Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card Read Free Book Online Page A

my mom taught me how when I was ten.”
    â€œYour mom taught you how to blow smoke rings? When you were ten? ”
    The kid laughed. “This is tobacco country, Mr. Fletcher, and my people are all tobacco people. My mama used to blow smoke in my face when I was a baby, so I’d grow up knowing the difference between the cheap weed in Reynolds cigarettes and the good stuff in E&Es.”
    Step hoped that his shudder didn’t show. When he and DeAnne were house-hunting, they had had to rule out the whole eastern edge of town, where the Eldredge & Emerson Tobacco Company kept the air filled with the pungence of tar and nicotine, like being trapped forever on an elevator with someone who put out his cigarette just before stepping on.
    What business did Mormons have moving into tobacco country? Especially since DeAnne was so allergic to tobacco smoke that it made her throw up even when she wasn’t pregnant. The idea of somebody blowing smoke in a baby’s face made Step angry. There’s things you just don’t do to children, if you have any decency. And teaching a ten-year-old to blow smoke rings . . .
    â€œI don’t want to sound like some kind of dumb fan or nothing, Mr. Fletcher, but I thought Hacker Snack was the best game anybody ever did on the Atari.”
    â€œThanks,” said Step.
    â€œOf course, your A.I. routines really sucked.”
    It hit Step like a blow, that forced change from shyly, genially accepting a compliment to suddenly having to take criticism.
    â€œA.I.?” he asked.
    â€œYou know—artificial intelligence.”
    â€œI know what A.I. stands for,” said Step. “I just don’t recall ever trying to incorporate any of it into my game.”
    â€œI mean, you know, the way the bad guys home in on the player,” he said. “The machine intelligence routines. Way too predictable. It stayed too easy to dodge them until you finally beat the player down with sheer speed. Like bludgeoning them to death.”
    â€œHey, thanks,” said Step.
    â€œNo, really, I loved the game, I just wished you had kept the bad guys moving in a kind of semi-random way, so the player wouldn’t catch on that they were homing in. So you couldn’t quite be sure where they were going to go. Then the game would have stayed fun into much higher levels, and you would never have had to include that killer speed level where you can’t outrun the bad guys.”
    â€œThere is no killer speed level,” said Step.
    â€œReally?”
    â€œNot if you find all the back doors out of the different rooms.”
    It was the kid’s turn to look embarrassed. “Back doors?”
    â€œHacker Snack isn’t an arcade game, it’s a puzzle game,” said Step. “Don’t tell me you were trying to outrun those little suckers at every level.”
    â€œI got up to half a million points doing it that way,” said the kid.
    â€œThat is the most incredible thing I ever heard. You should’ve been creamed before you got twenty thousand points. You must have the reflexes of a bat.”
    The kid grinned. “I’m the best damn video wizard you’ll ever meet,” he said. “You got to show me those back doors.”
    â€œAnd you got to show me what you mean about randomizing.”
    â€œCome on inside, I’ve got your game up on one of my machines, just in case you came by.”
    â€œYou got an Atari here?”
    â€œHey, there’s not a soul here who doesn’t know the Atari is ten times the computer the 64 is. The only reason we’re all writing 64 software is that millions of them are getting bought and the Atari is still going for like a thousand dollars which means nobody buys it.”
    Step followed him into the building. “How come you came outside to smoke?” he asked. “I notice people smoking in most of the offices.”
    â€œNot in mine,” said the kid. “I