A Good Old-Fashioned Future

by Bruce Sterling

  Tug configured the new computer and did a remote login to his workstation back in Los Perros. In ten minutes he’d siphoned off copies of all the software he needed, and ghostly jellyfish were shimmering across the computer’s new screen. Tug went out and looked at the robots; they’d finished five aquaria now, and water was gushing into them from connections the busy robots had made to the Quinonez Motorotive watermain.

  Tug opened the trunk of his car and began bringing in artificial jellyfish and throwing them into the new tanks. Meanwhile Revel was moving about on the big storage tanks, crawling all over them like an excited fly on fresh meat. Spotting Tug, Revel whooped and waved from the top of a tank. “The slime’s comin’ soon,” hollered Revel. Tug waved back and returned to his computer.

  Checking his e-mail, Tug saw that he’d finally gotten a coelenteratological monograph concerning one of the ctenophores he’d been most eager to model: the Venus’s-girdle, or Cestus veneris, a comb-jelly native to the Mediterranean, shaped like a wide, tapering belt covered with cilia. The Venus’s-girdle was a true ctenophore, and its water-combing cilia were said to diffract sunlight into gorgeous rainbows. It might be fun to wrap one of them around your waist for dress-up. Ctenophore, Inc. could make fashion accessories as well as toys! Smiling as he worked, Tug began transferring the report’s data to his design program.

  The roar of the Urschleim coming through the pipeline was like a subway underground. Initially taking it for an earthquake, Tug ran outside and collided with the jubilant Revel.

  “Here she comes, pardner!”

  The nearest of the giant tanks boomed and shuddered as the slime began coursing into it. “So far, so good!” said Revel.

  Tanks two and three filled up uneventfully, but a long vertical seam midway up on tank four began to gape open as the tank was filling. Scampering about like a meth-biker roughneck, Revel yanked at the pipeline valves and diverted the Urschleim flow from tank four into tanks five and six, which tidily absorbed the rest of the shipment.

  As the roaring and booming of the pipeline delivery died down, the metal of tank four gave a dying shriek and ripped open from top to bottom. Floundering in vast chaotic motion, the sides of the great tank unrolled to fall outward like a snipped ribbon, tearing loose from the huge disk top, which glided forward some twenty yards like a giant Frisbee.

  An acre or more of slime gushed out of the burst tank to flood the tank farm’s dry weedy soil. The thousands of gallons of glistening Urschleim mounded up on the ground like a clear tapioca pudding.

  Tug started running toward the spill, fearful for Revel’s safety. But, no, there was Revel, standing safe off to one side like a triumphant cockroach. “Come on, Tug!” he called. “Come look at this!” Tug kept running and Revel met him at the edge of the Urschleim spill.

  “This is just like the spill at Ditheree!” exclaimed Revel. “But you’ll see, spillin’ Urschleim on the ground don’t mean a thing. You ready to start fillin’ orders, Tug?” His voice sounded tinny and high, like the voice of an indestructible cartoon character.

  “The stuff is warm,” said Tug, leaning forward to feel the great knee-high pancake of Urschleim. His voice, too, had a high, quacking quality. Here and there fat bubbles of gas formed beneath the Urschleim and burst plopping holes in it. The huge Urschleim flapjack was giving off gas like a dough full of yeast. But the gas was helium, which is why their voices were high and—

  “I just realized how the Urschleim makes helium,” squawked Tug. “Cold fusion! Let’s run back in the garage, Revel, and find out whether or not we’ve got radiation sickness. Come on. I mean it. Run!”

  Back in the garage they caught their breath for a while. “Why would we have radiation sickness?” puffed Revel finally.

  “I think your Urschleim is fusing hydrogen atoms together to make helium,” said Tug. “Depending on the details of the process, that could mean anything from warming the stuff up, to killing everyone in the county.”

  “Well, it ain’t killed anyone down in Ditheree so far,” Revel scoffed. “And come to think of it, one of my techs did check the first batch over with a Geiger counter. It ain’t radioactive, Tug. How could it be? We’re gonna use it to make toys!”

  “Toys? You’ve already got orders?”

  “I got a fella owns a chain of variety stores down in Orange County, wants ten thousand jellies to sell for swimming-pool toys. All shapes and sizes. I told him I’d send ’em out down the pipeline to his warehouse early tomorrow morning. He’s takin’ out ads in tomorrow’s papers.”

