Ready Player None

Chapter 9.1 - Alex "The Waiting (Is The Hardest Part)"

I hate everything.

I don't care if that bothers you. I don't care if it doesn't. As you are part of everything, which I hate, I would prefer it if you spontaneously combusted, or lost a dimension and imploded along your major vertices, or just choked to death on something.

I hate you.

But don't leave.

Please stay with me, so I have someone to talk to. Oh, I'll talk to your corpse, if need be, so feel free to die at any moment, just die right here, please. Nothing talks. The walls don't talk, House doesn't talk, and I've tried. I promise, I have tried to get a conversation going with her.. him.. whatever.. but no matter what I do, there is no response. I still try to talk to House once in a while, just like I try to talk to you. I hate you both.

I need responses. I need interaction. I'm losing my mind. I can feel it leaking out, as every second passes while I sit here alone.

No, I haven't murdered Kate. I'm alone because she spends so much time in that place of which I will not speak, and not with me, and I'm left to my own devices, of which I have none. Do you understand? I have no devices. I didn't know I'd need them. I tried making some. I got some knives from the kitchen and began throwing them at the wall to see if I could make them stick point-first every time, and then I noticed that the wall had wires inside it, and I decided to see if I could hit the wires, and now the kitchen doesn't work.

Kate said it was okay, it wouldn't matter, and I don't know what she meant because eating unheated meals every single day was no fun for either of us.

She spends hours in that place. She comes out once in a while, and she used to ask me if I wanted to use her account, before I said some things. Now she doesn't ask. That's a good decision, because I would probably just say more things. I find it very hard not to say things when I think of them, and that place she goes makes me think of a lot of very bad things.

When she's not in there, she's usually sitting next to the front portal to the House, which has a viewscreen showing a oval of whatever is in front of the door. This is generally where we get the weekly delivery of supplies, which came at exactly 4:03pm and 17 seconds two days ago. I have this time logged in a notebook, but I don't have any way to backfill old delivery times so my findings are fairly scant at the moment. If you want to see my final analysis you'll need to check back in a month or so when I'll be dead.

I like it when she is sitting by the front portal. We get to talk, and if I try really hard I can make myself only talk about Kate and Mom and Dad. For me, it is calming, after a while I almost feel like a normal person again. For Kate, the time spent waiting on something just seems to make her crazier. We are like opposite ends of a balance bar. The average time we can sit together is exactly 1 hour and 38 minutes and 22 seconds. I have a lot more data on that one.

She watches the viewscreen like a hawk, waiting for something. I have given up asking. Her answer is always 'You'll see."

When she is in that place, I have taken to sitting next to the front viewscreen for her. I don't know what I'm waiting for, but I'm pretty sure I'll know it when I see it. Like, it could be a very large delivery Trak with ten wheels, and an array of smaller vehicles on a trailer behind it, all stopping in front of our House. It's the first time I've ever seen such a thing, and I'm older than Kate, so perhaps this is what she was waiting for. If it was bringing food, than we were going to be able to bathe in lukewarm soy soup for quite a while, as this Trak was much larger than the normal weekly delivery. It had several crates strapped to its flattened top platform, and one of them was absolutely massive.

The House chimed. This was normally my cue to check the outer portal for a delivery box, but then House chimed again.

Two chimes? I think.. I think Dad once said that meant someone needed access to our House itself. A visitor. I was supposed to.. respond?

"House, respond," I said, hopefully sounding much more sure than I felt.

House connected me to whomever had initiated the call. "Hey, hi there. We have a delivery for Petryavich, and need permission to tunnel in." The voice was human, but couldn't have been coming from a person in the Trak. It had no passenger compartment.

"This is Petryavich House, and my sister was expecting a delivery. Can't you put our stuff in the exterior portal?" I asked.

"No can do. This entire shipment is for you. There's no way it fits in a doorway. We've got to tunnel in to the storage room. Don't worry, we'll fill the tunnel back in when we're done."

Tunnel into the storage room? Our storage room was just off the kitchen, with a concrete floor and two large windowed walls that were sunk far beneath the mound of earth covering our home. This Trak was going to tunnel into our House?

Kate, get out here. "Okay, hold on, let me get my sister."

"Can I go ahead and have the excavators start working on the tunnel? We've got a schedule to keep."

"Sure, but don't touch the House itself until I give permission."

"Got it," replied the voice. The smaller vehicles began filing off the trailer, and disappeared from my view. I raced to pull Kate out of her pod, and find out what was going on. I should be scared. I probably ought to be angry. But, to be honest, I was excited and happy, for the first moment in a very long time.

I had something to do.