The Ware Tetralogy - Rudy Rucker (popular ebook readers .TXT) 📗

brain could effortlessly crunch any calculation. “We need that much because at least thirty feet are going to get used up by the roots. Three of us wouldn’t be enough to make a proper-sized tree. Randy will be happy that we need him.”

“Well—I’d like to,” said Babs. “It’s high time. As a matter of fact Randy and I rode over here together, but he was scared to come in. He’s wandering around looking at the Haight. I told him I would uvvy him if it looked like Da could act normal. Can you, Da?”

“Of course I can. I’m sure he’s a fine boy. I won’t scare him off.”

So Babs uvvied Randy and a few minutes later he walked up the front steps. He was pink with self-consciousness and his Adam’s apple was bobbing. He was wearing a new T-shirt with an incredibly intricate stippling of colors. Babs thought he looked so cute that she planted a kiss on him when she opened the door.

“Come on in, Randy. Ma, Da, this is Randy. Randy, this is Stahn and Wendy.”

“Hey,” said Randy, shaking their hands. “It’s an honor. I’ve heard about you two all my life. The Heritagists back in Kentucky are still squawkin’ about that Moldie Citizenship Act.”

Babs noticed Randy’s nostrils flaring as he sampled Wendy’s odor. Wendy had successfully infected her Happy Cloak with Cobb’s new stinkeater bacteria last week, so the smell was quite mild. But Babs didn’t want to tackle the topic of Randy and the smells of moldies. “How were things down on Haight Street today, Randy?” she asked.

“Waaald. Is it always that crowded? Or maybe it’s on account of it bein’ April Fool’s Day. It’s like a street festival, people alla-making shit you can’t believe.”

“I haven’t been on Haight Street in weeks,” said Stahn. “I always go around the back way. And, yeah, All Fool’s Day is very big in the Haight. What did you see?”

“Some of the stores have their windows painted over and you have to pay the owner to get in. Thanks to the individual Web address on each dollar bill, people can’t alla up counterfeit, so money’s still real anyway. Not that you need it for most things.”

“I noticed those stores,” said Wendy. “What do you get if you go inside?”

“Well, I paid one fella to find out,” said Randy, looking a little embarrassed. “Guess I thought he’d have something pretty racy behind them painted windows. But it was just a goddamn T-shirt store. He lets you pick out a T-shirt you like and then you alla yourself a copy. Can’t hardly sell objects no more. All you can do is sell ideas.”

“Exactly!” said Babs. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell Da. Intellectual property is all that matters now. It’s wonderful.”

“Yeah,” said Randy, looking down at his T-shirt, which had subtle patterns like faces embedded in its fractal swirls. “Notice how much detail this shirt’s got? I never could have seen it all in time to make a copy just from lookin’ at it. The store-guy uvvied me the design. Reason he keeps the store windows covered is some folks will just eyeball one of his shirts and alla-make a half-ass knockoff of it. There was a gaaah right outside the store, matter of fact, who looked me over and made a copy of my new shirt, then turned around and sold it to a tourist. All smudged and blurry, though. Look over here on the sleeve, I just noticed this line o’ little elephants. No way the pirated street copy picked that up.”

“I think I’m too old for new ideas,” sighed Stahn. “Don’t want to buy, don’t have to sell. What else did you see on Haight Street, Randy?”

“There was some folks in old-time metal armor with imipolex power hinges. Jumpin’ around like silver jelly beans. I saw a guy givin’ away jeweled Easter eggs, all diamonds and rubies, and when you took one, he’d make it disappear. April fool! Another fella was walking down the sidewalk poppin’ out a concrete lawn dwarf every step he took. Skinned my knee on one of those suckers, and allaed a bunch of ‘em back into air. Some hairfarmers made themselves a pizza ten feet across and didn’t eat but a corner of it, then just left it on the sidewalk so you had to step around it. Wasn’t nobody bothering to clean it up, and when I went to turn that one into air, one o’ the hairfarmers yelled at me not to waste food. One gaaah was standin’ around naked doin’ his laundry in the middle of the street; he had a washin’ machine hooked to a quantum dot battery and he was usin’ his alla to feed the water into it. He was just lettin’ the wastewater spill out on the ground. He shoulda alla-made it back into air, but I didn’t feel up to hasslin’ him. There was a peck of musicians playin’ electric guitars hooked to batteries, and a bunch of women doing brain concerts on sheets of imipolex hangin’ off the lamp-posts—right confusing, all the noise. One gaaah had a swarm of maybe a hundred dragonfly cameras buzzin’ all over gettin’ in everyone’s face and he was mixing their video so you’d just about go crazy lookin’ at the output—it was runnin’ on an imipolex billboard he’d pasted to the wall. Lots o’ cars and custom motorcycles. One of the choppers had a bathtub for the driver to sit in, and it wasn’t just a tub, it was a merge love puddle. Can you imagine drivin’ a hog while you’re merged? Your eyeballs stickin’ up on little stalks?” Randy laughed and shook his head. “I love this city. First place I ever felt normal. The craziest thing I saw in the Haight was two stoners taking turns zapping each other into air. And then recorporatin’ the aired-out gaaah from his alla.”

