M. T. Anderson (22 page)

Marty thought I was laughing at something else, so he got started, too, and pretty soon we were all laughing, and so everybody at the ice-cream store was looking at us. We’d just bought a tub and I was like,
If I eat this I’m going to puke,
and Marty went,
Unit, how the fuck did we get to an ice-cream store anyway?
and I was like,
Whoa, unit, shit, I hope you didn’t drive.
Some parents were moving their kids away from us, and Link went to them, “Boo! Okay? BOO!” He spread his hands. There was light coming from his fingers. I pointed and said, “Light.” Marty said, “Bright.” Link said, “Sight.” Marty said, “Night.” I said, “Kite.” Link said, “Have you ever thought about how a kite is held up by nothing?” Marty said it wasn’t nothing, fuckhead, it was air. Like, air. Like, as in fuckin’ air. Air.

We went out into the main part of the mall and went into a music store but it was really really really loud, so we went out? And we went down to a clothes store, and sat in the dressing room for a while. It was quiet there, except the banging on the door and asking us to leave. I showed Marty and Link the message from Violet with the list, the things she wanted to do before she died, and they read it, and Marty said,
Fuck, unit, fuck,
and Link said,
Whoa, that’s intense, she’s one weird bitch.
I said she wasn’t a bitch and he said that that’s not what he meant, that’s just what he said. Marty asked me why I wasn’t talking to her, and I said I was talking to her, I just hadn’t. He said that message was so fuckin’ sad it made him want to like fuckin’, you know, bawl his eyes out, and I said,
Do you think she’s being mean to me? In telling me about that part with me standing by her bed?
They said,
Mean how?
And there kept on being this stupid banging on the door, which woke me up several times in one minute. I was curled up in this ball, like doing a cannonball, but on carpeting, with my arms wrapped around my leg. There were some pants hanging on one of the hooks. We checked a few times, but we all had our pants on, so they must have belonged to the lady who left just before we came in. We thought it was funny that she hadn’t come back for them, and we laughed about that. It was good to be with friends. Violet asked me again what was going on, and I told her to shut the fuck up, but luckily, I told her that out loud, and she wasn’t there, but chatting.

We got up and opened the door, and there was this kid dressed in perfect clothes, like, with doughnut rings on his arms, and he asked us would we please leave as we appeared to be under the influence.

We went out and sat near the fountain, watching the water, which was interesting, because your vision slowed it down so much that you could see each individual droplet, which was fascinating, each one of them, falling down, and making a ring in the water, and that ring spreading with all of its tentacles reaching up and then dropping back, and then the water rocking. Violet asked me what I was doing, was I out of School™ yet.

Unit,
I said.
I’m way out of School™.

She was like,
How are you? I haven’t heard from you for days.

Violet,
I was like,
Violet. Violet. Violet.

Hey. What’s up?

Violet. Violet. Violet.

Are you in mal?

I’m coming over.

Hey. Yoo-hoo. Hey. Stop.

I can’t remember if my upcar’s here.

Don’t fly like this. You’re slammed. Have you heard about this Central American stuff? Two villages on the Gulf of Mexico, fifteen hundred people — they’ve just been found dead, covered in this black stuff.

“Gentlemen,” I said to the other two. “I got to go.”

Have you heard about it? This is big. It seems like an industrial disaster. The Global Alliance is blaming the U.S.

“I am hoping, sirs, that we brought separate vehicles for . . .” I said. “Things. Vehicles.”

Don’t fly right now,
she said.
Don’t fly. You’re meg jazzed.

No, I’m not.

You’re spewing a substream of junk characters all over the place. You’re completely unformatted. What are you doing? Why did you do this? Just stay there.

I’m at the mall. In mal. At the mall. In mal. At the mall.

Oh. Oh, god. Don’t do anything. Wait for it to wear down.

I’m coming to see you. I feel. I feel bad.

You are such a shithead. You don’t know what happened to me this morning. And the news. Titus — this morning . . . I can’t believe in the middle of all this, you went and got malfunctioned. You are such an asshole and a shithead.

“On level three,” said Marty, who I discovered was still sitting in front of me. “Of the parking lot. Next to mine. You okay to drive?”

“I’ll do it autopilot,” I said.

“You sure?”

I said, “The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh, through the . . .” I scratched my hair.

Marty nodded. Link started singing “Ho, Ho, Elflings, Santa’s on His Way,” which was the completely wrong song.

I went up to the parking lot. I looked for level three. The in mal was starting to wear off a little. It was mainly just euphoria now. I found my upcar next to Marty’s. Marty’s upcar was kind of touched and wrinkled by a pillar.

I flew. Once I got up the droptube, I put the upcar in autopilot. I was almost asleep. I dreamed about sweater vests, mainly.
Spreadable cheese! But with a difference!

. . . after the Prime Minister of the Global Alliance issued a statement that, quote, “the physical and biological integrity of the earth relies at this point upon the dismantling of American-based corporate entities, whatever the cost.” It is thought that the American annexation of the moon as the fifty-first state . . .

Into her droptube, and it found its way to her level, which was on the bottom, or maybe just toward the bottom, her suburb was.

I flew to her street. She was waiting outside her house. She had her hair up in this really nice way. I pulled up in her driveway and left the upcar hovering. I opened the door and stumbled to hang out of it.

