Читать книгу Hard, Soft and Wet - Melanie McGrath - Страница 20

Nancy’s COMDEX friend Dave brings his brain machine and an ounce of crystal caffeine around. He says that crystal caff is the drug du jour among programming types, and I suppose he should know, since he is one, all the way from the Dead Kennedys T-shirt to the lightly sprinkled dandruff. After spending Sunday in his company, Nancy told him as sweetly as she could that in spite of the fact that his qualities were manifestly overwhelming, she wasn’t ready for a relationship just now (which is actually a bald-faced lie, albeit a tactful one), but she’d like to be ‘just friends’. I suspect the truth is she doesn’t think Dave is glamorous enough for her. Nancy is always chasing the unattainable at the expense of the possible, whether it be some greaseball zillionaire in a sta-prest suit, the state of permanent perfect happiness, or the latest must-have body-shape.

We set up the brain machine and toss a coin to see who goes first. The machine reprograms your moods by flashing a series of lights into your retina and changing the pathways of your neural impulses. I win the toss. Having selected my chosen mood – exhilaration – from the mood menu, I settle down on the sofa, cover my eyes with the special glasses and flip the on button.

At first nothing happens. Then, a few seconds later, some strange pulsing music starts up, followed by flashes of light which gather into a pattern of green helixes inside my eyelids. For a moment the whole thing feels like a bad trip, but the next I know, Nancy is tugging on my shoulder.

‘Sweetie, it’s time to get up.’

I remove the glasses from my eyes.

‘Did I fall asleep?’

Nancy nods. ‘Twenty-five minutes ago.’

‘That’s pretty amazing for an insomniac.’

‘Except you were supposed to be exhilarated.’

And then Nancy takes her turn, chooses ‘speed learning’, picks up a software manual and is asleep within seconds.

Later, we pipe a little caffeine while Dave tells us the story of his six-toed cat, Arnie, who is a direct descendant of an identical six-toed cat found stowed away on the Mayflower. After that we sit around in benign but awkward silence; then Dave, smiling, makes his excuses and gets up to go. He’s picked up the thought waves passing between me and Nance and feels excluded. Besides, there really is no follow-up to Arnie, the six-toed feline Pilgrim Father, is there?