Home Again, Home Again by Cory Doctorow (spicy books to read .txt) 📖

head, then calling him a baby, goading him into hitting back, dodging easily, and retaliating viciously.

Chet thought that he understood some of what was going on. Maybe he'd be able to explain it to The Amazing Robotron.

#

I never thought I'd say this, but I miss my exoskeleton. My feet ache, my legs ache, my ass aches, and I'm hot and thirsty and my waterbottle is empty. I'm not even past Bloor Street, not even a tenth of the way to the bat-house.

#

The Amazing Robotron seemed thoughtful as I ratted out my chums. "So, I think they need each other. The big one needs the little one, to feel important. The little one needs the big one, so that he can feel useful. Is that right?"

"It is ve-ry per-cep-tive, Chet. When I was young, I had a sim-i-lar friend-ship with an-other. It — no, she — was the lit-tle one, and I was the big one. Her pa-rent died be-fore we came of age, and she left the Cen-ter, and when she came back to visit, a long time la-ter, we were re-ver-sed — I felt smal-ler but good, and spec-ial be-cause she told me all a-bout the out-side."

Something clicked inside me then. I saw myself inside The Amazing Robotron's exoskeleton, and he in my skin, our roles reversed. It lasted no longer than a lightning flash, but in that flash, I suddenly knew that I could talk to The Amazing Robotron, and that he would understand.

I felt so smart all of a sudden. I felt like The Amazing Robotron and I were standing outside the bat-house, in it but not of it, and we shared a secret insight into the poor, crazy bastards we were cooped up with.

"I don't really like anyone here. I don't like my Dad — he's always shouting, and I think he's the reason we ended up here. He's batshit — he gets angry too easy. And my Mom is batshit now, even if she wasn't batshit before, because of him. I don't feel like their son. I feel like I just share an apt with these two crazy people I don't like very much. And none of my mates are any good, either. They're all either like my Dad — loud and crazy, or like my Mom, quiet and crazy. Everyone's crazy."

"That may be true, Chet. But you can still like cra-zy peo-ple."

"Do you like 'em?"

The Amazing Robotron's idiot lights rippled. Gotcha, I thought.

"I do not like them, Chet. They are loud and cra-zy and they on-ly think of them-selves."

I laughed. It was so refreshing not to be lied to. My skin was all tight from the dried saltwater, and that felt good, too.

"My Dad, the other day? He came home and was all, 'This is a conspiracy to drive us out of our house. It's because we bought a house with damn high ceilings. Some big damn alien wanted to live there, so they put us here. It's because I did such a good job on the ceilings!' Which is so stupid, 'cause the ceilings in our old house weren't no higher than the ceilings here, and besides, Dad screwed up all the plaster when he was trying to fix it up, and it was always cracking.

"And then he starts talking about what's really bugging him, which is that some guy at the workshop took his favorite drill and he couldn't finish his big project without it. So he got into a fight with the guy, and got the drill and then he finished his big, big project, and brought it home, and you know what it was? A pencil-holder! We don't even have any pencils! He is so screwed up."

And The Amazing Robotron's lights rippled again, and a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. I didn't feel ashamed of the maniacs that gave me life — I saw them as pitiful subjects for my observations. I laughed again, and that must have been the most I'd laughed since they put us in the bat-house.

#

I'm getting my sea-legs. I hope. My mouth is pasty, and salty, and sweat keeps running down into my eyes. I never even began to realize how much support the exoskeleton's jelly-suspension lent me.

But I've made it to Eglinton, and that's nearly a third of the way, and to celebrate, I stop in at a coffee-shop and drink a whole pitcher of lemonade while sitting by the air-conditioner.

I got the word that they were tearing down the bat-house only two weeks ago. The message came by priority email from The Amazing Robotron: all the bats were dead, or enough of them anyway that the rest could be relocated to less expensive quarters. It was barely enough notice to get my emergency leave application in, to book a ticket back to Earth, and to finally become a murderer all the way.

Damn, I hope I know what I'm doing.

#

The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla told me all kinds of stories, and I was sure he was lying to me, but when I checked out the parts of his story that I could, they all turned out to be true.

"I don't actually need to be here. I've come here to get away from all the treachery, the deceit, the filthy pursuit of the dollar. As though I need more money! I invented foam! Oh, sure, the Process likes to take credit for it, but if you look up the patent, guess who owns it?

"Master Affeltranger, you may not realize it to look at me, but I have some very important friends, out there in the Great Beyond. With important friends, you can make a whole block of apts simply disappear from the record-books. You can make tremendous energy consumption vanish, likewise."

He spoke as he tinkered with his apparatus, which hummed alarmingly and occasionally sent a tortured arc of electricity into the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla's chest.

It happened three times in a row, and he stamped his foot in frustration, and said, "Oh, do cut it out," apparently to one of his machines.

