by Stephen King
“You ready to get in the chair?”
Luke got in the chair.
“Are you going to behave, or do I need the straps?”
“I’ll behave.”
He did, and Tony was right. The earlobe pinch wasn’t as bad as the slap, possibly because he was ready for it, possibly because it felt like a medical procedure rather than an assault. When it was done, Tony went to a sterilizer and produced a hypodermic needle. “Round two, champ.”
“What’s in that?” Luke asked.
“None of your beeswax.”
“If it’s going into me, it is my beeswax.”
Tony sighed. “Straps or no straps? Your choice.”
He thought of George saying pick your battles. “No straps.”
“Good lad. Just a little sting and done.”
It was more than a little sting. Not agony, but a pretty big sting, just the same. Luke’s arm went hot all the way down to his wrist, as if he had a fever in that one part of him, then it felt normal again.
Tony put on a Band-Aid Clear Spot, then swiveled the chair so it faced a white wall. “Now close your eyes.”
Luke closed them.
“Do you hear anything?”
“Like what?”
“Stop asking questions and answer mine. Do you hear anything?”
“Be quiet and let me listen.”
Tony was quiet. Luke listened.
“Someone walked by out there in the hall. And someone laughed. I think it was Gladys.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
“Okay, you’re doing good. Now I want you to count to twenty, then open your eyes.”
Luke counted and opened.
“What do you see?”
“The wall.”
“Nothing else?”
Luke thought Tony almost had to be talking about the dots. When you see em, say so, George had told him. When you don’t, say that. Don’t lie. They know.
“Nothing else.”
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
Tony slapped him on the back, making Luke jump. “Okay, champ, we’re done here. I’ll give you some ice for that ear. You have yourself a great day.”
8
Gladys was waiting for him when Tony showed him out of Room B-31. She was smiling her cheerful professional hostess smile. “How did you do, Luke?”
Tony answered for him. “He did fine. Good kid.”
“It’s what we specialize in,” Gladys almost sang. “Have a good day, Tony.”
“You too, Glad.”
She led Luke back to the elevator, chattering away merrily. He had no idea what she was talking about. His arm only hurt a little, but he was holding the cold-pack to his ear, which throbbed. The slap had been worse than either. For all kinds of reasons.
Gladys escorted him to his room along the industrial green corridor, past the poster Kalisha had been sitting under, past the one reading JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE, and finally to the room that looked like his room but wasn’t.
“Free time!” she cried, as if conferring a prize of great worth. Right now the prospect of being alone did feel like sort of a prize. “He gave you a shot, right?”
“Yes.”
“If your arm starts to hurt, or if you feel faint, tell me or one of the other caretakers, okay?”
“Okay.”
He opened the door, but before he could go in, Gladys grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him around. She was still smiling the hostess smile, but her fingers were steely, pressing into his flesh. Not quite hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to let him know they could hurt.
“No tokens, I’m afraid,” she said. “I didn’t need to discuss it with Tony. That mark on your cheek tells me all I need to know.”
Luke wanted to say I don’t want any of your shitty tokens, but kept silent. It wasn’t a slap he was afraid of; he was afraid that the sound of his own voice—weak, unsteady, bewildered, the voice of a six-year-old—would cause him to break down in front of her.
“Let me give you some advice,” she said. Not smiling now. “You need to realize that you are here to serve, Luke. That means you have to grow up fast. It means being realistic. Things will happen to you here. Some of them will not be so nice. You can be a good sport about them and get tokens, or you can be a bad sport and get none. Those things will happen either way, so which should you choose? It shouldn’t be hard to figure out.”
Luke made no reply. Her smile came back nevertheless, the hostess smile that said oh yes, sir, I’ll show you to your table right away.
“You’ll be back home before the summer is over, and it will be like none of this happened. If you remember it at all, it will be like a dream. But while it’s not a dream, why not make your stay a happy one?” She relaxed her grip and gave him a gentle push. “You should rest a bit, I think. Lie down. Did you see the dots?”
