The Ware Tetralogy

by Rudy Rucker

Half an hour later she felt like her old self again, sitting on Babs’s ant-patterned silk couch talking with the others. Phil and Darla sat on either side of her, and Babs and Randy were on another couch. Cobb was flopped down on the floor, his head sticking out of a formless puddle. A huge green brocade fabricant tapestry covered the nearest wall.

  “What happened to your foot, Ma?” asked Yoke. “Your little toe is gone.”

  “It happened when Om’s powerball swallowed me on Christmas Eve,” said Darla. “I tried kicking my way out.”

  “Poor Ma. You were in there for a long time. Thank God you’re back.”

  “I don’t matter that much, Yoke. I’m old. Thank God you’re back.”

  Yoke kept testing her thoughts and looking down at her body, her precious flesh, touching herself, her leg, her stomach, her face, yes, all of her was back, even the same clothes that she’d been wearing—her new stretch leather pants and plush green shirt—and even the gem necklace Phil had given her, as well as his father’s gold ring, loose on her finger. She was going to have to think about that one.

  “Did you see the SUN?” asked Cobb.

  “The White Light,” said Yoke. “I saw it.” If she looked within herself, she could still see feel the Light. A savor of serenity, a sense that everything was okay.

  “I saw it too,” said Phil. “When I was peeking out of Om. Da flew into it.”

  “It had good vibes,” added Darla. She was wearing a shapeless dress with purple patterns on it. Not like something she’d normally wear.

  “The best vibes ever,” said Yoke. “It’s wonderful to know that God is real. And then you guys brought me back?”

  “Slick as snot on a doorknob,” said Randy. “All I did was hold your alla, and it goes, ‘Shall I actualize a new Yoke Starr-Mydol or shall I execute a fresh registration?’ And I go, ‘Yaaar, make me one o’ them Yokes.’ And then here you come, screamin’ your head off.”

  “It was quite a shock,” said Yoke. “I was already in heaven, I guess.” The impossibly bright memories were fading. “And now I’m back to—this.” Though life was wonderful, it was hard. There were so many things to see and feel and think about. Phil kept putting his hands on her, for one thing, and it was a little bit annoying. Was he serious about that marriage thing?

  Babs leaned forward, staring at Phil. “What was that you said before about knowing how to make more allas? Is it really true?”

  “It’s about time I got an alla!” interjected Cobb. “Fuck this ‘humans only’ bullshit. Anyway, I am human. I’m the same damned information I always was.”

  “I’m starting to see your point,” said Yoke. “Now that I’m made of realware. Stop touching me every second, Phil.”

  “I want an alla too,” said Darla on Yoke’s other side. “Just think what I could do to our cubby, Yoke. We could have a swimming pool. Can you really make me one, Phil?”

  “Yes, I think I know how to get us as many allas as we want,” said Phil. “As long as one of you guys with allas will help.”

  “Tell me what to do!” said Babs. “It’s important that we start handing out allas before people start wanting to take ours away from us.”

  “Om told me you can split up an alla,” said Phil. “You have to understand that an alla is part of a vortex thread. Like the central line down the throat of a whirlpool? Both ends of the alla’s thread are connected to Om. The thread is a loop, and the alla is where the loop dips into our space. Just barely skims in. Now, it’s hard to create a brand-new vortex thread, but it’s easy to split one lengthwise. That’s how you make more allas.”

  “I can split this in two?” said Babs, holding her silvery alla in her palm. “How?”

  “You only have to ask,” said Phil. “You can’t ask an alla to make an alla, but you can ask it to split. A subtle distinction.” He sounded oddly professorial.

  “I ask it, and it splits in two, and both allas will work?”

  “That’s what Om told me. The alla-thread divides itself up like strands of yarn coming untwined—and then the split moves ana along the loop back to Om. You end up with two loops of vortex thread and two allas. Or three, or four, or anything up to seven. The most you can split an alla into at once is seven. Om and the Metamartians are big on sevens. One of the allas will still be yours, the same as before, and the others will be blank slates, ready for someone’s registration.”

  “So you understand all about Om now?” asked Randy.

  “I’ve been inside Om for the last four days,” said Phil. “Om’s the god of the Metamartians. She’s a huge, higher-dimensional intelligence.”

