The Pedestal by Daniel Wimberley Read Free Book Online Page A

alerting me that I’ve just been fined for this indiscretion.
    Dang it.
     

     
    It’s very late and pleasantly dark with just a sliver of moonlight seeping between my drapes. Despite two glasses of Merlot and a rather slow mystery on my retinal display, I can’t sleep. I could remedy this easily, if I really wanted to. I have several sleep-aid add-ons at my disposal, any of which could have me sawing logs almost instantly. The truth is, I think I’m enjoying the struggle, dwelling on Adrian like a teenage boy who’s just seen his first bra.
    Did I mention she called this evening? I guess she isn’t just a dream after all.
     

 

     
     
    Arthur was a master storyteller, when the mood struck him—a cool glass of wine on a warm night generally got him going, in the right company. The man could conjure fiction from thin air like some sort of magician. Most of his tales stemmed from life before he was even born, the era he affectionately called the good old days —when a man carried his fortune in a billfold and anyone of sound mind could manually operate a motorized vehicle. These nostalgic accounts, while wildly entertaining, were too terrific to believe. Even more fascinating than the stories themselves was the excitement with which Arthur talked about life before the nexus—his mannerisms, the way his eyes would lose focus as he lapsed into a state of pure longing—it’s as if he had fallen in love with a time he never knew. Though he never spoke the words, I sometimes got the impression he believed the nexus has ultimately caused more harm than good, which is ridiculous, of course—downright blasphemous.
    Nevertheless, Arthur’s stories have foddered my daydreams since I was a kid. I don’t fantasize about a futuristic society where my every whim is catered to, where a NanoPrint add-on can flavor the blandest gruel, or perhaps make me irresistible to women—well, that last one comes and goes. I dream of a land where vegetation still grows according to nature’s design, where people still know how to cook and engineer contraptions in their workshops. Where being a neighbor meant more than physically residing next door to a stranger. I dream of a world in which people are prized in part for their roots. Surely there’s really nothing wrong with having cultural differences; dismissing our ethnicity doesn’t make it any less a part of us, even if our entire global society is ostensibly devoted to quashing the concept of heritage—in the name of peace, of course.
    Anyway, dreams are just dreams. Thanks to the nexus, though, I have access to an endless supply of old movies in which these fantasies are repeatedly lived out vicariously across the backs of my retinas—or on my Viseon walls, when I have company.
    Incidentally, I know I’ve finally found my soul mate when Adrian one day confesses that her guiltiest pleasure also happens to be old movies. I mean, seriously—what are the odds? I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve met in my life that have seen a single movie released before 2050. I feel like I’ve just won the lottery or something!
    Together, Adrian and I admire the antiques of cinema, enjoying the palpability of real people on film, projecting from a single wall—long before 4D processing dragged us into a movie when the movie was too weak to pull itself off on its own, even before film stardom made the shift from live personalities to digital avatars—until I fall asleep in her arms.
     

     
    Generally speaking, I don’t normally wake up with the urge to seek out my dead best friend’s ex-wife. There was a time when I really liked Mitzy, when I cared for her a great deal, in fact. But when she left Arthur high and dry, I quickly grew to despise her, dismissing each fond memory of her when I could, characterizing the rest as moments of normative fiction. It wasn’t just that she and Arthur could no longer see eye to eye—that sort of thing happens to the best of us—it’s