Feed

by M. T. Anderson

  That night, when I got home, I was looking out the window, being sorry, and my mother was like, “What’s wrong?”

  I didn’t answer for a while. Finally, I said, “Do you think I’m stupid? I mean, am I dumb?”

  “You’re a nontraditional learner.”

  Smell Factor said, “No, he’s not. He’s dumb.”

  My mother asked, “Is this re: Violet?”

  “No.”

  “Come on. Is it re: her? Because she shouldn’t make you feel stupid. That’s not good.”

  “Mom, it’s un-re: her, okay?”

  “She should be proud of you.”

  I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want my mom to think Violet was a snob. Violet wasn’t a snob. I was just dumb.

  My mom came over and said to me, “You’re a wonderful boy. I know I’m your mom, but I can say that you’re a wonderful boy. Isn’t he, Steve?”

  My dad was conked out at the table going over the news on the feed, but he pulled himself up, and she was like, “Isn’t he a wonderful boy?,” and my dad was like, “Sure, yeah, yeah,” and my mom was like, “You’re as handsome as a duck in butter.”

  “Where does she live, anyway?” my dad asked.

  “I don’t know. Like, two hundred miles from here. I’ve never been there. Why?”

  “Just asking.”

  “You’re a catch,” said my mother. “You’re pewter.”

  That was no help at all, and the next day, I did really bad on a test, and I came home, and Violet chatted me to say she couldn’t talk, she was, I don’t know, learning ancient Swahili or building a replica of Carthage out of iron filings or finding the cure for entropy or some shit, and I was sitting around, staring at a corner of a room, where two of the walls and the floor came together, and my mom and dad caught me doing it, and my mom came up and hugged me.

  I could tell it was all staged. They’d tried to find me. I patted Mom a little on the back, enough to say, Okay, yeah, enough for affection. You can back off now, Ma. She did, and I hoped they would leave, but they weren’t done. So I had to sit there and listen to about me.

  She said, “You’re just the boy we wanted. You’re good enough for any girl. You’re just what we asked for.”

  My dad was meg uncomfortable and kept on moving from foot to foot.

  My mom ran her fingers through my hair, and rocked me back and forth, even though I was standing, and she said, like a poem, “You’ve got your father’s eyes and my nose.”

  “And my mouth,” said my dad.

  “And my hands,” said my mom.

  “And the chin, dimples, and hairline of DelGlacey Murdoch.”

  “What?” I said.

  “This big actor,” explained my mom. “We thought he was like the most beautiful man we’d ever seen in our lives.”

  “Well,” said my dad, “we thought he was going to be big.”

  “We saw a feedcast with him in it the night we … the night you were made.” My mom winked.

  “What?” I said. “What was his name? You never told me about the actor.”

  “He was … What did you say his name was again, Steve?”

  “DelGlacey Murdoch.”

  “DelGlacey Murdoch,” said my mom, kind of smoothing things over. “That’s right. And we thought he was the most beautiful man we’d ever seen. So after the movie we went right to the conceptionarium and told them, ‘We want the most beautiful boy you’ve ever made. We want him with my nose and his dad’s eyes, and for the rest, we have this picture of DelGlacey Murdoch.’”

  I said, “I’ve never even like heard of DelGlacey Murdoch.”

  My father played nervously with his pinstripes. “He didn’t … he didn’t really take off the way like we expected. After that movie, he was mostly … I guess … small roles.”

  “He starred in some things,” said my mom. “Steve, he starred in a lot of things.”

  “Straight to daytime,” said my dad.

  “Honey, he was the most beautiful actor ever. So we went into the conceptionarium, and told the geneticists what we wanted, and your father went in one room, and I went in the other, and …”

  “Hey — hey — I don’t want to hear!”

  “You know what he was in?” said my dad. “Remember Virtual Blast? He played the fifth Navy Seal, with the croup. You know, coughing.”

