The Big Aha

by Rudy Rucker

  “Won’t happen,” shouted Carlo, who’d appeared at Reba’s side, joining our huddle amid the dancing throng. “I don’t foresee a dogpile fuckathon at all.”

  “The problem is empathy,” I said, fitting my voice into the spaces between the Bag Stagger sounds. “Cosmic empathy gets in your way. If you want to get orgiastic with strangers, you need to forget that they have emotions and minds.”

  “Zad’s holding forth on his vast sexual experience?” yelled Loulou, joining us as well. She was wearing the same tired pants and blouse she’d had on this morning.

  “If you mock Zad, I’ll throw you out,” said SubZad, momentarily wearing his knobbly robotic look—all corners and edges.

  “Oh, great,” cried Loulou, not at all intimidated. “Zad’s made himself an art-school bodyguard nurb. Hey, before I forget, I just realized something about this ballroom. I saw a copy of it—up in Fairyland. When I traveled through the oddball? The other end of the oddball was a big pearl sitting inside a giant clam right in the corner of this exact room. Anyway, this band is great, aren’t they? Skeezix is so qrude.”

  Reba was coldly looking Loulou up and down. “You don’t have any nice party clothes at all?”

  “I don’t think Reba has empathy,” said SubZad.

  “Oh yes, she does,” said Carlo. “You’re Zad’s copy, huh? Reba has empathy, but it’s S&M empathy. She savors people’s pain while she’s being mean to them, you wave? And I’m her boyfriend, god help me.”

  “Qwet’s blanketed the world,” announced Junko, standing at the edge of our little group. “I just checked the web. Europe, Asia, Africa, South America—all covered. Those rats and flydinos went wild.” Junko was triumphant, terrified, full of wonder. “No sign of a wormhole invasion yet. Fingers crossed. Maybe everything’s wonderful.”

  “Junko’s been worrying we’re all going to die,” put in Reba. “That’s why she dipped all the way down to Loulou this afternoon. Like she had nothing left to lose.”

  Bicker, bicker, bicker.

  All around me, people were writhing to the dissonant, jigsawed bleats of the Bag Stagger sound. Over by the wall, two people actually were preparing to screw—a fez-capped man on all fours above a supine woman whose limbs were coated with a nurbskin of gold.

  Where the hell was Jane anyway? I stepped onto the terrace, found a spot under an awning and called Jane on my wristphone once more. This time she answered.

  “On our way!” she sang. She was wearing makeup and a silky green party dress. But something was wrong on her left cheek.

  “Is that a black eye?” I demanded.

  “I walked into a door,” said Jane, too quickly. “Pre-party pump-priming. We’ll be there in ten mins.”

  Half an hour later, Jane, Gaven and Whit came walking across the Rollers’ back lawn, their airy nurb umbrellas faintly aglow and with raindrops springing off the bells in tiny bursts of spray. Whit and Gaven looked trim and confident, assholes that they were.

  The pale purple oddball and the dull brown dirtbubble were in the air behind the trio, repeatedly darting at each other, like birds competing for a perch. The scene looked choppy and cinematic—thanks to Mr. Normal doing his strobe routine by the barn.

  “Jane,” I called, starting across the lawn. “Are you all right? Did these guys hurt you?” Her only answer was a stiff wave of her hand.

  I hurried to her and got under her umbrella. She really did have a black eye. And her vibes—she wasn’t like the Jane I knew.

  “Back off,” she said in Gaven’s voice. “I’m driving this car.”

  For a wild instant I hoped Jane was kidding me. But no, Gaven had overwritten her. He’d used his goddamned platypus.

  “Want a quickie?” said Jane, switching to a falsetto. “I’m ready. I just did Whit while Gaven watched.”

  Gaven and Whit began laughing like hyenas. They smelled like bourbon, even in the open air. I couldn’t let myself explode. I had to take this one step at a time. Cosmic mode, Zad. I focused on the party noise from the house, on the hiss and ping of the rain, on the festive glow of a floating jellyfish.

  “This way,” I said, steering Jane, Gaven and Whit to the awning on the terrace. “We have to talk.”

  Jane stood still, quietly regarding me. I felt like I could see her real self behind the callow, geeky expression that dominated her face.

