I threw out all my lamps, all things electrical. With hammer, chisel, and handsaw I went to work on the drywall just above the baseboards.
As I stripped the house of wiring I wondered many times why I was doing it. Why was it worth it? I couldn't have very many more years before a final seizure finished me off. Those years were not going to be a lot of fun.
Lisa had been a survivor. She would have known why I was doing this. She had once said I was a survivor, too. I survived the camp. I survived the death of my mother and father and managed to fashion a solitary life. Lisa survived the death of just about everything. No survivor expects to live through it all. But while she was alive, she would have worked to stay alive.
And that's what I did. I got all the wires out of the walls, went over the house with a magnet to see if I had missed any metal, then spent a week cleaning up, fixing the holes I had knocked in the walls, ceiling, and attic. I was amused trying to picture the real-estate agent selling this place after I was gone.
It's a great little house, folks. No electricity...
Now I live quietly, as before.
I work in my garden during most of the daylight hours. I've expanded it considerably, and even have things growing in the front yard now.
I live by candlelight, and kerosene lamp. I grow most of what I eat.
It took a long time to taper off the Tranxene and the Dilantin, but I did it, and now take the seizures as they come. I've usually got bruises to show for it.
In the middle of a vast city I have cut myself off. I am not part of the network growing faster than I can conceive. I don't even know if it's dangerous to ordinary people. It noticed me, and Kluge, and Osborne. And Lisa. It brushed against our minds like I would brush away a mosquito, never noticing I had crushed it. Only I survived.
But I wonder.
It would be very hard... Lisa told me how it can get in through the wiring. There's something called a carrier wave that can move over wires carrying household current. That's why the electricity had to go.
I need water for my garden. There's just not enough rain here in southern California, and I don't know how else I could get the water.
Do you think it could come through the pipes?
"The Pusher" first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy And Science Fiction, copyright © 1981 by Mercury Press, Inc.
"Blue Champagne" first appeared in New Voices 4, edited by George R. R. Martin, copyright © 1981 by John Varley.
"Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo" copyright © 1985 by John Varley.
"Options" first appeared in Universe 9, copyright © 1979 by Terry Carr.
"Lollipop and the Tar Baby" first appeared in Orbit 19, edited by Damon Knight, copyright © 1977, Copyright reassigned to John Varley, 1985.
"The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged)" first appeared in Westercon 37, edited by Debbie Cross.
Copyright © 1984 by John Varley.
"The Unprocessed Word" copyright © 1985 by John Varley.
"Press Enter" first appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, copyright © 1984 by Davis Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 1986 by John Varley.
Cover design by Todd Cameron Hamilton.
Book design by Jill Dinneen.
ISBN: 0-441-06868-5