Hazel put on the helmet, climbed inside, and lay back. “Let me poke a few airholes,” she heard Liver say. “For your health!”
The helmet blocked out all light, but she heard a series of terrifying stabs delivered in near-mechanical succession, and then it was quiet. Hazel pressed the activation button to start the helmet’s beta-wave sequence. It was pleasurable, frighteningly easy the way her mind cleared. She knew the visual that always came into her head during the Sleep Helmet’s induction wouldn’t sound that serene to others: she pictured a zookeeper cleaning the cement floor of a cage, working a large push broom across soapy ground, the ambient rasp of its polymer bristles moving farther and farther away from the center of the room to the periphery. Off went her worries. The bubbly sheen of industrial disinfectant became her consciousness, liquid and thin. Growing thinner still. Spreading into nothing.
WHEN THE IMAGES OF BYRON CAME, IT FELT LIKE THEY WERE HITTING her between the eyes with a paintball gun. One after the other: Byron accepting an award. Byron delivering a speech. Byron standing amid a group of children in a rural African village. They all sped toward her at an incredible velocity, like billboards she was being flung up against. Her head continued to feel hammered upon even after the images stopped.
It took Hazel a moment to realize this was because she was inside a box wearing a helmet and she kept trying to sit up without opening its lid.
The download had not been thwarted. Hazel pushed the visor release so the helmet’s eyepiece turned transparent, then pressed against the coffin’s lid and climbed out. She was shaking but didn’t see any vomit. After using the crate to help herself stand, she teetered into the living room.
Her father and Liver were having a beer. “Are you ex-military?” her father asked. He was looking at Liver with squinted eyes, trying to get a read on him.
“I’m not big on government,” Liver answered. Her father looked over and saw her in the helmet—she’d lifted the visor but had forgotten to take it off.
“You kids off to ride some go-carts?” he asked.
Hazel went to the kitchen to grab a garbage bag. It would take time to find work, so she figured she might as well sell the electronics Byron had left for her. And the safe. Hazel dropped the helmet inside and slung the bag over her shoulder.
“I’m going to go scare up some rent money for you, Pops. Liver, what do you have going on?”
He stood. “Need to head up to the cemetery for a bit.” With that, he reached out and took Hazel’s arm by the wrist, turning it a little in the light, examining it. For a moment she worried that he was about to pull a bowie knife out of the back of his vest and sever her hand in a single pass—perhaps he was under the mistaken impression that she’d stolen a keepsake from his shed-house, a lottery scratch-off ticket that one of the giant spiders had in fact taken and woven into its web.
Instead he moved his fingers down and gave hers a squeeze, then offered up a wink she would’ve written off as a nervous twitch if it hadn’t been timed just so with his grip of her fist. “I’ll be at the bar later,” he said, then he held her gaze for a moment and left.
Hazel’s father produced a small cough. “Are you courting that fellow? Why wasn’t he wearing a shirt?”
“Do you have a wagon or a wheelbarrow or something I could use to get some electronics down the road to the Gogol resale store?”
Her father scootered over to the breakfast nook and climbed in next to Diane. “You can take the Rascal. Make wide turns and don’t attempt any hills.”
HAZEL BAGGED UP ALL THE SMALLER ELECTRONICS AND SET THEM on her lap, then placed the safe in the Rascal’s front basket. It was slow going with all the additional weight, but she supposed she wasn’t in a rush.
A few blocks from the store, the cell phone started ringing. She pressed DECLINE the first few times, but when the calls persisted, a far-fetched sense of hope lit up inside her. Maybe Byron was so disgusted by her physical union with Liver that he was now willing to cut her loose. It would be delightful to hear his voice crack with revulsion.
“Yes, Byron?”
“We’ve got to talk. I have some upsetting news.”
Two children on bicycles zipped past, pointing and laughing at the large garbage sack on her lap. One threw his chocolate milk shake at the scooter; the plastic lid came off the cup and left an unsettling trail of brown splatter. Hazel worried onlookers would think it was human waste. She honked the Rascal’s horn in protest, but that only seemed to enhance their joy.
“I think I’m caught up,” Hazel said. “You put a chip in my brain that sends you a daily report of all my thoughts and activities. The download will put me into an inconvenient state of paralysis and shock each afternoon. Both are troubling developments for me, but they don’t warrant a phone call.”
“It’s your father,” Byron said. “He’s not being honest with you.”
Hazel stopped the scooter. Okay, so probably her dad really, really wanted her out of his house. The renter thing did seem weird after he’d so recently voiced a desire for privacy. Was there some humiliating eviction plan in motion that Byron had caught wind of? Was her father planning to bring in a ringer, one of his Shady Place pals who’d fry offensive-smelling fish and walk around in large cotton briefs while spewing misogynistic comments until Hazel chose to leave so her father didn’t have to kick her out and seem heartless?
“The renter? What’s going on? What do you know?” Hazel didn’t want to ask how he knew it.
“It’s about your fa-ther, Hay-zel. We have the Sleep Helmet X7 to thank for this information, by the way. I know your hope was to try to disrupt the download, but you may have inadvertently saved your father’s life by putting it on.”
A woman walking her dog made a large show of having to step off the sidewalk to move around the scooter. Hazel tried to motor off onto the grass a little bit but the wheels didn’t like it. The last thing she needed to do was get stuck. “Sorry,” Hazel called out to the woman. “I had to take this phone call.”
“I’m sure it’s real important,” the woman yelled back.
“I’m not even the enemy!” Hazel shouted. At times like these, it was shamefully easy to understand Byron’s contempt for the general public. Hazel knew relativity could be difficult: that woman would probably be in debt to Gogol for electronics purchases and technology usage until she met her death, but someone taking up three squares of sidewalk with a scooter was her perceived grievance with the world.
“Hazel?” Byron questioned. “Don’t engage hostile strangers. Ours is a violent society and you’ve lived behind protected walls for some time. We need to get you back home to us in one piece.”
“What’s this about my father?”
“Where are you? Can I send a car? This news should really come in person.”
Hazel laughed. Byron did nearly all his meetings virtually.