  Overhead, the dirtbubble ball made a razzing noise. A smell of sewage and gasoline. Maybe it was gearing up to eat someone. But the oddball kept nudging it, distracting it, keeping it from settling down. As if it wanted the dirtbubble to go somewhere else.

  “Panic time coming,” said Whit, staring at me, his face blank and insolent. “You should work with us, Zad. You’ve got some skills. Maybe we can get Jane’s personality back for you. Unless you prefer her like this. I do.”

  Instead of answering, I leaned in close to Jane and said her name three times. “Jane, Jane, Jane.” Whit didn’t know about our new restore routine. I only hoped it would work.

  And, thank you dear world, it did. Jane smiled at me, shaking out her bright gold hair. Whit started to protest, but she cut him short.

  “Fuck you!” she said, clawing his face, gouging scratches with her nails. And then she backhanded Gaven with a return swing, having clenched her fingers into a fist. “Jerk!” The men were stunned, off-balance, half-drunk.

  “I can’t stand seeing them,” Jane told me, talking fast. “I’m going inside. Get rid of them. Then come to me. I’ve missed you.” And with that, she was across the terrace and heading through the ballroom door. The oddball followed her.

  So now it was me against Gaven and Whit. I messaged the Funhouse crew for support, but, at least for now, they were into their own trips. The party was raging; they were high; they were sick of my dramas. Only SubZad and Skungy responded. They came out the ballroom door as Jane went in. She seemed only slightly surprised to be passing my shifty double. Anything was possible tonight.

  The Bag Stagger squonk band had dropped into a hip-hop beat, with the gitmo wailing, and the bagpipe honking like a baritone sax. Skeezix and her guys were rapping staccato rhymes, shouting the last syllable of each line. The terrace flickered with Mr. Normal’s flashes, seemingly in synch with the beat.

  Skungy was on my shoulder. The dirtbubble was sputtering overhead. Whit and Gaven were glaring at SubZad and me. Showdown.

  Something skittered towards me across the terrace, the party lights glinting off its fur and eyes. The poison platypus that carried Gaven’s personality.

  “I’ll get this one too,” said Skungy, preparing to leap.

  “My turn,” said SubZad, his face dreamy. He swung his arm in a circle, meanwhile doing some kind of internal biomod, so that his arm mutated into a wobbly rubber limb that was six feet long. SubZad’s hand landed precisely on the platypus’s back and, with a single squeeze, he reduced the thing to scraps of gel.

  “You want me to kill Gaven and Whit?” asked SubZad, restoring his arm. “I’d be cool with that.” His face had a chiseled look. Like a professional bodyguard.

  “Not Gaven,” I said. “He’s—” It was hard to describe exactly what Gaven was. Geeky, greedy, awkward, and with low empathy—but not exactly evil. Misguided? Lost? A fool? “We’ll see about Gaven later. But Whit? Yeah. Rub him out.” Hard to believe I’d reached this point.

  “Keep away!” barked Whit. He’d already deployed his nurb stingray. It was hovering in front of him, gently rippling its wings in the damp air, with its long poison spike curled up from the rear. For his part, Gaven was clutching a flame-thrower firepig nurb. The firepig was a sausage six inches long, and with four stubby legs. He could exhale methane and strike sparks with his teeth.

  SubZad might have been able to snatch away their weapons. But I wasn’t liking our odds. That stingray thing scared me. But now, finally, some help from my so-called friends arrived. It was Carlo, carrying, of all things, a metal sword.

  “Went to get this off the den’s wall,” sa
id Carlo, striking a pose and flourishing the blade. “That’s what took me so long. Dig the stingray. Aren’t those illegal, Whit? Sic him on me, why don’t you. Snotty chickenshit creep.”

  Fully into the moment—almost too much so—Carlo inched forward, making tiny circles with the tip of his outstretched sword. With an abrupt flap, the stingray rose up high, meaning to come down on Carlo from above. But Carlo was quick. His blade swept through the air, and now the floppy nurb lay in two pieces on the ground, its tail furiously lashing. Wearing a face like a garbageman nurb, SubZad plucked out the tail’s stinger with another move from his rubbery arm—and he buried the stinger in the dirt.

