Lighthouse Island Read Online Free Page A

people’s breath and the walls sparkling with frost.
    Every apartment was assigned about 20 kWh of electricity per month, which was enough to run the OLED television screen, flexible and thin as paper, and maybe a lightbulb for a few hours in the evenings. Communications and Entertainment made sure every human being in the megacity had access to television. Some people fought for assignments to apartments with a higher allowance, maybe 90 kWh a month, but then you had to pay for it with work hours and the electricity failed a lot. And then there were people who were adept at stealing it, and also tapping into the water pipes. Penalty: the cactus farms.
    Throughout the apartment building at least twenty televisions were all broadcasting the same program. Soccer was over (men in shorts struggling in the frozen mud over a ball) and now it was Early to Rise , where a group of people in a recycle unit found weird things in rubble and argued with one another and had love affairs, but if Nadia watched the screen for more than five minutes she began to see sparks flashing and weaving through her vision.
    So she began to read and memorize whatever came to hand. In abandoned upper stories she found novels, stories in which the characters’ actions and thoughts were described and the plot proceeded with a happy continuity. The characters’ behaviors were explained and motivations stated so everything fell together. She didn’t need to see anything. She found herself so grateful for this phenomenon that she fell into novels as if into a well, and into poetry as if it were a river.
    We’re looking down into a valley, she said to Thin Sam. Under all the buildings there, right? “And travelers now, within that valley, through red-lit windows see vast forms . . .” of whatevers. I love to scare myself. Vast stinking forms. Eww. She lifted her dark eyebrows and smiled at him.
    Nadia, Nadia, he said. He folded the delicate foil strips in his hard fingers. There used to be a lake down there. Standing water. Dirty but standing. It was called Blue Springs Lake.
    Where did it go? She pressed out a foil strip between her cold hands.
    We used it up. He took the strip from her hand. For manufacturing. Flushed our waste with it. Then the weather changed. Our ancient imperative for growth. It was supposed to be a good thing. Nobody asked, when does growth stop? And so here we are. This used to be called Kansas City but now it’s just city most of the way to Denver and we are called Gerrymander Eight.
    And where did the animals all go?
    We ate them, he said. And we took up all their space. Except for rats, mice, and the hardier sort of bird.
    Nadia handed Thin Sam another foil. She had to press them out smooth and then fold them longways; then he wove them together in diamond patterns. She loved being away from the television and the crowded rooms and passageways. From Thin Sam’s cupboard where he lived and drank and had his being, a radio played.
    Nadia kept her schoolbooks under the bench and only occasionally flipped through them because they were so boring. She also kept old novels there. Nobody cared if she read. Child welfare didn’t care. So few people read that it was of no concern.
    Thin Sam Kenobi was loose inside his layers of clothes, several shirts and a tattered sweater and a coat. His knuckles were round as marbles. From below came a deep rumbling. The transport trains. He had taken to instructing her in matters of life, things an orphan girl ought to know.
    He said, Always, always hide food. Never, never sign anything.
    Why? she said. She rested her pointed chin on one fist and her dark-red hair stuck out in sprays.
    Because there are people who would arrest you and take you away. He turned a leaf of foil in his hand. You would be a happy child if only the world would let you be.
    This left Nadia confused. Was she supposed to be happy all the time? Would people love her then?
    Never mind. So.