  “He was in the feature with all the crazy utensils,” said my mother. “A few years ago? That one? He was the doorman in the pillbox hat.”

  I had already pulled up a list of his feed-features and I was going over them. None of them got more than two stars. My parents were checking my feed, I could feel them like prodding it, and my mom was like, “It doesn’t matter what he was in,” and she m-chatted something to my dad, and so he was like, “No, no, that isn’t the point.”

  “What we’re talking about,” said my mother, “is how handsome you are, and how brave you are.”

  “We’ve decided that you’ve been through a lot,” said my father.

  “You’ve been very brave,” my mother repeated.

  “Yeah … ?” I said. “I just fell down. The guy touched me and I just like, fell down.”

  “You were brave,” said my father.

  “We’ve decided you need a little cheering up,” said my mother.

  I started to feel a little better. I could feel their feeds shifting toward a common point, some kind of banner they were pulling up.

  “We’ve decided to get you your own upcar,” said my mother.

  “You can pick it,” said my dad. “Within certain limits.”

  “Oh, god!” I said. “Oh, god! Oh, Mom — Dad — this is — oh, shit! Holy shit! Are you kidding! You are like the best mom and dad ever!”

  “We’re not kidding,” said my dad. “Here’s the banner.”

  And it unwrapped in my head, a banner for a dealer, and links to other dealers, and a big line of credit, and I was hugging them, and I was like holy shit, by tomorrow I would be driving to pick up Violet in my own goddamn upcar, and suddenly, suddenly, I didn’t feel so stupid anymore.

  “… what the President meant in the intercepted chat. This was, uh, nothing but a routine translation problem. It has to be understood, that … It has to be understood that when the President referred to the Prime Minister of the Global Alliance as a ‘big shithead,’ what he was trying to convey was, uh — this is an American idiom used to praise people, by referring to the sheer fertilizing power of their thoughts. The President meant to say that the Prime Minister’s head was fertile, just full of these nutrients where ideas can grow. It really was a compliment. We should say again that any attempt to withdraw the Alliance’s diplomatic presence from American soil will be taken as a sign of ill will, and, uh, we are likely to respond with the most stringent …”

  My father took me to test-drive upcars on Saturday. I had tried a lot of them in the feed-sim, but it’s not the same as actually driving them, and you should always test-drive a vehicle before purchasing it, because you never know what unexpected factors will come into play. For example, I discovered that the Illia Cloud had a windshield that was kind of the wrong height for me, and I didn’t like the dashboard arrangement of the Dodge Cormorant.

  We picked Violet up at the mall and took her with us. Both she and me were really excited by the whole thing, and we were chatting really fast the whole time, about what color to get, and whether the red was too cheesy, or whether it was autumnal, which is what she said.

  We took them out to test-drive, with my father sitting next to me. He’d be chatting with someone somewhere else while I drove. He’d be looking out the window, and wincing whenever Violet or I talked out loud. He had trouble thinking and hearing at the same time. When he was done chatting, he’d ask me a question out loud, like, “How’s she feel?”

  Violet would tell me, “Resist the feed. Look into ox carts.”

  “Yeah, thanks, Violet,” my father would say. “We’re having serious decision flux here.”
He’d ask me, “What do you think?”

  I’d tell him about the handling or the lift.

  Violet would say, “How about a howdah?”

  Dad asked, “What’s a howdah?”

  “A seat on elephant-back.”

  “Great. Great. Thanks.”

  Me and Violet walked up and down the rows of upcars. I was thinking about the Swarp and the Dodge Gryphon.

  The Swarp didn’t have as much room in the back. It was a little sportier.

  The Dodge Gryphon had the larger back seat for your friends and shit, but it was a little lumbering.

  So here was the decision: Dodge was bannering me with me driving, and all of these people in bikinis stuffed into the car with me, this big party, and with a beach ball, too, like I could be the scene; and Nongen, who made the Swarp, was showing a romantic drive through the mountains with just me and Violet, who they got pretty much right, except they made her taller and with bigger boobs, and they made her cheeks kind of sparkly in a way that, if it were really happening, I would try to wipe off with a facecloth.

