by Rudy Rucker
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In many ways, Jeff was a good live-in boyfriend. Lately Diane had been ordering food online, and printing it out in the fab box that sat on the kitchen counter next to the microwave. It tasted okay, mostly, and it was easy. But Jeff cooked tasty meals from real vegetables. And kept the place clean, and gave Diane backrubs when she came home from working her cubicle at the insurance company. And, above all, he was a gentle, considerate lover, remarkably sensitive to Diane’s thoughts and moods.
He really only had two flaws, Diane thought —at least that she’d discovered so far.
The first was totally trivial: he doted on talk shows and ghastly video news feeds of all sorts, often spinning out crackpot theories about what he watched. His favorite show was something called “Who Wants to Mock a Millionaire?” in which bankers, realty developers, and hi-tech entrepreneurs were pelted with eggs—and worse—by ill-tempered representatives of the common man.
“They purge their guilt this way,” Jeff explained. “Then they can enjoy their money. I love these guys.”
“I feel bad for the eggs,” said Diane. Jeff looked at her quizzically. “Well, I do,” insisted Diane. “They could have had nice lives as chickens, but instead they end up smeared all over some fat-cat’s Hermes tie.”
“I don’t think they use fertilized eggs,” Jeff said.
“Well, then I feel bad that the eggs never got fertilized.”
“I don’t think you need to feel too bad,” said Jeff, glancing over at her. “Everything in the world has a life and a purpose, whether it’s fertilized or not. Or whether it’s a plant or an animal or a rock.” He used his bare foot to prod a sandal lying next to the couch. “That shoe had life when it was part of a cow, and it still has life as a shoe. Those eggs may feel that their highest function is to knock some humility into a rich guy.”
“You really think that?” asked Diane, not sure if he was just yanking her chain. “Is that like the Gaia thing?”
“Gaia, but more widely distributed,” said Jeff. “The sensei at the karate dojo explained it all to me. It’s elitist to think we’re the only creatures that matter. What a dumb, lonely thing to think. But if everything is alive, then we’re not alone in the universe like fireflies in some huge dark warehouse.”
Maybe Jeff was more spiritual than he appeared, Diane thought. “So, if everything is alive, how come you still eat meat?”
“Huh,” said Jeff. “Gotta eat something. Meat wants to be eaten. That what it’s for.”
Okaaaayyy, Diane thought, and she changed the subject.
Then one day Diane came home and found Jeff watching a televangelist. Pastor Veck was leaping up and down, twisting his body, snatching his eyeglasses off and slapping them back on. He was a river of words and never stopped talking or drawing on his chalkboard, except once in a while he’d look straight out at his audience, say something nonsensical, and make a face.
“You believe in that?” she asked.
“Nah,” he assured her. “But look at that preacher. He’s making those people speak in tongues and slide to the floor in ecstasy. You can learn from a guy like that. And I’ll tell you one thing, the man’s right about evolution.”
“Evolution?” said Diane, baffled.
“Say what you like, but I’m not an ape!” Jeff said intensely. “Not a sponge or a mushroom or a fish. The simple laws of probability prove that random evolution could never work. The sensei told me about this, too. The cosmic One mind is refracted through the small minds in the objects all around us, and matter found its own way into human form. A phone can be smart, right? Why not a grain of sand?”
I’m not going there, Diane thought. We don’t need to get into an argument over this. Everybody’s entitled to a few weird ideas. And, really, Jeff was kind of cute when he got all sincere and dumb. “Can we turn off Pastor Veck, now?” she asked.
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Jeff’s other, more definite, flaw was that he showed no signs of earning a living. At any hour of the day, he’d be lying on Diane’s couch with her wall screen on, poking at his smartphone. Thank god he didn’t know the user code for Diane’s fab box, or he would have been ordering half the gadgets that he saw and printing them out. His intricate and time-consuming online machinations were bringing in pennies, not dollars. People didn’t seem all that interested in Kenny Lately and the Newcomers.
“How much exactly does this band earn in a week?” asked Diane after work one day.
“I don’t know,” said Jeff, affecting a look of disgust. “What are you, an accountant? Be glad your man’s in show biz!” He held out his smartphone. “Look at all the chirps I did for Kenny today.” There was indeed a long list, and most of the chirps were cleverly worded, and linked to interesting things.
