Read M. T. Anderson for Free Online Page B

that mean?” I asked.
    “It’s the first thing my dad teaches the students on the first day,” she said. “It means, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’”
    I looked at her pen. “You write all the time,” I said, completely in awe.
    “I’ve done it since I was little.”
    “Do you write . . . stuff?”
    “Not stories or anything. I just write down things I see sometimes.”
    “On paper.”
    “Yeah.”
    I looked at her. “You’re one funny enchilada,” I said.
    She nodded real quiet.
    “Doesn’t your hand get all cramped up?” I asked. “Don’t you end up like, hook-hand?” I made hook-hand. She made hook-hand. We pawed each other with hook-hand.
    She shook her head and smiled.
    I asked, “Why don’t you use the feed? It’s way faster.”
    “I’m pretentious,” she said. “Really pretentious.”
    “Yeah, so the studio audience has noticed, but seriously.”
    “Seriously.”
    Suddenly, something occurred to me. I looked up at her.
    Marty had fallen to his knees, and was being pulled back toward the bed by the tubing. His cheeks were puffed out. His hands were in fists. His fingers were getting blue. All of the ridges on his arms stood out. Calista and Link were whistling with their fingers in their mouths. The other people in the ward were yelling, “Shut up! Would you all shut up?”
    I asked Violet, “Your father, he’s a college professor, but he was too busy to come see you after you like completely collapsed from a hacker attack? Too
busy
?”
    She looked me in the eye. “No,” she said, “but that’s what I told you.”

The salad days couldn’t last forever. We really wanted to get back to Earth. Everyone wanted to forget how sucky the moon had been.
    Tuesday, just before lunch, a doctor and a policewoman and a technician came in. Our parents were all talking over in the corner. The rest of us were all sitting around, talking about spaceship disasters.
    The technician called us all to attention and went through this whole thing, he was sorry for the delay, but they wanted to be absolutely sure there was no permanent hack, that our feeds were safe, etc. He was all like,
da da da, must have been a difficult time for all of us, da da da, we would find our normal service resumed without interruption, da da da da da, he was meg sorry we had to go through this, and he had complied with the police and handed over our data, da da da, like thank you all again for your patience.
    One by one, we went into the examination room.
    In there, there were nurses and the doctor and the technician. The nurses were watching the relays, our blood pressure and all. They were like, “Don’t worry about anything. You’ll feel it all coming back in a few seconds.” The doctor touched a bootstick to my head.
    He said, “Okay. Could we like get a thingie, a reading on his limbic activity?”
    The bootstick was cold on my neck. I could feel the little hairs standing up around it. There was some kind of static electricity.
    They moved the bootstick a little. I heard it beep.
    “You should feel it now,” said one of the nurses.
    I didn’t feel anything. I looked around. They were watching me closely.
    “No,” I said. I shifted on the bed. I didn’t feel anything. I said, “Nothing. I feel nothing.”
    “Hold your head still,” said the doctor.
    He shifted the bootstick and it beeped again.
    I kicked my heels against the bed. “There’s nothing. Nothing,” I said.
    “Why don’t you —” said the nurse.
Pulse up. Rising.
    Limbic activity okay?
    He’s just nervous.
    Don’t worry. It’ll hit him in like a second.
    We have readings on engram formation.
    Signal engaged.
    Don’t drop the exterior relays yet.
    The Ford Laputa.
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    “There you go,” said the nurse.
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