Читать книгу Rabbit and Robot - William Hughes, Andrew Smith - Страница 10

Here are some of the things Billy Hinman and I have never done: At sixteen years of age, we have never attended school like other kids. And we also have never seen my father’s television program, Rabbit & Robot, which, like school, is only for other kids—definitely not for Billy and me.

And Billy Hinman, who never lied to me, has also never taken Woz, which is something they only give to other kids, to help them learn, so they can become proper bonks or coders, to help them “level down” when watching Rabbit & Robot.

Billy never took it, but I am an addict.

It does not embarrass me to admit my addiction to Woz. It’s about the same thing as admitting my feet are size fourteen, and that I have a painfully acute sense of smell: all true, all true. The drug became the glue that held me together, even if the source of my cohesion was, according to my caretaker, Rowan, destined to kill me.

This is why Billy and Rowan concocted the scheme to get me up to the Tennessee.

Their plan ended up saving—and condemning—all of us.

Cager Messer hears me.

Sometimes when he wakes up in the mornings—no, let’s be honest, it’s more like the afternoon, and frequently it’s evening—he says he feels good and strong, and his head is clear, and he thinks he’s not going to smoke or snort or suck down the worm, and I tell him, Cager, who are you fooling? I’ll tell you who you’re not fooling: all of creation minus one, kid.

The kid listens to me, but only because I never tell him what to do. Maybe “listens” is the wrong boy word. He hears me. Yeah, that’s what he does.

He hears me.

Which is an unbalanced social dynamic, you might say. Right? I’ve got ears. Look at me. I hear him. I know what he wants; what he isn’t getting; what he will never get; how he’s passively letting that monster-size ball roll down the hill. Gravity, take control, because Christ knows the kid doesn’t want to.

I am the Worm.

There was an episode of his father’s program, Rabbit & Robot, titled “I Am the Worm.”

Oddly prophetic, that one.

I need a cigarette, and I don’t even smoke. Whenever I ask Cager to bring me some cigarettes, he laughs and tells me I can’t smoke. So I say, fine, then bring me a gin and tonic.

In the episode called “I Am the Worm,” there are these blue space creatures who can turn themselves into anything they want to be—alligators, Abraham Lincolns (Or is it Abrahams Lincoln? This is why I need a cigarette), Phillips-head screwdrivers, frying pans, whatever—and they send out this little blue worm, wriggling through the solar system, and it ends up crawling up inside Mooney’s nose.

The worm, not the solar system.

Mooney is one of the main characters—the robot.

The worm that went up his nose reprogrammed him and made him go insane.

Bad things like that happen to Mooney in practically every episode.

Formula.

The “Rabbit,” who doesn’t really have a name, is a bonk—a soldier who’s come back from one or three, or eighteen, wars. He’s insane too.

It’s a lot of fun.

And Cager is not allowed to watch it.

Mr. Messer doesn’t want the worm to crawl up his son’s nose.