If Diane had a weak spot, it was funny, verbal men. She gave Jeff a long, sweet kiss, and he reciprocated, and pretty soon they were down on the shag carpet, involved in deep interpersonal exploration. Jeff kissed her breasts tenderly, and then started working his way down, kissing and kind of humming at the same time. He really is a dream lover, Diane thought. She was breathing heavily, and he was moving down to some very sensitive areas. And then —
“Chirp,” said Jeff very quietly. His voice got a little louder. “Afternoon delight with Kenny Lately and—”
“What are you doing!” Diane yelped. She drew up her legs and kicked Jeff away. “Are you crazy? You’re chirping me? Down there?”
“Nobody knows it’s you and me, Diane. I’m logged on as Kenny Lately.” Jeff was holding his smartphone. Rising to his knees, he looked reproachfully at Diane. “Kenny wants me to raise his profile as a lover. Sure, I could have gone to a hooker for this chirp. But, hey, I’m not that kind of guy. The only woman for me is—”
“Take down the chirp, Jeff.”
“No,” said Jeff, looking stubborn. “It’s too valuable. But, oh damn, the video feed is still—” His face darkened. Jeff had a tendency to get angry when he did something dumb. “Thanks a lot,” he snapped, poking at his phone. “You know I don’t want my followers to guess I’m not Kenny. You just blew a totally bitchin’ chirp by saying my real name. So, okay fine, I’m erasing the chirp of your queenly crotch. Sheesh. Happy now?”
“You’re a weasel,” yelled Diane, overcome with fury. “Pack your duffel and beat it! Go sleep on the beach. With the other bums.”
Jeff’s face fell. “I’m sorry, Diane. Please let me stay. I won’t chirp you again.”
Even in her red haze of rage, Diane knew she didn’t really want to throw him out. And he had taken down the video. But….
“Sorry isn’t enough, Jeff. Promise me you’ll get a real job. Work the counter at the Wienerschnitzel if you have to. Or mop the floor at the karate dojo.”
“I will! I will!”
So Jeff stayed on, and he even worked as a barista in a coffee shop for a couple of days. But they fired him for voice-chirping while pulling espressos, when he was supposed to be staring into the distance all soulful.
Jeff gave Diane the word over a nice dish of curried eggplant that he’d cooked for her. “The boss said it was in the manual, how to pull an espresso with exactly the right facial expression: he said it them taste better. Also, he didn’t like the way I drew rosettes on the foam. He said I was harshing the ambiance.” Jeff looked properly rueful.
“What are we going to do with you?” asked Diane.
“Invest in me,” said Jeff, the candlelight glinting off his toothy smile. “Lease me a Rawna Roller squidskin shirt so I can take my business to the next level.”
“Remind me again what a shirt like that is?” said Diane. “Those of us who slave in cubicles aren’t exactly au courant with the latest in geek-wear.”
“It’s tank-grown cuttlefish skin,” said Jeff. “Tweaked to stay active when sewn into garments. Incredibly rich in analog computation. It’s not a fashion statement. It’s a somatic communications system. Just lease it for two weeks, and it’ll turn my personal economy aroun
d. Please?”
“Oh, all right,” said Diane. “And if you don’t get anywhere with it, you’re—”
“I love it when you lecture me, Diane,” said Jeff, sidling around the table to kiss her. “Let’s go into the bedroom, and you can really put me in my place.”
“Yes,” said Diane, feeling her pulse beating in her throat. Jeff was too good to give up.
So the next day, Jeff went and leased a squidskin from Rawna Roller herself.
“Rawna and I had a good talk,” said Jeff, preening for Diane in the new shirt, which had a not-unpleasant seaside scent. Right now it was displaying an iridescent pattern like a peacock’s tail, with rainbow eyes amid feathery shadings. “I might do some work for her.”
Diane felt a flicker of jealousy. “Do you have to wear that dorky sailor hat?”
“It’s an exabyte-level antenna,” said Jeff, adjusting the gold lamé sailor’s cap that was perched on the back of his head. “It comes with the shirt. Come on, Diane, be happy for me!”
