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“—was here. Did we embarrass you that much?”

“Did she break up with you?” Dad asked.

“I swear to God, I’ll murder my brother if he said anything to her and she dumped Tyler,” Mom growled.

“I’m fine,” I said, a little more gruffly than I meant to. “Kassandra and I are fine. In fact, we’re exclusive now.”

My parents both looked at me funny. They weren’t old and out of touch by any means, and both had gone to college and had some “crazy times” according to them, but they still weren’t able to grasp the modern dating scene. Men and women weren’t always “going steady” these days, and some of the older folks seemed to get bent out of shape about it. Especially with the girls, which made them whores, or tramps, or sluts. I’d tried to explain it to my parents before, and I’m sure that their brains understood, but their emotions just couldn’t quite grasp it.

“How’s the new computer?” my father asked, changing to subject to something more comfortable with all of us.

“It’s fine.”

“I thought they sent you the wrong parts and you were going to send them back?” Mom asked.

“I was, but it turns out, the parts they sent were better than what I ordered.”

“They might be wanting those ‘better’ parts back,” my father said, raising an eyebrow at me.

I understood his words well enough to know he was asking me if this was a moral test I was passing or failing. My parents never sat me down and taught me morality lessons, nor did they ever attend church so some dude could stand before us and tell us how moral we were supposed to be. They’d taught me what I considered
mini-lessons
about right and wrong my whole life. After I graduated high school, they stopped for the most part, satisfied that I would make it through life making good decisions that benefited me without hurting anyone else.

“Yeah, I know. I wrote them an email, alerting them to it, but I also mentioned I’m a tech blogger, and asked if I could evaluate the stuff and then write about it. It’s stuff that hasn’t been released to the public yet.”

I felt like shit for lying to my father, but I had enough problems already without trying to explain, maybe even demonstrate, the objects sitting on my desk. My father nodded as if it was a decision he approved of, and turned his attention back to the television. My mother looked like she wanted to say something else, but she didn’t, and we sat watching the show in silence for a while.

By the time the show was over and Dad was flipping through guide to see what else was on, we were back to our normal selves. My father would see a stupid commercial and do his “exaggerated rage” bit at it, or my mother would see a show in the guide and shake her head, complaining about how the show either made Americans look even more ridiculously stupid, was demeaning to women, or worse, teaching young girls the exact opposite of positive body image.

Whenever we were together like this, and nothing interesting was on, we would just hang out and talk. We might watch five or ten minutes of a program in silence, until a commercial break, then Dad would flip through the channels some more, and we’d talk about random subjects. It felt like the television’s purpose wasn’t so much to entertain us, as it was to give us a multitude of things to talk about. I felt normal again. All of the worries and other strange feelings I’d been having fell into a muted silence while we bantered about this or that for a couple of hours.

At ten, the local news came on. School levies, health care, a nasty wreck on I-84, and of course, whatever BSU’s football team was up to. The swirl of thoughts surrounding the quantum computer began to swim back up to the surface as I watched, upset at myself for not making this part of the experiment. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, but I’d been mostly looking at sports and elections. There was a small blurb after the weather about the contested governor’s race in Texas, but it hadn’t said anything new to me. Still a thirty-six vote margin of victory, but the loser was of course going to challenge in court.

Mom handed me the remote just as the sports segment was coming on. Neither of them were sports fans, and this was the normal time they went to bed during the week. The top sports story was the Boise State Broncos and whichever opponent fodder they were playing next.

“—after school tomorrow?” I heard my Mom ask. I’d been staring at the screen and hadn’t realized I’d blocked everything else out.

“What?” I asked.

“I said, are you and Kassandra going to go out after school tomorrow?”

“Oh, uh, yeah.” I saw the segment segue from football to basketball and almost lost my train of thought. “We’re supposed to.”

I heard my mom say something in reply, but my eyes, ears, and brain were focused completely on the sports anchor’s voice and the replay video of the Miami Heat game. I shouldn’t have been surprised by this point, but I sat stunned, my thoughts crashing around my brain too fast for me to hold onto. Lebron had 30 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists, and 7 steals… just like Qwerry’s version of ESPN said he would. I’d have to go online and check the box score to compare the other notes I took about the game, but Lebron’s stats told me everything I needed to know.

“Tyler!” My mom’s shout broke through the cold fear that had overtaken me.

“What, Mom?” I asked, a little more shortly than I meant to.

“What the hell is the matter with you? You look just like you did the other day, white as a ghost. What is going on with you?”

Her voice had crept into anger, something that was rare for her, especially toward me. I’d spent enough of my life in trouble with her for doing dumb little boy or dumb teenage boy things, but ever since I’d started college, whatever minimal ass-riding she’d done up to that point disappeared completely.

“Nothing, Mom. Nothing’s wrong.”

“Bullshit,” my father said, coming back out of their bedroom to stand next to my mother. “Your mom told me you were acting funny, but I thought it was about your girlfriend, maybe even whatever Marion said to you that got you so upset. But whatever it is, it isn’t about your girlfriend.”

I said nothing, my mind churning over things, lies really, to say to get them to back off. I didn’t know what I could possibly say that would make any sense other than the truth, which made even less sense.

“Tyler,” my father said, sitting down on the couch, my mother sitting next to him, “I know what you’re doing.” I stopped breathing, wondering if they’d been in my room, had fooled with the computer. “Every time you lie about something, you have to spend ten seconds or more thinking of the lie.” I exhaled.

“Tyler, what was it about the news that made you so upset?” my mother asked, trying a different tactic than my father. “Was it the football game? Basketball? Why would it make you turn white and clam up like this?”

