the differences. Although at a glance it looked very similar to the one selling for $99 in the Apple Store, it didn't have the two small buttons beneath the silver button and the navigation buttons.

"What is it?" Sam murmured.

Out of his curiosity, he picked up this "remote" and tried to examine it. While he was still scratching his head why someone would leave something like this in the ravine, his focus was now turned to the device itself.

The silver-coloured device looked very well built. While it looked like an Apple TV remote, holding the device in his hand gave Sam the impression that it was built with some exotic material instead. As someone who followed Engadget religiously, gave Sam any electronic device and he could tell you the model number instantly. Not this time. He couldn't help but pressed the big button in the middle.

Something unexpected happened.