Текст книги "The Bazaar of Bad Dreams"
Автор книги: Stephen Edwin King
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 33 страниц)
I’m experimenting with new technology, he imagined himself saying.
He liked the sound of it. It was New School all the way.
And of course he liked thinking of Ellen’s reaction. He had stopped leaving messages on her phone, and he had begun avoiding places – The Pit Stop, Harry’s Pizza – where he might run into her, but that could change. Surely I’m reading off the computer, just like the rest of you was too good a line to waste.
Oh, that’s small, he scolded himself as he sat in front of his computer, looking at the picture of the Kindle. That is spite so small it probably wouldn’t poison a newborn kitten.
True! But if it was the only spite of which he was capable, why not indulge it?
So he had clicked on the Buy Kindle box, and the gadget had arrived a day later, in a box stamped with the smile logo and the words ONE-DAY DELIVERY. Wesley hadn’t opted for one-day, and would protest that charge if it showed up on his MasterCard bill, but he unpacked his new acquisition with real pleasure – similar to the pleasure he felt when unpacking a box of books, but sharper. Because there was that sense of heading into the unknown, he supposed. Not that he expected the Kindle to replace books, or to be much more than a novelty item, really; an attention-getter for a few weeks or months that would afterward stand forgotten and gathering dust beside the Rubik’s Cube on the knickknack shelf in his living room.
It didn’t strike him as peculiar that, whereas the Henderson kid’s Kindle had been white, his was pink.
Not at first.
II – Ur Functions
When Wesley got back to his apartment after his confessional conversation with Don Allman, the message light on his answering machine was blinking. Two messages. He pushed the playback button, expecting to hear his mother complaining about her arthritis and making trenchant observations about how some sons actually called home more often than twice a month. After that would come a robo-call from the Moore Echo, reminding him – for the dozenth time – that his subscription had lapsed. But it wasn’t his mother and it wasn’t the newspaper. When he heard Ellen’s voice, he paused in the act of reaching for a beer and listened bent over, with one hand outstretched in the fridge’s frosty glow.
‘Hi, Wes,’ she said, sounding uncharacteristically unsure of herself. There was a long pause, long enough for Wesley to wonder if that was all there was going to be. In the background he heard hollow shouts and bouncing balls. She was in the gym, or had been when she left the message. ‘I’ve been thinking about us. Thinking that maybe we should try again. I miss you.’ And then, as if she had seen him rushing for the door: ‘But not yet. I need to think a little more about … what you said.’ A pause. ‘I was wrong to throw your book like that, but I was upset.’ Another pause, almost as long as the one after she’d said hi. ‘There’s a preseason tourney in Lexington this weekend. You know, the one they call the Bluegrass. It’s a big deal. Maybe when I get back, we should talk. Please don’t call me until then, because I’ve got to concentrate on the girls. Defense is terrible, and I’ve only got one girl who can actually shoot from the perimeter, and … I don’t know, this is probably a big mistake.’
‘It’s not,’ he told the answering machine. His heart was pumping. He was still leaning into the open refrigerator, feeling the cold wafting out and striking his face, which seemed too hot. ‘Believe me, it’s not.’
‘I had lunch with Suzanne Montanaro the other day, and she says you’re carrying around one of those electronic reading thingies. To me that seemed … I don’t know, like a sign that we should try again.’ She laughed, then screamed so loud that Wesley jumped. ‘Chase down that loose ball! You either run or you sit!’ Then: ‘Sorry. I’ve got to go. Don’t call me. I’ll call you. One way or the other. After the Bluegrass. I’m sorry I’ve been dodging your calls, but … you hurt my feelings, Wes. Coaches have feelings too, you know. I—’
A beep interrupted her. The allotted message time had run out. Wesley uttered the word Norman Mailer’s publishers had refused to let him use in The Naked and the Dead.
