by Rudy Rucker
“Poor Jokie. I’ll keep you from getting lost and you’ll help me with hard stuff at school,” said Yoke.
As they grew older, Yoke and Joke were inseparable companions, well loved by Whitey and Darla’s circle of friends. On their eighth birthday, Corey Rhizome brought a special toy over as a present for them.
“Wave this, girls,” said Corey, setting a small plastic dinosaur down on the floor. The dino reared back and gave a small roar that was interrupted by a hiccup so vigorous that the little creature fell over on his side, which sent Yoke and Joke into gales of laughter.
“What is that thing?” asked Darla as the plastic dinosaur grinned sheepishly and got back on its feet.
“It’s a production-quality Silly Putter,” said Corey proudly. “Willy showed me how to program them way back when, and I’ve been refining their software and limpware ever since. Check it out. I think I’ve advanced my Art to the magical level. I expect a stunning tsunami of commercial success for Rhizome Enterprises. I can like mass-produce plastic animals that I invented. Yes, I’m about to surf the tsunami, Darla—everyone’s going to want to buy a Silly Putter.”
“Your Silly Putter is funny,” chuckled Yoke, squatting down to watch as the little dinosaur began dancing a jig.
“Can we really keep this one?” asked Joke.
“Yes yes, it’s a present for you girls!” said Corey, patting them on their heads. “Because you two are so cute.”
“Hold on,” said Darla. “What if it’s dangerous? It might hurt children. You know how devious moldies are.”
“Moldies are good,” put in little Joke loyally. She always stuck up for the boppers and their descendants.
“Don’t get your bowels in an uproar, Darla,” sneered Corey. “Silly Putters aren’t smart enough to be dangerous.”
“Oh right! And meanwhile the DIM in my microwave or in a maggie is about the size of my thumb. DIMs are tiny. This dinosaur is like a thousand times bigger, in terms of mass.”
“You’re smart, huh, Darla?” went Corey. “So dig it, that’s the exact problem that Willy solved for me like six years ago, before he started spending all his time sitting in the marijuana grove staring up at the stars. The Silly Putters damp themselves. Admittedly they mass enough imipolex to go moldie. But they don’t because we have them in a feedback loop. Instead of getting smarter, they make themselves more beautiful. And they know how to become beautiful because I told them how, and I’m an Artist. They don’t reproduce, by the way—if you want more of them, you have to get them from me: Corey Rhizome, a.k.a. the Old Toymaker, a.k.a. the Silly Putter King, a.k.a. the president of Rhizome Enterprises.”
“Corey’s got orders for three thousand Silly Putters,” put in Whitey. “We think they’re gonna be a fad. Willy’s not interested in investing anymore, so I gave Corey some money myself. And he’ll give me initial public offering stock in return. We’re owners, now, Darl, we’re realman and realwoman.”
“You gave him money?” demanded Darla. “Who exactly is ordering all these Silly Putters?”
“All the orders for the Silly Putters are on the Moon,” intoned Corey. “I think right now Earth figures they have enough trouble with the Moldie Citizenship Act without importing more weird limpware. Especially with those asshole Heritagists. You know what they should really call that religion? The Born-Again Dogshit Moron Motherfucking Asshole Scumbag Church of Fuck Your Kids and Blame Satan.” Corey’s antic smile broke into wheezing chuckles. “But I digress. Silly Putters are perfect toys and pets for up here, where the moldies don’t live with us. Silly Putters appeal to our loonie sense of the strange, and they’re an ideal substitute for the animal pets we’re not allowed to have because of our air-quality laws. Silly Putters are squeaky clean.”
The business did well, and over the next few years, Corey gave Yoke and Joke several more Silly Putters. The girls liked the toys, and they enjoyed Corey. Corey was one of the only people who would let Joke talk freely about Emul and Berenice. He was also the only one of Whitey and Darla’s friends who knew anything about literature. He got Yoke and Joke to read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.
On the girls’ eleventh birthday, Corey showed up with a set of six brand-new Silly Putters. Chuckling and showing his gray teeth, he upended his knapsack to dump the lively plastic creatures out on the floor. “Remember Jabberwocky, girls?” he cried. “Jokie, can you recite the first two verses?”
