Chapter 22

"DID YOU WASH YOUR HANDS?"

"Yes, I washed my hands." (For ten solid minutes. Still purple.)

"I'm glad to… Good God, Hunter, your hair!"

Mom and I smiled at each other across the table as this morning's terrifying graph slipped from Dad's fingers.

"Yeah, I decided to go for a different look."

He took a breath. "Well, you managed that, all right."

"And he was wearing a tuxedo and bow tie last night," Mom said, then added in a stage whisper, "It's the new girl."

Dad's mouth closed, and he nodded with the insufferable expression of a parent who thinks he knows everything. Which I was glad he didn't.

"I thought you just met her two days ago."

"I did?" I asked. But he was right: I had known Jen less than forty-eight hours. A sobering thought.

"She's an impact player," I admitted.

"Are your hands purple?" Dad asked as I poured coffee.

"Retro-punk thing. Plus the dye kills bacteria."

"You kids," Mom said. "So, what did you two do last night? You never told me."

"We went to a launch party for this magazine, then we, um, went and watched videos at Tina's house."

"Oh, what did you see?"

"'Computer Warrior Polygon. " I sipped my first coffee of the day.

"Is Kevin Bacon in that?"

"Yes, Mom, Kevin Bacon is in that. Oh, wait, no, he isn't. It's animated and Japanese." I named the franchise.

My father spoke up, disconcertingly looking at my bleached hair instead of my face. "Aren't those the cartoons that cause epilepsy?"

I fought my way through this coffee-spitter. "How did you know about that? Is epilepsy contagious now?"

"Well, in a way it is. Most of the reactions in that case were sociogenic."

Okay, if there's anything sadder than your dad using the word sociogenic at the breakfast table, it's knowing exactly what he means.

Dad tells this cool story:

There was a garment factory in South Carolina back in 1962. One Friday one of the workers there got sick and said she'd been bitten by bugs while handling cloth from England. Then two more workers had to be hospitalized with fainting and hives. By the next Wednesday it was an epidemic. Sixty workers on the morning shift fell ill, and the federal government sent in a team of doctors and bug specialists. They discovered the following:

There were no poisonous bugs, from England or anywhere else.

The workers' various symptoms matched no known illness.

The sickness hadn't affected everyone on the morning shift, only workers who knew each other personally. It spread through social groups rather than among people who had worked with the suspect cloth.

It looked like a scam, but the victims weren't faking. The disease was sociogenic, the result of a panic. As the rumors of illness spread, people thought they felt bugs biting them, then a few hours later they developed symptoms. It really works. Watch this: Bugs on your leg… bugs on your back… bugs crawling through your hair… bugs, bugs, bugs. Okay, do you feel the bugs now?

I think that you do (or will in a minute or so). Go ahead, scratch.

The contagion in South Carolina had spread the same way yawning does, from brain to brain.

So how did they cure this epidemic? Simple. They fumigated the hell out of the factory, pumping clouds of poison gas into it right in front of everyone. Real poison gas. Because if you believe the imaginary bugs are dead, they stop biting. Sort of like Tinkerbell… but bugs.

And the epidemic was over.

"You mean those seizures weren't really epilepsy?"

"Not most of them, just a few in the beginning," he said. "From what I read, the number of kids coming into hospitals started off pretty low. But once the seizures were reported on the news, the numbers soared. Parents were panicking and freaking out their children. The kids went to school the next day and of course talked about it on the playground. Most victims went to the hospital the night after the show was broadcast. They just wanted to go along with the crowd, I guess."

"That makes a lot of sense," I said, casting my mind back to the party. Maybe Tina was wrong and the anti-client hadn't perfected the paka-paka to work on everybody. They hadn't needed to. Instead the mini-seizures had spread like imaginary bugs, leaping from brain to brain. The Poo-Sham ad had showed actors being dazzled and dumbstruck, a hypnotic suggestion to act dazed and confused. (Which is what ads are all about, by the way—getting you to act a certain way.) Maybe only a few people had reacted to the flashing. Then, like Trendsetters spreading a fad, they'd led everyone else at the party down the path of bedazzlement.

If a few of us are open to having our brains rewired, the rest will follow.

"That happens a lot with epidemics," my father said. "Especially when kids are involved."

"So, is there an epidemic of kids dyeing their hands purple, Hunter?" Mom asked.

"No, it's just me and Kevin Bacon."

"Really? He doesn't seem very 'punk' to me."

That's right, she said «punk» with quote marks around it.

I was saved from breakfast by a call from Cassandra, Mandy's roommate or girlfriend.

"Cassandra! Have you heard from Mandy?"

"Yeah, Hunter, she called late last night. Apparently she had to go out of town at the last minute."

"She called? From her own phone?"

"Yes. Why wouldn't she?"

"Uh, how did she… I mean, did she sound okay?"

"Well, she sounded kind of stressed, but who wouldn't, you know? She didn't even have time to pack, so they sent a messenger to pick up some of her stuff. Anyway, after I got your message, I thought I'd call and tell you. Mandy said her phone doesn't always work out there."

"Out where?"

"Somewhere in Jersey, I think."

I drummed my fingers, wondering if I should say anything that might freak Cassandra out, but decided not to needlessly spread my possibly imaginary bugs to her.

"Did she mention how long she'd be gone?"

"Not exactly. She just said to pack for a couple of days. You can always try to call her."

I bit my lip. That's what they wanted.

Jen met me at the place with musty couches and strong coffee. She looked much better after a night of post-seizure sleep. In fact, she looked fabulous. Her buzz cut surprised me all over again, my mental image of her having slipped back to long hair overnight. She hesitated for a moment in the doorway, bracelet flickering, then grinned when she spotted me at our usual couch.

I stood up as she crossed the room, and then her arms were around me.

"Hi, Hunter. Sorry I passed out on you."

"It's okay." I sat her down and got coffee, looking back over my shoulder as I waited for the barista to pour, just to make sure Jen was still there, still smiling at me like, Yeah, I kissed you last night.

The coffees came, and I carried them back.

When Jen had heard about my call from Cassandra, we agreed it had given us exactly zero new information. All it meant was that the anti-client had somehow convinced Mandy to cover their tracks and that the cops weren't going to be helping us anytime soon.

"So, I've got a theory," Jen said.

"Another vision?"

She shook her head, playing with her Wi-Fi bracelet, which was twinkling in the heavy wireless traffic in the coffee shop as all around us people deleted spam, downloaded music, and asked the world's most powerful communication system to find them pictures of blond tennis players.

"Just normal brain activity, I'm happy to say. And some tinkering: this morning I took my Poo-Sham camera apart. I was right. When you take a picture, it sends a copy of the image to the nearest Wi-Fi hub."