Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

ISDN threw a fabulously lavish party in Willy’s honor. The party was on top of the ISDN ziggurat, one of the larger buildings in Einstein. The top of the great truncated pyramid was a big open space, with the great curve of the Einstein dome only fifty feet overhead. Through the dome you could see the sweep of the stars and the great hanging orb of Mother Earth.

The terrace floor was set with an intricate tessellation of silver-and-­gold Penrose tiles: Perplexing Poultry. Bowers of quick-grown gibberlin-­treated fruiting plants had been installed all along the edges of the terrace. The plants were heavy with such delicacies as cherry tomatoes, tangerines, blackberries, and grapes—live food right there for the picking. Guests came and went on the magnetic levitation vehicles called maggies; the maggies were working again, thanks to fresh DIMs designed using the Limpware Developer’s Kit.

Fern led Willy around, introducing him to people. The principal ISDN host was a yellow-skinned man with odd vertical wrinkles in his face.

“Willy, this is Bei Ng,” said Fern.

“Hello,” said Willy.

“I am so glad to meet our best employee,” said Bei.

“I’m not an employee,” protested Willy. “I’m the president of Mbanje DeGroot.”

“Ah yes, but Mbanje DeGroot is a subsidiary of ISDN. You work for me, Willy. But only as much as you wish. And you’ve already done plenty. Rest assured that no matter what happens in the future, ISDN will continue to pay you the contractual license fees for the patents and copyrights that you assigned to us on the formation of Mbanje DeGroot.”

“I assigned you my inventions? Limplan-E? The LDK and the uvvy?”

Bei laughed knowingly. “You techies are so refreshingly naive. Wave with it, young fellow. You’ve got all the money you’ll ever need. Get the boy lifted, Fern.”

Fern steered Willy over to the bar and ordered Willy a snifter of sweet liqueur. “Catch a glow, Willy,” said Fern, then noticed someone across the terrace. “There’s my old merge boyfriend Ricardo! I’ve gotta talk to him. Hey, ‘Cardo!”

Fern darted off, and Willy turned to talk to a large moldie standing near him, an imposing snakelike fellow with a metallic purple luster to his imipolex.

“I’m honored to meet you, Mr. Taze,” said the moldie. “My name is Gurdle. I’m one of the finest scientists in the Nest. I want to thank you for opening up Earth for my race. I’m interested to know if you’re planning an upgraded version of your limpware programming language? A Limplan-F? My colleagues and I have ideas for a number of improvements.”

“Then make them yourself,” said Willy, sipping at his liqueur. “The language spec is freeware. And an intelligent moldie shouldn’t find it hard to implement Limplan languages at least as efficiently as the LDK. But me, I’m through hacking it. I want to do something different now. I started out as a cephscope artist, you know.”

“So the creator of Limplan has an artistic sensibility,” said Gurdle sententiously. “I am not surprised. Art is the highest form of communication. In art one has the opportunity to encode the entire soul. This topic happens to be my primary area of interest.”

“How do you mean? Like to transmit your personality to distant moldies?”

“How quickly you penetrate to the essence! In fact, I will transmit my personality by having sex with a female moldie and programming a child. But, yes, remote personality transmission lies at the heart of my research interest. In fine, I hypothesize that such transmissions are taking place throughout the universe. I believe that a great number of personalities are being transmitted everywhere and everywhen—there are souls flying past us thick and fast. I hold that it is only a technological lack that prevents these personalities from being locally received. Many technological advances are still needed before one might hope to carry out what I immodestly call a Gurdle decryption of a personality wave. It will take perhaps another twenty years. Seven lifetimes for a moldie.”

Whatever was in his drink was hitting Willy and he was having trouble following Gurdle’s line of conversation. It seemed almost as if the moldie might be insane. And what a stench this one had. Like vile, overripe cheese smeared across rotten carrion.

“I base my reasoning on an information-theoretical argument which my fellows find quite compelling,” continued Gurdle. “It involves an examination of the power spectrum of cosmic rays. But I see your mind is wandering, Mr. Taze. This festive occasion is not the time to go into details. Would you like to visit me in the Nest to discuss these things?”

“I’d love to visit the Nest,” said Willy. “But not just yet. I still need to settle in.”

“I’ll ping you anon,” said Gurdle. “Let me repeat that I am very delighted to have met you.” Glassy-eyed Willy watched the reeking purple moldie slither away.

Now the annoyingly bossy Bei Ng was in Willy’s face again. At Bei’s side was a heavily made-up Cambodian woman—or man?—with long blonde hair. “Bei says you’ll need help in finding a place to live, Willy,” said the morph, laying a fluttering hand on the center of Willy’s chest. “My name is Lo Tek. I do all sorts of things at ISDN. We can go out tomorrow and look at some properties. If you have a minute, I’d like to take down some personal information so we can narrow in on—”

“Thanks, but I’m planning to live in the Einstein-Luna Hotel for now,” said Willy and twisted away. He got another drink from the bar—just water this time—and headed off across the terrace, joining a group of three interesting-looking types: a shirtless man with a hair-grafted mohawk that went all the way down his spine, a voluptuous woman with long curly dark hair, and a stocky man with a narrow goatee shaped like a vertical rectangle. They were passing around a smokeless pipe that resembled a small chemical refinery.

“Hi, guys,” said Willy. “Nice view here.”

“Willy Taze!” said the goateed man. Although he spoke with a heavy ironic drawl, he seemed quite sociable. “Welcome to the Pocked World. I’m Corey Rhizome and this is Darla Starr and Whitey Mydol.”

“Whitey and Darla! I saw you on the vizzy this spring. When Stahn Mooney helped Darla escape from the boppers’ Nest. After the chipmold killed the boppers.”

“Yup,” said Darla. Her breasts were large and bare, with gold chains hanging across them. “I was pregnant. And now I’m the mother of twins. And I can go back to getting as lifted.”

Willy inhaled a cautious toke from their complicated little pipe. It tasted like very strong pot with a snappy tingle to it. Very very strong pot with maybe some customized extra indoles. Willy exhaled the invisible particle-free vapor, and as the new drug layered itself over the hash liqueur, the sounds of the party clicked into a perfect tapestry decorated by the patterns of the voices of Willy’s three new friends.

“Yaar, Corey grows this himself,” Whitey said, taking back the pipe. “Mongo big plants. Corey and the beanstalk.” Whitey’s rangy, hard-looking features were bent into a loose grin that was a joy to behold. “Brah Corey! Tell Willy here about your idea for Silly Putters.”

“Silly Putters?!?” demanded Darla.

“Yeah,” said Corey. “It’s the only possible name. I thought about it.”

“Only possible name for what?” asked Willy.

“Evil imipolex toys,” said Corey. “Imipolex is such a great new medium. It’s like clay that’s alive. The Silly Putters will be toys, but hopefully more adult and corrupted. Later I want to make a line of pets modeled on real and mythical animals. But first of all, to have some fun, I want to do some copies of classic three-dimensional logo creatures. The Dough-Boy. Barbie. Reddy Kilowatt. The Western Exterminator Man. The Fat Boy. Squawky Bird. Vector Man. Giggles the Bear. Tedeleh Torah. The Pig Chef. The Help Daemon. I’d like to give them each a DIM so they can run around and lay trips on people. Without having them be smart and autonomous like moldies. Would that work, Willy? Check out this study I’ve been hacking. It’s what they’re calling a philtre —a philtre’s like a cephscope tape, but interactive.”