“Okay,” said Joke and declaimed the wonderful, time-polished words.
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
As Joke spoke, each of the six new Silly Putters bowed in turn: the tove, a combination badger and lizard with corkscrew-shaped nose and tail; the borogove, a shabby moplike bird with long legs and a drooping beak; the rath, a small noisy green pig; the Jabberwock, a buck-toothed dragon with bat wings and long fingers; the Jubjub bird with a wide orange beak like a sideways football and a body that was little more than a purple tuft of feathers; and the Bandersnatch, a nasty monkey with a fifth hand at the tip of his grasping tail.
Joke and Yoke shrieked in excitement as the Jabberwocky creatures moved about. The Jubjub bird swallowed the rath and regurgitated it. The freed rath gave an angry squeal that rose into a sneezing whistle. The Jabberwock flapped its wings hard enough to rise a few inches off the floor. The tove alternately tried to drill its nose and its tail into the floor. The borogove stalked this way and that, peering at the others but not getting too close to them. And the Bandersnatch snaked its tail behind Yoke and felt up her ass.
“Don’t!” said Yoke, slapping at the Bandersnatch’s extra hand. The Bandersnatch gibbered, rubbed its crotch, capered lewdly, and then seized the back of Joke’s leg, shudderingly hunching against the young girl’s calf.
“I better do some more work on him,” wheezed Corey, grabbing the Bandersnatch and stuffing the struggling Silly Putter back into his knapsack. “I put so much of myself into each of them that I’m never quite sure how they’ll react to new situations. Quit staring at me like that, girls.”
“Uncle Corey’s a frumious Bandersnatch,” giggled Yoke.
“It was so sick how that thing was pushing on my leg,” said Joke.
“Doing it,” whooped Yoke. “Oh, look, the Jubjub bird is going to swallow the rath again and make it outgrabe!”
“The present tense is outgribe,” corrected the literate Joke. “It’s like give and gave.”
Darla was upset by the incident of the Bandersnatch, and her suspicions about Corey Rhizome were amplified a few months later when Kellee Kaarp came over to visit.
Kellee was a young friend of Darla’s from Darla’s heavy drug-use days, back when she’d been living in the Temple of Ra. Kellee was strung out on drugs—quaak, snap, three-way, merge, whatever—and she had sex with anyone who could get her high. She only visited when she needed something, but Darla always welcomed her. Darla sometimes thought that if she hadn’t met Whitey, she might have ended up like Kellee.
“Come on in, Kellee,” said Darla. “How’s it going?”
“Hard and xoxxy. I need money.” Kellee was tiny and undernourished, not much bigger than Yoke or Joke.
“I don’t keep any money around the house, Kellee,” said Darla. “But I can give you a couple hits of merge. Best I can do.”
“You still take merge, Darla? You still into the magic floppy?”
“Sure, whaddya think? I’m suddenly too realwoman for the love puddle? But I only do it with Whitey, like on major special occasions, maybe two or three times a month, and hardly ever in front of Yoke and Joke anymore.”
“You’ve got your life together, Darla. I envy you. The pervo dooks
I make it with, you wouldn’t believe.”
“I’m all ears,” said Darla. “You know I love your sordid tales. How about some coffee, Kellee?”
“You got beer?”
“Affirmo.”
After three beers and half an hour of chat, Kellee reminded Darla about the merge, and Darla went and got three caps from her stash.
“Thanks a lot, Darla,” said Kellee, pocketing them. Her face took on a sly look. “Before I go, there’s something I better tell you. The girls aren’t home, are they? Yoke and Joke?”
“No, they’re at school.”
“Okay,” said Kellee, running her fingers through her lank hair. “I gotta tell you about Corey Rhizome. Last night I was out to the isopod fuffing him for a few doses of snap and he did this really slarvy thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was wearing his uvvy on his neck while he was on top of me, which is totally insulting in the first place—I know I’m not as wonderbuff as I used to be, but if somebody doesn’t want Kellee, they should leave Kellee alone. I mean obviously Corey was using the uvvy to run a philtre to make me look like someone else. And I’m wondering who? So . . . I snatch the uvvy off him while he’s coming, and I check it out, and . . . and it was a philtre of Joke. Or Yoke. They look the same to me.”
