LETTERS FROM THE FUTURE by Dune Loring
(c) Copyrighted 1999, All Rights Reserved
I heard Dad yelling!
Billy had barricaded himself in his room with his computer and the Internet, even though everyday, the Internet produced a fresh pile of meat, the victims, teenage boys who went loco. Billy, quiet, straight A-student, nerd, mamas boy.-- Well, in the day's climate, it seemed I was turning out to be the safe child. D-minus on everything that counted to college recruiters, like Math, Science, History. A plus in gym, B in shop, triple A with the girls. I smoked and I drank beer. Mom and dad were captives of the news. The in-delinquents were the little nerds, the geek boys with computer smarts, who could download everything they needed to make bombs to blow up the world, and suburbia too. And these geeks knew how to buy machine guns over the Internet! The dirt I was doing seemed so Lilliputian that it wasn't seen. The grand crimes were done by kids who, in an earlier time, were given their pick at the family feast. Occasionally, mom and dad's eyes glanced my way, but their intense scrutiny never made it to me. I was almost a grown-up in their house. I became almost like a stranger. I could return home hours after curfew, emerge from my room with a hangover, and my parents would still talk to me like I was an adult. The kid, the problem child, was my brother, the Internet surfing toad. I closed my door. And even with my door closed I could hear my dad's voice booming through my head, shouting his way through the beer buzz. Buzz?
Buzzing!
"Boy, open this door!"
Dad kept knocking. He stayed at it a long time, so long that I hoped even he would grow tired of harassing the nerd. Fooled you, did I? I didn't resent my brother. I certainly didn't dislike him. He couldn't help it that he was born with book smarts. I felt for the poor guy. And I wanted dad to stop shouting. I wanted to curl up in my bed and take a nap until I was no longer under the influence of the buzzing.
Then mom started shouting and pounding on the door too.
Great! I wondered if I could make it to the garage. I thought I might find some quiet in my car. I remembered hiding out in the garage when I was little, pretending it was superman's fortress of solitude. When dad would yell, I would run, sometimes and sometimes not. I would hide in the back seat of the family's car. Dad never found me. I think he didn't want to. When I returned, and I always had to return, he would say, you're back. He would say: Go sit in the corner, and make it easy on yourself, don't whine. I thought it was barbaric to make a hyperactive kid sit in the corner. I sat. It was so uncomfortable to try to sit still in a chair. But I never complained to him.
I guess parents have a right to shout in their own house. The house is always theirs. Their kids just live there.
The effect of my parents shouting was like somebody was rattling rocks in my head. I got off the bed and stood on my feet without shaking, too much. I pulled myself together, gathered my strength to look meaningful. I grinned as though my mouth was full of cookies, like my system with its blood alcohol level, needed more sugar. I waddled out of my room and stationed myself right in front of parents. Mom looked so sad, as though she wanted to sit down and lie on the couch. Dad looked as though he was unhappily exhausted from yelling. But he had this uptight look in his eyes. His face was carpeted in red. Sweat covered his shirt. I knew the shouting wasn't over.
Dad pounded on the door again. "What's he doing in there?" He stared at me.
I leaned on the wall to stand steady. "He's on his computer again, dad."
Mom glanced from the corner of her eyes. I realized how grateful she was to God that her eldest son was too dumb to know much about computers. "The Internet?" she asked, she almost cried.
"I'm afraid so, mom."
I expected more shouting and got it. "Open this door!" Dad rattled the door knob. "Why does he lock the door?"
"He's playing one of those violent shoot 'em up games, dad."
Dad grunted, taken aback by my frankness. He stared, sniffed. I wondered if he could smell the alcohol under my breathy mint breath. Maybe, he was smelling a rat. I was still sporting my meaningful look, like it was a bandage over a wound. I gave him the look I'd given him that day last week when I asked if I could borrow the family car. I told him: "I have a heavy date, dad. A nice girl. I needed a nice car to drive her to the date." Dad sweat-ed me the whole afternoon. In the end he said, no! No loan. But mom said: "He wants the car? To take out a girl? He doesn't spend his whole life locked up in his room, for Heavens sakes!" She took dad's keys from his fingers and gave them to me like they were a trophy. Dad said: "You clean up the car before your return it." The day after the date he had me out in the rain, cleaning out the car. In the rain, not in the garage! The garage wasn't for a car full of kids' junk. I dripped rainwater onto mom's floor. She didn't yell about it. She only said: "Why won't you introduce your brother to some of your friends?" I said: "Mom, I don't know any girls who would like him."
