by Rudy Rucker
Another issue was that thoughts of my immediate family were tainted by my feelings about my father. His gambling bankruptcy had infuriated me. And the very last time I’d talked to him, he’d started ragging on me about “wasting my time” playing in a band. We’d gotten into a terrible argument and I’d told him I wished he was dead. A week later he’d keeled over from a heart attack. Lacking a way to love his memory, I preferred not to think about him at all.
“Math is more important than your family?” probed Ma.
“Don’t start on Bela, Xiao-Xiao,” interrupted Bert. “He was about to tell me how to use his theorem to get rich. You guys said you could predict the market if it weren’t for—what?”
“Codec,” said Paul. “We’re kind of on our own with the problem right now. Last week our adviser, Roland Haut, claimed he had a big insight about solving the codec problem; he was going to turn, like, a rubber sheet into a programmable paracomputer. But then he went mental and threw his chair through his window, and now he either doesn’t remember his codec idea or he doesn’t want to talk about it. I visited him yesterday. He’s better. He’s decided the cone shells and cockroaches were just hallucinations.”
“You saw him?” I said feeling a twinge of jealousy. “You should have beaten the freaking codec outta him.” I picked up an empty cup and began pouring my rice wine back and forth from cup to cup. It made a gentle gurgling sound. The wine surfaces dimpled with turbulence; small bubbles swirled around. “Here’s a simulation of a mutual fund’s price, Bert.”
“Right,” said Paul. “A small-cap mutual fund is a perfect morphonic match to a poured cup of liquid. At the morphon level, you’re looking at a pair of rakes with their tines hooked together in overhand knots, and a fish and a teapot perched on the handles, with the fish drinking tea from the spout and wearing a little dish on its head like a straw boater.” As he talked, I kept pouring the wine back and forth. “But, you see, Bert,” added Paul, "Our problem is how do we feed the market trends into the wine? And how do we get the prediction numbers out?”
“Codec it like this,” I said, draining my glass. I was feeling reckless.
“Piled high and deep,” said Bert approvingly. “I’ll tell you guys a trade secret. If you have enough smoke and mirrors, you can pull in the fees whether or not your predictions work. Business guys are bored. They want to be amazed. You could get steady work dazzling them with those Humelocke math degrees.”
I still couldn’t believe Chulo State hadn’t hired me. I abhorred the notion of getting a normal nine-to-five job. Maybe I should get back into music. Start a band.
I handed in my cap and gown, then took a walk around the campus with my family, showing them some of my favorite spots. For lunch we got yogurt and giant bowls of roast root vegetables at Mondokko, a student-type place near Ratvale. Ma enjoyed the chance to eat in somebody else’s restaurant. Just for today she’d left East-Vest in the hands of her brother and his wife, Zoltán and Zsuzsa Wong, who’d sent along their best wishes and a card containing a hundred dollar bill. Good old Uncle Zoltán. Ma said their son Gyula had to work at Membrain Products today. If he’d had been present, he probably would have tried to scam or strong-arm me out of my hundred bucks. That’s the kind of guy Gyula was: guiltlessly predatory.
After lunch, Bert and Margit took off in their car, while Ma and I walked down Telegraph and Shattuck towards the DART station. Ma was interested in all these shops that I’d passed a hundred times without noticing, places filled with imported fabrics and carved figurines. We went into about four of them, and finally she found just the pink-flowered silk pillow that she wanted, a plump round disk to put on her chair by the cash register at East-Vest.
“Hurry home soon,” Ma told me at the station. “You’re all done in Humelocke now. You did a good job, and you can party, but don’t do anything reckless. Mongol rabbit when you get home.” Her little restaurant’s specialty and my favorite. Ma used organically raised rabbits from Marin County and had added Hungarian variations to a traditional Chinese recipe.
By the time I got up to the Egyptian Theater, the undergrad commencement ceremony was over. Worming through the hubbub, I caught up with Alma and the Ziffs by the main entrance as planned. It was just her parents with her. Seemingly her aging surf-dregger brother Pete hadn’t made it, which was fine with me.
