F Paul Wilson - Sims 02 by The Portero Method (v5.0) Read Free Book Online Page B

“What right?” and pointed to the snarling woman’s
handbag.
                 “Balducci, right?”
                 Her only reply was a stunned look.
                 “Sim made!” Ellis pivoted and jabbed
a finger at the insignia on a man’s windbreaker. “Tammy Montain—sim made!” As
he slipped deeper into the throng, pointing out all the popular labels that
used sim labor, crying “Sim made!” over and over, he knew he should be careful.
But these people angered him, and not simply because they’d interrupted his
lunch.
                 Finally he was back where he’d
started and could see by their expressions and averted eyes that he’d taken the
steam out of them.
                 “How can you be part of the solution
when you’re part the problem?” he said, knowing it was a cliché but knowing too
that it would hit home. “You really want to ‘free the sims’? The fastest way is
to boycott any company that uses them as labor. Companies understand one thing:
the bottom line. If that’s falling off because they use sim labor, then they’re
going to stop using sim labor. It’s as simple as that. But you can’t show up
here wearing sim-made clothes and shoes and accessories and expect anyone with
a brain to take you seriously. If you’re sincere about this you’re going to
have to make some sacrifices, you’re going to have to let the Joneses have the
more prestigious sim-made car, the more fashionable sim-made sweater.
Otherwise, you’re just blowing smoke.”
                 Ellis stepped back inside and closed
the door behind him. He had no idea what the protesters would do next, but the
question was made moot by the arrival of half a dozen cops who began herding
them off.
                 He returned to the table to find his
family staring at him.
                 “Dad,” Robbie said, wide-eyed. “You
were great!”
                 “Ellis?” Judy said. Ellis noticed a
tremor in her voice, and were those…?
                 Yes, she had tears in her eyes. “For
a moment there you were like…like you used to be.”
                 He looked into her moist blue eyes.
God, he wanted her back, more than anything in the world.
                 “I don’t know if I can ever be like I
used to be, Judy,” he said, knowing his soul was scarred beyond repair. “But if
things go right, if a few things happen the way I hope they will, I should be
able to present a reasonable facsimile.”
                 “But Dad,” Robbie was saying, “you
were, like, telling them how to, like, so screw your own company.”
                 Ellis put on a pensive expression.
“You know, Robbie, now that you mention it, I believe I was. I’ll have to be
more careful in the future.”
                 “Will sims ever evolve into humans?”
Julie said, looking up at him with her mother’s huge blue eyes.
                 Ellis stared at her, momentarily dumb.
                 “She’s studying evolution in school,”
Judy offered.
                 Ellis cleared his throat and
controlled the sudden urge to run from the room. He’d rather be off the subject
of sims— this was Robbie’s birthday after all—and
especially off their evolutionary genetics, but how could he not answer the
jewel of his life?
                 “Do you think they will?”
                 “Well,” she said slowly, “we humans
evolved from chimps, and sims are a mix of chimps and
humans, so won’t sims evolve into humans someday?”
                 “No,” Ellis said, choosing his words
carefully. “You see, humans didn’t evolve from chimps; chimps and humans are
primates and both evolved from a common primate ancestor, an ape that had
evolved from the monkeys.”
                 “A gorilla?”
                 “No.