M. T. Anderson (14 page)

Later, when we were flying back in the dark, lit up by the dashboard, she asked me, “If you could die any way you wanted, how would you like to?”

I said, “Why you asking?”

She said, “I’ve just been thinking about it a lot.”

I thought for a while. Then I said, “I’d like to have this like, this intense pleasure in every one of my senses, all of them so full up that they just burst me open, and the feed like going a mile a second, so that it’s like every channel is just jammed with excitement, and it’s going faster and faster and better and better, until just —
BAM!
That’s it, I guess. I’d like to die from some kind of sense overload.”

She nodded.

I said, “I’m going to do that when I get real old and boring.”

She said, “Yeah. You know, I think death is shallower now. It used to be a hole you fell into and kept falling. Now it’s just a blank.”

We flew over a lake. The bottom had been covered with a huge blue ad that was lit up and magnified by the water, which had a picture of a smiling brain and broadcasted “Dynacom Inc.” when you looked at it.

I was like, “What are you asking for?”

She said, “It makes good times even better when you know they’re going to end. Like grilled vegetables are better because some of them are partly soot.”

I wanted to point out that that was probably because her dad made them, but that if someone good makes them, they’re probably not partly soot, but I didn’t think that was her point, about vegetables, so I just kept flying, and I said, “This was a good time?” and she said, “One of the best,” and I said, “So when it’s time for them to do a pleasure overload on me, are you going to be around to give the order to cut the juice?”

She looked at me, surprised. For a second, she was like completely confused. It was like I’d said something else.

Then she saw what I meant, and she laughed like I’d given her a present. She said, “If you’ll let me, sure. Sure I’ll be there.” She leaned over, really sudden, and kissed me on the cheek. Then she whispered, “I’ll be the first one, dumpling, to pull your plug.”

The way she said it, pull your plug, it sounded kind of sexy.

Right then, everything seemed perfect.

I dropped her off, and we planned other things, and did a secret handshake. I drove back toward home listening to some brag new triumph screams by British storm ’n’ chunder bands. When I got home, the lights were out, but they came on for me. I walked through the empty house, and got ready for bed, and lay there thinking about how perfect everything was.

I could feel my family all around me. I could trace their feeds faintly, because they weren’t shielding them. Smell Factor was dreaming while a fun-site with talking giraffes sang him songs and showed him wonderful things in different shapes. My parents were upstairs going in mal, which they wouldn’t want me to know, but which I could tell, because they chose a really flashy, expensive malfunction site that was easy to trace. They were winding down together, I guess. Like, you can only go on being completely fugue-stressed for so long without winding down.

I could feel all of my family asleep in their own way around me, in the empty house, in our bubble, where we could turn on and off the sun and the stars, and the feed spoke to me real quiet about new trends, about pants that should be shorter or longer, and bands I should know, and games with new levels and stalactites and fields of diamonds, and friends of many colors were all drinking Coke, and beer was washing through mountain passes, and the stars of the
Oh? Wow! Thing!
had got lesions, so lesions were hip now, real hip, and mine looked like a million dollars. The sun was rising over foreign countries, and underwear was cheap, and there were new techniques to reconfigure pecs, abs, and nipples, and the President of the United States was certain of the future, and at Weatherbee & Crotch there was a sale banner and nice rugby shirts and there were pictures of freckled prep-school boys and girls in chinos playing on the beach and dry humping in the eel grass, and as I fell asleep, the feed murmured to me again and again:
All shall be well . . . and all shall be well . . . and all manner of things shall be well.

Later that night, I had nightmares.

Someone was poking my head with a broom handle. They tried to put it like in my ear. They said, “Whispering makes a narrow place narrower.”

Then came all these pictures, and I was seeing all over the world, and there were explanations, but I was still asleep, and I couldn’t figure them out. I saw khakis that were really cheap, only $150, but I didn’t like the stitching, and then I saw them torn and there was blood on them. It was a riot on a street, and people were screaming in some other language, they were in khakis or jeans and T-shirts, and they were throwing stones and bottles, and the police were moving forward on horses, and a man in the crowd waved a gun, and then the firing started. They were in front of factories, and clouds of gas drifted through them and the American flags they were burning started to spark big, and the gas got darker and darker, and the people sped up, like a joke, grabbing at their necks and waving and sitting and slapping the ground. They fell down. I saw a sign with a picture of a head with a little devil sitting in the brain, inside the skull, with these like energy bolts coming out of his mouth.