Then the second message started and she was back. ‘I guess English teachers also have feelings. Suzanne says we’re not right for each other, she says we’re too far apart in our interests, but … maybe there’s a middle ground. I … I need to think about this. Don’t call me. I’m not quite ready. Goodbye.’
Wesley got his beer. He was smiling. Then he thought of the spite that had been living in his heart for the last month and stopped. He went to the calendar on the wall, and wrote PRESEASON TOURNEY across Saturday and Sunday. He paused, then drew a line through the days of the workweek after, a line on which he wrote ELLEN???
With that done he sat down in his favorite chair, drank his beer, and tried to read 2666. It was a crazy book, but sort of interesting.
He wondered if it was available from the Kindle Store.
That evening, after replaying Ellen’s messages for the third time, Wesley turned on his Dell and went to the Athletic Department website to check for details concerning the Bluegrass Preseason Invitational Tournament. He knew it would be a mistake to turn up there, and he had no intention of doing so, but he did want to know who the Meerkats were playing, and when Ellen would be back.
It turned out there were eight teams, seven from Division Two and only one from Division Three: the Lady Meerkats of Moore. Wesley felt pride on Ellen’s behalf when he saw that, and was once more ashamed of his spite … which she (lucky him!) knew nothing about. She actually seemed to think he had bought the Kindle as a way of sending her a message: Maybe you’re right, and maybe I can change. Maybe we both can. He supposed that if things went well, he would in time come to convince himself that was indeed so.
On the website he saw that the team would leave for Lexington by bus at noon this coming Friday. They would practice at Rupp Arena that evening, and play their first game – against the Bulldogs of Truman State, Indiana – on Saturday morning. Because the tourney was double elimination, they wouldn’t be starting back until Sunday evening no matter what. Which meant he wouldn’t hear from her until the following Monday at the earliest.
It was going to be a long week.
‘And,’ he told his computer (a good listener!), ‘she may decide against trying again, anyway. I have to be prepared for that.’
Well, he could try. And he could also call that bitch Suzanne Montanaro and tell her in no uncertain terms to stop campaigning against him. Why would she do that in the first place? She was a colleague, for God’s sake!
Only if he did that, Suzanne might carry tales straight back to her friend (friend? who knew? who even suspected?) Ellen. It might be best to leave that aspect of things alone. Although the spite wasn’t entirely out of his heart after all, it seemed. Now it was directed at Ms Montanaro.
‘Never mind,’ he told his computer. ‘George Herbert was wrong. Living well isn’t the best revenge; loving well is.’
He started to turn off his computer, then remembered something Don Allman had said about Wesley’s Kindle: I thought they only came in white. Certainly the Henderson kid’s had been white, but – what was the saying? – one swallow didn’t make a summer. After a few false starts, Google (full of information but essentially dumb as a post) led him to Kindle Fan Sites. He found one called Kindle Kandle. At the top was a bizarre photo of a woman in Quaker garb reading her Kindle by candlelight. (Or possibly kandlelight.) Here he read several posts – complaints, mostly – about how the Kindle came in only one color, which one blogger called ‘plain old smudge-friendly white.’ Below it was a reply suggesting that if the complainer persisted in reading with dirty fingers, he should buy a custom sleeve for his Kindle. ‘In any color you like,’ she added. ‘Grow up and show some creativity!’
Wesley turned off his computer, went into the kitchen, got another beer, and pulled his own Kindle from his briefcase. His pink Kindle. Except for the color, it looked exactly the same as the ones on the Kindle Kandle website.
‘Kindle-Kandle, bibble-babble,’ he said. ‘It’s just some flaw in the plastic.’ Perhaps, but why had it come one-day express delivery when he hadn’t specified that? Because someone at the Kindle factory wanted to get rid of the pink mutant as soon as possible? That was ridiculous. They would have just thrown it away. Another victim of quality control.
Could you use a Kindle to go on the Internet? He didn’t know, and he remembered there was something else odd about his: no instruction booklet. He thought of going back to the Kindle Kandlers to check out his Internet question, then dismissed the idea. He was just goofing around, after all, beginning to while away the hours between now and next Monday, when he might hear from Ellen again.
