War of the Worlds: Fixes after reading

[ccbib.git] / content / Cory_Doctorow / Home_Again_Home_Again.tex

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Home Again, Home Again
}}
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\noindent

From ``A Place So Foreign and Eight More,'' a short story
collection published in September, 2003 by Four Walls Eight Windows
Press (ISBN 1568582862). See http://craphound.com/place for more.

Originally Published in Tesseracts 8 (Tesseract Press, 1999)

\bigskip\bigskip

``\,`Home Again, Home Again,' is at once intimate and spectacular.''

\begin{authorof}
-- Farren Miller,  Locus Magazine  Issue 512, Vol 51, No 3
  Sept 2003 
\end{authorof}

\section{Blurbs and quotes:}

\begin{itemize}
\item
  Cory Doctorow straps on his miner's helmet and takes you deep into
  the caverns and underground rivers of Pop Culture, here filtered
  through SF-coloured glasses. Enjoy.

  \begin{authorof}
    Neil Gaiman Author of American Gods and Sandman
  \end{authorof}
\item
  Few writers boggle my sense of reality as much as Cory Doctorow.
  His vision is so far out there, you'll need your GPS to find your
  way back.

  \begin{authorof}
    David Marusek Winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Award, Nebula Award
    nominee
  \end{authorof}
\item
  Cory Doctorow is one of our best new writers: smart, daring, savvy,
  entertaining, ambitious, plugged-in, and as good a guide to the
  wired world of the twenty-first century that stretches out before
  us as you're going to find.

  \begin{authorof}
    Gardner Dozois Editor, Asimov's SF
  \end{authorof}
\item
  He sparkles! He fizzes! He does backflips and breaks the furniture!
  Science fiction needs Cory Doctorow!

  \begin{authorof}
    Bruce Sterling Author of The Hacker Crackdown and Distraction
  \end{authorof}
\item
  Cory Doctorow strafes the senses with a geekspeedfreak explosion of
  gomi kings with heart, weirdass shapeshifters from Pleasure Island
  and jumping automotive jazz joints. If this is Canadian science
  fiction, give me more.

  \begin{authorof}
    Nalo Hopkinson Author of Midnight Robber and Brown Girl in the Ring
  \end{authorof}
\item
  Cory Doctorow is the future of science fiction. An nth-generation
  hybrid of the best of Greg Bear, Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling and
  Groucho Marx, Doctorow composes stories that are as BPM-stuffed as
  techno music, as idea-rich as the latest issue of NEW SCIENTIST,
  and as funny as humanity's efforts to improve itself. Utopian,
  insightful, somehow simultaneously ironic and heartfelt, these nine
  tales will upgrade your basal metabolism, overwrite your cortex
  with new and efficient subroutines and generally improve your life
  to the point where you'll wonder how you ever got along with them.
  Really, you should need a prescription to ingest this book. Out of
  all the glittering crap life and our society hands us, craphound
  supreme Doctorow has managed to fashion some industrial-grade
  art."

  \begin{authorof}
    Paul Di Filippo Author of The Steampunk Trilogy
  \end{authorof}
\item
  As scary as the future, and twice as funny. In this eclectic and
  electric collection Doctorow strikes sparks off today to illuminate
  tomorrow, which is what SF is supposed to do. And nobody does it
  better.

  \begin{authorof}
    Terry Bisson Author of Bears Discover Fire
  \end{authorof}
\end{itemize}

\section{A note about this story}

This story is from my collection,
``A Place So Foreign and Eight More,'' published by Four Walls
Eight Windows Press in September, 2003, ISBN 1568582862. I've
released this story, along with five others, under the terms of a
Creative Commons license that gives you, the reader, a bunch of
rights that copyright normally reserves for me, the creator.

I recently did the same thing with the entire text of my novel,
\href{http://craphound.com/down}{``Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom''},
and it was an unmitigated success. Hundreds of thousands of people
downloaded the book --- good news --- and thousands of people
bought the book --- also good news. It turns out that, as near as
anyone can tell, distributing free electronic versions of books is
a great way to sell more of the paper editions, while
simultaneously getting the book into the hands of readers who would
otherwise not be exposed to my work.

I still don't know how it is artists will earn a living in the age
of the Internet, but I remain convinced that the way to find out is
to do basic science: that is, to do stuff and observe the outcome.
That's what I'm doing here. The thing to remember is that the very
\emph{worst} thing you can do to me as an artist is to not read my
work --- to let it languish in obscurity and disappear from
posterity. Most of the fiction I grew up on is out-of-print, and
this is doubly true for the short stories. Losing a couple bucks to
people who would have bought the book save for the availability of
the free electronic text is no big deal, at least when compared to
the horror that is being irrelevant and unread. And luckily for me,
it appears that giving away the text for free gets me more paying
customers than it loses me.

You can find the canonical version of this file at\\
\texttt{http://craphound.com/place/download.php}

If you'd like to convert this file to some other format and
distribute it, you have my permission, provided that:

\begin{itemize}
\item
  You don't charge money for the distribution

\item
  You keep the entire text intact, including this notice, the license
  below, and the metadata at the end of the file

\item
  You don't use a file-format that has ``DRM'' or ``copy-protection''
  or any other form of use-restriction turned on

\end{itemize}
If you'd like, you can advertise the existence of your edition by
posting a link to it at http://craphound.com/place/000016.php


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\section{Home Again, Home Again}

The kids in my local bat-house breathe heavy metals, and their
gelatinous bodies quiver nauseously during our counseling sessions,
and for all that, they reacted just like I had when I told them I
was going away for a while --- with hurt and betrayal, and they
aroused palpable guilt in me.

It goes in circles. When I was sixteen, and The Amazing Robotron
told me he needed to go away for a while, but he'd be back, I did
everything I could to make him guilty. Now it's me, on a world far
from home, and a pack of snot-nosed jellyfish kids have so twisted
my psyche that they're all I can think of when I debark the shuttle
at Aristide Interplanetary, just outside my dirty ole Toronto.

The customs officer isn't even human, so it feels like just another
R\&R, another halting conversation carried on in ugly trade-speak,
another bewilderment of queues and luggage carousels. Outside:
another spaceport, surrounded by the variegated hostels for the
variegated tourists, and bipeds are in bare majority.

I can think of it like that.

I can think of it as another spaceport.

I can think of it like another trip.

The thing he can't think of it is, is a homecoming. That's too hard
for this weak vessel.

He's very weak.

\tb

Look at him. He's eleven, and it's the tencennial of the Ascension
of his homeworld --- dirty blue ball, so unworthy, yet --- inducted
into the Galactic fraternity and the infinite compassion of the
bugouts.

The foam, which had been confined to just the newer,
Process-enclaves before the Ascension, has spread, as has the cult
of the Process For Lasting Happiness. Process is, after all, why
the dirty blue ball was judged and found barely adequate for
membership. Toronto, which had seen half its inhabitants emigrate
on open-ended tours of the wondrous worlds of the bugout domain, is
full again. Bursting. The whole damn planet is accreting a layer of
off-world tourists.

It's a time of plenty. Plenty of cheap food and plenty of cheap
foam structures, built as needed, then dissolved and washed away
when the need disappears. Plenty of healthcare and education.
Plenty of toys and distractions and beautiful, haunting bugout art.
Plenty, in fact, of everything, except space.

