Devon Monk A Cup of Normal (v5.0) (epub) i

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.So when Gerald called, she said: “I still don’t have the blink accounted for,” while she twirled a pencil in her hair, the mirror in front of her desk smudged from the frenching she’d been practicing right before the call.At that point, Gerald was past caring about the why and how of the blink, and more focused on the if and when.“But we can do it, right?”“Yeah,” she said, “we can do it.”Gerald got real excited and told her to come over right away before his crazy Thumb-sucking sister ruined everything by buying stationery with Mr.and Mrs.Opposable embossed in gold script on it.Gerald was worried.Screwing with reality was one thing — trying to return gold embossed stationery was out of his league.Fortunately, Carla said she’d be right over.She hung up the phone, tucked the pencil behind her ear and put on a new coat of lip gloss.She’d get Gerald to shine that angel-eyed slacker smile on her tonight — hamster or no hamster.Gerald was ready for her.He had left his bedroom window open just enough for the ground wire attached to the city light pole to get through.He’d rigged the ground in case they blew the half-dozen drained car batteries strapped together on the floor of his room.The wire snaked toward the hamster cage on his desk like, well, like snakes — and there the cables and wires connected to hangers, six sets of jumper cables and a broken handled turkey fork held in place above the cage with a network of de-papered twisty ties which in turn wrapped around the bars of the squeaky wire exercise wheel and the forty watt lightbulb in a socket in the corner of the cage.Gerald had taken extra care to strap the whole deal together with generous strips of duct tape, because he wasn’t about to risk reality or beer to a half-ass wiring job.Once Carla arrived, they fueled the hamster with super-condensed Italian caffeine, and dropped it into place on the wire wheel.The hamster ran — all four of its nubby legs pounding like hummingbird wings, moving faster than any rodent had ever moved.Gerald already had the phonebook open in his hands and his finger planted on Anthony’s address.He stared at the hamster and repeated to himself, Anthony’s gone, Anthony’s gone.He tried really hard not to think about the beer, the free beer, just Anthony gone, free beer, Anthony, free beer, gone.when the hamster hit the threshold speed and triggered Carla’s mathematically unpredictable blink.A firework shower of sparks filled the cage, first too bright then too dim, and then just plain too dead.The lightbulb went dark and stayed that way.Carla covered her nose, her eyes watering from the smell of scorched hamster — a little like over heated vacuum cleaner and three-day old road kill skunk.“Did it work?” she asked.Gerald glanced at the phone book and realized that under his finger was Torlioni, Anthony, same street as always, even the same phone number.Realities might have bumped, but they hadn’t changed.Gerald shook his head.By now Rachel had probably picked out the stationery, maybe even registered for wedding gifts, the bitch.His window of opportunity was gone and the Thumb hadn’t budged.Carla was talking, her words coming out sort of muffled.“Sorry about the hamster.”Gerald looked down at the tan-colored lump and felt an overwhelming moment of guilt.He hadn’t meant for the little guy to croak.“I don’t know why it didn’t work.” He gave the hamster a gentle poke.Nothing.“It’s not your fault,” Carla said.“You were great.I should have predicted when the blink would hit and warned you.Maybe if I try —”“Naw,” Gerald said, “That’s it.One hamster is my limit.”Gerald glanced at Carla, who looked pretty cute with her hand over her nose.“How about I buy you a.uh.” He paused.“We could go out for a.” He glanced at the hamster.Something.He was thirsty for something.The ghost of a memory slid by, cool and fizzing, tantalizing, and was gone in a blink.“For.coffee,” he finished.“Would you like to go out for coffee?”Carla looked surprised.“Unless you’d like something else?” he quickly said.“No, no,” Carla said, “coffee sounds perfect.”And it was.One of my earliest published short stories, this was my first foray into science fiction.I have a fondness for little robots, and giant robots, and I hope that love shines through.PROBEIt comes, breaks, lands.Strange parts move here, there and touch.Heat.I am more, free of my world, my soil.I drift and soon cling to the strange parts.I stretch, absorb, learn.These are machines, I learn.They mine for substance known as mineral.They will not be here long.Soon they will take to the sky, the stars.This soil is rich with mineral, but poor of life.Life?I search to understand that, find the moving of limbs, the rhythm of speech, the part and whole that make human, soul/thought/life.I want that.I devour the small chip of metal in the machine that contains so many thoughts.Now I am alive.And words have meaning.“If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”It is coming from the big gray machine, the one that bangs against the ground, pulverizing rock into silt.I swivel, find optical, see.“Shut up, Bruce! You’re killing me.” This machine is smaller and scoops up the silt, pouring it into another machine, a carrier.Carrier moves well.Tracks for feet push over the rocky terrain, moving silt to the sorter.Sorter is bigger than Carrier, bigger than Scoop, bigger than Bruce the pulverizer and much bigger, I realize than me.I am Probe.There is only one bigger than Sorter and that one is sitting silent, a behemoth that pours light down on us, and waits as they fill its belly — its hull.The biggest one is important [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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