Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

The hotel cleared its throat before talking, so as not to startle them. “We have a bus leaving for the museum at oh-nine-hundred hours.”

Cobb was scared to even look at Sta-Hi. Did DEX know who they really were? And was he on their side or the diggers’ side? And why would any of the boppers be against making Cobb immortal in the first place? He poured out the last of his Scotch, tossed it off, and lay down. He really was tired. The low lunar gravity felt good. You could gain a lot of weight up here. Wondering what would be for breakfast, Cobb drifted into sleep.

Sta-Hi threw a blanket onto the old man and walked over to look out the window. Most of the boppers were gone now. They had left a jumble of wheeled refrigeration carts next to the air-lock. Slowly, meticulously, a hunch-backed bopper was lining the carts up.

A human couple strolled around the plaza between the hotel and the visa-checker. There was something odd to Sta-Hi in the studied aimlessness of the couple’s wanderings. He watched them for five minutes and they still didn’t get anywhere. Around and around like mechanical hillbillies in a shooting gallery.

The translucent plastic dome was not far overhead, tinted against the raw sunlight. For the humans it was night in here, but outside the sun still shone, and the boppers were as active as ever. Even though the Lunar day lasts two weeks, and even though the boppers rarely “slept,” they still, perhaps out of nostalgia, but probably out of inertia, kept time by the human twenty-four-hour day system. And to make the humans comfortable, they varied the brightness of their dome accordingly.

Sta-Hi felt a shudder of claustrophobia. His every action was being recorded, analyzed. Every breath, every bite was just another link to the boppers. He was, right now, actually inside a bopper, the big bopper DEX. Why had he let Cobb talk him into coming here? Why had Cobb wanted him?

Cobb was snoring now. For a terrible instant, Sta-Hi thought he saw wires running out of the pillow and into the old man’s scalp. He leaned closer and realized they were just black hairs among the gray. He decided to go down to the lounge. Maybe that stewardess would be there.

The hotel bar and lounge was full, but quiet. Some businessmen were bellied up to the automatic bar. They were drinking moon-brewed beer . . . the dome’s dry air made you mighty thirsty.

In the middle of the lounge a bunch of tables had been pushed together for a party. Earth-bottled champagne. Sta-Hi recognized the revelers from the flight up. A fortyish dominatrix-type tour-guide, and six sleek young married couples. Inherited wealth, for them to be up here so young. They ignored Sta-Hi, having long since sized him up as dull and lower-class.

Alone in a booth at the end of the room was the face he wanted. The stewardess. There was no drink in front of her, no book . . . she was just sitting there. Sta-Hi slid in across from her.

“Remember me?”

She nodded. “Sure.” There was something funny about how she had been sitting there . . . blank as a parked car. “I’ve sort of been waiting for you.”

“Well all right ! Do they sell dope here?”

The hotel’s disembodied voice cut in. “What would be your pleasure, Mr. DeMentis?”

Sta-Hi considered. He wanted to be able to sleep . . . eventually.

“Give me a beer and a two-boost.” He glanced at the symmetrical, smiling face across the table. “And you?”

“The usual.”

“Very good, sir and madam,” the hotel murmured.

Seconds later a little door in the wall by their table popped open. A conveyor belt had brought the order. Sta-Hi’s two-boost was a shot-glass of clear liquid, sharp with solvents, bitter with alkaloids. The woman’s . . .

“What’s your name anyway?” Sta-Hi tossed off his foul-tasting potion. He’d be seeing colors for two hours.

“Misty.” She reached out to pick up the object she had ordered. The usual .

“What is that?” A too-high rush of panic was percolating up his spine. Fast stuff, the two-boost. The girl across from him was holding a little metal box, holding it to her temple . . .

She giggled suddenly, her eyes rolling. “It feels good.” She turned a dial on the little box and rubbed it back and forth on her forehead. “This year people say . . . wiggly ?”

“You don’t live on Earth anymore?”

“Of course not.” Long silence. She ran the little box over her head like a barber’s clippers. “Wiggly.”

There was a burst of laughter from the young-marrieds. Someone had made an indecent suggestion. Probably the beefy guy pouring out more champagne.

Sta-Hi’s attention went back to the emptily pretty face across the table from him. He’d never seen anything like the thing she was rubbing on her head.

“What is that?” he asked again.

“An electromagnet,”

“You’re . . . you’re a bopper?”

“Well, sort of. I’m completely inorganic, if that’s what you mean. But I’m not self-contained. My brain is actually in BEX. I’m sort of a remote-controlled part of the spaceship.”

She flicked the little box back and forth in front of her eyes, enjoying the way the magnetic field lines moved the images around. “ Wiggly . Can you teach me some more new slang?”

Before seeing his own robot double at the spaceport, Sta-Hi had never believed that he could mistake a machine for a person. And now it was happening again. Sitting here in the roar of the two-boost, he wished he was someplace else.

Misty leaned across the table, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “Did you really think I was human?”

“I don’t normally make dates with machines,” Sta-Hi blurted, and tried to recover with a joke. “I don’t even own a vibrator.”

He’d hurt her feelings. She turned up the dial on her magnet, blanking her face in an ecstasy that showed him her contempt.

Suddenly lonely, he reached out and pulled the hand with the electromagnet away from her temple.

“Talk to me, Misty.” He could feel the movements of his lips and talking tongue. Too high. He had a sudden horrible suspicion that everyone here was a robot. But, even so, the girl’s hand was warm under his, fleshy.

Sta-Hi’s beer sat untouched on the table-top between them. Misty blew part of the head away, took a sip, handed the glass to Sta-Hi. He sipped too. Thick, bitter.

“DEX brews this himself,” she remarked. “Do you like it?”

“It’s ok. But can you digest? Or is there a plastic bag you empty every . . . “

Misty set down her magnet-box and twined her fingers with Sta-Hi’s. “You should think of me as a person. My personality is human. I still like eating and . . . and other things.” She dimpled prettily and traced a circle on Sta-Hi’s palm. “I don’t get to meet many stuzzy young guys just stewardessing the Ledge-Disky run . . .”

He pulled his hand away. “But how can you be human if you’re a machine?”

“Look,” Misty said patiently. “There used to be a young lady called Misty Nivlac who lived in Richmond, Virginia. Last spring Misty-girl hitchhiked to Daytona Beach for some brainsurfing. She fell in with a bad crowd. Really bad. A gang called the Little Kidders.”

The Little Kidders . Sta-Hi could still see their faces. That blonde girl who’d picked him up . . . Kristleen? And Berdoo, the skinny little guy wearing chains. Haf’N’Haf with all those missing teeth. And Phil, the leader, the big guy with the tattoo on his back.

“ . . . got her brain-tape,” Misty was saying. “While BEX built a copy of her body. So now inside BEX there’s a perfect model of Misty-girl’s personality. BEX tells the model what to do, and the model runs . . . this.” She spread out her hands palm up. “Brand-new Misty-girl.”