  Skungy squealed a cheer. Carlo continued inching closer to Whit, his sword still outstretched. Cautious little Gaven hung back to one side, still clutching the firepig, but not wanting to risk defending his partner.

  I was just starting to rejoice. But then everything changed.

  For the first fraction of a second, I mistook the desperate, full-throated screams for a part of the Bag Stagger sound. But, no, the band wasn’t even playing. The guests were wailing, crashing to the floor, breaking things, sending out horrific vibes. The ballroom’s glass French doors bulged, then shattered. I smelled a swampy odor of decay, laced through with a sharp scent like turpentine. Six or seven dark wormholes were in the ballroom, eating people.

  The wormholes were lumpy dark-brown balls like the dirtbubble, frantic as chickens pecking cracked corn. A ball would flatten itself, then spring forward, opening a sagging, irregular mouth—formless as a hole in the ground. The hole would catch onto someone’s head and shoulders, pinch closed, and rock back and forth, frantic with greed, swallowing the struggling victim right down to the feet. And then the wormhole would wobble in wild triumph, forcing the captive into some unseen higher-dimensional tunnel that lay within the ball. After that the wormhole might disappear, or it might cast about for another victim.

  Terrified and unbelieving, the guests were struggling against each other, their fine party clothes torn and awry, their shoes skidding on the floor as they pushed their way through the jagged openings of the French doors, heedless of cuts on their bodies, uncaring of their fellows who were being trampled underfoot.

  I noticed Dad and Junko in the panicked mob. Jane and my other friends were nowhere to be seen. But maybe—

  Careening past me, the woman with six breasts knocked me off my feet. Whit was standing over me, yelling to the dirtbubble.

  “Get Zad!”

  The icky brown ball came for me, and the torrent of people parted to flow around us. Whit was smirking, thinking he’d won. The dirtbubble’s wide, disgusting mouth was almost upon me.

  And then, as if by a miracle, one of Craig Gurky’s mover golems came to my aid. It was the one called Gustav, doing his trick of curling up like a ball. He bounded over the heads of the crowd and struck Whit directly in the chest, knocking him to ground.

  In the second that remained before the stinking dirtbubble swallowed me, I threw myself onto Whit, wrapping my arms around his chest. The lips of the dirtbubble’s toothless mouth fumbled around us—and it began swallowing us as a pair, like a boa constrictor eating two rabbits at once. Whit cursed and struggled; I held him tight. Our heads, our shoulders, our chests were within the dirtbubble’s maw.

  It was dim in there, but not pitch-dark. The dirtbubble’s flesh gave off a dank glow. The stinking slime within the dirtbubble stung my skin. My tense muscles relaxed. I was picking up some teep from the myoor beyond the dirtbubble—the myoor had a mind like a primordial sea teeming with chains of life. But the slime was making me too dumb to focus. I was thinking I could sleep in here, I could sleep for a long time. My grip on Whit was going slack.

  People were pulling on my legs. I slid down the length of Whit’s body. Down—and out of the dirtbubble’s mouth. SubZad and Carlo had hold of my feet. I’d escaped. I was on the terrace, lying on my back, with rain sprinkling my face. Whit’s feet were inside the dirtbubble. I was numb, and filthy all over. I didn’t care.

  The dirtbubble’s lively lump flexed—and then it was small once more. Maybe it would come for me again? No, it drifted out across the lawn. Carlo and SubZad were shaking me. Junko was leaning over me, too.

  “Robotic,” she kept saying. “Be robotic!”

  I could do that, yes. It had been a while. I slipped out of cosmic mode. And now I remembered what Junko had said about the wormholes keying in on people who were qwet and in a cosmic state of mind.

  “You be robotic too, Carlo,” warned Junko, giving him a nudge.

  “Hate like hell to come down,” drawled Carlo.

  “I hear you, qrude,” echoed SubZad, his face blurred.

  “You two think it’s a joke?” said Junko. “A hundred people must have died here. Loulou, Joey, Reba. Our friends. They got Jane’s mother, too. It’s the same all across town.”

  “What about Jane?” I croaked. “And Dad.”

  “Your Dad’s okay,” said Junko. “He’s upstairs. As for Gaven—he’s nowhere to be seen. I have a feeling he escaped too. Gaven always takes care of number one. But…”

  “Jane?” I repeated. Junko shook her head.

