Mazes and Monsters Read Online Free

loved a good argument. Their house was often filled with friends having endless, spirited discussions about everything from politics to psychology, while his mother served coffee from a restaurant-size urn.
    Daniel was their joy, their hope. He was the bright one, the son with the wonderful future. His older brother, Andy, a handsome, easygoing young man, had chosen to be a gym teacher, and it was typical of their parents that they were just as proud of Andy as they were of Daniel, only in a different way.
    “Andy keeps kids out of trouble,” his mother said proudly, as if by teaching basketball in a middle-class suburban public high school he was single-handedly saving a flock of future juvenile delinquents. Andy shared an apartment with his girl friend, a pretty social worker named Beth, and his mother acted as if they were both in the same profession.
    Ah, but Daniel, he was extraordinary. He was the computer genius who would save the world. Goodness knows, the world was rotten and needed saving. What Daniel really wanted to do was make up games for computers. His parents thought that would be a nice hobby, something he could do on the side. They tried not to pressure him. After all, they knew that pressure causes rebellion.
    The only time they made a fuss was when he announced he was not going to M.I.T., but to Grant. They were horrified. To turn down M.I.T.?
    “I want to go away from home,” he said. “I need space.”
    “We give you space,” his mother said. “You can live in the dorm. We’ve been saving money for your education since you were born—you can live in the dorm or even have your own apartment if you like.”
    “Space is an overused concept of the Seventies,” his father said. “Space exists inside your own head.”
    “I don’t want to be in Cambridge, that’s all.”
    “If I see you coming out of the subway I promise not to say hello,” his mother said. She gave him a look of disgust and went into the kitchen.
    Daniel followed her. “Mom … I just don’t know what I want to be.”
    “Of course you know.”
    “It’s too soon. Everybody always knew, but I’m not so sure. I want to put my life on hold for a while.”
    “Terrific,” she said angrily. “And then you’ll come out of that Grant University and look for a job and they’ll say, ‘Sorry, we want someone from M.I.T.’”
    “You always said money was far less important than personal satisfaction.”
    She had a long, wicked-looking knife in her hand and was hacking at the fat on a roast of beef, making a mess. “It’s a rat race out there,” she said, without looking up.
    “I can always transfer,” he said weakly. He felt as if she were strangling him. His parents had always given him advice but never orders, and there had never been anything he hadn’t been allowed to do. Except fail. Or be ordinary. He suddenly envied his brother Andy for doing something simple that he loved, for never being hassled, for not having to be special.
    “I truly don’t understand, Daniel,” his mother said. She looked up at him, finally, and he saw that her eyes were full of tears. “I thought you were different from other kids. You always had such a sense of purpose. Did we fail you somehow? Did we do something wrong?”
    “No,” he said. He went over and put his arms around her. Her bones felt very small. “People don’t always run away from something bad. Sometimes people have to run away from perfection.”
    “We’re far from perfect,” she said, surprised, but he saw with relief that the tears in her eyes were gone.
    So he had gone to Grant. And now he was starting his Junior year, nineteen years old, comfortable with his work and his friends, involved in the game he had discovered at college, spending all his free time making up new and more devious versions. He also ran. He liked running down the long empty streets of Pequod at dawn, out to the suburbs that reminded him of Brookline, looping back past the shopping mall