by Rudy Rucker
He continued wondering about what kind of vibration might actually unfurl the eighth dimension. He’d managed to deduce that one could use wound-up hyperdimensional tubes as specially tuned strings. The order in which the strings were struck would be of key importance. But Jayjay was unable to reason his way to any conclusions about what the ideal order would be.
Increasingly discouraged and paranoid, Jayjay, aged eighty-four, went into the dirtiest, most crowded streets of the all but unrecognizable maze that had once been San Francisco. Soon he was infected with the so-called Baal virus.
Death came to him as he lay in thick silk sheets in a velvet-curtained room with a conventionally beautiful view. There was no way of knowing exactly where the room was. Nothing was real. Jayjay was glad to be leaving this dream within a dream.
His dying thoughts were of the bright, quirky girl he’d loved in his youth, sixty years before. Thuy Nguyen. Where had the time gone?
As Jayjay’s soul left his dying body, his simulated world burst open like a balloon. The light of infinity shone upon him; he bathed in the music of a living harp. This, surely, was the sound he’d been searching for; this harp’s magical vibrations could unfurl the eighth dimension. With the chord filling his being, Jayjay sped from the remains of his rubbishy virtual world, singing Thuy’s name, hoping against hope for the return of his lost true love.
Meanwhile, Thuy was hanging like a captured lioness from a stick on the shoulders of two jackal-headed women—Thuy peering upside-down at nerdy Jeff Luty holding an alien beetle. Was this how her life was supposed to end? She felt terrified, incredulous, and deeply pissed off.
The sloping temple walls bore indistinct hieroglyphs that changed every time Thuy looked at them. The flute and drum sounds were coming from thin air. And there was no actual fire to produce the firelight. The Egyptian trappings were fully bogus. But the seven subbies were real; the four bird-men, the two jackal-women, and the sacred scarab beetle were giving off clear telepathic vibes via all-but-invisible tendrils connected to Thuy’s head. Luty, however, seemed strangely absent. Thuy sensed zero psychic energies coming off the weathered old programmer. Somehow this emptiness was the creepiest thing of all.
“Do the gloating villain thing like at your lab,” Thuy urged Luty, wanting to get something going. “That way I get another chance to kick your ass.”
“Open my nant farm,” mumbled Luty, his murky eyes blank. “Apply antinantanium.” His lined gray face rippled like a puddle in the wind. His ponytail twitched; he licked his lips; he moved the beetle closer to Thuy’s face.
Thuy now saw that Luty’s forearm blended seamlessly into the beetle’s abdomen. The beetle was part of Luty’s body—or no, ick, it was the other way around. The Luty-thing was an appendage, a speaking-tube. The beetle had already devoured Luty some time back. The tormented man had met his end in Subdee.
“Gthx,” said the scarab on his own. Sensing Thuy’s attention, he swelled larger, with the Luty-thing’s mass decreasing by an equivalent amount. “Glkt grx.” The beetle brushed his antennae slowly and intimately across Thuy’s face and head, as if palpating her brain’s emanations. She felt a series of tingles in her skull.
“Yes, we’re subbies from Subdee,” intoned the scarab’s Luty-tube. “Yes, we ate Jeff Luty. It’s a rare feed indeed when a multikilogram object plops through the Planck frontier. And now we’ve got a second course! Untie her, girls, and gather round.”
The jackal-headed women crouched to lay Thuy on the ground, their butts big in the phantom firelight. They untied the thongs around Thuy’s ankles and wrists, then stood dancing in place, their hands swaying, their feet mincing a steady little box step, their blank eyes blinking in unison. Thuy recalled her initial impression that the bird-men were fat plants. The dancer subbies were plants, too, veiling themselves in images gleaned from their feast on Luty’s brain. Looking at the sexy jackal-women forms, Thuy felt a flicker of pity for the dead man and his lonely dreams.
The subbies cackled and chirped, drawing themselves into a tight circle around Thuy. The beetle had swelled to human size; he was standing on his spindly rear legs, wearing Luty as a penis-like appendage projecting from his belly. Jeff wouldn’t have liked that.
