Glitch Read Online Free PDF

lingering at every opportunity on the Regulators, and wondering where the green-eyed boy, the Monitor, could be.
    I chewed my salad silently, counting to five with each bite. Slow. Methodical. A tomato crunched in my mouth and the juice exploded between my teeth. I wanted to close my eyes and enjoy the wild taste of it—slightly sweet and yet not quite. I knew they grew all this produce in underground hothouses but it still seemed wonderfully impossible to create from a tiny seed something so beautiful and complex. I speared a piece of broccoli with my fork and chewed on it thoughtfully, enjoying the texture on my tongue and the crunch that echoed in my ears with each bite. I wished I could draw this feeling so I could hold it in my hands.
    “Zoel,” said a voice to my right, almost making me jump. “I request your assistance on the homework we were assigned today.”
    I looked over at Maximin and had to stop myself from smiling. He’d tested through to the biotech track just like I had three years ago, and as adults we were both destined to become V-chip technicians. But he was hopeless at memorization. He’d asked for tutoring two months ago, but now study lunches with him were part of my daily routine. I kept telling him he should ask for memory-enhancement programs, but he insisted that with practice and study he could learn it on his own. If we were capable of it, I might have thought he was stubborn.
    Stubborn was another word I had learned from the old archive texts at the central library database. Along with happy , sad , guilty , lonely , angry , afraid. The green-eyed boy’s face flashed in my memory. What had the expression on his face meant? Angry? Afraid? No, none of those things. I was just so desperate to see something, anything, on someone else’s face that I imagined it.
    “Assistance willingly rendered, Maximin,” I said. “Let me retrieve my tablet.”
    I reached down to unclick my case and pulled out the thin tablet. As I tapped the screen to load the neurochem text, I kept thinking about the green-eyed boy from the subway. Maybe it was just his eyes. He had probably zoned out to the Link and happened to be looking at me, not watching me carefully and reporting on my anomalous behavior. I needed to stop thinking about him.
    “Shall we begin?” Maximin asked.
    “Yes,” I said, careful to keep my voice placid and even. I looked over at Maximin, whose shock of blond hair and pale skin looked bright in the cafeteria light, his athletic build filling out the entire left side of my vision.
    I touched my subcutaneous forearm panel. The two-by-six-inch panel lit up underneath my skin and I tapped on it to get to my notes.
    “Read through the text again,” I said. “Then we can look over my notes.”
    Maximin nodded and took the tablet to read. I watched him for a moment, then looked at my lit-up arm keyboard to get my mind off my larger worries. The smooth subcutaneous panels were implanted at age five, then upgraded at ages ten and fifteen. The skin was smooth over the top. We only needed a 2-D image to see my notes, so I took out one tiny black pyramid projector from my tablet case and set it on the table. I tapped my forearm keyboard to connect it. An eight-by-twelve screen appeared flat on the table, and with another click my meticulous notes filled the illuminated space.
    Maximin put down my tablet, then leaned over to look at my projected notes.
    “I could sync my notes to your tablet if you want,” I said.
    “No, I just need to observe them for a moment.” He compared the diagrams I’d drawn with ones in the tablet text. “The auxiliary nerve tension between synapse quadrant one and two. Can you sketch it in my notes?” He held out his forearm panel to me.
    “Where’s your tablet?” I asked.
    “I always remember better when I see you draw it out piece by piece rather than looking at the finished whole. My projector’s acting up too. You can just trace directly on my arm