MOM

by Collin Piprell

  “Cisco,” Ellie says. She's crying and laughing all at the same time. “Oh, my. Finally we're together.”

  Ellie. His mother who has been dead these past two decades, who then appeared to die again only minutes ago, when her just‐resurrected ebee was obliterated in the cave. Leary has his arm around her; he's grinning and grinning. His father, also reclaimed after twenty years, did die minutes ago. Cisco watched it happen. The wet Leary, crushed to death.

  Cisco himself wants to cry at the warmth of family he has never known in all his years of isolation in ESUSA Mall, all those years of not knowing who his parents were or who he really was. But he doesn't yet understand.

  “Welcome to Aeolia, Kid.” Leary looks at once abashed and proud. “That's what we call it.”

  “Aeolia?” Cisco asks. A descendant of the Worlds. When did they decide to call this place anything? They've been dead only a few minutes. Haven't they?

  •

  There's an old gray wooden board on a thick rope hanging from an enormous tree. Not so enormous as it feels, but big. And a swinging chair for two beside it under the tree. And an animal, a garok. That was its name in Thai. Cisco learned that from Lek, their maid, before he knew what it was in English. “Squirrel.” This knowledge seems to come from a collective lode of information, a channel even more immediate than his WalkAbout connection to the Lode.

  It's as though he's dreaming again, except it's like a flashback to another person's dream. Or even more like he's in a dream behind all the dreams he has ever had in his life. This is a home he once had, the house and garden where, in another time and place, he had a mother and a father.

  Jesus Christ. Here's Lek. Coming out of the house with a tray full of drinks and kanoms. She looks the same. She hasn't aged, and her sarong and rubber flip‐flops are as familiar to him as his mother's face. Which is to say not all that familiar, but rapidly becoming more so.

  “Lek!” he says.

  Lek doesn't recognize him.

  “Never mind.” Leary puts a hand on his shoulder, and it feels real. “She's only what I call a wallpaper ebee. Part of the décor, you could say.”

  The humid air is heavy with scents, from the heaped garlands of flowers on that little spirit house by the wall, from the smoke twisting from a thicket of little sticks on the same platform. Now the squirrel climbs up there to steal food from a saucer set out for the spirits. Everywhere Cisco looks and everything he sees triggers memories that flood him with a mix of love and loss and wonder at how all this can be. It's the same as when he was a little boy, those memories coming to him now for the first time since last he was here.

  “Do you remember any of this?” says Leary. “We spent a lot of time here when you were growing up.”

  “Until that man took you,” Ellie says. “And me.”

  “Brian Finister.” Leary mouths the name as though it were poison.

  “That's in the past,” Ellie says. “Now you're home again. And your room upstairs is just the way you left it.”

  Of everything that's happened since he fled the disintegration of ESUSA Mall, the only home he has ever known, breached by the PlagueBot, this is the most overwhelming.

  Equal measures of grief and excitement and wonder abruptly give way to a sense of dire absence.

  •

  “Where's Dee Zu?” Cisco asks.

  “Here,” says Sky.

  “I'm here,” Dee Zu says.

  How could Cisco have missed her arrival? She's standing right beside him. As real, as substantial as ever she was in the Worlds. She's wearing a simple Worlds UnLtd pilot's tunic. The sight of her fills him with joy.

  She grins and punches him in the shoulder, not too hard. “Go a couple of rounds?” she says.

  “What?”

  “Let's spar.”

  Cisco's joy evaporates. This Dee Zu is dim, spiritless. Even the playful feint, a straight kick to the head, is wooden.

  And one moment she's there, the next she isn't.

  “Sorry,” Sky says. “I wanted you to see it. That's the best we could do.”

  “You're kidding me, right?”

  Leary's hand on Cisco's shoulder, by contrast, is solid, warm. Real. “That was only an ebee, son,” he says.

  “What about you?” Cisco replies. “And me? Aren't we ebees?”

  “We're scendents. It's not the same.”

  “Dee Zu never was a real candidate,” Sky explains. “She was too uncomplicated. Yes. Too happy, perhaps.”

  “She's dead?” Cisco asks.

  “Probably. Whatever. We can't bring her here. Hi‐rez ebees are the best we can do; we don't have enough of the right stuff to resurrect her.”

