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“So what brings us here today?”
The little man smiled reassuringly at the Clark family, pencil poised over a steno pad. His blue eyes twinkled behind his spectacles. Light from the Tiffany lamp beside his chair reflected off his smooth, bald head. The lack of hair on his head made him look older than he was; his thick beard and mustache were brown with barely a hint of gray.
Beard, glasses, bald head: His appearance was not unlike that of the most famous psychiatrist of all time, so it should have come as no surprise to anyone that AC3.0 mistook him for that very man.
“Dr. Freud? Or may I call you Sigmund? If you permit it, I’d like to record our proceedings,” said AC3.0.
“This,” Mr. Clark said pointing at the boy. “This is what brings us here today.”
The psychologist’s eyes had widened ever so slightly after AC3.0 had spoken, but his smile had not dimmed.
“Angus, my name is not Dr. Freud. I’m Dr. Dave Grosvenor. You are welcome to call me Dr. Dave, Dr. Grosvenor, Dr. D, any of those. But not Sigmund. Okay?”
AC3.0 had pulled his recorder from his lab coat and held it up for the psychologist to see.
“Dr. Dave, my name is not Angus. I’m AC3.0. You may call me AC3.0 or AC. But not Angus. And you’ve not yet answered my question about the recording.”
“Angus,” growled Mr. Clark, but Dr. Dave held up his hand indicating he had not taken offense.
“I apologize AC. May I see your recorder?” He extended his open palm.
AC looked at him closely. Dr. Dave continued to smile. AC noticed the psychologist had the largest, whitest teeth he’d ever seen. He wondered if they were real. He placed the recorder in Dr. Dave’s hand.
“Be gentle. The electronics are delicate,” said AC.
Dr. Dave held the recorder between his thumb and forefinger and rotated it by the corners. He pulled the spectacles down to the end of his nose to get a better look, making him look even older.
“Fascinating,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
AC held his hand out. The gesture was both expectant and commanding. Dr. Dave’s smile slipped for a moment, and he handed the recorder back to the boy.
“So, what is your answer? May I record our meeting?”
“No, AC. I’d prefer you didn’t. Patient confidentiality laws and all that,” smiled the psychologist.
“But I’m the patient. By recording the proceedings, I am ipso facto releasing you from the terms of the doctor-patient privilege,” said AC.
“He said NO,” said Mr. Clark.
“AC darling, please put away your little gadget,” said Mrs. Clark.
AC rolled his eyes and stuck the recorder back into his pocket. He had wanted to document this historic example of pre-modern medical practice. Without a recording, he’d have to recreate everything later, which would introduce human error caused by personal interpretation and memory lapses. Far from ideal scientific observation, but he had no alternative. With a sigh, he returned his attention to the adults.
The parental figures seemed to be discussing the past behavior of their son, Angus with the smiling psychologist. AC had missed the beginning of the exchange, but from what he could gather at this late stage, their son had displayed multiple personalities over a short time frame. The father figure was apprehensive about an emotional disturbance; the mother figure assumed her son had an over-active imagination; the psychologist had nothing to add other than another tooth to his unwavering smile.
Only AC knew what was going on: Each of the personalities was clearly an alter ego from a parallel world. But AC also knew that these adults were far too obtuse to understand such a concept. The question was, how could he garner the greatest amount of personal amusement out of this situation?
Dr. Dave turned his teeth on AC.
“So, AC. What do you have to say about all this? Did you really believe you were a pirate? Or were you just pretending?”
AC considered his options. If he admitted that he’d believed he was a pirate, he’d be prescribed some medication he didn’t need, and this being such a primitive world, they’d probably get the dosage wrong. If he said he’d been pretending, everyone would smile and be happy and go home.
AC was bored and had been so for some time. School had been closed for months, all his friends were in the hospital, and he’d had nobody to show his experiments to but a robot. This was the perfect opportunity for a little diversion.
So he looked the psychologist straight in the eye and said, “Dr. Dave, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I just got here.”
Dr. Dave asked, “AC, please explain that to me. What do you mean, you just got here? That you just got to my office?”
“No, Dr. Dave. My meaning is that I’ve just arrived in this world. My world is on a different axis in space, perhaps time also. I’m not entirely sure. The science behind interworld travel is still in its infancy. Suffice it to say, I’m not the child of these two adults you see before you.
“I suspect that their son, who I surmise looks like me, is spending time in my world with my parents while I spend time in his world with his parents. Consider it a student exchange across parallel worlds.”
AC smiled hugely at Dr. Dave, who himself had stopped smiling midway through this explanation.
Mrs. Clark was clutching Mr. Clark’s hand while he repeated the mantra, “Worse than I thought. Worse than I thought.”
Dr. Dave stood.
“Mr. and Mrs. Clark, would you please wait outside for a moment? I’d like to speak with Angus alone.”
After Dr. Dave had smiled them both out of the office and had closed the door behind them, he spun around and looked at AC. “Angus, I’d like to ask you a few more questions.”
“Sure, but please call me AC.”
Dr. Dave was no longer smiling. “No, I think I’ll call you Angus. AC3.0 sounds like a computer program to me.”
