Rabbit and Robot. Andrew Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ smells like human.

       Cheepa Yeep!

Hocus Pocus, and Kansas Is Full of Shit

      The only time in my life I’d ever seen Rowan look anything close to being embarrassed came when I asked him if he was a virgin.

      That was two years ago now. I was fourteen at the time and was just learning so much about all the surprises of life. Also, being fourteen, I was not yet aware that there were certain questions that guys weren’t supposed to ask, even if Rowan was closer to me, and certainly knew more about me, than my own parents.

      But Rowan wouldn’t tell me. He changed the subject to laundry or bathing or driving me somewhere, or some shit like that, which was how Rowan routinely handled me when I asked questions he didn’t want to answer.

      And even now, at the age of sixteen, I was still constantly monitored by Rowan. At least I was usually permitted to bathe myself, though. But Rowan still did my laundry and got me dressed. And the terrifying thing was that Rowan had told me he was going to teach me how to shave before Christmas, which was something that I really did not think I needed to start doing.

      A few days before we ended up marooned on the Tennessee, Billy Hinman and I had a play date with kids who were supposed to show us what being normal was all about. Rowan waited for us, as he always did, parked out on the street while Billy and I attended what we called a real-kids party.

      It wasn’t much of a party.

      But Billy Hinman and I were not real kids. Until we turned eighteen, or until we were somehow liberated, we considered ourselves to be our parents’ fancy pets, tended to by insomniac caretakers like Rowan.

      Billy Hinman’s caretaker was an actual v.4 cog named Hilda. She was one of the early releases, like most of the cogs who worked on the Tennessee, so she had wild and unpredictable mood swings. Most people—humans, that is—didn’t like the v.4s. I thought they were hilarious, though. And they also made Albert Hinman—Billy’s dad— the richest man in the world.

      Not that any of that would amount to shit by the time we got stuck on the Tennessee.

      Our parents had decided early on that the best way to socialize us, since we were not attending school or watching Rabbit & Robot like everyone else in America, would be to create an artificial “friends group” of kids the same age as Billy and me. Our friends group went through several iterations over the years for various reasons. And the kids’ families had to apply and go through a screening process.

      Not just anyone in the world could be a “play buddy” with a Messer or a Hinman.

      Our real-kid friends’ parents were paid, naturally.

      The only two members of our group who’d been with us since the beginning, when Billy Hinman and I were four years old, were Katie St. Romaine, who was my girlfriend for nearly a year, and a boy named Justin Pickett.

      Katie and I had never had sex, although we did come close a few times. It was always me who’d be the one to chicken out. And where did that get me? Stuck on the Tennessee, alone, with Billy, Rowan, and a couple thousand v.4 cogs. Ridiculous.

      Whatever.

      Billy Hinman did have sex with Justin Pickett. Billy told me everything. He was one of those guys who, according to him, didn’t like to be pinned down by expectations regarding his sexuality.

      Billy Hinman called himself “fluid,” which sounded incredibly foreign to me. I just thought he was horny all the time. And, yes, Billy Hinman did ask me more than once if I’d like to fool around sexually with him, to which I answered that if I was too afraid to try anything with Katie St. Romaine, I was definitely too afraid to do anything with him.

      And we left it at that, because nothing could really get in the way of our friendship, especially because of how honest and sometimes sad Billy Hinman was. Also, we needed each other. We were the only real human beings either of us truly knew.

      All our fake friends were on Woz. They all went to school, so this was natural. All schoolkids had prescriptions for Woz. It helped you learn things. Billy never had Woz once in his life that I was aware of, but I was pretty much an out-of-control addict ever since I was about twelve. Still, I felt like I’d learned plenty of stuff. Rowan was also my tutor; Billy’s, too, when he’d pay attention to stuff.

      You couldn’t really tell much of a difference between Wozheads at school. The doses they received were perfectly adjusted to help future coders concentrate, or to cull out the obvious future bonks. It was guys like Charlie Greenwell and me who were the unfortunate casualties of the culture of Woz.

      I did it for fun, and I had too much fun.

      The party was awkward, to say the least. For one thing, it was at Paula Jordan’s house, and Mrs. Jordan was there, which meant that I’d probably have to stay around and “wait” for Billy Hinman after all the other kids left.

      I had only broken up with Katie St. Romaine two days earlier, and she was there, sitting as far across the room from me as she could possibly get and still qualify her parents for payment for her attending this week’s “normal kids” group.

      Such fun.

      Katie looked unhappy. It kind of made me feel drawn to her, and simultaneously sad, too, because I worried that I may have hurt Katie St. Romaine’s feelings, and nobody likes to do that, right?

      I sat on a couch, next to Billy and Justin. There were four other teenagers with us: Paula Jordan; Stuart Michelson; Dani, who was Stuart’s twin sister; and another kid who had just joined our play group a few weeks earlier. His name was Craig or Ken or something. Whatever. Craig or Ken tried too hard to talk to me and Billy. He acted like a fucking v.4 cog that was stalled out on friendliness or something. But he was definitely a human. I could smell pee stains in his underwear. Oh well, I’m sure Craig/Ken’s parents were beyond thrilled that their boy got to hang out with a couple of kids like Billy Hinman and me.

      “Don’t mess up the game, Cager,” Justin Pickett said.

      “I’m not even really playing. I don’t care about the game,” I said.

      I leaned forward and dropped four Woz tabs on the table screen in front of the couch. We were all supposedly playing a game with our thumbphones. The playing field rose up in three dimensions from the table. The game was called Hocus Pocus, and it was one of those trendy party games that was supposed to get people to talk about all kinds of personal stuff, but none of us was really talking that day.

      It was Paula’s turn. She had to either make a sacrifice to one of the other players, or she had to get up and change something on someone. She decided to change Billy Hinman’s hairstyle. So she walked around the table while I worked at grinding up my drugs, then Paula began combing his hair back from his forehead. It was easy enough for Paula to do; Billy was always loose and relaxed, and his hair was long and hung down in front of his face.

      “I like my hair down in my face,” Billy protested.

      “Nonsense,” Paula said. “And you look better this way, besides.”

      “Nonsense right back at you,” Billy told her.

      Katie СКАЧАТЬ