into Luke’s eyes, then took a small ruler and measured the distance between them. “No corrective lenses?”
“I want to know what that was! I couldn’t breathe! I couldn’t swallow!”
“You’re fine,” Evans said. “Swallowing like a champ. Color going back to normal. Now do you or don’t you wear corrective lenses?”
“I don’t,” Luke said.
“Good. Good for you. Look straight ahead, please.”
Luke looked at the wall. The sensation of having forgotten how to breathe was gone. Brandon pulled down a white screen, then dimmed the lights.
“Keep looking straight ahead,” Dr. Evans said. “If you look away once, Brandon is going to slap you. If you look away a second time, he’ll shock you—low voltage but very painful. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Luke said. He swallowed. It was okay, his throat felt normal, but his heart was still double-timing. “Does the AMA know about this?”
“You need to shut up,” Brandon said.
Shut up seems to be the default position around here, Luke thought. He told himself the worst was over, now it was just an eye test, other kids had been through this and they were fine, but he kept swallowing, verifying that yes, he could do it. They would project the eye chart, he would read it, and this would be over.
“Straight ahead,” Evans almost crooned. “Eyes on the screen and nowhere else.”
Music started—violins playing classical stuff. Meant to be soothing, Luke supposed.
“Priss, turn on the projector,” Evans said.
Instead of an eye chart, a blue spot appeared in the middle of the screen, pulsing slightly, as if it had a heartbeat. A red spot showed up below it, making him think of HAL—“I’m sorry, Dave.” Next came a green spot. The red and green spots pulsed in sync with the blue one, then all three began to flash off and on. Others began to appear, first one by one, then two by two, then by the dozens. Soon the screen was crowded with hundreds of flashing colored dots.
“At the screen,” Evans crooned. “The screeeen. Nowhere else.”
“So if I don’t see them on my own, you project them? Kind of like priming the pump, or something? That doesn’t—”
“Shut up.” Priscilla this time.
Now the dots began to swirl. They chased each other madly, some seeming to spiral, some to flock, some forming circles that rose and fell and crisscrossed. The violins were speeding up, the light classical tune turning into something like hoedown music. The dots weren’t just moving now, they had become a Times Square electronic billboard with its circuits fried and having a consequent nervous breakdown. Luke started to feel like he was having a breakdown. He thought of Harry Cross puking through the chainlink fence and knew he was going to do the same thing if he kept looking at those madly racing colored dots, and he didn’t want to puke, it would end up in his lap, it—
Brandon slapped him, good and hard. The noise was like a small firecracker going off both close and far away. “Look at the screen, sport.”
Something warm was running over his upper lip. Son of a bitch got my nose as well as my cheek, Luke thought, but it didn’t seem important. Those swirling dots were getting into his head, invading his brain like encephalitis or meningitis. Some kind of itis, anyway.
“Okay, Priss, switch off,” Evans said, but she must not have heard him, because the dots didn’t go away. They bloomed and shriveled, each bloom bigger than the last: bwoosh out and zip back in, bwoosh and zip. They were going 3-D, coming off the screen, rushing toward him, rushing back, rushing forward, rushing—
He thought Brandon was saying something about Priscilla, but that had to be in his head, right? And was someone really screaming? If so, could it be him?
“Good boy, Luke, that’s good, you’re doing fine.” Evans’s voice, droning from far away. From a drone high in the stratosphere. Maybe from the other side of the moon.
More colored dots. They weren’t just on the screen now, they were on the walls, swirling on the ceiling, all around him, inside him. It came to Luke, in the last few seconds before he passed out, that they were replacing his brain. He saw his hands fly up among the dots of light, saw them jigging and racing on his skin, became aware that he was thrashing from side to side in the chair.
He tried to say I’m having a seizure, you’re killing me, but all that came out of his mouth was a wretched gargling