M. T. Anderson by Feed Read Free Book Online Page A

around in the afternoons, he sat in his closet watching
Top Quark,
with it broadcasting all over the place, so I watched it, too, because there was nothing else to do really but watch
Top Quark
and eat Chipwiches.
    Cap’n Top Quark, that whole planet is so sad that I think they’ll need a whole lot of good thoughts and hugging!
    That’s why, lickety-split, and we’re on our way. Charm Quark, prepare the Friend Cannon. Boson, turn our biggest, orangest sails toward Cryos, on the planet Sadalia.
    Aye, aye, sir! You’ve made me one happy particle, sir!
    Smell Factor had one of those birds now, one of the ones that didn’t fly or sing, the metal ones, so I could tell they were meg yesterday. Stuff always starts with people who are cool and in college, and then works down, until when the six-year-olds get it, it’s like, who cares? The birds must have been yesterday for a while, because I didn’t see them in any ads, and even Smell Factor was leaving his around and not clutching it.
    A few days later, I went out on errands, because really, there was no problem anymore. It felt good to get out and to see all of the upcars in tubes and in the parking lots, just normal stuff, like people walking and talking on their feeds, and kids hanging out and shit. There were all the suburbs stacked on top of each other, like Apple Crest and Fox Hollow, and I would just fly through the tubes in the suburbs in my parents’ upcar, looking at all the houses and the lawns, each one in its own pod, and everything was all like neat. Then I’d go home and sit on my bed and watch the feed, and everything seemed normal.
    It’s times like this that I’m real glad I have friends. They say friends are worth your weight in gold.
    We had a party at the end of the week over at Quendy’s, because her parents were off choking somewhere. That was when everyone was having those choking parties. I mean, it was completely midlife crisis.
    It was the first time I saw Violet since we were on the moon. It was brag because she didn’t have a ride, and I could borrow my parents’ upcar, so I got to fly over and pick her up. I met her at a mall near her house. The mall was right on the surface, and you could see the sky through the dome. She was waiting there and looking up at the sun hitting one of the department stores.
    Violet lived in a suburb that was a few hundred miles away from my suburb, so while we drove we had a little time to talk before we got to the party.
    It was great because we had music on our feeds, and it was the same music, so I knew she was hearing the same notes that I was hearing, and our heads were like moving together, and she put her hand near the lift lever, so when I got to the exit tube and went to lift us, her hand was there, and our fingers closed over the lift lever, and we lifted it together, and were flung up into the sky.
    We were going along pretty fast, and going around towers and shit, and she asked me, “What’ll a party be like?”
    “Like a party.”
    “I haven’t been to many.”
    “You . . .” I shrugged. “You do this . . . I don’t know. It’s fun. It’s a party. What do you do instead of parties?”
    “My friends and I are all home-schooled, so we’re a mixed bag. Bettina’s mother has us come over and weave ponchos.”
    “You don’t go to School™?”
    “Alf’s parents teach us how to breechload their antiaircraft gun.”
    “Whoa. Can you show me?”
    “Here’s the surprising thing: It’s all in the wrists.”
    “Unit.”
    “Yeah. Unit. God, I’m so excited to be going to a real party.”
    “Oh yeah?”
    “Will it be like it is on the feed?”
    I patted her hand. “Yeah. I mean, dumber, but yeah.”
    “Why, this makes me feel like a special girl. The specialest girl in the world.”
    She raised up her hand, and we knocked knuckles together.
    She leaned back in her seat. She pulled some seat belt out and then let it roll back in. We were both thoughtful for a minute. There were some