Enemy In the Room Read Online Free PDF Page B

his
entertainment center.
    “Hey, how was school?” David asked his son’s
back.
    “Huh? Oh,” he turned to his father, putting
on his virtual reality gun, toggling the connect switch, and moving
toward the USNet Virtual Reality floor plate. “Good.”
    “How are you doing?”
    Rob smiled from inside the helmet. “It’s
awesome. There are, like, about ten thousand of us all linked
together and we’re fighting Street War 2100. I’m on the blue team.
When you knocked I was helping Justin. He’s wounded. I gotta get
back. You ought to see this gun I’ve got.” Rob picked up a
three-foot plastic wand and plugged it into the connection point on
his belt. “This baby fires both hollow point shells and grenades.
You ought to see it splatter ‘em.”
    David knew about the games that USNet
sponsored online, twenty-four hours a day. Virtual reality groups
came together from all over the world to fight epic battles, street
brawls, aerial dogfights—anything the USNet programmers could
imagine. There were now over a hundred such battles going on
continuously. Individuals logged in and out, keeping their
characters and roles intact as the battle progressed. Besides
charging well for participation in these virtual battles, USNet had
chat rooms, strategy sessions, and cyber magazines dealing with
each one; and twice a week outstanding individual efforts were
noted and the videos of their exploits replayed for the other
participants. Rob played Street War 2100 almost daily.
    “I’m sure it’s awesome,” David replied. “How
you been doing?”
    “I’ve been online since school, ‘til I had
to pause when you knocked, and I’ve only been, like, wounded once.
And”—he flipped his visor down to review the battle summary up to
that point—“I’ve killed five and wounded twenty.”
    David spoke to the opaque visor covering his
son’s eyes. “What about school? Mom says you have a history test
tomorrow.” He glanced over at the books lying on the bed.
    “Yeah. Sure. I’ll look at my notes after
supper. No sweat.” He turned back to his terminal.
    “Well, you need to study, but I’m glad
you’re enjoying this stuff.”
    Rob pushed Enter and then stepped onto the
VR floor plate, looking over at his father. “It’s awesome. Like,
wait a minute.” He swiveled the helmet’s microphone in front of his
mouth. “Yeah. I’ll be there in a second. Hold on.” He placed his
free hand over the mike. “Dad, I gotta go. They, like, need me. Let
me know when dinner’s ready.” He started to turn away.
    “OK.”
    “Blue Nine is back. Where are you, Blue
Ten?”
    Rob faced away, and David watched him for a
few moments on the VR floor plate, ducking and firing his “gun” at
the enemies he was seeing in his visor. David turned, held the door
as if he were going to say something else, then closed it and went
downstairs.
    “He’s having fun,” he said to Elizabeth as
he entered the kitchen, “and it’s a good way to learn that you have
to take your lumps, get up, and keep fighting.” He walked to the
refrigerator for some iced tea.
    “But what about his history test?” Elizabeth
asked from the breakfast area, as she set the table.
    David shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll do fine.
It’s just a break after school, before he has to study. He’ll be
OK.”
    “I’m not sure. He’s a different person this
year.”
    David smiled. “He’s a teenage boy. He’ll be
different every day.”
    “No, I mean really different,’ she said,
shaking her head. “And isn’t that game that he plays from
USNet?”
    He stirred some sweetener into the tea and
then put down the spoon. “Yes.” He nodded without looking up. “And
all of the equipment we bought him is very expensive.” He turned to
face her. “I don’t want it to go to waste. It’s just a game, made
possible by technology that our company provides to the world. I
think we should let Rob use it, and not bug him over one test.
He’ll be fine.”
    “But I