Looking Glass by James R. Strickland

Author:James R. Strickland
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-09795889-0-7
Publisher: Flying Pen Press Science Fiction

Chapter 19

7:30 p.m. Sunday.

We're sitting in the living room. The sunlight filters in through dirty windows, past a curtain made from a U.N. flag. That quality of light makes the room seem more yellow, the house more full of stuff, the air closer. Collectors live here, and the things in the house tend to run in families. Dolls, lovingly dressed in club wear, their glass eyes everywhere looking out into the living room, unseeing. Sculpture welded up from junked technology. Animation cels, some from series I even remember. Art is plastered to all the walls. There are toys. Board games. Video games. Half a dozen game consoles from the antique models of my own childhood through the present. A whole shelf of game ice from Epimetheus Games. My old company. They're displayed prominently, and some of them I even remember having a hand in. Too much of that, time to look at other things.

I look around at the board games — Operation. Trivial Pursuit. CandyLand. CandyLand? Hell, I've played that. It's one of the earliest things I can remember. I'm lying on my belly on the scratchy carpeting of mom's apartment and playing CandyLand with her. I'm too young not to think she is the best person in the world. Monopoly. I'm older. Same living room. The carpeting is more threadbare. The game is more cutthroat. “Money doesn't grow on trees, Catherine. It's serious business.” Mom says that, as I land on Park Place for the third time and her hotel bankrupts me. “That's how this world is. Get used to it. No pity. No mercy.”

* * *

These are not my things, I remind myself. They are someone else's memories. Someone gone.

There are home decks wired together, a Devuzhka and a Zhang. Newer than my OSDeck, faster. They're connected to a wireless switch, connecting them to the NFWN. Brian is sitting on a lumpy looking couch, toying with a battered looking pillow and afghan there, lost in his own memories, perhaps.

“So you're Dr. Catherine Anne Farro.” He says, enunciating with excruciating precision. Even my first name gets the three syllables to which it's technically entitled.

I look over at him and nod. “Yeah. Not what you were expecting, huh?”

“Not too far off, actually.” He shrugs a little. “I know the type.”

“I'm of a type now?” He nods. Small talk is awkward. We're both having that hippopotamus in the corner problem. The one thing, the only thing we have in common is… “Listen, I'm really sorry about what happened to Tika…”

“Really?” The face is neutral under those shades, the body language carefully guarded.

“Yeah. Why do you think I'm here?”

“I think you're chasing a ghost. To be honest.” He's watching me behind those shades. Taking my measure. Sizing me up.

I wonder what kind of impression I must be making. But I'm tired. I've had what you'd call a bad day. So now I don't actually give a shit about making a good impression. This is me, Brian, warts and all. “It's about paying my respects.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.