Tesla's father was a bishop, and his mother was an illiterate, thoughshe was a gifted memnist and taught me much about visualization."
"No, I mean _your_ parents. Mister and Missus Ballozos. What were _they_ like?"
The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla shut down the ocean and watched thelumps of ore tumble to the sand. "Why do you want to know about _them_? Are youhaving some sort of trouble at home?" he asked impatiently, not looking awayfrom the ocean.
"No reason," Chet said. "I have to go home now."
"Yes, fine."
#
"The hell have you been, boy?" Chet's father said, when he came through door.His father was in front of the vid, wearing shorts and a filthy t-shirt, holdingthe remote in one hand. Chet's mother was sitting at the window, staring outinto the clouds.
"Out. Around. I'm okay, okay?"
"It's not okay. You can't just run around like some kind of animal. Sit the helldown and tell me where you've been. Your counselor was here looking for you."
"Robotron? He was here?"
"Yes he was here! And I had to tell him I didn't know where my damn kid was! Howdo you think that makes me look? You know how worried your mother was?"
Chet's mother didn't stir from her post by the window, but she flinched whenChet's father spoke. Chet swallowed hard.
"What did he want?"
"Never mind that! Sit the hell down and tell me where you've been and what thehell you thought you were doing!"
Chet sat beside his father and stared at his hands. He knew he could outwait hisfather. After half an hour, Chet's father turned the vid on. Four long hourslater, he switched it off, and went to bed.
Chet's mother finally turned away from the now-dark window. She reached into thepocket of her grimy bathrobe and withdrew an envelope and handed it to Chet,then turned and went to the apt's other room to sleep.
My name was on the outside of the envelope, in rough script, written withawkward exoskeleton manipulators. I broke its seal, and it folded out into asingle flat sheet of paper.
DEAR CHET, it began. At the bottom of it was a complex scrawl that I recognizedfrom the front of The Amazing Robotron's exoskeleton. It must be some kind ofsignature.
DEAR CHET,
I AM SORRY TO HAVE TO LEAVE YOU SO SUDDENLY, AND WITHOUT ANYONE ELSE TO TALK TO.THERE IS AN EMERGENCY AT MY HOME, BUT I WOULDN'T GO IF I DIDN'T BELIEVE THAT YOUWERE ABLE TO HANDLE MY ABSENCE. YOU ARE A VERY PERCEPTIVE AND STRONG YOUNG MAN,AND YOU WILL BE ABLE TO MANAGE IN MY ABSENCE. I WILL BE BACK, YOU KNOW.
YOU WILL BE ALL RIGHT. I PROMISE.
THIS ISN'T EASY FOR ME TO DO, EITHER. IT MAY BE THAT I AM THE ONLY ONE YOU CANTALK TO HERE AT THE CENTER. IT IS LIKEWISE TRUE THAT YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE I CANTALK TO.
I WILL MISS YOU, MY FRIEND CHET.
The writing was childish, with many line-outs and corrections. Reading it, Iheard it not in The Amazing Robotron's halting mechanical speech, but in my ownvoice.
I didn't cry. I held the letter tight in my hand, as tight as I ever held theapparatus, and leaned into it, like it was a source of strength.
#
They haven't even started work on the bat-house. There are bugout saucershovering all around it, with giant foam-solvent tanks mounted under theirbellies. A small crowd has gathered.
I take off my jacket and lay it on the strip of grass by the sidewalk across thestreet from the bat-house. I pull off my soaked t-shirt and feel a rare breezeacross my chest, as soothing as a kiss on a fevered forehead. I ball up theshirt, then lay down on my jacket, using the shirt as a pillow.
The bat-house is empty, its eyes staring blind, vertical to infinity. The grottysculpture out front is gone already, and with it, the sign with the polite,never-used name. It is now just the bat-house.
I check my comm. The dissolving of the bat-house is scheduled for less than anhour from now.
#
The new counselor was no damn good. It wore a different exoskeleton, a motorizedgurney on wheels with three buzzing antigrav manipulators that floatedconstantly around the apt, tasting the air. It called itself "Tom." I didn'tcall it anything, and I limited my answers to it to monosyllables.
