Authors: Rudy Rucker
Spaceland (26 page)
Pop!
Using my
third eye, I could see Deet vout on the Klupper side of Spaceland, frantically trying to recharge his hyperbazooka with a cord from his borrowed saucer. In the distance, a couple of grolly-guard saucers were approaching.
third eye, I could see Deet vout on the Klupper side of Spaceland, frantically trying to recharge his hyperbazooka with a cord from his borrowed saucer. In the distance, a couple of grolly-guard saucers were approaching.
The Wackle snout in my room grew to a full devil-sized body. He'd heard what Deet said about destroying Spaceland. “Kill the Mophones fast,” he told me. “We'll cover you. Our smeel is one.” The last phrase sent a tingle through the bandaged spot on my shoulder.
The Wackle dwindled, heading voutward after Deet. But he wasn't going alone. A cascade of red flesh went pouring through the space of my room like a midair cattle stampede. Wackle after Wackle appeared, swelled up, and then shrank down to the size of a persistent golf ball. My room was abuzz with the red balls of smeel, a hundred of them or more, each ball the cross section of a long tail connecting a Wackle to his home cliff. With my third eye I could see the horde of Wackles vout on the Klupper side of Spaceland; they were tearing the hapless Deet into little pieces. The grolly
guards were just starting to arrive too late to save Deer, but not too late to fight the Wackles.
guards were just starting to arrive too late to save Deer, but not too late to fight the Wackles.
I snatched up my Mophoneâsurely one more call wouldn't matter at this pointâand called Spazz. He answered on the second ring.
“Yo?” It was hard to hear him; there was a whistling roar in the background. Was space already coming apart?
“Spazz, we have to turn off the Mophones!” I shouted. “It's an emergency! I know you made a script for pumping out Motalk upgrades to the users. How can I use it?”
Spazz answered something, but with the background noise, the only word I could make out was “uptight.” I fumbled at my Mo phone, turning up its volume.
“Talk louder!” I screamed. “We have to shut off the Mophones immediately!”
Spazz's voice floated free of the drone, finally audible. “Why?” he asked in a lazy drawl. “Some kind of snag in the MeYou meeting? You need to put a scare into Clement Treed?”
“No, no, we've got a disaster, Spazz! One of the Kluppers just told me the Mophones are a trick. The antenna crystals are draining our energy away! Space is gonna pop.”
“Pop?” I thought I heard Spazz chuckle.
“Like a bubble film that gets too thin,” I said. “Like a mildewed sail in a gust of wind. Spaceland's gonna tear open and disappear. Nothing'll be left. We gotta turn off those Mophones!”
“What you smokin', dog?” said Spazz, still not taking me seriously. “Or is it the grolly?” The cross sections of the Wackle strands were flailing all over the room, bashing holes in my floor, ceiling and walls. One of them shattered the glass of my window and swooped outside. Several others followed. A floorboard at my feet splintered.
“Please please please help me, Spazz. Can you come to the office right now?”
“I'm a mile high, dude. Taking a test ride in a jet I might buy. Look up, you can probably see me. I'm the Gulfstream IV-SP over Los Perros. Heading southwest. I'll be over the beach in thirty seconds.”
“Make them turn down the engine, Spazz! I can barely hear you! I'm going to sit down at my computer now. Tell me what to do.”
“Hold on.” I could hear the faint sound of Spazz talking to the pilot. Instead of damping down, the background roar grew shriller and louder.
I walked out of my bedroom and into the office area. The Wackle balls followed me, some going through my open door, but most of them crashing through the wall. Plaster dust went flying. Another platoon of Wackles came tumbling through the room on their way vout to fight the Kluppers, their shapes shifting like flames. The strands of their tails made more balls in the room. A few of them had even made holes in the roof, and rain was starting to drip in. My house wasn't going to last much longer.
I sat down at my computer and for a horrible second, I couldn't remember the first thing about how to use it. “Spazz!” I yelled into the buzzing Mophone. “Help me! Are you there?”
