Liam stared at the spinning wheel of death on his phone, the little "No Internet Connection" banner glowing like a tombstone. Outside the bus window, the Nevada desert blurred into a beige smear. His family was moving. Again. No signal. No data. Nothing.
His little sister, Maya, didn’t look up from her paperback. "Read a book." google no wifi game
He started playing for real. He traded a memory of his grandmother's laugh for a blanket when the bus AC went arctic. He traded the feeling of his first bike ride for a full canteen. He traded the name of his first pet for a fire source when the bus broke down for three hours in the dark. Liam stared at the spinning wheel of death
Liam snorted. "Funny, Google. Ads now?"
"What the—" Liam whispered.
A new icon appeared on the map: a tiny wagon wheel, three rows ahead. The man sitting there—a heavyset guy in a trucker hat—turned into a pixelated trader. Nothing