The Mirror Man, стр. 49
“Okay, then,” Jeremiah said. “What do we do?”
Brent began a series of fast maneuvers with the handset, typing in lines of code that appeared in rapid succession on the side of the screen. It looked like gibberish to Jeremiah.
“There,” Brent said. “We’re in. Now I just need to send this guy a request. He’s usually around in the afternoons.”
He typed a screen name with the handset and Jeremiah’s eyes grew wider as each letter appeared on the screen: L...o...u... D...o...g...1...2...3.
That was Parker’s screen name. Jeremiah was certain of it. It was the same name he used for everything—every password, the combination for his locker at school and every game he played online. Jeremiah had told him more than once that he ought to vary it up a little, but he never did.
“LouDog123?” he asked. “That’s who you’ve been playing?”
Brent looked at him sideways. “Yeah. So what?”
“Brent. That’s Parker. You’ve been playing Infinite Frontiers with my son.”
“No.”
“That’s Parker,” he said again. “Remember? He asked the clone for the beta? That’s him. I’m sure of it.”
On the screen, LouDog123 accepted the game request and an avatar somewhat less sinister looking than Clyde appeared blinking on the screen, waiting for battle.
“What do I do?” Jeremiah asked, a sudden wave of worry momentarily paralyzing him.
“I suggest you begin with a grenade,” Brent said. “Just play. He won’t know it’s you.”
For the next half hour, Jeremiah engaged in a gleeful, surreal and violent battle with Parker. Despite how much he’d been practicing, he was hard-pressed to even keep up with his son. Parker was good at this, and Jeremiah had to work just to keep the tenuous connection going. One mistake and he feared the game would be over. He resisted the considerable urge to stop firing and just start typing all the things he wished he could tell him. He wanted so desperately to talk to him, to have even a casual conversation—to ask him about school, music, other games he’d been playing—but he knew he couldn’t do that. Instead, he let Clyde do the interacting for him. Every grenade he launched, every blast from his gun, every duck and cover, felt like a little step closer into Parker’s life.
When it was over—only when Parker’s avatar accidentally stepped on a land mine and blew himself to bits—Jeremiah was caught off guard by his own disappointment. He could have stayed there all night.
Good game, Clyde, Parker typed onto the side of the screen.
Jeremiah looked at Brent.
“Answer him if you want to,” he said. “Go ahead.”
Thanks, he typed, his hands shaking visibly. You, too.
The connection severed, Jeremiah slumped back against the couch and took off his headgear. He sighed heavily and didn’t even attempt to stop the tears he felt stinging the back of his eyes.
“I don’t think I can do that again,” he said to Brent. “It’s just too hard.”
Chapter 24
Day 145
On a Tuesday evening, Jeremiah and Brent sat down to view the clone as he was arriving home from work. Jeremiah leaned back against the couch and opened his third light beer of the evening, hoping it might help him sleep later, and Brent, businesslike and dressed in his lab coat, pretended he hadn’t been counting. Jeremiah didn’t care one way or the other.
The camera came on and showed an inside view of the front door of Jeremiah’s home opening onto the hallway, a patch of evening sunlight illuminating the dust bunnies on the floor. He heard Louie’s tags jingle and saw the dog walk sheepishly into the room and yawn when he saw it was the clone and not someone more interesting, like the mailman or a complete stranger.
“Hey there, pal,” the clone said uselessly, leaning down to scratch the dog behind the ears. Louie acquiesced, but just barely, and shook his head away after only a second or two. “Where is everyone?”
Tossing his keys on the small table in the hallway, the clone walked into the dining room and through to the kitchen, calling as he went. “Diana? Parker? Anybody home?”
No one answered. He opened the refrigerator and grabbed a soda from the door. He looked around the room for a note or some hint of dinner in the oven, but the lights weren’t even on. It appeared that no one had been home all day. Jeremiah could see the clock on the oven. It was twenty past seven. There should have been someone home by now. Parker should have been pretending to do homework while playing some computer game in his room. The clone called out again as he went upstairs. Louie followed slowly, keeping his distance from the clone, but wondering, certainly, whether anyone was going to even consider letting him outside.
“Dog’s probably got to pee,” Jeremiah said out loud.
The clone walked through the upstairs hallway and opened the door to Parker’s room. The light was off there, too, but Jeremiah could see a swath of typical clutter on Parker’s floor—books, laundry, dog toys—and it made him flinch for a moment to remember how much he missed his son. The clone stood there in the doorway, thinking about God knows what, looked down at Louie again and sighed.
“Where is everyone?” he asked again, as though the dog not only had that information but might somehow answer him.
Back in the kitchen the clone made himself a tuna sandwich and filled the dog bowl with food. Jeremiah noted again that Louie likely had to pee and shook his head. No one was taking care of his dog.
The clone took the sandwich into the living room, slumped back in his chair and turned on the news. For about ten minutes Jeremiah and Brent watched as he sat there, unmoving, Louie lying down unheeded by the front door, and they listened, along with the clone, to the headlines and weather report. When the door opened, Louie jumped up with an exuberant