"Why, yes! Think of it as a trick I do, if it makes you feel better. I could
show you how to do it. . ." he trailed off, but a look of hunger had passed over
his face.
#
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.
#
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." _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."
#
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 _your_ parents. Mister and Missus Ballozos. What were _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 _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."
#
"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.
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.