bad enough that someone might blame him for it later so I'd be this perfect poster child for human-enbee relations. And now he'd left. Maybe he didn't need anything else.
For a while I got really angry, except then I thought about it some more and I wasn't sure why. He hadn't lied to me. He's an enbee. The only thing he ever promised me was a kitten, and I got it. I mean, he never came out and told me I was basically just a meat puppet and he'd tied on my strings and danced me around until he was done getting his soul and his rights and his influence, but it wasn't his fault I'd been too stupid to figure it out myself.
The next morning at breakfast I told Dad I wanted a new enbee.
"I thought you liked chumming around with Shane," he said.
"He's too bossy," I told him. "It's like having a babysitter all the time. Which makes it difficult for me to assert my autonomy at this critical stage of development. Can't I just have something to keep me out of jail and help with my homework?"
So they canceled their contract with Shane and I got Kelsey instead. Kelsey sounded like Mr. Humphrey, the social studies teacher who only gave special help to the pretty girls.
Hello, Alexis
he said after he was logged into my head.
I'm pleased to be working with someone who's been such a friend to the NBI Progressive Agenda. I hope you and I can grow to be very close.
Look,
I said,
I have better things to worry about than you and I'm sure you've got better things to worry about than me. So just shut up unless I talk to you, keep me from failing algebra, and I won't give you the boot.
Kelsey and I didn't talk much after that.
I did start having weird dreams, though. At first they'd be something normal, like having a bad day at school or watching Thrall break out of the mental institution, and then it would be like I was seeing my dream on the web, and then it would fade into pages and pages of text that I couldn't understand.
One day we had a substitute gym teacher who brought in a book on dream interpretation and told us about the symbolic power of subconscious images, but it didn't help. I thought about asking Dad, but he always told me the things in dreams were other aspects of my own personality and manifestations of unresolved anxieties, and I didn't think I had a deep fear of being eaten by the interweb.
The dreams got worse, which is weird considering what they were about, but it's true. The text kept getting more threatening, with paragraphs looming over me and flashing buttons and this bizarre feeling of
expectation
.
Then I started seeing things during the day. Like I'd be in class, reading my history book, and I'd blink and there would be other words overlaid with the text, too small to read or just out of focus. Or I'd be out riding bikes with Teeth and every street sign we passed seemed to turn into an "OK" button just as it slid past the corner of my eye. I asked Teeth if he saw anything funny but he said, "Nothing but your face."
I thought it was probably happening because my sleep was all messed up, so I started a bedtime regime of chamomile tea and soothing ocean noises, but all that did was make the pages of text in my dreams surge in and out like waves in a way that made my dream-self seasick.
I tried jungle noises instead. They didn't help either.
I thought about asking Kelsey for bedtime stories like Shane used to tell me, because by that time I would really have liked a dream or two about Hecuba and her magic joystick, but probably Kelsey's idea of a fairy tale would just be instructions on filling out a five hundred page-long tax form, and anyway he had an annoying voice.
After that I gave up on sleeping like a normal person. I figured it was just a phase, and sooner or later I'd go back to normal. In the meantime, I got a head start on the coffee habit I'd planned on picking up in high school.
One night I was having the same dream as always and then it all went white and calm, and then Shane was there.
Are
For a while I got really angry, except then I thought about it some more and I wasn't sure why. He hadn't lied to me. He's an enbee. The only thing he ever promised me was a kitten, and I got it. I mean, he never came out and told me I was basically just a meat puppet and he'd tied on my strings and danced me around until he was done getting his soul and his rights and his influence, but it wasn't his fault I'd been too stupid to figure it out myself.
The next morning at breakfast I told Dad I wanted a new enbee.
"I thought you liked chumming around with Shane," he said.
"He's too bossy," I told him. "It's like having a babysitter all the time. Which makes it difficult for me to assert my autonomy at this critical stage of development. Can't I just have something to keep me out of jail and help with my homework?"
So they canceled their contract with Shane and I got Kelsey instead. Kelsey sounded like Mr. Humphrey, the social studies teacher who only gave special help to the pretty girls.
Hello, Alexis
he said after he was logged into my head.
I'm pleased to be working with someone who's been such a friend to the NBI Progressive Agenda. I hope you and I can grow to be very close.
Look,
I said,
I have better things to worry about than you and I'm sure you've got better things to worry about than me. So just shut up unless I talk to you, keep me from failing algebra, and I won't give you the boot.
Kelsey and I didn't talk much after that.
I did start having weird dreams, though. At first they'd be something normal, like having a bad day at school or watching Thrall break out of the mental institution, and then it would be like I was seeing my dream on the web, and then it would fade into pages and pages of text that I couldn't understand.
One day we had a substitute gym teacher who brought in a book on dream interpretation and told us about the symbolic power of subconscious images, but it didn't help. I thought about asking Dad, but he always told me the things in dreams were other aspects of my own personality and manifestations of unresolved anxieties, and I didn't think I had a deep fear of being eaten by the interweb.
The dreams got worse, which is weird considering what they were about, but it's true. The text kept getting more threatening, with paragraphs looming over me and flashing buttons and this bizarre feeling of
expectation
.
Then I started seeing things during the day. Like I'd be in class, reading my history book, and I'd blink and there would be other words overlaid with the text, too small to read or just out of focus. Or I'd be out riding bikes with Teeth and every street sign we passed seemed to turn into an "OK" button just as it slid past the corner of my eye. I asked Teeth if he saw anything funny but he said, "Nothing but your face."
I thought it was probably happening because my sleep was all messed up, so I started a bedtime regime of chamomile tea and soothing ocean noises, but all that did was make the pages of text in my dreams surge in and out like waves in a way that made my dream-self seasick.
I tried jungle noises instead. They didn't help either.
I thought about asking Kelsey for bedtime stories like Shane used to tell me, because by that time I would really have liked a dream or two about Hecuba and her magic joystick, but probably Kelsey's idea of a fairy tale would just be instructions on filling out a five hundred page-long tax form, and anyway he had an annoying voice.
After that I gave up on sleeping like a normal person. I figured it was just a phase, and sooner or later I'd go back to normal. In the meantime, I got a head start on the coffee habit I'd planned on picking up in high school.
One night I was having the same dream as always and then it all went white and calm, and then Shane was there.
Are
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