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*****

November 26, 2014

“So, how are your parents?” Kassi asked while we waited for the movie to start.

“Good,” I said, reaching over for a handful of greasy popcorn. “Yours?”

“Good,” she said, looking away.

I felt bad for asking, knowing her parents were back in Virginia. Why she’d chosen Sawtooth College here in Idaho was beyond me. From what she’d told me in the month we’d been dating, her parents were rich, but were always off doing their own thing, something they’d begun to practice a lot when she’d turned fifteen and could be on her own. On her own if you treated the housekeeper, grounds keeper, and the other hired help as if they were invisible, a skill her parents practiced often.

“I’m sorry,” I said, laying my head on her shoulder.

“Don’t be. I’d rather be here with you.”

“Dorms are pretty lonely over break. You sure you don’t want to eat with us? My mom keeps asking about you. My dad does too, but he just wants to look at your boobs.”

“Tyler!” she hissed, then giggled.

“I’m sorry again. I lied. He and my mom just want anyone not related to us there so they can talk to you instead of having to talk to the rest of the family. I’m the one that wants to look at your boobs.” I leered at her chest and got a popcorn kernel in the face for it.

“I might let you look at them if you are quiet and pay attention to the movie,” she said.

“Is it going to be like a test, or something?”

“Maybe. If you want a look-see, you better be ready to answer questions.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go see ‘Forever War’ instead?” I asked.

“Tyler Gallagher, do you want to see these or not?” She used her arms to squeeze her breasts forward, her face serious. I couldn’t tell if she was joking.

“Yes, please.”

“Then watch the movie. It’s supposed to be funny. Besides, it has time travel in it.”

I chuffed. She was heading into dangerous territory. “Listen, sister,” I said with mock sternness, “I know you aren’t comparing this comedy, whatever it is called—”

“—‘Down Time.’”

“—with ‘Forever War,’” I finished. “I don’t need to tell you how… brutal that is. You’ve crushed our relationship under your heel and ground it into dust.” I fell back in my chair as if I’d been shot, and stayed still until she pinched me.

“Time travel is science fiction,” she said, not looking at me on purpose.

I gasped loudly, making a few heads turn toward us. Kassi looked embarrassed. I could see her face darken even in the dim theater. The look she gave me could have frozen lava.

“Well,” I said, “that’s what you get for even thinking such blasphemy.”

“That time travel isn’t science fiction?”

“No, that’s true. But this movie versus… I mean… I don’t even know what to say…”

“Shhh, don’t say anything,” she said as the dim lights died out and the pre-movie advertisements began.

*

I glared at her from across the booth. She took a bite of her hamburger, then chewed it with her mouth open until I had to look away. I couldn’t help laughing. I don’t think I was in love with Kassandra, but I knew if this was her true self, I would be very quickly. She was funny, gross, weird, a tomboy, brilliant, and goofy. All of the things I was. Almost all.

“Are you going to hold this against me forever?” she asked after swallowing her food.

“Maybe,” I said. “I can’t believe I sat through that.”

“But you laughed every time I did!” She threw a french fry at me.

“No, that’s not true. You were laughing so hard you just assumed I did.”

“Come on…”

“Seriously. It was a terrible movie. Least funny movie since ‘Passion of the Christ.’”

“Ouch,” she said, then a sly grin crept across her face. “If you just admit it, I’ll show you something.” She glanced down at her shirt.

“I don’t know…”

“Really?” Kassi looked shocked, almost hurt, as if she’d never been rejected before.

“Maybe sweeten the pot a little?” She narrowed her eyes at me. “I mean, look at what I’m admitting to. Not only did I have to sit through a movie that might have been, maybe, a little, somewhat, possibly funny in one ten second section of the larger work.” She burst out laughing. “But I’m also admitting that I missed watching a movie from one of the best science fiction books ever. To laugh for ten seconds.”

“You and your science fiction,” she said, shaking her head. “Admit it, and they’re yours.” She winked.

“I admit nothing!” I said defiantly, a little too loud. “I admit nothing!” I said again, this time in a loud whisper after everyone’s heads turned back to their own tables.

She shook her head again, and took another bite, making sure to chew it loudly and grossly.

“Okay. Jeez. I admit it. It was a good movie, just stop doing that.” She closed her mouth but cocked her head, prompting me to add, “And I laughed.”

Kassi smiled as if she’d won the game.

“Once. For one second.”

I felt her toes on my leg under the table. I gave her a sly grin this time, both of us knowing that I’d won the game.

*

“What is that?” Kassi asked me once I’d closed my bedroom door.

“Oh, that.” I wondered how I was going to explain it, then realized this was probably the one time I was happy that she wasn’t a geek like me. “It’s just some new computer that I built.”

She walked up to it, marveling at the screen. I tugged on her coat, and she let it slip from her shoulders. We’d
sneaked
in as quietly as we could. I don’t think my parents would hassle me about bedding a girl in their house, but I also don’t think they’d want to know if I was engaging in such a practice. Luckily, their bedroom was downstairs and on the other side of the house. We’d tiptoed anyway, as I was sure my parents would come racing up the stairs at any moment, flip on the lights, and embarrass the hell out of me.

“What is quantum computing?” she asked, sitting in my chair while I put our coats in my closet.

“Oh, it’s just some theory stuff. I was curious, and was searching random stuff to make sure the computer worked.”

“What else were you searching for?” she asked, grinning at me.

“Ukrainian fetish porn,” I said, sitting on the bed next to her. “You want to watch?”

“Is it weird?” she asked, her eyes wide.

“I don’t know. Want to watch some with me and see how weird it is?”

“Sure,” she answered.

“Serious?”