I saw fields and fields of black, it was this disgusting black shit, spread for miles. I saw walls of concrete fall from the sky and crush little wood houses. I saw a furry animal trying to stand up on its legs but the back ones were broken or not working, and it dragged itself with the front ones, whimpering, through someplace with gray dust, and needles coming out of the sand. Its jaws were open. I saw long cables going through the sea. I saw girls sewing things, little girls in big halls. I saw people praying over missiles. I smelled the summer in this rocky place, and the summer smelled like electrical burns. I saw a kid looking at me, he was a kid from another culture, where they wear dresses, and there were all of these shadows all over his face, these amazing shadows, and I thought it was a really cool picture, to get all of those weird shadows somehow, but with nothing making them, and finally, I realized that they weren’t shadows, they were bruises, and then the end of a gun, it’s called the butt, it came down and hit him in the face and then all the pictures were over.

Hey,
Violet said.
Hey. Was that you?

I was like,
What? What’s the thing? With . . . the . . . ?

Did I wake you up?

Okay, could . . . is she . . . ?

Hey — look lively. Someone was just nosing around my feed, checking out my specs and sending me all these images.

It was probably a corp. Don’t . . . Oh, unit, I can’t believe you completely jolted me. I was having this weird-ass dreaming.

I don’t think it was a corp. They didn’t have a tag.

Don’t you have a shield?

They got right wham through the shield.

Oh, unit. Oh, unit. I’m . . . Do you know how asleep I was?

I called FeedTech Customer Assistance. I’m going to report this. Something’s happening.

Oh, okay. Shit. Okay. So can I go like back to sleep?

You sure it wasn’t you?

Unette — it wasn’t me. I was so asleep, it was like . . . It was like ten asleep factor.

They can trace who it was, I bet.

Yeah. Maybe.

You didn’t see any of this? The images?

What of?

There’s someone else here. Can you feel it?

Who?

Someone else. They just tapped in, just a second ago.

A voice said,
Hi, this is Nina from FeedTech Customer Assistance.

Thank god.

Are you tired of the same old shoulders? Why not try extensions?

Violet was like,
Someone just approached my feed. They were checking the specs and stats.

And what can I do to help you this morning?

You need to follow them and see, somehow, see who it was. Quickly . . . Quickly!

Violet, I’d love to respond personally to each and every request for assistance, but unfortunately I’m unable to, due to increased customer demand, so I’ve sent this automated intelligence Nina to talk to you instead.

No, you don’t understand.

Looking at your recent purchase history, I notice that you’ve expressed interest in a lot of products you haven’t bought. Are you having trouble making up your mind with so much cool stuff to choose from?

Can you please connect me with a live operator?

Violet, I think I can help you come up with products that really say, “You.” They’ll shout, “You! You! You!” as if it was always Saturday! Oh, I know! You’re almost a woman, and you want things that are totally big Violet! That’s where I can help!

All right,
chatted Violet.
No thanks. Thanks. I’m done.

Sometimes choices are hard to make.

Fuck off.

This automated intelligence Nina can help you throw away the bad — and find the good! I can help you find the great products that are uniquely the woman known as “Ms. Violet Durn”!

Fuck off!

Okay, it doesn’t seem like you want to talk right now. So I’m going back to my little hole. There, I’ll be sorting and sifting, and trying to make life as easy and interesting as possible for you and your friend and all of our excellent customers at FeedTech — making your dreams into hard fact™.

Okay. Thanks. Thanks a big lot.

And thank you, Violet Durn of 1421 Applebaum Avenue. I’ll look forward to helping you again, whenever you —

Can I go back to sleep?
I asked.
I had these really weird dreams.

Violet seemed kind of without any energy. She was like,
Go ahead. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

We said good night. She was slow. I turned over and curled up, and the pictures playing in my head now were better, not so violent or sucky. They were more of women in turtlenecks petting my hair. I heard some music. I fell asleep. It was a deep sleep, and I didn’t wake up until morning.