Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

He entered the La Mirage lounge. His brain systems scanned his Know for an analog of what he saw. “Exploratorium,” “Science Fair,” and “Disky Museum of Robotics” came to mind. Scattered all about the lounge were people looking at or listening to little machines, little things like viewers and earphones and, in a few cases, whole-head helmets.

“Welcome, sir,” said a young man in a tuxedo. “Are you new here?”

“Yes. I’m hungry.”

“Very good, sir, there’ll be a waiting time of twenty minutes. Party of one?”

Bubba observed that there were a few unattached women in the lounge. “Party of two,” said Bubba. “Do you need my card?”

“Just your name, sir.”

“Buford Cisco Anderson.”

“Very good. While you’re waiting, feel free to enjoy the healthful stim of our various software devices. Are you familiar with them all?”

“No.”

“Well, you might start with a twist-box. Twist-boxes do a simple feedback-directed cutup and CA cleanup on visual inputs. They’re from Einstein and quite amusing, though not everyone’s seen them yet. Next I might suggest that you experience a cephscope tape. This week’s special tape is by our local media star Willy Taze. Even if you’re from out of town, you must have been following the meatbop conspiracy hearings? Willy was working on this tape when they arrested him at his parents’ house. The first part of it’s supposed to be his impression of Manchile’s assassination. La Mirage’s profit on Willy’s tape showings will be contributed to the Taze Legal Defense Fund.”

Bubba did his best to look noncommittal, and the young man continued.

“Last of all, should you and your companion be up for a numero trois , we have a Mindscape Axis Inverter—a truly enlightening experience for the wealthy connoisseur of healthy highs.” The tuxedoed young man gave a prim smile and turned his attention to the next customer.

Bubba found a soft chair and plopped down. The well-lit dining room spread out from the other side of the dim lounge. There were people at all the tables, some of them tucking into big steak and seafood dinners. Bubba’s stomach rumbled again. Disconsolately he glanced around the lounge. A dark-skinned woman was watching him from a couch nearby.

She was looking through a kind of lorgnette that she had held up to her face. A twist-box. He smiled and waved at her. Her full and finely chiseled lips smiled back from beneath the twist-box. He got up and walked over.

“Hi, I’m Bubba Anderson.” He tried his most winning tone. The woman tilted her head back to look at him, still using the twist-box. “I’m alone,” said Bubba, still smiling. “Would you like to have dinner with me? I’d like to talk to you for a while.”

She set down the twist-box and looked him in the eye. Her eyes were large, with unreadable pupils set into smooth white whites. Finally she favored him with another smile. “Kimmie,” she said, holding up her hand, palm down.

Bubba bent over and brushed his lips across Kimmie’s fingers. “Charmed, I’m sure. May I look through your twist-box?”

“Certainly.”

He sat down next to her on the couch and took the proffered twist-box.

A slim titaniplast cable connected it to a staple in the floor. He held it up to his eyes and looked at Kimmie.

Her face took on the appearance of a visage in an animated cartoon. A congeries of fluxdots drifted out of her hair and down over her eyes, silvering them, adding meat to the cheeks and still more heft to the lips. He looked down her throbby neck and at the breast mounds swelling out of her strapless pink silk dress. He could hear his heart going kathump kathump. Kimmie’s dress disappeared, and Bubba’s glance skied down the slope of her smooth belly to the wiry black mysteries of her crotch. He stared and Knew. She was fertile. His penis stiffened.

“Now, really, Bubba,” said Kimmie, plucking the twist-box from his grasp. “You barely know what couth IS, do you, dear? You a country cousin?”

She talked like Geegee. “I’m new in town,” he said, uncertainly. “It’s very cold out tonight, did you notice? Cold and windy.”

“Well, I suppose it’ll get colder before it gets hot. And you’re asking me to dinner?”

“Yes.”

“I accept. But we’ll split the check, and there’s no strings. I fancy I could buy and sell you, Bubba child.”

“Thank you, Kimmie. Have you looked at the new Willy Taze cephscope show? It’s supposed to be about Manchile?”

She countered with a question. “What do you think of Manchile, Bubba? Do you think they were right to kill him?”

“I didn’t see him. But what he says makes sense, doesn’t it? Why shouldn’t humans and boppers begin to merge?”

Kimmie smiled drily. “How do we know the robots won’t screw our genes up so bad that the race dies off? Maybe that’s what they want. I’m all for the Thang’s enlightened egalitarianism, but I do have my doubts about a man who knocks up ten women in a week. Manchile’s nine-day boys.”

She gave Bubba an odd look. Did she know him for a meatbop? Was she some kind of Gimmie agent? His stomach rumbled again. To cover up his confusion he picked up one of the cephscope headsets and put it on. It was a simple band with metal pads that rested on his temples. As soon as Bubba slipped it on, the tape started.

Bubba felt a series of odd tingles all over his body, as if the cephscope were checking out his neurowiring. There were some random sounds and washes of color, and then suddenly the room around him tore into bits. He was staring at a man’s handsome face, and the man was talking in a thick Southern accent.

“In all the different kinds of folks I’ve met, I’ve seen one thing the same—everybody wants the best for their children. Boppers is the same!”

The image cut to the faces of a cheering crowd. Bubba had the kinetic feelings of being in a jostling crowd, staring up at Manchile on a stage. Two shiny boppers hovered overhead—one of them was Uncle Cobb! The crowd got softer and everything grew pink, glowing pink with branching purple vein patterns. Fish darted by. Far in the distance, breakers crashed. Bubba felt himself floating, floating on a wooden raft . The raft scrunched onto the sand of a pitilessly bright beach. A chattering band of apes came running down from the jungle that edged the beach. They poked and probed at Bubba, showing their large teeth. He held up his arms and roared at them. But now he was looking out at a crowd of people, looking out at them from Manchile’s point of view. One of the men in the crowd lifted a particlebeam tube and aimed it. The burning blast blew him into blackness. Spermy white wiggles darted in the black. The squiggles split in two, and the new pieces split and split again, but unevenly, mapping out some kind of design like a circuit diagram or a choice-tree. Behind the branching tree he could see the apes again; the tree was a cage that held him captive. A monotonous male voice recited numbers in his ear, and his hands moved obsessively back and forth, as if he were knitting. Meanwhile his eyes darted up and down the branchings of the cage’s bars—there was a way out if only he could see . . . Bubba had the odd feeling that the design coded up a message just for him, but it was going by too fast, and now the image grew faint and grainy as a vizzyscreen. On the screen there was a woman newscaster talking with a slight lisp.

“Welcome to the evening news for Saturday, February 8, 2031. Tonight’s top story: Half an hour age, fugitives Cobb Anderson and Cisco Lewis were killed in a bloody shootout with Kentucky state troopers on I76. Three officers were wounded, one severely.”

Bubba shook his head and blinked his eyes. The vizzy image stayed put. Pictures of Mamma and Uncle Cobb appeared behind the sleek, fast-talking anchorwoman.