Spaceland (18 page)

Read Spaceland Online

Authors: Rudy Rucker

BOOK: Spaceland
5.17Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Tulip looked up from her plate. “Pay me right now?”
“Sure,” I said. I used my third eye to look around to see if anyone was watching us, but everyone was into their own personal dinner dramas. I counted forty hundreds out of my wallet and forked them over. Tulip tucked them into her purse. Finally she looked impressed.
“Can you do it tomorrow?” I asked her.
“The first Monday of the new Millennium?” said Tulip. “Oh, I guess I could. It's just going to be stupid Y2K meetings. Nothing will get done. I'll call in sick.” The corners of her mouth looked determined.
Over dessert I asked her again if she wanted to sublet a room.
“We can talk about it tomorrow,” said Tulip, glancing at her watch. She tossed her head, making her earrings jangle. “I've got to get back to my sister's. She and her husband want to go to a midnight concert by Turbans Over Memphis and I promised to baby-sit. The Turbans are playing at the Naz, that Indian movie theater I told you about, with a Satyajit Ray film in the background. Very retro. All the cool Indian engineers will be there.”
I paid the check and we went outside. “It was nice to have dinner with you,” I told Tulip.
“You bet it was nice,” said Tulip with a big smile, her cheeks shining. “You really cheered me up. I'll come by around ten tomorrow morning? To the address on your card?”
“Beautiful,” I said. As she walked off, I peeked into her fine body. Was her heart beating just a little bit fast?
The wind was blowing harder than ever, like it was trying to rain. When I got back to my house I was too excited to go to bed. For some reason it struck me that this might be a good time to get some more money from Wells Fargo. Go ahead and get enough cash to pay Tulip for her second day. Wackle hadn't showed up again; maybe Momo was keeping him away.
The blue velvetlike sack was floating next to my new butterfly chair, slowly changing its shape as it drifted vinn and vout. I'd tied its shiny gold-colored rope to the chair's leg to keep it from floating off into the All. I untethered the sack and peeled myself vinnwards. Once again all my clothes stayed behind. Going into the fourth dimension was like jumping right out of my socks. I wrapped the sack's cord around my waist and started to flap.
Even though it was nighttime in Spaceland, the higher light of the All filled Dronia and bounced off the objects of our hyperflat world. I could see fine. I wondered if Momo was still over on the Klupper side, trying to watch over me. I'd forgotten to check on her before taking off into Dronia. And now that I was over here, Spaceland blocked the view of the Kluppers' half of the Cave Between Worlds.
Flying alongside the village to Wells Fargo seemed like more work than it had before, and by the time I got there I was too tired to think very hard. I just went to the same stuffed safe-deposit box and cleaned it the hell out, not bothering to count how many bundles
I took. Maybe half a million bucks, all stuffed into the hyper sack tied to my waist.
I backed off from Spaceland. And then something thumped me in the middle of my spine, pressing from my vinner side. I shrieked at the top of my lungs, twisting and flapping as hard as I could. I swung around towards Dronia to see what had touched me and—oh God, it was a red devil-shaped monster. I knew at once that it was Wackle.
He was red and rubbery and constantly changing his shape. He had quite a few arms, or legs, and he had a tail that led vinn and vinn—a miles-long tail vanishing off towards the writhing anemones on the reefy Dronian cliffs. The horns on his head were soft and flexible, like snail horns. Eyestalks. He didn't have any regular eyes in his face, but he had a mouth and a nose.
“The pig fat Kluppers are anti than you know,” said Wackle. He didn't talk at all like Momo. While Momo sounded Victorian, Wackle came across like an overexcited nut. “Momo's freezeminded, Joe Cube, anti life and anti free. Listen to my tentacle of me. I'm red as your heart, true blue. Stop helping the Kluppers—or else what? A Wackle cackle!” And then he did cackle, long and loud, trying to scare me. His mouth resembled a giant clam shell, with rows of teeth inside.
“Get away!” I yelled. “Don't steal my money again!”
“I make cosmic cause against Joe's filthy paws,” said Wackle, coming towards me, his mouth opening right up around his head, and a new face coming out of his throat. “No no dough dough Joe Joe,” he said, catching hold of my bag of bills. A third face came out the mouth of his second face. His head was continually turning inside out.
“Help!” I hollered and pulled back on the bag. I needed Momo. But she couldn't help me here in Dronia. I had to get back into
Spaceland where she could see me. Even though I was pointed away from Spaceland, I knew it was right behind me. I twitched like a crawfish backing under a rock and then, bingo, I felt myself locking back into Spaceland. I was standing naked on the lit-up sidewalk outside Wells Fargo. It must have been a little past midnight; nobody much was around, other than a few smokers in front of the Black Knight bar down the street.
