Tomorrow Land Read Online Free Page B

admit it, but her father’s cellmate had convinced him that the end of the world was near. Ian talked about it often and had decided he needed to start making arrangements. Armageddon was on its way, and the Andersons would be ready. Not even his wife had been able to dissuade him from preparing. Peyton was torn between admiring her father’s genius and her horror at what her friends at school must think about him.
     “So, what have you been up to today, Dad?” she asked, ready for a subject change. She tossed a few punches at the heavy bag, warming up. She had to admit, she did kind of enjoy their sessions; there was something about breaking a sweat that no one else in her world seemed to understand. Her classmates were too into their injections and surgeries to find any joy in building muscles the old-fashioned way.
    “Reading,” her father replied. He walked over to his desk and held up a well-worn paperback book.
    Peyton resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Her dad was the only person on earth who didn’t own an e-reader. Even she had one: he’d had to allow it, for the technology was the only way to access school texts. But her dad always claimed he preferred the good old days when books were made of paper and the government couldn’t check up on what you were reading. He hunted flea markets constantly, looking for rare, out-of-print treasures and banned books.
    She swung a few times at the speed bag, then glanced at the cover. “ Neuromancer ,” she said. “What’s it about?”
    “It’s brilliant,” he replied. “The author completely predicted sims and the Internet and the dangers of artificial intelligence. And this was back in 1984—before most people even had a computer! If you read this book you’d never use a sim again, I bet. At the very least you’d want to know who was controlling it.”
    “Sounds interesting,” Peyton said, feeling sweat bead on her forehead as she continued her speed training. “I’ll have to take a look when you’re done.” Maybe they had it as an e-book….
    “There’s even cybernetics in it,” her father continued. Though he was officially out of the business, he admitted to a continued fascination in the art of enhancing man by machine, and he was constantly tinkering with parts in his lab. “A girl named Molly Millions. A razor girl.”
    Peyton stopped punching. “What’s a razor girl?” she asked.
    “A cybernetic ninja, of sorts,” Ian explained. “Sort of like those soldiers I worked on but…” He broke off, stared at the wall for a moment. “She has four-inch razors under her fingernails that she can slide in and out at will. She knows half a dozen forms of martial arts. And she has these ocular implants with infrared and a bunch of other functionality. She can see better, move faster, react quicker. She’s amazing. If I had everything from my old lab… Well, she’d be the perfect creature to survive the apocalypse.”
    “I don’t know. Sounds pretty weird to me.” Peyton grabbed a towel and wiped her brow. “Besides, how would this person survive before the apocalypse? Imagine what that’d be like. Would she be chopping apples with her fingernails?” Peyton giggled. “I’d hate to see her forget to retract her razors while she’s picking her nose.”
    Her father shrugged, set his book down and pulled the gloves off her hands. He handed over the jump rope, saying, “She’d manage. She’d have to be tough to survive the operation, anyway. You wouldn’t want to choose someone who wouldn’t be able to use the enhancements.” Picking up the book and flipping through it, he said, “People adapt. The good ones, at any rate. They take their hardships and make them strengths. Because of her implants, Molly Million’s tear ducts were rerouted to her mouth. In other words,” her dad concluded, “a razor girl doesn’t cry. When she’s sad, she spits.”
    Peyton burst out laughing. “Now that’s just messed up.”
    Her father held up