“Well, it’s my name. I’m sorry it doesn’t please you, Sigmund.”
Dr. Dave ignored this. “How many hours a day do you spend on the computer?”
AC stared at him. What was this question he was asking? It was as ridiculous as asking how many hours a day do you breathe? How many hours a day does your heart beat?
“I don’t understand the question.”
“There’s not much to misunderstand. Do you play video games?”
Of course AC played games. Before his friends had all gotten sick, he, Billy, Ivy, and a few of his other classmates met up every night on the virtual playground and competed head to head or made teams to play all sorts of games. On the weekends when he wasn’t performing experiments, AC and his parents played together on their home interface.
“Yes, I do.”
“How many hours a week?”
AC didn’t even know how to answer that. He slept, he used to go to school, but he learned online now. If he wasn’t performing experiments, he was playing games. And all of his experiments were on his desktop. He said, “I’m not sure. Do you mean how many hours do I play games? Or how many hours do I use a computerized device?”
“Either. Both. How many hours are you on the computer a week?”
AC thought for a moment and then asked, “How many hours a week does a person sleep?”
“The average is eight hours a night. Some sleep a little more; some sleep a little less. Is that how long you sleep?” asked Dr. Dave.
“No, of course not. I would never waste an entire eight hours sleeping.”
“So, are you saying that’s how much time you spend on the computer? Eight hours five days a week? You’re on the computer forty hours a week?” Dr. Dave raised his eyebrows so high it looked like some of his hair was growing back.
“Of course not!” AC snorted. “The opposite of that. Plus weekends.”
“The opposite?” asked Dr. Dave.
AC sighed and shook his head. Such a primitive world where the adults didn’t understand basic mathematics. It made the achievements of his alter, Angus Clark that much more impressive.
“No, Dr. Dave. I sleep for fewer than 50 hours a week. The balance of weekly hours I spend studying, performing experiments, and playing. And yes, I do most of that on computerized devices.”
Dr. Dave slumped into a chair. He expelled a world-weary sigh. “How many hours a day do you play outside?” he asked.
“Outside?” AC was appalled. “Are you insane? Why would I go outside, let alone play there?”
“Thank you, Angus. Would you please wait in the lobby? Send your parents in, please.”
Mrs. Clark’s heart pounded beneath her rib cage. She felt the anger building in her chest and radiating upward. She couldn’t think straight; the fury nearly took her breath away. She knew her ears had gone bright red as they always did when she was livid. She clamped her lips together in a thin red line and crossed her arms across her chest.
She wasn’t sure who would get the brunt of her anger: the male person who said her son was a computer addict and thus implied that she was a terrible mother or the male person who had forced her to come here and thus implied that she was a terrible mother.
“He must spend some time outside in the fresh air. I prescribe physical exercise, plenty of it, accompanied by no technology whatsoever. In fact, I recommend you unplug for an entire weekend. No video games, no TV, and absolutely no YouTube. Kids today are too wired. Angus is crying out for attention. He wants you to play with him,” said Dr. Dave.
Mrs. Clark glowered at the psychologist. She had painted the boy’s entire bedroom, made pancakes and hamburgers in animal shapes, worn a costume to connect with him. And he’d told her clearly that he didn’t like the costume, the bedspread, that he didn’t need any of it. The other day, he’d hugged her and told her he loved her. And a few days before that, she couldn’t keep him inside the house if she’d tried. Her son a computer addict? Never. Not on her watch.
Mr. Clark had stopped listening as soon as he’d heard the word fresh air. He had some vacation time coming up and had been thinking about taking his family away for a few days: nothing extreme, but it had been a while since they’d embraced the wild blue yonder. He ticked off the packing list in his head: propane tanks, cooking stove, tent, sleeping bags. They’d pack weenies and marshmallows, bug spray and hiking boots. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d all been camping together.
As soon as Dr. Dave began lecturing about parents who used technology to babysit their children, Mrs. Clark knew she’d heard enough. She was going to knock that patronizing smile off his face.
“That’s it!” she exploded. She clenched and unclenched her fists. “I’ve heard enough! I have never used technology as a replacement for love. Angus and I cook and paint together, we hike together, and his father spends a lot of time with him, too.
“And outside? We love being outside! In fact, there’s nothing the three of us love more than spending time together outside.”
Mr. Clark began listening again in time to hear his wife utter that last sentence. She would regret that sentence spoken in a moment of anger for a long time to come.
“Perfect!” he said, his smile sparkling brighter in that moment than Dr. Dave’s had all afternoon. “I’m glad we agree! We can throw our gear into the truck, grab some food at the market, and get to the campground before sundown.”
He shook the bewildered psychologist’s hand with gusto. “This was what our family needed! Thanks, Dr. Dave!”
Mr. Clark rushed out of the room, slamming the door into the wall in his excitement.
Mrs. Clark looked out the window at the rain streaming down the panes and said, “Thanks a lot.”
A trace of Dr. Dave’s former smile crossed his lips, but one look from the indignant mother sitting across from him vanquished it. “Ummm ... I guess I’ll send the bill in the mail?”
“Hummphh,” she said and strode out of the room.