Mad Professor

by Rudy Rucker

  The Boss_tx has finished his coffee and his doughnut. He motions to a sandpit next to the willow tree and says, “Let’s get this rolling and maybe Jenna will want try out the new volleyball court with you, Wag. That’ll be a treat, huh? We know how fascinated with her you are.”

  “I hate volleyball. Give me some fucking coffee. And if you think that–” I stop the beginning of a rant and assess the situation: I’m losing it. I’ve slept twenty minutes, Hella thinks I’m boning Jenna, Larva has probably shat all over my room, I have no idea if Jenna can be fixed, and Dogyears is down the tubes. “Coffee,” I repeat.

  The Boss_tx catches my gaze and says, “Relax, Wag.”

  “Relaxing makes me tense!” I scream. This is a running joke I have with my sister. The SS totally don’t realize I’m being funny.

  On some sort of silent cue from the Boss_tx, the Muscle_tx grabs my thumbs, pulls them behind my back, and mutters, “Welcome to Texas,” in my ear.

  At this moment, George Dubya walks out of the ranch house in a jogging suit, carrying a tray with more breakfast supplies. I feel a wave of affection for the man.

  “Pleased to see y’all up and at ’em,” says George. “We gonna fix my girl?” His we’re-all-working-together attitude calms the tense situation I’ve created. The Muscle_tx lets up.

  And now finally I get my breakfast. “I’ve got the agents organized and ready to go,” I say, mouth full. “Right here in my laptop. The Jennions.”

  Renshaw lifts a box up from under the table. It’s one of those Ricochet cell phone repeater antennas like you see on lampposts all over San Francisco! “This is the kind transmitter we’re particularly interested in learning to use,” he says. It’s like this whole thing’s been set up as a science experiment for the Clik. Poor Jenna.

  Now Brad weighs in. “I saw some druggie San Francisco–type colored patterns on Wag’s laptop in the house. I’m not sure he’s really made the program sufficiently Elephant-oriented.” What an ass kisser.

  “There’s nothing in there but Jenna,” I say. “And, if you want to know, I didn’t edit her words at all. If it works right, she’ll be the same as she used to be. Take it or leave it.”

  George’s face gets that inspirational, leader-of-the-nation glow. “That’s the way it should be. She’s fine the way she was.” He pats Jenna’s shoulder. “Would you like a doughnut, dear?”

  “OK.” She gobbles it in two bites.

  Meanwhile Renshaw jacks a special wireless card into my laptop and turns a switch on the repeater box. On my laptop screen, I drag the Jennion icon to the fresh icon for the wireless card, and now the repeater is beaming out Jennion code at 5.4 gigahertz. The microwaves go right through George, Renshaw, the SS guys, and me, but it’s digging into Jenna’s Justfolx-sensitized brain.

  Jenna freezes real still for about twenty seconds. Like a startled deer. And suddenly her face lights up, chubby and friendly, she’s like a regular person, yes, I’m meeting Jenna Bush at last.

  But then, crap, she opens her mouth and starts making a noise like fax machine or a 560 modem. She jumps up and runs over to the TV satellite dish on the lawn, spewing out that noise all the while. She stops by the antenna and rocks back and forth until her mouth is in the direct focus of the parabolic dish.

  “Is this part of the process?” asks Brad. Good show of out-of-the-box thinking, Brad!

  “She’s transmitting, dude.” I say. Jenna’s sending some kind of signal into the antenna and up into the satellites in the sky. The SS operatives look at me like they’re ready for the Vulcan nerve-pinch session again. “But, hey, don’t blame me!”

  Jenna finishes doing her thing, shuts her mouth, and walks back to the table.

  “Thanks, Wag,” she says . “You fixed me good.”

  “Jenna dear, is that you?” asks the president.

  “Yeah, Dad. I’m back. But now there’s a whole ’nother consciousness in me as well. Call her NuJenna. She’s from the stars.”

  Jenna’s expression changes. She’s looking at us with incredible wisdom in her eyes. Like the picture of Mahatma Gandhi I saw on an Apple billboard near my server hotel. “You and the Clik have done well, Renshaw,” she says in a high-pitched, mellow tone. “It was we who posted the Justfolx recipe.”

  George’s cell phone rings, and he picks it up for a brief conversation. His end goes like this.

