Characters in Word Processor of the Gods

He typed: MY WIFE IS ADELINA MABEL WARREN HAGSTROM. He punched the DELETE button. He typed: I AM A MAN WHO LIVES ALONE. Now the word began to blink steadily in the upper right-hand corner of the screen: OVERLOAD OVERLOAD OVERLOAD. Please. Please let me finish.

Lina asked as he and Mr. Nordhoff lugged it over to his study piece by piece. Mr. Nordhoff had lived next door to Richard Hagstrom’s brother’s family . . . Roger, Belinda, and their boy, Jonathan. “Something Jon built,” Richard said. “Meant for me to have it, Mr. Nordhoff says.

his friend Bernie Epstein had asked him once, and Richard had only been able to shake his head, feeling the same dull embarrassment he was feeling now. He was a nice guy.

… or parked in the parking lot of some greasy hamburger hangout, and Norm was also somewhere in the world, as was Davey, the bassist, whose eyes were frighteningly blank and who wore a safety pin dangling from one earlobe, as was the drummer, who had no front teeth. They were …

… this week instead of next because next week Father Phillips has to go in hospital and have his gall-bladder out. I won the coverall.” She smiled. A brown mixture of chocolate and peanut butter dripped and ran from her teeth. “Lina,” he said, “are you ever sorry we never had …

ASK AGAIN LATER. “Dad?” He swiveled around in his chair, heart pounding so hard he felt that it might actually tear itself out of his chest. Jon stood there, Jon Hagstrom, and his face was the same but somehow different—the difference was subtle but noticeable.

Lina asked as he and Mr. Nordhoff lugged it over to his study piece by piece. Mr. Nordhoff had lived next door to Richard Hagstrom’s brother’s family . . . Roger, Belinda, and their boy, Jonathan. “Something Jon built,” Richard said. “Meant for me to have it, Mr. Nordhoff says.

Richard turned off the word processor and went outside. The driveway was empty. The group’s lead guitarist, Norm somebody, drove a monstrous and somehow sinister old LTD station wagon in which the group carried their equipment to their infrequent gigs.

It was only on second glance that Richard Hagstrom saw that the casing had been split open (and not gently, either; it looked to him as if the job had been done with a hacksaw blade) to admit a slightly larger IBM cathode tube.

… a perfectly ordinary occurrence in the life of Roger Hagstrom. But this time his luck had simply run out and he had driven his dusty old van off the edge of a ninety-foot drop. It had crashed and burned. Jon was fourteen—no, fifteen. Just turned fifteen a couple of days …

… side, and suddenly he typed: MY SON IS SETH ROBERT HAGSTROM. His finger hovered over the DELETE button. What are you doing? his mind screamed at him. Can you be serious? Do you intend to murder your own son? “He must do somethin in there,” one of the others said.