  * * *

  11: Fairyland

  I got unsteadily to my feet and peered into the ballroom. It was empty in there, with scattered food, broken chairs, shattered glass, splashes of blood. All the people had fled outside, or to the other parts of the Funhouse. Looking across the rainy lawn, I could see the faintly glowing wormholes, still hunting, still swallowing people at will. I couldn’t believe that Jane and my friends and Jane’s mother had been eaten. Jane’s brother Kenny seemed to be okay. I could see him inside a floating jellyfish with Kristo. Apparently his wooing of the jellies had paid off. He could ride in them again. I noticed that Kenny and Kristo were hardly projecting any vibes at all. Robotic mode was the way to go.

  Some of the surviving guests were clustered around the blinking nurb I’d made. Mr. Normal. Maybe his flashes were keeping the wormholes at bay. My lifesaving pal Craig Gurky was with this group with his golem movers. I gave them a grateful wave.

  And, weirdly enough, that elephruk was standing there too. Darby. The dirtbubble had spit her out? Maybe the thing had decided it only liked swallowing humans. Not only had Darby recovered from the myoor’s paralyzing poison, she’d even regenerated her missing leg. She was tooting a little tune, giddy with joy over her return.

  But the main thing was that Jane was gone. And I was going to find her. I found a hose outside the house, and rinsed off the smell of the dirtbubble.

  Going back inside, I scanned the ballroom one more time, and finally spotted what I was hoping to see. The lavender oddball, hovering in a dim recess of the ceiling—as if she were waiting for someone. Waiting for me.

  Of all the wormholes, only the oddball seemed like she might be a friend. I strode across the ballroom, allowing myself a touch of cosmic mode to make sure the oddball noticed me.

  “Zad,” she said, twitching her conical mouth. Speaking aloud. Her voice was high and sweet, with a trace of a lisp. “Come to Fairyland. Jane’s inside me. She wants you to join her. You two can move the myoor.”

  Did I believe this? I had no other choice. I went and stood stock still beneath the oddball.

  “Swallow me,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Don’t be scared,” fluted the oddball, widening her mouth. “I’m not part of the myoor. I’m gentle.”

  “But you smothered Gaven a couple of days ago.”

  “Gaven’s our enemy. He’s for letting the myoor run wild. Maybe Gaven doesn’t realize this, but the myoor wants to swallow every single person on Earth. The spotted pig and I aren’t for that at all. The myoor doesn’t need to swallow everyone. She only needs the two right people. And do remember—I was nice to Loulou when she was inside me. I’ll make sure you have air. So here we go.” The oddball sank towards me.

  I slid in as smoothly as a penis into a vagina. The walls
didn’t sting. They smelled like musk and honeysuckle. Although it was tight in the tunnel, I could breathe fine. Mauve light filled the walls, light from the flesh of the oddball.

  Two gubs were in here, the same ones I’d seen before, the ones we’d been talking about, the green gub and the spotted gub, romping like a pair of lovers. I thought of my overwhelming encounter with the spotted gub last night—his teep reaching down to me through the tunnel of the oddball. But seen close up, he still looked like a little pig with a pointy snout. By way of greeting me, the two gubs began rubbing on me like friendly dogs.

  The gubs were putting out squidskin web signals as well as teep. The teep showed me their moods, and the web signals hipped me to specific images. Not that they made any more sense than last night. The info from the green gub was like the feed from, say, a worldwide botany study whose images had been randomly cut and spliced, all of this pervaded with a watery, root-twining vibe. The spotted gub’s output was more restrained than last night. He was displaying abstract and chaotic imagery, vaguely mathematical. I had a sense that, if I wanted to understand them, I’d need to process every single one of the screwed-up glyphs at once.

  Losing interest in so much inscrutability, I pushed my way past the gubs. Jane was only a little way ahead. She was waiting for me in a spot where the tunnel widened to form a soft, glowing cave.

  “Oh, Zad,” she said, embracing me. “What’s happening? My poor mother’s dead. And Reba too.” Her eyes were wet.

  I told Jane what I knew, and what I’d been speculating. Meanwhile, on the teep level, she and I were sharing a heavy vibe of—love?