The Live-Forever Machine Read Online Free

father said.
    Probably, Eric thought grudgingly. He usually did. His father’s stories were the strangest he’d ever read, but they were wonderful. The settings were cut off from the rest of the world, neither past nor present nor future. There were deserts and jungles and snow-capped mountains and angels with broken wings and magic cameras, and small towns overrun with cats, and sometimes, a woman with laughter like Nepalese wind chimes who disappeared down narrow streets into the twilight.
    The woman, Eric felt certain, was his mother. She had died so soon after he was born that he had no memory of her. She had gotten caught in the subway doors, and the train hadn’t stopped. His father had told him this when he was seven and he hadn’t known how to react. Part of him wanted to laugh—it was impossibly horrible and absurd; the other part wanted to cry for the woman whose face he couldn’t remember. But all he had done was watch hisfather’s fingers as they traced a pattern on the tabletop, again and again.
    His father never really talked about her, except in the stories, and Eric read them all hungrily, hoping to catch glimpses of his mother. He sometimes thought his father missed her as much now as when it had happened. There were periods when he seemed caught in a deep reverie—days when he’d slip through the hours lifelessly, not writing, not talking much. There had been a few other women over the years, some of whom had even made breakfast in the mornings, but they never stayed longer than a month or two. And then his father would start a new story.
    “Why haven’t you ever tried to get them published?” Eric asked.
    “I’ve never thought about it.” He shrugged. “I do them for myself.”
    It made Eric angry to think of the pile of stories in his father’s bedroom, yellowing with age.
    “If you sold enough,” he said, “maybe you wouldn’t need to work on the subway anymore.”
    “It’s as good a way to earn a living as any,” his father said quietly. “It’s certainly nothing to be ashamed of.”
    “That’s not what I—”
    “I’ve still made time for all this.” He waved hishand to indicate the bookshelves. Self-taught. That was the word his father always used.
    “That’s not what I meant, anyway,” Eric grumbled irritably, fanning out his shirt to cool his back. In fact, he wasn’t sure quite what he’d meant. Maybe it
had
been intended as a small stab. But it couldn’t be healthy, spending whole days in the subway tunnels, in the dark.
    “I was thinking about you today,” his father said distractedly.
    Eric waited for him to go on.
    “A book,” he said, after hammering out a few more words on the typewriter. “A book that you should read.”
    “Oh,” Eric said, disappointed.
    “Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole. I think you’d enjoy it.”
    Eric sighed. “Dad, you already gave that one to me. Remember? A couple of weeks ago.”
    “Oh. It’s good, isn’t it?”
    “It was all right. It was kind of dumb.”
    “Kind of dumb?” His father looked up from his typewriter, scandalized. “It’s a great classic.”
    Eric just nodded. Every old book was a great classic, according to his father. A shopping list would have been a great classic if it had been written a hundred years ago.
    “You should try to read everything,” his father said. “That’s the only real education.”
    “You make it sound as if I picked up one book every five years,” Eric said resentfully. “Chris thinks all I do is read.”
    “Well,” his father said with a chuckle, “Chris isn’t exactly an intellectual.”
    “You hardly know him!” Eric objected. “Last time he was over you didn’t even say hello.”
    The lights flickered suddenly and the electric fan jolted in mid-revolution. The tiny television set in the corner switched on full blast.
    Eric jumped. “Not again,” he groaned.
    “What a din,” Mr. Sheppard said, gathering up his papers.
    “It’s been doing this all