For an entire week, since the latest bunch of nerdy kids began acting stupid, mom cooked my brother's favorites meals. Her reply to her youngest son's anti-social behavior was to try to make him more sociable by getting him to spend more time at the family table, stuffing himself. She cooked stuff reserved for special occasions. My brother, with his dreary self, the salad head, wouldn't get with it. I dressed him down. I told him if he spoiled it, I would pop him in the mouth. Well, many of his favorites were my favorites too. Mom made two homemade dessert a night, and she would have made three, if my brother had showed a little appreciation. But he couldn't wait to leave the table to get back to his room and his computer and the Internet! My brother wasn't an ace.
"Boy! Open this door!" My dad yelled.
"Dad, who knows what he's thinking of --" I said. I felt as if I was being stepped on by my brother, and by my parents' noise.
"I said: Open this door!" Dad shouted. "Stop being an odd ball! You're not in there downloading wacky stuff from the Internet?"
"Billy, are you downloading!" Mom 's mouth looked so sad. Her mouth, her eyes, her entire face.
"Are you in there downloading? Turn off that computer! I've told you to stay off the Internet!"
I thought dad was going to go crashing through the door, butting it with his head. He lunged forward, not quite angry enough. He landed a thunderous blow on the door with his fist. The door shook, didn't shatter, didn't fly open. He struggled with himself, not to pound his head on the door. He had half a look that he might.
I wanted to go, to take-off for the garage, before my legs gave way. It was getting harder to stand up straight. The buzz was getting stronger. And I didn't want to be present, if my dad broke down the door. I knew such a thing would freak my brother. But, I just couldn't slip out. I was about to make an excuse: say I needed to go to the bathroom, that I would use the one downstairs, when dad said.
"Pull the plug, Jerry. Go out back and cut the telephone line leading up to his room."
I didn't think before I replied. My head was buzzing. "Dad, he has his computer hooked up to his cell phone."
"My Lord, my son!" Mom looked as though she might faint. I expected her to fall and to roll on the carpet, and lay there until dad carried her to their room. But mom didn't faint. Well, I could barely think.
"He fits the profile, mom. Loner, loony kid, spends hours on the Internet playing DOOM."
"God!" Mom wept.
Have you ever started saying something and though you knew it was the wrong thing to say, you couldn't stop talking? It is like your head is frozen in place. The rest of you keep going without you. Your mouth races along on its own. A monster anxiety rises in you and you just want to shout: Ouch!
"Mom, dad, you know what is happening." I bent mom's ear and dad's too. I extended my mouth all the way through my arse. I skunked my brother. "Kids who play violent computer games are going crazy," I went on, my mouth couldn't break. "They're shooting everybody, their parents, their siblings, their family dogs. A kid in Utah, dad, even shot the family goldfish. He emptied a TEC-DC9 right into the fish tank. Cops found water and dead fish everywhere."
Mom went pale as a ghost. I asked, "You're okay, mom?"
"Billy is not a loony kid." She said, but didn't believe it.
Dad shouted: "We have to break down the door! Get the electric saw! I'll cut through the door!"
The old electric saw got the door down. Dad quickly rushed through the opening, Mom too. I carefully, waddled in, avoiding the splinters and pieces of jagged wood.
Mom, from behind a face of a hundred worry wrinkles, gasped, "What? He's not here!"
But he was, smiling, cool, before a black drop. There was a figure behind him. It was impossible to make out what it was. I clearly saw something green resting on his shoulder.
"He's on the computer." I said.
"Hi mom. Hi dad. Hi to you too Jerry. I'm gone for a bit. Will be back in a few."
Dad began to shout at the computer. Shout his outrage, pour out his fear. If Dad could have, he would have snatched Billy right out of the computer.
Mom yelled at Billy's image on the computer's screen. "What does that mean?"
Billy smiled, "Say nothing to the men in black."
"Men in black?" I shook my head. "Men in white with a straight jacket!"
Billy smiled and the computer screen went to blue.
That blue screen remained on Billy's computer for two years, then the screen went black. The monitor burned out, and mom and dad replaced it with another. THE CPU lasted for several years. By the time it died, mom and dad had lost faith. They let the computer sit dark. They let it and everything else in Billy's room stay where Billy had left them.
Sometimes, when I am sitting before a screen, tv, computer, movie, a flicker, an image, a flash, pass before my eyes, in an instance, before I can focus, the image is gone. Billy? I swear I hear, or imagine I hear, the words, "Will be back in a few."
