Read Online M. T. Anderson by Feed - Free Book Online Page B

these sites, you realize this obscure stuff isn’t obscure at all. Each thing is like a whole world. I can’t tell you.”
    “How’s your like,” I pointed at my head, “how’s your feedware working out?”
    “It’s fine. You’re not listening.”
    “I’m just wondering.”
    She asked me, “What do you think?”
    “I liked the guy in Bebrekker & Karl. I wonder if it’s true, about the cockroaches.”
    “What do you think about resisting?” she asked me really hard. Her jaw muscles were sticking out.
    I said, “It sounds great, as long as I get to wear the chemise.” She laughed.
    We went to dinner at a J. P. Barnigan’s Family Extravaganza. We had mozzarella sticks and then I had a big steak. She got a Caesar salad. There were free refills on drinks. Afterward, we were sitting there in the booth, and I asked her whether she wanted a ride home. She said no. I said was she sure, and she said yes.
    I said, “What’s doing with your parents?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, with your house, and why you have me meet you here instead. And why didn’t your dad come to the moon? When we were, you know.”
    She looked at me funny. She said, “Do you know how much it costs to fly someone to the moon?”
    I guessed. “A lot?”
    “Yeah. Yeah, a lot. He wanted to come, but it would have been, like, a month of his salary. He saved up for a year to send me. Then I went, and that stuff happened.”
    “He saved up for a year for you to go to the moon?”
    “Yeah.” She said, “Hey, here’s what you can do. You can drop me at the feed technician’s office. I have an appointment.”
    We made out for a minute in the car. Then I flew her a few miles away, to a technician. I left her there. Before I pulled out of the tube by his office, I looked back at her, standing by the door. She had her hands on her elbows. She was pinching the elbow skin and pulling it.
    She waited there, pinching and pulling, and then went in.

That night, I chatted her after I went to bed. I was like,
Violet. Violet?
    She was like,
Hey. Hey there.
    It was great, going to the mall today. I had a good time. I enjoyed that whole thing.
    Finally, she was like,
I did, too.
    I could tell something was wrong. It was something about the way she was sending things on the feed.
    I asked,
Are you crying?
    There was a long feed silence. I could hear programming.
    She was like,
Yeah. Just for practice.
    What’s doing?
    Never mind,
she chatted.
Never mind.
    Didn’t you have a real good time?
    I wish you were here,
she said.
    I thought about her lying in bed. Maybe in some pajamas, so she was warm. I said,
I wish I was there, too.
    Look,
she said, changing the whole subject.
Look at everything I got from the feed. It’s going crazy with everything we looked at today. It’s trying to work for me.
    This perky voice on her feed said,
Hi! I’m Nina, your personal FeedTech shopping assistant! Tired of that gross-out smell in your mouth? Try FreshGorge Glottal Deodorant — your boyf will thank you big-time! Hey, Violet Durn, what a skip kinda day you had! You go shop, girl! Here’s some more great info about all the brag stuff you asked about!
    Violet started to forward me things. There were sites for the spotlights and the dresses and the endoscopy kits, and she sent them in flurries. Once they started coming, they started to call others to them, and I could feel them doing that call, and they were all around me. They came to us. It was like they were lots of friendly butterflies, and we were smeared with something, and they kept coming and coming, and their wings were winking beautifully, and more and more came. And they were landing on our fingers, and on our lips, and on our eyes, opening and closing? And we were going —
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
    It was crazy.

Being with Violet was great.
    She hadn’t had much of the stuff you see on the feed when she was younger. A lot of it was too expensive, or her father just said no. But she had watched all the