Playtime Read Online Free Page A

of the night, but he can’t sleep, so he
makes himself some coffee and heads over to the book shelves to find something
on brain function to look at. 
     He loves books, the written word. He has volumes
about almost everything you can think of and a number on the brain and language
and thought itself. He does a lot of corresponding by email to folks here and
there about this and that, and what he has noticed is that the conversations
are much more focused and on point than those you have in person. It’s hard for
him to come up with the best response to a comment, many times, when he is
face-to-face with someone in real time. The emails allow him to compose
sentences and look at them, just like when he is writing something to publish,
and revise and edit until he has said exactly what he wants to say. It is a way
to hone his thinking and communication skills, and he has come to really enjoy
this mode of conversation, though he hadn’t in the beginning. He had thought of
it as a virtual communication, then, replacing real face-to-face, but what he
has found to be true is that really isn’t the case: It is more a supplement to the personal.   
     So he picks out three or four volumes on the
brain and takes them to the table to browse through while he sips his coffee.
He has looked through them all before; the human brain has always fascinated
him. 
     He looks at the familiar picture of the pole that
shot through the brain of Phineas Gage, exploded through the frontal lobes,
back in the 1800s. He had lived, miraculously enough, and even seemed undamaged
for a bit. His intelligence remained intact. Memory also. But it turned out
that the sober, industrious Phineas was gone. He became impulsive and moody and
cursed like a sailor. He was unable to control himself or form long-range plans
any longer, though some later reports indicated partial recovery. Planning and
control are what the frontal lobes are all about, Blaine knows. He is thinking
how lucky he had been in the accident. Maybe it’s time to put the old Shadow to
rest, quit tempting fate. Not in this lifetime , he thinks.   
     Blaine sips coffee, flips pages, gets up and
stretches, realizes it is 5 a.m., only hours from dawn, but he feels good; the stiffness
in the neck had been a bit worse when he woke but has eased now. He stretches
some more, decides to get down on the floor and do his routine, and go for a
run. The doctor had told him no physical exertion for at least a week, but he
doesn’t trust those guys anyway. That was one reason he hadn’t let on about
knowing more about brain function.   
     He throws his old shorts on and runs through the session,
the same that he has been doing for years. Pushups, leg lifts, sit-ups, a bunch
of different stretches he had picked up from a yoga book, designed to loosen
him in every direction. Just about 20 minutes of exercise, but enough. 
     The sky is still dark when he heads out the front
door and down the street, though the east is a touch lighter. The neighborhood
is full of dogs, but most of them are accustomed to him by now, and this
particular morning they are quiet. If one starts up, it begins a chain reaction,
and soon dogs blocks away are barking. The canine community doing their job. 
     Blaine has a reflective fluorescent green cap and
white shorts and shirt he wears on night runs, but this time of morning there
isn’t much traffic, usually. The most dangerous thing out is typically the
paper guy: a young bald man who weaves from one side of the road to the other
trying to throw both sides in one drive-by. Blaine has cussed him under his
breath a few times but tries to leave him alone. Live and let live is his
philosophy. 
     He runs by Mandy’s house, brightly lit and
gleaming with the porch light on, but everything else dark. He never did find
out how the tow guy knew his address. Maybe she had told him. 
     End of the street, then another block and into
the rich part of the island, and he