Free Thomas World by Richard Cox Page A

in front of it, that I will never be caught up enough to actually enjoy anything, like my life, and I wonder if the powers that be set it up this way on purpose. Just like the debt I owe—thirty years to pay off my giant mortgage, credit card debt with low payments and high interest designed to keep me paying forever. Maybe this is why I feel like I’m being chased all the time, like I can never rest, because even though I’m stuck in middle-class hell, I’m always one paycheck away from epic collapse. And I can’t imagine a way out of it, not ever.
    I look down and see the email from Dick has finally arrived, There is a link, as promised, which I click on. The page that pops up is white, and at the top, the words Ant Farm 2.0 shimmer in large, silver letters. Below the name is a photo of a miniature Mayan temple with ants crawling on it, and beside that photo there is a quote that says Play God.
    Farther down the page there are two more sections. One is a list of blog entries in reverse chronological order with names like Player Feedback — Chapter 31 and Player Feedback — Chapter 30 and so on. Thirty-one chapters of player feedback means a lot of people are playing this game.
    The other section says: Download Ant Farm here — Large file size, high speed Internet required!!
    And beneath the text is a graphic, a round, nebulous, object drawn to look like a sphere. It appears to be rotating, like a planet on its axis.
    By now you may have guessed, but I’m going to say it anyway.
    The sphere is blue. It looks exactly like the orb I saw in church yesterday.
    I’m not kidding.
    For a moment I can’t do anything but stare at it. Paranoia creeps down my spine and shrivels my balls.
    With a shaking hand I direct the mouse pointer toward the orb, and the arrow dances a jerky dance across the screen.
    The orb is the link to download the file.
    I want to click the link, but I don’t, not yet.
    Because surely you can agree this graphic is proof that what I saw yesterday really happened. Maybe no one else in the church saw the blue orb, but I sure as hell did, and now here it is on the web site Dick sent me. It can’t be an accident. It looks exactly the same.
    Something important is happening. Something so important that I am apparently being fed clues and hints. The guy in the bathroom started it, and now Dick, who went into a trance and told me a secret about numbers, about pi, has pointed me toward a computer program that uses a blue orb on its web site.
    I have good reason to be freaked out, right?
    For a moment I just sit there, staring at the computer monitor, my hands still shaking. The cooling fan in my computer hums. My hard disk whirs. Conversations from other cubicles float toward me, a few words here, a chuckle there. Footfalls and swooshing pants as someone walks by in the hallway behind me.
    The synthetic smell of microwave popcorn.
    The surreal and contrived florescent light.
    And in my head, distantly, maybe I’m imagining her or maybe she’s real…a woman reciting numbers.
    4…1…9…7…1… pause… 6…9…3…9…9… pause… 3…7…5…1…0.
    Slowly, carefully, I stand up and peek over the wall of my cubicle. Everywhere I look, 360 degrees, I see the grid outlines of other cubicles. Seven or eight rows over, someone else is also standing up, looking right at me.
    She quickly sits down, and I quickly sit down.
    Someone is watching me. I can feel it. But who are they? Where are they?
    My skin is gooseflesh, so prickled with energy I may as well be plugged into an electrical outlet. Is anyone else besides me being watched? They must be. Certainly I can’t be so special that I’m the only one who has ever been chosen. I mean that’s the sort of thing a paranoid schizophrenic believes, right? That the world somehow revolves around him?
    But this is different. This is really happening to me. I