Be More Chill (10 page)

“Hi, I’m looking for Rack,” I approach.

“Yeah.”

“You’re him?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Rack has the Asian Wolverine haircut with the two oversize bangs, bleached, hanging down across his eyes; his hair is short and buzzed in the back. He’s probably eighteen, although I tend
to think kids my age are eighteen because I have such a warped self-image; he could be fifteen. He’s not from Middle Borough, though; I’d have him cataloged.

“Yeah, hi, um, I got sent here by, ah, the…” Jesus, I never got the guy’s name. “By the
guy
over at B. Bowl-Town lanes. You know who I mean?”

“Oh yes.” Rack smiles, polishing a shoe. “My cousin. So you’re looking for a squip, right?”

“Yeah.” I bite my lip, duck my head into my neck, wary.

“Well, do you have the money?”

“Sure.” I grip the wad tightly in my pocket.

“What’s your name, then?”

“Jeremy.”

“Well, all right, Jeremy. I’m gonna be your guide today. C’mon.” Rack gives a well-toothed grin, shakes my hand, and opens a gate that I didn’t even know was a gate
in the Payless countertop. I step through into his world: exotic topless calendars on the inside of shelves that hold shoe polish and extra laces.

“The squips got moved in back with the legit merchandise,” Rack explains. “We got a bunch of new ones in and we’ve had lots of people asking for them so we had to secure
them, y’know? Let’s walk.” We leave the counter unattended and venture back into the Payless inventory hangar, full of shoes in boxes that lack the insignias and celebrity faces
that get you to buy them in the first place.

“Stop,” Rack says, removing a totally nondescript Reebok box off the particular nondescript shelf we’re at. The back of this Payless is really
big
; it stretches to an
indoor horizon like the hallway of my school.

“Take a look.” Rack opens the box; inside, padded with tissue paper, are half a dozen gray pills.

“Nice, aren’t they?” Rack shakes his head. Then he adopts a more serious pose. “Okay, just so you know: squip is untested technology and obviously it’s not exactly
legal, which is why you’re paying for it with cash in the back of a shoe store. I take no responsibility—neither does my cousin or Payless or anybody else—for what it will do to
you. Even if you
could
spit it out and get a refund, there wouldn’t be one.”

“Understood.”

“Let’s see the money.”

I try my bargaining skills a little. Rack never mentioned a price, so instead of pulling $600 out of my pocket, I select $500 with the sweaty tips of my fingers, pushing seven of the twenties
aside. Maybe that’ll be enough. I give it to him—so thick.

“Wow, man, you don’t need to give me this much.” He smiles.

“Really?”

“No, actually, you do.” Rack clenches with laughter, pinches a squip from the box and holds it in one hand with my cash in the other.

“Gimme!” I grab. Rack holds it above his head, grins—a return to grade school, a game of keep away.

“Calm down, dude, calm down. What do you want to take your pill with? I’ve heard people say that if you drink Mountain Dew, it works best.”

“Fine!” I hold my hand out. “Whatever.”

The pill plops in my hand with a gorgeous little pat. “Here,” Rack says, “I just happen to keep some Dew behind the Tevas.” He reaches back and pulls out a bottle of
incredibly flat, green quasi-soda. I put it to my mouth and swig it—it coats my teeth in a thick sugar film. Ugh. Nasty. But…
dun da da dunh da dunn dunn
…

The pill goes down.

“What now?” I lean against a Payless shelf. “What’s happening?”

“I dunno.” Rack lounges on a step ladder and lights up a cigarette. “You hear anything yet?”

I shake my head.

“Well, it’s warming up. It’ll start soon.”

I picture the pill in my stomach, opening like a cocoon, allowing the tiny (invisible?) computer inside to pass through the pinched gate of my duodenum into my intestines and mush its way
through my intestinal walls into my bloodstream and shoot its way up to my brain to my neurons (bio class) to start talking to me. What kind of computer is it? How does it work, exactly?

“Do you have one?” I ask Rack.

“Of course.” He drags his cigarette lazily.

“Is it on right now?”

“Sure is. It just said you were a chump, but I don’t think so.”

“Wow. Did yours get you a girlfriend?”

“Man, that’s the first thing it does, is get you a girlfriend. I bet yours is working on that right now.”

“That’s what I want.”

Rack nods, rolls his eyes.

T
ING
.

Whoa. Here we go.

W
ELCOME TO
SQUIP 2.5.

It’s a voice, in my head, but it isn’t all that strange. It’s like my own voice, but deeper, older, more authoritative. It sounds like—

“Keanu Reeves?”

“Yeah! You’re hearing it?” Rack stands up.

“It’s
Keanu Reeves’s
voice?”

“Sure, but that’s just the default.” Rack swishes his cigarette, explains. “You can set it for Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, Tyrese; you can even give it a sexy female
voice if you want, but I find that distracting.”

SQUIP 2.5
CALIBRATION AND ACCESS PROCEDURE IN PROGRESS.

“Aaaaaagh!”
Pain like a motorcycle races through my head. “Jesus!
Agh!
”

“It’s okay!” Rack puts an arm around me. “It only happens once. It’s picking out information from your brain.”

“Oh my God…” It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced, transcendent pain, from temple to temple, death, fear, agony, like a spike bent through my ear…and
then it’s over.

H
ELLO
, J
EREMY
.

“Hey. Ugh.”

P
LEASE
. D
O NOT TALK TO ME OUT LOUD
.

“It’s working!” I tell Rack.

Y
ES, IT IS WORKING
. “I
T
”
HAS A LOT OF WORK TO DO, BY THE LOOK OF THINGS
.

