The Crystal Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

games make sickness go away?  Unless maybe some of the electricity from your brain leaks into your cells or something like that and gives them a sort of charge.  Could that be true?
    Alex brought me a bunch of games you can play on the computer.  I’m not too good on the computer.  I have trouble making the mouse go where I want it.  Also it’s hard to read.  Some of the games are about aiming and shooting and making points.  I’m really lousy at those.  Others are trickier, you have to solve problems and work out strategies like in chess.  I like those better.  I’m good at chess and also at games like chess.  I played three games of chess with Alex and won every time.  “Hey, you’re good,” he said.  He was surprised, maybe because he couldn’t believe anybody as sick as me could still have a brain.
    The games I like best of all are those where you create worlds and play roles.  They let you imagine you’re somebody else in another place, a magical place where you can make the rules.  I like imagining I’m not me, a little sick guy. The one I like best is called HyperionQuest.  At first I played the game with Alex, who said I was very good at it, way beyond my age level.  Now I play with Dr. Stein who likes the game a lot — but she doesn’t want me to let anybody know.   It has so many characters and kingdoms and situations I’ll bet you could play it for the rest of your life.  Even if you had a very long life.  It all happens in a galaxy called Hyperion where there are sorcerers and cyberknights and dragon ships and like that.  Also there are girls who don’t wear very much, but Dr. Stein doesn’t think that’s so bad.  “Just don’t believe everything you see on the screen,” she said.
    I said, “Why not?”
    She said, “Because that’s not quite the way real females look.”
    I said, “Oh.”  What I was wondering was when she thought I was ever going to find out what real females look like.  I guess she sort of read my thoughts because she gave me a quick hug and said, “That’s nothing we have to worry about now.”
     
    ***
     
    Julia was loath to praise anything digital to her computer-addicted son, but she was secretly delighted to learn that some remnant of fantasy and magic survived in Alex’s life. Even more, she was grateful that he had shared that remnant with her.  She told herself the time she spent at the computer was research for Aaron’s benefit, but in truth the game took her back to the fairy-tale world she had loved as a child.  It was a tawdry, animated version of the fantasy literature she had read obsessively when she was a girl.  Imaginary beings had dominated her mind then, tales of King Arthur, the Tolkien stories, the chronicles of Narnia, the Andrew Lang fairy tales.  In her preschool years, she would report encounters with elves and trolls as if they had really happened.  Her mother had indulged her in these imaginary adventures, encouraging her to write stories of her own.  She did — long, rambling romances about daring heros and nefarious villains and damsels in distress.  Eventually, the serious study of medicine had swept all this from her mind, but now for the first time in many years, she realized how much of her child’s imagination had survived.
    As she played along with Aaron, she found the game’s fascination growing steadily stronger; through the day it tugged at her mind, sometimes becoming an unwelcome distraction.  She often found herself rehearsing a gambit, perfecting a role.  Careful! she warned herself.  What would her patients say if they knew Dr. Stein was preoccupied with plotting her escape from a dungeon in a galaxy far, far away?  Nevertheless, she was spending more time than she could afford in her busy schedule furtively consorting with time-warped wizards and laser-wielding warriors. HyperionQuest connected so strongly with Julia’s long-forgotten, girlish fantasies that she often found herself