by Rudy Rucker
The first person I contacted was an old guy calling himself Johnny Nonesuch. I used my wristphone for the contact, and I saw Johnny’s face floating before me. He was a weathered Louisville qrude with streaked, shoulder-length hair. He wore a T-shirt with a picture of a skinny Tunisian cactus with glistening purple axelerate buds.
“Y’all calling from Junko?” he asked, knowing her name from the ad.
“Yeah. You want your qwet now?”
“What does it do? The ad showed a roaring dinosaur and it said I’d get wisdom, power, and love. Thass nice.” Johnny Nonesuch ran his hand over his T-shirt. “Far as it goes. But will qwet get me high? Some dry times lately.”
“Best high ever,” I said. “Hold still and calm your mind. Qwet’s coming in.”
I let my teep flow out along the web path to Johnny Nonesuch. Even though he wasn’t actively a teeper yet, I could feel the pulse of his personal vibes, steadily alternating between robotic mode and cosmic mode. I came in on a cosmic peak and hit him with the Joey twistor.
It wasn’t an entirely pleasant feeling. Like Junko had said, sending out the qwet-teep pattern gave me a fleeting sense of being paralyzed. At anyone’s mercy. Like a surgeon who falls under the sway of his own anaesthetic.
Johnny Nonesuch was paralyzed for a moment there himself. We were as close as lovers. But then we bounced apart. Johnny Nonesuch was qwet and feeling the power. He teeped his gratitude and we were done.
The next volunteer was an intense young woman named Laraine Dunkle.
“I saw the ad,” she told me. “I want love. My men are always skanking away. Even when I treat them good.”
“I’ll give you the power of telepathy,” I said. “And you can pass the power to them. And your souls will be in harmony.”
Same as before, I shoved the Joey twistor into the new user’s head. The mental quantum Mobius strip did its thing, and Laraine was qwet.
This accomplished, I used the wristphone to communicate a concrete fact. “Hang onto that pattern I sent you. And message it to the men you want to get close to.”
Laraine answered with a teep-pulse of exultation. Like a whoop on graduation day.
Next came Jim Cheeks, a bristly, muscular guy.
“I’m a nurb housing contractor,” he told me. “Getting these big old seeds to sprout the right way. Sometimes biomodding them before we start. And listening to the customers bitch, always. I been using a biomodder wand on the nurbs, but I think your ad said this qwet stuff will give me a better way?”
“Teep programming,” I said. “A sensual, emotive path. So the nurbs understand what you dream and feel.”
“Great day in the morning,” said Cheeks.
Zip zap—another satisfied qwet user was born.
Carlo was the first to hit a bad one. A little ironic, given that Carlo wasn’t at all enthused about our recruitment campaign. When Carlo installed qwet onto this one particular user, the guy surged across their teep link and overwrote Carlo’s mind.
Carlo let out a wild scream, his voice high and thin.
“I owe a blood oblation to the Lord!” he cried, looking wild-eyed around the room. We dropped whatever we were doing and backed away. Carlo was possessed by the soul of a psychotic hillbilly
“Carlo, Carlo, Carlo!” I yelled, wanting to invoke the restore routine like Junko had said. But Carlo didn’t properly hear me. He grabbed the hatchet by the fireplace, the one I’d been using to split wood.
“I wonder if maybe Junko should have implemented that dead-man’s switch,” said Dad, all poker-faced and sarcastic. He and Weezie clambered over the longest couch, getting it between them and Carlo.
Kenny sicced three of the little flying jellyfish on Carlo. They plastered themselves to his face, covering his eyes, nose and his mouth. Carlo was still waving the hatchet, but a minute later he was out of steam. He dropped the hatchet and began clawing at the jellyfish on his face. He couldn’t breathe.
“Carlo, Carlo, Carlo,” screamed Kenny at the top of his lungs, his mouth only a couple of inches from our possessed friend’s ear. The restore routine kicked in.
Carlo thrashed his arms as if in the throes of a seizure. Their job done, the three jellyfish peeled themselves off and floated away. Carlo made a sizzling sound in the back of his throat. I almost imagined I could see a sinuous thread of vapor drifting from his mouth—the departure of an evil spirit.