“No.”
“You will.”
She closed the door, very gently. Luke sleepwalked across the room to the bed that wasn’t his bed. He lay down, put his head on the pillow that wasn’t his pillow, and stared at the blank wall where there was no window. No dots, either—whatever they were. He thought: I want my mom. Oh God, I want my mom so bad.
That broke him. He dropped the cold-pack, cupped his hands over his eyes, and began crying. Were they watching him? Or listening to his sobs? It didn’t matter. He was past caring. He was still crying when he fell asleep.
9
He woke up feeling better—cleaned out, somehow. He saw two things had been added to his room while he was at lunch, and then meeting his wonderful new friends Gladys and Tony. There was a laptop on the desk. It was a Mac, like his, but an older model. The other addition was a small TV on a stand in the corner.
He went to the computer first and powered it up, feeling another deep pang of homesickness at the familiar Macintosh chime. Instead of a password prompt, he got a blue screen with this message: SHOW CAMERA ONE TOKEN TO OPEN. Luke banged the return key a couple of times, knowing it would do no good.
“You fucking thing.”
Then, in spite of how horrible and surreal all this was, he had to laugh. It was harsh and brief, but genuine. Had he felt a certain sense of superiority—maybe even contempt—at the idea of kids scrounging for tokens so they could buy wine coolers or cigarettes? Sure he had. Had he thought I’d never do that? Sure he had. When Luke thought of kids who drank and smoked (which was rarely; he had more important things to consider), what came to mind were Goth losers who listened to Pantera and drew lopsided devil horns on their denim jackets, losers so dumb that they mistook wrapping themselves in the chains of addiction as an act of rebellion. He couldn’t imagine doing either, but here he was, staring at a blank blue laptop screen and hitting the return key like a rat in a Skinner box banging the lever for a piece of kibble or a few grains of cocaine.
He closed the laptop and grabbed the remote off the top of the television. He fully expected another blue screen and another message telling him he needed a token or tokens to operate it, but instead he got Steve Harvey interviewing David Hasselhoff about the Hoff’s bucket list. The audience was laughing it up at the Hoff’s funny answers.
Pushing the guide button on the remote produced a DirecTV menu similar to the one at home, but as with the room and the laptop, not quite the same. Although there was a wide selection of movies and sports programs, there were no network or news channels. Luke turned the set off, replaced the remote on top, and looked around.
Other than the one leading to the corridor, there were two doors. One opened on a closet. There were jeans, tee-shirts (no effort had been made to exactly copy the ones he had at home, which was sort of a relief ), a couple of button-up shirts, two pairs of sneakers, and one pair of slippers. There were no hard shoes.
The other door opened on a small, spandy-clean bathroom. There were a couple of toothbrushes, still in their cases, on the washbasin, next to a fresh tube of Crest. In the well-stocke
d medicine cabinet he found mouthwash, a bottle of children’s Tylenol, with just four pills inside, deodorant, roll-on Deet bugspray, Band-Aids, and several other items, some more useful than others. The only thing that might be considered even remotely dangerous was a pair of nail clippers.
He swung the medicine cabinet closed and looked at himself. His hair was crazied up, and there were dark circles (beat-off circles, Rolf would have called them) under his eyes. He looked both older and younger, which was weird. He peered at his tender right earlobe and saw one of those tiny metal circles embedded in the slightly reddened skin. He had no doubt that somewhere on B-Level—or C, or D—there was a computer tech who could now track his every movement. Was perhaps tracking him now. Lucas David Ellis, who had been planning to matriculate at MIT and Emerson, had been reduced to a blinking dot on a computer screen.
Luke returned to his room (the room, he told himself, it’s the room, not my room), looked around, and realized a dismaying thing. No books. Not a single one. That was as bad as no computer. Maybe worse. He went to the dresser and opened the drawers one by one, thinking he might at least find a Bible or a Book of Mormon, like they sometimes had in hotel rooms. He discovered only neat stacks of underwear and socks.
