As he said this he let the hand holding the cigar drift down until, as if unaware, the cigar’s hot glowing tip was near Noah’s arm.
“And fear of bodily injury, say the loss of a limb, is also very real.”
Noah stared at his captor, looking for evidence in his liquid brown eyes that he was joking, exaggerating, fooling, or anything other than speaking the truth.
“Do you know the poet Ezra Pound?” Dr. Pound asked.
“What are you doing down there?” Noah asked, wishing his voice was not quite so obviously shaky.
Dr. Pound had wheeled a cart into place beside Noah’s right leg. It wasn’t tall, just maybe eighteen inches high, and it looked like it might be an emergency generator. Except that someone had attached a chain saw to it.
“Whoa. No, whoa. No, wait up.”
Again, testing the Velcro. Again, not possessing superstrength. The Velcro gave up a few gritty Velcro sounds, but that was all.
“Pound was considered perhaps the greatest poet of the twentieth century.” The doctor locked the cart’s wheels and swung a bracket around to affix the machine to the chair leg in such a way that the glittering chain of the saw came to within a quarter inch of the back of the chair leg.
“Okay, I’ve quite changed my mind,” Noah said.
“But I’ve gone to all this trouble.” Pound winked up at him. “Unfortunately, Pound was also mentally disturbed. He was a rabid anti-Semite. And he was a supporter of Hitler.”
Pound had gone around to Noah’s left. He picked up a wire, thicker than the others, a cable really, and ending in two small alligator clips. Pound applied one of the alligator clips to Noah’s earlobe.
“Jesus!” Noah cried. “That bloody hurts!”
“Yes, and it will hurt a lot more later. I’ll just apply the ground to your nose.” The second clip pinched Noah’s nostril.
“All right then,” Pound said. “The sooner we start, the sooner we’re done.”
“What am I supposed to do?” The clips hurt. The presence of a chain saw was terrifying. And Noah did not want to hear about insane Nazi poets.
“Two games. One is the familiar first-person-shooter sort of game. The second is a different game, one that requires you to traverse a complex three-dimensional structure wherein you are represented by a cute little robot called Nano.”
Noah’s eyes blazed at that word. His brother had babbled that word madly.
Nano nano nano.
This then was what had driven Alex mad.
“This isn’t a game!” Noah cried, suddenly seeing the truth. “You’re going to do what you did to my brother!”
Dr. Pound raised his eyebrows in a leer. “The funny thing about Ezra Pound? He did much of his best work in a mental institution. You have thirty seconds to learn the game,” Dr. Pound said, walking over to his laptop. “Then we will begin.”
Both video monitors came on.
On the right Noah was represented by a gun. Symbols on the right side of the screen. Weapons choices? The environment a London street. No, not London: the taxis were yellow. New York, maybe. Animations of pedestrians walked by, cabs and cars and trucks drove by.
The graphics were impeccable. The sound was realistic.
On the left screen, the scenery was inexplicable. He was represented by a spider. The spider was atop a wavy, corrugated surface beneath a sort of Dalí cathedral of soaring buttresses.
When he flexed the left glove—no, no, they were crossed, that’s right. So right glove, left screen. When he flexed, the spider moved. And the gun. Hands crossed: he would need to remember that.
Okay, a game. Focus on that. They hadn’t sawed Alex’s leg off. He was panicking for nothing, had to stay calm here; it was all part of that Chinese American dude’s test, all about that. So foc—
“Aaaahhh!” The alligator clips sent a stab of unbelievably intense, immediate pain shooting from ear to nose. It convulsed that whole side of his face. His left eye filled with tears.
“Just so you understand the stakes,” Dr. Pound said. “And now: game on!”