by Rudy Rucker
“Nice try,” said Frank condescendingly. “But the correct answer is that the aliens’ electromagnetic signals have a higher-dimensional component. What we see is just the tip of the iceberg. You should show him our chapters, Rudy.” And he went to get more wine.
“Is your friend a UFO contactee?” the astronomer asked me after we’d chatted a bit more.
“He says so,” I answered. “I’m working on a book about his experiences. So much for my academic credibility.”
“Oh well. Life is to make entertainment,” said the Italian astronomer. “Your friend knows this.”
Looking across the patio, we could see Frank deep in conversation with a very impressive dominatrix-dressed woman. He was throwing back his head and laughing, while making rapid circling gestures in the air with his hands.
“Perhaps he offers her a ride in the flying saucer,” said the astronomer. “She is very sexy.”
“I’m not sure she’s really a woman,” I said. “She’s from San Francisco.”
“America is the great labyrinth,” said the astronomer.
The evening wore on. The air was filled with a combination of licentiousness, California weirdness, and business chatter. There were lots of young gen-Xers, tons of old punks and hippies, and a good sprinkling of new-wave media artists, writers, and scammers from the ages in between. Everyone had the sense that somehow, some way, there was money to be made off the rising tidal wave of electronic information, but nobody was sure how. Above and beyond all that was the joy of being at a big weird party, a feeling of being close to the center of hip.
I noticed Frank talking for a long time with a British-accented pup who styled himself as the publisher of a new Mondo-clone magazine out of London. I’d met him before, and had pegged him as a rip-off artist and a wanker, unlikely to ever even put out one issue, let alone pay anyone. His name was Nigel. Frank briefly drew me into their conversation.
Nigel was playing the multimedia mogul, and Frank was falling for it, even though Nigel was incredibly drunk. Frank wanted to sell Nigel serial publication rights for my chapters on the spot. I demurred and wriggled away. Behind me, I heard Frank saying, “Rudy’s trying to hold out on me, but he’ll let me have the manuscript pretty soon. Sooner than he thinks!”
This last phrase was shouted after me. It made me nervous. When I was sure I was out of Frank’s sight, I checked that my manuscript was still in my knapsack, and then, just to be on the safe side, I locked my knapsack in the trunk of my car.
About an hour later, an ancient VW beetle veered off the road, puttered across the meadow and pulled up at the edge of the patio. And who should emerge but—Spun and Guster. Spun was carrying his conga drum, and Guster had a big cardboard box.
“Oh no,” I said to Audrey.
“You know them?” she said. “They look like homeless stoners.”
“They’re friends of Frank’s. I never should have invited him.” I looked around, not seeing Frank anywhere. “Have you seen him lately?”
“The last I saw of him, he was trying to sell something to someone,” laughed Audrey. “Something big that he had in his pocket. And then he was over by the bushes yelling, but I couldn’t see who he was talking to. I’ve been making a point of telling everyone that you’re really good friends with him.”
“William Gibson!” hollered Spun, spotting me. “I brought the cunga! Budda boom budda bammity bip bip bip zee zow zee zow zee zow zoooooom!”
“‘Sup, Rudy,” said Guster. He and Spun came straight over. Spun’s eyes were completely bloodshot and Guster’s beard was wet with red wine. “Where’s the bar at?”
“Inside,” I said. “What’s in the box?”
“Frank asked me to bring up a bunch of Lotus Lights,” said Guster. “He figured these Berkeley types might like ‘em. Keep an eye on our stuff, would you?” He set the box down on the edge of a planter and Spun left his conga there too. They started in towards the bar, but got distracted by the big San Francisco dominatrix. Maybe she was a woman. Maybe it didn’t matter.
“Duuude,” Spun told her. “I’m gonna play the cunga.”
“The Lotus Light is nine out of ten gynecologists’ choice!” hollered Guster. “Up up in the stirrups, and awaaaay!”
“What are Lotus Lights?” asked Audrey. “Are they ray-guns?”
