Spacetime Donuts Read Online Free PDF Page A

this? He wanted to apologize, take it back, but already her lost face was miles away from him, untouchable. Her move.
    "Goodbye, Vernor." She started to say something else, then choked back tears, gave him a terrible smile and hurried ahead.
    "Alice," he was suddenly shouting, running to catch up. "Alice, I didn't mean that!"
    She turned, all grief refined to bitterness. "You don't know what you're doing anymore, Vernor. I don't want to be part of it. It's too sad. You're not the same person." Again she hurried off, and this time Vernor watched her go. He looked at his watch. Five thirty. Might as well go over to Waxy's.
    The last conversation with Alice played over and over in his mind as he walked. She was right, sure, but she wasn't an Angel, not even a head, really. He smoked a stick of weed on the way over, bringing his thoughts away from the past and into his surroundings.
    Dreamtown. Nobody working, but everyone with a little money in their pocket. Street action was picking up as the evening drew on. Dope dealers ambled along the sidewalks, unloading the night's supply. Hemispherical robots glided along the curbs cleaning up the day's refuse. There were homeshops selling tawdry pieces of plastic furniture equipped with small Hollowcasters to cover them with an image of luxury, restaurants selling Dreamfood molded and dyed to look like old style food, and stores selling pornographic Hollow infocubes. Illusions were the stock in trade.
    Vernor stopped to watch a street magician, an intense man with a cable leading from his head socket to a Hollowcaster at his feet. The magician kept a constant play of images dancing in a ten-foot radius about him. Most were abstract . . . clouds and stripes of color . . . but some of the images were more realistic. Donald Duck paced glumly around the magician, wearing a trench into the ground while black smoke issued from his ears. Daisy Duck beaked softly between the magician's legs.
    A fire-breathing lizard came scampering up to Vernor, rearing up on its hind legs to display a bright blue erection. As Vernor watched, the erection swelled and the lizard shrank . . . until the erection had turned into a large piggy bank.
    The slit of the piggy bank moved and said, "Got a penny for the old guy?"
    Unpleasantly surprised, Vernor kicked at the Hollow, but there was nothing really there to kick. His foot passed through the image and emerged covered with blood. Lightening bolts shot towards him from the magician's head and a voice of thunder said, "Let's have that donation, buddy."
    All of his bad feelings from the fight with Alice came welling back up and he walked up to the magician, addressing him directly. "You're fucking with an Angel, douchebag."
    The magician grinned at Vernor, sizing him up. A red, rubber douchebag appeared and swatted at Vernor's face. "I can take you," the magician said. "Duel?"
    Dreamer duels were not uncommon. The idea was something like plugging in to a girl's socket while you made love. Only in this case the goal was not ecstatic union, but rather the annihilation of your partner. The magician snapped a cable into his neck and handed Vernor the free end.
    Vernor snapped the plug into his socket and stood glaring at the magician, who slowly dissolved along with the rest of the street scene. Animals and energy patterns came at him, clichés easily avoided and shunted aside. It was nothing compared to plugging into Phizwhiz. Vernor began flashing a series of images, connected in unusual ways to form a pattern of unpleasant strangeness. The corny lightning bolts and leaping tigers from the magician's brain began to look confused. Vernor stepped up the assault. It was easy, too easy, to take his present mood of despair and loneliness and project it out at this man; to show him that everything was nothing.
    Suddenly the circuit broke. The magician had unplugged. He looked at Vernor with frightened eyes. "You win, Angel." Vernor unplugged, nodded, and walked on.