Zasada | The Retention Device
after that. What a deal!” She lowered her voice, glanced behind her, out the window. “A shame, what happened to the owners, that's the only thing.” “What happened to them?” Joe asked. We were in their living room and Lisa was, disconcertingly, also on the TV that was the size of a large window, her head at least ten sizes larger than her real life head. She was replaying a recorded news story she'd been telling us about, about a fire in a skyscraper across town, but what she actually wanted to show us was the size of the new building next to it, a giant hothouse for engineered vegetables. When the TV version of Lisa smiled, I guessed that my entire hand was the size of one of her teeth. “Oh” Lisa started, and then frowned, “nothing good. You know, it's really a coincidence; I covered that story. Well, sort of a coincidence; I mean, after that, I knew in the back of my mind that the house, what was left of it, was up for sale…” She trailed off, staring straight at her own giant face, paused and floating there on the screen, smiling brilliantly. “They died, of course. They didn't find them for weeks; no one expected them to be so far away. They crashed right through the roofs of some of those old abandoned buildings downtown. No one knows what to do about those. They're such a problem!” She hit the play button again. “Oh, look,” she said, taking the remote and pausing and zooming in on the building. “See that big thing right there, next to the window? That's a tomato!”I looked around while Lisa and Joe were staring at the TV. Miles had already left the room. This is my chance, I thought. I got up and followed him. It took a few minutes, but I finally found Miles in an unfinished room in the basement. “Hey there,” he said. I tried to read his expression when he saw me, but I got the impression that he was making his expression deliberately unreadable. “White or red?” he asked. We were standing below a bare bulb, one of the ultra-efficient kinds. It gave off the thinnest yellow glow you could imagine, as if it were casting off a watered down layer of paint. Whenever either of us moved, giant shadows rippled like monsters across the cinderblock walls.
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