Ur by Stephen King Read Free Book Online

ripping
Deliverance
out of his hands and hurling across the room. And why? Because she hated books? No, because he hadn’t been listening when she needed him to. Hadn’t it been Fritz Leiber, the great fantasist and science fiction writer, who had called books “the scholar’s mistress?” And when Ellen needed him, hadn’t he had been in the arms of his other lover, the one who made no demands (other than on his vocabulary) and always took him in?

    “Wes? What were those other things on the UR FUNCTIONS menu?”

    At first Wesley didn’t know what the kid was talking about. Then he remembered that there
had
been a couple of other items. He’d been so fixated on the BOOKS sub-menu that he had forgotten the other two.

    “Well, let’s see,” he said, and turned the Kindle on. Every time he did this, he expected either the EXPERIMENTAL menu or the UR FUNCTIONS menu to be gone—that would also happen in a fantasy story or a
Twilight Zone
episode—but they were still right there.

    “UR NEWS ARCHIVE and UR LOCAL ,” Robbie said. “Huh. UR LOCAL’s under construction. Better watch out, traffic fines double.”

    “What?”

    “Never mind, just goofin witcha. Try the news archive.”

    Wesley selected it. The screen blanked. After a few moments, a message appeared.

    WELCOME TO THE NEWS ARCHIVE!
    ONLY THE NEW YORK
TIMES
IS AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME
    YOUR PRICE IS $1.00/4 DOWNLOADS
    $10/50 DOWNLOADS
    $100/800 DOWNLOADS
    SELECT WITH CURSOR YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE BILLED

    Wesley looked at Robbie, who shrugged. “I can’t tell you what to do, but if
my
credit card wasn’t being billed—in this world, anyway—I’d spend the hundred.”

    Wesley thought he had a point, although he wondered what the other Wesley (if indeed there was one) was going to think when he opened his next MasterCard bill. He highlighted the $100/800 line and pushed the select button. This time the Paradox Laws didn’t come up. Instead, the new message invited him to CHOOSE DATE AND UR. USE APPROPRIATE FIELDS .

    “You do it,” he said, and pushed the Kindle across the kitchen table to Robbie. This was getting easier to do, and he was glad. An obsession about keeping the Kindle in his own hands was a complication he didn’t need, understandable as it was.

    Robbie thought for a moment, then typed in January 21, 2009. In the Ur field he selected 1000000. “Ur one million,” he said. “Why not?” And pushed the button.

    The screen went blank, then produced a message reading ENJOY YOUR SELECTION! A moment later the front page of the New York
Times
appeared. They bent over the screen, reading silently, until there was a knock at the door.

    “That’ll be Don,” Wesley said. “I’ll let him in.”

    Robbie Henderson didn’t reply. He was still transfixed.

    “Getting cold out there,” Don said as he came in. “And there’s a wind knocking all the leaves off the—” He studied Wesley’s face. “What? Or should I say, what now?”

    “Come and see,” Wesley said.

    Don went into Wesley’s book-lined living room-study, where Robbie remained bent over the Kindle. The kid looked up and turned the screen so Don could see it. There were blank patches where the photos should have gone, each with the message IMAGE UNAVAILABLE , but the headline was big and black: NOW IT’S HER TURN . And below it, the subhead: Hillary Clinton Takes Oath, Assumes Role as 44 th President .

    “Looks like she made it after all,” Wesley said. “At least in Ur 1,000,000.”

    “And check out who she’s replacing,” Robbie said, and pointed to the name. It was Albert Arnold Gore.

----

    An hour later, when the doorbell rang, they didn’t jump but rather looked around like men startled from a dream. Wesley went downstairs and paid the delivery guy, who had arrived with a loaded pizza from Harry’s and a six-pack of Pepsi. They ate at the kitchen table, bent over the Kindle. Wesley put away three slices himself, a personal best, with no awareness