Read Your Next-Door Neighbor Is a Dragon for Free Online Page B

himself uncomfortably against the corner of his desk. I winced at the awkward pose. It looked as if it could lead to toilet problems.
    “First and most important, zis is not a toy. Zee chamber is a complex scientific instrument and it is not an amusement. Not a joke. You said your book is funny, ja?”
    “Oh, don’t worry.” I held up my hands. “My book won’t be funny at all. That’s just what the publisher thinks.”
    “Ja, vell, no jokes. A joke could produce zee false result,” he scolded. “Und no getting up. Once vee start you must continue to zee end.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Zis is a complex process und once I start there is no shtopping. I see concern on your face, Herr Parsons. Do not fret, there is no danger to you. If you follow meine instructions nothing vill go wrong.”
    Being told “there is no danger” and “nothing will go wrong” by a guy who sounds suspiciously like an Igor from a low-budget Frankenstein remake is not really reassuring. However, other than the slightly creepy chair the chamber did not look all that scary.
    “Anything else?” I asked.
    “Ja, you are not epileptic, richtig?”
    “Nope,” I said.
    “Zen vee are ready, Herr Parsons.”
    Anders led me to the glass door and held it open. There was a slight pressure change when the opening door broke the seal. I could see the fabric covering the walls sway almost imperceptibly.
    “Take off your shoe, but not your sock, und have a seat on zee…seat,” Anders instructed.
    He watched me untie and remove my shoes and then I stepped into the room. Anders followed me in and walked me to the seat. Every movement, everything that should have made a sound, was muffled and deadened by the acoustics of the room.
    I sat down in the black reclining chair. It was difficult to settle into properly, but with a little help from Anders I found the right position. At that point it became very comfortable, so comfortable I might have been tempted to nap were the room not so bright. Anders hydraulically adjusted the seat using a foot pedal on the floor and then adjusted the back so that I was facing forward and slightly up.
    “Zee chair will turn slowly,” he said. “Zis, accompanied wiz everything sometimes make a person sick.”
    He pressed a tightly folded paper bag into my hand.
    “If you feel zee sickness, use zis,” he said.
    I nodded.
    “Remember, do not get up during zee process,” he said, and I replied in the affirmative.
    Anders gave me one last check, adjusted the chair’s height again very slightly, and then stepped back.
    “Okay, gut, you are ready,” Anders pronounced. “I will give you instructions over zee speakers. If I ask you a question you must answer immediately; do not hesitate. Hesitating can contaminate the response. Inshtinct is zee key.”
    “I’ve got it,” I said, and gave him two thumbs up.
    Anders walked out of zee chamber, sealing the glass door and leaving me alone with the bright whiteness. There was a mechanical thump overhead and the lights within the chamber suddenly switched off.
    Faint techno music began to play from three sides. I did not recognize it, but it was driving and repetitive. It was the sort of moronically pounding music that might play over the sound system at a car show as models in bikinis posed next to an ergonomic green Frisbee on wheels. It was hypnotic twenty-first-century Jock Jams.
    The music began to increase in volume, and I realized there were also speakers built into the headrest of the chair and a booming subwoofer pressed against the small of my back. The drum and bass was beginning to vibrate my insides. The sensation wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Yet.
    Digital constellations of colors burst across the walls in synchronization with the music. Red and green showers of pixels exploded with each drum hit. Smaller eruptions of blue and yellow exploded into being with machine gun rapidity and tracked in glowing strips that crisscrossed from one wall to the next.
    The