“What a burn,” croaked Carlo, slowly looking around the room. “I was Vaughan Henry from the Shively part of town.” He looked down at the hatchet by his foot. “What’s this doing here? Ah yes. Sorry, guys.”
“Time for a break,” said Reba. “Food, coffee, like that.”
“Color me gone,” said Carlo. “Tender my resignation.” He and Reba headed for to the kitchen, with Dad and Weezie in their wake.
“Keep at it,” Junko urged Joey, Loulou, Kenny, Kristo and me. “We need momentum. I promised free qwet in my ad. And we absolutely have to qwet all the local cops and DoG staffers—whether they like it or not.”
“We’ve only done sixty-seven people so far,” protested Joey. “And I’m seeing twelve hundred on your list. Twelve hundred just from Louisville. And the list is growing. I ain’t gonna sit here for weeks and months bein’ no frikkin’ call wallah. And every half hour somebody comes after me with that goddamn hatchet.”
“We can store the hatchet outside,” said Junko.
“Feeble,” said Kenny.
But Joey did take the hatchet outside, with Skungy the rat riding on his shoulder. Looking out the window, I saw Joey standing in the rain talking to the rat, making gestures. Joey was in a weird mood. He raised his arm and threw the hatchet across the yard with all his strength.
The hatchet struck a beam on the side of the nurb chow shed and stayed there, quivering. Sissa and the twelve new Joey Moon rats ran out of the shed. Joey hunkered on the lawn, smiling and jabbering to his posse, very animated. The rain was running down his face and matting the rats’ fur. None of them seemed to care. They were into some very high-bandwidth communication. I tried to eavesdrop on their emotive teep, but I couldn’t decipher it. The rats and Joey had such similar minds that their teep was like an idiosyncratic private language.
“Don’t like this,” said Junko, standing by the window next to me. “That freak is up to something.”
“You’re not a freak?” said Kenny.
Joey and the rats came inside, dripping water on the parquet and the rugs.
“I’m saying we let these little guys be our wallahs,” said Joey. “Our telemarkeeters. My rat pack. I done coached them.”
“Did you teach them my trick for making a backup?” Junko asked. “No? Too time-consuming? Too complex?”
“Aw, hell, if a rat freaks, we just kill it,” put in Kenny. “Stomp it.”
Of course this launched Skungy into one of his paranoid, hysterical rants—just as Kenny had known it would. I calmed Skungy down. And now Junko taught the backup method to the rats. She liked teaching things. A born professor.
“These rats are all just copies of Joey Moon anyhow,” grumbled Kenny. “I honestly don’t see why losing one would be so bad.”
“Each of these rats has hours or even days of unique personal experience,” said Joey. “Each moment of each life is incalculably precious.”
“Each green leaf is sacred,” intoned Loulou, very sarcastic. “Every insect is god. This is why bug wallahs sweep the paths before me when I wander my temple garden in walking meditation.”
“Oh relax, you guys,” said Junko, wanting to quench the steady bickering. “I do think Joey’s had a good idea. We’ll let the rats do our calls.”
Just for a goof, I tore off a chunk of Jericho’s nurb-gel so I could sculpt a call center for the rats. Jericho roared and thrashed his tail but I managed to cool him out with chow and with promises to give him even more gel when the Roller elephruk arrived with his load.
Then I knelt on the floor and modeled a little oval conference tabl
e that dolls might have sat at. I made fourteen little chairs just the right size for our rats, with holes in the backs of the chairs so their tails could wave free. The rats took their seats, looking proud of themselves, their whiskers twitching with curiosity. To complete the setup, Joey overrode the nurb reproduction block on his wristphone, and coaxed it into spawning off fourteen mini-wristphones with screens the size of pinkie fingernails. Joey presented these to the excited rats, who zealously strapped them to their tiny arms.
“So cute!” said Loulou, finally seeing something she liked this morning. “Like the first day of school.”
“Thing is, I don’t dig rats,” said Kenny. “If I haven’t made that clear.” He and Kristo went to join the group chatting in the kitchen. This left Junko, Joey, Loulou and me to oversee our new call wallahs.
“Git on it, y’all!” Joey told the rats. “Do it like I told you.”
The rats began squeaking to their tiny wristphones in low tones.
Almost immediately Junko and I sensed something wrong. Rather than showing images of individual people, the rats’ squidskin screens were tiled into tiny dots.