He lived in a building that is so tall, its top floors are
perpetually damp with clouds. There's a nice name for this
building, inscribed on a much-abused foam sculpture in the central
courtyard. No one uses the nice name. They call it by the name that
the tabloids use, that the inhabitants use, that everyone but the
off-world counselors use. They call it the bat-house.

Bats in the belfry. Batty. Batshit.

I hated it when they moved us into the bat-house. My parents gamely
tried to explain why we were going, but they never understood, no
more than any human could. The bugouts had a test, a scifi helmet
you wore, and it told you whether you were normal, or batty. Some
of our neighbors were clearly batshit: the woman who screamed all
the time, about the bugs and the little niggers crawling over her
flesh; the couple who ate dogturds off the foam sidewalk with
lip-smacking relish; the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla.

I don't want to talk about him right now.

His parents' flaw --- whatever it was --- was too subtle to detect
without the scifi helmet. They never knew for sure what it was.
Many of the bats were in the same belfry: part of the bugouts'
arrogant compassion held that a couple never knew which one of them
was defective, so his family never knew if it was his nervous, shy
mother, or his loud, opinionated father who had doomed them to the
quarantine.

His father told him, in an impromptu ceremony before he slid his
keycard into the lock on their new apt in the belfry:
``Chet, whatever they say, there's nothing wrong with us. They have no right to 
put us here.''
He knelt to look the skinny ten-year-old right in the eye.
``Don't worry, kiddo. It's not for long --- we'll get this thing sorted out 
yet.''
Then, in a rare moment of tenderness, one that stood out in Chet's
memory as the last of such, his father gathered him in his arms,
lifted him off his feet in a fierce hug. After a moment, his mother
joined the hug, and Chet's face was buried in the spot where both
of their shoulders met, smelling their smells. They still smelled
like his parents then, like his old house on the Beaches, and for a
moment, he knew his father was right, that this couldn't possibly
last.

A tear rolled down his mother's cheek and dripped in his ear. He
shook his shaggy hair like a dog and his parents laughed, and his
father wiped away his mother's tear and they went into the apt,
grinning and holding hands.

Of course, they never left the belfry after that.

\tb

I can't remember what the last thing my mother said to me was. Do I
remember her tucking me in and saying,
``Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite,'' or was
that something I saw on a vid? Was it a nervous command to wipe my
shoes on the way in the door? Was her voice soft and sad, as it
sometimes is in my memories, or was it brittle and angry, the way
she often seemed after she stopped talking, as she banged around
the tiny, two-room apt?

I can't remember.

My mother fell away from speech like a half-converted parishioner
falling away from the faith: she stopped visiting the temple of
verbiage in dribs and drabs, first missing the regular sermons ---
the daily niceties of Good morning and Good night and Be careful,
Chet --- then neglecting the major holidays, the Watch out!s and
the Ouch!s and the answers to direct questions.

My father and I never spoke of it, and I didn't mention it to the
other wild kids in the vertical city with whom I spent my days
getting in what passed for trouble around the bat-house.

I did mention it to my counselor, The Amazing Robotron, so-called
for the metal exoskeleton he wore to support his fragile body in
Earth's hard gravity. But he didn't count, then.

\tb

The reason that Chet can't pinpoint the moment his mother sealed
her lips is because he was a self-absorbed little rodent in those
days.

Not a cute freckled hellion. A miserable little shit who played
hide-and-seek with the other miserable little shits in the
bat-house, but played it violently,
hide-and-seek-and-break-and-enter,
hide-and-seek-and-smash-and-grab. The lot of them are amorphous,
indistinguishable from each other in his memory, all that remains
of all those clever little brats is the lingering impression of
loud, boasting voices and sharp little teeth.

The Amazing Robotron was a fool in little Chet's eyes, an
easy-to-bullshit, ineffectual lump whose company Chet had to endure
for a mandatory hour every other day.

``Chet, you seem distr-acted to-day,'' The Amazing Robotron said in
his artificial voice.

``Yah. You know. Worried about, uh, the future.'' Distracted by
Debbie Carr's purse, filched while she sat in the sixty-eighth
floor courtyard, talking with her stupid girlie friends. Debbie was
the first girl from the gang to get tits, and now she didn't want
to hang out with them anymore, and her purse was stashed underneath
the base of a hollow planter outside The Amazing Robotron's apt,
and maybe he could sneak it out under his shirt and find a place to
dump it and sort through its contents after the session.

``What is it about the fu-ture that wo-rries you?'' The Amazing
Robotron was as unreadable as a pinball machine, something he
resembled. Underneath, he was a collection of whip-like tentacles
with a knot of sensory organs in the middle.

``You know, like, the whole fricken thing. Like if I leave here when I'm 
eighteen, will my folks be okay without me, and like that.''

``Your pa-rents are able to take care of them-selves, Chet. You must con-cern 
your-self with you, Chet. You should do something con-struct-tive with your 
wo-rry, such as de-ciding on a ca-reer that will ful-fill you when you leave 
the Cen-ter.''
The Center was the short form for the long, nice name that no one
ever used to describe the bat-house.

``I thought, like, maybe I could be, you know, a spaceship pilot or something.''

``Then you must stu-dy math-e-mat-ics and phy-sics. If you like, Chet, I can 
re-quest ad-vanced in-struct-tion-al mat-e-rials for you.''

``Sure, that'd be great. Thanks, Robotron.''

``You are wel-come, Chet. I am glad to help. My own par-ent was in a Cen-ter on 
my world, you know. I un-der-stand how you feel. There is still time 
re-main-ing in your ses-sion. What else would you like to dis-cuss?''

``My mother doesn't talk anymore. Nothing. Why is that?''

``Your mo-ther is\ldots{} .'' The Amazing Robotron fumbled for a
word, buried somewhere deep in the hypnotic English lexicon baked
into its brain.
``Your mo-ther has a prob-lem, and she needs your aff-ec-tion now more than 
e-ver. What-ev-er rea-son she has for her si-lence, it is not you. Your mo-ther 
and fa-ther love you, and dream of the day when you leave here and make your 
own way through the gal-ax-y.''

Of course his parents loved him, he supposed, in an abstract kind
of way. His mother, who hadn't worn anything but a bathrobe in
months, whose face he couldn't picture behind his eyes but whose
bathrobe he could visualize in its every rip and stain and fray.
His father, who seemed to have forgotten how to groom himself, who
spent his loud days in one of the bat-house's workshops, drinking
beer with his buddies while they played with the arc welders. His
parents loved him, he knew that.

``OK, right, thanks. I've gotta blow, 'K?''

``All-right. I will see you on Thurs-day, then?''

But Chet was already out the door, digging Debbie Carr's purse from
under the planter, then running, doubled over the bulge it made in
his shirt, hunting for a private space in the anthill.

\tb

The entire north face of the bat-house was eyeless, a blind,
windowless expanse of foam that seemed to curve as it approached
infinity.

Some said it was an architectural error, others said it was part of
the bat-house's heating scheme. Up in nosebleed country, on the
120th level, it was almost empty: sparsely populated by the very
battiest bats, though as more and more humans were found batty,
they pushed inexorably upwards.

Chet rode the lift to the 125th floor and walked casually to the
end of the hallway. At this height, the hallways were bare foam,
without the long-wear carpet and fake plants that adorned the
low-altitude territories. He walked as calmly as he could to the
very end of the northern hall, then hunkered down in the corner and
spilled the purse.

