Free Player One: What Is to Become of Us by Douglas Coupland Page B

rebels, saying, “Well, my name is Warren, and screw you. I’m almost in.”
    “Warren,” Rick says, “my grandmother’s more web-savvy than you.”
    Karen says, “Both you men, just shut up. Wait — CNN’s on the screen.”
    They look at the CNN page, which is shattering into digital fragments. During its two seconds onscreen, the group sees the words oil hits $350 and new info sheds light on anna nicole smith’s drug suicide.
    Then the connection dies and the server asks if they’d like to test a new Microsoft upgrade for their system.
    “Jesus H. Christ,” barks Warren. “This hunk of crap probably has a dot matrix printer, too.”
    “Actually,” Rick says, “it does, but I can’t find paper with tractor-tread holes on the sides anymore.”
    Rachel begins thinking about a world in which oil costs $350 a barrel, and it’s not a world the people she knows would want to live in — not exactly a world of empty roads and starving masses, but getting there. Fewer planes. Fewer vegetables and fruits. Anarchy. Crime. Maybe some suicides. There may no longer be a need for high-quality white mice in this world, and then what will she do? For a brief moment she thinks of the pizza-sized black circles cartoon characters throw onto the ground — portable holes — which they jump into to escape difficult situations. In her mind, that’s where people go when they die: down Daffy Duck’s cartoon hole. How comforting to have a wide array of cartoon friends to meet you on the other side! Cartoons were introduced to Rachel as a means of explaining the concept of humour, but she ended up preferring cartoons over real life because in cartoons she could at least tell whose face was saying what. She hasn’t watched a film in years. But there, in the stress of the bar, she wishes she had a cartoon hole she could escape into. But no — she’s on a mission, and this is no time to bail.
    ___
    Warren was yelling at the hard drive, and Karen was yelling at Warren for yelling at the machine. The two reminded Rachel of her parents, but she knew from Luke that they had met only an hour beforehand. Perhaps they were . . . What is the term? . . . a match made in heaven and ought to reproduce as quickly as possible.
    Warren clearly held Rick responsible for the lounge’s lame computer and for his inability to get a cellphone connection. “How hard can it be for a hotel lounge to have decent wireless? You’ve got nothing to do all day but make three margaritas and stick some bar mix in a bowl. You’d think you’d have time to find a computer that works.”
    “Right, Warren. I’ll put it on the agenda at the next board meeting, right after my PowerPoint presentation to implement a chain-wide series of planet-friendly green initiatives.”
    “There’s no other computer in this place?”
    “In the hotel’s main office. Be my guest and go use it.”
    “Smartass. Wait — I think I’ve got CNN again.” The screen’s address bar indicated a connection to the website, and the loading bar indicated it was about to appear. Then an ad for Tropicana orange juice popped up. Warren was incensed. “Jesus H. Christ.”
    Rick said, “Why don’t we let Rachel give this a try?”
    “Yeah, sure,” Warren said. “I get it. Out with the old, in with the young.”
    Karen said, “Warren, just move. Rachel, try and get us online here.”
    Rachel sat and executed some keystrokes that unclogged much of Warren’s mess. She considered rebooting but decided not to risk it. As she tried reaching various news websites, she reasoned that if oil was now $350 a barrel, most airline flights would soon be grounded. Gas stations would be emptied in minutes, and all grocery stores gutted. She asked Rick, “Do you have a radio?”
    “Just in my truck,” Rick said.
    “We should go out and listen to it,” Rachel said. “We’ll get the news faster that way.”
    “No!” said Warren. “We are going to get the real facts online. Keep trying,