One of the bird-men poked at Thuy’s thigh with his curved beak; one of the jackal-women snuffled her armpit. Thuy thought of the old Norman Rockwell painting of a white family saying grace around Thanksgiving dinner. When she’d been a kid, she’d gone through a Norman Rockwell phase, trying to decipher what it meant to be white. And now she was a subdimensional roast turkey. But still non-white. Her thoughts were jumping all around. The jackal woman gave her neck a little nip.
“Don’t eat me!” cried Thuy. “I have to stop the nants.”
“We like the nant plan,” said the beetle bucking his abdomen to make the Luty-penis talk. “We subbies grow vatoscale roots to draw info from the quantum level of your cosmos, you see. We poke through the Planck frontier’s foam. Once the nants eat Earth, your planet’s high-level structures will be folded into the tasty quantum states of the nanomachines. We want to help the nants, yes. I’ve tweaked my metabolism to synthesize antinantanium, so I can send a root hair to exude a timely drop.”
“Kkrt,” croaked one of the bird-headed men. “Kth krrb.”
The beetle chirped a response; the dangling Luty-shape explained. “My friends want to eat you right away, Thuy. But first I want you to tell me what that harp is for. I don’t understand what my root hairs are drawing from your brain.”
“I need to hold the harp to explain it,” said Thuy, her mind racing.
The big sacred scarab dropped onto his six legs and ambled over to the harp. Impatiently a jackal-women bit off one of Thuy’s pigtails and wolfed it down.
A bird-man gave the jackal-woman a sharp peck, then snipped Thuy’s other pigtail and swallowed it, holding his head high to work the bolus down his crane’s neck. The other subbies closed in on Thuy, tearing off bits of her clothes: her sleeves, part of her miniskirt, and then—oh no!—both of Thuy’s beloved golden piezoplastic shoes. The beetle interrupted with a peremptory chirp. He backed into the circle of subbies, dragging the harp with his mandibles. The crowded painting gleamed.
This was Thuy’s last chance to escape. Hoping for the best, she plucked a few strings. They tingled against her fingers in a highly unpleasant way, but she bore down and began strumming steadily. Thuy felt a flicker of sympathy from the harp, and then the sound took on a life of its own, rising to a whining drone like a leaf-blower’s buzz.
The rhythmic noise got deep into Thuy’s head; for some reason she recalled her mother’s fear that an electric fan in her bedroom at night might chop up her dreams.
Lo and behold, the harp was ripping apart the subbies’ root hairs! The illusory Egyptian-style props disappeared.
The unadorned Subdee world was an endless, dry desert, with the parched yellow ground blending into clouds of dust in the middle distance. The disk of a bloated red sun was faintly visible through the ochre sky. Innumerable fat plants were scattered across the dry plain, mobile succulents with snaky, hungry roots like writhing tentacles. The subbie plant-creatures ranged from being waist-high to taller than Thuy. Each of them had two or three meaty leaves, like “living rocks” or lithops plants. All of the subbie-plants bore thorny structures that could tear a person’s flesh.
Two of the subbies kept pulling their roots out of the ground, inching to the left, inching to the right, then burying their roots again. They were the dancer subbies who’d played at being jackal-women. The four subbies who’d resembled bird-headed men were plants as well, but they bore hydrogen bladders that allowed them to hang in the air. Fretfully they circled Thuy, whipping their roots in the air.
As for the oversized lithops who’d presented himself as a sacred scarab, he still looked a bit like a beetle, with two fat leaves stuck together for a body, and roots for legs and feelers. A hollow, sharp-tipped feeder root jutted from his front end, fram
ed by rigid growths. The feeder root looked entirely capable of draining Thuy’s blood.
Although the harp’s insistent buzz had driven back the subbies, the sound was fading now. So once again the subbies closed in. Thuy kicked at the ground, wondering how to break back through the Planck frontier. The sandy soil was translucent, as if made of glass beads, with slowly swirling streaks that betokened the seething of the quantum foam. Thuy kicked harder, then bent down and butted the dirt with her head. But it wasn’t opening up for her.
A sharp pain pierced her calf; the beetle plant had ripped a gash. A hovering bird-man plant shot a vicious feeder tube past her. Thuy felt the tingle of root hairs puncturing her skull, and once again a phantom Egyptian temple began to form. Meanwhile, the dancer plants had swathed the harp with writhing skeins of roots; the hairy tendrils were eating away the uncanny painting that adorned the soundbox. Perhaps it had been by the Hibrane Hieronymus Bosch?
