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Chapter 16

"MRRF," I SAID IN ALARM

Hepastcluradually I realized that he wasn&039;tat me A thin black headset stretched in front of his mouth, and his eyes had the faraway look of the homeless and the wireless He was on a hands-free phone, and his gaze went straight through uin suit, I was invisible

I turned and took a few steps away, the tight fist of nerves in er threatening to squeeze the shole sushi back up I continued toward the planetariu beach-ball-sized model of Saturn presented itself

I ducked behind the planet and counted to ten, waiting for his bald head to appear, another five goons behind hi headsets and predatory sli on his headset He was a non-penguin, dressed in the all black of security personnel and surveying the crowd, clearly on the lookout

For uise had worked He hadn&039;t connected the new non-Hunter with the skater kid he&039;d seen thismy luck I looked ahead for another section of the party to explore In front ofa steady strean announced continuous showings of the new TV ad for Poo-Sham Inside it would be dark, and I could recoveradvertiseood at

I took a deep breath and stepped out fro purposefully toward the planetariu ent

Poo-Shahts dimmed in the planetariu presence of a museum-class speaker system Stars shimmered to life above our heads, as crystal clear as on soht appeared, a giant television screen carving itself out froan in the usual sha her head Then she was dressing, her hair dry and bouncing in slow hts that special effects could produce (Somewhere, lower-level Lexa types had acted as hts)

Then the model&039;s date arrived Her Poo-Sham hair dazzled him, and he sputtered, "Did you just shake a tower?"

She s at the theater, and the usher, tongue-tied by the glamorous hair, babbled, "May I sew you to your sheets?"

Our heroine s her hair

Then at dinner the still-bedazzled date ordered "lack of ra, hicking of flair

The ad ended with a close-up on the bottle and a voice-over:

"Poo-Shalare!"

The planetariu for a les Then some sort of software freak-out seemed to take over the projector The entire screen flickered rapidly back and forth fro a needle of weirdness deep intostopped as suddenly as it had started, and the stars ca

I stuotten the bald guy, the anti-client, everything The flashing screen had done solass in e juice froh me, as if soe juice turned out to be even more spiked than the first one I&039;d had, but I needed its cold reality into walk off the weirdness left over fro the back ofme to settle Like everyone, I&039;ve watched a lot of TV, seen lots of advertisements I&039;ve even been paid to critique the with the Poo-Sha screen at the end, but soer affront to my sensibilities

It hadn&039;t looked real

You knohen you&039;re watching aTV in thesome TV show that doesn&039;t really exist, with some fake talk-show host they just invented for the ? That happens because you and I, like every other A coffee into TV watching And we&039;re really, really good at it

Two seconds after switching on a television shoe knohether it&039;s from the late 1980s or last year and whether it&039;s a cop show or a sitco or the dog-walking channel, all this froles, and the quality of the videotape Instantly

You can&039;t get anything past us