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	It was a little strange. After slapping Jack, Amber settled back into her chair again, apparently now composed with her hands coupled in front of her on the table.  

‘So anyway…,’  said Jack, as the sting in his cheek faded, ‘now you know a little more about my world. Happy to oblige.’  

Amber tired to keep composed, though the discomfort of what she had done started to play on her. She wriggled a little in her chair. She cleared her throat in a pleasant, ladylike manner.

‘You said “When you were a boy”,’  she said, ‘so things have changed?’  

‘Ah, yes, they have.’ Jack remembered there was more to what he was going to say. ‘The world I described was the way things were. The world I knew as a boy started changing when I was in my late teens. First came a virus. Uh…’  Jack revised the word ‘virus’ in his head, realising, especially by the curious frown on amber’s face, that it wasn’t a word she was exactly familiar with. 

‘An illness,’  he clarified, and continued, ‘It came up fast. Killed a lot of people. And suddenly the world was a different place. Aside from killing a great number of people, it caused a great depression. The world’s economy crashed. Soon a famine had gripped the world. Then a war broke out. It was a war like no other. Lasted only a few weeks.’ Jack paused, clearly unsettled by the memory. ‘Millions more people died. Billions, actually. The world I knew as a child was left in ruins.’