Cory Doctorow

“ Mr Adelson smiled and nodded, the way he did when one of the students got the right answer in class. "Well?"
"Well, what?" I said.
"What did you learn this semester?"
"Why, everything you taught! Geometry! Algebra! Latin! Geography! Biology!
Physics! Grammar!"
"I see," he said. "James, what's the formula for determining the constant in the second derivative of an equation?"
I knew that one: it was one of Newton's dirty calculus proofs. "It's a trick question. There's no way to get the constant of second derivative." ”

“ I found myself saying, "How was it hard, Mr Adelson?"
He looked surprised, like he'd forgotten that he was talking to me. "Well, James, it's like this: when you're away that long, you get to invent yourself all over again. Of course, everyone invents themselves as they grow up. Your chums there —" he gestured at the boys, who were now trying, with varying success, to turn somersaults, dirtying their school clothes "— they're inventing themselves right now, whether they know it or not. The smart one, the strong one, the brave one, the sad one. ”

“ He went to a vid and punched impatiently at the screen while I prowled the apartment. The bookcase was full of old friends, books by the Frenchman, of course, and more, with strange names like Wells and Burroughs and Shelley. I looked over a long, stone-headed spear, and the curve of an elephant's tusk, and a collection of campaign ribbons and medals under glass. I returned to the bookcase: something had been bothering me. There, there it was: "War of the Worlds," the book that Mr Adelson had given me for Christmas. ”

“ My Pa's easy chair sat in the parlour, with a print-out of the day's Salt Lake City Bugler folded on the side-table. I walked to one wall and laid my palm against it, the familiar cool glassy stuff it was made of. "Window," I said, and wiped a line across the wall. Wherever my hand wiped went transparent. It was a sunny day in 1975 — 1980, by then, but it would be 75 in my mind forever. Under the dome, Greater Salt Lake was warm and tranquil. I saw boys my age scooting around in jet-packs, dodging hover-traffic. ”

“ Mr Johnstone had a whiskey in our parlour before we ate, sitting in my Pa's chair, smoking a cigar from my Pa's humidor. Mama ordered me to keep him company while she set out the meal.
"Do they call you Jimmy?" he asked me, staring down his long, pointy nose.
"No, sir. James."
"It's a fine name, isn't it? Served me well, man and boy." He made a face that was supposed to be funny, like he'd bit into a lemon.
"I like it fine, sir."
"Are you having any problems adjusting, now that you're home? Finding it hard to relate to the other fellows?" ”

“ I still don't know how it is artists will earn a living in the age of the Internet, but I remain convinced that the way to find out is to do basic science: that is, to do stuff and observe the outcome. That's what I'm doing here. The thing to remember is that the very *worst* thing you can do to me as an artist is to not read my work — to let it languish in obscurity and disappear from posterity. Most of the fiction I grew up on is out-of-print, and this is doubly true for the short stories. ”

“ The null-gee doughnut that our apartment was spoked into had a supply of escape-jumpers, single-use jet-packs with a simple transponder that screamed for help on all the emergency channels. I could ride one of these down into Greater Salt Lake, wait for the police. The more I thought about this plan, the better it sounded. Better, anyway, than sitting around like a fairytale princess, waiting for rescue. In my mind, I was the rescuing type, not the kind that needed rescuing. ”

“ Mr Adelson had a bottle of beer with dinner, and a whiskey afterwards, and I insisted on paying.
"Well, then," he said, sipping his whiskey. "You're a very well-set-up young man. What will you do now?"
All throughout my scheming since my second return from 75, the prospect of what to do with all the money had niggled away at the back of my mind. All I knew for sure was that I didn't want to grow up in New Jerusalem. I wanted adventure, exotic places and people, danger and excitement. Over dinner, though, a plan had been forming in my head. ”

“ I cycled the emergency lock into the doughnut, unracked a pack and a jumpsuit that looked like it would fit me, and suited up. The packed whined as it powered up and ran through its diagnostics. I checked the idiot-lights to make sure they were all green, feeling like a real man of action, then I stepped into the exterior lock and jumped, arms and legs streamlined, toes pointed.
The jet-pack coughed to life and kicked me gently, then started lowering me to the ground. The emergency beacon's idiot-light came on, and I heaved a sigh of relief and got comfortable. ”

“ I just knew that the next time I set foot in New Jerusalem, I'd be my own man, a man of the world, and not dependent on anyone. I'd take Mama and Mr Johnstone out for a big supper, and stay in the fanciest room at the Stableman's hotel, and hire Tommy Benson to carry my bags to my room. "Besides, I'm not asking you to do this for free. I'll pay you a — an administrative fee. Five percent, for life!"
He looked serious. "James, if I do this — mind I said if — I won't take a red cent. ”

