Free King Dork Approximately by Frank Portman Page A

that turns out to be the key to the big dilemma and another person tells him to say it again so the audience’s attention can be drawn to it without any possibility of missing it. In short, there was evidently something to this idea, in the world of Sam Hellerman.
    “What?” I said, playing my assigned role as best I could for the moment.
    “What you just said. Say it again.”
    “You mean, ‘Fuck you, Hellerman’?”
    “You didn’t say that,” said Sam Hellerman woundedly.
    My eyes said, “I know, man, I just felt like saying it for some reason. No offense.”
    But even though I wouldn’t play along with the “say that again” game, Sam Hellerman is a genius, and I could see that faraway genius look in his eyes. And of course he wouldn’t tell me his specific plan right then. And of course we had to sit for a while at the bus stop in front of Linda’s Pancakes on Broadway pretending not to look at Jeans Skirt Girl. And of course Sam Hellerman was listening to his tape rather than talking to me, making surreptitious notes and swaying from side to side like he was having a fit or something. And of course I sat there too, though I felt like a big idiot, because I was just so curious as to what he was going to propose in the end that I had to stick it out so I’d get to hear it. As with the letter, I was a prisoner of his cockeyed genius, if cockeyed isn’t too strange of a thing to call a person’s genius. Basically, I just had to know.
    Jeans Skirt Girl had climbed into the green station wagon, and Sam Hellerman had switched off his tape player, just as the thought struck: the letter! I’d forgotten all about it in the excitement about APLPA-016. I hadn’t yet had a chance to discuss the switch to Clearview High School and compare notes with Sam Hellerman on the pros and cons.
    “So,” I said. “Queerview.”
    “What?” he said.
    “Queerview.”
    “What?” he said.
    I decided to make my meaning clearer.
    “Clearview,” I said.
    “Stop saying that,” said Sam Hellerman. “You sound like a lunatic.”
    I patiently explained that what I meant was that I’d seen the letter at last and that I had been attempting, using as few audible words as possible, as is my wont, to introduce the topic of how it looked like we’d be attending Clearview High School in the new year. Is it “wont”? I think it’s “wont,” though that’s weird.
    “If we’re not killed by Y2K, that is,” I added with my eyebrows.
    Now, I have no idea how astute you, my public, may be. But it occurs to me that some of you possibly will have some idea already of what Sam Hellerman was going to say next. If so, I congratulate you, because I’m obviously not anywhere near as good as you are at astuteness, and it came as a complete surprise to me.
    “Clearview?” he said. “I’m not going to Clearview. I’m supposed to go to Mission Hills.”
    And again, if the astute among you who saw that coming also already knew that my response to this was to sit on the bench, remaining aloof from reality, my blood running cold and sweat bedewing my brow, wishing desperately that there were a kitchen table next to the bus stop just so I could tip it over? Well, you were right about that, too. You’re good.
    Sam Hellerman and I would be going to different high schools.
    It was a con. A definite con.



THE BRUTAL CONDITIONS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN KIBBLE MINES
    As those of you from the future knew all along, January 1, 2000, dawned on a changed world. Computer irregularities had caused an instant worldwide financial collapse. Huge regions of the western United States were rendered uninhabitable by the failure of the electrical grid and lack of water, while nuclear plants, their automated temperature control systems disabled, quickly melted down and spewed radiation throughout the countryside. The world’s great nations, seeing their security endangered, let loose their missiles simultaneously, wiping out all but ten percent of the