Things looked somehow weird, but before I could figure out why, two of Wackle's hands were there in Spaceland with me, still grappling at my bag of bills. I yanked the bag, Wackle tugged back, I pulled some more, and now the bag opened and all the money fell out, the packets coming undone, and the bills swirling off down the street in the cold, damp gusts of wind. Damn!
More of Wackle appeared in front of me, standing there like an over-the-top Halloween monster. He came for me, still talking in that jabbery way he had, and I screamed again, and then, all of a sudden, there was a big flash of light, like the biggest camera flashbulb you ever saw. Yet there was no sound of an explosion. Just this immense H-bomb of a flash, brighter than white, more like pale purple. It blinded me for a second, and while I was blind, something smacked into me and slid down my leg.
When my vision slowly faded back in, I saw I'd been struck by a bloody chunk of Wackle. The jiggling glob drifted off through the pavement and disappeared. Wackle was gone. But my troubles weren't over.
There were sirens in the distance and shouts from down the street. The people outside the Black Knight—three men and two women—were running towards me, running towards the naked guy next to where the big flash had happened. And more people were coming out of the bar.
Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of dollars were blowing down the sidewalk like fallen leaves. Of course when the barflies noticed
this, they forgot about me and started gathering up the bills as fast as they could, shouting with excitement.
“There's money all over the place! Hundred dollar bills!”
“Grab some, dude! Before the cops get here!”
“Yeeee-haw!”
Flashing police lights were coming up the street. I needed to get away. But this was no time to go back into hyperspace. I thought I knew a good combination of back streets and pedestrian walkways to get me home. I ran down into an alley beside the bank—and instantly got lost. Instead of being on my left, the parking lot I was expecting was on my right.
“This isn't real money,” came a shout from Santa Ynez Avenue. “It's all backwards!”
“Where'd the naked guy go?” shouted someone else. It seemed like they hadn't noticed me going into the alley.
I crouched down and ran through the parking lot, keeping myself behind the cars. I knew there was a bike path back here—but it, too, was in the wrong position, off on my right when it should have been on my left. I took it anyway, running with all my might. So far so good. Nobody was on my tail.
A minute later I was on a pedestrian bridge over Route 17. I glanced down at the traffic—what the hell? The cars were all driving on the wrong side of the road. And the sign over the freeway that said Los Perros Next Exit was on my left instead of on my right. And—the writing on the sign was backwards. Somehow the world had turned into its mirror-image.
My new house was close enough to the pedestrian bridge that I was able to find it. I just went from landmark to landmark, still wondering why left and right had changed places.
All the doors to my house were locked, of course. A little hop into the fourth dimension would have gotten me in easily enough, but I still wasn't ready to try that again. But then I remembered
I'd left my bedroom window open. I scampered onto the back porch, with the window on the wrong side now, and climbed in.
I'd sort of hoped my room wouldn't be backwards, but it was. Everything the opposite of how I remembered it. The business books by my bed were in mirror-writing. I unfastened the tattered blue velvet hypersack from my waist, and, as I did, a few stray bills fell out of it. Unlike all the other writing around me, the bills looked normal. They weren't reversed.
That last shout I'd heard came back to me. “This isn't real money. It's backwards.” But the money was the only thing that
wasn't
backwards. It didn't make any sense.
I crawled into my bed and pulled up rhe covers, trying to imagine I was safe. But of course I wasn't. Every nook and cranny of Spaceland was completely open—to the Kluppers on the vout side and to the Dronners on the vinn side. They could come for me anytime. A creepy feeling. I focused in on my third eye to see what I could see out in the All. But where I expected to see Momo and the soldiers, my third eye was instead aimed towards the cliffs of Dronia. I could almost grasp what had happened, but not quite. Hell with it. I was too tired to think about dimensions.
Lord, it had been a long day. I'd moved, traveled to Grollyton, robbed a bank, started a company, hired Tulip, been attacked by a monster from the fourth dimension, and seen the world turn into its mirror-image. I wondered what Jena was up to. Cautiously I tested my feelings. My new resolve was still holding up. I was okay without Jena. I was really going to be okay.
I fell asleep smiling.
Mophone, Inc.
The next
morning I got out of the wrong side of bed—or started to, but then I slammed my elbow into the wall. Damn. The world was still backwards. I used my third eye to peer out at the highway and, yes, all gazillion Monday-morning cars were driving on the wrong side. As long as I was using my third eye, I glanced into the All, hoping to catch sight of Momo. I'd forgotten that my third eye was sticking vinn towards Dronia, with its distant, writhing anemones. I definitely didn't want to go there again.