“I’m not sure.” We looked in the box; it was full of flashlights that had a kind of plastic cone glued over the lens. Audrey turned one on and so did I. There was a weighted wheel inside the cone that moved as you moved the light; the effect was that the color of the light kept changing. A few friends joined us and we were all waving the colored lights around laughing.
“Far out,” said Audrey, not quite seriously. “Cosmic!”
“Ten dollars each!” shouted Guster, puffing back from the bar with a glass of beer and a glass of wine. “Yes! All you Bezerkely freaks need the Lotus Light to see God! Test trial is free, but don’t be runnin’ off with them. Dr. Spun will provide the audio section of our presentation.”
Spun fired up a huge Santa Cruz spliff and began to drum. Guster began juggling three of the Lotus Lights. I would have thought his coordination would be shot, but he juggled as easily as if he were moving in slow-motion. Now Frank and Mary appeared, walking up from the misty meadow. They looked happy and relaxed.
“Hope you don’t mind that I told Spun and Guster to come, Rudy,” said Frank, sitting down next to us. “I like to cut my brahs in the good times. And this seemed like a good opportunity to sell some Lotus Lights.”
“I guess I don’t mind. Spun and Guster are pretty funny to have around.”
“You’re not worried any more about them spying on you?” said Frank. As he said this, Guster put an extra double-flip onto one of the bobbing Lotus Lights and Spun beat an extra tattoo on his conga.
“Are you spying on me?” I asked Guster, but he just grinned and kept juggling.
It was getting cold now, so Audrey and I went back inside the Brazilian Room. These days I was trying not to get wasted at parties anymore. I was unable to predict which times I’d be successful, but tonight King Alcohol and Queen Jane were letting me off easy. Tonight I was going to be okay. We ate and talked and danced until it was past midnight. And then Mary appeared.
“Frank rode home with Spun and Guster,” she said. “One of the Mondo people started bawling them out for selling Lotus Lights. Some crypto-yuppie. I still need a ride from you. I’m supposed to pick up our car. Do you want to go soon?”
“Why isn’t Frank riding with us?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Mary. “I guess he wanted to hang with Spun and Guster. Or he didn’t want to bother you.”
“Well okay.”
Burglarized
The ride home was uneventful; Mary and Audrey slept most of the way. We dropped Mary off at her car in front of the Los Perros Coffee Roasting and drove to our house. I got my knapsack with the Saucer Wisdom manuscript out of the trunk and we went inside.
Right away Audrey noticed something was wrong. “We didn’t leave all those lights on, Rudy. Someone’s been in here! Look, the rug’s all crooked! My jewelry! Go upstairs to our bedroom and see. No, don’t! They might still be in there!”
We fell silent and listened. The house was absolutely still.
“There’s nobody in here,” I said. “I’ll check the bedroom.”
“Should we call the police?”
“Let me look around first.” For protection, I took the hammer out of the kitchen toolbox. Then I went upstairs to our bedroom. It was dark. I had a fleeting spasm of fear that when I turned on the light I’d see an alien in there, maybe one of those repellent starfish that Frank had described. Clutching the hammer, I thumbed the light switch. The lit-up room was blandly unharmed, all the furniture just as it always was, like “Hello, I’m your and Audrey’s bed, you sleep and make love
on me,” “Hello I’m the chair where you put your dirty clothes,” “Hello I’m Audrey’s dresser, I’ve been around for years and you don’t really know what’s inside me,” “Hello, I’m—”
“Your computer!” Audrey cried from downstairs. “My paintings are okay, but your computer’s gone!”
Sure enough, my computer was missing from my little office off the kitchen. Someone had taken the whole system: printer, monitor, keyboard, mouse and CPU. Even the power cords were gone.
“That son of a bitch,” I said. “Frank Shook did this. That’s why he left the party early.”
“Call the police.”
“If nothing else is missing maybe I should handle this myself,” I snarled. “I’ll drive down to his house tomorrow and—”
“Rudy, don’t try and make this a personal thing. You could get killed! If someone breaks into your house you call the police. That’s what they’re for.”
