The Transition. Luke Kennard
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Название: The Transition
Автор: Luke Kennard
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Научная фантастика
isbn: 9780008200442
isbn:
‘You really need to start with the decline of the Roman Empire to understand the situation,’ said Stu, taking a bite of croissant. ‘The original population were Helvetic Celts.’
‘I’m pretty sure that’s a font,’ said Janna.
Once he was alone in the house, Karl took to reviewing a retro-look anti-SAD desk lamp with unusual enthusiasm. It was fun having opinions about things. Also, he had been keeping up the press-ups, trying to do ten every hour so that he could hit the ground running in Stu’s next workout. The tension in his chest muscles was a novelty, and when he dropped the paperclip he was fiddling with and leaned out of his chair to pick it up, his stomach didn’t feel like a balloon he was trying to fold in half. It hurt, certainly, but it was a new kind of pain, an earned pain. ‘This lamp is the Switzerland of desk apparatus,’ he wrote.
He checked Study Sherpas© and found that someone called Cynthia Palmer needed an A-level coursework essay on contemporary British fiction. ‘Really need an A*’ was her only communiqué. A-level essays were a cinch – he could ace them in an hour while talking to someone on the phone. Karl spun the fruit machine in his head, tapped out a title – ‘A Comparison of Representations of Masculinity in the work of Martin Amis and Ian McEwan’ – and brought up three novels apiece on eBeW.
After three hours he had finished the essay and four reviews and thirty press-ups, in spite of thinking about his Polaroid of Genevieve. He started to consider his position. It meant that Janna and Stu were snooping and, well, so was he. It meant that either Stu or Janna was looking for some kind of an edge. Or fancied his wife. Or had designs on his wife of some kind. Or it was part of The Transition which would later be revealed to him. Or Stu was a bigger perv than he was, and Genevieve was his wife, dammit, and that was his photo of her awesome body. Karl stood up and started pacing from his study to the bedroom and back again. That’s the problem with self-respect, he thought. You start to feel offended when someone insults you.
He completed eight circuits of the room and the study. He was an inveterate pacer. Genevieve said it was the only reason he wasn’t fat. He stopped in the bedroom, looked out of the window and decided to channel his irritation into some more press-ups. He hit the floor, staring straight ahead at the foot of the bed. One … Two … The familiar pulsing in his temples. Three … Four …
Something caught his eye. The word NOT was carved in tiny letters into the foot of the bed, next to a rough downward pointing arrow.
‘Not?’ said Karl, out loud.
He started patting the floor under the bed, feeling under the bed frame. He stuck his head under the bed. He turned on the tablet for light and slid it under with him. not_all_transition.com was carved into one of the wooden slats under the mattress.
Karl put www.not_all_transition.com into his tablet, and the screen went white. He hit refresh and the same thing happened. Then it told him that the connection had timed out. The second time it told him that the site was unavailable, and then the screen froze. He made a mental note to check in an internet cafe. There were still internet cafes, presumably.
He restarted the tablet. When it came back on, the screen was prompting him to complete his 500-word journal from last night or lose a merit point. He texted Keston.
– Favour to ask you.
The reply felt almost implausibly instant:
– Anything for my favourite screw-up.
– That was quick. Bored much?
– I’m at work. This is one of eight conversations I’m having, mother. <PICTURE OF OWN JUNK>
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