  “Heavens to Betsy!” exclaimed Tug. “How are we going to pull that off?”

  “I figure all you need to do is tap off Urschleim a bucketful at a time, and just dip one of your artificial jellyfish into each bucketful. The ur-snot will glom right on to the math and start acting like a jellyfish. You sell the slime jellyfish, and keep the plastic jellyfish to use as a seed again and again.”

  “We’re going to do that ten thousand times by tomorrow morning?”

  “Teach the damn robots to do it!”

  Just about then, Felix Quinonez showed up in his truck to try and find out what they’d just spilled out of tank four. Revel blustered at him until he went away, but not before Tug managed to set a dinner date for that evening.

  “Jesus, Tug,” snapped Revel. “What in hell you want to have supper with that old man for? I hope to God it ain’t because of—”

  “Hark,” sang Tug. “The love that dare not speak its name! Maybe I can get myself a Venus’s-girdle sintered up in time. I think it would be a stunning thing to wear. The Venus’s-girdle is a ctenophore native to the Mediterranean. If I can make mine come out anywhere near as gorgeous as the real thing, then we’ll sell twenty thousand of them to your man in Orange.”

  Revel nodded grimly. “Let’s git on in the garage and start workin’, son.”

  They tried to get the robots to help with making the ten thousand jellies, but the machines were slow and awkward at this task. Tug and Revel set to work making the jellies themselves—tapping off Urschleim, vivifying it with the magic touch of a plastic jellyfish, and throwing the Urschleim jellyfish into one of the aquaria for storage. They put nets over the storage aquaria to keep the creatures from floating off. Soon the nets bulged upward with a dizzying array of Urschleim coelenteroids.

  When dinnertime rolled around, Tug, to Revel’s displeasure, excused himself for his date with Felix Quinonez.

  “I’ll just work on through,” yelled Revel. “I care about business, Tug!”

  “I’ll check back with you around midnight.”

  “Fine!” Revel drew out his packet of white powder and inhaled deeply. “I can go all night, you lazy heifer!”

  “Don’t overwork yourself, Revel. If we don’t finish all the jellyfish tonight we can finish them early tomorrow morning. How many do we have done anyway?”

  “I’m counting about three thousand,” said Revel. “Damn but those robots are slow.”

  “Well, I’ll be back later to drive you back to the hotel. Don’t do anything crazy while I’m gone.”

  “You’re the one who’s crazy, Tug!”

  Tug’s dinner with Felix Quinonez went very well, even though Tug hadn’t had time to sinter himself that Venus’s-girdle. After the meal they went back to Felix’s house and got to know each other better. The satiated Tug dropped off to sleep, and by the time he got back to the tank farm to pick up Revel, it was nearly dawn.

  A stiff breeze was blowing from the south, and a dying moon hung low in the west over the sea. Patches of fog swept northward across the moon’s low disk. The great tanks of Urschleim were creaking and shivering. Tug opened the garage door to find the whole interior space filled with Urschleim jellies. Crouched cackling at one side of the garage was the wasted Revel. Streaming out of five jury-rigged pipes next to Revel were unbreakable fresh Urschleim jellyfish, blowing out of the pipes like bubbles from a magic bubble wand. Every now and then an air-bubble would start to swell
too large before plopping free, and one of the two robots would step forward and snip it off.

  “Reckon we got enough yet, Tug?” asked Revel. “I done lost count.”

  Tug did a quick estimation of the volume of the garage divided by the volume of an air jelly and came up with two hundred thousand.

  “Yes, Revel, I’m sure that’s way more than enough. Stop it now. How did you get around having to dip the plastic jellyfish into the slime?”

  “The smart nose knows,” said Revel, horning up a thumbnail of white powder. “How was your big date?”

  “My date was fine,” said Tug, pushing past Revel to turn off the valves on the five pipes. “It could even be the beginning of a steady thing. Thank God this garage isn’t wood, or these air jellies would lift off the roof. How are you going to feed them all into the pipeline to Orange County, Revel?”

  “Got the robots to rig a collector up top there,” said Revel, gesturing toward the distant ceiling. “You think it’s time to ship ’em out? Can do!” Revel slapped a large toggle switch that one of the robots had jury-rigged into the wall. The deep throb of a powerful electric pump began.

  “That’s good, Revel, let’s get the jellies out of here. But you still didn’t tell me how you got the jellies to come out of the pipe all ready-made.” Tug paused and stared at Revel. “I mean how could they come out ready-made without your having to dip a plastic jellyfish in them. What did you do?”