I was like, “Unette.”

“Don’t go inside. My dad will know.”

“Big unsteady. Biiiiig unsteady.”

“You are such a shithead. Okay. Get down from there. Let’s spend some time on the lawn.”

I climbed down. I had to touch the grass with my heel like all these times to make sure it was still hard. She took my hand.

“Your list,” I said. “It will just take about five days.”

“What?”

“Look at your list. It will just take about five days. I mean, for us to do everything. Well, okay, the list before the part, you know, where you become from Fort Worth.”

“Fort Wayne. Activity twelve.”

“Huh?”

“Activity twelve. Actually being from Fort Wayne.”

“Activity twelve is out of the question.”

“I’m glad you came back. I was worried you weren’t going to.”

“We’re going to do it all, unette. We’re going to find the mountains.”

“Hey. Hey. Calm down. Have you heard the news? It’s awful.”

“I think maybe if I sleep again, we can start by going dancing. We better wait for the weekend to go to the mountains. I have School™. You don’t.”

“No. I just have mourning.”

“What?”

“My father sitting around, staring at me. He’s stopped teaching me. He says he’ll tell me whatever I want to know, but that there’s no reason for lessons anymore.”

I felt like what she was telling me was real important, but the trees were so green, and I could smell the grass near my face. She told me that her father asked her what she wanted to know, and she asked him whether there was a soul, but I just put my face against the ground, and the dirt was cool, and the grass was tickling my nose, and I fell asleep, and heard the news talking through my eyes.

While I slept on her lawn, she sent me a message.
This is from earlier today,
it said.
The FeedTech response. Check out the attachment.

It was a full feed-sim of Violet’s sensations. It explained a lot. It was memories from that morning. I tried them on.

I was Violet, walking down the stairs in her house. There was a poster next to me with a picture of an Asian lady holding up an old machine. I was whistling some stupid bore-core tune. I took the steps two at a time.

Suddenly, I couldn’t move my legs, I couldn’t even scream, I just tried to grab on to the banister. I was falling backward. I hit the walls with my hand as hard as possible and then my face hit the carpet on the stair and I was sliding down on my butt. The rug on each stair was burning the side of my face, it was like underwater.

There was no space in me for breathing.

I lifted my head up and dropped it. I was lying on the floor of the downstairs. It was dark because I hadn’t turned on the light. I was trying to breathe.

Trying to breathe.

That was when Nina appeared.

I clutched at the air.

She chatted,
Hi, I’m Nina, your FeedTech customer assistance representative. Have you noticed panic can lead to big-time underarm odor? A lot of girls do. No sweat! Why not check out the brag collection of perspiration-control devices at the DVS Superpharmacy Hypersite? But that’s not why I’m here, Violet.

First little breaths, then bigger ones, then finally I could feel my face and my back hurting, and I had my wind back. My legs were in funny places and I couldn’t feel them at all.

Nina said,
I’m here to inform you that FeedTech Corp has decided to turn down your petition for complimentary feed repair and/or replacement.

“No,” said Violet/me out loud. “No, fuck you. Please. Please. No.”

We have also tried to interest other corporate investors in your case.

Violet was like,
Please. Please. I need help.
We couldn’t move our legs. We were lying there, and we couldn’t move them, and Nina was saying,
We tried our best to interest a variety of possible corporate sponsors, but we regret to tell you that you were turned down.

What? Why?

We’re sorry, Violet Durn. Unfortunately, FeedTech and other investors reviewed your purchasing history, and we don’t feel that you would be a reliable investment at this time. No one could get what we call a “handle” on your shopping habits, like for example you asking for information about all those wow and brag products and then never buying anything. We have to inform you that our corporate investors were like, “What’s doing with this?” Sorry — I’m afraid you’ll just have to work with your feed the way it is.

Violet lay back down in the dark, her legs starting to sting. She called out loud for her dad. She was sobbing.

Maybe, Violet, if we check out some of the great bargains available to you through the feednet over the next six months, we might be able to create a consumer portrait of you that would interest our investment team. How ’bout it, Violet Durn? Just us, you and me — girls together! Shop till you stop and drop!

Go away,
Violet said in a burst over the feed.
Go away. Go — away.

Nina smiled.
I’ve got a galaxy of super products we can try together!

Please. I’m alone in the house and I fell down. Please go away. Please don’t help.

That’s where Violet clipped off the end of her memory when she sent it to me. Her, lying in the dark, on the ground, in the basement, waiting for her father to come and help.

Feeling the pain in her head. Wondering if it was just from falling, or if it was the feed rusting somehow, as if she could feel it, rusting brown in her brain.

When I woke up, I had a headache. We didn’t go dancing. It was already getting dark in her neighborhood, and her father was staring out the window at her, and I felt like a jerk, because it was pretty clear he was thinking,
My daughter is spending these last like precious hours with some malfunctioned asshole.

She was sitting next to me on the grass. Upcars were shooting over, back and forth, people were commuting. It was the end of the day.

She asked whether I wanted to stay for dinner, and I was feeling bad about coming over and embarrassing her, so I said no. The feed was trying to mop up my headache. I could feel it doing nerve blocks. There was a message in my inbox from Sweden saying they hoped I had enjoyed Cow-kicker, please come again. There was no way I was trying that shit again, because it had a mean attack and a bastard of a decay. I felt awful.