“That’s okay. I already updated your phone.”

Rohan froze. The tablet cycled through his old photos: his late dog, an ex-girlfriend’s birthday, a forgotten passport scan. Then a folder marked “Hidden” appeared. Inside: GPS logs from places he’d never visited. Voice recordings of conversations he’d never had. A single text file named “README_OREO.txt.”

His heart did a little jitterbug. Huawei had long abandoned this budget slate. This had to be a glitch—or a miracle.

He pressed “No.”

Then, a warm “Hello” in a new font. Oreo’s picture-in-picture mode worked. Notification dots appeared. Even the old launcher felt snappier, as if the tablet had discovered yoga and green smoothies.

The tablet went dark. Then a single line of text appeared:

He looked at the MediaPad’s tired bezel, its underpowered chip, its screen that had once been a window to YouTube and PDFs. Now it was a mirror of something else.

From the kitchen, his smartphone vibrated once. The silver eye icon blinked. Then it smiled.