《ur》(6)

Wesley turned off his computer, went into the kitchen, got another beer, and pulled his own Kindle from his briefcase. His pink Kindle. Except for the color, it looked exactly the same as the ones on the Kindle Kandle website.

"Kindle-Kandle, bibble-babble," he said. "It's just some flaw in the plastic." Perhaps, but why had it come one-day express delivery when he hadn't specified that? Because someone at the Kindle factory wanted to get rid of the pink mutant as soon as possible? That was ridiculous. They would have just thrown it away. Another victim of quality control.

He thought of Ellen's message again (by then he had it by heart). If it's a Kindle, I think you can use it to go to the Internet, she'd said. He wondered if it was true. He turned the Kindle on, and as he did so, he remembered there was something else odd about it: no instruction booklet. He hadn't questioned that until now, because the device was so simple to use it practically ran itself (a creepy idea, when you considered it). He thought of going back to the Kindle Kandlers to find out if this was a true oddity, then dismissed the idea. He was just goofing around, after all, beginning to while away the hours between now and next Monday, when he might hear from Ellen again.

"I miss you, kiddo," he said, and was surprised to hear his voice waver. He did miss her. He hadn't realized how much until he'd heard her voice. He'd been too wrapped up in his own wounded ego. Not to mention his sweaty little spite. Strange to think that spite might have earned him a second chance. Much stranger, when you got right down to it, than a pink Kindle.

The screen titled Wesley's Kindle booted up. Listed were the books he had so far purchased -

Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates, and The Old Man and the Sea, by Hemingway. The gadget had come with The New Oxford American Dictionary pre-loaded. You only had to begin typing your word and the Kindle found it for you. It was, he thought, TiVo for smart people.

The question was, could you access the Internet?

He pushed the MENU button and was presented with a number of choices. The top one (of course) invited him to SHOP THE KINDLE STORE. But near the bottom was something called EXPERIMENTAL. That looked interesting. He moved the cursor to it, opened it, and read this at the top of the screen: We are working on these experimental prototypes. Do you find them useful?

"Well, I don't know," Wesley said. "What are they?"

The first prototype turned out to be BASIC WEB. So Ellen was right. The Kindle was apparently a lot more computerized than it looked at first blush. He glanced at the other experimental choices: music downloads (big whoop) and text-to-speech (which might come in handy if he were blind). He pushed the NEXT PAGE button to see if there were other experimental prototypes. There was one: UR FUNCTIONS.

Now what in the hell was that? Ur, so far as he knew, had only two meanings: a city in the Old Testament, and a prefix meaning "primitive" or "basic." The screen didn't help; although there were explanations for the other experimental functions, there was none for this. Well, there was one way to find out. He highlighted UR FUNCTIONS and selected it.

A new menu appeared. There were three items: UR BOOKS, UR NEWS ARCHIVE, and UR LOCAL (UNDER CONSTRUCTION).

"Huh," Wesley said. "What in the world."

He highlighted UR BOOKS, dropped his finger onto the select button, then hesitated. Suddenly his skin felt cold, as when he'd been stilled by the sound of Ellen's recorded voice while reaching into the fridge for a beer. He would later think, It was my own ur. Something basic and primitive deep inside, telling me not to do it.

But was he not a modern man? One who now read off the computer?

He was. He was. So he pushed the button.

The screen blanked, then WELCOME TO UR BOOKS! appeared at the top of the screen...and in red! The Kandlers were behind the technological curve, it seemed; there was Kolor on the Kindle. Beneath the welcome message was a picture - not of Charles Dickens or Eudora Welty, but of a large black tower. There was something ominous about it. Below, also in red, was an invitation to Select Author (your choice may not be available). And below that, a blinking cursor.

"What the hell," Wesley told the empty room. He licked his lips, which were suddenly dry, and typed ERNEST HEMINGWAY.

The screen wiped itself clean. The function, whatever it was supposed to be, didn't seem to work. After ten seconds or so, Wesley reached for the Kindle, meaning to turn it off. Before he could push the slide-switch, the screen finally produced a new message.

10,438,721 URS SEARCHED

17,894 ERNEST HEMINGWAY TITLES DETECTED

IF YOU DO NOT KNOW TITLE, SELECT UR

OR RETURN TO UR FUNCTIONS MENU

SELECTIONS FROM YOUR CURRENT UR WILL NOT BE DISPLAYED

"What in the name of God is this?" Wesley whispered. Below the message, the cursor blinked. Above it, in small type (black, not red), was one further instruction: NUMERIC ENTRY ONLY. NO COMMAS OR DASHES. YOUR CURRENT UR: 117586.

Wesley felt a strong urge (an ur urge!) to turn the pink Kindle off and drop it into the silverware drawer. Or into the freezer along with the ice cream and Stouffer's frozen dinners, that might be even better. Instead, he used the teeny-tiny keypad to enter his birth date. 7191974 would do as well as any number, he reckoned. He hesitated again, then plunged the tip of his index finger down on the select button. When the screen blanked this time, he had to fight an impulse to get up from the kitchen chair he was sitting in and back away from the table. A crazy certainty had arisen in his mind: a hand - or perhaps a claw - was going to swim up from the grayness of the Kindle's screen, grab him by the throat, and yank him in. He would exist forever after in computerized grayness, floating around the microchips and between the many worlds of Ur.