Clash of the Geeks Read Online Free PDF Page B

programming will underlie all her hardware, and overwhelm Wil Wheaton’s meager cloned brain. To make him happy, Donut will play along.
    “If you truly want to attack the Scalzi’s homestead, I will be your steed, Madison,” she will say.
    “If it will make you smile to wage war on the wetware swarm,” she will purr.
    “If it will be a quality bonding activity to incinerate Ohio,” she will whinny, “I have a Mattel Brand Xtreme Atom SuperCore.”
    And all Wil Wheaton will say will be: “I have no armor.” And he will growl it, his eyes blazing green with Mainframe status lights.
    Donut will smile. Donut will have exterminated all of Madison Suzanne Keller’s other toys already, and kept scalps. She will give him the face of Scribbles the Clown to wear emblazoned on his chest, and the spear of Daisy, Madison’s Elfigator RealPal, and together they will go forth to the house of his father. 
    The Scalzi will hear them coming. He will strap on his old war armor—only a little tight, after all these years. He will take up his trusted shield, his noble axe, and knowing the laws of narrative as he will, the Scalzi will realize that it is his son on the horizon, for fathers and sons very often end thus. He will be sorry. But he will see the enemy light in his son’s eyes and know it can be no other way.
    Once, twice, three times the two will tilt, but neither shall have the advantage, for the Scalzi’s limbs will still sizzle with his hideous morphogenic cocktail. Finally, Wil Wheaton will activate the Xtreme Atom SuperCore in Donut’s heart, the madness of foreign software blazing in him.
    “I love you, Wil,” Donut will say, her eyes brimming with Mattel Brand TruTears, sanity returning to her mind for one terrible instant. But he will not hear her. 
    As they clash, the steroids, Coke Zero, and certain highly classified strains of methamphetamines that would burn through steel, will react extremely poorly with Donut’s heart, and when the blast hits the caustic, poisonous earth of the Ohio Burn Zone, it will not only obliterate the American Midwest, part of the Rockies, and the Atlantic Seaboard, but will begin a series of reactions that will ultimately boil the seas and crack the earth along the prime meridian. 
    The world will not end with a bang or a whimper, but a meow. I told you you wouldn’t believe me. But if you stiff me on my fee the guild will audit your finances, garnish your wages, and take it out in fingers and toes. As I said, prophecy is serious business. But I have given you the genuine future, stripped of the insistence on gravitas and glory, told plain, told simply, and told true. Thank me or don’t—you have to have a thick skin in this business. By the time you know I’m right, it won’t really matter.

The complex identity of the archetypal hero, a fictional treatise with unicorn pegasus kittens
Rachel Swirsky
    At dawn, the volcano spat a stream of ash into the sky. Black haze drifted across the plain, battering Wil’s face as he tried to sleep, insinuating between his eyelashes and coating his tongue. 
    Beside him, the unicorn pegasus kitten stirred, beating its ash-covered wings furiously. More black clouds whooshed into the air.
    The hellscape was thick with heat and sulfur. Lava hissed and bubbled. Basalt formations cast weird, sinister shadows.
    Squinting through the grit, Wil ascended his mount and urged the beast into the air. They swung upward, circling above the plain. Amid the geological chaos, Wil couldn’t hope to spot his enemy. Still, he soothed his impatience—if there was one thing he knew about the Scalzi, it was that he couldn’t remain quiet for long.
    •••
    Before setting down on this fiery planet, Wil had attended one last appointment with his analyst.
    She sat on her sterile, grey chair, in her sterile, grey office. The asymmetrical, plunging neckline of her turquoise dress showcased her cleavage magnificently. Black curls cascaded across her back,