M. T. Anderson by Feed Page A

bedroom.
    Violet asked if I wanted to walk out in the yard for a minute, and I said sure, so we went out. We were standing on the porch and it was much cooler out there. The dome on the yard’s pod was all blue, like it was night, which it was, I mean, up on the surface, but it was blue there at the house, too.
    We stood, leaning on the railing. The night was perfect. We shut out the music from the feed. It was funny, then, to look back in and see people moving to nothing.
    She said, “You’re quiet.”
    I nodded.
    “What’s doing?” she asked.
    “No real one thing.”
    We just stood there together.
    I said, “You didn’t like the feature.”
    She said, “It was okay.”
    “You didn’t laugh.”
    “I liked the mountains. All the pine trees. I’d like to go to the mountains. Wouldn’t it be nice? With a fire?”
    I pictured the mountains and the fire and a snowball fight and let’s-get-out-of-these-wet-clothes, and I said, “Yeah. Sure.”
    “I want to get out to the country,” she said. She looked at me. “What’s really doing?”
    I couldn’t tell her about the guys going in mal. I didn’t want her looking at them while they were on the wall-to-wall carpeting and doing the quiver. I didn’t want her to look at them as if she was sorry.
    Finally, I said, “People have just gone so quick back to like before.”
    “Why?” she said. “What happened?”
    I didn’t tell her about them upstairs. I just told her about sitting in the living room, and hearing the guy who was like the truffle was undervalued, and the girl who was like he never pukes when he chugalugs. I told her about them and then I looked for the memory of them, which I still had, and I played it for her. She knew exactly what I was talking about.
    She went,
Brittle.
    I feel like we’re the only two of us who like remember the, like, the thing.
    People want to forget.
    You can’t blame them.
    She looked at me. She didn’t say anything for a second, and then she said, “My feedware is damaged.”
    “What? In your — in your brain?”
    She put her hand up next to her scalp. “It’ll be fine. But I’m the only one who had damage. They’re trying to fix it.”
    “What’s wrong? Can you still get like, stuff and shit?”
    She laughed. “Yeah. Both of them. I’m fine. But they say they have to find some way to make adjustments. Something happened when the guy hacked. Most people, the hack just jammed them for a while. Somehow it affected mine more. Something’s still wrong.”
    “Holy shit.”
    “Do you remember one day when we were on the moon, the doctors took me out to talk to me alone? Then I came back and found you, and took you up to the air-loss garden? The doctors, they were talking to me about this. They said that it would probably stabilize. It hasn’t yet.”
    “Holy shit.”
    “They say it will probably be fine.”
    “Holy shit.”
    She patted me on the chest. “Calm,” she said. “The rose will bloom ere long.”
    “Yeah. What-fuckin’-ever.” She watched me. I stared at her. I thought about Marty and Link going in mal.
    She chatted,
What are you thinking about?
    Nothing.
    It can’t be nothing.
    I thought about Link and Marty’s eyes rolled back. And I lied, like,
I’m just wondering whether he meant truffles the mushroom or truffles the candy.
    She laughed and touched my face. I felt like I was protecting her from something and that felt good, like I was a man already. I hugged her like a man and we kissed. For a long time, we stared at each other. I liked the way the synthetic breeze was on her hair. We stood, looking out at the shrubs, and the motorboat up on a trailer, and I felt like I was in love, and our arms were around each other.
    She leaned close to my head and took a handful of my hair in her hand and pulled my head down. She whispered, “Keep thinking. You can hear our brains rattling inside us, like the littler Russian dolls.”

That night, the night after the party, I had something that