  “Is she like that light Yoke saw?” asked Randy.

  “No,” said Phil. “Much more concrete. Om reminds me of a giant, pink woman. A woman the size of the solar system. You’d probably try to hump her leg, Randy. Except that she’s four-dimensional or, come to think of it, maybe five. That would explain how she could have disjoint hyperspherical fingertips.”

  “You a math-freak all of a sudden?” snapped Randy, hurt by Phil’s dig. “I thought that was just your dad.”

  “Phil made peace with his father,” said Darla. “It was beautiful. I helped them, Yoke.”

  Yoke glanced sideways at Darla. There was something in her mother’s face that made Yoke suspicious. “You met Phil’s father, Ma? Was he nice?”

  “They got along very well,” said Phil quickly. “Try and split your alla now, Babs. I want one too.”

  “Okay,” said Babs. “I’ll make one and you three decide who gets it.” She clenched her alla in her hand and focused inward on her uvvy. “Split in two,” she said.

  Though Yoke was staring at Babs’s hand, the transformation was hard to follow. There was a moment of fuzziness, a kind of double vision around Babs’s alla, and then there was a second silver tube that passed through Babs’s fingers and clattered to the floor.

  Phil shot out of the couch and managed to pick it up before Cobb or Darla could, and now he was into his alla registration process. “A face,” said Phil, naming the first three images the alla showed him. “A path. Yoke’s skin.” And then the images were coming too fast for him to talk.

  Once again it sounded to Yoke like the alla’s series of images were the same ones she’d seen: a disk of colors, a crooked line, and a patch of texture. It was sweet that Phil automatically thought of her skin.

  “Show me your alla, Phil,” said Babs when Phil’s registration was complete. “My alla’s paler than it was before, don’t you think, guys? And Phil’s is the same pale color as mine. Almost platinum. Let’s see if mine still works. Here we go.” Babs popped a little imipolex DIM dinosaur onto the floor. It capered around in circles like a windup toy, now and then pausing to let out a tiny roar. “Skronk!” said Babs, encouraging it. “Gah-rooont!” She made three more dinos, each one a different shape. They started fighting with each other. “Collect the whole set!” crowed Babs. “You want my catalog, Phil? It’s the one the Metamartians made, but with additions by Randy, Yoke, and me. We’ve been pooling our designs. Randy’s good with DIMs.”

  “What about an alla for me?” said Darla. “Split yours, Yoke.”

  “I want one for me too,” clamored Cobb. Yoke eyed him critically. He didn’t seem lifted anymore.

  So she uvvied into her alla and said, “Split in three.” Simple. There was a momentary vibration in her hand, then a kind of breeze passing through her fingers, and then two pale gold-colored tubes dropped to the floor, ringing like chimes. One rolled over to Cobb. Darla leaned forward and picked up the other one, which was next to her injured foot. Yoke’s alla was the same pale gold color as the two new allas.

  “Earth,” said Darla, doing her registration. “A vein. Cereal.”

  “The SUN,” said Cobb. “A wrinkle. Television.”

  “Zap me that catalog?” Darla asked Yoke. “I want to get some bitchin’ threads like you.”

  “Here you go, Ma,” said Yoke. “Now think about clothes, and the catalog will show t
hem to you. You can customize things too. Where did you get that purple muumuu, anyway? You look guh-roovy.”

  “Too true,” said Darla. “Phil made it for me, poor thing. When he showed up in the powerball I was—um, so yeah, I think I’ll make some black leather moon-boots and sparkly gold leggings, and a kicky black skirt and—”

  “He saw you naked, Ma? Were you drunk?”

  “I was cooped up in there for eight fucking weeks, Yoke,” snapped Darla. “A lesser woman would have gone crazy. Now stop grilling me and let me look for my new clothes.” She stood up and marched off, holding her alla. She had only the slightest limp from her missing toe.

  “You know what I’m going to do?” said Cobb, fondling his alla. “I’m going to invent a bacteria that eats the stink right off the moldies. It’s high time. Call it the stinkeater germ. Hey, Darla, I’ll come sit with you. You can be the test-sniffer.” Darla made a face, but Cobb followed her across the room.