  I didn’t know which to choose, because if I got an upcar that was too small, then Link and Marty might be like, “We’ll take my car instead. More of us can fit in,” and then I would have spent these hundreds of thousands of dollars for nothing. But if I bought the Swarp, it was a little more sporty, and that might be brag, because the Dodge Gryphon was maybe too family.

  “So you’re getting this as a reward for being in the hospital?” Violet asked.

  “I guess.”

  “A little present from Mommy and Daddy?”

  “Yeah. They’re buying it.”

  She thought about this for a minute. Then she shook her head. “You’re lucky.”

  “Are you saying I’m spoiled?”

  “No.”

  “It seems like that’s what you mean.”

  “No, that’s not it.”

  I thought for a second, and said, “So what is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Look, it’s like a reward. I’m going to turn in evidence in court and everything. I mean, you are, too, but we’re going to have to go to court against that guy. We should get something for that. We deserve it.”

  She looked at me strangely.

  “What?” I said.

  “No one’s told you?”

  I waited. Her eyebrow was arched. Finally, I gave in and said, “No. No one told me what?”

  “We’re not going to court.”

  “We got out of it? My dad was trying to get us out of it.”

  “He didn’t need to. The guy was dead.”

  “What? How?”

  “He died a day after we went into the hospital. Contusions. Broken skull.”

  “What are contusions?” I looked it up. “Oh.”

  “He was beaten to death at the club. We saw it. The police, remember? They beat him over the head.”

  She reached out and took my arm.

  My father walked toward us across the pavement, waving. The plastic flags were flapping in the artificial wind while Muzak came out of heaven.

  I bought the Dodge.

  That night we all had dinner together, my family and Violet. My dad was real proud of me, and was all, “He drove home behind me. Can you like believe this shit? Our own son with his own upcar?”

  I couldn’t stop smiling. “Yeah.” I was like, “It’s meg brag.” My mom smiled at me.

  Smell Factor wasn’t listening to anything. He had some crappy kids’ music show blasting in his feed so loud his aud nerves were probably shot. He had a bunny plate and was making something with his burrito.

  “Are you going to take Violet out in it?” Mom asked.

  “Tomorrow. She and me are driving out to like the country. She wants to go for a walk. I’m picking her up.” I couldn’t help grinning like a shithead again.

  Violet smiled back at me.

  “There’s a forest,” said Violet. “It’s called Jefferson Park. We’re thinking about going either there, or out to beef country.”

  My dad nodded. “It’ll have to be beef country,” he said. “The forest’s gone.”

  “Jefferson Park?”

  He nodded, then squinted while he like clawed something off the roof of his mouth with his tongue. He told us, “Yeah. Jefferson Park? Yeah. That was knocked down to make an air factory.”

  “You’re kidding!” said Violet.

  “Yeah, that’s what happened,” said Dad, shrugging. “You got to have air.”

  Violet pointed out, “Trees make air,” which kind of worried me because I knew Dad would think it was snotty.

  My father stared at her for a long time. Then he said, “Yeah. Sure. Do you know how inefficient trees are, next to an air factory?”

  “But we need trees!”

  “For what?” he said. “I mean, they’re nice, and it’s too bad, but like … Do you know how much real estate costs?”

  “I can’t believe they cut it down!”

  Mom said to Smell Factor, “Hey. Hey! Stop playing with your food.”

  Smell Factor was head-banging with the feed music and turning his bunny plate around and around with his little pudgy fingers.

  My father told him, “This is dinner together. That means family networking and defragging time.”

  “They cut down Jefferson Park? That is so like corporate —”

  My father nodded and smiled at her with this meg condescending smile on his face, and was like, “Dude, I remember when I was like you. You should grow up to be a, you know. Clean-air worker or something. Don’t lose that. But remember. It’s about people. People need a lot of air.”

