by Rudy Rucker
Craigor spent a few more days with Lureen Morales, grew tired of her, and made yet another effort to patch up things with Jil. She stonewalled him. The marriage was over. Craigor moved to a new girlfriend, then another and another. But all the while, he kept on visiting the Merz Boat, chatting with Jil and the kids, fishing for cuttles, fiddling with his junk. He was free, but he was lonely.
Meanwhile, Ond solved his house problem with Nektar by building a second home on their large lot. In some ways, working with intelligent materials made building easier. For instance, Ond could teep into a piece of lumber to find the best spot for a nail—the silps in the boards were quite cooperative. They enjoyed linking together to make a structure. Ond built his house with four bedrooms, the better to convince Jil and her kids to move in.
Fed up with Craigor’s visits, Jil finally acceded to Ond’s courtship. She and the kids abandoned the Merz Boat and began living with Ond. He was happier than he’d ever been.
Chu was glad for the company, although mostly he slept at Nektar’s. Bixie made him a little shy. At Nektar’s urging, Chu began teeping into the gray matter of his own brain, coaxing the tissues towards a healing of the congenital defect in his cingulate cortex. Bit by bit he grew more personable.
As for Jayjay and Thuy? They got hitched.
It was the end of the Digital Age and the beginning of something new. Society percolated like a river city settling down from a flood. People were pleased with the new order; they’d reclaimed their lives from the machines. Good-humoredly they implemented the necessary changes, working together, fixing one problem at a time.
Astronomers reported that our unrolling of the eighth dimension had spread no further than the gravity well of Earth. But, now that the scientists knew what to look for, they could spot other unfurled zones amid the nearby stars and galaxies.
Perhaps the neighbors would be visiting soon.
Tor Books by Rudy Rucker
As Above, So Below
Frek and the Elixir
Mathematicians in Love
Postsingular
Saucer Wisdom
Spaceland
Acknowledgments
Chapter 2, “Nant Day,” appeared as “Chu and the Nants” in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, June 2006. This story also appeared in Year’s Best SF 12, edited by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.
Chapters 3 and 4, “Orphid Night” and “Chu’s Knot,” appeared as a single story, “Postsingular,” in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, September 2006.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
POSTSINGULAR
Copyright © 2007 by Rudy Rucker
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rucker, Rudy v. B. (Rudy von Bitter), 1946–
Postsingular / Rudy Rucker.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”
ISBN: 978-1-4668-0487-6
1. Nanotechnology—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3568.U298P67 2007
813'.54—dc22 2007020210