  “Good thing Randy didn’t hear Cobb’s plan,” Yoke said to Phil. “Randy likes the way moldies smell right now.” Babs and Randy, on the other couch, were deeply engrossed in a personal conversation.

  “I’m surprised that your alla remembered the necklace and the ring, Yoke,” said Phil, scooting even closer to Yoke and touching the gold band around her finger. “It must update itself all the time. And you got all of your memories back too? You remember right up to the last instant?”

  “I remember,” said Yoke, bracing herself.

  “I meant what I said,” said Phil. “I’d like to marry you.”

  Yoke slipped the ring off her finger. “This is too big for me, you know. And it’s your father’s.”

  “But I want you to have it,” said Phil. “That is, if—”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Phil. Yes, I like you very much, but what’s the big rush? Don’t pressure me. It’s all too much for one day. And you keep this ring, I don’t want it, it’s kind of creepy.” She peered down at its inscription. “The writing’s still backward.”

  Phil took the ring and read the engraving. “ ‘ ,’ ” he said. “At least it’s unknotted.” He pocketed it. “The necklace looks really good on you. You notice how the shape of the gem changes as well as its color? Dynamic Metamartian realware. You’ll keep it, won’t you?”

  “Okay,” said Yoke, glancing down. “And now let’s stop negotiating. I’m tired. But I’m afraid to go to sleep. Being dead wasn’t all sunny and nice, you know. There were bad things too. Things like demons. I’m sure I’m going to dream about them.”

  While Yoke and Phil were talking, Babs and Randy finished their tête-à-tête and now they were standing up.

  “Good night, guys!” sang Babs. “We’re going to hit the hay. We’ll start handing out allas in the morning.” She and Randy disappeared behind a floor-to-ceiling curtain of red and yellow moire silk, presumably to share Babs’s canopy bed.

  Darla and Cobb were over in the kitchen part of the room chatting. Darla was sipping at a split of champagne and alla-making outfit after outfit, asking Cobb’s opinions about each one. Cobb was screwing around with some cryptic biotech machinery that he’d alla-made. Each time Darla would ask Cobb about an outfit, he’d ask her what she thought of the smell of some fresh sample of gene-tailored mold.

  “Let’s get in bed together?” suggested Phil.

  “In here?” said Yoke, rolling her eyes toward her mother.

  “We can alla-make ourselves a nest. Like what I used to live in at Calla and Derek’s.”

  “Where Kevvie probably is right now. That pig. What happened to her after she killed me?”

  “Haresh kept us from getting to her. But then the aliens took off in a flying saucer. Kevvie wanted them to take her with them, but they didn’t. We didn’t try to do anything to her yet because we wanted to hurry back here and make a new realware you. We just left her there on the Anubis.”

  Yoke felt a stab of fear. “What if she comes to get me again? Shouldn’t you call the Gimmie?”

  “Oh, not the Gimmie,” sighed Phil. “And then everyone finds out about the allas? I’ll do something to Kevvie myself tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll take her alla away. But I don’t think we have to worry right now. If I know Kevvie, she’s back at Calla and Derek’s, trying to snort her way to the bottom of an alla-made mound of gabba. Saint and I’ll go over there tomorrow morning and we’ll take her alla while she’s still passed out. Okay?”

  Yoke found Phil’s calmness maddening—but it was contagious. “Okay,” she said, leaning against him.

  “Now let me make us that nest.” Phil gazed thoughtfully at the girders supporting the warehouse roof.

  “Not up there, Phil. Put it where Ma won’t be staring at us. In fact let’s put it outside. In the alley.”

  So they stepped out the warehouse’s side door into a deserted, dead-end alley. It was raining. Phil held out his pale gold alla and formed a control mesh in the air. Raindrops fell through the mesh, twinkling in its light. It took Phil a minute to get the structure fully imagined. Finally he said, “Actualize,” and a cozy-looking box was resting on the alley’s cinders; it was pentagonal like a shingled wren’s house, with a big round door on hinges and a triangular window next to the door.

  “I had the alla put rubber cushions under it, Yoke, so we don’t get cold. See?”

  “Don’t come a-knockin’ if this nest’s a-rockin’.” Yoke giggled, feeling relaxed for the first time since she’d popped back. “Looks like Babs and me are gonna scooore!” She stuck her head back into the warehouse. “Hey, Ma, good night!”