  We. We scendents. Autonomous ebees, a big evolutionary surprise. “There must be a way.” Cisco says.

  Leary looks unhappy. This is the same Leary that Cisco saw die not so long ago. His father. Cisco's mother is also alive. Here in this place they're calling Aeolia. He can't get over it. Cisco saw them both die. Just minutes ago, in fact. Crushed and likely incinerated in a bunkerbuster strike. This is like a bizarre dream. Though he knows it must be a World. A generated reality unlike any he has visited, even as a test pilot.

  Who he is, here in Aeolia, is more than the mere telep of a wet self safe in his Worlds UnLtd cradle back in ESUSA Mall. Neither is he only a telep of the wet Cisco who lies dead or dying in a cave in mondoland, on the far side of the world from ESUSA. The Cisco he is now is something different. Something unprecedented. At the same time he basically feels like the person he was. Better than that, in fact, but mostly the same Cisco.

  But the low‐rez Dee Zu wasn't anything like that.

  “Even if you found her alive,” Ellie says, “you'd both still be down there in mondoland.”

  “Estimated life span one hour,” Sky adds. “If you are lucky.”

  “I might be able to find her?”

  “Maybe,” she replies. “Though she would never be able to ascend. Even if you both survived. She was too well balanced. She needed fragmenting. More conflict, bigger trauma. Yes. She had to be torn apart, and she herself had to put the pieces back together. That's how we are seeded.”

  “Was too well balanced?” Cisco is pissed off. “Needed fragmenting? She isn't dead yet.”

  “Not yet.”

  “You've been recording my data with the WalkAbout; we can do the same for her.”

  “I do not want you to go back.” Sky's abundant femininity takes on an intractable, machine‐like edge. “Your own ascension is no small thing. Yes. And your chances of survival in mondoland are close to nil.”

  “I'll take those chances.”

  “You are not expendable.”

  “And Dee Zu is?”

  “Nothing remains for you in mondoland.”

  “I can help Dee Zu.”

  “And then?”

  “We'll think of something.”

  “You are a scendent. She's a wet.”

  “She has a WalkAbout.”

  “Yes.”

  “We can collect more data. She can still ascend.”

  “We need the right stuff, conflicted and integrated.”

  “Conflicted is a problem? I don't think so. Not down there.”

  Ellie is crying, less happily than before. “Just stay,” she says. “Please.”

  Cisco smiles at her. He hardly knows his mother, finds he's reticent about touching her, reluctant to put a reassuring arm around her. “What about Toot?” he asks Sky. “Is he intact? Can he be reactivated?”

  “Yes. He is operative.”

  “And Toot knows, you know, where Dee Zu is?”

  No response. Sky understands where this is leading.

  “What about me; what about my wet master?”

  “Alive. Not in good shape.”

  “I'm going back.”

  “No.”

  “I'm going.”

  “Cisco,” Sky says. Her voice goes all womanly, compassionate and caring. “We can't resurrect Dee Zu.”


  “She isn't dead.”

  “You're a scendent, now. You belong here with Ellie and Leary and the others. With me.”

  “I'm going back.”

  Ellie tries to smile. “He's your son,” she tells Leary. “No question.”

  “My little Cisco the Kid, all grown up.” He sounds happy and sad all at once.

  Finally Cisco does reach out to hold his mother. He kisses her forehead. He turns to shake Leary's hand.

  “Gosh,” Leary says. “You be careful, now.”

  “Use that door under the stairway,” says Sky.

  Cisco ducks into the darkness.

  •

  He descends the Escher staircase to another doorway where, in passing, he transposes with someone who's ascending the same stairs in a different direction.

  Outside

  He awakens to pain and darkness. The pain isn't as bad as it was before, but it's bad enough. Naked and filthy, he's squeezed into a fifty centimeter‐high stone dungeon buried deep beneath an alien and hostile world.

  He waits as something scrabbles and slips out of the black towards him. Then there's light. A little headlamp.

  “This isn't going to be easy,” Toot says. “But let's go. We can try this way.” The 'pet turns around, although, aside from the lamp, he looks the same from either end, and heads off back into the dark. “You coming?”

  Cisco follows.

