The Portable Veblen

25 THE CYBORG

In her home office before her monitor, Cloris was reassuring her former husband that reporters were not bothering their son and that she was more than happy to put him on a plane to Washington tomorrow.

No, of course she hadn’t hit the idiot on purpose. It was a huge pain in the ass and her father wasn’t speaking to her and she didn’t want to answer any more questions or she might explode.

Morris had been creeping along the wall, holding Paul’s device as if it were one of the four-barreled guns in the cyborg game. “Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!” He wasn’t listening to the words his mother was saying, but he registered the tone — definitely cyborg.

“Don’t give me that. He gets more attention than any child should.”

“I think you need to take a look at yourself, Cloris,” said her ex-husband.

“Morris, get over here and tell your father you’re ready to go home.”

Morris didn’t come. Cloris was rocking violently in her ergonomic executive chair, siphoning liquid from a large tumbler.

“Morris?” called the cyborg father. “Come here, son. I’d like to see you.”

Morris began to shuffle around the perimeter of the room, keeping his back on them, trying to figure out which of his special powers to use.

“I’ve made an appointment with Patricia’s psychologist. The one her son sees.”

“What about sports?” Morris’s father said. “If you could just get him busy on a team of some kind, soccer, Little League, maybe swimming?”

“Do you know how stressful that would be? He doesn’t want to do anything normal like that. He will not go.”

“Son, you need to get yourself active, okay?”

“How soon we forget. Last year he agreed to the soccer then moved around the field like a robot.”

Morris was directly behind his mother’s chair now, going through his defense options: Teleport? Shape change? Energy shield? Perplex?

“I don’t have that kind of trouble, Cloris. Morris is more than happy to play tennis when he’s here. Aren’t you, son?”

At that moment, Morris spun around and placed the Pneumatic Turbo Skull Punch on the top of his mother’s head, and squeezed the trigger. This was the perfect weapon to use on a cyborg. There was a loud report and the device kicked back in his hands, pinching out a bone-white disk, cascading with blond hair and a strip of skin.

“Cloris?” Morris’s father said. “Cloris, what is it?”

“What… was… that… sound?” Cloris said, in a slow, rasping voice.

Then she crumpled forward, fluid spilling from the large, vulnerable opening (LVO) on the top of her head.

“Morris? What is happening to your mother? Morris!”

“Mommy?” Morris cried. “Want to play a game?”