What did that leave? Steve Harvey interviewing David Hasselhoff? Reruns of America’s Funniest Home Videos?
No. No way.
He left the room, thinking Kalisha or one of the other kids might be around. He found Maureen Alvorson instead, trundling her Dandux laundry basket slowly down the corridor. It was heaped with folded sheets and towels. She looked more tired than ever and sounded out of breath.
“Hello, Ms. Alvorson. Can I push that for you?”
“That would be kind,” she said with a smile. “We’ve got five newbies coming in, two tonight and three tomorrow, and I’ve got to get the rooms ready. They’re down thataway.” She pointed in the opposite direction from the lounge and the playground.
He pushed the basket slowly, because she was walking slowly. “I don’t suppose you know how I could earn a token, do you, Ms. Alvorson? I need one to unlock the computer in my room.”
“Can you make a bed, if I stand by and give you instructions?”
“Sure. I make my bed at home.”
“With hospital corners?”
“Well . . . no.”
“Never mind, I’ll show you. Make five beds for me, and I’ll give you three tokes. It’s all I’ve got in my pocket. They keep me short.”
“Three would be great.”
“All right, but enough with the Miz Alvorson. You call me Maureen, or just Mo. Same as the other kids.”
“I can do that,” Luke said.
They went past the elevator annex and into the hallway beyond. It was lined with more inspirational posters. There was also an ice machine, like in a motel hallway, and it didn’t appear to take tokens. Just past it, Maureen put a hand on Luke’s arm. He stopped pushing the basket and looked at her enquiringly.
When she spoke, it was just above a whisper. “You got chipped, I see, but you didn’t get any tokens.”
“Well . . .”
“You can talk, as long as you keep your voice down. There’s half a dozen places in Front Half where their damn microphones don’t reach, dead zones, and I know all of them. This is one, right by this ice machine.”
“Okay . . .”
“Who did your chip and put that mark on your face? Was it Tony?”
Luke’s eyes began to burn, and he didn’t quite trust himself to speak, whether it was safe or not. He just nodded.
“He’s one of the mean ones,” Maureen said. “Zeke is another. So is Gladys, even though she smiles a lot. There are plenty of people working here who like pushing kids around, but those are three of the worst.”
“Tony slapped me,” Luke whispered. “Hard.”
She ruffled his hair. It was the kind of thing ladies did to babies and little kids, but Luke didn’t mind. It was being touched with kindness, and right now that meant a lot. Right now that meant everything.
“Do what he says,” Maureen said. “Don’t argue with him, that’s my best advice. There’s people you can argue with here, you can even argue with Mrs. Sigsby, much good it will do you, but Tony and Zeke are two bad bumblebees. Gladys, too. They sting.”
She started down the corridor again, but Luke caught her by the sleeve of her brown uniform and tugged her back to the safe area. “I think Nicky hit Tony,” he whispered. “He had a cut and a mousy eye.”
Maureen smiled, showing teeth that looked long overdue for dental work. “Good for Nick,” she said. “Tony probably paid him back double, but still . . . good. Now come on. With you to help me, we can get these rooms ready in a jiff.”
The first one they visited had posters of Tommy Pickles and Zuko—Nickelodeon characters—on the walls, and a platoon of G.I. Joe action figures on the bureau. Luke recognized several of them right off the bat, having gone through his own G.I. Joe phase not all that long ago. The wallpaper featured happy clowns with balloons.
“Holy crap,” Luke said. “This is a little kid’s room.”
She gave Luke an amused glance, as if to say You’re not exactly Methuselah. “That’s right. His name is Avery Dixon, and ’cording to my sheet, he’s just ten. Let’s get to work. I bet I only have to show you how to do a hospital corner once. You look like a kid who catches on quick.”