“They’re calling multiple prospects in parallel?” asked Junko.
“Hell yeah,” said Joey. “I taught em to fork their processes. You not the only one knows how to be a cyberfreak, Junko.”
Uneasily we watched for another couple of minutes. The rats’ squeaks had risen to a frantic twitter.
“How can the clients even understand them?” Loulou asked.
“Don’t need no small talk,” said Joey. “No Mother may I. Rats call folks up and they’re qwet.”
“I’m really having trouble monitoring this,” said Junko, mentally fumbling around in her web space. “My list is—wait! The rats aren’t even using my list. And they’ve qwetted—are you crazy, Joey? Seven thousand people?”
Joey stared at us in silence, savoring our dismay. “You doin’ good,” he said, leaning over the rats’ table. The rats peered up at him, their eyes bead-bright and full of mischief.
“We’re cookin’ alright,” said Skungy. “Making a mark.”
“They’ve been systematically calling every single person in reach!” wailed Junko. “And—am I getting this right? They’ve been telling their converts to do the same?”
“What I told em,” said Joey, his expression defiant. “Joey Moon process art. The bi-ass chain-reaction avalanche you was jawin’ about.”
Even though it was way too late, Junko was finally having second thoughts. She yelled at the qwet rats and threatened to throw them into the fire. Skungy and Sissa bared their fangs and made Junko back away. Meanwhile the twelve younger rats fled outside. Of these, four hid themselves in the foundations of the nurb chow shack, two of them rode off on Kenny’s roadspider, two of them flapped away on Reba’s flydino, and four hopped aboard the floating jellyfish that were continually drifting away.
“Telepathic Rats Beam Mutation Rays From Sky,” announced Joey, peering out the window at the wobbly house jellies amid the clouds. “This shit is apocalyptic!”
With a final volley of defiant squeaks, Skungy and Sissa ran out to the chow shed as well. Junko, Joey, Loulou and I were the only ones left in the living room. The others were eating or upstairs—feckless, zonked, obliv. They’d lost interest in our game.
“With each transfer, the zone of contagion grows,” said Junko, her voice tight. “It’s going exponential. It’ll reach New York this afternoon. Thanks to you, Joey Moon.”
“You’re welcome,” said Joey.
Junko sighed. “Okay, deep down I wanted this to happen. I think even Gaven wanted it. But we wanted control.”
“Hell with control,” said Joey. “No such thing.”
“The crazy thing is this seems at all reasonable,” said Loulou, her voice slow and calm. “Being in cosmic mode for days on end is, like, the strongest drug trip you ever had. You get this deceptive sense of lucidity. As if you’re thinking more clearly and logically than ever before.”
“And I know I’m always right,” added Joey. “I’m the Lord of Rats.”
No, we weren’t lucid at all. We were slushed.
Junko had a temper tantrum around then. She jumped up and down on the little chairs and table that I’d crafted for the rats—smashing them to bits. The fragments of gel relaxed into sticky puddles. I scraped up the stuff and patted it onto Jericho’s belly, like applying plaster with a trowel. Jericho was glad, but not fully assuaged.
“It was mean to break the rats’ cute chairs,” I told Junko.
No answer. She was slumped silent in her easy chair now, her attention in the web.
Meanwhile Loulou and Joey were hugging each other on the maroon loveseat, possibly on the point of making love. Conceivably Loulou would ask me to join in. Don’t do it, Zad.
I went out into the drizzling rain, with Jericho tagging along. He was insistently talking about the extra nurb-gel I’d promised him from the upcoming delivery. He wanted to get fat and to spawn a baby whale.
As if on cue, a snuffling honk sounded. It was the elephruk, splashing up the Roller’s mossy driveway. The leathery gray nurb bore a glistening mound of gel, really quite a bit. Noticing me, the elephruk messaged her name: Darby. I’d seen her before. In the old days, she’d sometimes come to the Rollers to entertain us kids at Jane’s birthday parties.
Trumpeting a fanfare, Darby strode onto the lawn. She came to a halt in a great puddle, peering at me with her tawny gold eyes.
