Episode 23: Home with Stranger
Paul Asher unstrapped the wired canvas band from across his chest. He put the selectorscope spectacles into the pouch on the arm of the seat and walked out of the R.K.O. Vicarion into High Street and around the corner to where his car was parked.
His roommate at the communapt, MacCloy, was still up when he got there, going over some projectos. Mac snapped off the screen and quickly swept the slides together and into a case.
"You're back early," MacCloy said.
"The multifilm broke," Paul told him.
"Oh." Mac seemed abstracted, as he often did, and again Paul wondered about this man he knew so casually and who had never confided in him about anything--especially about his government job.
"So I missed the ending," Paul said. "I guess it was near the end, anyhow. The space patrol was on the way, but the villain, that Hafitz, was just about to blast me with his gun and I don't know how I would have got out of that."
"I remember that," Mac said. He laughed. "You must have been Positive all the way through. Like I was when I saw it. If you'd had any negative reactions--if you'd leaned back against the strap instead of forward--you'd have been at some other point in the multiplot and I wouldn't have recognized that part. Want me to tell you how it ends?"
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Richard Wilson