Shit, but Debbie Carr was going girlie. The pile was all tampons
and makeup and, ugh, a spare bra. A spare bra! I chuckled, and kept
sorting. There were three pennies, enough to buy six chocolate bars
in the black-market tuck-shop on the 75th floor. A clever little
pair of folding scissors, their blades razor-sharp. I was using
them to slit the lining of the purse when the door to 12525 opened,
and the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla emerged.

My palms slicked with guilty sweat, and the pile of Debbie's crap,
set against the featureless foam corridor, seemed to scream its
presence. I spun around, working my body into the corner, and held
the little scissors like a dagger in my fist.

The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla was clearly batty. He was
wearing boxer-shorts and a tailcoat and had a halo of wild, greasy
hair and a long, tangled beard, but even if he'd been wearing a
suit and tie and had a trip to the barber's, I'd have known he was
batty the minute I laid eyes on him. He didn't walk, he shambled,
like he'd spent a long, long time on meds. His eyes, set in deep
black pits of sleeplessness, were ferociously crazy.

He turned to stare at me.

``Hello, sonny. Do you like to swim?''

I stood in my corner, mute, trapped.

``I have an ocean in my apt. Maybe you'd like to try it? I used to love to swim 
in the ocean when I was a boy.''

My feet moved without my willing them. An ocean in his apt? My feet
wanted to know about this.

I entered his apt, and even my feet were too surprised to go on.

He had the biggest apt I'd ever seen. It spanned three quarters of
the length of the bat-house, and was five storeys high. The spots
where he'd dissolved the foam walls away with solvent were rough
and uneven, and rings of foam encircled each of the missing storeys
above. I couldn't imagine getting that much solvent: it was more
tightly controlled than plutonium, the subject of countless
action-adventure vids.

At one end of the apt stood a collection of tall, spiny apparatus,
humming with electricity and sparking. They were remarkable, but
their impact was lost in what lay at the other end.

The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla had an ocean in his apt. It
was a clear aquarium tank, fifteen meters long and nearly seventeen
high, and eight meters deep. It was dominated by a massive, baroque
coral reef, like a melting castle with misshapen brains growing out
of it.

Schools of fish --- bright as jellybeans --- darted through the
ocean's depths, swimming in and out of the softly waving plants. A
thousand neon tetra, a flock of living quicksilver sewing needles,
turned 90 degrees in perfect unison, then did it again, and again,
and again, describing a neat, angular box in the water.

``Isn't it beautiful? I'm using it in one of my experiments, but I also find it 
very \emph{calming}.''

\tb

I hail a pedicab and the kids back on my adopted homeworld, with
their accusing, angry words and stares vanish from my mind. The
cabbie is about nineteen and muscular as hell, legs like
treetrunks, clipped into the pedals. A flywheel spins between him
and me, and his brakes store his momentum up in it every time he
slows. On the two-hour ride into downtown Toronto, he never once
comes to a full stop.

I've booked a room at the Royal York. I can afford it --- the
stipend I receive for the counseling work has been slowly
accumulating in my bank account.

Downtown is all foam now, and ``historical'' shops selling
authentic Earth crapola: reproductions of old newspapers,
reproductions of old electronics, reproductions of old clothes and
old food and other discarded cultural detritus. I see tall,
clacking insect-creatures with walkman headphones across their
stomachs. I see squat, rocky creatures smearing pizza slices onto
their digestive membranes. I see soft, slithering creatures with
Toronto Blue Jays baseball hats suspended in their jelly.

The humans I see are dressed in unisex coveralls, with discreet
comms on their wrists or collars, and they don't seem to notice
that their city is become a bestiary.

The cabby isn't even out of breath when we pull up at the Royal
York, which, thankfully, is still clothed in its ancient dressed
stone. We point our comms at each other and I squirt some money at
him, adding a generous tip. His face, which had been wildly
animated while he dodged the traffic on the long ride is a stony
mask now, as though when at rest he entered a semiconscious sleep
mode.

The doorman is dressed in what may or may not be historically
accurate costume, though what period it is meant to represent is
anyone's guess. He carries my bag to the check-in and I squirt more
money at him. He wishes that I have a nice stay in Toronto, and I
wish it, too.

At the check-in, I squirt my ID and still more money at the
efficient young woman in a smart blazer, and another babu in period
costume --- those shoes look painful --- carries my bag to the lift
and presses the button.

We wait in strained silence and the lift makes its achingly slow
progress towards us. There are no elevators on the planet I live on
now --- the wild gravity and wilder windstorms don't permit
buildings of more than one story --- but even if there were, they
wouldn't be like this lift, like a human lift, like one of the
fifty that ran the vertical length of the bat-house.

I nearly choke as we enter that lift. It has the smell of a million
transient guests, aftershaves and perfumes and pheromones, and the
stale recirc air I remember so well. I stifle the choke into my
fist, fake a cough, and feel a self-consciousness I didn't know I
had.

I'm worried that the babu knows that I grew up in the bat-house.

Now I can't make eye-contact with him. Now I can't seem to stand
naturally, can't figure out where a not-crazy puts his hands and
where a not-crazy puts his eyes. Little Chet and his mates liked to
terrorize people in the lifts, play ``who farted'' and
``I'm gonna puke'' and ``I have to pee'' in loud sing-songs, just
to watch the other bats squirm.

The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla thought that these games
were unfunny, unsophisticated and unappetizing and little Chet
stopped playing them.

I squirt extra money at the babu, after he opens my windows and
shows me the shitter and the vid's remote.

I unpack mechanically, my meager bag yielding more-meager clothes.
I`d thought I'd buy more after earthfall, since the spaceports'
version of human apparel wasn't, very. I realize that I'm wearing
the same clothes I left Earth in, lo those years before. They're
hardly the worse for wear --- when I'm in my exoskeleton on my new
planet, I don't bother with clothes.

\tb

The ocean seemed too fragile to be real. All that caged water, held
behind a flimsy-seeming sheet of clear foam, the corners joined
with strips of thick gasket-rubber. Standing there at its base,
Chet was terrified that it would burst and drown him --- he
actually felt the push of water, the horrid, dying wriggles of the
fish as they were washed over his body.

``Say there, son. Hello?''

Chet looked up. Nicola Tesla's hair was standing on end, comically.
He realized that his own long, shaggy hair was doing the same. The
whole room felt electric.

``Are you all right?'' He had a trace of an accent, like the hint
of garlic in a salad dressing, an odd way of stepping on his
vowels.

``Yeh, yeh, fine. I'm fine,'' Chet said.

``I am pleased to hear that. What is your name, son?''

``Chet. Affeltranger.''

``I'm pleased to meet you. My name is Gaylord Ballozos, though that's not who I 
am. You see, I'm the channel for Nicola Tesla. Would you like to see a magic 
trick?''

Chet nodded. He wondered who Nicola Tesla was, and filed away the
name Gaylord for making fun of, later. In doing so, he began to
normalize the experience, to structure it as a story he could tell
the other kids, after. The guy, the ocean, the hair. Gaylord.