The next time I came on the guy who was Nicola Tesla in his chair, the letterwas in my pocket. I took a long swim in the ocean, and then I stripped off mymask and spit out the snorkel, took a deep breath and dove until my ears feltlike they were going to burst. I stared at my reflection in the silvered wall ofthe tank. Through the distortion of the water and the sting of the salt, my bodywas indistinct and clothed in quicksilver, surrounded by schools of alien,darting fish. I didn't recognize myself, but I didn't take my eyes away until mylungs were ready to burst and I resurfaced.
The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla was still thrashing away at his strapswhen I climbed down from the ocean's top. At one side of Old Sparky, there was atimer, like the one on my apparatus, and a knife-switch for timed and untimedsessions.
I stared at him. My life unrolled before me, a life distanced and remote fromthe world around me, a life trapped in my own deepening battiness. Before Icould think about what I was doing, I flipped the switch from "timed" to"untimed." I took one last look at the ocean, looked again at Nicola Tesla, myfriend and seducer, stuck to his chair until someone switched it off again, andleft the 125th floor.
#
I took the apparatus apart in the kiddy workshop, stripped it to a collection ofscrews and wires and circuit boards, then carefully smashed each component witha hammer until it was in thousands of tiny pieces.
It took me two days to do it right, and not a moment passed when I didn't nearlyrun upstairs and switch off Tesla's chair.
And not a moment passed when I didn't visualize Tesla's wrath, his betrayal, hisanger, when I unbuckled him.
And not a moment passed when I didn't wish I could plug in the apparatus, swimin the ocean, take myself away from the world and the world away from me.
The Amazing Robotron returned at the end of the second day.
"Chet, I am glad to see you a-gain."
I bit my lip and choked on tears of relief. "I need to leave here, Robotron. Ican't stay another minute. Please, get me out of here. I'll do anything. I'llrun away. Get me out, get me out, get me out!" I was babbling, sniveling andcrying, and I begged all the harder.
"Why do you want to leave right now?"
"I -- I can't take it anymore. I can't _stand_ being here. I'd rather be inprison than in here anymore."
"When I was young, I left the Cen-ter I was rais-ed in to attend coun-sel-ingschool. You are near-ly old e-nough to go now. May-be your pa-rents would letyou go?"
I knew he had found the only way out.
I started work on my father. I wheedled and begged and demanded, and he justlaughed. For three whole days, I used begging as a way to avoid thinking ofTesla. For three days, my father shook his head.
I cried myself to sleep and wallowed in my guilt every night, and when I woke, Icried more. I stopped leaving the apt. I stopped eating. My mother and I sat allday, staring out the window. I stopped talking.
One morning, after my father had left, I dragged a stool to the window andpressed my face against it. My mother clattered around behind me.
"Go," my mother said.
I gave a squeak and turned around. My mother had folded my clothes in a neatpile and had laid a canvas bag beside it. She had the vid remote in her hand,and on the screen was a waiver for me to go to school. We locked eyes for amoment, and I moved to go to her, but she turned and stormed into the kitchenand started to clean the cupboards, silent again.
I left that day.
#
The saucers lift off to-the-second on-time. The crowd, which has grown, sighscollectively as the saucers disappear over the haze, then a fine mist of solventrains down on our heads. It's as salty as sea-water, and the bat-house tremblesas it begins to melt. Streams of salty water course down its sides.
The top of the building comes into view, the saucers chasing it down as itdissolves, spr
aying a steady blast of solvent.
I tense as the building's top reaches what I estimate to be 150. My calves bunchand my breath catches in my chest. I feel like I'm drowning, and the building'stop crawls downwards, and my feet are sloshing to the ankles in dissolved foam,that runs off into the sewers.
I stay tense until the building's top is far beneath what _must_ be 125, then Iexhale in a whoof of air. My head spins, and I brace my hands against my thighs.I'm not looking up when it happens, as a result.
The first sign is when the great tide of green, scummy, plant-stinking watercourses down over us, soaking us to the skin, blinding me and sending me reelingin reverie. Did I see hunks of dead, petrified coral crashing around me, or didI imagine it?
A brief second later the building's top emits a bolt of lightning that brokeeven