“I’ve seen porn before, Tyler. However, ‘Ukrainian fetish porn’ doesn’t sound like anything I’d be into.”

“So…” I hedged. “What kind of porn
are
you into?”

“Live porn,” she said, and stood up.

She pushed me back onto the bed and began to remove my shoes. She made me nervous. I’d lost my virginity when I was sixteen, and I’d been decently lucky in high school and college so far, but I’d never hooked up with a girl like Kassandra Perkins. I thought she might be a little bit crazy, in the sense of having aloof parents, and she might do off the wall things just to get their attention. I wasn’t complaining about her forwardness, but it was a little scary.

“Come on, get ‘em off,” she demanded when my jeans wouldn’t slide down my legs.

“You first,” I said, hoping for a moment to gather my wits.

Kassi sighed. “Fine.”

She reached down and grabbed the bottom of her shirt with both hands, whipping it over her head in a single motion.

*

“Turn on some music,” she said as we spooned in my bed.

“Uh… I’m not sure if I can.”

She scooted away from me and turned around. “Why not?”

“I don’t know. I guess I can try.”

“Your new computer didn’t come with the ability to play music?”

“I don’t know,” I answered again, getting out of bed and sitting in the computer chair.

The projected image hadn’t changed at all. Apparently there wasn’t a screen saver, or a hibernation mode. I hesitated, sure that I would screw up getting the computer to do anything. I reached out and touched the address bar of the browser, and was relieved when it highlighted.

“Pandora,” I said aloud, and was relieved again when the web page loaded. “What do you want to listen to?”

“I don’t care. No metal or country. How about something groovy?”

“Like trance music?”

“Nothing that thumpy.” She smiled at me in the glow of the monitor. “Like Groove Armada or something. Something… groovy.” She winked at me and lifted up the sheet.

I touched the login link on the screen, wondering how I was going to put my username and password in, hoping it wouldn’t be a process. I wanted to hop back under the sheets with her. The girl was absolutely amazing, or maybe I just wasn’t really that experienced. My mind wandered until I heard a slow beat followed by a groovy synth riff that was in time with it. I looked at the monitor and saw that I’d been logged in as TGall1992.

“What the hell?” I asked the monitor, but all I received in reply was a secondary beat starting up.

Kassi lifted the sheet again, and patted the mattress next to her. I decided I’d worry about it later, and almost jumped from the chair into the bed.

*

I woke to a strange sound, like mechanical buzzing over an old dial-up modem. It wasn’t loud, but it was constant, and for a while, I’d been dreaming about a monstrous machine that had been chewing up the landscape behind me while I tried to flee on foot. I felt something wet on my arm, and suppressed a laugh when I figured out what it was. I gently extracted my arm from under Kassi’s head, then reached down to the floor to grab one of our shirts. I wiped the drool off my arm and her cheek as best I could without waking her. I paused when she let out a little half-snore, but she didn’t wake up.

I sat down in the chair and stared at the screen. The web browser was still up on the screen, though the music must have stopped playing while we were asleep. I wondered if it had stopped because there had been no activity, or if the computer knew we were sleeping. That thought creeped me right the hell out. As a science fiction dork, I’d watched more than my share of “The Twilight Zone,” both old and new, “The Outer Limits,” and “The X-Files.” I could immediately recall at least ten episodes where an evil computer did some evil shit.

“What are you?” I whispered to the black case on my desk.

The computer didn’t respond, didn’t acknowledge me. I touched the X in the corner of the browser window on the projected screen, and the browser closed. I noticed there were now three more icons on the desktop. There had only been three before. I looked at the other five icons that I hadn’t messed with yet, trying to decipher what they might be. I knew what the web browser icon was now, but the other shapes were strange. I almost touched one, then remembered what had happened during the setup process. I’d almost locked myself out of the computer. Maybe. Was the computer supposed to lock me out if I couldn’t figure it out? Would it just keep resetting to three attempts?

Was I going fucking crazy? I gritted my teeth. I became angry at myself for just accepting that these components had shown up, and like a gullible dweeb, I’d built a computer with them. I’d been skeptical at first, but that had ended the instant the computer had powered up. It was on the internet without any network configuration. It knew my login and password to the music site. But it hadn’t logged me in to Google. I opened the web browser again, and touched the login link. The page reloaded faster than my eyes could follow, but I was now logged in to Google. I touched the X and closed the window, and leaned back in the chair, feeling the fake leather cold on my naked back.

“Baby?” Kassi whispered from the bed. For some reason, when she called me that, I got all flushed and warm inside.

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Was just messing with it. New computer and all, and I’m a nerd, you know.”

“Come back to bed.”

I wondered how to turn the computer off without having to talk to it. I thought about pressing the button on the front of the case, but decided to leave it alone. It was too strange already, and I had no idea what it might do if I tried to turn it off. What if it was like Skynet and decided to take over the world? Launch nukes and all that, or maybe just bring the internet to its knees and destroy world economies. My brain began to play out scenario after scenario about the thing sitting on my desk being an evil AI, enslaving mankind, or maybe just wiping us out.

“Tyler?”

“Coming,” I said, my paranoid delusions broken for the moment as I climbed back in bed and curled up next to her.

As I closed my eyes, I wondered how I was going to sneak her out of the house without my mother and father seeing us. I wouldn’t be in any trouble, but I didn’t want to die of embarrassment, knowing that they’d know exactly what had been going on. It was embarrassing enough that my mother couldn’t have missed the signs of me going through puberty, especially after I was allowed to have a computer in my room. My last thought before falling asleep again wasn’t about the computer, but about whether or not I was a puppy falling in love with the girl in my bed.