“I’m Magnet please meet you.”
“You’re Magnet?” I said.
“I’m Magnet please meet you.”
“It’s true,” Triple-J said. “This is Magnet, Belt. It’s true.”
I pushed out some laugh sounds, a wow and more awws, kept my eyes on the cure’s, and off Triple-J’s, unsuccessfully trying to feel simply flattered instead of weirded out and vaguely offended.
Magnet took a couple of rapid steps forward, onto my forearm. It widened its eyes, as if in surprise, gasped dramatically, and said, “We’re silly?”
“Maybe?” I said.
“We’re…silly,” said Magnet.
Fon, whose smile looked about as forced as mine, said, “That’s what it says when it wants to be tickled,” then offered me a micro-shrug.
I tickled the bottom of its muzzle a little. It convulsively raised and lowered its shoulders, and shouted, “I’m giggling! I’m giggling! I’m giggling!”
“You are,” I said.
“Adorable, right?” Triple-J said.
“It’s impressive,” I said. “How well it’s trained.”
“Come on,” he said. “What Curio over a couple years old can’t play some version of Tickle-Me-Giggle? Unless you mean—oh…” he said, deflating a little—enough so that Magnet leapt off my forearm and climbed onto his to nuzzle his wrist. “You mean it’s impressive because of who I am—because you don’t think I’d be any good as a trainer.”
“No,” I said. “Hey, it’s not that at all.”
“So what? You were just being polite? Saying it was well trained?”
“No, I—”
“Good,” he said. “You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t just be polite. Everyone’s always being polite with me. And you know what? It’s okay with me that you don’t think I’d be good as a trainer. It stung for a second, but there’s no more sting. It’s good feedback to have. Truth is, I probably wouldn’t think I’d be a good trainer either. Not when I look around at other kids my age. How lazy they are. I should say we—it is my generation. How lazy we are. We’ve got no imagination.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I said.
“Well you should, cause it’s true. We act like ‘stacking PerFormulae for novel effects’ is a form of creativity. Like overloading is a kind of expression of passion, an expression of lust for life or something. Like the PerFormulae Abuse Labs Bros are the great geniuses of our time, and every stack and OD they come up with’s a major cultural event, and ‘What note of its painsong would I prefer to dact it on?’ is an important, like, art-of-living-type question. Instead of using these amazing little tools ourselves to do something new—and that’s what a Curio is, right? that’s what any machine is, no matter how complex, right? a tool?—instead of using them to do something new that could expand us, as humans, to expand what it means to be a human, or to think more clearly about what it really means, we let them be used on us. By corporations. Aided by the media. By people who want to sell us formulae, accoutrements. And we have no idea the opportunities we’re blowing to get past what we think are our limits. I mean, that’s one of the big reasons I made A Fistful—to inspire people, you know? To shake them out of their complacency. I mean, obviously, I like to think I’m exceptional, but I can see how my being the age that I am might get in the way of other people seeing that, so I understand. I get why you’d think I’d suck at training.”
“I was thinking more about ‘Living Isn’t Functioning,’ ” I said.
“My paper?” he said. “You read it?”
“I read both of the papers,” I said. “Last night. And you know, as long as we’re sort of talking about what I did and didn’t have time to do before coming here—”
“I guess you think it’s weak, huh? I mean, I know it’s really talky in some parts, and maybe redundant, but the teacher had this whole thing about ‘exploiting the rhetorical peculiarities and nonstandard usages of one’s generation,’ so I was trying to keep it ‘informally voiced’ and that’s kinda why I gave you the other paper, too, like to show you I don’t always write like that. I guess I should have explained that.”
“The paper’s not weak,” I said. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just it keeps insisting that cures are machines.”
“Yeah, you’re right. You’re right,” he said. “It’s way too obvious. And I was worried about that. I admit it. I was worried it was too obvious a point to make. I shouldn’t have shown it to you. It’s not up to snuff. Man, I’m a dick.”
“It’s not too obvious a point to make,” I said. “Not to me. It’s just I have a hard time imagining anyone who’s convinced that cures are machines spending as much time training one as it must have taken you to train Magnet. That’s all I was trying to say.”
“But why?” Triple-J said. “Why a hard time? I love machines. Well, some machines. Like Magnet—obviously. Or the Boatmobile. That didn’t come across in the paper at all? Wait—defensive question. I keep being bitch-ass. Sorry, I’m sorry. Obviously it didn’t come across. I didn’t think to put it in there. I thought it was clear. Maybe…Did you really read it, or just, like skim it? No. Don’t answer that. It’s just more bitch-assness. Man. Aw, man…”
“You know what?” I said, hoping to comfort him, “I did only get to read the paper once. I probably missed some undertones.”
“No, no, no,” he said. “Don’t snow me, Belt. Please. I know it sounds like I’m trying to get you to snow me, but I have to learn. I mean, I wrote that thing almost four months ago, and now I’m not only four months smarter, but I should be able to look at it with distance, through the eyes of an intelligent, discriminating reader.”
“See, that’s a really impressive attitude,” I said. “I mean it. I’m impressed. You really could make a great novelist one day.”
“A great novelist?” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “Because…” I looked over at Fon.
“I was just,” she told him, “telling Belt the story about how, when you first read No Please Don’t, it made you want to be a novelist.”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I remember that. That was intense. I really did think I wanted that. Yeah. But that was before I read what’s-his-name, though. What’s his name, Fon?”