A ball of lightning leapt from Tesla/Ballozos's fingertips and
danced over their heads. It bounced around the room furiously, then
stopped to hover in front of Chet. His clothes stood away from his
body, snapping as though caught in a windstorm. Seen up close, the
ball was an infinite pool of shifting electricity, like an ocean of
energy. Tentatively, he reached out to touch it, and Tesla shouted
``Don't!'' and the ball whipped up and away, spearing itself on the
point of one of the towers on the opposite side of the room.

It vanished, leaving a tangy, sharp smell behind.

The story Chet had been telling in his mind disappeared with it. He
stood, shocked speechless.

The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla chuckled a little, then
started to laugh, actually doubling over and slapping his thighs.

``You can't \emph{imagine} how long I've waited to show that trick to someone! 
Thank you, young Mr.~Affeltranger! A million thanks to you, for your obvious 
appreciation.''

Chet felt a giggle welling up in him, and he did laugh, and when
his lips came together, a spark of static electricity leapt from
their seam to his nose and made him jump, and laugh all the
harder.

The guy came forward and pumped his arm in a dry handshake.
``I can see that you and I are kindred spirits. You will have to come and visit 
again, very soon, and I will let you see more of my ocean, and maybe let you 
see `Old Sparky,' too. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for dropping in.''

And he ushered Chet out of his apt and closed the door, leaving him
in the featureless hallway of the 125th storey.

\tb

I had never been as nervous as I was the following Thursday, when
my regular appointment with The Amazing Robotron rolled around
again. I hadn't spoken of the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla
to any of my gang, and of course not to my parents, but somehow, I
felt like I might end up spilling to The Amazing Robotron.

I don't know why I was worried. The guy hadn't asked me to keep it
a secret, after all, and I had never had any problem holding my
tongue around The Amazing Robotron before.

``Hel-lo, Chet. How have you been?''

``I've been OK.''

``Have you been stud-y-ing math-e-mat-ics and phys-ics? I had the 
supp-le-ment-al mat-e-rials de-liv-er-ed to your apt yes-ter-day.''

``No, I haven't. I don't think I wanna be a pilot no more. One of my buds tole 
me that you end up all fugged up with time an' that, that you come home an' 
it's the next century an' everyone you know is dead.''

``That is one thing that hap-pens to some ex-plor-a-tor-y pilots, Chet. Have 
you thought a-bout any o-ther poss-i-bil-i-ties?''

``Kinda. I guess.'' I tried not to think about the 125th story and
the ocean. I was thinking so hard, I stopped thinking about what I
was saying to The Amazing Robotron.
``Maybe I could be a counselor, like, and help kids.''

The Amazing Robotron turned into a pinball machine again, an
unreadable and motionless block. Silent for so long I thought he
was gone, dead as a sardine inside his tin can. Then, he twitched
both of his arms, like he was shivering. Then his robot-voice came
out of the grille on his face.
``I think that you would be a ve-ry good coun-sel-or, Chet.''

``Yeh?'' I said. It was the first time that The Amazing Robotron
had told me he thought I'd be good at anything. Hell, it was the
first time he'd expressed \emph{any} opinion about anything I'd
said.

``Yes, Chet. Be-ing a coun-sel-or is a ve-ry good way to help your-self 
un-der-stand what we have done to you by put-ting you in the Cen-ter.''

I couldn't speak. My Mom, before she fell silent, had often spoken
about how unfair it was for me to be stuck here, because of
something that she or my father had done. But my father never
seemed to notice me, and the teachers on the vid made a point of
not mentioning the bat-house --- like someone trying hard not to
notice a stutter or a wart, and you \emph{knew} that the best you
could hope for from them was pity.

``Be-ing a coun-sel-or is ve-ry hard, Chet. But coun-sel-ors sometimes get a 
spec-ial re-ward. Some-times, we get to help. Do you re-ally want to do this?''

``Yeh. Yes. I mean, it sounds good. You get to travel, right?''

The Amazing Robotron's idiot-lights rippled, something I came to
recognize as a chuckle, later.
``Yes. Tra-vel is part of the job. I sug-gest that you start by ex-am-in-ing 
your friends. See if you can fi-gure out why they do what they do.''

I've used this trick on my kids. What do I know about their
psychology? But you get one, you convince it to explain the rest to
you. It helps. Counselors are always from another world --- by the
time the first generation raised in a bat-house has grown old
enough, there aren't any bats' children left to counsel on their
homeworld.

\tb

I take room-service, pizza and beer in an ice-bucket: pretentious,
but better than sharing a dining-room with the menagerie. Am I
becoming a racist?

No, no. I just need to focus on things human, during this
vacation.

The food is disappointing. It's been years since I lay awake at
night, craving a slice and a brew and a normal gravity and a life
away from the bats. Nevertheless, the craving remained, buried, and
resurfaced when I went over the room-service menu. By the time the
dumbwaiter in my room chimed, I was practically drooling.

But by the time I take my second bite, it's just pizza and a brew.

I wonder if I will ever get to sleep, but when the time comes, my
eyes close and if I dream, I don't remember it.

I get up and dress and send up for eggs and real Atlantic salmon
and brown toast and a pitcher of coffee, then find myself unable to
eat any of it. I make a sandwich out of it and wrap it in napkins
and stuff it into my day-pack along with a water-bottle and some
sun-block.

It's a long walk up to the bat-house, but I should make it by
nightfall.

\tb

Chet was up at 6h the next morning. His mom was already up, but she
never slept that he could tell. She was clattering around the
kitchen in her housecoat, emptying the cupboards and then
re-stacking their contents for the thousandth time. She shot him a
look of something between fear and affection as he pulled on his
shorts and a t-shirt, and he found himself hugging her waist. For a
second, it felt like she softened into his embrace, like she was
going to say something, like it was normal, and then she picked up
a plate and rubbed it with a towel and put it back into the
cupboard.

Chet left without saying a word.

The bat-house breathed around him, a million farts and snores and
whispered words. A lift was available almost before he took his
finger off the summon button. ``125,'' he said.

Chet walked to the door of the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla
and started to knock, then put his hands down and sank down into a
squat, with his back against it.

He must have dozed, because the next thing he knew, he was tipping
over backwards into the apt, and the guy who thought he was Nicola
Tesla was standing over him, concerned.

``Are you all right, son?''

Chet stood, dusted himself off and looked at the floor.
``Sorry, I didn't want to disturb you\ldots{}''

``But you wanted to come back and see more. Marvelous! I applaud your 
curiosity, young sir. I have just taken the waters --- perhaps you would like 
to try?''
He gestured at the ocean.

``You mean, swim in it?''

``If you like. Myself, I find a snorkel and mask far superior. My set is up on 
the rim, you're welcome to them, but I would ask you to chew a stick of this 
before you get in.''
He tossed Chet a pack of gum.
``It's an invention of my own --- chew a stick of that, and you can\emph{not} 
transmit any nasty bugs in your saliva for forty-eight hours. I hold a patent 
for it, of course, but my agents report that it has been met with crashing 
indifference in the Great Beyond.''

Chet had been swimming before, in the urinary communal pools on the
tenth and fifteenth levels, horsing around naked with his mates.
Nudity was not a big deal for the kids of the bat-house --- the
kind of adult who you wouldn't trust in such circumstances didn't
end up in bat-houses --- the bugouts had a different place for
them.

``Go on, lad, give it a try. It's simply marvelous, I tell you!''

Unsteadily, Chet climbed the spiral stairs leading up to the tank,
clutching the handrail, chewing the gum, which fizzed and sparked
in his mouth. At the top, there was a small platform.
Self-consciously, he stripped, then pulled on the mask and snorkel
that hung from a peg.