[END Of Part One]
5/3/99
(c) Copyrighted 1999, All Rights Reserved
I heard Dad yelling!
Billy had barricaded himself in his room with his computer and the Internet, even though everyday, the Internet produced a fresh pile of meat, the victims, teenage boys who went loco. Billy, quiet, straight A-student, nerd, mamas boy.-- Well, in the day's climate, it seemed I was turning out to be the safe child. D-minus on everything that counted to college recruiters, like Math, Science, History. A plus in gym, B in shop, triple A with the girls. I smoked and I drank beer. Mom and dad were captives of the news. The in-delinquents were the little nerds, the geek boys with computer smarts, who could download everything they needed to make bombs to blow up the world, and suburbia too. And these geeks knew how to buy machine guns over the Internet! The dirt I was doing seemed so Lilliputian that it wasn't seen. The grand crimes were done by kids who, in an earlier time, were given their pick at the family feast. Occasionally, mom and dad's eyes glanced my way, but their intense scrutiny never made it to me. I was almost a grown-up in their house. I became almost like a stranger. I could return home hours after curfew, emerge from my room with a hangover, and my parents would still talk to me like I was an adult. The kid, the problem child, was my brother, the Internet surfing toad. I closed my door. And even with my door closed I could hear my dad's voice booming through my head, shouting his way through the beer buzz. Buzz?
Buzzing!
"Boy, open this door!"
Dad kept knocking. He stayed at it a long time, so long that I hoped even he would grow tired of harassing the nerd. Fooled you, did I? I didn't resent my brother. I certainly didn't dislike him. He couldn't help it that he was born with book smarts. I felt for the poor guy. And I wanted dad to stop shouting. I wanted to curl up in my bed and take a nap until I was no longer under the influence of the buzzing.
Then mom started shouting and pounding on the door too.
Great! I wondered if I could make it to the garage. I thought I might find some quiet in my car. I remembered hiding out in the garage when I was little, pretending it was superman's fortress of solitude. When dad would yell, I would run, sometimes and sometimes not. I would hide in the back seat of the family's car. Dad never found me. I think he didn't want to. When I returned, and I always had to return, he would say, you're back. He would say: Go sit in the corner, and make it easy on yourself, don't whine. I thought it was barbaric to make a hyperactive kid sit in the corner. I sat. It was so uncomfortable to try to sit still in a chair. But I never complained to him.
I guess parents have a right to shout in their own house. The house is always theirs. Their kids just live there.
The effect of my parents shouting was like somebody was rattling rocks in my head. I got off the bed and stood on my feet without shaking, too much. I pulled myself together, gathered my strength to look meaningful. I grinned as though my mouth was full of cookies, like my system with its blood alcohol level, needed more sugar. I waddled out of my room and stationed myself right in front of parents. Mom looked so sad, as though she wanted to sit down and lie on the couch. Dad looked as though he was unhappily exhausted from yelling. But he had this uptight look in his eyes. His face was carpeted in red. Sweat covered his shirt. I knew the shouting wasn't over.
Dad pounded on the door again. "What's he doing in there?" He stared at me.
I leaned on the wall to stand steady. "He's on his computer again, dad."
Mom glanced from the corner of her eyes. I realized how grateful she was to God that her eldest son was too dumb to know much about computers. "The Internet?" she asked, she almost cried.
"I'm afraid so, mom."
I expected more shouting and got it. "Open this door!" Dad rattled the door knob. "Why does he lock the door?"
"He's playing one of those violent shoot 'em up games, dad."
Dad grunted, taken aback by my frankness. He stared, sniffed. I wondered if he could smell the alcohol under my breathy mint breath. Maybe, he was smelling a rat. I was still sporting my meaningful look, like it was a bandage over a wound. I gave him the look I'd given him that day last week when I asked if I could borrow the family car. I told him: "I have a heavy date, dad. A nice girl. I needed a nice car to drive her to the date." Dad sweat-ed me the whole afternoon. In the end he said, no! No loan. But mom said: "He wants the car? To take out a girl? He doesn't spend his whole life locked up in his room, for Heavens sakes!" She took dad's keys from his fingers and gave them to me like they were a trophy. Dad said: "You clean up the car before your return it." The day after the date he had me out in the rain, cleaning out the car. In the rain, not in the garage! The garage wasn't for a car full of kids' junk. I dripped rainwater onto mom's floor. She didn't yell about it. She only said: "Why won't you introduce your brother to some of your friends?" I said: "Mom, I don't know any girls who would like him."
