Kill Switch Read Online Free Page B

“Look, it’s not that complicated a thing and it’s wasting my time. But, since you’re probably going to badger me until I talk about it, here it is. Do I hate my father? Yes. Is it because he divorced my mom? No. Mom’s a complete wacko. I love her and I can’t even stand to be around her. So, no, it’s not that. So why can’t I stand him? Gosh, let me think. How about the fact that he’s always mean to me. Always. He hates me and he doesn’t mind showing it.”
    â€œYour father loves you, Prospero.”
    â€œOh, please. I’m young but I’m not stupid. It’s not me he loves. It’s this.” Prospero tapped his head. “He loves what’s up here because he knows it can make him a lot of money.”
    â€œYour father is a very intelligent man,” said Greene.
    â€œSure, but I’m smarter by at least an order of magnitude. We all know it. And I’m getting smarter all the time. And, sure, Dad’s smart, but he only uses his brains to build weapons of war. Am I against war? Not really. Wars happen. But to spend your life making it easier to kill people, and easier for very few people to kill large numbers of people, then, yeah, I don’t like that.”
    â€œBecause of the potential for loss of life?”
    Prospero’s green eyes seemed to look straight through him. “No. I don’t care about people. I’m not one of them.”
    â€œThen why?”
    â€œBecause it’s a waste of intellectual opportunity.”
    â€œFair enough,” said Greene, interested. “What else?”
    â€œWell, Dad doesn’t believe in anything. Not God or a larger world. Nothing. And he hates it because I do. He thinks it’s a waste of my time. A distraction. He’d rather me spend all my time in the lab.” Prospero snorted. “Have you seen the latest upgrades to my lab? Dad broke through the wall so that I now have the entire basement. All of it. He got rid of his billiards room to put in new sequencers and to give me table space to build whatever I want.”
    â€œThat’s very generous.”
    Prospero shook his head. “I kind of like you, Doc, so I’m going to pretend you’re not that naïve. We both know that Dad will keep giving me as much scientific equipment as he can cram into the house in the hopes that I make another toy for him.”
    Greene nodded. Twice in the last sixteen months Prospero had built small electronic devices that, from things the father let slip, had great potential for military application. Greene did not understand the science, even when Prospero tried to explain it to him. Something about a short-range field disruptor and something else about a beam regulator. Whatever they were. Oscar Bell had been extremely excited about both, and from the things Greene had picked up, was able to obtain contracts to develop them for the Department of Defense.
    Prospero had been mostly indifferent to the devices, labeling them as “junk,” and ultimately disregarding them because they did not help him in his “work.” He said one was a by-product and the other was an interesting side effect. Greene was trying to determine what that work was, convinced it was a key factor in understanding Prospero.
    Overall, Oscar Bell was openly obsessed with his son’s genius. Bell talked about almost nothing else, and that was disturbing to Greene. He did not know how this would play out over time. Bell was the least pleasant man Greene had ever met. He was acquisitive, demanding, inflexible, and probably cruel in many ways. His household staff was terrified of him and there was a high turnover rate among them. Bell was the kind of man who had no real friends and instead relied on maintaining a network of acquaintances whose shared agendas were based on financial reward rather than personal enrichment.
    â€œI guess you know,” said Prospero, “that Dad hates