‘I miss you, kiddo,’ he said, and was surprised to hear his voice waver. He did miss her. He hadn’t realized how much until he’d heard her voice. He’d been too wrapped up in his own wounded ego. Not to mention his sweaty little spite.
The screen titled Wesley’s Kindle booted up. Listed were the books he had so far purchased – Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates, and The Old Man and the Sea, by Hemingway. The gadget had come with The New Oxford American Dictionary preloaded. You only had to begin typing your word and the Kindle found it for you. It was, he thought, TiVo for bookworms.
But could you access the Internet?
He pushed the Menu button and was presented with a number of choices. The top one (of course) invited him to SHOP THE KINDLE STORE. But near the bottom was something called EXPERIMENTAL. That looked interesting. He moved the cursor to it, opened it, and read this at the top of the screen: We are working on these experimental prototypes. Do you find them useful?
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Wesley said. ‘What are they?’
The first prototype turned out to be BASIC WEB. So, yes to the Internet question. The Kindle was apparently a lot more computerized than it looked at first blush. He glanced at the other experimental choices: music downloads (big whoop) and text-to-speech (which might come in handy if he were blind). He pushed the Next Page button to see if there were other experimental prototypes. There was one: Ur Functions.
Now what in the hell was that? Ur, so far as he knew, had only two meanings: a city in the Old Testament, and a prefix meaning ‘primitive’ or ‘simple.’ The screen didn’t help; although there were explanations for the other experimental functions, there was none for this. Well, there was one way to find out. He highlighted Ur Functions and selected it.
A new menu appeared. There were three items: Ur Books, Ur News Archive, and Ur Local (under construction).
‘Huh,’ Wesley said. ‘What in the world.’
He highlighted Ur Books, dropped his finger onto the Select button, then hesitated. Suddenly his skin felt cold, as when he’d been stilled by the sound of Ellen’s recorded voice while reaching into the fridge for a beer. He would later think, It was my own ur. Something simple and primitive deep inside, telling me not to push that button.
But was he not a modern man? One who now read off the computer?
He was. He was. So he pushed it.
The screen blanked, then WELCOME TO UR BOOKS! appeared at the top … and in red! The Kandlers were behind the technological curve, it seemed; there was Kolor on the Kindle. Beneath the welcome message was a picture – not of Charles Dickens or Eudora Welty, but of a large black tower. There was something ominous about it. Below, also in red, was an invitation to Select Author (your choice may not be available). And below that, a blinking cursor.
‘What the hell,’ Wesley told the empty room. He licked his lips, which were suddenly dry, and typed ERNEST HEMINGWAY.
The screen wiped itself clean. The function, whatever it was supposed to be, didn’t seem to work. After ten seconds or so, Wesley reached for the Kindle, meaning to turn it off. Before he could push the slide-switch, the screen finally produced a new message.
10,438,721 URS SEARCHED
17,894 ERNEST HEMINGWAY TITLES DETECTED
IF YOU DO NOT KNOW TITLE, SELECT UR
OR RETURN TO UR FUNCTIONS MENU
SELECTIONS FROM YOUR CURRENT UR WILL NOT
BE DISPLAYED
‘What in the name of God is this?’ Wesley asked the empty room. Below the message, the cursor blinked. Above it, in small type (black, not red), was one further instruction: NUMERIC ENTRY ONLY. NO COMMAS OR DASHES. YOUR CURRENT UR: 117586.
Wesley felt a strong urge (an ur urge!) to turn the pink Kindle off and drop it into the silverware drawer. Or into the freezer along with the ice cream and Stouffer’s frozen dinner, that might be even better. Instead, he used the teeny-tiny keypad to enter his birth date. 7191974 would do as well as any number, he reckoned. He hesitated again, then plunged the tip of his index finger down on the Select button. When the screen blanked this time, he had to fight an impulse to get up from the kitchen chair he was sitting in and back away from the table. A crazy certainty had arisen in his mind: a hand – or perhaps a claw – was going to swim up from the grayness of the Kindle’s screen, grab him by the throat, and yank him in. He would exist forever after in computerized grayness, floating around the microchips and between the many worlds of Ur.