“This is my friend Bela,” said Alma. “And these are my parents Gary and Sarah. Bela and Paul have been letting me live in their apartment. I told you about Paul.”
“Yo,” said Gary Ziff. He had long curly hair hanging down like a welcome mat, with a bald spot on top. He sported a walrus mustache and a Hawaiian shirt. I made him for a parrot head. Sure enough he lit up a joint, right there on the street.
“Gary," said Alma. She looked very cute in her yellow graduation robe and three-cornered mortar-board, which set off her dark eyes and intense features.
“Hey, we're in Humelocke,” said Gary. “This is a party town. I used to come up here in high-school and freakin’ run wild. Want a hit, Bela?”
I waved him off. I was feeling buzzed enough from the wine, the emotions, and the weeks of overmathing.
“I’ll shotgun you,” said Gary, rounding his lips and blowing a stream of smoke my way. “It’s my special Ziff-zone mix. I put termite powder in it.” I accidentally caught a pungent whiff and felt instantly dizzy. “I’m an exterminator,” added Gary.
“Make him stop, Sarah,” said Alma.
Sarah Ziff was a stocky woman with a marcelled perm, her hair black with gray at the roots. She had a sweet doughy face behind her pointy cat’s-eye shades, and earrings shaped like fish. Hearing Alma’s distress, her mouth formed a fierce expression.
“Don’t. Ruin. The day,” she said to Gary, drawing back her lips to reveal stained teeth. She clamped her hand onto his shoulder and gave him a shake with each word.
“Whoah,” said Gary. He took a few steps back, did one more toke, then pinched out his joint and dropped the roach in his pocket. “Bring the band down behind me, boys,” he said, flicking an imaginary microphone cord. What a guy.
“I think it’s time to feed him," said Sarah, folding her expression into sweetness again.
“Is the Triple Rock Brewery still on Shattuck?” asked Gary. "They’ve got killer nachos.”
“That’s a wonderful idea,” said Alma. “You guys go there and fill up. Order without me. I’ll be there in, like, forty minutes. I have to change, and finalize my packing—and it’ll be easier without you hovering.”
“We are taking your stuff back to Cruz, right?” said Gary. “I spent the last three days emptying out the van. You won’t believe some of the things I found. Dick Chandler’s reflecting telescope that he’s been asking me about. I’d totally spaced on that. I borrowed it for our trip to Death Valley.” He held his finger out like a gun and mimed shooting himself in the head.
“When he was looking for UFOs,” added Sarah. “Never a dull moment around the Ziff household, Bela. I heard you got your doctorate today? Congratulations.”
“My van’s right outside Ratvale if you want to start carrying some boxes down for her,” Gary told me. “We were late, but I got a great space.”
“Come to think of it,” said Alma, “why don’t you guys just come back to Bela’s apartment and meet me there after you eat? I’m really not that hungry.”
The Ziffs angled off towards the brewery, sharing Gary’s roach as they walked. Alma and I headed for Ratvale. Everywhere students were floating along in their red and yellow robes. Like butterflies on a field of flowers.
“I can’t believe you’re expecting me to go back and live with them,” said Alma, apropos of her parents. “Gary, Sarah, and Pete? I’d rather die.”
“Maybe we can both move into the city,” I said. “Depending what kinds of jobs we get. I didn’t tell you there’s a slight chance I could renew my Ratvale lease for a month. If I get some money.”
“You shoul
d have told me that earlier, Bela,” said Alma, her voice rising to a shrill note on my name. She was very tense. “Instead of saying you’re going to live with your mother? In San Jose? Living with your parents is like a comic where time starts running backwards because Bizarro Superman flies around the equator a bunch of times the wrong way. And now you tell me maybe you’ll stay in Humelocke after all? Like I wanted to all along!”
I was getting a little tired of Alma’s dramatics. I loved her, yes, but come on. I needed to kick back for awhile. No way was I up for offering her guaranteed support.
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen,” I said. "Just accept that. Why not hang here with me and find out? I know that graduations are hard. Your relatives think it’s a big happy day, but it isn’t happy at all. It’s like dying. And now we’re going into another world.”