I'd been jumping every time he got zapped, but this time, I had to giggle. He whirled on me. "I am not trying to be amusing. One thing you people never realize is that the current has a will, it has a mind, and you have to keep it in check with a firm hand."

I shook my head a little, not understanding. He waved a hand at me, frustrated, and said, "Oh, go have a swim. I don't have time to argue with a child."

I climbed into the ocean, and the silence embraced me, and the water tingled with electricity, and my consciousness floated away from my body and soared over an alien world. Like a broken circuit, I disconnected from the world around me.

#

Chet's father came home with a can of beer in his hand and the rest of the six-pack in his gut. He walked over to the vid, where Chet was researching the life of Nicola Tesla, which took forever, since he had to keep linking back to simple tutorials on physics, history, and electrical engineering.

Chet's father stooped and took the remote out of Chet's hands and opened up a bookmarked docu-drama about the coming of the bugouts. Chet opened his mouth to protest, and his father shouted him down before he could speak. "Not one word, you hear me? Not! One! Word! I've had a shithole day and I wanna relax."

Chet's mother dropped a plastic tumbler, which bounced twice, and rolled to Chet's toe. He stepped over it, walked out the door, and took the elevator to the 125th floor.

Chet burst into the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla's apt and screamed. Nicola Tesla was strapped into a heavy wooden chair, with a metal hood over his head. Arcs of electricity danced over his body, and he jerked and thrashed against the leather straps that bound his limbs. Unthinking, Chet ran forward and grabbed the buckle that bound his wrist, and a giant's fist smashed into him, hurling him across the room.

When he came to, the electric arcs were gone, but the guy who thought he was
Nicola Tesla was motionless in his straps, under his hood.

Carefully, Chet came to his feet, and saw that the toe of his right sneaker had been blown out, leaving behind charred canvas. His foot hurt — burned.

He hobbled to the chair and gingerly prodded it, then jerked his hand back, though he hadn't been shocked. He bit his lip and stared. The wood was quite weathered and elderly, though it had been oiled and had a rich, well-cared-for finish. The leather straps were nightmarishly thick, gripping the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla at the bicep and wrist, at the thigh and calf and ankle. Livid bruises were already spreading at their edges.

Chet was struck by a sudden urge to climb into the ocean and stay there. Just stay there.

Under the hood, the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla groaned. Chet gave an involuntary squeak and jumped a little. The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla's body snapped tense. "Who's there?" he said, his voice muffled by the hood.

"It's me, Chet."

"Chet? Damn. Damn, damn, damn." His right hand bent nearly double at the wrist and teased the buckle of the strap free. With one hand free, the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla quickly undid the straps on his upper body, then lifted away the hood. He pointedly did not look at Chet as he doubled over and undid the straps on his legs and ankles.

Gingerly, he stood and stretched, then sighed tremendously.

"Chet, Chet, Chet. I hope I didn't frighten you too badly. This is Old Sparky, an exact replica of the electric chair at Sing-Sing Prison in New York. Edison, thief and charlatan that he was, insisted that his DC current was safer than my AC, and they built a chair that used my beautiful current to execute criminals, by the hundreds.

"Nicola Tesla and I became one when I was eight years old, and I received a tremendous shock from an electrified fence. I was stuck to it, glued by the current, and after a few moments, I just relaxed into the current — befriended it, if you will. That's when the spirit of Nicola Tesla, a-wandering through the wires for all the years since his death, infused my body.

"So now I use Old Sparky here to recharge — please forgive the expression — my connection with the current. I once spent eight years in the chair, when I needed to disappear for a while. When I woke, I hadn't aged at all — I didn't even need to shave! What do you think of that?"

Chet was staring in horror at him. "You electrocute yourself? On purpose?"

"Why, yes! Think of it as a trick I do, if it makes you feel better. I could show you how to do it. . ." he trailed off, but a look of hunger had passed over his face.

#

I get all kinds of access to bat-house records from the vid in my apt on my new world. No one named Gaylord Ballozos ever lived in any bat-house. Apt 12525, and the five above it, were never occupied. The records say that the locks have never been used, the doors never opened. It won't be searched when they evacuate the bat-house.

That's what the records say, anyway.

Electricity gives me the willies. The zaps of static from the dry air of the FTL I took home to Earth made me scream, little-boy squeaks that made the other passengers jump.

I don't remember that it was ever this hot in Toronto, even in the summer. The sky is all overcast, so maybe it's a temperature inversion. Up here at Steeles Avenue, I'm so dehydrated that I spend a whole dime on a magnum of still water and power-chug it, though you're not supposed to drink that way. Almost there.

#

The other kids in the abandoned apt on the 87th floor ignored me. They'd been paying less and less attention to me, ever since I started spending my afternoons up on 125, and I was getting a reputation as a keener for all the time I spent with The Amazing Robotron.

That suited me fine; the corner of the gutted