So we called the Los Perros police and a squad car came right over. There was a young woman officer and a small older officer with a mustache. I didn’t immediately tell them that I thought I knew who’d done it. I just told them that there’d been a break-in and my computer had been stolen. I tagged along as they looked all over the house for broken locks or windows—but there weren’t any.
“You’re sure the front door was secured?” asked the man with the mustache.
“Yes,” I said. “At least it was locked when I came home.”
The woman officer hunkered down and examined the lock, then stood back up. “This particular brand isn’t very hard to pick. Of course, if we’re dealing with a lock-picker, we’re dealing with a professional burglar. But your computer is the only thing missing. Not all that valuable a thing, in and of itself, a used computer.” She looked at me levelly.
“Well, I think maybe the thieves wanted the information inside my computer,” I said.
“What kind of information?”
“It’s a book I’m working on. I’m a writer as well as a professor. I think maybe the burglar is my co-author. His name is Frank Shook and he lives in San Lorenzo.”
“What’s his phone number?”
“He doesn’t have a phone, and I can’t even tell you his address. It’s on a back road. I do know how to get there.”
“But he doesn’t want to go there alone,” Audrey put in. “Can you drive down there with him?”
“Not at this time of night,” said the man with the mustache. “And in any case, San Lorenzo is out of our jurisdiction. The county sheriff’s office can send someone down there tomorrow. We’ll call them in the morning and they’ll get in touch with you.”
“Another thought,” said the woman cop. “Do you keep an extra key to your house outside?”
“Yes,” I said. “On a shelf in the garbage shed down by the street.”
“Let’s go see,” said the woman.
Sure enough the extra key was gone.
“Had Frank Shook ever seen you use that key?” asked the woman.
“No,” I said. “He’s never been to the house at all. At least I don’t think so.” It occurred to me that it would have been possible for the aliens to show Frank my key. An unsettling concept.
“I know!” said Audrey. “The first time Rudy visited Frank he locked himself out and had to get the key. If Frank or his wife followed Rudy home that time, they would have seen him get it.” Equally unsettling.
The cops asked some more questions, and then they left. Audrey and I had trouble going to sleep; we felt violated and unsafe. I even wedged a chair against the front door; the lock no longer offered any protection.
I slept badly that night, and in the middle of the night I had a very frightening dream.
I’m in a rutted clearing in the woods. There are some creatures high up in the air above me, they’re in a fantastical spindly-legged walking-machine, the machine is like a rickety bulldozer, it’s pushing down a tree at the edge of the clearing, it’s rocking and roaring with the effort—uhhnnnm, uhhnnnm, uhhnnnm. I’m protesting, trying to protect the tree. The creatures in the high machine shine a laser down into my mouth, an intense, precisely vibrating beam. The laser is etching chip-designs into my gums, fast and painful, flickering this way and that—zzzzt zzzzt zzzzt—now it’s etching onto my teeth as well, changing me for good. If I don’t get away they’ll do all of my teeth and I’ll have nothing left—but I can’t move. This is happening too incredibly fast…
I woke myself up. Oh, my teeth. I was terrified. For the first time I could understand the deep dark helpless paranoia of the poor nuts who think that the aliens have secretly taken over, think that the aliens have made a deal with the government and we are just their cattle, their lab rats, controlled and dictated to by our implants. I went in the kitchen and drank some water, ran my tongue and my fingers across my teeth and gums, paced back and forth, trying to shake off the dream.
And then I started thinking that maybe it hadn’t been a dream at all. Maybe those people I’d always made fun of were right—maybe the aliens do come and get people while they’re asleep. And if there was anyone the aliens would want to get, it was me. I was asking for it, writing a book called Saucer Wisdom.
It was completely dark in the house. Thank God Audrey was here. The only safe and sure thing was the sound of her breathing. It had been a big mistake for me to get involved with ufology. The lure of easy money had led me into evil territory. I decided I was through working with Frank Shook.
I said a prayer, got into bed and calmed myself by listening to Audrey’s breathing. It was a good thing not to live alone.