The background roar slid down the scale and finally I could hear Spazz properly. “We're at ten thousand feet now,” he said. “Coasting. The ocean looks great. I was just thinking about what you said. That the vacuum's gonna decay? Dude, I saw a physics article about that once. Written up as a hypothetical scenario. That maybe our vacuum is only metastable, and maybe somewhere it'll tunnel down to the true zero, and once that happens the decayed state will fill a sphere that expands forever. Supposedly the hole would grow slowly at first, but then it would speed up. Destroying everything in its path.”
“Pop,” I said. “Space is gonna pop. We're pumping energy out the antennas, more than they're taking in. You know that law in physics? The Conservation of Energy? The Mophones are breaking the Law.”
“Funny Tulip didn't think of that,” said Spazz. “Her kind of thing. Why didn't you ask Tulip to help you, instead of asking me? She knows how to access the user Mophones as well as I do.”
“Tulip thinks I'm possessed. She saw some creatures from the fourth dimension. She left. You got no idea what's been going on today, Spazz. The Wackles killed Momo. Jena was here after that, but now she's gone too. We had another fight. Andâoh no, I forgotâthat gangster Sante's back in town. I have to see about Jena.”
“Poor Joe,” said Spazz, breaking into his wheezing laugh. “Such the loser. Married to Jena. Phew. Look, can't we stall on crashing the phones? I want to buy this jet. Let's wait a week till we scam our money from the IPO. You and me are talking on Mophones right now and I don't see any like ball of Nothingness eating up the fabric of reality.”
A Wackle glob thumped me in the back, rolling my chair away from my desk. There were more of them darting around outside the window and in my front yard. Cars on the street were slowing to look at my house, at the weird red balls and the fleeting devil figures.
“Things are coming apart fast,” I said. A hole in the ceiling had dripped a puddle of water onto my desk. “Please please tell me what to do. For the love of God, help me, Spazz.”
“Oh, all right,” said Spazz. “Begging is good, Joe. I like it. You should always talk to me that way. And, what the hey, if this is bogus, I can always turn the Mophones back on. I wonder ifâ”
“Come on, Spazz! Please! Let's shut 'em down!”
“Okay, okay, all you have to do is go to this web address I'm
gonna tell you, enter my name and a password, and then type something into a form you'll find there. I've got a script on the server that sends what you type to all the Mophones.”
gonna tell you, enter my name and a password, and then type something into a form you'll find there. I've got a script on the server that sends what you type to all the Mophones.”
“Tell me.”
Spazz walked me through the steps. His secret controller web page had a graphic of the vintage soft-porn queen Bettie Page holding a whip; the tip of the whip led to a field where I could type in Spazz's real name, which I'd never actually heard before, and then this weird, hard-to-hack password pâ§h#re@ky?DEF6. A little Motalk upgrade window appeared.
“Type helo mophone : * and press ENTER,” said Spazz. “One 1 in helo.”
I did it. Meanwhile sirens were coming towards my house, a fire engine and a rescue vehicle. The rain picked up as the fire engine pulled up and the firemen jumped off. Suddenly a big metal disk materialized in my front yard, rolling around on its edge like a twenty-foot hubcap, gouging a muddy trench in the ground and changing its shape as it rolled. That would be Deet's borrowed saucer. It dinged the truck, smashed my garage and disappeared into Dronia. Another wobbly wave of Wackles flickered through my front yard, on their way to Klupdom. The firemen stood there in shock, with no clue what to do next, the rain streaming off their helmets and their yellow slickers.
“Type halt-a,” said Spazz.
I did it. The window at the tip of Bettie's whip printed an echo line:
done
“It says done,” I told Spazz.
“Gnar gnar,” said Spazz, meaning something like “Good.”
A question occurred to me. “If the Mophones are off, why can I still hear you?”
“We're like superusers,” said Spazz. “You and me and Jena. Our
three Mophones don't accept downloads. They were the first three we built, before Tulip put the download feature in.”
three Mophones don't accept downloads. They were the first three we built, before Tulip put the download feature in.”
“Well turn off your Mophone and don't use it again! I'll tell Jena and we'll be done. Oh, thank God, Spazz, thank God. We're safe.”