  “They did?”

  “I see.”

  “We can fix that.”

  “We can’t fix that?”

  “I see.”

  “They will?”

  “We can’t fix that?”

  “I see.”

  He hangs up and runs his hands across his face.

  “Back to baseball for me,” he says with a crooked smile.

  “The Clik needs a period of chaos, Daddy,” says Jenna’s sweet voice. For the moment she’s the chubby college kid again. “Until the new order settles in. So Nujenna and I told everyone the truth about your administration, about the rigged election, about Cheney’s crimes, about Osama and the Fair Play for House of Saud committee. I like being so smart with NuJenna in me.” Jenna blushes when she says she likes being smart. And I get the feeling that shutting down the Elephant administration has made her feel just a little bit sorry for Dad.

  She switches back to NuJenna mode. “All your microwave telephone transmissions are watermarked by our personalities,” she intones. “Thanks to this proof of concept, we’ll be downloading into multiple exemplars quite soon. We’ll adopt your artificial life protocol wholesale, Wag.”

  “It’s an alien invasion!” I exclaim, filling in the blanks so George Bush won’t think I’m an evildoer. “Their personality patterns were in the air. They were watermarked into the those phone conversations that I used to reprogram your daughter’s brain.”

  “Clever Wag,” says NuJenna, favoring me with a serene smile. I have a feeling she’s able to read my mind. Is she going to investigate my body functions with a probe? “We come from the core of your Milky Way galaxy,” she continues. “Our world was lost to a spacequake thousands of years ago. Just before the moment of destruction we launched an ark.” She points up into the sky. “A ship carrying our culture’s most sacred artifacts: the encrypted and compressed personality waves of each and every one of our citizens. For millennia, the ship has wandered, seeking a world with a wetware race to host our software.”

  And now, yes, an endlessly tumbling polyhedron is descending down upon Dubya’s Crawford Ranch. “Behold,” says NuJenna. Jenna’s voice returns and she excitedly says, “Don’t worry, Daddy, I’ll be back in a month! I have to go to Humboldt County! We’re starting a colony!”

  The vehicle’s door opens, laying a great slab of light onto the lawn. There’s nothing to be seen inside but row upon row of crystals, set into the walls. Jenna holds her arms forward like a zombie, then stomps across the grass and into the UFO’s waiting maw. The hyperpolyhedron folds through itself and disappears.

  George glares at me. “Get him the hell outta here,” he tells the SS. “He’s screwed Jenna up worse than before. And chop up his goddamn machines with an ax.” And then he gets busy with his cell phone, trying to save the Elephant Party’s big gray ass.

  + + +

  Brad drops me off at the airport, and I fly economy to San Francisco. Back in cattle class where I belong. I’m cramped, but I sleep the whole flight.

  In the San Francisco terminal, a copper-helmeted Hella greets me with a big kiss and excited eyes. “Jenna visited us in her UFO! She stopped in our neighborhood to pick up the tweakers. Oh, Wag, I love you. The aliens are real happy you hacked together a way for them to download. Jenna promised an interview for your Prexy Twins site! I hope you didn’t try to wire brush her like you and Ben are always saying?”

  “Uhhh … I didn’t touch her.” I’m about six steps behind. “Why are you wearing a copper helmet?”

  “Rumbo said it was a good idea, in case the Justfolx drug gets into the water or the food.
The Clik put Justfolx in the tweakers’ meth, so they’re all hosting alien minds now. I have a helmet for you in the car.”

  On the drive home from the airport, sweet Hella fills me in on all that I’ve missed. Thanks to the news that Jenna and NuJenna released, the Elephants are ruined. It’s like the Berlin Wall falling, like the Russians getting rid of the Communists. All at once it’s finally time. On the alien front, Jenna is on TV in her NuJenna mode, recruiting human volunteers to share their brains with aliens. The aliens want clean new helpers, not just the tweakers they already have. “Humans only use ten percent of their brains, share your head with an alien and live like a king in Humboldt County!”

  Pulling up to the Dogyears headquarters, Ben greets me and says, “Don’t worry Wag, The Mummy Bum Cult has already pulled your data back out of the web watermarks. Your ISP is up on my boxes and I even patched some old security holes you had. Bye.”