I walked to the 7-Eleven, only two blocks from my new digs. I could have walked five blocks to the Los Perros Coffee Roasting, but I personally didn't care all that much about what kind of coffee I had in the morning. That was more Jena's thing.
I had to be careful to walk in what seemed like the wrong direction, and I almost got run over when I crossed the street. I picked up some coffee, a muffin and a mirror-reversed newspaper that was too much trouble to look at just now. I wasn't sure whether I should pay with one of my new regular-looking hundreds or with some of the older mirror-reversed money in my wallet. So I hung back and
watched another customer. Mirror-money was the way to go. I was glad I could still speak and listen.
Outside I took a bite of my muffin, and found myself reflexively spitting it onto the sidewalk. It tasted like soap, or worse, like the smell of Pine-Sol floor cleaner in an airport men's room. I tried to wash away the janitorial taste with a sip of coffee, but the coffee was nasty too, a brew of nose drops and coconut sunblock, even worse than 7-Eleven coffee usually is. Something told me there was no use going back into the store to complain.
When I got home, I drank a couple of glasses of water, but even that didn't taste quite right. The water had a faint hint of gasoline in it. I tried nibbling at some mints I had; they tasted like hot chili peppers. At this rate I would starve to death. Where the hell was Momo when I needed her? Again I peered out into Dronia, again I was scared to try going there.
I sat down in at my desk to study the paper, the
. Right on the front page was a picture of the Los Perros Wells Fargo with an inset image showing some fanned-out hundred dollar bills. The bills in the picture didn't look reversed to me, but by now I was realizing that I was the only guy who was out of step. If something looked right to me, it looked backwards to everyone else. I took the paper into the bathroom and held it up in front of the mirror so I could read it.
“Mirror Million Blows in Wind,” is what it said. “Bankers Check Coffers.”
Just then there was a knock on the front door. I lowered the paper and examined my face in the mirror. I looked kind of crooked, but not all that different. I went to the door.
“Hi Joe,” said Tulip, not really looking at me. She had her six gold earrings on, but she wasn't wearing any makeup at all this morning. The old acne scars on her cheeks stood out very clearly. I finally grasped that this woman was a science geek. An engineer.
“I brought some things,” she said, setting down two boxes of tools. She trotted back to her car for more stuff. A brown Nissan wagon. I noticed there was a statue of the Virgin Mary on her dashboard.
Tulip returned with two new cell phones, still in their boxes. “I'll put a couple of your antenna crystals into these, and we'll see what's what.” She glanced at my face and did a double-take. “Is something wrong, Joe? Didn't you sleep? Are you worried about Jena?”
“I just feel weird today,” I said. I longed to confide in her, but it didn't seem safe. “Is the kitchen counter all right for you to work on? You can sit on this new stool.”
“Okay,” said Tulip. The bags under her eyes were darker than ever. “I didn't sleep so well myself. I even tried to phone Spazz, but he wasn't home. It sucks to be rejected.” That long black lock of hair was hanging down across one of her cheeks.
I brought Tulip some of my antenna crystals and she settled in with the cell phones and her tools. She had special thick glasses she put on for the close-up work. Her mouth was calm and serious. How wonderfully competent she seemed.
I dialed up my email on my desk computer, just to seem busy, but it was too hard to read the backwards writing. So then I hand wrote some notes towards a business plan for Mophone, Inc. Time passed. Tulip was quietly tinkering in the kitchen. I went in and looked at her, enjoying the curve of her back and the shine of her cheeks. She gave me a blank, preoccupied glance. I took a glass of gasoline-flavored water and went back to my desk. I was getting really hungry. Much as I hate thinking about science, it was time to figure out what had happened to me.
Momo had said it helped to think in terms of Flatland. I found some scissors in my desk and I cut out a little paper profile of a man, a man with feet and a body and a mouth and nose, with the feet and mouth and nose all pointing to the right. I set the flat man down on my desk and looked at him for a minute. I drew a dot in the middle of his head to stand for his third eye. And then I flipped him over so his third eye was pointing down into the desk. His feet and mouth and nose were all pointing to the left. Flipping the flat man over in the third dimension made him into his mirror image. That's what had happened to me. I'd started out with my third eye pointing towards Klupdom, but then I'd turned it towards Dronia. And thanks to Wackle, I'd come back into Spaceland without reorienting myself.
“Playing with paper dolls, Joe?” asked Tulip. “You'll make a perfect CEO.”
“I'm doing some out-of-the-box thinking,” I said, sliding the cut-out man into my desk drawer. “Previsualizing our users. Are you making any progress?”
“Well, your antenna crystals do have some functionality,” said Tulip. “If I pass current in through one wire it comes out through the other. Even though the wires don't seem to touch each other. It's like there's an invisible loop. So maybe they really are antennas. Before I can test them, I'll need to dash out to Fry's. I need a couple of wiggywaggy-frammistat-bilgebulge-777-converters.” That's not the exact phrase she used, but I'm no techie.