Then the screen produced type, plain old prosaic type, and the superstitious dread departed. He scanned the Kindle’s screen (the size of a small paperback) eagerly, although what he was eager for he had no idea.
At the top was the author’s full name – Ernest Miller Hemingway – and his dates. Next came a long list of his published works … but it was wrong. The Sun Also Rises was there … For Whom the Bell Tolls … the short stories … The Old Man and the Sea, of course … but there were also three or four titles Wesley didn’t recognize, and except for minor essays, he thought he had read all of Hemingway’s considerable output. Also …
He examined the dates again and saw that the death date was wrong. Hemingway had died on July 2, 1961, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. According to the screen, he had gone to that great library in the sky on August 19, 1964.
‘Birth date’s wrong, too,’ Wesley muttered. He was running his free hand through his hair, pulling it into exotic new shapes. ‘I’m almost sure it is. Should be eighteen ninety-nine, not eighteen ninety-seven.’
He moved the cursor down to one of the titles he didn’t know: Cortland’s Dogs. This was some lunatic computer programmer’s idea of a joke, pretty much had to be, but Cortland’s Dogs at least sounded like a Hemingway title. Wesley selected it.
The screen blanked, then produced a book cover. The jacket image – in black-and-white – showed barking dogs surrounding a scarecrow. In the background, shoulders slumped in a posture of weariness or defeat (or both), was a hunter with a gun. The eponymous Cortland, probably.
In the woods of upper Michigan, James Cortland deals with the infidelity of his wife and his own mortality. When three dangerous criminals appear at the old Cortland farm, ‘Papa’s’ most famous hero is faced with a terrible choice. Rich in event and symbolism, Ernest Hemingway’s final novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize shortly before his death. $7.50
Below the thumbnail, Kindle asked: BUY THIS BOOK? Y N.
‘Total bullshit,’ Wesley whispered as he highlighted Y and pushed the Select button.
The screen blanked again, then flashed a new message: Ur novels may not be disseminated as according to all applicable Paradox Laws. Do you agree? Y N.
Smiling – as befitted someone who got the joke but was going along with it anyway – Wesley selected Y. The screen blanked, then presented new information:
THANK YOU, WESLEY!
YOUR UR NOVEL HAS BEEN ORDERED
YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DEBITED $7.50
REMEMBER UR NOVELS TAKE LONGER TO DOWNLOAD
ALLOW 2–4 MINS
Wesley returned to the Wesley’s Kindle screen. The same items were there – Revolutionary Road, The Old Man and the Sea, the New Oxford American – and he was sure that wouldn’t change. There was no Hemingway novel called Cortland’s Dogs, not in this world or any other. Nonetheless, he got up and went to the phone. It was picked up on the first ring.
‘Don Allman,’ his officemate said. ‘And yes, I was indeed born a ramblin’ man.’ No hollow gym sounds in the background this time; just the barbaric yawps of Don’s three sons, who sounded as though they might be dismantling the Allman residence board by board.
‘Don, it’s Wesley.’
‘Ah, Wesley! I haven’t seen you in … gee, it must be three hours!’ From deeper within the lunatic asylum where Wesley assumed Don lived with his family, there came what sounded like a death scream. Don Allman was not perturbed. ‘Jason, don’t throw that at your brother. Be a good little troll and go watch SpongeBob.’ Then, to Wesley: ‘What can I do for you, Wes? Advice on your love life? Tips on improving your sexual performance and stamina? A title for your novel in progress?’
‘I have no novel in progress and you know it,’ Wesley snapped. ‘But it’s novels I want to talk about. You know Hemingway’s oeuvre, don’t you?’