``Tighten the straps, boy!'' the guy who thought he was Nicola
Tesla shouted, from far, far below.
``If water gets into the mask, just push at the top and blow out through your 
nose!''

Chet awkwardly lowered himself into the water. It was warm ---
blood temperature --- and salty, and it fizzled a little on his
skin, as though it, too, were electric.

He kept one hand on the snorkel, afraid that it would tip and fill
with water, and then, slowly, slowly, relaxed on his belly, mask in
the water, arms by his side.

My god! It was like I was flying! It was like all the dreams I'd
ever had, of flying, of hovering over an alien world, of my
consciousness taking flight from my body and sailing through the
galaxy.

My hands were by my sides, out of view of the mask, and my legs
were behind me. I couldn't see any of my body. My view stretched 8m
down, an impossible, dizzying height. A narrow, elegant angelfish
swam directly beneath me, and tickled my belly with one of its fins
as it passed under.

I smiled, a huge grin, and it broke the seal on my mask, filling it
with water. Calmly, as though I'd been doing it all my life, I
pressed the top of my mask to my forehead and blew out through my
nose. My mask cleared of water.

I floated.

The only sound was my breathing, and distant, metallic \_pink!\_s
from the ocean's depths. A school of iridescent purple fish swam
past me, and I lazily kicked out after them, following them to the
edge of the coral reef that climbed the far wall of the ocean. When
I reached it, I was overwhelmed by its complexity, millions upon
millions of tiny little suckers depending from weird branches and
misshapen brains and stone roses.

I held my breath.

And I heard nothing. Not a sound, for the first time in all the
time I had been in the bat-house --- no distant shouts and mutters.
I was alone, in a vast, personal silence, in a private ocean. My
pulse beat under my skin. Tiny fish wriggled in the coral, tearing
at the green fuzz that grew over it.

Slowly, I turned around and around. The ocean-wall that faced into
the apt was silvered on this side, reflecting back my little pale
body to me. My head pounded, and I finally inhaled, and the sound
of my breathing, harsh through the snorkel, rang in my ears.

I spent an age in the water, holding my breath, chasing the fish,
disembodied, a consciousness on tour on an alien world.

The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla brought me back. He waited
on the rim of the tank until I swam near enough for him to touch,
then he tapped me on the shoulder. I stuck my head up, and he said,
``Time to get out, boy, I need to use the ocean.''

Reluctantly, I climbed out. He handed me a towel.

I felt like I was still flying, atop the staircase on the ocean's
edge. I felt like I could trip slowly down the stairs, never quite
touching them. I pulled on my clothes, and they felt odd to me.

Carefully, forcing myself to grip the railing, I descended. The guy
who thought he was Nicola Tesla stood at my side, not speaking,
allowing me my reverie.

My hair was drying out, and starting to raise skywards, and the guy
who thought he was Nicola Tesla went over to his apparatus and
flipped a giant knife switch. The ocean stirred, a puff of sand
rose from its bottom, and then, the coral on the ocean's edge
\emph{moved}.

It squirmed and danced and writhed, startling the fish away from
it, shedding layers of algae in a green cloud.

``It's my latest idea. I've found the electromagnetic frequencies that the 
various coral resonate on, and by using those as a carrier wave, I can 
stimulate them into tremendously accelerated growth. Moreover, I can alter 
their electromagnetic valences, so that, instead of calcium salts, they use 
other minerals as their building-blocks.''

He grinned hugely, and seemed to want Chet to say something. Chet
didn't understand any of it.

``Well, don't you see?''

``Nuh.''

``I can use coral to concentrate trace gold and platinum and any other 
heavy-metal you care to name out of the seas. I can prospect in the very water 
itself!''
He killed the switch. The coral stopped their dance abruptly, and
the new appendages they'd grown dropped away, tumbling gracefully
to the ocean's floor.
``You see? Gold, platinum, lead. I dissolved a kilo of each into the water last 
night, microscopic flakes. In five minutes, my coral has concentrated it all.''

The stumps where the minerals had dropped away were jagged and
sharp, and painful looking.

``It doesn't even harm the fish!''

\tb

Chet's playmates seemed as strange as fish to him. They met up on
the 87th level, where there was an abandoned apt with a faulty
lock. Some of them seemed batty themselves, standing in corners,
staring at the walls, tracing patterns that they alone could see.
Others seemed too confident ever to be bats --- they shouted and
boasted to each other, got into shoving matches that escalated into
knock-out brawls and then dissolved into giggles. Chet found
himself on the sidelines, an observer.

One boy, whose father hung around the workshops with Chet's father,
was industriously pulling apart the warp of the carpet, rolling it
into a ball. When the ball reached a certain size, he snapped the
loose end, tucked it in and started another.

A girl whose family had been taken to the bat-house all the way
from a reservation near Sioux Lookout was telling loud lies about
home, about tremendous gun-battles fought out with the Ontario
Provincial Police and huge, glamorous casinos where her mother had
dealt blackjack to millionaire high-rollers, who tucked thousand
dollar tips into her palm. About her bow and arrow and her rifle
and her horses. Nobody believed her stories, and they made fun of
her behind her back, but they listened when she told them,
spellbound.

What was her name, anyway?

There were two boys, one followed the other everywhere. The
followee was tormenting the follower, as usual, smacking him in the
back of the head, then calling him a baby, goading him into hitting
back, dodging easily, and retaliating viciously.

Chet thought that he understood some of what was going on. Maybe
he'd be able to explain it to The Amazing Robotron.

\tb

I never thought I'd say this, but I miss my exoskeleton. My feet
ache, my legs ache, my ass aches, and I'm hot and thirsty and my
waterbottle is empty. I'm not even past Bloor Street, not even a
tenth of the way to the bat-house.

\tb

The Amazing Robotron seemed thoughtful as I ratted out my chums.
``So, I think they need each other. The big one needs the little one, to feel 
important. The little one needs the big one, so that he can feel useful. Is 
that right?''

``It is ve-ry per-cep-tive, Chet. When I was young, I had a sim-i-lar 
friend-ship with an-other. It --- no, \emph{she} --- was the lit-tle one, and I 
was the big one. Her pa-rent died be-fore we came of age, and she left the 
Cen-ter, and when she came back to visit, a long time la-ter, we were 
re-ver-sed --- I felt smal-ler but good, and spec-ial be-cause she told me all 
a-bout the out-side.''

Something clicked inside me then. I saw myself inside The Amazing
Robotron's exoskeleton, and he in my skin, our roles reversed. It
lasted no longer than a lightning flash, but in that flash, I
suddenly knew that I could talk to The Amazing Robotron, and that
he would understand.

I felt so smart all of a sudden. I felt like The Amazing Robotron
and I were standing outside the bat-house, \emph{in} it but not
\emph{of} it, and we shared a secret insight into the poor, crazy
bastards we were cooped up with.

``I don't really like anyone here. I don't like my Dad --- he's always 
shouting, and I think he's the reason we ended up here. He's batshit --- he 
gets angry too easy. And my Mom is batshit now, even if she wasn't batshit 
before, because of him. I don't feel like their son. I feel like I just share 
an apt with these two crazy people I don't like very much. And none of my mates 
are any good, either. They're all either like my Dad --- loud and crazy, or 
like my Mom, quiet and crazy. Everyone's crazy.''

