A small graphic appeared under the father and son, and in small print the words cybernation appeared.
r._
Michaels pointed the remote at the television in disgust and clicked the set off. “Have you seen this? A three- hanky commercial for an Internet service.”
Toni came out of the bathroom with the electric toothbrush in her mouth. “What?”
Michaels waved at the television. “The CyberNation ad.”
She held up a hand, a “wait a second” gesture, then went back into the bathroom. A moment later, she was back. “Let me go check on the baby,” she said.
“Already did. He’s sleeping like a rock.”
She moved to the bed and sat. “You were saying something about the TV?”
“Yeah, the CyberNation tear-jerker commercial.”
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“Which one? The old lady abandoned in the nursing home by her children? Or the young guy talking to his wife’s tombstone?”
“The high school graduation.”
“Oh, that one.”
“These guys put Coca-Cola, the phone and insurance companies into the minor leagues. Most manipulative thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Wait until you see the thirteen-year-old girl orphan on the street and the cop who comes to help her,” she said. “Equal parts of pathos and pedophilia.”
He shook his head. “Don’t they have any shame?”
“Not if they sell the product.”
He shook his head again.
“So, have you thought any more about what we talked about? Guru?”
“You really want to do this?”
She nodded. “Yes. She’s as much my grandma as anybody. Every day from the time I was thirteen until I went off to college, I spent two hours with her. Sometimes at her house, sometimes on the steps out front, sometimes in the park. Rain or shine, whatever else was going on, she was there for me. She gave me a skill that’s the core of who I am. Whatever else happened to me, I was always sure I could take care of myself if somebody wanted to put his hands on me and I didn’t want him to. It was the basis of making my way in the world. If all else failed, I could kick somebody’s butt. I didn’t have to be afraid.”
He smiled at her.
“She’s useful here. Little Alex loves her. I love her. And I owe her. For so much. She’s eighty-five, she won’t be around much longer.”
He chuckled. “She’ll probably outlive us all.”
“Alex-”
“Okay. If you really want this, then, yeah, okay. Ask her.”
“You sure?”
“What I’m sure of is that I want you to be happy. What
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it is. If that means having a coffee-swilling deadly nanny living in the guest bedroom, what the hell.” He didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile any bigger. : hugged him, and once again he marveled at how good : made him feel, to make her smile. What was it Jay’s girl Saji had said recently? Making ebody smile lightens your karmic burden? Well, if was the case, he intended to be karmically clear on li’s grins alone, if he could.
SyberNation Train , Germany
i train was stopped, some kind of mechanical problem, outside Kassel, still three hundred or so kilometers Jsouthwest of Berlin. Some of the team had taken the op| portunity to get off and stretch their legs, but Keller saw reason to do so. He had never been a fan of outside. en you could go anywhere in time or space in VR, aid control the weather, the smells, the action, why I would you bother tromping around in the cold and dark jpKxt to a train track in the middle of nowhere? Where you 1 no control at all, save that of your own body’s ability I’to come or go? That’s what the Luddites didn’t under- f stand, that virtual reality was so much better than the real world because you could make it do exactly what you wanted it to do. No wild cards, no chance that you would be caught in an unexpected snowstorm, or bitten by a mosquito chock full of malaria. In VR, life was what you wanted it to be.
This was the real reason that CyberNation would succeed, more than anything. As VR became more and more .like RW, the ability to have anything you wanted, to see, hear, taste, touch, smell, and feel it exactly as you wished | it to be, that was heaven. Give the people what they want. Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path
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to your door. That was always how it had been, and that was how it was going to continue to be.
There were some things you still had to do. Serious VR players, really serious ones, could hook up TVs and catheters so they could stay jacked hi for days, not having to eat or pee. Keller had done that a few times, been in VR for forty, fifty hours, even sleeping on-line, being fed dreams by programs that knew how to input them. Usually, however, he had to interface with the real world often enough so he couldn’t do that. Just like now, he had to go pee. It was a bother, but there was no help for it without a Foley running through your dick into your bladder.
He went to the toilet, which on this old-style car was a pretty big place-five stalls, five urinals, a tile floor, mirrors, sinks, the whole enchilada. Normally, they closed the toilets when the train was in the station, because when you flushed the toilet, a hole opened hi the bottom and it fell right out onto the tracks. There were laws against that now in a lot of places, but people who ran private trains didn’t pay attention to them. Who was going to follow a train across the country looking to see if it was dropping turds and piss onto the tracks out in the middle of nowhere?
He stood in front of the urinal for what seemed like a long time, emptying his bladder, zipped up, and started to wash his hands.
“Hello, Jackson” came a voice from behind him.
Keller froze, as if he had seen Medusa and turned to stone.
Smiling behind him, reflected in the mirror, was Rob- erto Santos.
Keller forgot how to breathe. He managed to manufacture a grin that felt like a rictus. “Roberto. Wh-what are you doing here? Something wr-wrong?”
Santos moved to the door. Locked it.
Keller’s heart turned to a block of dry ice. His mouth went dry.
“Nothing wrong, Jackson. Just balancing things out.”
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“WhWhWhuh-?”
“You touched my woman. You knew she was mine, : you went with her. Missy is fine, she is hot. I know ; was her idea, making the two-backed beast, I know how ; is. Woman’s got tricks that would make a plaster saint I know turning her down is not easy. But she was e. She still is, until I say otherwise.” “Listen, Santos, it was a mistake, a mistake, I’m sorry, teally am, I’m sorry, what can I do to make it up to u?”
Santos smiled. “Don’t worry so much, Jackson. I’m not na kill you. It won’t even show. But you got a debt; : has to be paid.”
“Santos, don’t! You don’t want to do this! Jasmine will |fire you!”
“No, she won’t. Because you won’t tell her.” “I will! I will!”
“No,” he said, “you won’t. And you know why? Be?? cause if she fires me, I will come back and kill you. But I only after a long, long time of you wishing you were dead. I You understand?”
Keller’s fear gripped him so hard he started to shake. Santos moved-so fast! and hit him, just under his sternum.
He … couldn’t… get… any … air-! Santos smiled. A man enjoying himself. As Keller tried to get his wind back, Santos hit him again. It hurt so bad-!
The rental car was cold when Santos started it, and it took the heater a while to warm things up. He hated the cold. Even in a jacket, with gloves and a hat, he felt the chill
l-trying to get to him. Yes, they had whiter at home, but it was the kind of winter where you could walk around in a T-shirt and shorts. In June, when it was the coldest, it
|, dropped to maybe sixty, sixty-five most nights. Mean term- i perature year round was seventy-something. It got hot
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sometimes-now, in the summer, you could work up a sweat; it actually got cold sometimes, but rarely. Those were not the normal things. In Rio, the temperature was almost always perfect. It was God’s country, and men who lived there were fortunate above other men.
Here and now, there was ice in the ponds and lakes, and patches of snow in the shadows, with more to come. How could people live in such places?
Well. They were Germans, weren’t they? And all Germans were at least slightly mad.