Free Run by Michaelbrent Collings

looked frightened, gripping the seat with white hands that matched his dry-white face, with little lips blue as the sky outside.  Fran caught his gaze, and smiled.  He tried to smile back, tried to be brave as his parents chatted nonchalantly in the seats behind him.  But the smile nearly dissolved into tears as the plane bounced slightly.  An air pocket, surely nothing more serious than that, but the child was rapidly nearing terror.
    "What’s your name?" she asked.
    For a moment it looked as though the boy wouldn’t answer her, though Fran could not discern whether it was because he was too scared to speak or because he was under an injunction not to talk to strangers.  But after a moment he conquered his fear and spoke.  Either that or he just reasoned that it was all right to talk to strangers as long as Mom and Dad - both of whom were deeply engrossed in a discussion of their new time-share in Malibu - were sitting behind him.
    Fran felt sorry for the little boy.  Like so many in the world, and particularly in the U.S., his best friend was probably the television.  Mom and Dad probably worked hard to pay for their toys, and the child was left to make friends with machines: TV’s and stereos and video game systems.  It was a cruel assumption to make, she knew, one that gave the parents no credit at all for the work they did, but the cruelest thing about it was that it was very likely true.
    "George," he whispered, the word barely a breath across his lips.
    "George.  What a nice name.  Like the curious monkey?"
    George nodded.  Still too scared to smile, but some of the fear had left his face. 
    "Are you curious, too, George?"
    He nodded.
    "About what?"
    "Stuff."
    "Really?  How interesting.  I had a friend once who was an expert."
    "In what?"
    "Stuff.  He was an expert in stuff."
    George’s face loosened up a little more.  He could feel he was being played with, and it didn’t bother him at all.  Fran had a knack for talking to children, and was using it now to calm this frightened boy.
    "Yup," she continued, "he was a great expert in stuff.  World-famous, in fact.  He was curious, too, and decided to be a stuff expert.  So he went out and examined stuffs all year long, for ten years.  Then he brought it all home."
    "What did he bring home?"
    "His stuff, of course.  He kept the big stuff in the main room - the ballroom, he called it - and the smaller stuff in a dollhouse that he made special for small stuff.  The medium-size stuff he just threw wherever."
    George smiled.  Fran decided he wasn’t going to puke or cry.  Good kid.  She leaned across the aisle, as far as her belt would allow. 
    "But you know, the medium-size stuff didn’t like that.  Didn’t like that small stuff got its own house, big stuff got its own room.  So one day...."
    "What?  What happened?"  George really was curious now, and more than that.  Entranced.  He had evidently forgotten about the air-pocket and about the plane itself as he leaned toward Fran, mouth agape and eyes agleam.
    "Well, all the medium stuff rebelled.  They called a secret stuff meeting, and decided they’d had enough.  The next day my friend got back from a long trip, holding lots of new stuff.  He went in his house, and BAM!  The medium stuff grabbed him.  Said they wanted better treatment.  Said they wanted better food.  Said they wanted their own room , by heck and by golly. 
    "But my friend had no more rooms.  In fact, that’s what he said, ‘I have no more rooms.’  So...."
    Fran opened her mouth as though to finish her story.  Then shut it and sat back.  She was silent.
    "So what happened?"
    Fran looked at George again.  He was straining across the aisle, now, as though he could influence her to finish the story by drawing close. 
    "What happened to your friend?" he urged, his little boy voice growing even higher in his excitement.
    "I...I don’t know, George."  She shook her head, as though debating.  "What they