When he awoke, the computer was close to his feet, and the lights were on in the
living room. Oh, wonderful, he thought, now it can feed. Lovely. Lovely.
He drew himself together at the hips, then extended his upper torso, the cord
clenched between his teeth, and moved another six inches to the baseboard. And
again. And once more. Now he was lying with his cheek against the cool hardwood
floor; and the plug lay just below the outlet.
The computer scraped the floor, byte drool etching an acid alphabet in the
pegged wood floor. I'll help you, Chris tried to whisper. I'll plug you in and
you can drink.
He didn't understand why the PC was so impatient. He was trying to help. He
would help, even if the machine was being impatient.
With the last of his strength, he dragged his arm around his body, and grasped
the plug. He tried ever so hard to raise the plug, to insert the triple prong
into the slots and hole. But his strength was gone. He was empty. His head had
been sucked dry of all knowledge, his body drained of all energy, his arteries
dusty with emptiness. The PC was whimpering at his feet like an asthmatic
infant.
Friend, he thought, my old dearest friend. He wanted to say, be patient, I'm
coming, I'll get you fed yet, I'll set the table and billow the napkin into your
lap. Hold on, old friend.
And from some small reservoir of unknown value, some untilled patch of muscle,
he found an inch worth of foot-pounds of energy, and he thrust the plug into the
power point.
The energy spike exploded straight through the heart of the PC. It had been
lurking there in the web, waiting to be tapped, and as the plug drove home,
Chris speared the computer with a coruscating spike of energy that blew the
feeding keyboard into dust. Chris was showered with sparks. And darkness closed
over him again.
When he came to, he was lying curled in a foetal rictus, every fiber of his body
crying for a soft breeze, a gentle touch. But he could think . . . he could
reason.
And he knew what had happened to him. The long banquet that had transpired in
this dark house. Sharilyn was gone, his family was gone, and he had very nearly
been taken.
But now, by chance, he had saved himself. Unknowing without sense or purpose, he
had saved himself from the thing that drank, the device that dined. He would
begin to crawl toward the kitchen, to pull down a box of saltines, to kick the
table and make a desiccated tangerine fall from the bowl up there. He would
live. By chance, but yes, he would live. And it was chance that lived on the