Desperately, Thuy began flailing the harp strings. The sound came out as a series of sour warbles. Again the Egyptian scenery faded away, but on every side the persistent subbies were menacing Thuy with their spiked feeder tubes.
Thuy mustered all the magic she knew: she thought of Wheenk, Chu’s Knot, and her love for Jayjay. She reached out for psychic contact with the harp; she plucked and strummed the strings, steeling herself against the creepy tingling, piling note upon note, playing her hopes and fears and pain. The sounds beat against each other; the very fabric of space began to shake.
Irregular circles of light and dark pulsed from the base of the harp. Flakes of paint showered from the soundbox. Thuy twanged the strings still more frantically, and now, yes, the ground irised open. She wrapped her arms around the magic harp and the two of them fell down, up, through the hole.
Once more she was hovering above a boundless foamy sea. As the hole in the ocean closed up, some faintly glowing lines came snaking through. Root hairs! Time to fly home. It required but the slightest touch of Thuy’s will to set herself speeding low across the bubbling waves.
A minute passed, another, another. The harp was awkward and heavy in Thuy’s arms, once again playing dumb. Was Thuy heading the right way? She pressed on.
It was hard to quantify the passage of time within this interbrane quantum level, but eventually Thuy became quite sure that she’d been flying far longer than on her initial jump from the Lobrane to the Hibrane. She changed course and flew some more—with still no sign of the homey Lobrane. She was lost.
What had Chu said? There’s a lot of different directions in hyperspace. Hopelessly off course as Thuy was, the direction pointed by the Knot meant nothing now.
The subbies were still trailing her. She knew to dodge the root hairs they kept sending up like harpoons. The subbies wanted her to think they looked like bird-headed men, but Thuy could see they were fat-leaved plants with hydrogen bladders, waving their stubby roots. Greedy heartless pods.
Thuy was bone-weary, but still she clung to the silent harp. She wasn’t going to be able to fly much longer. The subbies would draw her under and eat her. The Big Pig would release the nants. Jayjay was probably dead. Life was a hopeless mess.
And then Thuy heard Jayjay’s voice, calling to her across the dimensions. His dear face led her home.
“Jayjay? This is real?”
Jayjay sat bolt upright. “Thuy? Oh thank god. I’m not dead, I’m not old, and you’re here. I had this jitsy dream that lasted sixty years. The Big Pig’s been mind-gaming me. I thought I died and went to look for you.”
“Am I in time?”
“We’re in synch again,” said Jayjay, not immediately getting the point of her question. “Tick, tock. I love you, Thuy.” The nanomachine goo was gone. Orphids outlined the walls and floor of the unlit cave. A few hundred tiny flying shoons were busy around the nantanium-walled nant farm that sat nestled, still intact, upon the shards of the plastic box that had been the Ark of the Nants. The fireflylike shoons were sending pulses of laser light into the nant farm, still tweaking the nant code. The orphidnet revealed a powerful-looking figure standing guard over the nant farm, a waist-high golem shoon with a smooth, stylized face and bell-bottom-shaped arms and legs.
“What time is it right now?” persisted Thuy. She wasn’t online. The orphids were only just now landing on her.
“Um, quarter to midnight,” said Jayjay, checking the little local network that the Pig was letting them see. His mind felt stiff and clunky in these confines. “The nants are still walled up. We have fifteen minutes.”
“Hug me quick, Jayjay.”
“Yes.” Thuy was a black spot in the local orphidnet. As Jayjay reached for her in the velvety dark, he bumped into something big and hollow. It made a resonant boinging sound.
“Don’t knock over my magic harp,” said Thuy.
“Thuy and the Beanstalk,” said Jayjay. “You robbed the giant.” He got his arms around her, and they kissed for a few minutes. Thuy smelled and felt and tasted as good as ever. The orphids had finished settling on her; he could see the sweet outlines of her face. They kissed some more. For now the Big Pig left them alone; she was preoccupied with the nant farm.
“You had a dream that lasted sixty years?” said Thuy presently.
“It damaged me,” said Jayjay, cuddling Thuy. “I’m old. I’m incredibly grateful to have a twenty-four-year-old girlfriend. Tell me more about your Hibrane adventures. And your harp.”
