...of revenge

I had left it to him because I had a broken arm at the time and was too busy learning to write with my left hand. But I know he didn't do it. I know because two years later, when he was rushed off to hospital with acute peritonitis, I was looking for an instruction-book he'd borrowed, and rummaging in his stuff. I found two floppies, marked X, carefully hidden among physics papers in a box. I stared at them. Fleeting butterfly queries were transformed pico into sharp suspicion.
No, the other way round, a sudden sharp suspicion called up fleeting butterfly queries. I checked, and there it was, our original Xorandor story, chatterboxy and unrevised. He must have copied the originals before erasing them to show them to me, callcoded Xorandor and empty. I felt sick with shock. Not because he had wanted to keep them - why not, maybe my request was unreasonable. Not even because he'd broken his promise. But because he had lied to me, and in such an elaborate way. I'm sure the peculiar change in our almost telepathic relationship dates back to that day, though I never said anything. But deeply hurt, I went in for a swift silent revenge. I told myself that if he wanted it kept I would do the keeping, and in exactly the same way. I transferred the content of both floppies onto one more comprehensive smaller disc for my new computer, giving it one of my mystery callcodes. I still have it with me, here in this very attic. I erased his floppies called X and put them back where I had found them, between exactly the same pages in exactly the same place, which had become marked on the paper from the weight of the physics notes. He never mentioned it, so presumably he has them somewhere in his Nasa office and has never called them up. Or else he has, and kept silent, assuming I erased them out of anger but also out of conviction. So which is worse? Not keeping a promise and cheating about it, or sneaking and cheating back, in the same way, out of revenge?

[Verbivore, Brooke-Rose, C.]