-----
Initially the squidskin shirt seemed like a good thing. Jeff got a gig doing custom promotional placement for an outfit called Rikki’s Reality Weddings. He’d troll the chirp-stream for mentions of weddings and knife in with a plug for Rikki’s.
“What’s a reality wedding?” asked Diane.
“Rikki’s a wedding caterer, see? And she lets her bridal parties defray their expenses by selling tickets to the wedding reception. A reality wedding. In other words, complete strangers might attend your wedding or maybe just watch the action on a video feed. And if a guest wants to go whole hog, Rikki has one of her girls or boys get a sample of the guest’s DNA—with an eye towards mixing it into the genome of the nuptial couple’s first child.” Jeff waggled his eyebrows. “And you can guess how they take the samples.”
“The caterer pimps to the guests?” asked Diane. “Wow, what a classy way to throw a wedding.”
“Hey, all I’m doing is the promo,” protested Jeff. “Don’t get so judgmental. I’m but a mirror of society at large.” He looked down at the rippling colors on his shirt. “Rikkie’s right, though. Multiperson gene-merges are the new paradigm for our social evolution.”
“Whatever. Are you still promoting Kenny Lately too?”
“Bigtime. The band’s stats are ramping up. And, get this, Rawna Roller gave me a great idea. I used all the simmies in my growbox to flood the online polls, and got Kenny and the Newcomers booked as one of the ten bands playing marching songs for the Fourth of July fireworks show at the Rose Bowl!”
“You’re really getting somewhere, Jeff,” said Diana in a faintly reproving tone. She didn’t feel good about flooding polls, even online ones.
Jeff was impervious. “There’s more! Rawna Roller’s really into me now. I’m setting up a deal to place promos in her realtime on-line datamine—that’s her playlists, messages, videos, journals, whatever. She frames it as a pirated gossip-feed, just to give it that salty paparazzo tang. Her followers feel like they’re spying inside Rawna’s head, like they’re wearing her smartware. She’s so popular, she’s renting out space in the datamine, and I’m embedding the ads. Some of my simmies have started using these sly cuttlefish-type algorithms, and my product placements are fully seamless now. Rawna’s promised me eight percent of the ad revenues.”
Diane briefly wondered if Jeff was getting a little too interested in Rawna Roller, but she kept her mouth shut. It sounded as though this might actually bring in some cash for a change, even if his percentage seemed to be going down. And she really did want to see Jeff succeed.
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On the Fourth of July, Jeff took Diane to see the Americafest fireworks show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Jeff told her that, in his capacity as the publicist for Kenny Lately and the Newcomers, he’d be getting them seats that were close enough to the field so they could directly hear the bands.
Jeff was wearing his squidskin, with his dorky sailor hat cockily perched on the back of his head. They worked their way into the crowd in the expensive section. The seats here were backless bleacher-benches just like all the others, but they were…reserved.
“What are our seat numbers?” Diane asked Jeff.
“I, uh, I only have general admission tickets,” began Jeff. “But—”
“Tickets the same as the twenty thousand other people here?” said Diane. “So why are we here in the—”
“Yo!” cried Jeff, suddenly spotting someone, a well-dressed woman in a cheetah-patterned blouse and marigold Bermuda shorts. Rawna Roller! On her right was her assistant, wearing bugeye glasses with thousand-faceted compound lenses. And on her left she had a pair of empty seats.
“Come on down,” called Rawna.
“Glad I found you,” Jeff hollered back. He turned to Diane. “Rawna told me she’d save us seats, baby. I wanted to surprise you.” They picked their way down through the bleachers.
“Love that shirt on you, Jeff,” said Rawna with a tooth-baring high-fashion laugh. “Glad you showed. Sid and I are leaving right when the fireworks start.”
Diane took Rawna’s measure and decided it was unlikely this woman was having sex with her man. She relaxed and settled into her seat, idly wondering why Rawna and Sid would pay extra for reserved seats and leave during the fireworks. Never mind.
“See Kenny down there?” bragged Jeff. “My client.”
“Yubba yubba,” said Sid, tipping his stingy-brim hat, perhaps sarcastically, although with his prismatic bugeye lenses, it was hard to be sure where the guy was at.