“Are you… are you in trouble with gambling?” my father asked, looking troubled. “Did you just lose a lot of money on that basketball game?”

I relaxed a little inside, but not much. They didn’t know about the computer, which was good, but now they thought I had a gambling problem, which was bad. I wanted to tell them yes, that’s exactly what had happened, but that somehow seemed like a worse lie. I stared at my parents, unable to say anything. My throat was frozen shut, my thoughts in overdrive as I desperately thought of lie after lie, going into panic mode, my brain discarding each one as more foolish than the last. I thought I was going to cry, and I did everything I could to keep that in as well, as that would have led to me spilling my guts about everything.

“Son? Say something.” My dad looked scared now.

“I—I can’t.” My mouth clacked shut.

My parents sat on the couch, staring at me for a long time. I wanted to scream at them to just leave me alone, to go away, but I couldn’t even do that. My dad finally looked at my mom, gave her leg a squeeze, and stood up.

“We’ve never had The Talk about things like sex, drugs, or I guess gambling, because I didn’t think we needed to. We’ve always let you do pretty much whatever you wanted, but that’s because you’ve always given us no reason to think you wouldn’t make good decisions.” My mom stood up and put her arm around him. “I don’t know if you are involved in drugs, gambling, or maybe you got Kassandra pregnant and don’t want to tell us. Whatever it is, if you want to talk about it, you know we’ll sit down and listen to you. If you don’t want to talk about it, just remember that we not only love you, but respect your ability to make good decisions.”

“If you need help, get help,” my mom added, but she sounded like she was about to cry.

Even with all the options my father had given me, drugs, gambling, pregnancy, I couldn’t come up with anything feasible. I could see the bleeding wound I’d inflicted on both of them. This was the first time in my adult life I’d lied to them, and they knew it. I hated myself, but I couldn’t tell them anything. It was still too crazy.

“Okay,” is all I said.

They stared at me for a little longer, hoping I would say something else. When they turned to go to their bedroom, I felt the chasm between us. I’d hurt them, deeply.

CHAPTER 7 - Absence Makes The Heart Grow Crazier

December 7, 2014

When I woke up, the first thing I thought was
how the hell did I get any sleep?
I’d spent most of the night and early morning in a daze. I was a zombie. I was a mix of elation and terror. Not only did DeShon Franklin and the Florida State Seminoles dismantle the Hokies with the exact stats that were on Qwerry’s ESPN page, but if I’d have bought lottery tickets, I’d be almost three hundred million dollars richer. When I refreshed the page that had lottery results, and the numbers came back exactly as I’d written them down, I felt my bladder let go just enough that I had to change my clothes. The sports stats were too unbelievable as it was, but this…

My parents had avoided me as much as possible over the weekend, but they didn’t have to try very hard. I stayed locked in my room trying to finish up my final projects, or studying for finals. I spent as much time with Kass as I could, and thankfully I was a lot better around her than I was around my parents. I think she knew something was wrong, but she never said anything. I stayed away from the computer for the most part. That seemed to help me act a little more normal.

Whatever studying or writing I needed to do for school, I did from my laptop. I could have said
fuck it
and decided to get rich and drop school, but I had to get through this semester. If I tanked right at the end of the semester, my parents definitely would go apeshit, to the point they might try to have me committed for emergency observation. I knew I was scaring them, their good, kind, intelligent, responsible only child that over the course of two weeks had become a complete stranger to them. I was pretty sure I acted like I’d acquired a drug addiction.

I cracked the bedroom door and peeked out. I didn’t see or hear either of my parents, so I made the trek to the bathroom. As I relieved myself and then brushed my teeth, I started to work out a plan. I knew the first part of my plan was to stay the hell away from the quantum computer until after finals. I definitely felt like a drug addict when it came to that. The pull of the thing, with its ability to be a crystal ball into the future, was what I imagined a bad heroin jones was like.

If I could make it through finals and into Winter Break, I’d have a month to work up a solid plan. Right now, the temptation to fly off the handle and act crazy was too strong. I wanted to make sure my family and I were comfortable for the rest of our lives, but I knew I had to do it properly. I also knew that whatever happened, I had to protect my strange computer from prying eyes. Kass had seen it, had seen some of the things it could do, but none of the
things
it could
really
do.

I’m sure my parents, Mom at least, had seen it sitting on my desk when she dropped off the clothes basket. I couldn’t take the chance of anyone else seeing it, or even knowing about it. I felt paranoid when I wasn’t feeling like I was outside of my own body. All I had to do was make it to December 12th. Friday was my last final, and then I would be free of that worry until mid-January. As I rinsed my toothbrush and swished water around in my mouth, I made myself promise that I’d not touch the quantum computer until Saturday. Friday night, maybe. I wasn’t sure if I could wait until Saturday, to be honest.

*****

December 14, 2014

I’d done better than I thought I could. Kassandra was a big help. The week of studying my ass off for finals and the Friday and Saturday night of nothing but Kassi (and I mean
nothing
but Kassi) had led to me thinking about the computer only a few times. I’d even unplugged the case and moved it and the monitor off my desk and into the closet, just so I wouldn’t be tempted. It was hard to not touch it, see what the future might hold, with it sitting in plain view.

I wasn’t sure what my final grades were going to be. Western Civ II almost killed me. I couldn’t remember ever mentally sweating as hard as I did during the final exam. I felt confident that I’d at least get a B, which should still give me an A in the class, but a little part of me worried I’d tanked it. That same little part of me was afraid every essay I handed in was nothing but a bunch of jumbled letters, like I’d opened the word processing program and then laid a heavy book on the keyboard and walked away for an hour. Or maybe I wrote proper words, but not coherent sentences.