Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

Cobb enjoyed their dealings very much. In his old body he had never been able to talk comfortably to garage mechanics. But now, with a random grease monkey’s face on a Sta-Hi-shaped body, Cobb fit in at a filling station as easily as he used to fit in at research labs. Idly he wondered if Mr. Frostee could change the flickercladding enough to turn him into a woman. That would be interesting. There was so much to look forward to!

After lunch they changed the license plates. Cobb handed over the missing half of the thousand-dollar-bill, and the extra two hundred dollars. Hoping to keep Jody bought, he suggested that he might be back with more of the same kind of business next month, if things worked out.

“Come shot!” Jody said. “And good luck.”

Cobb drove out of Purcell, heading east, past cows and egrets.

“I wish you’d taped his brain,” Mr. Frostee nagged. “We can always use a good mechanic.”

Cobb had been expecting a remark like this. And the next remark, too.

“How come you’re driving East? That’s not the right way to Disney World. We’ve still got to get Berdoo!”

“Mr. Frostee,” Cobb said, “I love my new body. And I support your basic plan. It’s the logical next step for human evolution. But mass-murder is not the way. There’s a better way, a way to get people to volunteer for brain-taping. We’ll start a new religious cult!”

There was a pained silence. Finally Mister Frostee spoke. “I feel I should warn you, Cobb. You have free will in the sense that I can’t control your thoughts. But the body belongs to both of us. In certain special circumstances I may take . . . “

“Please,” Cobb said, “hear me out. Am I right in believing that you’re the only big bopper now on Earth?”

“That’s right.”

“And I’m using the only robot-remote you have left ?”

“Yes. Hopefully, with Mooney out of the way, security at the spaceport will be relaxed again. We had planned a shipment of some thousand new remotes during the next two years, as well as several more big bopper units. These plans are unfortunately . . . in flux. There are some . . . difficulties on the Moon. But until the situation re-stabilizes, I intend to continue gathering tapes and . . . “

“You’re trying to tell me there’s an all-out civil war starting on the Moon, aren’t you?” Cobb exclaimed. “We’re on our own, M.F.! If we go back to the spaceport and try . . .”

“There is no need to go to spaceport for tape transmission. I can radio-beam the tapes directly up to BEX at Ledge.”

“A soul transmitter,” Cobb said thoughtfully. “That’s a good angle. Personetics: The Science of Immortality .”

“What do you mean?”

“The religion! We’ll get the down-and-out, the runaways, the culties . . . we’ll get them to believe that you’re a machine for sending their souls to heaven. It’s not really so . . .”

“But why bother? Why not just proceed as Phil always did? To seize , and cut, and . . . “

“Look, M.F., we’re in this together. It works both ways. If something happens to this truck I’m dead. I don’t think you realize just how strongly humans react to murder and cannibalism. This is no bopper anarchy here, it’s more like a police -state. If you and I are going to last out until BEX gets the troops here, we’re going to need to lay low and play it careful.”

Just thinking about it gave Cobb the creeps. If he couldn’t get fuel for the truck, if the cops stopped them, if the refrigeration unit broke . . . It was like being a snail with a ten-ton shell! A snowball in hell!

“We need security,” Cobb said urgently. “We need a lot of people to take care of us, and we need money to keep the hydride tanks full. If we get enough money I think we should build a scion, too. A copy of your processor. We could get our followers to buy the components in computer shops. You’ve got to understand the realities of life on Earth!”

“All right,” Mr. Frostee said finally. “I agree. But where are you driving to?”

“Back to the coast,” Cobb said. “I know a place north of Daytona Beach where we can hole up. And, say . . . give me a new face. Something fatherly.”

After his father’s funeral, Sta-Hi went back to driving a cab in Daytona Beach. Bea, his mother, wanted to put the house up for sale and move north, away from the pheezers. She hated them since Mooney’s death . . . and who could blame her! Her husband had gone to old Cobb Anderson’s house on a routine check, and had been blown to smithereens! Just for doing his job! And so on.

There was an investigation into Mooney’s death, but the blast hadn’t left a hell of a lot to investigate. There was not a scrap of the suspected robot double to be found. And Sta-Hi didn’t tell the authorities any more than he had to. He still couldn’t decide whose side he was on.

He took a couple of his father’s space-ship paintings and rented a room in Daytona. He went back to Yellow Cab and they gave him a job driving the night-shift. Mostly it was a matter of bringing drunks and whores to motels. Seamy. And duller’n shit.

His dope habit crept up on him again. Pretty soon he was smoking, snorting, dropping, spraying and shooting his money as fast as he made it. Late at night, driving up and down the one-dimensional city, Sta-Hi would dream and scheme, forming huge, interlocking plans for the future.

He would make a movie about cab-driving. He would write a book about the boppers. No, man, do it with music!

He would learn how to play the guitar and start a band. Fuck learning! He would get another Happy Cloak and let it play his fingers for him. He needed a Happy Cloak!

He’d threaten the boppers to tell about the Little Kidders and the nursies if they wouldn’t come across. With Anderson and his father blown up, no one else knew!

He’d get rich and then go back to Disky and get in on the civil war and they’d make him king. Hadn’t he already helped the diggers to off a big bopper? He’d lead them to victory! Moon King Sta-Hi!

But there was no way to reach the boppers. The cops had lost track of Mr. Frostee and those Little Kidders. BEX and Misty-girl never got any closer to Earth than space-station Ledge. And no private phone-calls to Disky were allowed. The thing to do was to make the boppers contact him . How? Get so famous they’d notice him!

Around and around, night after night, tripping and bouncing the length of dreary Daytona. One night a drunk left his wallet in the cab. Two thousand bucks in there. Sta-Hi took the money and quit work. He needed time to think!

He got a crate of Z-gas aerosols . . . he’d sunken that low . . . and started hanging around the strip. Eating burgers, selling hits, playing machines, hunting pussy. He tried to make himself conspicuous, hoping something would happen to him. The day his money ran out, it finally did.

He was hanging out at Hideo-Nuts’ Boltsadrome, stoned, staring at the floor. His boots looked so perfect. Two dark parabolas in a field of yellow, slight 3-D interest provided by the scurf strewn about. His favorite song was playing. He felt like screaming, like crying out, “I’m here and I’m staying high! I’m Sta-Hi, the king of the brainsurfers!”

The metal speaker overhead was pumping out solid music. He could see the notes if he squinted. He started to giggle, thinking of the tiny note-shaped bumps traveling down the wires like white mice swallowed by a python. God, he had good ideas!

Keeping his smile, in case it came in handy, Sta-Hi looked around the arcade, swaying back and forth, fingering chords on an invisible electric guitar. He couldn’t actually play yet, but he had all the moves down . . . say . . . look at little blondie over there. He stared at her and slid a riff down the neck of his imaginary guitar. Smiling harder, he beckoned with his head.