‘I love it when you talk dirty.’
‘Do you or don’t you?’
‘Of course. But not as well as you, I hope. You’re the twentieth-century American lit man, after all; I stick to the days when writers wore wigs, took snuff, and said picturesque things like ecod. What’s on your mind?’
‘To your knowledge, did Hemingway ever write any fiction about dogs?’
Don considered while another young child commenced shrieking. ‘Wes, are you okay? You sound a little—’
‘Just answer the question. Did he or didn’t he?’ Highlight Y or N, Wesley thought.
‘All right,’ Don said. ‘So far as I can say without consulting my trusty computer, he didn’t. I remember him once claiming the Batista partisans clubbed his pet pooch to death, though – how’s that for a factoid? You know, when he was in Cuba. He took it as a sign that he and Mary should beat feet to Florida, and they did – posthaste.’
‘You don’t happen to remember that dog’s name, do you?’
‘I think I do. I’d want to double-check it on the Internet, but I think it was Negrita. Something like that. Sounds slightly racist to me, but what do I know?’
‘Thanks, Don.’ His lips felt numb. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Wes, are you sure you’re– FRANKIE, PUT THAT DOWN! DON’T—’ There was a crash. ‘Shit. I think that was Delft. I gotta go, Wes. See you tomorrow.’
‘Right.’
Wesley went back to the kitchen table. He saw that a fresh selection had appeared on the contents page of his Kindle. A novel (or something) called Cortland’s Dogs had been downloaded from …
Where, exactly? Some other plane of reality called Ur (or possibly UR) 7191974?
Wesley no longer had the strength to call this idea ridiculous and push it away. He did, however, have enough to go to the refrigerator and get a beer. Which he needed. He opened it, drank half in five long swallows, belched. He sat down, feeling a little better. He highlighted his new acquisition ($7.50 would be mighty cheap for an undiscovered Hemingway, he reckoned) and a title page came up. The next page was a dedication: To Sy, and to Mary, with love. Then:
Chapter 1
A man’s life was five dogs long, Cortland believed. The first was the one that taught you. The second was the one you taught. The third and fourth were the ones you worked. The last was the one that outlived you. That was the winter dog. Cortland’s winter dog was Negrita, but he thought of it only as the scarecrow dog …
Liquid rose up in Wesley’s throat. He ran for the sink, bent over it, and struggled to keep the beer down. His gorge settled, and instead of turning on the water to rinse puke down the drain, he cupped his hands under the flow and splashed it on his sweaty skin. That was better.
Then he went back to the Kindle and stared down at it.
A man’s life was five dogs long, Cortland believed.
Somewhere – at some college a lot more ambitious than Moore of Kentucky – there was a computer programmed to read books and identify the writers by their stylistic tics and tocks, which were supposed to be as unique as fingerprints or snowflakes. Wesley had a vague recollection that this computer program had been used to identify the author of a pseudonymous novel called Primary Colors; the program had whiffled through thousands of writers in a matter of hours or days and had come up with a newsmagazine columnist named Joe Klein, who later owned up to his literary paternity.
Wesley thought that if he submitted Cortland’s Dogs to that computer, it would spit out Ernest Hemingway’s name. In truth, he didn’t think he needed a computer.
He picked up the Kindle with hands that were now shaking badly. ‘What are you?’ he asked.
III – Wesley Refuses to Go Mad
In a real dark night of the soul, Scott Fitzgerald had said, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.
At three o’clock on that Tuesday morning, Wesley lay awake, feeling feverish and wondering if he might be cracking up himself. He had forced himself to turn off the pink Kindle and put it back in his briefcase an hour ago, but its hold over him remained every bit as strong as it had been at midnight, when he had still been deep in the Ur Books menu.
