Recursion Read Online Free PDF Page A

worse. She forced herself to eat the whole of the burger slowly and finished the remaining half glass of water. Then Eva picked up her purse and keys and walked out of the flat, down to the garage.
     
    Reasons for escaping:
    I couldn’t even get myself promoted at the burger bar.
    The greyness of South Street is seeping into my soul.
    I have no friends to speak of.
    They killed my brother.
    Eva ran through the list in her mind as she stepped out into the unpleasant morning air. She didn’t dare write down her reasons. They would see, as they saw everything. Then they would be around to visit her with their professional concern, something they learned in the second year of the Social Care course.
    “Eva, why are you unhappy?” they would ask. “Why is promotion so important to you? What do you mean by the greyness of South Street? Why do you want to leave? But where would you go? Your problems will just come along with you, Eva; you must know that. You’ll never solve anything just by running.”
    But there were still places they didn’t control. Places they couldn’t see. Eva had heard the rumors like everyone else. Eva knew one such place, and she had planned her flight there with meticulous care.
    The late morning rush hour was easing off. All those people who paid good money to live in the supposedly clean air of the country were helping to make each breath Eva took just that little bit more unpleasant as they drove past to their city center jobs. Across the road, the garage was a brightly colored plastic blancmange mired in a grey sea of cracked and crumbling concrete. She dodged through the traffic to reach it, stepping gratefully from the hot air reeking of raspberry-scented gasoline into the cool antiseptic atmosphere of the retail area. She thought it was funny, the way the cleanest places in the city were responsible for the greatest proportion of its pollution. She staggered to the pharmacy shelf and looked for something to take the throbbing pain from her head. It was all that she could do not to laugh at the irony of her purchase.
    Eva found a yellow-and-red-striped pack of tablets and took it to the counter, along with a pink can of cola. She felt in her pocket for her e-card as the young man behind the counter scanned the pack of pills. He frowned at his screen.
    “It says here you’ve been going through quite a few of these lately. I’ve got to ask you when you finished the last pack.” He blushed as he spoke, the flesh-toned cream he used to hide his acne contrasting nicely with his reddening skin. Eva reckoned he couldn’t be aged more than thirteen. Only just old enough to hold down a part-time job.
    “I finished the last pack last weekend. I was having a very heavy period. Does it mention that there, too?” The boy turned a deeper crimson and tapped at a button.
    “I’ve got to ask if you have any alcohol at home.”
    “I gave that up months ago. The computer must know that. It monitors everything that goes into my apartment, and it counts every empty package and bottle that comes out.”
    “Sorry, Eva,” apologized the boy.
    “Call me Ms. Rye. You don’t know me.”
    “Sorry, Ms. Rye.” He placed her e-card on the counter and held out the painkillers. “Your account has been debited.”
    Eva snatched the package from his hand, popped the top of the cola can and took a deep swallow. She slid two pills from the package into her mouth and then chased them down with another gulp of cola.
    “That’s better,” she said.
    “Good morning, Ms. Rye.”
    She ignored him and pushed her way back out into the raspberry-stinking air. As she strode toward the middle of South Street, she ran over what she had to do in the next few hours.
    The most important thing was to continue acting normally. If there were any hints that she was deviating from her normal routine, they would spot it. She had learned that lesson the hard way, when they had killed her brother. Her phone vibrated in her back