Sweat poured from her body as she jolted awake, her clammy hand touching the screen next to her bunk. Lines of incoherent text spread across the previously dormant screen, spreading out from her hand. Snatching her hand away, the screen immediately went dormant again, as it had always been for the thirteen years of her life so far. Worried, but curious, she reached out and touched the screen with her index finger. The screen lit up, text spreading like a firework explosion from the tip of her finger. Wonder overtook her emotions as she called out for her mother.

~

The main computer systems failed the same year that Zoe was born. Her mother was the main computer technician in the base and she had put the cascading failures down to old, failing tech. Their geothermal and hydro power was fine, it was just deterioration of software and hardware from overuse and inability to replace anything.

Elaine's labour with Zoe was relatively short and easy for her first, and only, child. Thankfully, there were still competent doctors in the area, so her poor husband Rene didn't have to attempt to deliver a child himself. Not that the larger friends and family group they lived with would have let him try anyway. He was a good mechanic and great with machines, but not so great with humans.

A squalling baby girl entered the work inside a repurposed, underground military base, during the height of Summer. Named Zoe Clara after Elaine's grandmother and Rene's grandmother respectively, she joined the horrendous world, protected by the recently formed Community.

~

The young Zoe, barely more than two years of age, happily banged away at the keyboard in front of her while seated in her mother's lap. From an early age, Zoe had always had a way of finding technology that wasn't in use and playing with it over any toys she was given. Her parents put it down to being in a military base filled with things she shouldn't be playing with.

Starring at the screen in front of her that her mother was working on, Zoe quickly forgot the keyboard and touched the screen, following along with small fingers. Little did Elaine know that this was just a precursor of Zoe's future Talent.

~

Zoe wanted to understand everything and was always bothering her parents and anyone who would pay her attention when she wasn't occupied with chores. By the age of ten, she knew the workings of a motor and knew how to do an oil change, while also knowing how to write basic programs on the very limited tech she had access to. However, ask her to handle a weapon, bandage a wound or help harvest crops, she wouldn't have the faintest idea of where to start and was generally disinterested in doing so.

It was around this time that she was given duties assisting in the nursery, where, even though she felt out of her depth, still a child herself, she found that she had a way with younger people, making fast friends, leading some of the younger children to mischief. The one she was most remembered for was after her Talent had emerged, where she had bypassed security locks and taken an armoured personnel carrier filled with children to a nearby farm to go berry picking. It was during that trip that a young Naomi fell from a tall tree, shifting into her cat form to save herself with Zoe being first to her, comforting her.

Zoe, of course, got herself into vast amounts of trouble, but also gained a life long friend in Naomi.

~

"I don't know how to explain Mére," Zoe said, holding a tablet in her small hands, sitting across from the small table from her mother. "I just do it."

"Mmm," her mother replied, running a hand through her hair, almost like trying to get the knots out of her brain. She watched the screen as Zoe, without moving, rapidly flicked through programs, videos and text files.

"I suppose it's like when I touch the tablet," Zoe said, demonstrating by opening an app, "but I just think to the tablet that I want to open that one."

"Mmm."

Zoe knew her mother well enough to know she was deep in thought and barely listening to her. The thirteen year old Zoe, curious about her Talent, focused her attention on the tablet, eyes flickering all over as she mentally told the tablet to, effectively, do somersaults with its programming. Taking a hand from the tablet and wiping her tired eyes, she paused, her hand over her closed eyes. She sucked her breath in and, keeping her eyes closed, returned her second hand to the tablet. "Mére, I can see the programs."

"Pardon Bebe?"

"I - I don't know how to say what I'm seeing, or, not seeing? It's like the tablet is telling me what it looks like and I see it in my head, like a memory, but without having to remember."

"Interesting. Interact with it for me?"

Zoe, using just her thoughts, opened a video. It came straight to her thoughts, just as if she was viewing it with here eyes, but she could also see everything in the background of the video. The sound profile, the colour coding and even the individual pixel codes when she focused on it.

"You opened a video," her mother said to her, though Zoe barely heard it, lost in the code as she was. Zoe kept watching in fascination while the video played, before wondering what else she could see.

Time rushed by as information flooded her young brain. She was able to manipulate the programs as if she were manually doing it, yet with barely a thought.

She felt a hand fall on her shoulder and squeeze gently, ripping her attention from the tablet. Opening her weary eyes, she looked at the owner of the hand, seeing her father smiling warmly at her.

"Elaine left you to wonder and play. She asked me to check on you."

Stretching, realizing her body ached from not moving, Zoe looked at the clock. Many hours had passed since she'd started exploring what she could do with her stomach backing up the time. "Oh no! I forgot the kids! I was on duty."

"Relax love, your mére is covering for you. You're not the first Talented to get lost in wonder and exploration of your new abilities." A small bowl of food was handed to her, which she started eating immediately. "Relax for now, your mére has some ideas to test your Talent. Get up and stretch before the dust settles on you."

She hugged her father's side from her seat, thankful that she had her family to look out for her.

~

A timer buzzed, reaching her ears at the time her 'mindscape' registered it. Zoe's mother had given her the term mindscape as a way of describing it from what she'd been told. Opening her eyes and putting the tablet down, Zoe stretched, shaking out her muscles and stomping her feet.

In the few days since her Talent had awoken, she had found that she was able to reach out through the network, through any open connection to view devices at a distance while in contact with what was with her and was able to make it do things. She could feel broken programs and firewalls, sense the age of data, read programs from their codes.

It wasn't until the end of the third day that Elaine suggested manipulating things, seeing if she could change the code with just her thoughts. Starting off slowly, she changed the text in documents, then colour coding in pictures, videos and finally, base coding in programs.

Within a fortnight of awakening, Zoe was able to remotely alter programs around the base and was actively restoring systems around corrupted software and hardware. She found that, while manipulating programs, if she were at the hard disk and found a hardware fault, she could slowly force the circuits to rewrite and avoid the corrupted hardware.

A month later, Zoe was actively repairing and upgrading the systems around the military base she called home, with guidance from her mother. With assistance, she started re-writing software on satellites in orbit, starting to create a communications network dedicated to the Community, establishing herself as a powerful Talent in her own right, setting herself down her interesting path.