d more
money! I invented foam! Oh, sure, the Process likes to take credit for it, but
if you look up the patent, guess who owns it?

"Master Affeltranger, you may not realize it to look at me, but I have some
_very_ important friends, out there in the Great Beyond. With important friends,
you can make a whole block of apts simply disappear from the record-books. You
can make tremendous energy consumption vanish, likewise."

He spoke as he tinkered with his apparatus, which hummed alarmingly and
occasionally sent a tortured arc of electricity into the guy who thought he was
Nicola Tesla's chest.

It happened three times in a row, and he stamped his foot in frustration, and
said, "Oh, _do_ cut it out," apparently to one of his machines.

I'd been jumping every time he got zapped, but this time, I had to giggle. He
whirled on me. "I am not trying to be _amusing_. One thing you people never
realize is that the current has a _will_, it has a _mind_, and you have to keep
it in check with a firm hand."

I shook my head a little, not understanding. He waved a hand at me, frustrated,
and said, "Oh, go have a swim. I don't have time to argue with a child."

I climbed into the ocean, and the silence embraced me, and the water tingled
with electricity, and my consciousness floated away from my body and soared over
an alien world. Like a broken circuit, I disconnected from the world around me.

#

Chet's father came home with a can of beer in his hand and the rest of the
six-pack in his gut. He walked over to the vid, where Chet was researching the
life of Nicola Tesla, which took forever, since he had to keep linking back to
simple tutorials on physics, history, and electrical engineering.

Chet's father stooped and took the remote out of Chet's hands and opened up a
bookmarked docu-drama about the coming of the bugouts. Chet opened his mouth to
protest, and his father shouted him down before he could speak. "Not one word,
you hear me? Not! One! Word! I've had a shithole day and I wanna relax."

Chet's mother dropped a plastic tumbler, which bounced twice, and rolled to
Chet's toe. He stepped over it, walked out the door, and took the elevator to
the 125th floor.

Chet burst into the guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla's apt and screamed.
Nicola Tesla was strapped into a heavy wooden chair, with a metal hood over his
head. Arcs of electricity danced over his body, and he jerked and thrashed
against the leather straps that