“Ow,” said Babs. “I wouldn’t do that for anything. Yoke said there’s a real chance of not being able to come back.”

“I hear there’s been a lot of people getting ‘aired out,’ ” said Wendy. “And not for fun. People trying to kill each other.”

“Yeah, but remember that it hasn’t been working,” said Babs. “Seems like Om’s got it set so that a dead person’s alla starts beeping after a day. An alla is indestructible, and someone always finds it. And if it was an alla that killed you, your alla offers to bring you back.”

“Like in _The Telltale Heart,” _said Stahn. “That Poe viddy where the murdered man’s heart under the floorboards is beating so loud that it shakes the room. So what else did you see on Haight Street, Randy?”

“Did I mention that it’s crawlin’ with moldies down there? It’s a good thing they can’t reproduce themselves but every six months. Even if the average moldie don’t live but two years, that makes three times as many moldies every two years, less somethin’ makes ‘em cut back. Lord knows I’m the last one to say anything against moldies, but they could run us outta room! They don’t hardly smell like nothin’ anymore. I can tell you got that new stinkeater bug too, Ms. Mooney.”

“Oh, call me Wendy,” said Ma. “Yes, Cobb brought some over here before he left with Darla. He said since I’m a public figure, I should be an example. So I went ahead and infected myself with stinkeater. It’s not an infection, really, it’s more like a symbiosis. I benchmarked my computation rate before and after the stinkeater, and there’s an eleven percent enhancement. So I’m telling all the moldies to do it. Stahn likes it and I do too.”

“She’s moanin’, huh?” said Stahn, admiring his wife. “But I’m with you on what you said about too many moldies, Randy. We three were just fabbing about it. Too many people, too many moldies, too much _stuff. _I think the allas suck. Look out there right now. My moron neighbor Jones is up on his roof again. I bet he’s planning a second tower for his house. I can’t fucking believe it. And see the house right down the hill from him? Used to be a beautiful madrone tree there, and now Ms. Lin has a garage. For what? For her brand-new fucking electric-motor-retrofitted vintage 1956 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow with twenty-four-karat-gold trim. A garage to protect her car that she made out of air and could replace in one second.”

“Don’t make yourself sick, Stahn,” said Wendy. “Let’s go out in our backyard and build the tree. Randy, we were thinking we’d make a redwood with some kind of tree house in it. And we figured out that if each of us alla-makes a section at the same time, the tree can be a hundred and sixty feet long from top branch to bottom root. Come on, we go out this way.”

“Maybe it should be two hundred feet,” said Stahn when they got outside. He was starting to get excited. “A monster tree. That’ll show ‘em.” Their yard was maybe fifty feet on a side.

“Let’s call Saint,” suggested Wendy. “He should be here for our little get-together. With five allas, the tree could be two hundred six feet and 1.69 inches. Call your brother, Babs, I don’t want to always be the one to bother him.” Saint answered Babs’s uvvy call right away. ” ‘Sup, sis?” He sounded cheerful and lively.

“I’m over at Ma and Da’s with Randy,” said Babs.

“Yaaar. Did you tell them yet?”

“There hasn’t been a good moment. Da’s all uptight about the neighbors.

We’re going to help him put up a giant redwood.” “Make a sequoia instead.” Saint had a contrary streak. “A big tree,” said Babs. “I don’t really care what kind, but now Da’s fixated on redwood. Anyway, that’s what right for this climate. If you were here, there’d be five of us and the tree could be two hundred feet tall instead of a hundred and sixty. What are yon doing anyway?”

When Saint had gotten his alla, he’d quit working at Meta West. Recently he and Phil and Randy had been talking about starting a business. But for now he’d been spending most of his time riding his bicycle and playing uvvy games with friends. And he had a new girlfriend.

“I made a bicycle that I can ride on the water,” said Saint. He patched in a view of where he was: out on the bay, near the Golden Gate Bridge. He glanced up at the people-nests encrusting the underside of the bridge, then turned his attention back to the water. There were exceedingly many recreational watercraft around him. Everyone who’d ever wanted a sailboat or DIM board had one now. And you didn’t need an expensive dock for your boat—when you finished using it, you just turned it back into air. Saint abruptly veered to avoid a collision. “This is too much fun to stop right now. And I’m supposed to meet Milla later. Whoah, here comes another boat. Just say hi for me. It’s enough if Da’s tree is a hundred and sixty feet. Tell him not to be so greedy. And to make it a banyan.”

” ‘Bye, Saint.”

“Good luck with Randy and the rents.”

“He doesn’t want to come,” Babs told the others. “He’s out bicycling on the bay. And then he’s going to see _Milla.” _She stressed the last word as bait for her mother.

“We haven’t met Milla yet,” complained Ma. “You children are so secretive.”

“You two are so hard to talk to,” said Babs.

“Let’s make the redwood,” said Stahn. “I’m stoked.”

Babs found a redwood in her alla catalog,