Diane found it energizing to be in such a huge, diverse crowd. Southern California was a salad bowl of races, with an unnatural preponderance of markedly fit and attractive people, drawn like sleek moths to the Hollywood light. There was a lot of action on the field: teenagers in uniforms were executing serpentine drum-corps routines, and scantily dressed cheerleaders were leaping about, tossing six-foot long batons. Off to one side, Kenny Lately and the Newcomers were playing—
“Oh wow,” said Jeff, cocking his head. “It’s a Grand Old Flag. I didn’t know Kenny could play that. He’s doing us proud, me and all of my simmies who voted for him.” Picking up on the local media feed, Jeff’s squidskin shirt was displaying stars among rippling bars of red and white. Noticing Jeff’s shirt in action, Rawna nodded approvingly.
“I’m waiting for the fireworks,” said Diane, working on a root beer float that she’d bought from a vendor. Someone behind them was kicking Jeff in the middle of his back. He twisted around. A twitchy, apologetic man was holding a toddler on his lap.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said.
Jeff was frowning. “That last kick was sharp!” he complained.
“Oh, don’t start tweaking out,” snapped the man’s wife, who was holding a larger child on her lap. “Watch the frikkin’ show, why dontcha.”
Diane felt guilty about the snobby feelings that welled up in her, and sorry for Jeff. Awkwardly they scooted forward a bit on their benches. Sid and Rawna were laughing like hyenas.
Finally the emcee started the countdown. His face was visible on the stadium’s big screen, on people’s smartphones, and even on Jeff’s shirt. But after the countdown, nothing happened. Instead of a blast of fireworks, yet another video image appeared, a picture of the Declaration of Independence, backed by the emcee’s voice vaporing on about patriotism.
“Like maybe we don’t know it’s the Fourth of July?” protested Diane. “Oh god, and now they’re switching to a Ronald Reagan video? What is this, the History Channel?”
“Hush, Diane.” Jeff really seemed to be into this tedious exercise of jingoistic masturbation. His shirt unscrolled the Declaration of Independence, which then rolled back up and an eagle came screaming out from under his collar and snatched the scroll, bearing it off in his talons.
Up on the scoreboard, there was a video of Johnny Cash singing “God Bless America,” including some verses that Diane hadn’t heard since the third grade, and then Bill Clinto
n and George W. Bush appeared together in a video wishing everyone a safe and sane Fourth. By then, others were grumbling, too.
The announcer did another countdown, and the fireworks actually began. It had been a long wait, but now the pyrotechnicians were launching volley after awesome volley: bombettes, peonies, palms, strobe stars, and intricate shells that Diane didn’t even know the names of—crackling cascades of spark dust, wriggly twirlers, sinuous glowing watersnakes, geometric forms like crystals and soccer balls.
“Au revoir,” said Rawna Roller, rising to her feet once the show was well underway. She and Sid made their way out to the main aisle. Sid cast a lingering last look at Jeff, with the fireworks scintillating in every facet of Sid’s polyhedral lenses.
Looking back at the show, Diane noticed that the colors were turning peculiar. Orange and green—was that a normal color for a skyrocket shell? And that shower of dull crimson sparks? Was this latter part of the show on a lower budget?
The show trailed off with a barrage of off-color kamuros and crackling pistils, followed by chrysanthemums and spiders in ever-deeper shades of red, one on top of another, like an anatomical diagram or a rain of luminous blood.
Out of the corner of her eye, Diane could see Jeff’s squidskin shirt going wild. At first the shirt was just displaying video feeds of the skyrockets, processing and overlaying them. But suddenly the Jeff-plus-shirt system went through a phase transition and everything changed. The shirt began boiling with tiny images—Diane noticed faces, cars, meals, houses, appliances, dogs, and trees, and the images were overlaid upon stippled scenes of frantically cheering crowds. The miniscule icons were savagely precise, like the brainstorm of a person on his deathbed, all his life flashing before his eyes. The million images on Jeff’s shirt on were wheeling and schooling like fish, flowing in jet streams and undercurrents, as if he’d become a weather map of the crowd’s mind. Jeff began to scream, more in ecstasy, Diane thought, than in agony.
In the post-fireworks applause and tumult—some of it caused by people rushing for the exits en masse in a futile effort to beat the traffic— Jeff’s reaction was taken to be just another patriotic, red-blooded American speaking in tongues or enjoying his meds.