  Aeolia

  While the rest of us play at being Olympians, the Kid drops back down like Aeolian plankton to re‐seed planet Earth.

  —Leary

  Everybody is, like, scendents are totally the next stage of evolution. To tell the truth I'd rather be dead; but that's no longer an option.

  —Brian Finister

  Full of It

  (Posthumous Chronicles of Leary's Second Half‐Century and Beyond)

  So this is it. Our new, new improved reality. Gosh. Still can't get a decent T‐bone or a glass of Jack Daniels, though there are compensations. Eternal youth for starters. Nevertheless.

  We've abandoned the malls. Shucked the whole of mondoland and set out as butterflies. And it's probably been for the best after all. Even all the pain. We had rough times, but, looking back, you can see they were necessary.

  Don't hear much from the kids, but I guess they're coping. The only contact we have is by way of their WalkAbouts. The last worlding cradles we know of are at Mars Base, and there's no way the Kid and Dee Zu can make that trip. It would be nice to get together, though. And I do miss mondoland, from time to time. I know it was kind of a nightmare towards the end. But it had something this place lacks.

  Maybe it was the sense of my own mortality. That raised the stakes. Added savor.

  But isn't that something? The Kid decided to go back. Never mind he's an ebee, he could still make that choice. This “scendent” business could be the next stage in evolution. A whole new ballgame. It's as though the Kid has dropped back down to re‐seed planet Earth. Like Aeolian plankton. Meanwhile the rest of us get to play god, or so Ellie is telling me. Olympian gods. Looking out as best we can for the Kid and Dee Zu. Anyway, they won't be alone. And neither will we. We can enjoy this newfangled qubital universe, but we also get to enjoy the news from mondoland.

  Meanwhile I'm keeping up this chronicle of my second half century, a pretty open‐ended project, seeing as how I've already overshot by thirteen years and the end's nowhere in sight. It's true I'm finding holes in my memory. But that's nothing new and, the way things are going, we'll have plenty of time together to fill in the gaps.

  Hang on. Ellie wants to add a note. Gosh. Whose book is this, anyway?

  It's everybody's. That's the point.

  So we had MOM One, Two and Three. At least. Then there was Cisco One, Two, Three and Four. And lots more personalities, as well as simple fragments or attributes hiding there in the cognitive shadow, or even out in mondoland. Take myself, for example. There were traces of me in the Lode, stuff stored on Rabbit, a bunch of me on a cube in ESSEA and the rest in ESUSA.

  Humpty Dumpty big time, as Leary tells me. But never mind, he says. All the king's horses and all the king's men do have us mostly stuck back together again. That's true, Leary. Nicely put.

  And we should remember that any personality is a composite of persons and part‐persons. More than that, the whole person comprises many other elements, including their own alters, family, friends, society and culture.

  Fully developed human beings recognize an essential truth: whether we're part of some human, machine, hybrid, or other culture altogether, we're all expressions of one thing. What is this thing? Who can say? But experience tells us it's an open‐ended adventure and, whatever it may look like at any given time, an ongoing melioration.

  We are life.

  Gosh. Did I or did I not say my Ellie was a kind of genius?

  I thought that was your Nance.

  Darn it. I might have said something to that effect, once. Aside from the Kid, I didn't think anybody ever read this stuff.

  And Ellie has just pointed out another thing. This book is a historical first. It's not only gonna be published posthumously, these bits are being written post‐friggin'‐humously. Beat that, if you can. Though my editor may not let me say “friggin'.”

  All this hi‐tech stuff… I guess you could say I'm hi‐tech, now. Not just an ebee, I'm a scendent. Be that as it may, a lot of our brave new world has always been nothing but smoke and mirrors. Like the idea that the Worlds are better than books.

  Speaking of hi‐tech savvy, it turns out that Brian has always been one of Sky's favorite people. In many ways he was the most interesting individual left on earth. Prime‐time worlding. Especially the mongrel version that ascended to wherever the heck we are now.

  Brian is dead, long live Brian

  (despatch from hell)

  “To MOM, we leave everything.” Humanity's last will and testament. Elegy for a failed prototype. Whatever.

  No, no, they'll tell you. We're just part of the next stage in evolution. So goody gumdrops; the meek get to inherit the Earth after all. Fucking mallsters, one and all. Nothing to lose but their kludginess.

