Feed Read online

  I was crying and saying to call an ambulance, and people were like, Fuck no, is she in mal? If she’s in mal, no way, we’ll get in trouble, and I was like, Call a fucking ambulance, and I tried to do it on my feed, but things were too screwed up, and I could feel the signals going out, and she was breathing again, but she’d gone limp, and I lowered her to the ground, and I put her there, and Quendy was still yelling, “Fuck you!” at her body. “Fuck you!” And Violet was breathing now in heavy, big gasps, but her eyes were closed, and I was leaning next to her asleep body, and squeezing, and squeezing, and squeezing.

  I don’t know what the others did. There were noises, and women came.

  I went with them. And the feed whispered to me about sales, and made all these suggestions about medical lawyers and malpractice, and something happened, and I was sitting beside her in an ambulance, and suddenly I realized, The party is over.

  The fucking party is over.

  The waiting room was white. There were these orbs moving back and forth filled with fluids. They went up and down the halls.

  “There will be some delays,” said one of the nurses.

  She touched her face with her hand. Her pinkie was sticking out. She pressed on her cheek, like she had a toothache.

  She said, “Expect a delay.”

  “Let me tell you a little story,” said a woman on a chair next to me.

  “He’s distressed,” said the nurse. She fixed her hair, which was this hair held together with two magic wands. “Breathe deep,” the nurse told me. “She’s pretty functional.”

  “What?” I said. “What do you mean?”

  “The doctor will talk to you.”

  “There was this one time,” said the woman on the chair.

  “When is the doctor coming?” I asked.

  “He’s here.”

  “Where?”

  “In the room with her.”

  “But when’s he like coming out?”

  She sighed. “You might want to rest your eyes.”

  I paced on the floor. The feed was handing me things. I listened to it, and I paced around, following the pattern of the tiles on the floor.

  … the poor sales of the Ford Laputa in the Latin American market can’t be explained by …

  … craziest prime-time comedy yet. What happens when two normal guys and two normal girls meet in their favorite health-food restaurant? Lots of ABnormal laughs, served with sprouts on the side, is what!

  I paced there. I went around all the chairs. I did them slalom. Men locked into giant wheels with their arms and legs spread out were being wheeled past down the hall. People in smocks hit them on the rim to keep them rolling. The wheels rolled by. The people in smocks were whistling. The men in the wheels stared out, their mouths open, their eyes looking at everything flashing by, but the men were not moving at all. Just looking at the world helpless, in circles, the world going by.

  Violet’s father got there half an hour after I did. I saw him running past me. I didn’t wave or anything, because I didn’t want to get in the way or be a pain in the butt. People, sometimes, they need to be alone. He went past me and didn’t see who I was. That was okay with me. They took him into the room. I waited.

  I clapped my hands together softly a bunch of times. I swung my arms at my sides and then clapped. I realized that they were swinging really wide. People were looking up at me. I stopped. I couldn’t help a small clap, one last one.

  He came out. He was walking real slow. He sat down.

  I didn’t know whether to talk to him. He was smoothing out the knees of his tribe-suit.

  I went over. I said hello, and introduced myself again.

  He said, “Oh, yes. Hello. Thank you for …” He was just like, nodding.

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes. ‘Okay.’ Yes, she’s ‘okay.’”

  He didn’t seem much like before.

  I was like, “What’s happening?”

  “They’re fixing the malfunction. For the time being. The doctor’s coming out.” His eyes were orange with the light from his feed glasses.

  The orbs went past. We waited. Two nurses were talking about the weekend. There was nothing I wanted to watch on the feed. It made me feel tired.

  “Can you stop?” said her father to me.

  I realized I’d like been clapping again.

  “I hate rhythms,” he said.

  I put my hands down. I stood still, in front of him.

  He said, “You can monitor her feed function.” He sent me an address. “Go there,” he said. “If things neural were going swimmingly with Vi, the number you detect would be about ninety-eight percent.”

  I went there. It was some kind of medical site. It said Violet Durn, Feed Efficiency: 87.3%. He stared at me. I stared at him. We were like, just, there. The efficiency went up to 87.4%. He turned his head. Someone was whistling two notes in the hallway.

  Violet was not a bitch. She didn’t mean those things. It was because of the damage. It was making her not herself. I told myself that again and again.

  But it didn’t matter if she was right or wrong about what she said. It was the fact she said it, especially to Quendy, calling her a monster, screaming like one of those girls in black at school, the ones who sat on the floor in the basement and talked about the earth, the ones who got rivets through their eyes just to make people think they were hard. I wanted Violet to be uninsane again, just a person who would touch my face.

  “She’s awake,” said a nurse. “Please come in.”

  She wanted him. Not me. I just stood there. He turned around and went in.

  After a while, he came out and sat down again.

  The nurse said, “Now you.”

  I followed her in.

  Violet was sitting in a floating chair with lots of cables. Some of them went to her head.

  When I came in, she looked away from me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  We stood that way for a little while. She was dressed in just a gown again. Like when we were getting to know each other, back on the moon.