  “You’re sleeping outside?”

  “Phil made us a little house. You can use my bed. Just for fun I made it a bunk-bed like Joke and I used to have at home. It’s in the corner over there. Cobb will show you.”

  “How cute. Well, good night, dear. What a scare you gave me today. Thank God you survived. I’m going to uvvy Whitey in a few minutes.”

  “Don’t whip him up too much about Kevvie. Just say I’m fine and tell him hi from me. The big news is that you’re back, Ma. He’s going to be so glad.”

  “I hope so.” Darla’s face hardened a little. “I might just blow Kevvie’s head off tomorrow morning. And as for your father—he better not be with one of his little chippies.” She held out her arms. “Give me a kiss.”

  So Yoke walked across the room and kissed her mother good night, and then went back outside to get into the little nest-house Phil had made them. Phil had put a bed in their nest, and three lit candles for light. They lay there cuddling for a long time, talking a little, and then, finally, they made love.

  “That was even nicer than I expected,” said Yoke when they were done.

  “Me too,” said Phil. “I love you, Yoke.”

  “I love you.”

  “June wedding?”

  “Maybe.” Yoke found herself smiling uncontrollably. “We’ll see. What’s going to happen to everything in the meantime? After everyone gets an alla.”

  “We’re really going to give them to everyone?”

  “We were talking about that while you were gone,” said Yoke. “If other people can’t get allas, they’re going to kill us to take ours away.”

  “Does getting killed matter? If your alla can bring you back?”

  “If someone shreds you with like an O. J. ugly-stick, and then your alla asks them if they’d rather actualize a new Phil or register the alla for themselves, they’re not going to make a new you.”

  “And—myoor!—I just thought of something,” said Phil, running his fingers through his blond hair. “When your alla brought you back, Yoke, it made a realware copy of you just the way you were before you died. And that was fine—since you were in perfect health right up until the instant Kevvie turned you into air. But if I bleed to death from an O. J. ugly-stick attack, then when the alla actualizes a fresh Phil, it’s gonna be me lying there all trashed and bleeding to death—and I die all over again.”

  “Gnarly! It would be torture!”r />
  “Actually, I have a feeling that recorporation only works if it was an alla that killed you in the first place,” said Phil. “It’s probably a kind of fail-safe feature to keep the allas from becoming a weapon. I think the aliens would have told us if an alla also had the effect of making its owner immortal.”

  “Why don’t you ask Om?” said Yoke. “Didn’t you say she’d been talking to you?”

  “Yes, I could hear Om when I was inside her, up there in hyperspace. But even there I could only do it when I was dreaming. I don’t think I’ll be able to hear her at all down here in regular space.”

  It was raining hard now, and the drops were drumming on their little roof. The window was open a little to let air in, with a red silk curtain over it for privacy. Yoke alla-made herself an orange.

  “Want some?” she said, peeling it by the warm candlelight.

  “Thanks. This is such fun. I’ve never been so happy. It was good to see my dad.”

  “What was that like?”

  “He was nice to me,” said Phil. “And I told him I was sorry I’d been mean to him. He told me I was smart.”

  “I knew that already.” Yoke smiled and touched Phil’s cheek. “Are you going to use your alla to make blimps?”

  “I have been thinking about it. I have an idea how to keep blimps from getting pushed around by the wind. People are always looking for new ways to fly. Getting a moldie to carry you isn’t that pleasant. I mean, then you have the moldie to deal with. It’s like taking a cab instead of driving.”

  “I don’t understand why people don’t use DIMs to make big brainless flapping things that aren’t moldies. Kind of like Randy’s giant snail?”

  “The problem is that safely flying a person takes enough mass and enough computational ability that you’d have to give a flapping thing a fairly elaborate mold-based nervous system. And then it would end up turning into a moldie and not being willing to work for you. A blimp’s brain can be a lot simpler. My secret is that I’m going to give my blimps a kind of hair. But what giant snail of Randy’s are you talking about?”

  Yoke was expecting to start laughing about Randy again, but her recent contact with the White Light had sapped the meanness right out of her. The story ended up coming across as something pathetic that had happened to a friend.