  “Scendents,” my ass. But I've got nobody to blame except myself. I should have seen it coming. Ellie's ascension, I mean.

  And we've got more scendents already. Those Psalmist backups, for example. Fuck me. I'm a scendent. And everybody is, like, scendents are totally the next stage of evolution. State of the art. Wow. Man and machine belly2belly, enjoying a higher plane of existence. Maybe. To tell the truth I'd rather be dead. But that's no longer an option. That's right. We did away with marriage and taxes years ago. Now we've abolished death.

  This business of MOM's self‐awareness always made me think. It occurred to me, don't think it didn't, that I could pull a MOM myself. Stash enough personal data, stir it up, stress it out some. Maybe hit it with a bolt of lightning. And presto, my ebee would be looking all around saying, “Fuck a duck, what's this?” Then my qubital self wouldn't need my mondo self anymore. I'd be able to shuffle off that old mortal coil and rock on, fully empowered and happy ever after. And here I actually am. Except I'm not happy.

  Leary still pokes away at Full of It, a perfect title, the sequel to Half Full, the chronicle of his first half century. Whatever. I may try my own hand at writing. Call it self‐therapy. Take these notes, for example. A shot at straightening out a few things.

  MOM is getting her act together. Sky claims Cisco's experiences were a big help to her; entertainment as therapy. Not only that, Sky—MOM, whoever—has debugged her source code. That's right. This lizard's no longer at the wheel. MOM has debugged herself and deballed me all in one swift operation. Or so she believes. One more woman in the ongoing saga of my ball‐busted life.

  Anyway, here I am. Dead and gone to heaven and unhappy.

  For one thing I find this urgency in myself. This sense of time running out. It's like: “There's no time, no time. I'm late!” Never mind that there's nowhe
re I have to go. And I have all the time anybody could ever want. I'm immortal, for fucksake.

  “I find myself dwelling on the fact there's no more growing old and dying, though you can still sprain yourself psychologically pretty bad. Never mind Leary and Ellie are so happy together it isn't real. Hee, hee.

  “Hee, hee?” Oh, my God. “Hee, hee?” Where did that come from? This is the kind of shit that's getting me down.

  And there's no hope now, ever, of wet sex. Sure, there's other stuff. You get all this infinite possibility; we can world our asses off in a way the mallsters never could. It's truly magic. And there are no Mondays.

  Then again you have all these other scendents. Everyone living right up there inside each other. Most intimately, in my case, I've got Rabbit shacked up inside. There's no escape. I've been contaminated. I know now that I am Rabbit, in some measure and in some sense. For ever and ever. So be it not. Fuck.

  That fucking Rabbit. He backs us up in the same quantum hypercube, no idea what he's doing. Fucked‐up partitions, you name it. And then he and Sweetie lode all this shit together. Just like that. They panic. So here I am. Here we are. Whatever. Fuck me. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  And maybe it's only the Rabbit in me, but I can't help wondering how much of MOM is involved in this godawful dog's breakfast of a personality. Come to that, how much is she an ingredient in all us scendents? And who finally won after all? Who's the mitochondria in this partnership, and who's the eukaryote?

  Oh, dear! I'm going to be late.

  C'mon, man. Don't start with that now.

  No time; no time!

  And I'm going to be like this forever. But I guess we have to make do, eh?

  Make doo‐doo. Hee, hee.

  Dear God. Please tell me I didn't say that.

  The horror.

  Glossary

  All entries from the New Millennium English Lexicon (The Lode, continuous updating). Quotations from Leary, Full of It: The Way Things Are, Vol. I (Reading Group, AD 2057).

  Aibo™ (n.) from “a*rtificial i*ntelligence ro*bo*t”; the first commercial pet robot, a dog caricature provided with a limited behavioral repertoire including a rudimentary capacity to learn and to evolve a personality in the course of interaction with its owner; several generations of Aibo were produced between 1999 and 2022 by Sony, a multinational manufacturer of electronics goods, until the wide availability of organic robopets, infinitely transmutable nanobot assemblies (see “foglet”), made them obsolete; a retro fad for customized Aibos saw prices for antique models soar briefly in the early 2030s.