“That gunjy deeve!” cried Darla. “My girls! I knew it! On their birthday, he gave them a Silly Putter that humped Joke’s leg, and now he’s running sex philtres of them on snap whores—excuse me, Kellee. This has to got to stop! I’m telling Whitey!”
“Whitey will stop Corey,” said Kellee. “Brah Whitey will do the deed. And clearly you’ll be needing my inputs. You got another beer?”
So Whitey spoke to Corey, and Corey claimed he’d never been with Kellee Karp at all. Whitey believed Corey, but just the same, Corey stopped coming around, and the friendly dinners out at the isopod came to an end. Whitey stayed friends with Corey, but Darla hadn’t talked to him since. How time flies by. Now the girls were twenty-two, and it was November 6, 2053.
“Come on, Darla,” pleaded Corey Rhizome’s hollow. “Talk to the Old Toymaker.”
Slowly Darla got out of bed, her boobs jouncing in the gentle lunar gravity. Her flesh exuded the notions of softness, of comfort, of ease. She had a mild double chin, a practical bow-shaped mouth, a pug nose, and frank eyes.
“Just a minute, goob!” she hollered and got herself dressed. She pulled on thigh-high moldie boots and low-cut black panties with a satin string waistband and scallops of lace around the edges of the crotch. She slung her heavy studded leather utility belt about her waist and left her breasts bare. She put on a long strand of black moon-pearls and a necklace of thin gold chain, then rummaged briefly at her hair, a great black haystack that puffed down over her shoulders to feather across the mounds of her breasts. She put on her black lipstick and toggled the uvvy’s video camera.
“What is it?”
“Hi, Darla,” said Corey Rhizome, regarding her with no special interest. Darla’s garb was not at all unusual in the heated tunnels of the Moon and, in any case, Darla was far too mature to pique Corey’s lust. “Do you, uh, know where Whitey is?” Judging from the background of the hollow, it looked like Corey was calling from his bathroom. Some guys had no class at all.
“He went out this morning, dook. He’s doing something for ISDN. That’s all you called for? Like I’m some kilpy message machine?” She reached for the uvvy cutoff.
“Wait, Darla, wait. I can talk to you.”
“Oh, I’m lucky.” Darla picked up the uvvy and carried it into the kitchen area with her. Rhizome’s hollow trailed along behind the uvvy like a balloon. While she was moving, the hollow made some funny hisses and crackles, and then she thought she heard a sound like whooping somewhere else in the apartment. She stopped and cocked her head, but now everything was quiet. Drug hangover, no doubt. “Okay, I need some breakfast,” said Darla. She set the uvvy on the counter, popped a squeeze bulb of sugared coffee into the microwave, and filled a bowl with paste from the food tap.
“It’s about my Silly Putters,” said Corey Rhizome, looking worried. He was sitting on the toilet with his pants on. “They’re acting different today. This morning I got an uvvy call from this moldie called Frangipane. She’s a friend of Willy and Gurdle-7 in the Nest. And she sent my uvvy something like a virus, which it then downloaded onto twelve of the fourteen Silly Putters up and running today. When Frangipane hosed me, my uvvy made a kind of crackling sound and then the twelve infected Silly Putters started whooping and, um, I hate to tell you this, Darla, but I just heard those sounds again, so I think my uvvy sent the virus on to your uvvy. How many Silly Putters do you have in your apartment? You better go check on them.”
“Oh sure, thanks a lot,” said Darla, spooning up her paste and not paying much attention. “How many Silly Putters do we have? We only have one left. The girls took the rest of them when they moved out. But we do still have Rags, the one that’s like a cute little spotted fox terrier. I haven’t seen him yet this morning.” She raised her voice. “Here, Rags! Come here, boy!” There was no response.
ISDN had done well by Darla and Whitey; they had a six-cubby apartment. Darla set down her spoon and ambled into the living cubby. Rags was indeed in the living cubby, but Rags had stopped acting like a dog. He was shaped the same, still white with irregular black spots, but—he was standing on his hind legs, and he didn’t run over to greet Darla like he usually did. He was standing like a little man with his back to the room, carefully examining the electric zapper curtain that filled the apartment’s outer door. Rags leaned forward and cautiously touched one of his whiskers to the zapper and—zzzt!—so much for that hair. Darla made an exclamation, and Rags turned to confront her. His eyes were live and alert.
