Radio Sphere by Devin terSteeg Read Free Book Online Page A

supplies of nutra—meals? Because: Do people enjoy every day brown skies and every night enforced curfew, no running water, minimal electricity rations, and crazy radiation addled minds doing whatever they please? The worlds we’d seen in art and movies had much more ingrained possibility than ours. Things seemed bleak on the best days. That’s why it was easy for anyone to believe Chad had jumped.
    I’d stolen my father’s torch. 35 He had other weapons, several in fact, so he wouldn’t miss this one. I figured the torch had the most utility. I knew exactly where Chad had gone, Weeks Cemetery. I knew of the graveyard since the family wanted to bury Grandpa at Weeks, but of course couldn’t.
    I was half way there before realizing how mindlessly I’d rushed after Chad, selfishly, on this stolen, dirty, mud coated bike.
    The back tire wasn’t inflated properly, the handle—basket kept my gun from falling and after a few hurried miles I stopped caring how dirty the contraption was. I brought no food, just my thoughts of food once my belly began to rumble. I brought no shelter, which somehow made me miss my apartment and the thought of camping out made me even miss the couch.
    I envisioned my old people sitting in their Jesus room with a modest fire lit, holding each other close on that chilly evening, discussing their favorite passages from Psalms and thanking each other kindly for their input. I imagined they had individual favorite lines, had them embroidered on pillows, but they accepted each other without a wavering thought or feeling.
    I imagined some brat playing my Yoshi’s Island, but when I realized they didn’t have a way to recharge the battery; I felt bad for them. I wondered about what kind of person they were: boy or girl, nice or mean, good or bad.
    I realized a growing rumble within me and tried to ignore it. I realized I didn’t know what I was doing and that I couldn’t admit to myself why I was doing it.
    My head ached, and I grew more and more irritable about everything. I wanted my Yoshi’s Island back, and Chad; why did you have to disappear when you could have stayed home? You could have been safe and warm at your place or mine. There was no need for you or I to have gone out to the unknown. I regretted it all. Why couldn’t we have been honest? Why couldn’t everything just be wonderful, and simple, and easy, and mine?
    I needed to concentrate on my task, but I couldn’t; all I had were scatter brained imaginings that got blurrier and blurrier the more I looked into them.
    It took me over six hours of imaginings and realizings until I got to that damn cemetery. Forever and not long at all, which made me realize the danger of the situation and that I shouldn’t be day dreaming there; I hadn’t noticed my follower at all.
    “Are we there yet?” He asked in a friendly, natural way.
    I almost shot him, in the face, but— click click— the safety was on.
    “Get away from me!” I demanded, and flipped to red. 36 Even beat—brains know what that means. “Don’t get any closer!” Had he been following me since the train?
    “I brought you apples,” he said while holding out a bucket full of strangely shaped red things the size of small fists that looked as if they belonged next to a ginger jar in fiction. 37 My stomach was audible. I was on the verge of passing out.
    “You followed me to give me that?”
    “Saraswati gave me them to share with you. She told me you were here and would need help.”
    “This is food?” I knew I shouldn’t easily trust my stalker and attacker.
    Did I have it in me to kill him if I needed to?
    “Totally natural, and clean, and present.”
    I was hungry. I’d never seen a real red food, can you imagine, eating red food?
    His extended arm place an apple before my eyes as I collapsed to the ground with a huff.
    “I don’t want anything from you. Keep back.” I limply held the torch pointed in his general direction— it’s hard to miss with a