Just then something cataclysmic must have happened up in Klup dom, for a dozen dead Wackles flew across my office and crashed through the house's front wall like it was tissue paper. I yelped with surprise.
“You're really losing it, Joe,” said Spazz on the Mophone “I better be the one to call Jena.”
“Don't!” I shrieked. But he'd already hung up.
There was a heavy creaking from overhead, as of thick, rusty nails being slowly pulled from old beams. I pocketed my Mophone and ran out into the front yard just before the ceiling of my office collapsed.
There was a sharp twinge in my shoulder. From the corner of my eye I could see my burgundy linen shirt bulging upwards. Some thing was growing out of the spot where the Wackle had bit me! I didn't like to think what it might be. But right now I had the fire chief to deal with, a handsome guy with a dark mustache.
“What's going on?” he asked. “Is this a toxic spill?”
“It'sâit's computer graphics,” I told him, wiping the rain out of my eyes. “A three-dimensional projection unit gone out of control. There's nothing we can do to stop it. Just keep people back from the house.” A Wackle ball thudded into me, very nearly ma ing me lose my balance.
“Is there anyone else in the house?” asked the chief.
“No,” I said. The Wackle strands were smashing it to bits. Pieces of wood and plaster were flying; the walls were wobbling.
“Where's your utility boxes?” asked the chief. “We need to cut your power and gas.”
“In back,” I told him. and he splashed off.
I pulled out my Mophone and dialed Jena's number, leaning over the Mophone so the rain wouldn't get on it. Busy. Talking to Spazz. When Jena got going, she could talk for half an hour. And Spazz would let herâjust to drive me nuts. He didn't really buy into how serious this was.
I'd have to find Jena in person before it was too late. Maybe she'd gone hack to our old house? Not likely, given how worried she was about Sante. Where else did Jena like to go? The Los Perros Coffee Roasting. She loved to sit there drinking nonfat decaf lattes and talking on her cell phone.
I decided to drive there. Even though I could walk to the Roasting in five or ten minutes, I didn't want to do it in this rain. My shirt was already soaked. The scene here had gotten so chaotic that none of the firemen moved to stop me from getting into my car.
But before I could pull out of the driveway, a limo blocked me in. Clement Treed and the MeYou transition team. Oh, Christ. I honked, but the driver didn't move. I jumped out and ran back. Clement got out of the rear and unkinked his lanky body, looking around.
“Bad news?” he said, ducking his head against the rain.
“I turned off the Mophones,” I told him. “They were a trick. The Kluppers gave them to us so we'd pop space. They want to get rid of us so it'll be easy for them to shoot the Dronners. I have to go find Jena. I couldn't turn off her Mophone.”
Clement scowled down at me. “Turned the Mophones off? The day after product launch? That's a showstopper, Joe. Hurry up and turn them hack on.”
“Didn't you hear me, Clement,? We're talking about the destruction of the cosmos! The Mophones violate the Law of Conservation of Energy. They'll make a hole in space. The decay of the vacuum.”
“What's your source on this?” he said sharply.
“Them,” I said, pointing to the swarm of red balls. “The Wackles.”
“I was wondering about those things,” said Clement. “Bad business. They're wrecking our office. You won't restore Mophone service?”
“Maybeâmaybe we do a bait-and-switch,” I said frantically. “We slam our users over to PacBell.”
“There's no
we
anymore,” said Clement grimly. “You've lost it, Joe. I'm taking control. And you're fired.”
we
anymore,” said Clement grimly. “You've lost it, Joe. I'm taking control. And you're fired.”
There was a blinding flash of light: a hyperbazooka beam passing through our space. Some of the red balls disappeared, and a few more dead Wackles went flying by, rapidly phasing through a series of nightmarish shapes you weren't really sure you could see. Losing my job didn't seem too important just now.
“Gotta go,” I shouted. I jumped into my Explorer, put it into four-wheel drive, and circled through the yard to get to the road. I headed for the coffee shop as fast as I could go, using redial on my Mophone to call Jena over and over. Busy, busy, busy. I should have killed Spazz when I had the chance.
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