Chapter Nine: Missing Time
Looking For Frank
But of course I wasn’t really through, or you wouldn’t be reading this book.
In the morning we were awakened by two cops knocking at the front door. What a way to start the day. It was a couple of county sheriff’s deputies, both in their twenties. One was a talkative stocky white man named Don, the other a slender quiet Hispanic man named Luis. Don drove, but Luis seemed to be in charge.
I threw on some clothes and said goodbye to Audrey. She was doing the final touches on her pictures for the show today, so she was just glad to have me out of the way. “But be careful,” she warned me.
I rode in the back of the squad car, and when we got to San Lorenzo I gave the cops the directions on how to get to Frank’s.
“Mr. Rucker, we’re going to ask you to stay in the car while we talk to the occupants,” said Don as we pulled up by Frank’s cottage.
“I understand,” I said. “But can you lower my window all the way so I can hear?” Luis nodded, and Don pressed a switch to lower my window.
They walked down the path and the Shooks’ yellow bulldog came charging out barking. Don shouted “Hello!” until the front door opened and Mary came out.
“Ma’am can you tie up that dog?” said Luis.
“She doesn’t bite,” said Mary.
“Any dog’ll bite, ma’am.”
Mary disappeared with the dog then came back out. She looked terribly worried. “Has something happened to my husband?”
“We’re looking for a Mr. Frank Shook?”
“That’s him. He hasn’t been here since yesterday. We went to a party and—” Mary spotted me up in the police car. “That man drove us. Rudy Rucker. Rudy, do you know where Frank is?”
“No,” I called back.
Mary kept shouting questions to me, so then the cops let me get out and stand there with them. According to Mary, Frank hadn’t come back home at all the night before, and she still hadn’t heard from him. She wasn’t sure where Spun and Guster lived these days. It was possible that the three of them were off on a bender. She said Frank hadn’t indicated any plans to break into my house before leaving, and she felt there was no reason to think that he was in fact the burglar. “It could have been th
e aliens,” she said. “Or maybe it was Peggy Sung.”
Luis didn’t say anything about Mary’s reference to aliens, but he did ask where Peggy Sung lived.
“Her house is right on the highway through Benton,” said Mary. “There’s a big sign out front that says ‘Peggy Sung’s Psychic Readings.’ You can’t miss it.”
We said our good-byes to Mary and went back to the patrol car. “I think this is a bullshit case,” said Luis. “We got no signs of forced entry, no witnesses, no stolen goods, and now we’re hearing about psychics and aliens. You ever hear of corpus delecti, Mr. Rucker?”
“What does it mean?”
“It means there’s no investigation if there’s no evidence of a crime. We got other things to do today.”
“We’re not going to Peggy Sung’s?”
“You want to ask a fortuneteller where’s your computer, you do it on your own time. Sorry, but we got a lot on our plate. You can let us know if anything more develops.”
That afternoon I had a man over to change the locks on our house. And that night I helped Audrey hang her jellyfish paintings at Los Perros Coffee Roasting. They looked terrific.
Saturday morning, July 2, 1994, Audrey and I hung around the Coffee Roasting for a couple of hours, looking at her pictures on the walls and kind of seeing if anyone noticed them. I couldn’t stop thinking about my stolen computer, though, so that afternoon, I drove alone down to Benton and found Peggy Sung’s place. The house was a yellow trailer perched on concrete blocks a few dozen feet off the road. Hanging from a rusty pipe in the ground was a sign.
Peggy Sung Psychic Readings
Past * Present * Future
Cosmic Spirits Know
I pulled into the gravel driveway and got out of my car, but then I was scared to knock on the door. I’m not a particularly courageous person. Frank had been so aggressive when we’d seen the Asian woman on the beach. If that was really Peggy Sung, she must be a pretty tough cookie, or why else would Frank have acted like that? I decided to kiss my computer goodbye. It was high time I upgraded anyway. I got back in my car. But right then the door of the trailer opened. It was indeed the same woman I’d seen on the beach.