Assured Destruction by Michael F. Stewart Read Free Book Online Page A

like drawing,” I add.
    He flushes red again.
    “I mean, I saw your notebook. It’s covered.”
    “If Harry didn’t do it, then who hacked Harry’s Facebook profile?” he asks. I catch his eye, but can’t read his expression. Concerned? Suspicious? How many other people out there are searching for the answer? How many are going to put two and two together and have it equal me? I shrug in response.
    We’re walking through Brewer Park. Kids slip down slides and monkey about a jungle gym, watched by their parents or nannies. It’s cool and I feel fresher and free. I want to check my various profiles and announce on Twitter how amazing it all is, but I resist. Jonny doesn’t appear to have a phone even. Decidedly low tech.
    “You ever try drawing with a tablet?” I ask.
    He shakes his head.
    I’d bet he could do amazing things with a tablet.
    As we near our destination, he slows to a shuffle as if he’s just remembered something and is delaying the inevitable. I know where we’re headed: the Underpass. It’s this giant concrete canvas for all of the graffiti artists. A legal canvas. I’ve seen it a couple of times. Each year House of PainT holds a hip–hop competition and these amazing dancers come out and spin on their heads while artists fill the air with paint spray.
    I soon find myself walking ahead of him.
    “What’s up?” I ask over my shoulder. I can’t think what Jonny would be regretting in coming here.
    “Just not sure I’m totally in the mood to paint today,” he says.
    I raise my eyebrow. This from the guy who wrote that if he doesn’t paint, he’ll explode?
    “We’re already here,” I say and jog past the wall of the Underpass. When I see it, I freeze.
    There are three stacked layers of graffiti. Each canvas is about as far across as I can reach and as high as I can stand on my toes. All told, forty or fifty wicked murals of signatures, aliens, dragons, cartoons. And one … one that looks an awful lot like me. Except I’m a cyborg. I’ve got a camera lens for an eye and these fiber optics sprouting from my head. I look so cool. Maybe firewire hair isn’t as bad as I thought.
    “Sorry, well.” He doesn’t even try to suggest it wasn’t him or that it’s not me. He rummages in his pack and pulls a can with a white cap. “I can cover it.”
    I shake my head. “No, I mean. No!” I yank my phone from my pocket and thumb the camera. “This is amazing.”
    I snap a picture and then I wave him into the frame. It looks like Cyborg Jan is kissing his cheek but he doesn’t notice. Then I dash in and hold the camera out to take a pic of all three of us. I don’t have five-foot-long arms so we have to snuggle close to be in the shot and our shoulders are pressed together and the day doesn’t feel cool at all despite the damp beneath the bridge and the river running past. I take three more pics than I really need.
    “Thanks,” I say.
    “You want to paint?” He hands over a spray can, and I chuckle.
    “Can’t be serious,” I scoff. The art around me goes from serviceable to it should be in a museum . “I draw stick people.”
    “Why else are you here?”
    Why, indeed. Would I be here if I hadn’t read his journal?
    He takes back the can of paint and reaches into his knapsack to produce a can with a black cap. “So draw stick people.” He hands me the new can and points to a spot further down that is just a gray area.
    Every month or so a van comes by and paints over all of the art so that it’s a new fresh canvas. It’s both sad and very Zen, like those monks who create patterns from colored sand which the wind then carries away.
    I haven’t been frightened for a while, but I am now as I wander up to the big gray spot. I pop the cap off the can and shake it like I see Jonny shaking his, but he’s not watching me, he’s focused on his own gray spot. I reach out and place a tentative blob in the centre. It starts to drip. And now I have a dripping blob in the middle. I