“ She looked at me like I was some kind of small-town fool. It was a look I was getting used to seeing.
"Reddekop only plays for the evening shows, kid. No organ for the matinee."
"Who you calling a kid?" I said. I'd kept a civil tongue ever since debarking the train, treating adult and kid with equal respect, but I was getting sick of being treated like a yokel. I'd been farther than any of these dusty slickers would ever go, and I was grown enough that I'd told my Mama and Mr Johnstone that I was going off on my own, instead of just leaving a note like I'd originally planned. ”

“ Nussbaum was talking to the Frenchman — and he was helping him to cheat! To steal from Mark Twain! I was suddenly conscious of "War of the Worlds," down the front of my jumpsuit. I thought back to Mr Adelson's assignment, and it all made sudden sense. Verne was a plagiarist.
Nussbaum hung up just as Pondicherry re-seated himself. He took a sip of his drink, then held up a hand. Pondicherry eyed him coldly.
"Look," Nussbaum said. "We've gone over this a few times, OK? I know where you stand. You know where I stand. We're not standing in the same place. ”

“ It turns out that, as near as anyone can tell, distributing free electronic versions of books is a great way to sell more of the paper editions, while simultaneously getting the book into the hands of readers who would otherwise not be exposed to my work. ”

“ We'd gotten a new load of hay in for our team, and Mama added stacking it in the horsebarn to my chores. I'd been consciously avoiding the horsebarn since Pa had disappeared. Every time I looked at it, I felt a little hexed, a little frightened.
But Mama had a philosophy: a boy should face up to his fears. She'd been terrified of spiders when she was a girl, and she told me that she had made a point of picking up every spider she saw and letting it crawl around on her face. ”

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“ I still did all the work."
"Why are you in school, James?" Mr Nicholson asked me again.
"To learn."
"Well, then I think you'd better start learning something, don't you? You're the brightest student in the class. You're certainly smarter than I am — I'm just an old sailor struggling along with the rest of the class. But you, you've got it. You've been marking time in class all semester, and I daresay you haven't learned a single thing since you started. That's why you got F's."
"Mr Adelson," Mama said. "Am I to understand that James performed all his assignments satisfactorily?" ”

“ Son, you could pay for a stateroom on a proper liner with all the money you have. Why would you want to be in charge of chamber-pots on a leaky old tub?"
"Why do you want to sail off on a leaky old tub instead of teaching in Utah, or working on the trolleys here?" ”

“ James, I'm just a sailor, I'm not qualified."
I'd prepared for this argument, on the long slog to the rooming house. "But I know something about this; they won't believe it, though, and will slip all kinds of dirty tricks in if they think that the only fellow who'll be looking at it is just a kid."
"Explain to me again why you don't want to wire Mr Johnstone to come and look it over? It sounds like an awful lot of money for him not to be involved." ”

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“ It was just as I remembered it, every word, just as it was in the Verne. I couldn't begin to explain it.
A robutler swung out of its niche with a sheaf of papers. I startled at the noise, then reflexively stuck the book in my jumpsuit. The roboutler delivered them to Pondicherry, who stuffed them in a briefcase.
"The embassy will be able to return you home by courier route in three hours. Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of waiting around here until then. I have an important meeting to attend — you'll have to come along." ”

“ I'm not a stupid little kid. I didn't spend much time pewling. Instead, I went to the phone and dialed the police. The screen stayed blank. Feeling like I was in a dream, I went to the teleporter and dialed for my old school and stepped in. I failed to teleport.
Reality sank in.
All outside services to the apartment had been shut off when we moved out. The only things that still worked were the ones that ran off our reactor, a squat armoured box on the apartment's underbelly. ”

“ Winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Award, Nebula Award nominee
* Cory Doctorow is one of our best new writers: smart, daring, savvy,
entertaining, ambitious, plugged-in, and as good a guide to the wired world of
the twenty-first century that stretches out before us as you're going to find. ”

“ I preferred the horsebarn.
I worked close to the door the first day, which is no way to do it, of course: if you blocked the door, it just made it harder to get at the back when the time came. The way to do it is to first clear out whatever hay is left over, move it out to the pasture, and then fill in from the back forward.
Mama told me so, that first night, when she came out to inspect my work. "You sure must love working out here," she said. "If you do it that way, you'll be out here stacking for twice as long. ”

“ Well, when we packed our bags and Pa went into the horsebarn to hitch up our team, I figured we'd be taking a short trip out to the train station. All my chums were waiting there to see us off, and I'd promised my best pal Oly Sweynsdatter that I'd give him my coonskin cap to wear until we came back. But instead, Pa rode us to the edge of town, where the road went to rutted trail and salt flats, and there was Mr James H Johnstone, in his own fancy-pants trap. Pa and me moved our luggage into Johnstone's trap and got inside with Mama and hunkered down so, you couldn't see us from outside. ”