Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

He bounced right into Monique, whooping wildly, and they wrapped their arms around each other and went rolling down toward the water. They came to rest at surf’s edge and lay there writhing in a sexual embrace, each of them pushing branching tendrils deep and deeper into the other’s body.

Monique loved the intimate sensation of having herself in Xlotl and Xlotl in her. They were linked up like fractal puzzle pieces, with as much of their surfaces in contact as possible. In the deepest cracks of their linkage, their skins opened up so that their bodies could exchange small wet seeps of imipolex, carrying along cells of their symbiotic fungi and algae. The more often two moldies embraced in this sexual manner, the more their bodies came to resemble each other.

The pleasure of contact reached an intense crescendo—an orgasm, really—and then the moldies slipped into puddle shapes so that their algae could soak up as much sun as possible.

“Oh, that was yummy,” sighed Monique. “We’re getting so tight with each other, Xlotl. If we can buy the imipolex, we’ll be ready to have a baby soon.”

After having sex enough times, two moldies would buy the necessary imipolex plastic for a new body and fuck it into new life, creating a child infused with some combination of the parents’ lichens and software. The plastic was expensive and could only be purchased from one of two or three large human-run companies with money earned (or stolen) from the fleshers. Like it or not, the moldies and the fleshers were uneasily allied, even though some moldies were capable of invading human brains and some humans were willing to burn moldies in pools of alcohol.

“It’s gonna take a while to earn the dough, what with the crummy wages we’re getting,” chirped Xlotl cozily. “But we’re having fun anyway, ain’t we?” The foam lapped about them and Xlotl snuggled himself against Monique, making sure that they touched all along the edge that separated their two puddles. For a moment Monique slipped into sleep and started to dream. About whales. But then a bold wave splashed her and she was back awake. Something was wrong . . . oh yes.

“Xlotl, omigod, I forgot to tell you! This cheeseball in Room 3D is like coming on to me?”

“No kidding? A cheeseball?”

“For sure. I’m about to like clean the room and he’s standing there behind the glass waving to me. Beckoning me? Just then you called and I jammed down here. I don’t want to go back.”

“Aw, go on in there and take him for every cent he’s worth, Momo. Andrea taught us how to do it yesterday.”

“I’m scared. And, Xlotl, don’t you think it’s a negative thing to trash a dook’s brain and then make him like die? I mean of course it’s only a flesher . . . but don’t you ever flash that information is sacred? Even a flesher cheeseball’s brain?”

“Honey, it balances out. A dog is sacred, a DIM is sacred. Everything’s sacred. But with this mark’s money we can have a child right away and use our own money to get ourselves retrofits. Like Andrea does. Hell, we can have two, three children and rejuvenate ourselves if your dook is well fixed. All this fine moldie consciousness for the cost of one less flesher? I’d call that a net gain of information. Move in on him, baby!”

“I’m like undecided? Let’s fab about something else. How’s Los Trancos today?”

“Same sleazy dive. This morning I had to goose the loaf of wendy meat with hormones to make it grow faster. All the tourists are gobbling it. I think they ain’t got that brand outside of California yet.”

“And wendy meat is human flesh!” exclaimed Monique. “It’s all cloned from the same cells as that Wendy Mooney who’s in the ads. I thought there was some heavy human taboo about cannibalism !”

“Fleshers will eat anything, Monique. They’re like lobsters. How do you know the woman in the ad is the actual Wendy Mooney anyhow?”

“Tre told me. He just helped Apex Images design a wendy meat ad—the big one down at the Boardwalk?”

Monique and Xlotl laid back down in the shallow, lapping surf, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the coolness of the water. Xlotl formed a cavity in his flesh, filled it with water, and sprayed it up overhead like a fountain. Monique engulfed an even bigger amount of water and sprayed higher than him. Then break time was over and the two moldies shared a last intimate embrace.

Just then a little boy stopped to stare at Monique and Xlotl.

“Lookie, Paw, it’s two moldies fucking!” he bawled. “I’ll try and kill ‘em!” The child picked up a stick and poked it into Xlotl. Hard. Xlotl pinched off his skin around the puncture before he lost much cell tissue, and then he twisted around so that he flipped into the shape of an angry chessman, with the stick still protruding from his chest.

“You want me to bust your sack for good, you twerp?” snarled Xlotl, rearing up like a six-foot nightmare centaur. He pushed the stick out of his flesh so hard that it flew past the boy’s head like a viciously hurled boomerang.

The kid took off crying, only to return a moment later with his father in tow.

“What are you scummy moldies doing out here?” asked the man. Monique jumped up into her chessman mode as well.

“This is a public beach, dook,” said Xlotl. “And we’re citizens.”

“Hell you are,” said the man, not drawing any closer. He was balding and paunchy, with sunburned pale skin. “You leave my kid alone or else.” He turned and moved back off down the beach. The little boy followed his dad, turning once to give Xlotl the finger.

“Fleshers,” said Xlotl. “Why can’t we ever get away from them? Why can’t we kill them all?”

“It wouldn’t work,” said Monique. “You know that. You can’t ever kill all of anything.”

“The fleshers killed all of the boppers in 2031, didn’t they?” said Xlotl. “With chipmold. All we need is a really good plague germ to kill off all the humans.”

“They didn’t really kill the boppers. Lots of the bopper software still lives on in us. The chipmold just helped the boppers move to a new platform. All at once. And really, Xlotl, you know that if the moldies start a biological war against the fleshers, the fleshers will come back at us with some really sick disease. Everyone knows that. It’s live and let live.”

“Also known as a mutual-assured destruction,” said Xlotl. “Thank God for the Moldie Citizenship Act. Now what about this cheeseball situation. You ain’t gonna punk out, are you? Get mad! Think about the kid who poked me.”

“Maybe—why don’t I go get a pep talk from Mom. I think she said she was gonna get high and lie out in front of the Boardwalk today.”

“Shaped like the Koran or the Book of Mormon? Or maybe like the fuckin’ works of Shakespeare!”

“Like the Bible. Remember? Andrea’s into Christianity these days. She’s all—” Monique broke into laughter, threw back her head, and delivered a pitch-perfect imitation of her mother’s tones: “ ‘I am interested in a relationship with a God-fearing Christian man.’ “

Xlotl nodded thoughtfully. “Andrea will get you to go through with it. If she don’t take the job herself. I’ll cool my heels at Los Trancos—with my uvvy tuned for you. Squawk if you need muscle.”

“Wavy, darling. Wish me luck.” Monique bounded down the beach toward the Boardwalk.

She stayed at the edge of the surf, where the glistening wet sand was the firmest. Some of the people she passed smiled and nodded, while others frowned and looked away. One guy—the father of the boy Xlotl had frightened—stood up and shouted, “Go back to the Moon!” He was holding a beer.

Instead of bouncing on farther, Monique stopped short and faced him. He was sitting on a blanket with his wife and another couple under an oversized beach umbrella. Their pale, weedy kids grubbed in the sand around them.