When Gina came back – eventually and total unexpected, from like no one knew how and no one know where – she was approximeatly (sic) 20 years old. Less time had passed on the Internet than it had for the rest of her fam or ‘control group’ (meaning the rest of the world) which is something that Einstein (the scientist not the singer/rapper) had once already long ago supposedly predicted in equations. In any case Gina looked different but still acted pretty much all the same incl same voice, much the same attitude, some of the same delinquent stare etc but other people had aged more. No one had a clue really what had happened her during her long absent but the more people asked abt it the more she wunt discuss it no matter what/if you asked her questions not a Million times or more. The past was a locked room, she said, a black hole or global warming, a topic not to be mentioned. It was a mystery but not that kind of mystery as other people found attractive or compelling, more like that kind as made them wary, distant, cold.

Old now ancient neighbors of the old neighborhood waggled their tongues of cause to see her returned, and her sisters – now grown up and with husbands/bfs, kids and mental health problems of their own – acted jealous of her unspoken adventures and whatever but nothing to be done.

Gina was strange. Life online had clearly left its toll on her attention span and vocabulary plus while she had information about almost anything in another sense she seemed to know nothing at all. Martha said Gina was “just like the kid she had been back then when she had 1st uploaded herself” but a yearning in the statement showed it wasn’t really true. Gina tired to fitted in the world as best she could when she came in it again, making bad jokes, making gang signs and drinking cold Old Beers like anyone else, but in true fact, if she ever heard the sound of distant modems there was soon a far off and far away look that came into her very haunted kind of eyes.

*

Despite all forces of alienation etc Martha nonetheless welcomed her daughter home and for a while G. lived in peace and pieces there at her mums place, camping on the sofa and helping out with some jobs around the house.