  Ben is never one for face-to-face conversation. I’ll get the FoneFoon scoop from him on chat later. Now it’s time to go hang out on the roof with Hella. With our helmets, we’re safe from alien takeover. Maybe Jenna will come give us a tour of the UFO. Maybe I can dose Larva with Justfolx and have a pet alien dog. Maybe I can work on the peer-to-peer telepathy project. Maybe Hella and I can just look at the sky together and talk about aliens.

  The Clik lives, Dogyears lives, the aliens live, Hella lives, and Larva needs some kibble. We’re all indestructible.

  THE USE OF THE ELLIPSE

  THE CATALOG THE METER

  & THE VIBRATING PLANE

  and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane

  —Allen Ginsberg, Howl

  “Damn this is good crack. How come nobody ever writes about how good crack is?”

  “You don’t smoke crack, old fool. That’s a gum-stimulator you’re holding, not a crack pipe.”

  “I’m gonna tell you a crack story anyhow. Something that happened to me today, Sunday, January something, in the year Y-fuckin’-two-K-plus-two. I’m sitting on a doorstep next to a crackhead woman at the Powell and Market cable car stop. Me there in my Saks corduroys and my shiny leather jacket, waiting for the cable car. Gray-haired and wearing a beret. It’s a cold day and this stone doorstep is the only spot with sun. I’m sitting there in the sun waiting for my wife to come out of Nordstrom’s so we can ride back to North Beach. A festive lark. We’re up in SF for the weekend.”

  “Who cares?”

  “Let me tell my story. You’ll care soon enough. There’s this hobbling alky guy talking to the crackhead woman, a guy who moves like a broken toy, maybe he has an artificial leg. He’s being real gentle with the woman. Commiserating with her. He’s like, ‘It’s Sunday, sweetheart. I know that’s hard to believe. I’ve lost a few days that way myself.’ There’s this admirable sense of warmth coming off him even though he’s a guy I’d skirt around on the sidewalk. He’s got this camaraderie going out to the woman. She’s black, maybe thirty years old, sturdy-looking, maybe only a year or two into her addiction. I’m wishing she could detox and get in a program.”

  “Were you using your gum-stimulator?”

  “Naw, man, I was high on life. Taking things in. Experiencing the now. And standing right in front of me were two homeboys with low pants–they’re as low as I’ve ever seen. The waists are literally at their knees. They could shit or piss without taking those pants off. The pant legs are like eighteen inches long. It’s as if they were midgets. But they’re not midgets, they’re big strong guys. I’d almost like to ask them how the pants stay up; they have long coats, and I can’t quite see if there’s suspenders as well as belts. But I’m not gonna say anything. This spot I’m sitting on could be viewed as their turf, and they’re being kind enough to ignore me. There’s a looped line of tourists waiting for their turn to get on the Powell-Hyde cable car, and then there’s the homies, and then there’s the sunny stone stoop with me and the crackhead woman. I’m enjoying the sun. An old homeless woman is playing Christmas carols on a keyboard on her lap, even though there’s no sound from the keyboard and Christmas is long gone. Maybe it’s just a piece of cardboard to give her confidence. She’s singing the songs real loud and getting some money from the tourists. It’s peaceful there in the sun. I’m zoned out. My wife’s still not coming for a while.”

  “You’re high on life.”

  “It’s the best, man. No rush to do anything. No need to score. A motion catches my eye, and I see that one of the homeboys is manipulating a green nylon fanny pack that’s on the sidewalk. He’s moving it around with this short cane he’s got. A cane like to match the length of his pants, maybe two feet long. I don’t know how he got hold of the fanny pack. I assume it came off one of the tourists. The homies are like salmon fisherman standing by a salmon ladder, and this is a fish they’ve pulled out. The other fish aren’t noticing though; they’re calm as ever, inching forward in the line and getting on the streetcars. Evidently the green nylon fanny pack has already been filleted, because the homie with the cane passes it over to the crackhead woman. She’s got nothing, so he’s giving her something. That flash of camaraderie again. The woman fumbles around the fanny pack for a while, getting it open, feeling inside it with her wooden fingers. I don’t watch her opening it very closely. It’s just sad how wasted she is. For sure she’s forgotten about it being Sunday already. She’s losing days at a time, maybe even weeks.”

