Challenger Deep by Shusterman Neal

Author:Shusterman, Neal [Shusterman, Neal]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-02-20T08:00:00+00:00

90. Atlas Drugged

They make Hal your roommate. Your old roommate, whose name and face you’ve already forgotten, was discharged that morning. Hal is moved in before the bed is cold.

“You seem to get along,” a pastel persona tells you. “Hal hasn’t been able to share a room with anyone, but you he likes. Go figure.”

You’re not sure whether that’s a compliment or an insult.

Hal arrives with an overstuffed portfolio of maps torn from atlases and pilfered from AAA.

“My mother brings new ones sometimes,” he tells me. “Every addition is a step in the right direction.”

He has written mysterious things on the lines that he draws between cities. And he orates random thoughts of profundity with such authority that you want to write them down and hang them on the wall, but they only allow writing instruments in the rec room.

“Man is often lost in a technological, physiological, astrological lack of logical existence that can best be described as a whole lot of nothing lightly dashed with an obvious hint of Scotch,” Hal says. You wish you could remember it so you could recite it to your parents, and show them that you, too, are profound—but these days things just don’t go in one ear and out the other, they actually teleport, avoiding the space between.

Hal speaks of mathematics, Euclidean perfection, and the golden mean. You tell him about the invisible lines of meaning you feel stretching and winding through and around the people in your life. He gets all excited, which excites you, too.

“You get it!” he says. “You see the big picture.” And although your big picture isn’t the same as his, they seem to layer neatly over each other, like parts of a musical score, incomprehensible to someone who can’t read music until all the instruments begin to play.

“Your artwork is a map,” he tells you. “Lines and curves that contain continents of meaning, points of commerce and culture. Trade and travel routes in every curve.” He traces his finger along the lines of your latest piece, which is taped up on the wall.

“What we perceive as art, the universe perceives as directions,” he proclaims. Directions to where, however, neither of you is sure.

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