He had searched for Ernest Hemingway in two dozen of the Kindle’s almost ten and a half million Urs, and had come up with at least twenty novels he had never heard of. In one of the Urs (it happened to be 6201949 – which, when broken down, was his mother’s birth date), Hemingway appeared to be a crime writer. Wesley had downloaded a title called It’s Blood, My Darling!, and discovered your basic dime novel … but written in staccato, punchy sentences he would have recognized anywhere.
Hemingway sentences.
And even as a crime writer, Hemingway had departed from gang wars and cheating, gore-happy debs long enough to write A Farewell to Arms. He always wrote A Farewell to Arms, it seemed; other titles came and went, but A Farewell to Arms was always there and The Old Man and the Sea was usually there.
He tried Faulkner.
Faulkner was not there at all, in any of the Urs.
He checked the regular menu, and discovered plenty of Faulkner. But only in this reality, it seemed.
This reality?
The mind boggled.
He checked Roberto Bolanõ, the author of 2666, and although it wasn’t available from the normal Kindle menu, it was listed in several Ur Books submenus. So were other Bolanõ novels, including (in Ur 101) a book with the colorful title Marilyn Blows Fidel. He almost downloaded that one, then changed his mind. So many authors, so many Urs, so little time.
A part of his mind – distant yet authentically terrified – continued to insist it was all an elaborate joke that had arisen from some loony computer programmer’s imagination. Yet the evidence, which he continued to compile as that long night progressed, suggested otherwise.
James Cain, for instance. In one Ur Wesley checked, he had died exceedingly young, producing only two books: Nightfall (a new one) and Mildred Pierce (an oldie). Wesley would have bet on The Postman Always Rings Twice to have been a Cain constant – his ur-novel, so to speak – but no. Although he checked a dozen Urs for Cain, he found Postman only once. Mildred Pierce, on the other hand – which he considered very minor Cain, indeed – was always there. Like A Farewell to Arms.
He had checked his own name, and discovered what he feared: although the Urs were lousy with Wesley Smiths (one appeared to be a writer of Westerns, another the author of porno novels such as Pittsburgh Panty Party), none seemed to be him. Of course it was hard to be a hundred percent sure, but it appeared that he had stumbled on 10.4 million alternate realities and he was an unpublished loser in all of them.
Wide awake in his bed, listening to one lonely dog bark in the distance, Wesley began to shiver. His own literary aspirations seemed very minor to him at this moment. What seemed major – what loomed over his life and very sanity – were the riches hidden within that slim pink panel of plastic. He thought of all the writers whose passing he had mourned, from Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow to Donald Westlake and Evan Hunter; one after another, Thanatos stilled their magic voices and they spoke no more.
But now they could.
They could speak to him.
He threw back the bedclothes. The Kindle was calling him, but not in a human voice. It sounded like a beating heart, Poe’s telltale heart, coming from inside his briefcase instead of from under the floorboards, and—
Poe!
Good Christ, he never checked Poe!
He had left his briefcase in its accustomed spot beside his favorite chair. He hurried to it, opened it, grabbed the Kindle, and plugged it in (no way he was going to risk running down the battery). He hurried to UR BOOKS, typed in Poe’s name, and on his first try found an Ur – 2555676 – where Poe had lived until 1875 instead of dying at the age of forty in 1849. And this version of Poe had written novels! Six of them! Greed filled Wesley’s heart as his eyes raced over the titles.
One was called The House of Shame, or Degradation’s Price. Wesley downloaded it – the charge for this one was only $4.95 – and read until dawn. Then he turned off the pink Kindle, put his head in his arms, and slept for two hours at the kitchen table.
He also dreamed. No images; only words. Titles! Endless lines of titles, many of them of undiscovered masterpieces. As many titles as there were stars in the sky.
He got through Tuesday and Wednesday – somehow – but during his Intro to American Lit class on Thursday, lack of sleep and overexcitement caught up with him. Not to mention his increasingly tenuous hold on reality. Halfway through his Mississippi Lecture (which he usually gave with a high degree of cogency) about how Hemingway was downriver from Twain, and almost all of twentieth-century American fiction was downriver from Hemingway, he realized he was telling the class that Papa had never written a great story about dogs, but if he had lived, he surely would have.