  “Is anything gonna happen in this story?”

  “Exactly now is when it gets surreal. I’m looking across the street at Nordstrom’s to see if my wife is coming, and then I hear this kind of xylophone chord next to me. And the crackhead woman is sitting up, and she’s pulling all this stuff out of the fanny pack. It’s like four circus clowns coming out of a suitcase. Big cartoony shapes with little arms and legs. There’s an ellipse, a catalog, a meter, and a vibrating plane. They’re all doing stuff to the crackhead woman.”

  “How do you mean—an ellipse, a catalog, a meter, and a vibrating plane?”

  “They’re like Robert Williams cartoon characters; each of them with little black legs with puffy white shoes and black stick-arms with white gloves for hands, each of these guys about three feet tall. They’re humanoid enough to be like a woman, a man, a man, and a woman. The ellipse herself is a thick black outline like the frame of an oval mirror, higher than she is wide. She has tiny little brown eyes up near the top, and a thin mouth near the bottom. Inside the ellipse is nothing—well, not exactly nothing, something like an energy field. Whenever the ellipse is at the correct angle so that I can look through her, I see that part of the world in black and white. Like a diagram in a physics book, with everything cleaned up and simplified. The ellipse is a window to reality’s blueprint. Now, the ellipse does a detox on the crackhead woman right away. Yep, as soon as the ellipse comes out of the fanny pack, she jumps at the crackhead woman and pushes herself over the woman’s head. The ellipse wriggles her way all down the woman, passing over the woman like a hoop of flame passing over a leaping tiger. That’s the thing that gets the woman clean and sober right off the bat. It’s like she’s been unwrapped from inside of dirty translucent plastic. She’s out from inside of her body bag. Her eyes are alive again, her face is awake.”

  “The mighty ellipse. What about the other three?”

  “The catalog is a fat, old, cloth-bound book, like a Library of Congress catalog volume. His cover is brown, and he has an eye and an arm on both the front cover and on the back cover. His shiny brown eyes notice me watching. But mainly he’s focused on the woman he’s helping. What he does, he holds the edges of his cover and spreads them open like a flasher, showing his store of information to the woman. She starts giggling as she looks at the flapping pages of the catalog. Not a rheumy giggle, but a light, clear giggle. Just about then I glance around to see if anyone else is seeing what I’m seeing. But, no, they aren’t. In fact everyone ar
ound me has stopped moving. All the world is temporarily silent and frozen: the homies, the tourists, the streetcars, the cars on Market Street. Nothing is moving but me, the crackhead woman, the ellipse, the catalog, the meter, and the vibrating plane. I’m witnessing a secret miracle.”

  “You’re living right, man. Tell me more about the catalog. What was the woman seeing inside?”

  “Well, I scoot a little closer to her so I can see too. Each page of the catalog is a picture, a picture of the things she’s thought and seen and done. I can see her younger self inside the pictures. She’s eating barbeque, going to movies, laughing with her friends. It’s like a catalog of her life. All the bad stuff is in there too, of course: the rip-offs, the beatings, the hospitals, and the jails. And when I look closer I can see that the pictures themselves are made up of smaller pictures. Like mosaics. And the little pictures are made of even smaller pictures etcetera. There’s this branching fractal catalog thing happening. The pictures in the pictures show other people doing the same kinds of things as the woman. I’m in there too. Everyone’s good things and bad things are inside of everyone else’s catalog.”

  “Like we’re all the same.”

  “You got it. Now, the meter is the next one out. The meter, he’s like a big voltmeter. He’s got a black dial face with a red needle swinging back and forth and two brown-and-white eyes set into the dial. He reaches his hands out and touches the sides of the woman’s head, and his needle goes swaying back and forth with her feelings. The woman is staring at the needle and watching how her thoughts move her feelings up and down. At first the needle is just slamming back and forth, but in a minute it calms down to where it’s mostly vibrating nice and even in the middle. She’s still watching the catalog, you dig, and now and then she sees something that makes the needle jump. The woman likes it when the needle jumps, and she likes it when it calms down afterward. She’s practicing with this for a long time, but there’s no rush because the world’s time has stopped for us. It’s like the ellipse has detoxed her, the catalog has shown her about her past, and the meter is telling her about peace of mind.”