10
Back in his room, Luke held one of his tokens up to the laptop’s camera. He felt a little stupid doing it, but the computer opened at once, first showing a blue screen with a message on it reading WELCOME BACK DONNA! Luke frowned, then smiled a little. At some point before his arrival, this computer had belonged (or been on loan, anyway) to someone named Donna. The welcome screen hadn’t been changed yet. Someone had slipped up. Just a tiny slip, but where there was one, there might be others.
The welcome message disappeared and a standard desktop photo appeared: a deserted beach under a dawn sky. The info strip at the bottom of the screen was like the one on his computer at home, with one glaring (but at this point unsurprising) difference: no little email postage stamp. There were, however, icons for two Internet providers. This surprised him, but it was a nice surprise. He opened Firefox and typed AOL log-in. The blue screen came back, this time with a pulsing red circle in the middle. A soft computer voice said, “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
For a moment Luke thought it was another slip-up—first Donna, then Dave—before realizing it was the voice of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not a goof, just geek humor, and under the circumstances, as funny as a rubber crutch.
He googled Herbert Ellis and got HAL again. Luke considered, then googled the Orpheum Theatre on Hennepin, not because he was planning to see a show there (or anywhere in the immediate future, it seemed), but because he wanted to know what information he could access. There had to be at least some stuff, or else why give him the connection at all?
The Orf, as his parents called it, seemed to be one of the sites approved for “guests” of the Institute. He was informed that Hamilton was coming back (“By Popular Demand!”), and Patton Oswalt would be there next month (“Your Sides Will Split!”). He tried googling the Broderick School and got their website, no problem. He tried Mr. Greer, his guidance counselor, and got HAL. He was beginning to understand Dr. Dave Bowman’s frustration in the movie.
He started to close down, then reconsidered and typed Maine State Police into the search field. His finger hovered over the execute button, almost pressed it, then withdrew. He’d get HAL’s meaningless apology, but Luke doubted if things would end with that. Very likely an alarm would go off on one of the lower levels. Not likely, surely. They might forget to change a kid’s name on the computer’s welcome screen, but they wouldn’t forget an alert program if an Institute kid tried to contact the authorities. There would be punishment. Probably worse than a slap to the face. The computer that used to belong to someone named Donna
was useless.
Luke sat back and crossed his arms on his narrow chest. He thought of Maureen, and the friendly way she’d ruffled his hair. Only a small, absent-minded gesture of kindness, but that (and the tokens) had taken some of the curse off Tony’s slap. Had Kalisha said the woman was forty thousand dollars in debt? No, more like twice that.
Partly because of the friendly way Maureen had touched him and partly just to pass the time, Luke googled I am overwhelmed with debt please help. The computer immediately gave him access to all sorts of information on that subject, including a number of companies that declared clearing those pesky bills would be as easy as pie; all the back-to-the-wall debtor needed to do was make one phone call. Luke doubted it, but he supposed some folks wouldn’t; it was how they got in over their heads in the first place.
Maureen Alvorson wasn’t one of those people, though, at least according to Kalisha. She said Maureen’s husband had run up the big bills before taking off. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but either way, there would be solutions to the problem. There always were; finding them was what learning was all about. Maybe the computer wasn’t useless, after all.
Luke went to the sources that looked the most reliable, and was soon deep in the subjects of debt and debt repayment. The old hunger to know came over him. To learn a new thing. To isolate and understand the central issues. As always, each piece of information led to three more (or six, or twelve), and eventually a coherent picture began to emerge. A kind of terrain map. The most interesting concept—the linchpin to which all the others were attached—was simple but staggering (to Luke, at least). Debt was a commodity. It was bought and sold, and at some point it had become the center of not just the American economy, but of the world’s. And yet it did not really exist. It wasn’t a concrete thing like gas or gold or diamonds; it was only an idea. A promise to pay.
When his computer’s IM chime rang, he shook his head like a boy emerging from a vivid dream. According to the computer’s clock, it was almost 5 PM. He clicked on the balloon icon at the bottom of the machine and read this: