by Rudy Rucker
Sixteen is hex-ten. The girls lifted off and darted about. When they got farther away from me, they either got a lot smaller or a lot bigger. Some of them went high into the redwoods and on up into the sky, growing as they flew. There were quick blinks of brightness across the sky as one by one they maxxed out to cosmic scale. Others bumped down the gully towards the sea, dwindling to tiny bright specks in the water. A few hung around watching me and the main Ma.
And then the main Ma was big enough for me to get in her, so I did; I did it by hugging her against me until her shape slipped over me and I was back inside the endlessly vast interior of a fractal solid weird screen come true.
I wandered about in there at will. There were trees, there were boulders, but when you tripped over something it didn’t hurt. I went up a nubby slope and found an ethereal armchair, same one as before, except now it was purple and it had wood trim along the arms. There was a glass of energy-drink on the floor by the chair, and laying there on the left arm’s wood trim was a monster jay with a book of matches. I fired up for sure. Breathing the smoke out, watching the tendrils, with a pink womany Ma shape on my lap, I forgot everything I ever knew.
And it was calm, and it was wonderful, until of course some new Nazi asshole was on our case.
“A loud machine,” said Ma. “Coming closer.”
If I peered closely at a little speck in the air near me, I could see out to the world outside. It was all there, right in that little speck, the hill, and the ocean, and Santa Cruz. Racketting towards Ma and me was an Army helicopter with searchlights and with guns. From the speck’s shifty viewpoint, I could even see the soldiers in the chopper, all peering down at our glow. They were getting ready to shoot us.
“Can we hide somewhere?” I asked Ma.
“Yes, William. I can shrink and I can jump in and out of Earth’s space.”
“Won’t that hurt me?”
“Inside me you’re already out of Earth’s space. And as far as shrinking goes—infinity divided by ten is still infinity. My inside is always the same.”
“Then let’s go and get…inside the can of Geisha Girl crabmeat in my kitchen cupboard.”
“It’s…done.”
I took my attention off the little worldview speck—which now showed strands of crabmeat, a can, and outside the can our kitchen. Cops in the house, talking to Koss and Donna.
That all happened yesterday, or maybe it’s been two days. The longer I’m in here, the better I can see. At my request, Ma’s got soft-edged computer graphics rippling over the endlessly unfolding surfaces around me—Escher images, Gosper hacks, Conway games—whatever I feel like seeing. It’s like programming without ever having to touch a key. And with the energy drinks I’m never hungry. It’s perfect in here.
I just hope no one gets hungry for canned crab.
============
Note on “As Above, So Below”
Written in 1987.
The Microverse, Bantam Books, 1989.
Soon after moving to California, I gave a talk on Cellular Automata in Ralph Abraham’s Chaos Seminar at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Nick Herbert, author of Quantum Reality (Anchor Books, 1987) was there. I knew Nick from having corresponded with him about relativity theory. After my UCSC talk we had dinner with Ralph, and then some hackers showed Nick and me a lot of Mandelbrot set graphics. All of this came together pretty readily into the start of a story.
“As Above So Below” is a phrase used by the mystic P.D.Ouspensky and by the theosophist Madame Blavatsky. They attribute the phrase to a legendary magician called Hermes Trismigestus.
It took me awhile to completely finish “As Above So Below.” The first installment of it came out in Terra Nova, a hippie hacker zine published by Nick Turner and Romana Machado, whom I met at a reading I gave for the magazine Mondo 2000.
A few years later I was approached by the theater director Kathelin Hoffman, who was interested in putting on a one-act play by me in a theater in Fort Worth. I worked “As Above So Below” into a script, and it was produced from August 20 - September 5, 1992, by the Theater of All Possibilities at the Caravan of Dreams Performing Arts Center in Fort Worth. It was an amazing thing to see the actor Jim Covault impersonate Will Coyote who was, in turn, an impersonation of me.
Ma the Mandelbrot set was played by the thrilling Fiorella Tirenzi. The great SubGenius Ivan Stang was there in the audience next to me. What a night. Mathematics has been good to me.
Chaos Surfari
(Written with Marc Laidlaw)
Way gnarly.
Delbert stood barefoot on a shelf of slimy-sharp sea rocks, clutching a terrycloth towel to his pimply chest. Behind him was a sandstone cliff crowned with cottages, below him were dead fish, seaweed, discolored water, and spit-bubbling crabs. One of the crabs had hold of a gooey condom; mindlessly the beast kept stretching and folding the rubber, now and again lowering its mandibles to taste the human salts that came oozing forth.
The sea, thought Del, has got to be the rudest place on earth.
Even though the surf was up, Del had stayed ashore today because of the red tide. Every so often the one-celled dinoflagellates would go on a breeding jag, and the ocean near Surf City would look and smell bad for weeks. Some of the older surfers said it was like the sea being on the rag, but it made Del think more of the time he’d vomited after eating reds, fried squid, and mucho red wine. Surf that shit? No way!
But Zep didn’t mind. Zep…Zep would wade right out into the middle of the most gruesome scenes Del could imagine. He picked fights with cops; called bikers by names even their buddies didn’t use; took drugs made by madmen; so right now, natch, Zep was out there carving tubes, unquestioningly accepting whatever liquid thrills Mother Ocean would serve up.
Well, almost unquestioningly. The catch was Zep’s unique imipolex microprocessing way-tech surfboard: the good stick Chaos Attractor. Chaos Attractor had a distinct effect on the waves; it was wired to a parallel nerve-port in Zep’s ankle. The smart board was able to read the ripples that hit it, run a CAM8 cellular automaton simulation of the future ocean nearby, use a global XOR to compare the simulation to Zep’s wishes, and to then eliminate the differences by pulsing out just the right antiripples into the sensitive chaos of the sea.
Zep had built the thing single-handedly out of stolen parts; in fact the corporation that had built the CAM8 chip—a Silicon Valley outfit called System Complex—had placed full-page ads in The Computer Shopper, offering huge rewards for the return of the device or any information leading to the arrest of the culprit. Fortunately, aside from Zep, the only person who knew the truth was Delbert.
Out on the water, where the red-stained waves sluiced in between the curling rock pinchers of Blowhole Cove, Zep let out a brain-curdling scream whenever he created a particularly nasty wave. Looking at the big crisscross surf, Del knew that Zep’s wishes were wild and unfocused—no surprise, as Zep was righteously stoned. Zep had scored a humongous jay that morning from Dennis Dementex, the chef at the Pup Tent where Del’s girlfriend Jen worked.
Del had toked a few puffs himself, and now he began to imagine that the stinking red-brown ocean was awash with real blood, drained from the bodies of dead and racked-up surfers; yes, the ocean and the things in it were angry, and the waves were hit-men out to extract vengeance from thankless air-breathers. “Is this how you treat your mother?” the ocean seemed to say. “By building parking lots and condos on her sandy flanks? By dumping toxic waste and pesticides into the cradle, as if you’re her only child? How dare you brag about your space probes when you know so little of what I conceal?”
Del peered down from his slippery rock shelf at the sand six feet below. The retreating tide combed back the eelgrass, slicking it down like Brylcreem in a cholo’s hair. Sea anemones puckered the scraggy wall like free-living anuses, punked out with bits of shell and broken glass. He realized he had to take a piss. Nobody around; do it.
Delbert aimed his steamy stream down int
o the eelgrass, hosing through the seaweed as if he were an archaeologist cleaning out a wreck. Something glinted; he tried to pee harder, but he’d run out of pressure. There was something nestled in the weeds, something scummy with pink plankton yet diamond-bright.
A jewel! he thought. It’s some kind of jewel washed up from the sea!
Zep screamed, his voice growing louder in a roar of surf. Delbert looked up and saw his best friend zooming toward him at the foot of a hungry wave. No time to watch Zep carve; in a moment, Del’s newfound treasure would be lost in a cataclysm of spray. He leaped down to the sand and pushed the seaweed aside.
Del’s fingers closed around the prize at the same time that the wave broke on his back an sucked him spinning into the deep. No way for now to tell which way was up, and already Del was out of breath. He clung hard to the shining ball he’d seized…confusion, a sharp jolt …
“Y’okay, dude?”
Del say up, his head ringing, and stared at the waves. Where had he been?
“My board clipped you right across the skull,” Zep said. “Shit, man, I’m glad you woke up. I had to drag you out. That’s a nasty bruise you got.”
“I—look what I found,” Delbert said. He opened his hand and the crystal lay revealed. The world showed inside it, reproduced in miniature but badly warped. He brought it closer to his eyes, working to focus, wishing that his head didn’t ache so bad. There was movement down inside it, maybe brine shrimp, krill.
He seemed to hear a voice inside his head, a slithery whisper that said, Look closer.
Now he saw more clearly. A tiny gallery of moving faces lay within the crystal Superball. Inhuman faces; faces out of horror comics. They had quivery tentacles instead of beards; beaks and mandibles where mouths should have been. Cold gray eyes, dark secrets. The slithery voice began to whisper words he didn’t understand, promising to reveal unguessed mysteries if he would only—would only —
“Del?”
“Shh! I’m looking!”
He was caught up in tracing the source of the faces, for they were set in a kaleidoscopic array, following some geometry he could hardly visualize. They seemed to sprout from the corners of a three-dimensional net of shimmering silver lines; the net formed pyramids and equilateral triangles, too many to see all at once. Some would vanish when others appeared. The whole thing cold have been an illusion, some novelty hologram a sea captain had put together in his spare time. But he couldn’t tear his eyes from the depths. The faces twitched, crowding closer. They were like gargoyles crouched on the vertices of the hinged lines, guarding the hearts of the triangles. Guarding what, he wondered?
Very well then, the voice whispered. A glimpse.
“Let me see it, Del.”
“I said wait!”
The gates of the net began to gape, permitting him some slight knowledge of what lay beyond those faces. His mind reeled with the insight. He saw an eye in a green pyramid, sitting on a plain very like the one he’d just dreamed of; but it wasn’t a real place. It was a landscape in cameo—straight off the back of a dollar bill. His point of view shifted suddenly, and where the dollar had been he saw a luscious naked blonde surfer girl, vaguely familiar, her hands cupping her breasts, one running down to play in her pubic curls and she winked at Delbert and began to approach. But then her tanned flesh went all white and flaky; she began to expand from the inside and her hair turned to shredded lettuce.
A burrito, Del thought. Jesus, that’s the most delicious burrito I’ve ever seen. And the smell—heavenly!
He started to reach out for it, but something rattled in his hands. He looked down and saw a car key where the crystal had been; looked up and saw, waiting for him at edge of an alien parking lot, a mint-green, mint-condition ‘48 Woodie. It was just like the car he’d seen in Surf Serf magazine last week, the boss Country Squire that belonged to the local Sicilian baron billionaire; it was the most beautiful car in the universe!
And poking out of the car’s open rear, perfect noses gleaming, were three fine surfboards—red, white and blue. He just knew that they would give him the ride of his life—like the Woodie, like that blonde girl.
As he approached the car, he could see that the back was heaped with cases of beer—all import stuff, powerful Australian lagers, which he could never afford. And there was a hefty block of resinous green vegetable matter on the front seat, little glints of gold scattered among the leaves of tight-packed buds as big as his foot.
And standing on the dashboard, glowing no less brightly at noon than he would at midnight, was Jesus Christ Himself, lending his aura of protection and respectability to even the drunkest surfari!
Then the weirdly angled walls snapped closed; the net swung back into being. The guardians leered out at him, as if daring him to seize their precious goods.
“Come on, Delbert, snap out of it!”
He blinked up at Zep. “I think—I think this is magic, Zep. I think I’ve found good luck.”
Zep snatched the ball out of his hand finally, and held it up to the sky, squinting at it with one eye.
“I don’t know about that,” he said after a minute. “I think this is just an ordinary plastic toy ecosphere. But look what’s written on it.”
He handed it back to Delbert, and showed him how when the light was just right you could see a string of angular letters scratched into the flattened base of the sphere.
WRITE IN NOW!
P.O. BOX 8128, SURF CITY, CA
WIN BIG $$$!
“We gotta write in now,” said Del, fondling the wonderful sphere. “Before someone else wins all the prizes. Did you see the Woodie, Zep? With the beer and the key and Jesus on the dashboard?”
