Parable of the Talents

physical and mental health, but her v-room was all she cared about'

I frowned. 'I've heard of that kind of thing—people being hooked on Dreamasks or on virtual-world fantasies. I don't know anything about it, though.'

'What is there to know? Dreamasks are nothing—cheap kid's toys. Really limited. In that room she could go any­where, be anyone, be with anyone. It was like a womb with an imagination. She could visit fourteenth-century China, present-day Argentina, Greenland in any imagined distant future, or one of the distant worlds circling Alpha Centauri. You name it, she could create some version of it. Or she could visit her friends, real and imaginary. Her real friends were other wealthy, idle people—mostly women and children. They were as addicted to their v-rooms as she was to hers. If her real friends didn't indulge her as much as she wanted them to, she just created more obliging ver­sions of them. By the time I was abducted, I didn't know whether she really had contact with any flesh-and-blood people anymore. She couldn't stand real people with real egos of their own.'

I thought about this. It was worse than anything I had heard about this particular addiction. 'What about food?' I asked. 'What about bathing or just going to the bathroom?'

'She used to come out for meals. She had her own bath­room. All by itself, it was big as my bedroom. Then she began to have all her meals sent in. After that, there were whole months when I didn't see her. Even when I took her meals in myself, I had to just leave them. She was in the v-bubble inside the room, and I couldn't even see her. If I went into the bubble—you could just walk into it—she would scream at me. I wasn't part of her perfect fantasy life. My brother, on the other hand, was. He got to visit her once or twice a week and share in her fantasies. Nice, isn't it'

I sighed. 'Didn't your father mind any of this? Didn't he try to help her—or you?'

'He was busy making money and screwing the maids and their children—some of whom were also his children. He wasn't cut off from the outside, but he had his own fantasy life.' She hesitated. 'Do I seem normal to you?'

I couldn't help seeing where she was going with that 'We're survivors, Len. You are. I am. Most of Georgetown is. All of Acorn was. We've been slammed around in all kinds of ways. We're all wounded. We're healing as best we can. And, no, we're not normal. Normal people wouldn't have survived what we've survived. If we were normal we'd be dead.'

That made her cry. I just held her. No doubt she had been repressing far too much in recent years. When had anyone last held her and let her cry? I held her. After a while, she lay down, and I thought she was falling asleep. Then she spoke.

'If God is Change, then... then who loves us? Who cares about us? Who cares for us?'

'We care for one another,' I said. 'We care for ourselves and one another.' And I quoted,

'Kindness eases Change.

Love quiets fear.'

At that, she surprised me. She said, 'Yes, I liked that one.' And she finished the quote:

'And a sweet and powerful

Positive obsession

Blunts pain,

Diverts rage,

And engages each of us

In the greatest,

The most intense