“Okay if I drop the load right here?” she asked. For an elephruk, her speaking voice was very clear. “I just now got qwetted by a rat on a flying jellyfish,” she added. She stretched out her trunk and softly felt my face. “You’re qwet, too. Have we met? You seem familiar.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The hayrides at Jane’s parties. Put the gel in the barn, would you? You can have some chow and dry off if you like.”
Darby had always been a comfortable presence. Her vibes were big and wise. Rocking from side to side, she ambled into the weathered wooden barn. It had stables and straw and wooden columns holding up the ancient metal roof. Darby sat back on her butt and tilted her back. The gel slid off like a giant slug. About fifteen tons.
“Awesome,” I said. “I’m an artist, you know. I’m planning to sculpt creatures from this stuff. Like this pet whale. Come here, Jericho. I’ll fatten you a little more.”
“You’re a genemodder,” said Darby.
“That’s right,” I said, amplifying Jericho’s curves. “I use qwet to figure out the genes for the shapes I want. Once I have a nurb’s body right, I program its mind. Are you glad to be qwet?”
“Too early to say.” The elephruk picked up a sheaf of hay with her trunk and swept it into her loose-lipped mouth. A moment later she spat it onto the hard dirt floor. “Old and dry. This place isn’t a real farm at all. I’ll eat some of that chow I carried here yesterday.”
“It’s in the shed,” I said, pointing. “Six qwet rats in there with it. Are you scared of rats?”
“You think I’m a screaming fat lady lifting her skirts?” said Darby. “I made friends with one of those rats when I brought the chow yesterday. Skungy. I can teep that he’s there now.” She lumbered to the shed, opened the door with a butt of her head, then dragged a laden pallet of chow into the barn. “This is more like it,” she said, grinding up the tobacco-smelling nuggets of feed with her great yellow teeth. “Stop hiding, Skungy.”
“Busted,” said Skungy, emerging from beneath one of the feed bags. “Hey, Darby. Glad you got qwet. We’re profound, baby. On a cosmic high.”
“Elephants are profound all the time,” said Darby. “Thanks to having big brains. No offense.”
“So I’m miniaturized,” said Skungy. “A mean and cringing rat. It’s good.” He turned his attention to me. “Some wild shit with that global qwet campaign, huh Zad? Has Junko calmed down?”
“She’s grimly viewing with alarm,” I said. “Joey was crazy to let you rats do the q
wetting. We’re in for a whole world full of scatter brained freaks.”
“Is that bad?” asked Skungy.
“Qwet’s got a cost,” I said. “All the Funhouse gang is snapping at each other today. It’s as if we’re all coming down, even though we’re still up. But the high doesn’t feel as awesome as it did yesterday.”
“What’s that thing floating over there?” asked Darby. She had her trunk stretched out like a pointing arm.
A lumpy sphere was hovering in one of the old stables. Drab brown, with a smell of horse liniment and decaying meat. The dirtbubble. Its pink mouth was open, ready for action. It drifted out of the stable, moving towards us. A breeze began to blow. Straws tumbled end-over-end across the pounded-earth floor.
“Look out!” I called, already backing away.
Skungy scrambled up Darby’s leg and onto the top of the elephruk’s head. The rat was like a naive tourist seeking a vantage point. He didn’t grasp what was coming. He assumed the elephruk and I could keep him safe.
“The dirtbubble wants to swallow us!” I yelled. My feet were slipping across the plank floor. I grabbed onto one of the free-standing wooden beams that supported the roof. The wind was like a hurricane; the air was full of dust. Everything happening too fast.
Skungy lost his footing atop the elephruk. Squealing a desperate curse, he went tumbling into the dirtbubble’s maw. Poky, dull-witted Jericho bounced across the floor in his wake. I was safe for the moment, plastered to lee side of the beam.
And now—oh my god—Darby fell into the ball, trunk first. Her stubby legs skidded across the dirt, she lifted into the air—and the gentle beast’s fat body disappeared trunk-first into the dirtbubble’s nightmarishly dilated mouth. All of Darby gone save for one leg. The leg wouldn’t fit.
The gale dropped. For a moment the grotesquely inflated dirtbubble wobbled and floundered above the ground, a brown balloon the size of a truck. Darby’s leg protruded from its mouth like the twitching butt of a cigar. With a crunch, the dirtbubble pinched the leg off, and it thudded to the floor. I could hear Darby’s frantic trumpeting from within.