For an entire week, since the latest bunch of nerdy kids began acting stupid, mom cooked my brother's favorites meals. Her reply to her youngest son's anti-social behavior was to try to make him more sociable by getting him to spend more time at the family table, stuffing himself. She cooked stuff reserved for special occasions. My brother, with his dreary self, the salad head, wouldn't get with it. I dressed him down. I told him if he spoiled it, I would pop him in the mouth. Well, many of his favorites were my favorites too. Mom made two homemade dessert a night, and she would have made three, if my brother had showed a little appreciation. But he couldn't wait to leave the table to get back to his room and his computer and the Internet! My brother wasn't an ace.
"Boy! Open this door!" My dad yelled.
"Dad, who knows what he's thinking of --" I said. I felt as if I was being stepped on by my brother, and by my parents' noise.
"I said: Open this door!" Dad shouted. "Stop being an odd ball! You're not in there downloading wacky stuff from the Internet?"
"Billy, are you downloading!" Mom 's mouth looked so sad. Her mouth, her eyes, her entire face.
"Are you in there downloading? Turn off that computer! I've told you to stay off the Internet!"
I thought dad was going to go crashing through the door, butting it with his head. He lunged forward, not quite angry enough. He landed a thunderous blow on the door with his fist. The door shook, didn't shatter, didn't fly open. He struggled with himself, not to pound his head on the door. He had half a look that he might.
I wanted to go, to take-off for the garage, before my legs gave way. It was getting harder to stand up straight. The buzz was getting stronger. And I didn't want to be present, if my dad broke down the door. I knew such a thing would freak my brother. But, I just couldn't slip out. I was about to make an excuse: say I needed to go to the bathroom, that I would use the one downstairs, when dad said.
"Pull the plug, Jerry. Go out back and cut the telephone line leading up to his room."
I didn't think before I replied. My head was buzzing. "Dad, he has his computer hooked up to his cell phone."
"My Lord, my son!" Mom looked as though she might faint. I expected her to fall and to roll on the carpet, and lay there until dad carried her to their room. But mom didn't faint. Well, I could barely think.
"He fits the profile, mom. Loner, loony kid, spends hours on the Internet playing DOOM."
"God!" Mom wept.
Have you ever started saying something and though you knew it was the wrong thing to say, you couldn't stop talking? It is like your head is frozen in place. The rest of you keep going without you. Your mouth races along on its own. A monster anxiety rises in you and you just want to shout: Ouch!
"Mom, dad, you know what is happening." I bent mom's ear and dad's too. I extended my mouth all the way through my arse. I skunked my brother. "Kids who play violent computer games are going crazy," I went on, my mouth couldn't break. "They're shooting everybody, their parents, their siblings, their family dogs. A kid in Utah, dad, even shot the family goldfish. He emptied a TEC-DC9 right into the fish tank. Cops found water and dead fish everywhere."
Mom went pale as a ghost. I asked, "You're okay, mom?"
"Billy is not a loony kid." She said, but didn't believe it.
Dad shouted: "We have to break down the door! Get the electric saw! I'll cut through the door!"
The old electric saw got the door down. Dad quickly rushed through the opening, Mom too. I carefully, waddled in, avoiding the splinters and pieces of jagged wood.
Mom, from behind a face of a hundred worry wrinkles, gasped, "What? He's not here!"
But he was, smiling, cool, before a black drop. There was a figure behind him. It was impossible to make out what it was. I clearly saw something green resting on his shoulder.
"He's on the computer." I said.
"Hi mom. Hi dad. Hi to you too Jerry. I'm gone for a bit. Will be back in a few."
Dad began to shout at the computer. Shout his outrage, pour out his fear. If Dad could have, he would have snatched Billy right out of the computer.
Mom yelled at Billy's image on the computer's screen. "What does that mean?"
Billy smiled, "Say nothing to the men in black."
"Men in black?" I shook my head. "Men in white with a straight jacket!"
Billy smiled and the computer screen went to blue.
That blue screen remained on Billy's computer for two years, then the screen went black. The monitor burned out, and mom and dad replaced it with another. THE CPU lasted for several years. By the time it died, mom and dad had lost faith. They let the computer sit dark. They let it and everything else in Billy's room stay where Billy had left them.
Sometimes, when I am sitting before a screen, tv, computer, movie, a flicker, an image, a flash, pass before my eyes, in an instance, before I can focus, the image is gone. Billy? I swear I hear, or imagine I hear, the words, "Will be back in a few."
[END Of Part One]
5/3/99
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