The Flinkwater Factor Read Online Free Page A

sold in this country. If people are being attacked by their computers, it could kick his business in the you know what.”
    â€œI don’t think it’s the computers doing the bonking, Uncle Ashton. I think it’s the Brazen Bull.”
    There was a moment of silence.
    â€œTell me about this bull, punkin.”
    â€œEverybody who got bonked had the same thing on their screen.” I told him about the Brazen Bull and how I’d discovered the very first bonk victim.
    â€œHmmm. But if everybody’s using the same screenie, that don’t prove nothin’. That ol’ bull pops up automatic-like a minute or so after you stop punchin’ buttons, right?”
    â€œYeah, but I didn’t bonk, and I have my screenie disabled. And everybody who got bonked had the bull playing.”
    â€œYes, but you told me you looked at the bull when it was playing on your friend’s computer, and you seem to be okay. Does your mom have this Brazen Bull on her computer?”
    â€œUm, yeah, I think so.”
    â€œAnd she didn’t bonk, right?”
    â€œMaybe some people are more bonkable.”
    â€œOr maybe it’s not just the bull doing the bonking.”
    â€œWhat should I do, Uncle Ashton?”
    â€œFirst, just to be on the safe side, stay away from that dang bull. Second—”
    Click.
    That was it. The phone had gone dead. Apparently there was at least one nonmoron working for Homeland Security.

8

    Bubbled
    After leaving Addy’s, I took a ride around town. Uncle Ashton was right. We were bubbled. Not an actual bubble of course, but the roads were blocked, and a bunch of men and women wearing dark gray uniforms were erecting a twelve-foot-tall razor-wire fence all around the edge of town. It looked like a war zone. And if Uncle Ashton was right, maybe we were under attack.
    I talked to a few dazed-looking citizens and learned some things.
    First, the SCIC plague had bonked half the ACPOD engineering staff. The hospital was getting full, so they were putting new patients on cots in the high school gymnasium. Second, all computer use in Flinkwater had been banned, and Homeland Security was going door-to-doorconfiscating tabs and desktops. Third, no one was allowed to leave Flinkwater until a cause and cure for SCIC were discovered.
    What would Gilbert Bates do?
    I got home just as the Homeland Security teams were starting on our block. I put my tab in a plastic bag and hid it at the bottom of Barney’s cat box. Barney observed this procedure with that disdainful aloofness that only a purebred Siamese can pull off, then climbed into the box and delicately deposited an extremely fragrant gift atop the freshly disturbed cat litter. He examined his work and pronounced it satisfactory with a little merp.
    â€œGood job,” I told him.

    My brilliant cat-box ploy turned out to be unnecessary. The DHS guys were tired and cranky and didn’t look very hard at all. They took our phones, my dad’s desktop, and an old tab that I hardly used anymore. I thought they might take our DustBots as well, but they didn’t. I suppose it would have been impractical, what with just about everybody in Flinkwater having a dozen of the little things crawling around the house.
    As soon as they left, I dug my tab out of Barney’s cat box, sanitized it with multiple applications of disinfectant, and got to work. Uncle Ashton hadtold me to stay away from the Brazen Bull, but I do not always listen.
    Naturally, I took precautions.

    I was sitting at my desk wearing mirrored, polarized, Vaseline-smeared sunglasses and listening to some painfully loud static over my headset while watching the Brazen Bull bounce off the sides of my tab when Barney leaped into my lap without warning. Barney will jump on anybody’s lap, anywhere, anytime, and more often than not scare the heck out of them. I was used to it. Barney liked to watch videos.
    What I was not used to was the horrendous