  She said, “I said I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t want to piss her off, so I figured what she wanted me to say, and I said, “I’m just … I’m worrying about you.”

  She shrugged. I watched her. I didn’t know how close she was to the person who had gone completely fugue at the party.

  I asked, “How did they say you are?”

  “Fine,” she said. “For a little while.” She held on to her kneecap. She moved it back and forth.

  “How long?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer.

  I said, “You don’t have to say.”

  “Not long.”

  She looked up at me. She was almost crying.

  She was like, I can’t even say everything I need to say.

  Don’t be — don’t — it’s all going to be good.

  She rubbed her eye. Why are you standing so far away?

  I was like, You’re covered with cables.

  She was like, Oh. Yeah. Yeah.

  We were just like standing there for a minute. Well, she was sitting, but I was standing. I looked up at her. She was moving her kneecap again. I patted myself on my hips. It was like, Tip-tip-a-tip-tip. Tip tap.

  She went, It’s funny that you can move your kneecap all around with your fingers, but you couldn’t move it with your muscles if you tried.

  One of the orbs came in and started to circle around her.

  I said I had to go.

  She said she’d see me later.

  I said my upcar was back at Link’s. I’d forgot.

  She said I should go and get it.

  I said I hoped she was okay.

  She said she was pretty okay. She’d chat me later. Was that okay? Could she chat me?

  I was like, Oh, sure. Sure.

  No. Really?

  Sure. Yeah. On the chat.

  I nodded. Finally I waved, kind of pathetic, an
d I went out. The orb was in front of her face. I couldn’t see what she looked like. I went out into the hall.

  Later, my mom came and picked me up, and we went and got my upcar. The others weren’t there at Link’s house anymore. Link was in the back, by his pool. He waved, and yelled over to me, “She okay?” I chatted him yes, and he chatted me that that was good, and I got in my upcar and flew home behind my mom.

  We had bean cubes and fish sticks for dinner. I had a couple of helpings. There was still time to do my homework, but I watched the feed instead. Some cops found a bunch of rods in a warehouse and were trying to figure out what they were. Durgin, the star of the show, said they belonged to a pimp. His assistant had a run in her stockings. She bent down to fix it. Later I went to bed. I couldn’t get to sleep. My parents had turned off the sun hours before. The light outside the blinds was just gray.

  Finally, I guess I must have fell sleep. At least, I dreamed, and there were beads of water going along some string, and Violet said, “How many do you need before you’re done?” and I said, “These are yours, first,” and she said, “How many do you need?” and I said, “You know. You completely know,” and she said, “That’s why I want to hear it from your mouth.”

  The next day, I was at her house. It was all weird. We didn’t talk. I don’t know why. We didn’t open our mouths. We just sat there, silent, chatting.

  It’s not you, I argued. It’s the feed thing. You’re not like that.

  Maybe I am like that. Maybe that’s what’s wrong.

  She rubbed her hands together. I’m sorry. Please. Tell Quendy I’m sorry.

  Her father was walking down the stairs near us. We could hear him through the wall.

  She chatted, I lost a year of my memories.

  I didn’t understand, first. What?

  I lost a year. During the seizure. I can’t remember anything from the year before I got the feed. When I was six. The information is just gone. There’s nothing there.

  She was pressing her palms into her thighs as hard as she could. She watched herself real careful like it was a crafts project. She went, Nothing. No smells. No talking. No pictures. For a whole year. All gone.

  I just looked at her face. There were lines on it I hadn’t seen before. She looked sick, like her mouth would taste like the hospital. She saw me looking at her.

  She was like, Don’t worry, Titus. We’re still together. No matter what, we’ll still be together.

  Oh, I went. Yeah.

  She reached out and rubbed my hand. I’ll remember you. I’ll hold on to you.

  Oh, I chatted. Okay.

  She went, God, there’s so much I need to do. Oh my god. You can’t even know. I want to go out right now and start. I want to dance. You know? That’s this dumbass thing, because it’s so cliché, but that’s what I see myself doing. I want to dance with like a whole lacrosse team, maybe with them holding me up on a Formica tabletop. I can’t even tell you. I want to do the things that show you’re alive. I want to eat huge meals with wine. I want to go to the zoo with you.

  Zoos suck, I said. All the animals just sit there and play with their toes.

  I want to go on rides. The flume, the teacups, the Tilt-a-Whirl? You know, a big bunch of us on the teacups, with you and me crushed together from the centrifugal force.

  I wasn’t really wanting to think about us crushed together right then, or about us in a big group, where she might go insane again, so I just looked like, Yeah. The teacups!

  And she was still saying, I want to see things grazing through field glasses. I want to go someplace now. I want to get the hell out of here and visit some Mayan temples. I want you to take my picture next to the sacrificial stone. You know? I want to run down to the beach, I mean, a beach where you can go in the water. I want to have a splashing fight.

  I just sat there. Her father was working on something in the basement. It sounded like he had some power tools. Maybe he was drilling, or like, cutting or boring.

  She went, They’re all sitcom openers.

  What?

