Fiction: Last Minute
25 Christmas Eves pushes on. Today's installment is a short piece of near-future science fiction titled, "Last Minute." By: Erin L. Snyder Adam’s car broke down on the way home, courtesy of a faulty valve. It took the internal diagnostic system almost twenty minutes to identify the issue and, thanks to the strain the holiday season was putting on the network, another five to download the schematics. And of course the emergency 3D-printer in the hatch required another fifteen to replicate a replacement. Then the site streaming the walkthrough crashed twice while he was installing the damn thing. All of this in the middle of a snowstorm, too: it was like something out of an old holiday movie. It was after seven before he made it home, which meant arming his eleven year-old son with a world-class extortion scam: “You left me alone... on Christmas Eve! I had to order my own dinner! I had to watch a movie... by myself!” And so on and so forth. Fortunately, Adam was u