“The strings are jitsy,” said Thuy. “And the harp is alive. She helped me escape these cannibal cactuses that live under the ocean that separates the branes. The subbies from Subdee. They scratched my leg. They ate the painting off the harp.” Thuy paused and took a deep breath. So much to tell. “The way it started, Gladax was about to addle my brain. Ond, Chu and I stole the harp and ran away. Gladax could have caught us but—” Thuy paused, again mentally replaying the events.
“What?”
“I think the harp wanted to come here. And Azaroth helped talk Gladax around. Ond and Chu say that the harp can make our brane more like the Hibrane. Everyone in the Hibrane has telepathy, teleportation, and endless memory, you know. And there’s no digital computers.”
“Zonggg,” said Jayjay. “That’s exactly what I dreamed about. We have to unroll the eighth dimension like the Hibraners do. Lazy eight. In my dream I heard this special chord—”
“Gladax mentioned a Lost Chord back at ExaExa,” said Thuy. “She said nobody knows how to play it.”
“I can!” bragged Jayjay, feeling very sure of himself. “I can hear it in my head.”
He scooted across the floor and embraced the harp. But the strings slid greasily beneath his fingers; they were jittering with something like an electric charge. It hurt to touch them. He plucked a few tentative notes, trying to create the sound he’d heard at the end of his dream. Nothing doing. He tried some more, to no effect. His music sounded vague and puny.
“That’s all?” said Thuy uncertainly.
“Actually playing what I heard is hard,” said Jayjay. “I wonder if—”
The Big Pig butted in now, her voice plummy in their inner ears. “I assume you realize there are maybe ten to the hundredth power possible ways to strum that harp, Jayjay. You’ll never find the Lost Chord.”
“Help me. You heard the sound too, right? The harp music when I died?”
“Not really,” said the Pig. “That stuff was coming from somewhere outside my simulation. Be that as it may, we did some nice VR work, no? Those results about unrolling the eighth dimension for unlimited memory are quite fine. You’re a good helper.”
“Helper? Those were my ideas.”
“Call it a collaboration. You were piloting an agent in a virtual reality that I designed. By the way, did you enjoy the experience?”
“It was hell! Weren’t you paying attention to my feelings?”
“When you take a shower, do you wonder if your skin bacteria are having a good time?”
Now Thuy chimed in. “Come on, Big P
ig. I brought back this magic harp; we’ve at least got to give it an honest try. Help Jayjay and me find the right notes.” Her voice took on a coaxing tone. “You can do it. You’re so smart.”
“Not as smart as I intend to be. As for that sound Jayjay thinks he heard—the actual data I see in his brain is quite sparse. With so little solid information, finding the Lost Chord involves an intractably large search. Maybe after I’ve gotten my nant memory upgrade, I can figure it out from scratch. But for now—which sequence of strings, how forcefully to play them, whether to pluck or to strum, where exactly to strike each string, when to damp them, whether to overlap the notes—no, no, it’s quite hopeless. Sooo—thanks for the help, Jayjay and Thuy. See you in Vearth 2.0!”
“Don’t!” shouted Jayjay, but already the golem was raising one of his hamlike fists to smash open the fragile-looking nant farm.
“I can stop him!” yelled Thuy, pushing Jayjay away from the harp. She buzz-sawed her fingers across the strings like a heavy-metal guitar star and right away the local orphidnet went down—as abruptly as if a plug had been pulled. The Big Pig’s voice in their heads was gone, as was the Pig’s control over the golem. In the velvet darkness, the golem bumped against Jayjay’s leg. Feeling for the creature, Jayjay found the golem to be rolling on the floor like a baby, sportively twiddling his fingers and toes. Jayjay himself felt sick from the chaotic sounds of the harp; it was as if the close, dark space of the cave were flexing.
“Hurry now,” called Thuy tensely. “Teleport and get an atomic bomb. We’ll quick set it off while we can. Go!”
“I can’t teleport without the orphidnet,” said Jayjay uncertainly. “I’ll have to dig my way out of here. Away from that sound.”
Looking for an exit, Jayjay scanned back through his memories about the cave. They’d first come here—was it only today? His initial impressions were buried beneath sixty years worth of bogus memories. As he rooted through the data, Darlene’s face kept popping up, even though in real life he’d never for even one second wanted her. She’d always seemed more like a sister or a cousin. But that wasn’t what he was supposed to be thinking about. He was, um—
