What did that leave? Steve Harvey interviewing David Hasselhoff? Reruns of America’s Funniest Home Videos?
No. No way.
He left the room, thinking Kalisha or one of the other kids might be around. He found Maureen Alvorson instead, trundling her Dandux laundry basket slowly down the corridor. It was heaped with folded sheets and towels. She looked more tired than ever and sounded out of breath.
“Hello, Ms. Alvorson. Can I push that for you?”
“That would be kind,” she said with a smile. “We’ve got five newbies coming in, two tonight and three tomorrow, and I’ve got to get the rooms ready. They’re down thataway.” She pointed in the opposite direction from the lounge and the playground.
He pushed the basket slowly, because she was walking slowly. “I don’t suppose you know how I could earn a token, do you, Ms. Alvorson? I need one to unlock the computer in my room.”
“Can you make a bed, if I stand by and give you instructions?”
“Sure. I make my bed at home.”
“With hospital corners?”
“Well… no.”
“Never mind, I’ll show you. Make five beds for me, and I’ll give you three tokes. It’s all I’ve got in my pocket. They keep me short.”
“Three would be great.”
“All right, but enough with the Miz Alvorson. You call me Maureen, or just Mo. Same as the other kids.”
“I can do that,” Luke said.
They went past the elevator annex and into the hallway beyond. It was lined with more inspirational posters. There was also an ice machine, like in a motel hallway, and it didn’t appear to take tokens. Just past it, Maureen put a hand on Luke’s arm. He stopped pushing the basket and looked at her enquiringly.
When she spoke, it was just above a whisper. “You got chipped, I see, but you didn’t get any tokens.”
“Well…”
“You can talk, as long as you keep your voice down. There’s half a dozen places in Front Half where their damn microphones don’t reach, dead zones, and I know all of them. This is one, right by this ice machine.”
“Okay…”
“Who did your chip and put that mark on your face? Was it Tony?”
Luke’s eyes began to burn, and he didn’t quite trust himself to speak, whether it was safe or not. He just nodded.
“He’s one of the mean ones,” Maureen said. “Zeke is another. So is Gladys, even though she smiles a lot. There are plenty of people working here who like pushing kids around, but those are three of the worst.”
“Tony slapped me,” Luke whispered. “Hard.”
She ruffled his hair. It was the kind of thing ladies did to babies and little kids, but Luke didn’t mind. It was being touched with kindness, and right now that meant a lot. Right now that meant everything.
“Do what he says,” Maureen said. “Don’t argue with him, that’s my best advice. There’s people you can argue with here, you can even argue with Mrs. Sigsby, much good it will do you, but Tony and Zeke are two bad bumblebees. Gladys, too. They sting.”
She started down the corridor again, but Luke caught her by the sleeve of her brown uniform and tugged her back to the safe area. “I think Nicky hit Tony,” he whispered. “He had a cut and a mousy eye.”
Maureen smiled, showing teeth that looked long overdue for dental work. “Good for Nick,” she said. “Tony probably paid him back double, but still… good. Now come on. With you to help me, we can get these rooms ready in a jiff.”
The first one they visited had posters of Tommy Pickles and Zuko—Nickelodeon characters—on the walls, and a platoon of G.I. Joe action figures on the bureau. Luke recognized several of them right off the bat, having gone through his own G.I. Joe phase not all that long ago. The wallpaper featured happy clowns with balloons.
“Holy crap,” Luke said. “This is a little kid’s room.”
She gave Luke an amused glance, as if to say You’re not exactly Methuselah. “That’s right. His name is Avery Dixon, and ’cording to my sheet, he’s just ten. Let’s get to work. I bet I only have to show you how to do a hospital corner once. You look like a kid who catches on quick.”
10
Back in his room, Luke held one of his tokens up to the laptop’s camera. He felt a little stupid doing it, but the computer opened at once, first showing a blue screen with a message on it reading WELCOME BACK DONNA! Luke frowned, then smiled a little. At some point before his arrival, this computer had belonged (or been on loan, anyway) to someone named Donna. The welcome screen hadn’t been changed yet. Someone had slipped up. Just a tiny slip, but where there was one, there might be others.
The welcome message disappeared and a standard desktop photo appeared: a deserted beach under a dawn sky. The info strip at the bottom of the screen was like the one on his computer at home, with one glaring (but at this point unsurprising) difference: no little email postage stamp. There were, however, icons for two Internet providers. This surprised him, but it was a nice surprise. He opened Firefox and typed AOL log-in. The blue screen came back, this time with a pulsing red circle in the middle. A soft computer voice said, “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
For a moment Luke thought it was another slip-up—first Donna, then Dave—before realizing it was the voice of HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not a goof, just geek humor, and under the circumstances, as funny as a rubber crutch.
He googled Herbert Ellis and got HAL again. Luke considered, then googled the Orpheum Theatre on Hennepin, not because he was planning to see a show there (or anywhere in the immediate future, it seemed), but because he wanted to know what information he could access. There had to be at least some stuff, or else why give him the connection at all?
The Orf, as his parents called it, seemed to be one of the sites approved for “guests” of the Institute. He was informed that Hamilton was coming back (“By Popular Demand!”), and Patton Oswalt would be there next month (“Your Sides Will Split!”). He tried googling the Broderick School and got their website, no problem. He tried Mr. Greer, his guidance counselor, and got HAL. He was beginning to understand Dr. Dave Bowman’s frustration in the movie.
He started to close down, then reconsidered and typed Maine State Police into the search field. His finger hovered over the execute button, almost pressed it, then withdrew. He’d get HAL’s meaningless apology, but Luke doubted if things would end with that. Very likely an alarm would go off on one of the lower levels. Not likely, surely. They might forget to change a kid’s name on the computer’s welcome screen, but they wouldn’t forget an alert program if an Institute kid tried to contact the authorities. There would be punishment. Probably worse than a slap to the face. The computer that used to belong to someone named Donna was useless.
Luke sat back and crossed his arms on his narrow chest. He thought of Maureen, and the friendly way she’d ruffled his hair. Only a small, absent-minded gesture of kindness, but that (and the tokens) had taken some of the curse off Tony’s slap. Had Kalisha said the woman was forty thousand dollars in debt? No, more like twice that.
Partly because of the friendly way Maureen had touched him and partly just to pass the time, Luke googled I am overwhelmed with debt please help. The computer immediately gave him access to all sorts of information on that subject, including a number of companies that declared clearing those pesky bills would be as easy as pie; all the back-to-the-wall debtor needed to do was make one phone call. Luke doubted it, but he supposed some folks wouldn’t; it was how they got in over their heads in the first place.