“It’s
working
!” I grin.

“Welcome to the world,” Rack says. I expect a hug from him or something, but all he does is get up, crush his cigarette underfoot and lead me back, past monoliths of shoes, to the
Payless retail area. A girl is waiting by the cash register.

“Excuse me, is there a reason nobody’s attending to customers in here?” she asks, hair bouncing against her cheek, indignant.

T
ARGET FEMALE INACCESIBLE DUE TO INTEREST IN OTHER PARTY
, the squip declares.

“I’m really sorry, miss,” Rack says. He smiles like he can’t help it. “But I don’t know why you’re here. You have nicer shoes than we stock anywhere in
this place.”

“Well,” the girl says. “I’m not looking for me; I’m looking for my boyfriend. He
refuses
to get new shoes—”

“Would you like a cigarette?” Rack asks.

“You can’t smoke in the mall!” she whispers.

“Well, you can’t, but you can, sort of, in Payless. I won’t get you in trouble, I promise.”

“Okay,” she says, suddenly in on something. Rack makes eye contact and I understand:
I got this girl. Thanks for your money and get out
. I open the gate in the sales counter
unnoticed, leave Payless, and walk into the Menlo Park Mall alone—well, sort of alone.

Y
OU NEED A NEW SHIRT
. B
UY A NEW SHIRT
.

“But I—”

D
O NOT TALK TO ME OUT LOUD
, J
EREMY
! T
HAT IS RULE NUMBER ONE
.

Right. I stand stock-still by an Annie’s Pretzel cart. This is weird.

N
O
,
IT IS NOT
. T
HIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE ALWAYS WANTED
. J
UST WALK AND THINK TO ME AT THE SAME TIME
,
OKAY
? L
IKE TELEPATHY
.

I always thought telepathy was cool. Like
X-Men
.

R
IGHT
. I
T IS COOL
. A
ND NOW YOU GET IT
.

Rockin’.

R
OCKIN
’? I
T IS GOING TO BE DIFFICULT TO GET YOU UP TO SPEED
, J
EREMY
.

Why?

B
ECAUSE YOU ARE A SERIOUS DORK
, J
EREMY
. S
OME SQUIPS HAVE IT EASY
. T
HEY HAVE TO MEMORIZE INFORMATION FOR
TESTS OR SMOOTH OUT OCCUPATIONAL CHALLENGES OR HELP PEOPLE WITH STUTTERING PROBLEMS
. Y
OU, HOWEVER, DESIRE A COMPLETE BEHAVIORAL OVERHAUL
. C
ORRECT
? Y
OU HAVE TO BE MORE CHILL
—

You mean, I have to chill out.

N
O
, I
DO NOT MEAN
“
CHILL OUT
.” W
E ONLY USE SQUIP-APPROVED DATA FOR THE VERNACULAR
,
J
EREMY
. Y
OU HAVE TO TALK AS PER RAP-SLASH-HIP-HOP, THE DOMINANT MUSIC OF YOUTH CULTURE
.

Okay.

N
OW
,
THERE ARE MANY ASPECTS TO THE CHANGES YOU DESIRE AND IMPLEMENTING THEM WILL BE COMPLEX
.

Uh-huh. I’m walking back and forth between two indoor trees, not caring how crazy I look.

S
TEP ONE IS THAT YOU STOP PACING AND GET A NEW SHIRT
, J
EREMY
.

Okay. Okay. I put both hands in my pockets and walk toward Advanced Horizons, one of Menlo Park’s Cool clothing places.

H
OW COME YOU USE CAPITAL
C
FOR COOL
?

Well—I’m starting to get a little bit comfortable with this—because there are different kinds of cool. There are your friends who are just cool people, you know, like
laid-back, and then there are the certified popular, dominating, aristocratic Cool People. And then there’s the temperature and the jazz period—

N
O
.

No what?

N
O
,
DON
’
T USE CAPITAL
C. Y
OU
’
RE MAKING IT TOO DIFFICULT
,
J
EREMY, PUTTING IT ON TOO MUCH OF A PEDESTAL
.

Really?

Y
ES
. T
HE PROCESS THAT WE ARE EMBARKING ON IS COMPLICATED BUT IT IS ALSO
…
SIMPLE
. W
ITH
CERTAIN MODIFICATIONS TO YOUR DAILY BEHAVIOR YOU WILL BE COOLER THAN YOU EVER IMAGINED AND YOU WILL NOT THINK TWICE ABOUT IT.
H
UMAN SOCIAL ACTIVITY IS GOVERNED BY RULES
AND
I
HAVE THE PROCESSING CAPACITY TO UNDERSTAND, OBEY, AND UTILIZE THOSE RULES.

All right. Advanced Horizons appears on the horizon to the right.

D
O NOT PUT YOUR HANDS IN YOUR POCKETS
. T
AKE THEM OUT
. A
RCH YOUR BACK SO THAT YOUR SHOULDER BLADES ARE ALMOST TOUCHING
.
W
ALK LIKE THAT
.

I do as I’m told. It feels gay.

T
HE GAYER IT FEELS
,
THE BETTER YOUR POSTURE
. Y
OU MUST ALWAYS WALK THIS WAY
, J
EREMY
. I
WILL STIMULATE YOUR SPINE TO REMIND YOU
. Y
OU ARE TALL; IF YOU DON
’
T USE YOUR HEIGHT TO THE FULLEST
,
TARGET FEMALES
WILL ASSUME YOU ARE A LOSER AND MASTURBATOR
.