“Fine,” I said. “Get yourself a snack while you're at it. I don't have any food here.”
“Do you want to come along for the ride?” said Tulip. This was the closest thing to a friendly overture she'd made. But I needed some rime alone just now.
“I'm kind of busy,” I said.
“With your paper dolls,” said Tulip, laughing and shaking her earrings. “Rrright! Okay, Joe, see you later.”
As soon as she was gone, I went back into my bedroom, closed the door and the shades, and peeled myself into Dronia. No sign of Wackle. With a quick flip of my augmented body, I turned myself. over so that my third eye was pointing back towards Spaceland. And then I touched down.
Nothing was backwards anymore. My bed was on the proper side of the room, I could read the titles of my business books, and my face looked normal again in the mirror. Time to cat! I jumped in my car and jammed down to our local fast-food strip to stuff my gut. The food tasted great but when I got home I still felt a little wobbly, Grolly—I needed grolly for my augmented bod. I peered
up into Klupdom. No sign of Momo anywhere nearby, but I did see a saucer with one of the Empress's crimson-dressed soldiers. There was no hope of me trying to go vout there and forage for grolly just now. I'd have to wait for Momo and beg her. Where was she, anyway?
Around then Tulip came back. “Feeling better, Joe? You look more like your old self.”
“Yeah, I'm good now. I got some lunch. How was Fry's?”
“It's the key sight to see in Silicon Valley,” said Tulip. “Even though it's rather ordinary. I always take my visitors there. You'll find almost anyone in Fry's. Last month I saw Clement Treed buying four PowerBooks. The maximum dot-commer. He's tall and thin. He looks like a Muppet. A big mouth on a little head. He's not that old of a guy either.”
“The
MeYou
Clement Treed? The richest guy in Silicon Valley? Did you talk to him?”
“I went, ‘Hi,' and Treed went, ‘I'm sorry, but I'm busy right now.' I was with my cousin Amita who's just come over from India to take Computer Science classes at San Jose State. So then I put on my Indian accent and I said very loudly to Amita, ‘This is the
pandit
who defiles our
Mahatma.
He compares himself to Gandhi for material gain. For shame, Mr. Treed, for shame!'”
Tulip was referring to an ongoing MeYou ad campaign that had shown a picture of Gandhi and Clement Treed with the MeYou logo and web address. The ad was one of a series. They'd used Gandhi, Picasso, John Lennon, and Einstein, all blue-chip personalities like that, each of them Photoshopped in with Clement Treed. It was kind of gross, but the numbers showed the campaign was helping. As if MeYou needed to get any bigger. I'd read about the campaign in the business magazines. Instead of laughing along with Tulip, I drifted off for a second there, scheming about the Mophone.
Maybe we could get some venture capital from Clement Treed. Even if Tulip had insulted him, he'd remember her. And that was half the battle.
“Are you even listening to me?” snapped Tulip. Her eyes were big and shiny, the pupils dark brown in the white orbs. “You keep it up, and I'll charge you double tomorrow.”
“You're not going to finish today?”
“Money, that always gets their attention,” said Tulip. “The pointy-headed bosses of the world. Come talk to me while I work, Joe, I'm getting bored.” Another overture. Not riding to Fry's with her had been a good move. It had made me more of a challenge. Women like a challenge.
So now I sat on the other stool in the kitchen, chatting with Tulip. She'd pried the two cell phone cases open, and she was replacing the old antenna assemblies with my antenna crystals and those whizzbang-whatever chips from Fry's. She had her thick glasses on and she was using a soldering iron.
“I'm going to start out with a peer-to-peer architecture,” said Tulip. “Like walkie-talkies.”
“Are walkie-talkies different from cell phones?”
“Cell phones use the client/server architecture. If you call me on a normal cell phone, your phone sends a signal to a telephone company's antenna, the telco does some digital munging on the signal, and then a telco antenna broadcasts the signal back out for me to pick up. We're clients and the telco is the server. Walkie-talkies send signals directly to each other without any third party. Peer-to-peer instead of client/server. Peer-to-peer is only practical for short distances. But if this so-called ‘superchannel' of yours works as well as you say it will—maybe we can stretch it out. In terms of hardware it also happens to be easier to implement. And since I don't think it's going to work anyway—”

Other books

Frozen Solid: A Novel by James Tabor
The White Gallows by Rob Kitchin
Tivington Nott by Alex Miller
The Rebel by Julianne MacLean
The Mills of God by Deryn Lake
Keys of Babylon by Minhinnick, Robert