He looked down. His Fred Flintstone hands were trembling. The rough, stone-age skin was flickering, and beneath it, for just a moment, he saw the paper-thin, vein-mapped skin of Arthur Pendleton. He saw the IV needle taped to his wrist.
He could be quiet.
Days bled into weeks. Arthur stopped logging out. Mark’s worried text messages—“Dad, you there?” “Dad, check in”—became ignored icons in a corner of the neural interface. Inside, Fred never worried. Fred solved problems by yelling “Wilma!” and everything worked out in twenty-two minutes.
Arthur Pendleton opened his eyes. He was in a hospital bed. The beige apartment was gone. But Mark was there, asleep in a chair, his head resting on the thin mattress.
“Dad,” the memory-boy said. “Don’t be scared. I’ve got you.”