Zombie Ocean (Book 3): The Least by Michael John Grist Page A

imagined his face behind the avatar. Was he smirking? Was he sincere?
    "I want you here," Amo went on. "You don't know how much progress I've made since we met. It's helped so much, and I want to help you too. I told you I was in a coma- but I never really recovered. It hurts me still. I can't do much, not like normal people. This place helps, it's why I built it, but it didn't really work until you came. I want you to know that."
    Robert stared at the long speech bubble, scrolling into the darkness. It sounded like his story. It could be a trick, but his mother was right. Who would do that?
    "What did I say?" Amo pressed.
    He had to let it go. It was too much to keep fighting, trying to do it on his own. Amo's name meant love, after all, so if he was lying then let him lie, and the pig blood rain down. The wounds from that would be better than this sick fear poisoning him from within.
    So he let it go. He jumped into flight. "I was in a coma too," he typed. "I was going to the Olympics, and I lost everything."
    A long pause.
    "Tell me," Amo typed.
    So Robert did, from the beginning to the end. In the past it had hurt too much to even think about what had happened, plunging him into a deep and drowning panic, but not this time. He kept on until it was done, and when it was done the two avatars stood there in silence.
    "So I'm talking to an Olympic athlete?" Amo finally typed. "An Olympic parrot?"
    Robert snorted. "I'm a paraplegic now. I can't think clearly. I can't do anything, really."
    "Neither can I," Amo typed. "Maybe we had the same coma? I didn't break my back, but that was the fall wasn't it? It happened to me while I was filling in some panels for a zombie comic. That's what I used to do, draw comics. I was an editor, there was a lot of pressure, then one night things went all fuzzy and two weeks later I woke up in hospital. The headaches never went away. I call them twinges, and stimulation only made them worse. The doctor said I can't have sex until it clears up, and when I masturbate I should do it clinically."
    Robert sprayed water mid-swig, across his bed spread. "I don't want to hear about that."
    "Just be sure and do it clinically yourself," Amo went on flatly. "I mean masturbation. Nothing puts a downer on being horny worse than the devil's fat ass crashing down on your head."
    Robert laughed aloud, then clapped a hand over his mouth. His mother was asleep upstairs.
    "How do you masturbate clinically?" he typed.
    "Keep your eyes and look at an apple. Or an orange, that works too. It makes eating them later a bit weird, but…"
    Robert laughed.
    They talked on into the night. They walked and talked and worked. It was demanding; working the controls and following the diviner while also talking to Amo, but it didn't hurt too much and he loved it. He learned that Amo lived in New York alone, after moving out of his parents' basement.
    "I live in my mom's basement now," Robert typed.
    "Best place for you. Breakfast in bed and a turn down service for free, you'll not get that anywhere else."
    He laughed. It felt good to laugh about being trapped. "She has to lift me up with a winch to turn the sheets down. But it's true, I get breakfast, lunch and dinner in bed."
    "And shit in bed I guess too?" Amo typed. "Not manly."
    "I don't know," Robert fired back. "Some of these shits are pretty big."
    "Ha ha ha."
    "Cripples eat a lot."
    "Ah, we're both cripples here buddy. You've got it worse than me, but we're in this together."
    Afterward Robert remembered that line in particular. We're in this together. It was the best thing anyone could say to him.
    Amo understood.
    For four months they ran the darkness of the Yangtze every day.
    Robert got better and stronger. He still couldn't get in a wheelchair or watch much TV, but he could talk to his mother and the doctor more, he could surf the internet for short periods without too much pain, and he could even start thinking about diving again, following the results of the