‘Something more nutritious than Marley and Me,’ he said, and laughed with unnerving good cheer.
He turned from the blackboard and saw twenty-two pairs of eyes looking at him with varying degrees of concern, perplexity, and amusement. He heard a whisper, low, but as clear as the beating of the old man’s heart to the ears of Poe’s mad narrator: ‘Smithy’s losin’ it.’
Smithy wasn’t, not yet, but there could be no doubt that he was in danger of losing it.
I refuse, he thought. I refuse, I refuse. And realized, to his horror, that he was actually muttering this under his breath.
The Henderson kid, who sat in the first row, had heard it. ‘Mr Smith?’ A hesitation. ‘Sir? Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘No. A touch of the bug, maybe.’ Poe’s gold-bug, he thought, and barely restrained himself from bursting into cackles of nutty laughter. ‘Class dismissed. Go on, get out of here.’
And, as they scrambled for the door, he had presence of mind enough to add: ‘Raymond Carver next week! Don’t forget! Where I’m Calling From!’
And thought: What else is there by Raymond Carver in the worlds of Ur? Is there one – or a dozen, or a thousand – where he quit smoking, lived to be seventy, and wrote another half a dozen books?
He sat down at his desk, reached for his briefcase with the pink Kindle inside, then pulled his hand back. He reached again, stopped himself again, and moaned. It was like a drug. Or a sexual obsession. Thinking of that made him think of Ellen Silverman, something he hadn’t done since discovering the Kindle’s hidden menus. For the first time since she’d walked out, Ellen had completely slipped his mind.
Ironic, isn’t it? Now I’m reading off the computer, Ellen, and I can’t stop.
‘I refuse to spend the rest of the day looking into that thing,’ he said, ‘and I refuse to go mad. I refuse to look, and I refuse to go mad. To look or go mad. I refuse both. I—’
But the pink Kindle was in his hand! He had taken it out even as he had been denying its power over him! When had he done that? And did he really intend to sit here in this empty classroom, mooning over it?
‘Mr Smith?’
The voice startled him so badly that he dropped the Kindle on his desk. He snatched it up at once and examined it, terrified it might be broken, but it was all right. Thank God.
‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’ It was the Henderson kid, standing in the doorway and looking concerned. This didn’t surprise Wesley much. If I saw me right now, I’d probably be concerned, too.
‘Oh, you didn’t startle me,’ Wesley said. This obvious lie struck him as funny, and he almost giggled. He clapped a hand over his mouth to hold it in.
‘What’s wrong?’ The Henderson kid took a step inside. ‘I think it’s more than a virus. Man, you look awful. Did you get some bad news, or something?’
Wesley almost told him to mind his business, peddle his papers, put an egg in his shoe and beat it, but then the terrified part of him that had been cowering in the farthest corner of his brain, insisting that the pink Kindle was a prank or the opening gambit of some elaborate con, decided to stop hiding and start acting.
If you really refuse to go mad, you better do something about this, it said. So how about it?
‘What’s your first name, Mr Henderson? It’s entirely slipped my mind.’
The kid smiled. A pleasant smile, but the concern was still in his eyes. ‘Robert, sir. Robbie.’
‘Well, Robbie, I’m Wes. And I want to show you something. Either you will see nothing – which means I’m deluded, and very likely suffering a nervous breakdown – or you will see something that completely blows your mind. Come to my office, would you?’
Henderson tried to ask questions as they crossed Moore’s mediocre quad. Wesley shook them off, but he was glad Robbie Henderson had come back, and relieved that the terrified part of his mind had taken the initiative and spoken up. He felt better about the Kindle – safer – than at any time since discovering the hidden menus. In a story, Robbie Henderson would see nothing and the protagonist would decide he was going insane. Or had already gone. Wesley almost hoped for that, because …