``That may be true, Chet. But you can still like cra-zy peo-ple.''

``Do \emph{you} like 'em?''

The Amazing Robotron's idiot lights rippled. \emph{Gotcha}, I
thought.

``I do not like them, Chet. They are loud and cra-zy and they on-ly think of 
them-selves.''

I laughed. It was so refreshing not to be lied to. My skin was all
tight from the dried saltwater, and that felt good, too.

"My Dad, the other day? He came home and was all,
`This is a conspiracy to drive us out of our house. It's because we bought a 
house with damn high ceilings. Some big damn alien wanted to live there, so 
they put us here. It's because I did such a good job on the ceilings!'
Which is so stupid, 'cause the ceilings in our old house weren't no
higher than the ceilings here, and besides, Dad screwed up all the
plaster when he was trying to fix it up, and it was always
cracking.

``And then he starts talking about what's really bugging him, which is that 
some guy at the workshop took his favorite drill and he couldn't finish his big 
project without it. So he got into a fight with the guy, and got the drill and 
then he finished his big, big project, and brought it home, and you know what 
it was? A \emph{pencil-holder}! We don't even \emph{have} any pencils! He is so 
screwed up.''

And The Amazing Robotron's lights rippled again, and a huge weight
lifted from my shoulders. I didn't feel ashamed of the maniacs that
gave me life --- I saw them as pitiful subjects for my
observations. I laughed again, and that must have been the most I'd
laughed since they put us in the bat-house.

\tb

I'm getting my sea-legs. I hope. My mouth is pasty, and salty, and
sweat keeps running down into my eyes. I never even began to
realize how much support the exoskeleton's jelly-suspension lent
me.

But I've made it to Eglinton, and that's nearly a third of the way,
and to celebrate, I stop in at a coffee-shop and drink a whole
pitcher of lemonade while sitting by the air-conditioner.

I got the word that they were tearing down the bat-house only two
weeks ago. The message came by priority email from The Amazing
Robotron: all the bats were dead, or enough of them anyway that the
rest could be relocated to less expensive quarters. It was barely
enough notice to get my emergency leave application in, to book a
ticket back to Earth, and to finally become a murderer all the
way.

Damn, I hope I know what I'm doing.

\tb

The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla told me all kinds of
stories, and I was sure he was lying to me, but when I checked out
the parts of his story that I could, they all turned out to be
true.

"I don't actually \emph{need} to be here. I've come here to get
away from all the treachery, the deceit, the filthy pursuit of the
dollar. As though I need more money! I invented foam! Oh, sure, the
Process likes to take credit for it, but if you look up the patent,
guess who owns it?

``Master Affeltranger, you may not realize it to look at me, but I have some 
\emph{very} important friends, out there in the Great Beyond. With important 
friends, you can make a whole block of apts simply disappear from the 
record-books. You can make tremendous energy consumption vanish, likewise.''

He spoke as he tinkered with his apparatus, which hummed alarmingly
and occasionally sent a tortured arc of electricity into the guy
who thought he was Nicola Tesla's chest.

It happened three times in a row, and he stamped his foot in
frustration, and said, ``Oh, \emph{do} cut it out,'' apparently to
one of his machines.

I'd been jumping every time he got zapped, but this time, I had to
giggle. He whirled on me.
``I am not trying to be \emph{amusing}. One thing you people never realize is 
that the current has a \emph{will}, it has a \emph{mind}, and you have to keep 
it in check with a firm hand.''

I shook my head a little, not understanding. He waved a hand at me,
frustrated, and said,
``Oh, go have a swim. I don't have time to argue with a child.''

I climbed into the ocean, and the silence embraced me, and the
water tingled with electricity, and my consciousness floated away
from my body and soared over an alien world. Like a broken circuit,
I disconnected from the world around me.

\tb

Chet's father came home with a can of beer in his hand and the rest
of the six-pack in his gut. He walked over to the vid, where Chet
was researching the life of Nicola Tesla, which took forever, since
he had to keep linking back to simple tutorials on physics,
history, and electrical engineering.

Chet's father stooped and took the remote out of Chet's hands and
opened up a bookmarked docu-drama about the coming of the bugouts.
Chet opened his mouth to protest, and his father shouted him down
before he could speak.
``Not one word, you hear me? Not! One! Word! I've had a shithole day and I 
wanna relax.''

Chet's mother dropped a plastic tumbler, which bounced twice, and
rolled to Chet's toe. He stepped over it, walked out the door, and
took the elevator to the 125th floor.

Chet burst into the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla's apt and
screamed. Nicola Tesla was strapped into a heavy wooden chair, with
a metal hood over his head. Arcs of electricity danced over his
body, and he jerked and thrashed against the leather straps that
bound his limbs. Unthinking, Chet ran forward and grabbed the
buckle that bound his wrist, and a giant's fist smashed into him,
hurling him across the room.

When he came to, the electric arcs were gone, but the guy who
thought he was Nicola Tesla was motionless in his straps, under his
hood.

Carefully, Chet came to his feet, and saw that the toe of his right
sneaker had been blown out, leaving behind charred canvas. His foot
hurt --- burned.

He hobbled to the chair and gingerly prodded it, then jerked his
hand back, though he hadn't been shocked. He bit his lip and
stared. The wood was quite weathered and elderly, though it had
been oiled and had a rich, well-cared-for finish. The leather
straps were nightmarishly thick, gripping the guy who thought he
was Nicola Tesla at the bicep and wrist, at the thigh and calf and
ankle. Livid bruises were already spreading at their edges.

Chet was struck by a sudden urge to climb into the ocean and
\emph{stay} there. Just \emph{stay} there.

Under the hood, the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla groaned.
Chet gave an involuntary squeak and jumped a little. The guy who
thought he was Nicola Tesla's body snapped tense. ``Who's there?''
he said, his voice muffled by the hood.

``It's me, Chet.''

``Chet? Damn. Damn, damn, damn.'' His right hand bent nearly double
at the wrist and teased the buckle of the strap free. With one hand
free, the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla quickly undid the
straps on his upper body, then lifted away the hood. He pointedly
did not look at Chet as he doubled over and undid the straps on his
legs and ankles.

Gingerly, he stood and stretched, then sighed tremendously.

"Chet, Chet, Chet. I hope I didn't frighten you too badly. This is
Old Sparky, an exact replica of the electric chair at Sing-Sing
Prison in New York. Edison, thief and charlatan that he was,
insisted that his DC current was safer than my AC, and they built a
chair that used my beautiful current to execute criminals, by the
hundreds.

"Nicola Tesla and I became one when I was eight years old, and I
received a tremendous shock from an electrified fence. I was stuck
to it, glued by the current, and after a few moments, I just
relaxed into the current --- befriended it, if you will. That's
when the spirit of Nicola Tesla, a-wandering through the wires for
all the years since his death, infused my body.

``So now I use Old Sparky here to recharge --- please forgive the expression 
--- my connection with the current. I once spent eight years in the chair, when 
I needed to disappear for a while. When I woke, I hadn't aged at all --- I 
didn't even need to shave! What do you think of that?''

Chet was staring in horror at him.
``You electrocute yourself? On purpose?''

``Why, yes! Think of it as a trick I do, if it makes you feel better. I could 
show you how to do it\ldots{}''
he trailed off, but a look of hunger had passed over his face.