“Hello,” said Rags, although Rags had never talked before. “I’ve stopped being a dog. Now I am Cthon from the Andromeda galaxy.” He paused and stared at Darla as if analyzing her appearance. “Most remarkable. I believe I am one of the first personality waves to be decrypted at your node. This is the planet Earth?”
“This is the Moon,” said Darla flatly, not letting the moldie’s bufugu jive distract her. It was clear to Darla that this Silly Putter had fully crashed for true. Welcome to The Twilight Zone. Darla began walking backward step by step. The little dog trotted after her, still erect on his hind legs. “How did you learn to talk all of a sudden, Rags?” said Darla, sweetening her voice as if she didn’t have a care in the world. There was a needler in a drawer in the kitchen.
“Yes, that’s what I mean, Darla,” said Rhizome’s voice from the hollow on the counter. “The way Rags is acting. All my Silly Putters have turned into fucked-up aliens. They’ve been taken over by some kind of rogue software from outer space—I didn’t ask for it, but here it is, and it’s free, whether we want it or not, it’s physical graffiti from dimension Z, the truest freeware there ever was. I locked myself in the bathroom after Clever Hansi started—”
Darla toggled off the uvvy and skipped around behind the kitchen counter. Opened the drawer. Got the needler. The weird little dog-thing was at her feet, looking up at her. “Can you open the front door now?” he asked. “I want to go join the new arrivals at Corey’s. We have to get this node properly installed. It’s for your own good.”
Darla drilled it right between its big intelligent eyes. The imipolex charred, smoked, and burst into flame, writhing and giving off high, horrible screams. Darla needled it again and again, coughing from the smoke. The sprinklers in the ceiling kicked on and doused the flames. Suddenly suspicious of the uvvy that had brought this, Darla ran into the kitchen and chopped it up with a knife, cutting deep grooves into the countertop. Damn Corey Rhizome for bringing this down on her!
Just then Darla heard the zapper curtain make the boinging noise that signaled when it opened. She raced into the living cubby, holding the needler straight before her, with her other hand grasping her wrist for steadiness, but . . .
It was Yoke and Joke.
“What are you doing, Ma?” said Yoke. “It’s just us.”
Darla lowered the needler and the girls swept in. “She shot Rags!” exclaimed Joke. “It’s soaked in here and everything’s ruined!”
“Ma,” wailed Yoke. “Are you twisted on snap again? If you are, we’re leaving.”
Both Yoke and Joke had light olive skin, big bright eyes, and short full-lipped mouths. They had identical faces, but they’d outgrown the phase of wanting to dress the same. Yoke wore her thick dark hair natural in a bob, while Joke had used her hair for a creative zone. She’d started by dying it blonde, then she’d let three inches of black roots grow out, and now she wore her hair gathered into two high ponytails, with the blonde ends of the ponytails dyed purple. It matched the punk look of her clothes: a leather jacket over a T-shirt, with red plaid pants cut off at mid-calf above dull red combat boots. For her part, Yoke wore a long, dark, ribbed-wool dress with low silver boots—modern moonmaid-style.
“Wait,” gasped Darla, flopping down on a chair in the kitchen but still holding on to her needler. “Corey Rhizome sent me some kind of virus, and then Rags was possessed. He started talking. And then, after I shot him, I got the idea the uvvy might be possessed too.”
“You sure nailed them,” said Joke, holding up a ragged scrap of the hacked-up uvvy. “What did Rags say anyway?”
“He—” Darla shook her head in confusion. “I’m completely straight, girls, so unlax. Give me my coffee.” Yoke handed Darla her squeezie of coffee and Darla took a few big slurps. “I think Rags said he was from another galaxy. I, of all people, know better than to trust robots when they act tweaky. So I killed him.”
“And the uvvy?” insisted Joke.
“I was upset, damn it!” yelled Darla. “Do you have to be so fucking logical all the time, Joke? The signal that changed Rags came from the uvvy, so I killed it too. Call Corey Rhizome if you don’t believe me. He’s locked himself in his bathroom.”
“My dear old Bandersnatch?” giggled Joke. “Are his Silly Putters saying they’re from other galaxies too?”
