by Rudy Rucker
Tuesday, Susan Poker got me a contract with Fox for “seven figures,” as she happily put it. Riscky was with her when she told me. He was really excited about his Sue’s deal. Studly was to be equipped with fresh chips and given a starring role. It almost felt like Riscky had made this whole adventure happen to me just so Susan Poker would have a miniseries to sell. But that was a paranoid thought, and I was sick of being paranoid.
While they were talking to me, Riscky started hinting around that he might want to try and find a hacker to help him develop some miniature flying robots with “certain new technology I’ve got ahold of,” meaning the winged plastic ants. “Not me,” I told him. “No more ants for me.”
On Wednesday, Stu filed a seven-figure lawsuit against GoMotion for having framed me. Given Kay Coolidge’s promise not to pull any more dirty tricks on me, it seemed like we had a chance of winning. Stu lined up two other lawyers to help him, all of them working on a contingency basis.
On Thursday, Otto Gyorgyi phoned to offer me my job back at West West, and I had the joy of telling him to get fucked, royally. I still had most of the eighty thousand I’d gotten from Roger, and before long the miniseries bucks would be rolling in. I didn’t need West West’s money. And—“Great Work” or no, I was as sick of robots as I was of ants. The Veep and the Adze robots were out in the world and doing fine. A NASA scientist named Cobb Anderson was even talking about sending a set of self-reproducing robots to the moon—just as Roger had wanted. I was glad to hear it, but I’d done enough for the robots.
The summer wore on happily. Carol dropped Hiroshi and got another boyfriend, none other than Stu Koblenz. My lawyer. I fired him, which derailed both my lawsuit and the slow-moving process of Carol’s and my divorce. Just as well. My mother always said lawsuits were tacky. And I was less and less sure about that divorce. I kept seeing a lot of Sorrel, Tom, and Ida. They were proud of how much they’d helped me in my battle with the ants.
Gretchen sometimes talked about her and me getting a place together, but I’d grown attached to the freedom and privacy of my rented aerie at Queue’s. Plus, as long as I wasn’t actually living with Gretchen, I could still occasionally date other women, possibly even Carol. But not Nga Vo. During the trial I’d come to my senses and realized that dating a girl that age was too weird.
In August, Tom, and I went backpacking in Yosemite, which was wonderful. I had kind of a vision in Yosemite, a moment of enlightenment, just like in the old days. I’d always realized that animals and plants and the web of nature are as alive and cosmically conscious as me. But I’d never before realized that rocks are alive.
The rocks in Yosemite are what’s really unusual about the place—the rocks are plutonic granite, which has square or parallelopiped-shaped chunks of quartz in it. Looking at them in my moment of enlightenment, I could see that, yes, even rocks are alive.
So who needs smart machines? Consciousness is everywhere, but if you’re a person, people are what matter.
When I got back from Yosemite, I gave Carol a call. She was glad to talk to me. And before I knew it we were living together again.
© 1994, 2002 by Rudy Rucker
Published in the United States by:
Four Walls Eight Windows
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First Four Walls Eight Windows printing January 2003.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Rucker, Rudy v. B. (Rudy von Bitter), 1946—
The hacker and the ants: Version 2.0 / Rudy Rucker
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-0-786-75034-4
I. Title
PS3568.U298H33 2002
93-43500
813’:54—dc20
CIP