“Thanks so much for that cheery thought, Bela.” She was really in a state. “You’re so right. I am going into another world.”
“Even if I can’t renew here, you can come sleep over at my house in San Jose,” I said. “Ma likes you. Or maybe we’ll go camping.”
“As if.” When we were half a block from Ratvale, Alma stopped by a battered old white Rotgenick panel truck with a ticket on the windshield. “Look what my brain-dead father did.” The truck was parked next to a fire hydrant with a paper sack over the hydrant.
“The Ziff family vehicle?” I said, unable to suppress a grin. Somewhere along the line, Gary had glued fake plastic grass to the truck’s roof—Bogoturf.
“As if the cops weren’t going to notice that the curb’s painted red,” continued Alma. “As if they don’t see the hydrant there every single day. Gary’s going to be talking about this ticket for weeks.” She was laughing and, I suddenly realized, crying at the same time.
“There’s Paul’s van,” I said, to change the subject. Paul’s brand new camper van was parked a few spaces ahead, a high-tech, curvy, low-emission machine, gleaming in the sun. It even had a mattress in back. “Gotta hand it to the boy. He’s got it together.”
“Yes,” said Alma. “He does. Not like the rest of you.”
I was sensing something in the air. And when we went up to the apartment I finally got the picture. Paul was sitting there with a bunch of yellow roses.
“Congratulations, Alma,” he said hugging her.
“Oh, Paul,” she said, kissing him on the mouth.
Paul broke the clinch, embarrassed. “She’s coming with me, Bela. We’ve been talking about it.”
“I’m sorry,” Alma told me. “I do still care for you. More than you know. But—”
“I already put your boxes in my truck,” Paul said to Alma. “I figure the sooner we leave, the better.”
“Wait,” I said.
“Let’s just do it,” said Paul. “I feel sick about this too. You’re still my best friend. Come see us after things settle down.”
“I’ll miss you, Bela,” said Alma.
I felt a cramp in my stomach, a gag in my throat. I’d had too much wine and food, and that whiff of Ziff-zone hadn’t helped either. I ran into the bathroom and threw up. And when I got done, Paul and Alma were gone.
I went down to the corner store and bought some nonfilter cigarettes. Self-destruction mode. I sat in my room by my sunny window, smoking and retching a little from the smoke.
I was thinking about Paul’s messiness, his self-absorption, his awkward walk, his discordant voice, the ugly rash on his neck. Alma wanted that? I could almost hate Paul—but not Alma. It was, after all, thanks in part to my own ineptness that she had to choose between living with Paul or with her groover parents—at least until she found her own job. Poor Alma. She’d said it was hard to leave me. I’d work to get her back.
A torrent of Alma images was rushing through my mind. The way she craned her neck to look at something. The smell of her cheek. Her dimple. The way she pushed back her hair. Alma naked. Alma laughing. On and on.
Paul had stolen my one true love, and he had the nerve to say I was still his best friend? How pathetically naive he was, how spoiled by good fortune.
I continued brooding, watching the smoke, with the sun and leaf-shadows playing across my face. The chaotic flickers were hitting me with an almost psychedelic intensity. I was in a very weird state of mind. The wine and the Ziff-zone had worn off, but I was feeling stranger and stranger. I had this odd sense of an impending visitation, of beings on their way to give me a message. Angels in America? I wondered if I was fully losing it.
I took my electric guitar out of its case, plugged it into my speaker-amp and started playing riffs. It was a flashy chromed model, acquired secondhand along with some amps and mikes during my E To The I Pi days. My hands were shaking. Alma, Alma, Alma. Life was unbearable. Think about math, Bela. Music and math can calm you down.
As I tuned my guitar, it struck me that my instrument’s sounds could perhaps take on the same morphonic structure as my love triangle with Alma and Paul. To begin with, I imagined three mirror-bright mind dishes reflecting the elusive fish of love like a kaleidoscopic hall of mirrors.