  Everything I think of when I think of really living, living to the full — all my ideas are just the opening credits of sitcoms. See what I mean? My idea of life, it’s what happens when they’re rolling the credits. My god. What am I, without the feed? It’s all from the feed credits. My idea of real life. You know? Oh, you and I share a snow cone at the park. Oh, funny, it’s dribbling down your chin. I wipe it off with my elbow. “Also starring Lurna Ginty as Violet.” Oh, happy day! Now we go jump in the fountain! We come out of the tunnel of love! We run through the merry-go-round. You’re checking the park with a metal detector! I’m checking the park with a Geiger counter! We wave to the camera!

  Except the Mayan ruin.

  What about it?

  There aren’t, I like pointed out, there aren’t the sacrificial stones. In sitcoms.

  No, she said. That’s right. Chalk one up for the home team.

  We sat. She fixed her hair with her hand.

  I asked her, What did it feel like? At the party?

  She waited. Then, she admitted, It felt good. Really good, just to scream finally. I felt like I was singing a hit single. But in Hell.

  Later, before I left, I watched Violet and her father petition FeedTech for free repairs. Violet’s dad couldn’t pay for all the tests and shit himself. None of it was covered by medical, because the feed wasn’t medical.

  They sent a message to FeedTech explaining what happened. I sat there while they spoke it together. It was all about how she had lost her memory, and how sometimes she couldn’t move parts of her, and about how she had gone completely fugue-state. They asked FeedTech to take on payments for research and repairs. They said that FeedTech had to, because it was about the life of a girl.

  Her feed’s warranty had expired years ago.

  “We will present this petition to several corporate sponsors,” said Violet’s dad. “If you do not acquiesce, others will. We will find someone who will support this repair. We will take our business elsewhere.”

  “Please,” said Violet. “We need your financial assistance.”

  “If you want us as customers,” said her father.

  They sent the message. After that, we didn’t say much.

  Quendy and I talked the next day. We were sitting on big cubes, they were made of concrete. We sat side by side.

  I was like, “She’s really sorry.”

  Quendy nodded. She still had the lesions all over her. When she moved her head, I could see a lesion on her neck open and close like a fish mouth singing a country song.

  Quendy said, “I was like … I can’t go out in public anymore. At first, I was so living eternally in a tool shed. But Loga was like really, really good? She was sitting with me that night. We went back and sat around at my house. She was like, Da da da, she was completely in mal, don’t listen to her, da da da, she’s a complete fuguing bitch.”

  “She’s — but she’s not —”

  “I know. That was just what I like needed to hear then.”

  “She feels real bad.”

  “I know. It wasn’t her.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just nodded. Quendy brushed her hair back out of her face. I rubbed the corner of the concrete with my thumb.

  Quendy asked, “She okay?”

  I shook my head. “She’s scared. They say that it’s … The feed isn’t working well with her brain anymore.”

  “Omigod.” She looked at me. “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. The whole brain is tied in to the feed. The whole brain, like the memory and the part that makes you move and the part for your emotions.”

  “The limbic system.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I just looked it up.”

  “Okay.”

  “There’s a diagram.” She sent me the site.

  “Okay.” I sat there.

  “Maybe you should check it out,” she said, a little angry. “It’ll help you unders
tand what’s happening to her.”

  I pulled up my leg and untied and tied my shoe.

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  I said, “I guess not.”

  “You know,” said Quendy, “this isn’t re: the world serving you some meg three-course dump banquet. It isn’t re: the world serving me some dump banquet. She’s the one who this is happening to. I don’t know what you’re saying to her? But I hope you aren’t sulking weirdly.”

  She looked over at me. I just sat there.

  She added, “Making her feel low-grade.”

  She put her hand on my leg.

  “Hey,” she said. “Hey.”

  Through the holes in her hand, the blood in her veins was blue.

  When I woke up the next morning, there was a message from Violet waiting in my cache.

  It’s three-fifteen in the morning, she said. I haven’t heard anything from FeedTech. I’m lying here. You’re probably sound asleep right now. I like to picture you asleep. You have beautiful lips.

  My mom never had the feed. She didn’t get it installed when she was little. Her parents said they were going to wait until she was old enough to understand and make her own decision about it, like Catholic confirmation. She decided not to have the feed installed. She called it “the brain mole.”

  My father’s family didn’t have the money to buy feeds for my dad and my uncle. The feeds were newer then, and they were more expensive. They were advertised with these silver see-through heads with the chip inside them. The heads would be spinning around at the mall, with the mouths of the heads calling your name.

  My mom and dad both went through college without the feed. I guess it was really hard. They couldn’t remember things the way everyone else could, or see the models that were in the air, you know, of chromosomes or stamens. But they both went on to grad school. That’s where they met.

  I always thought it was strange that they decided to have a kid at a conceptionarium. I guess they really wanted to have me freestyle. They talked about it a lot. Well, I mean, they’d only been going out for a few months, but, you know, a lot for that. Anyway, the ambient radiation was already too bad by then for freestyle. So they went test-tube.