\tb

I get all kinds of access to bat-house records from the vid in my
apt on my new world. No one named Gaylord Ballozos ever lived in
any bat-house. Apt 12525, and the five above it, were never
occupied. The records say that the locks have never been used, the
doors never opened. It won't be searched when they evacuate the
bat-house.

That's what the records say, anyway.

Electricity gives me the willies. The zaps of static from the dry
air of the FTL I took home to Earth made me scream, little-boy
squeaks that made the other passengers jump.

I don't remember that it was ever this hot in Toronto, even in the
summer. The sky is all overcast, so maybe it's a temperature
inversion. Up here at Steeles Avenue, I'm so dehydrated that I
spend a whole dime on a magnum of still water and power-chug it,
though you're not supposed to drink that way. Almost there.

\tb

The other kids in the abandoned apt on the 87th floor ignored me.
They'd been paying less and less attention to me, ever since I
started spending my afternoons up on 125, and I was getting a
reputation as a keener for all the time I spent with The Amazing
Robotron.

That suited me fine; the corner of the gutted kitchen was as
private a space as I was going to find in the bat-house. I had the
apparatus that Nicola Tesla had given me plugged into the AC outlet
under the sink. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, concentrating
on the moments after my breath left my chest, that calm like the
ocean's silence. Smoothly, I reached out and grasped the handle of
the apparatus and squeezed.

The first time I tried this, under Nicola Tesla's supervision, I'd
jerked my hand away and squeezed it between my legs as soon as the
current shot through me. Now, though, I could keep squeezing,
slowly increasing the voltage and amperage, relaxing into the
involuntary tension in my muscles.

I'd gotten so good at it that I'd started using the timer --- I
could lean into the current forever without it. I had it set for
three hours, but when the current died, it felt like no time at all
had passed. I probed around my consciousness for any revelation,
but no spirit had come into my body during the exercise. The guy
who thought he was Nicola Tesla didn't know if there were any other
spirits in the wire, but it stood to reason that if there was one,
there had to be more.

I stood, and felt incredibly calm and balanced and centered and I
floated past the other kids. It was time for my session with The
Amazing Robotron.

``Chet, how are you fee-ling?''

``I'm well, thank you.'' Nicola Tesla spoke well and carefully, and
I'd started to ape him.

``And what would you like to dis-cuss to-day?''

``I don't really have anything to talk about, honestly. Everything is fine.''

``That is good. Do you have any new ob-ser-va-tions about your friends?''

``I'm sorry, no. I haven't been paying much attention lately.''

``Why hav-en't you?''

``It just doesn't interest me, sorry.''

``Why does-n't it in-ter-est you?''

``I just don't care about them, to be frank.''

The Amazing Robotron was absolutely still for a moment.
``Are things well with your par-ents, too?''

``The same as always. I think they've found their niches.''
\emph{Find your niche} was an expression I'd pirated from the guy
who thought he was Nicola Tesla. I was very proud of it.

``In that case, why don't we end this mee-ting?''

I was surprised. The Amazing Robotron always demanded his full
hour. ``I'll see you on Wednesday, then?''

``I'm af-raid not, Chet. I will be gone for a few months --- I have to re-turn 
home. There will be a sub-sti-tute coun-sel-or arri-ving next Monday.''

My calm center shattered. Sweat sprang out on my palms.
``What? You're leaving? How can you be leaving?''

``I'm so-rry, Chet. There is an em-er-gen-cy at home. I'll be back as soon as I 
can.''

``Frick that! How can you go? What'll I do if you don't come back? You're the 
only one I can talk to!''

``I'm so-rry, Chet. I have to go.''

``If you gave a shit, you'd stay. You can't just leave me here!'' I
knew as I said it that it didn't make any sense, but a picture
sprang into my mind, one that I'd been carrying without knowing it
for a long time: The Amazing Robotron and me as an adult, walking
away from the bat-house, with suitcases, leaving together, forever.
I felt a sob hiccough in my throat.

``I will re-turn, Chet. I did-n't wish to up-set you.''

``Frick that! I don't give a shit if you come back, asshole.''

\tb

Chet went straight to 87 and plugged in to the apparatus. He didn't
set the timer, and he stayed plugged in for nearly two days, when
two fighting boys tumbled into him and knocked his hand away. He
was centered and numb again, and didn't have any sense of the
intervening time. He didn't even have to pee. He wondered if he was
trying to commit suicide.

He checked his comm and got the date, noticed with distant surprise
that it was two days later, and wandered up to 125.

The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla shouted a distant
``Come in'' when Chet tapped on the door. He was playing with his
ocean again. Chet felt his hair float up off his shoulders. He
stopped and watched the coral squirm and dance.

``I spent nearly two days on the apparatus,'' Chet said.

``Eh? Very good, very good. You're progressing nicely.''

``My counselor has left. He had to go home.''

``Yes? Well, there you are.''

``What were your parents like?''

``Nicola Tesla's father was a bishop, and his mother was an illiterate, though 
she was a gifted memnist and taught me much about visualization.''

``No, I mean \emph{your} parents. Mister and Missus Ballozos. What were 
\emph{they} like?''

The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla shut down the ocean and
watched the lumps of ore tumble to the sand.
``Why do you want to know about \emph{them}? Are you having some sort of 
trouble at home?''
he asked impatiently, not looking away from the ocean.

``No reason,'' Chet said. ``I have to go home now.''

``Yes, fine.''

\tb

``The hell have you been, boy?'' Chet's father said, when he came
through door. His father was in front of the vid, wearing shorts
and a filthy t-shirt, holding the remote in one hand. Chet's mother
was sitting at the window, staring out into the clouds.

``Out. Around. I'm okay, okay?''

``It's not okay. You can't just run around like some kind of animal. Sit the 
hell down and tell me where you've been. Your counselor was here looking for 
you.''

``Robotron? He was here?''

``Yes he was here! And I had to tell him I didn't know where my damn kid was! 
How do you think that makes me look? You know how worried your mother was?''

Chet's mother didn't stir from her post by the window, but she
flinched when Chet's father spoke. Chet swallowed hard.

``What did he want?''

``Never mind that! Sit the hell down and tell me where you've been and what the 
hell you thought you were doing!''

Chet sat beside his father and stared at his hands. He knew he
could outwait his father. After half an hour, Chet's father turned
the vid on. Four long hours later, he switched it off, and went to
bed.

Chet's mother finally turned away from the now-dark window. She
reached into the pocket of her grimy bathrobe and withdrew an
envelope and handed it to Chet, then turned and went to the apt's
other room to sleep.

My name was on the outside of the envelope, in rough script,
written with awkward exoskeleton manipulators. I broke its seal,
and it folded out into a single flat sheet of paper.

\textuppercase{DEAR CHET}, it began. At the bottom of it was a complex scrawl that
I recognized from the front of The Amazing Robotron's exoskeleton.
It must be some kind of signature.

\textuppercase{
DEAR CHET,

I AM SORRY TO HAVE TO LEAVE YOU SO SUDDENLY, AND WITHOUT ANYONE
ELSE TO TALK TO. THERE IS AN EMERGENCY AT MY HOME, BUT I WOULDN'T
GO IF I DIDN'T BELIEVE THAT YOU WERE ABLE TO HANDLE MY ABSENCE. YOU
ARE A VERY PERCEPTIVE AND STRONG YOUNG MAN, AND YOU WILL BE ABLE TO
MANAGE IN MY ABSENCE. I WILL BE BACK, YOU KNOW.

