Internet Kill Switch Read Online Free PDF Page A

started throwing up.
    After cleaning himself off, Nelson took a minute to regain his composure. He sucked on a breath mint, straightened his tie, and walked shakily to the bathroom door. He rested his hand on the knob for a moment, took a deep breath, and walked through.
    As he walked toward the boardroom, hoping he hadn’t missed any vomit stains, he saw the back of the last of the Chinese executives, walking toward the elevators. Following behind was Sacks, near tears as he begged them to stay just a bit longer. They ignored him like he wasn’t there.
    The pleading continued as the executives waited for, then got on, the elevator. Sacks had his hands out toward them, like a panhandler on the street. He was halfway on the elevator with them. A Chinese hand pushed him back out. The door slid closed. Sacks hung his head.
    Nelson turned on his heel and headed back to the bathroom.

7
     
    Tony had a hugely busy school day, and mostly forgot about the phone. He played with it a bit at lunch, but couldn’t get it to turn on. With no buttons, dials or knobs of any kind, he didn’t even know where to start. Frustrated, he threw it back in his backpack and gave up until he got home from school that afternoon.
    His M om wouldn’t be home for several more hours, so Tony put on a pot of water for Ramen noodles and set the phone on the counter.
    As he looked at the phone, Bart and Juanita ’s voices, coming from their trailer, punctured the momentary solace. Bart complained that Juanita was getting fat. Juanita answered that Bart already was fat. That was the dead truth. Bart was a pig, and not just because of how he treated Juanita; he’d begun resembling one, with his pink belly getting rounder and rounder. Bart liked to wear wife-beaters or no shirt at all, so everyone in the neighborhood was familiar with his girth.
    Bart told Juanita to shut her slutty mouth. Juanita screamed back in Spanish, which was probably just as well, because Bart might have hit her if he ’d known what she said.
    Tony tuned out the fight and focused on the phone that he ’d started to suspect would never work. He shook it, waved it around, examined the surface with a magnifying glass to see if he’d missed a switch. The phone felt great in his hand, he knew that. It also looked amazing. But none of that mattered if it was dead.
    As he examined it, he n oticed a bit of residue marring the chrome, probably from his backpack. Tony breathed on the smudge and wiped it off with his sleeve, wondering if he should just chuck the thing, since it was obviously broken.
    At that moment, the display started to glow. Tony gawked; it worked! The glow of the display faded, replaced by an image of a very realistic human eye. The eye moved all around, as if looking for something. Then it saw Tony and stopped moving. He had the feeling it was examining him.
    “Who the hell are you?”
    “Ah!” Tony yelled as he dropped the phone on the kitchen counter. It landed on the edge, tipped over, and fell on the floor, where it spun for a few seconds. Horrified, Tony picked up the phone and looked it over. There wasn’t a scratch on it.
    The phone -- the phone -- spoke again. “Smooth move, Einstein. Let me guess -- you weren’t voted ‘Most Coordinated’ in school, were you?”
    Tony didn’t know what to say. He stared, open-mouthed, at the phone that was insulting him. At that moment, the display changed to a perfect photo of the inside of Tony’s mouth, showing his teeth, gums and tongue. The phone had apparently taken it while Tony gaped.
    “Hmm. Looks li ke a little gingivitis is starting in near your upper second molar. You might want to start adding flossing to your tooth-care regiment.” The display changed to a closer-up view of an area near the back of Tony’s mouth that looked slightly red and inflamed. “See?”
    Tony was full of questions, but couldn’t seem to form a single coherent one.
    “What ... how ... who are you?”
    “Hey, you can