I began making it real, using my silver guitar to code my thoughts and feelings into electrical signals that went to the speaker-amp. The circuitry munged the wave forms, decomposing, fuzzing, shifting, and remixing them—a computation whose result was sounds. And the room’s acoustics added a second stage to the computation. The guitar tones reverberated and beat against each other in the chunks and crannies of negative space surrounding my room’s furniture and me.
By way of expressing myself the more, I moved around as I played, letting the speaker’s vibrations affect the strings of my guitar, feeding the signals through multiple cycles of acoustic computation. And all the while my ears were decoding my gnarly guitar noise into thoughts and feelings.
Codec. Brain states, finger twitches, electric signals, air pressures, eardrums, brain states.
Codec. Thoughts —> sounds —> thoughts.
I collapsed the concepts more and more, stripping away the externals, glimpsing the mathy core. It was like staring into the sun. The more I understood, the more certain I became that strange visitors were on their way. It was as if their arrival were sending a ripple back through time, a reversal of cause and effect. I was approaching a solution to the codec problem because they were about to arrive. Did that mean I’d forget the answer after they left? And who were they really? I wiggled my guitar neck, riding the feedback like a witch on her broom.
I thought of the aura that epileptics experience before a fit. Perhaps I was on the brink of seizure? But I kept on playing my guitar, kept on thinking.
Thinking about Alma. Working intuitively, not quite knowing how I did it, I really did find a way to codec the love triangle into sound. The noisy room computed; I listened to what emerged. The grungy metal buzz was telling me what to do. Tweak this, tweak that, and deedle-yawng-skreek I suddenly knew how to win her back. I had to become famous by starting a rock band. And somehow Paul should sleep with another woman and have Alma find out. Aha.
I looked in the mirror on the wall above my dresser—grinning with an open mouth, hungry for the next rush. In the mirror’s recesses, I saw the image of my open window and the reflected tiny view of Haste Street with the eternal Humelocke freaks truckin’ on down the line. I noticed a couple of characters with heads vaguely like the buds on a fractal Mandelbrot set. They’d come to a stop across the street; they were staring at Ratvale. I had a premonition that they were here for me. Not wanting to face them yet, I peered deeper into the mirror’s dark glass. The two figures across the street had waving antennae and feelers; they were humanoid cockroaches standing on two legs, one male and one female.
I turned towards the window now, oddly calm, rocking my guitar, fire-hosing feedback from my amp. I couldn’t see the cockroach people through the window, although, glancing down, I could see them as reflections in my guitar, warped and breaking up across the shiny curved surfaces.
Staring through the mirror at them I formed the impression that the aliens were weird but cozy, like awkward chatty mathematicians in thick sunglasses—but those weren’t glasses, those were bulging, dark-green faceted eyes. Bug eyes. The aliens’ mouths were humanoid, with thin green lips and yellow teeth like corn kernels. Each of them had two legs and four arms, the limbs purple and muscular with one joint too many. Comfortingly, they had feet and hands.
Their bellies were banded with horizontal stripes of tough- looking elastic yellow tissue, and their gently domed backs were an iridescent shade of mauve. On their heads they wore those whiplike antennae I’d noticed, and writhing purple-green feelers in place of hair.
Was I safe? A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed that, at least so far as I could see, the aliens weren’t physically in the real room with the real me. This despite the fact that, within the looking-glass world, they were right behind mirror-me, close enough to touch my mirror-shoulder. A cockroach man and a cockroach lady.
And now, just like a mathematician would, the guy cockroach held up a scrap of—paper? It had symbols and diagrams on it, and it was better than paper, it was animated. The lines and shadings were moving through a cycle of a five steps, repeating them over and over so that I could better understand.
And that was not all. The woman cockroach was beaming green rays out of her eyes, rays that drilled through the mirror- glass and played across my forehead, no doubt penetrating into the tissues of my brain. But, perhaps due to the rays’ influence, I wasn’t scared. And soon I knew the solution to the generalized codec problem for a drumhead-type paracomputer, perhaps the same solution that Haut had claimed he’d learned from the cone shells. Aha.