  For a minute, we all ate without saying anything. Violet looked either angry or embarrassed. I chatted her about being sorry for what Dad said, but she didn’t chat me back. I thought Dad was being kind of a jerk to Violet. I wanted to say something, like, something that would be, you know, something about how she was more right than he was. I said, “Hey, Violet told me we’re not going to court.”

  “About what?” my mother said.

  “We were like assaulted?” I said. “Remember? The thing on the moon?”

  “Yeah, sure,” said my dad. “No, he’s dead. There’s no trial. We’ve all talked about suing. We’ll probably sue the nightclub, maybe the police.”

  I said, “No one told me he was dead.”

  My father chewed some.

  Smell Factor was banging his head and singing along with the feed, “Intercrural or oral. Ain’t a question of moral.”

  My father said to me, “There wasn’t any reason for you to know.”

  “Yes, there was.”

  “No, there wasn’t.”

  “It’s my feed.”

  “You’d just get worried.”

  “I want to get worried. If there’s like some meg thing wrong.”

  “Intercrural or oral! Ain’t a question of moral!”

  My mom reached over and touched me on the wrist and said, “You’re safe.”

  Dad said, “You have an upcar.”

  “The lunatic is dead,” said my mother. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Violet said, “It was frightening for all of us.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Dad, dismissing her kind of jerkily, “but that’s no reason —”

  “Intercrural or oral! Ain’t a question of moral!”

  “Smell Factor!”

  “That’s not his name,” said my mother.

  “Intercrural or oral! Ain’t a question of moral!”

  “What would you —”

  “Intercrural or oral! Ain’t a question of moral!”

  “Hey!” yelled my mother. “Hey, you! We don’t sing at the table!”

  “You’re acting out of line,” said my father, pointing at me. “I’m really disappointed.”

  “Doing what?” I said. “I’m just asking.”

  “Dude, I just bought you an upcar, and you’re being a brat.”

  You’re not bei
ng a brat, Violet chatted.

  “Stop chatting,” said my dad. “What are you saying?”

  “Let them alone, Steve,” said Mom.

  Suddenly, I saw Violet freeze, and her eyes stopped moving and her face got all white.

  My dad was saying, “Look, we’re going to sue the nightclub. Okay?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Whatev.”

  “Quits?”

  “Quits.”

  “Now maybe you better take the girlf home. In the new upcar. With the keys I just held out in my palm like a gift. Oh, because it was a gift.”

  My father got up all pissy and took the dishes into the kitchen. He rattled them against the rim of the junktube as he threw them away. They crashed down into the thing, the incinerator.

  “You okay?” I said to Violet. “We should go.”

  “It’s just, my foot’s fallen asleep.”

  “Shake it,” I said.

  She looked down at the table. I mean my foot isn’t working. Don’t say anything. It’s happened a couple of times since the hack. Something just won’t work for an hour or two. My finger or something.

  I was like, Holy shit. Are you okay?

  I’m fine.

  Do you want some water?

  Titus, don’t worry about it. It’ll go away in a minute. It was just the stress.

  Try to move the foot. Just try.

  She just sat there, smiling kind of sick, not moving while right next to her Mom and Smell Factor crinkled up the disposable table together and threw it away. Violet was still in her chair, near where the table had been. She was alone in the middle of the rug.

  Finally, she moved the foot. She moved it slowly in circles. She breathed out really deep. Her eyes were closed, like it was sex.

  I held out my hand and pulled her to her feet. She came to my arms like we were doing some kind of flamenco rumpus. My mom smiled, and my dad, who was still pissed, said, “Yeah. Cute.”

  We left a few minutes later. I drove her most of the way to her house, and we met her father in a mall parking lot. It was a new mall, with lots of spotlights swinging through the sky and rainbows going up a giant pyramid. We had to wait a few minutes for her dad to get there. We just sat together, holding hands. In my new Dodge Gryphon.

  I asked, “Are you sure you’re okay?”