YOU WILL BE ALL RIGHT. I PROMISE.

THIS ISN'T EASY FOR ME TO DO, EITHER. IT MAY BE THAT I AM THE ONLY
ONE YOU CAN TALK TO HERE AT THE CENTER. IT IS LIKEWISE TRUE THAT
YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE I CAN TALK TO.

I WILL MISS YOU, MY FRIEND CHET.
}

The writing was childish, with many line-outs and corrections.
Reading it, I heard it not in The Amazing Robotron's halting
mechanical speech, but in my own voice.

I didn't cry. I held the letter tight in my hand, as tight as I
ever held the apparatus, and leaned into it, like it was a source
of strength.

\tb

They haven't even started work on the bat-house. There are bugout
saucers hovering all around it, with giant foam-solvent tanks
mounted under their bellies. A small crowd has gathered.

I take off my jacket and lay it on the strip of grass by the
sidewalk across the street from the bat-house. I pull off my soaked
t-shirt and feel a rare breeze across my chest, as soothing as a
kiss on a fevered forehead. I ball up the shirt, then lay down on
my jacket, using the shirt as a pillow.

The bat-house is empty, its eyes staring blind, vertical to
infinity. The grotty sculpture out front is gone already, and with
it, the sign with the polite, never-used name. It is now just the
bat-house.

I check my comm. The dissolving of the bat-house is scheduled for
less than an hour from now.

\tb

The new counselor was no damn good. It wore a different
exoskeleton, a motorized gurney on wheels with three buzzing
antigrav manipulators that floated constantly around the apt,
tasting the air. It called itself ``Tom.'' I didn't call it
anything, and I limited my answers to it to monosyllables.

The next time I came on the guy who was Nicola Tesla in his chair,
the letter was in my pocket. I took a long swim in the ocean, and
then I stripped off my mask and spit out the snorkel, took a deep
breath and dove until my ears felt like they were going to burst. I
stared at my reflection in the silvered wall of the tank. Through
the distortion of the water and the sting of the salt, my body was
indistinct and clothed in quicksilver, surrounded by schools of
alien, darting fish. I didn't recognize myself, but I didn't take
my eyes away until my lungs were ready to burst and I resurfaced.

The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla was still thrashing away at
his straps when I climbed down from the ocean's top. At one side of
Old Sparky, there was a timer, like the one on my apparatus, and a
knife-switch for timed and untimed sessions.

I stared at him. My life unrolled before me, a life distanced and
remote from the world around me, a life trapped in my own deepening
battiness. Before I could think about what I was doing, I flipped
the switch from ``timed'' to ``untimed.'' I took one last look at
the ocean, looked again at Nicola Tesla, my friend and seducer,
stuck to his chair until someone switched it off again, and left
the 125th floor.

\tb

I took the apparatus apart in the kiddy workshop, stripped it to a
collection of screws and wires and circuit boards, then carefully
smashed each component with a hammer until it was in thousands of
tiny pieces.

It took me two days to do it right, and not a moment passed when I
didn't nearly run upstairs and switch off Tesla's chair.

And not a moment passed when I didn't visualize Tesla's wrath, his
betrayal, his anger, when I unbuckled him.

And not a moment passed when I didn't wish I could plug in the
apparatus, swim in the ocean, take myself away from the world and
the world away from me.

The Amazing Robotron returned at the end of the second day.

``Chet, I am glad to see you a-gain.''

I bit my lip and choked on tears of relief.
``I need to leave here, Robotron. I can't stay another minute. Please, get me 
out of here. I'll do anything. I'll run away. Get me out, get me out, get me 
out!''
I was babbling, sniveling and crying, and I begged all the harder.

``Why do you want to leave right now?''

``I --- I can't take it anymore. I can't \emph{stand} being here. I'd rather be 
in prison than in here anymore.''

``When I was young, I left the Cen-ter I was rais-ed in to attend coun-sel-ing 
school. You are near-ly old e-nough to go now. May-be your pa-rents would let 
you go?''

I knew he had found the only way out.

I started work on my father. I wheedled and begged and demanded,
and he just laughed. For three whole days, I used begging as a way
to avoid thinking of Tesla. For three days, my father shook his
head.

I cried myself to sleep and wallowed in my guilt every night, and
when I woke, I cried more. I stopped leaving the apt. I stopped
eating. My mother and I sat all day, staring out the window. I
stopped talking.

One morning, after my father had left, I dragged a stool to the
window and pressed my face against it. My mother clattered around
behind me.

``Go,'' my mother said.

I gave a squeak and turned around. My mother had folded my clothes
in a neat pile and had laid a canvas bag beside it. She had the vid
remote in her hand, and on the screen was a waiver for me to go to
school. We locked eyes for a moment, and I moved to go to her, but
she turned and stormed into the kitchen and started to clean the
cupboards, silent again.

I left that day.

\tb

The saucers lift off to-the-second on-time. The crowd, which has
grown, sighs collectively as the saucers disappear over the haze,
then a fine mist of solvent rains down on our heads. It's as salty
as sea-water, and the bat-house trembles as it begins to melt.
Streams of salty water course down its sides.

The top of the building comes into view, the saucers chasing it
down as it dissolves, spraying a steady blast of solvent.

I tense as the building's top reaches what I estimate to be 150. My
calves bunch and my breath catches in my chest. I feel like I'm
drowning, and the building's top crawls downwards, and my feet are
sloshing to the ankles in dissolved foam, that runs off into the
sewers.

I stay tense until the building's top is far beneath what
\emph{must} be 125, then I exhale in a whoof of air. My head spins,
and I brace my hands against my thighs. I'm not looking up when it
happens, as a result.

The first sign is when the great tide of green, scummy,
plant-stinking water courses down over us, soaking us to the skin,
blinding me and sending me reeling in reverie. Did I see hunks of
dead, petrified coral crashing around me, or did I imagine it?

A brief second later the building's top emits a bolt of lightning
that broke even Tesla's record for man-made lightning, recorded at
nearly a kilometer in length. A clap of thunder accompanies it,
louder than any sound I have ever heard, and \erratum{it}{in} its wake I am
perfectly deaf, submerged in silence.

The finger of lightning crawls through space like a broken-back
rattler, and my hair rises from my shoulders. In the presence of so
much current, I should be petrified, but it is magnificent. The
finger seeks and seeks, then contacts one of the saucers and
literally blasts it out of the sky. It plummets in slow-motion, and
as it does, the building's top descends even further, and I
\emph{swear} I see the chair falling from the building's edge, and
the man strapped inside it had not aged a day in all the lifetimes
gone by.

\tb

Chet's comm died somewhere in the lightning strike, but the
emergency crews that took him away and looked in his ears and poked
him in the chest and gave him pills take him back to the Royal York
in a saucer, bridging the distance in a few minutes, touching down
on Front Street. The Royal York's doorman doesn't bat an eye as he
gets the door for him.

The elevator ride is fine. He is still wrapped in the silence of
his deafness, but it's a comforting, \emph{centering} silence.

Once Chet is back in his room, he fires up the vid and starts
writing a letter to The Amazing Robotron.

\end{document}