Нил Шустерман - Antsy Does Time

Once the credits roll, and you’ve completed stage four, you’re ready for stage five. Acceptance. It begins with a flush, sending Mr. Moby the way of all goldfish, and ends with you asking your parents for a hamster.

So I’m sitting there on the bus holding car parts while Gunnar’s browsing through his catalog again, and I suddenly realize exactly what Skaterdud meant.

Gunnar never faced stages one through four.

He went straight to acceptance. This crisis, which would have thrown most people’s worlds into a tailspin, instead left Gunnar in a perfect glide. There was something fundamentally wrong about things being so “right” with Gunnar. So maybe, as Skaterdud suggested, Pulmonary Monoxic Systemia was just the tip of this iceberg.

Gunnar and I invited our whole English class to our dust bowl for dinner a few nights later, promising “authentic dust-bowl cuisine.” Since everyone knew my dad had a restaurant, more than a dozen people actually showed—including our teacher, so we were able to present our report right there. We served everyone a single pea on dusty china, to emphasize what it meant to be hungry in 1939. Our classmates thought we were jerks, but Mrs. Casey appreciated the irony. People kept asking what the faint chemical smell was, and I kept looking to the sky, praying for rain, probably looking like one of Steinbeck’s characters—although I wasn’t interested in making the corn grow, I just wanted the herbicide to wash away. Gunnar gave the verbal presentation, and I handed Mrs. Casey the written contrast between the book and the movie. She said we did a credible job, which, I guess is better than incredible, because we got an A. I wonder what she would have said if she saw Gunnar’s unfinished gravestone, which I forced him to cover with a potato sack before anyone showed up. When she gave back the written report, it came with a contract for two months, signed, witnessed, and stapled to the back of the report.

I went to my computer that night to escape thinking too much, or at least to force myself to think about things that didn’t matter. See, when you’re on the computer, you get really good at what they call multitasking, and usually the tasks you have to multi are so pointless you can have endless hours without a single useful thought. It’s great.

So I’m chatting online with half a dozen people, trying to maintain all these conversations while simultaneously trying to read all these e-mails filled with OMGs and LOLs that aren’t even F, while attempting to delete the obvious spam, like all those people in Zimbabwe who have like fourteen million dollars to give me, and the e-mails offering pills “guaranteed” to enlarge your muscles and other things.

Anyway, there I am, sorting online crud, when I notice something I rarely give any attention to: the ad banner at the bottom of the screen. Usually those ad banners are bad animations that say things like SHOOT THE PIG AND QUALIFY FOR OUR MORTGAGE. I’ve never lowered myself to shooting the pig. But right now the only thing on that banner was a single question, in bright red.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?

I think I must have seen this one before but it was all subliminal and stuff, because there are many times I’m sitting at this computer asking myself that same question. Meanwhile, all the chats are demanding responses. Ira’s is on top. At first he was trying to convince me about how old movies are better than new ones. He’s gotten snooty all of a sudden that way, and anytime you’re over his house, he forces you to watch classic movies like Casablanca and Alien. After chatting for like half an hour, he’s gotten tired of movie talk, and now he’s just telling dead-puppy jokes. This is where things go with Ira, no matter how snooty he pretends to be. I ignore it, and keep my eyes on the ad. Now the answer dances across the banner to join the question.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? ASK DR. GIGABYTE!

At first I just chuckled. Everything’s a website now. It was the next line that really got me.

WITH DR. G, DIAGNOSIS IS FREE!

I sat there staring and blinking, and shaking my head. Gunnar’s doctor was also a “Dr. G.” I figured it was just a coincidence. It had to be. I mean, one out of every twenty-six doctors would be Dr. G, right? Well, not exactly, but you know what I mean.

A scoop of ice cream, some root beer, and a dead puppy, Ira’s instant message says. He’s waiting for my LOL, but right now I’ve got bigger puppies to fry.

R U still there?

BRB, I type.

I keep wanting to ignore the Dr. G thing, but I can’t. It’s stuck in my head now.

Maybe it’s legitimate, I tried to tell myself. Maybe it’s just a real, live doctor who does online consultations.

What did one dead puppy say to the other dead puppy?

I don’t care, I answered. GTG. TTYL, I told him, and then I added, IGSINTDRN. I closed the IM window, taking a little pleasure in the fact that Ira would spend hours trying to figure out what that meant.

I watched a string of other ad banners. Singing chickens, man-eating french fries, aliens in drag. I have no idea what they were all advertising, and I really don’t want to know. Then the ad for Dr. G came back. WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? I clicked on the ad.

It took me to a very professional-looking page that asked me to enter my symptoms. Did I have symptoms? Well, I was overdue for new shoes, and the ones I had were too small, so my toes have been hurting. I entered Toes hurt. Then it asked me about twenty other questions, all of which I answered as honestly as I could.

Are your toes discolored?

No.

Do you live in a cold climate?

Yes.

Are your ankles swollen?

No.

Have you been bitten by a rodent?

Not to my knowledge.

When all the questions had been answered, the website made me wait for about a minute, my anticipation building in spite of myself, and then it gave me a bright blinking diagnosis.

You may be suffering from rheumatic gout complicated by lead poisoning.

To avoid amputation or death, seek a full diagnosis, available here for $49.95.

All major credit cards accepted.

When I clicked no thanks it took me to a screen that offered pills to relieve my symptoms, which also had the favorable side effect of enlarging muscles and other things.

I tried it three more times. My growling stomach was intestinal gangrene. The crick in my neck was spinal meningitis. The tan line from my watch was acquired melanin deficiency. All could be further diagnosed for $49.95, and all could be treated with the same pills.

I did a lot of pacing that evening. So much that Christina, buried in her homework, actually noticed.

“What’s up with you?” she asked as I paced past her room.

I considered telling her, but instead I just asked, “Have you ever heard of Dr. Gigabyte?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It told me my zit was late-stage leprosy.”

And, grasping at my last straw of reason, I asked, “What if it is?”

“Please, God, let it be true,” Christina said. “Because a leper colony would be better than this.” Then she turned her attention back to her math book.

There are no words to describe the muddy mix of things you feel the moment you realize your friend probably isn’t dying, but instead is conning you. It means that no matter how much you thought you knew him, you don’t know him at all.