“I don’t see anything in there but reflection lines and little shrimp,” said Zep. “This is one of those cheap plastic kits you order form a comic book to grow Sea Monkeys, man, which are in fact brine shrimp. Some feeb could easily have scratched that message on there simply for a goof. But hell yes, let’s go over to the post office. Penny. Penny’ll be there.” Penny was a big-breasted girl with dark brown hair and a wild laugh; Zep thought about her a lot.
They threw Chaos Attractor in the back of the old Chevy pickup Zep had recently acquired and drove over to the Surf City post office. It was cool and empty in there, like a jewel-case, Zep thought, a jewel-case holding plump pearl Penny so cute in her blue-gray Bermuda shorts, midthigh length with piping. Zep was all grin and buzzcut peroxide hair, leaning over the counter trying to think of something to say.
“I wish I was your underwear, Penny.”
“You’d be too scratchy, Zep.”
“Who has Box 8128?” asked Delbert. “I found this magic ball on the beach and it says to write Box 8128.” The reedy sound of his voice annoyed Zep no end.
“Who has Box 8128?” answered Penny. “I’m not supposed to give out government information, Del.” She gave her cute laugh and walked over to look at the post office boxes from behind. “Oh, wow! It’s Kid Beast!”
“That’s a name?” said Del. “Is he young?”
“Isn’t everyone young in Surf City?” said Pen, resting her arms on the counter and her breasts on her arms. “Kid Beast is a skinny punk who talks funny. You’ve seen him, Zep, he played drums for the Auntie Christs.” She glanced around the empty room. “I happen to know his home address because I saw him go in there one time. 496 Cliff Drive.”
“496 is a perfect number,” said Zep.
“What is?”
“Like six is three plus two plus one; and one, to, and three are the numbers that divide six. 496 is…whatever. Sixty-four times thirty-one. 1+2+4+8+16+32+64+31+62+124+248.”
“How do you know that?” asked Penny.
“I went to college, baby. Santa Cruz UC.”
“Let me see the magic ball,” said Penny.
“We found it on the beach,” said Zep, taking it from Del and handing it to her. “We saw things in it. You can keep it, Penny, if you’ll let me tie you up and fuck you.”
<
br /> “Oh right.”
She gave Zep a thoughtful glance.
“Hey, Zep, don’t give it to her!” said Delbert. “That ball’s got some kind of power—it’s magic.”
Zep sighed, pissed at Delbert for interrupting what had become a promising conversation.
“Why don’t you go out to the truck, Del,” he said. “I’ll put a postcard in the Kid’s box, then we’ll swing by his house to make sure he pays up.”
“You’re trying to ditch me, aren’t you? You want to steal my magic ball!”
“Yes. No. Here’s your ball. Go on, man.” Del went out to the truck.
Five minutes later Zep came out whistling, with a postmark stamped on his cheek like a government lipstick kiss. Penny had agreed to meet him at Bitchen Kitchen to watch the sunset later on. He would get another jay off Dennis at the Pup Tent, then he’d score a bottle of wine and mellow out with playful Penny. Unfortunately it was just past noon. Summer days were too damn long!
Zep found Delbert sitting in the front seat of the truck, staring into the float-ball as if he really were seeing all the weird stuff he’d said he saw. It worried Zep for a minute, bringing him down.
“You still seeing things, Del?”
Delbert shook his head. “They’re not showing me, Zep. I have to be good…I have to do something special for them, I think.”
“I hope you didn’t get some weird spacetime concussion, Delbert. I mean, it wasn’t just any old surfboard that cracked you on the skull—it was Chaos Attractor. It might have knocked your brain into another dimension. You ever see that movie where the living brains come after a bunch of geeks? They’re like brains with snaky whiplike spines for tails.
Delbert looked at him, a little trail of spittle running down his chin. A skinny stranger on the sidewalk ducked down and peered at them, then disappeared. There was something funny going on. Something weirder than plastic movie monsters.
All the houses near 496 Cliff Drive had flowers in their yards and little “Cottage for Rent” signs with ivy wrapped around the posts; all perfect except for number 496, which was an animal house, totally whipped to shit. A three-legged pitbull lay sprawled in the dust of the front yard, angrily barking. The dog’s missing leg ended in a stub that looked…well, chewed. When the dog finally stood up to make its move, Zep kicked it over. It fell on its spine, whining. Using the magic ball for a knocker, he rapped sharply on the bungalow’s front door.
