Schrödinger's Ball by Adam Felber

Author:Adam Felber [Felber, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781588365484
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2006-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

The President of Montana (As If He Still Gave a Fuck) stood in a parking lot in Springfield, Massachusetts, and wondered why he felt so much younger. He had three theories:

1) Because I just ran away from all the responsibilities that were making me feel old.

2) Because I’m going back to Boston.

3) Because the natural direction in the United States is east-to-west—westward ho!—and when you reverse that, you get younger. Like E = MC2 or something.

The PoM(AIHSGAF) had to admit that that last one was a long shot—he didn’t really know all that much about science. He guessed that number 3 was probably also a symptom of number 2—he was returning to the place where he’d gone to college, where speculation was a way of life, where he’d arrived as a Montana farmboy and had a million experiences, tried curry, had his mind opened up….

When exactly, mused the President, had it closed up again? Well, no, not closed, really, but definitely narrowed. Streamlined, he’d thought, but now it looked like he’d been being too generous with himself. Why hadn’t Tammy told him about that? Why the hell had she kept that to herself?

The President’s mind flashed back to the last couple of years and Tammy looking straight at him and saying things like “You’re getting kinda close-minded there, Earl,” and “Maybe you oughta try thinking more than one way for a change,” and “Stop and smell the roses, Earl,” and “Are you sure that all this antigovernment stuff isn’t just a way of narrowing your life down to one far-from-personal goal so you don’t have to think about the more complicated issues of aging and childlessness and our terrifying financial situation?”

Yes, the President had to admit, she may have hinted at it a bit.

He smiled, and looked back toward the sunset. The past few days had been easy, fun, even revelatory. North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York … What a spread. He’d been only mildly surprised to find no traces of the New World Order. Well, there’d been a lot more surveillance cameras than before, a lot of talk about being “on alert,” a few more signs with warnings printed on them, and you basically couldn’t smoke anywhere anymore. But it didn’t really feel like a shadowy, controlling authority. More like a confused mess, like always, with no one really in charge of it all. Just like Tammy always said, and he once again wondered why that lady even bothered with him.

His key said “17,” so he went to that door, opened it, and was greeted by a sad and musty little room with bolted-down furniture and a carpet stained with at least a decade’s worth of the Unexpected. Tomorrow he’d board the 7:43 A.M. Peter Pan bus and ride I-90 upstream all the way to the source. This tiny, dank space was to be his shelter until then.

He instantly loved it, and he walked into the motel room with his arms open wide.

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