Idoru Read Online Free PDF Page B

its airframe vibrating through frozen night somewhere above the sea, off the coast of Alaska now—impossible but true. “No,” Chia heard herself say, as Skull Wars, noting her inattention, dumped her back a level.
    “No,” the woman agreed, “you don't. I know. But they make you. They make you. At the center of the world.” And then she put her head back, closed her eyes, and began to snore.
    Chia exited Skull Wars and tucked the touchpad into the seatback pocket. She felt like screaming. What had that been about?
    The attendant came by, scooped up the corral of celery sticks in a napkin, took the woman's glass, wiped the tray, and snapped it up into position in the seatback.
    “My bag?” Chia said. “In the bin?” She pointed.
    He opened the hatch above her, pulled out her bag, and lowered it into her lap.
    “How do you undo these?” She touched the loops of tough red jelly that held the zip-tabs together.
    He took a small black tool from a black holster on his belt. It looked like something she'd seen a vet use to trim a dog's nails. He held his other hand cupped, to catch the little balls the loops became when he snipped them with the tool.
    “Okay to run this?” She pulled a zip and showed him her Sand-benders, stuffed in between four pairs of rolled-up tights.
    “You can't port back here; only in business or first,” he said. “But you can access what you've got. Cable to the seatback display, if you want.”
    “Thanks,” she said. “Got gogs.” He moved on.
    The blond's snore faltered in mid-buzz as they jolted over a pocket of turbulence. Chia dug her glasses and tip-sets from their nests of clean underwear, putting them beside her, between her hip and the armrest. She pulled the Sandbenders out, zipped the bag shut, and used her free hand and both feet to wedge the bag under the seat in front of her. She wanted out of here so bad.
    With the Sandbenders across her thighs, she thumbed a battery check. Eight hours on miser mode, if she was lucky. But right now she didn't care. She uncoiled the lead from around the bridge of her glasses and jacked it. The tip-sets were tangled, like they always were. Take your time, she told herself. A torn sensor-band and she'd be here all night with an Ashleigh Modine Carter clone. Little silver thimbles, flexy framework fingers; easy did it…. Plug for each one. Jack and jack …
    The blond said something in her sleep. If sleep was what you called it.
    Chia picked up her glasses, slid them on, and hit big red.
    —My ass out of here.
    And it was.
    There on the edge of her bed, looking at the Lo Rez Skyline poster. Until Lo noticed. He stroked his half-grown mustache and grinned at her.
    “Hey, Chia.”
    “Hey.” Experience kept it subvocal, for privacy's sake.
    “What's up, girl?”
    “I'm on an airplane. I'm on my way to Japan.”
    “Japan? Kicky. You do our Budokan disk?”
    “I don't feel like talking, Lo.” Not to a software agent, anyway, sweet as he might be.
    “Easy.” He shot her that catlike grin, his eyes wrinkling at the corners, and became a still image. Chia looked around, feeling disappointed. Things weren't quite the right size, somehow, or maybe she should've used those fractal packets that messed it all up a little, put dust in the corners and smudges around the light switch. Zona Rosa swore by them. When she was home, Chia liked it that the construct was cleaner than her room ever was. Now it made her homesick; made her miss the real thing.
    She gestured for the living room, phasing past what would've been the door to her mother's bedroom. She'd barely wireframed it, here, and there was no there there, no interiority. The living room had its sketchy angles as well, and furniture she'd imported from a Playmobil system that predated her Sandbenders. Wonkily bit-mapped fish swam monotonously around in a glass coffee table she'd built when she was nine. The trees through the front window were older still: perfectly cylindrical