  “Hell, I can tell by your face you already know the answer,” snapped Revel defensively. “You want to hear it? Okay, I went and put one of your goddamn precious plastic jellies in each of the big tanks. Same idea as back at Ditheree. Once the whole tank’s got your weird math in it, the pieces that bubble out form jellies naturally. We got sea nettles in tank number one, moon jellies in number two, those spotted jellies in tank three, bell jellies in tank five, and ctenophores in tank six. Comb-jellies. Tank four’s busted, you recall.”

  “Busted,” said Tug softly. Outside the screeching of metal rose above the sighing of the wind and the chug of the pipeline pump that was sucking the garage’s jellies off the ceiling and pipelining them off to Orange County. “Busted.”

  A huge crash sounded from the tank field.

  Tug helped the disoriented Revel out into the driveway in front of the garage. Tank number six was gone, and a spindle-shaped comb-jelly the size of a blimp was bouncing across the sloping field of artichoke plants that lay north of the tank farm. The great moving form was live and shiny in the slanting moonlight. Its transparent flesh glowed faintly from the effects of cold fusion.

  “The other tanks are going to break up, too, Revel,” Tug murmured. “One by one. It’s the helium.”

  “Them giant air jellies are gonna look plumb beautiful when the sun comes up,” said Revel, squinting at his watch. “It’ll be great publicity for Ctenophore, Inc. Did I tell you I got the papers for it drawn up?”

  “No,” said Tug. “Shouldn’t I sign them?”

  “No need for you to sign, old son,” said Revel. “The Urschleim’s mine, and so’s the company. I’m putting you on salary! You’re our chief scientist!”

  “God damn it, Revel, don’t play me for a sucker. I wanted stock. You knew that.”

  A dark figure shuffled up behind them and tapped Revel’s shoulder with its metal claw. It was one of the industrial robots, carrying Revel’s portable phone.

  “There’s a call on your phone, Mr. Pullen. From Orange County. You set the phone down earlier while you were ingesting narcotics.”

  “Busy, busy!” exclaimed Revel. “They must be wantin’ to transfer payment for our shipment. We’re in business, Tug, my man. And just to make sure there’s no hard feelings, I’ll pay your first year’s salary in advance! Tomorrow, that is.”

  As Revel drew out his portable phone, another of the great metal tanks gave way, releasing a giant, toadstoollike spotted jelly. Outlined against the faint eastern sky, it was an awesome sight. The wind urged the huge quivering thing northward, and its great stubby tentacles dragged stubbornly across the ground. Tug wished briefly that Revel were screaming in the jelly’s grip instead of screaming into his telephone.

  “Lost ’em?” Revel said, screeching. “What the hell you mean? We shipped ’em to you, and you owe us the money for ’em. Your warehouse roof blew off? That’s not my fault, is it? Well, yes, we did ship some extras. Yes, we shipped you twenty to one. We figured you’d have a high demand. So that makes it our fault? Kiss my grits!” He snapped the phone shut and scowled.

  “So all the jellies in Orange County got away?” said Tug softly. “It’s looking kind of bad for Ctenophore, Inc., isn’t it, Revel? It’s going to be tough to run that operation alone.” With a roar, a third storage tank gave way like a hatching egg, releasing a moon jelly the size of an ice-skating rink. The first rays of the rising sun shimmered on its great surface. In the distance there were sirens.

  In rapid succession the two remaining tanks burst open, unleashing a bell jelly and a mammoth sea nettle. A vagary of the dawn breeze swept the sea nettle toward Tug and Revel. Instead of fleeing it, Revel ran crazily toward it, bellowing in mindless anger.

  Tug watched Revel for a moment too long, for now the huge sea nettle lashed out two of its dangling oral arms and snagged the both of them. Swelling its hollow gut a bit larger, the vast sea nettle rose a few hundred feet into the air, and began drifting north along Route One toward San Francisco.

  By swinging themselves around and climbing frenziedly, Tug and Revel were able to find a perch together in the tangled tissues on the underside of the enormous sea nettle. The effort and the clear morning air seemed finally to have cleared Revel’s head.

  “We’re lucky these things don’t sting, eh, Doc? I gotta hand it to you. Say, ain’t this a hell of a ride?”

  The light of the morning sun refracted wonderfully through the giant lens-like tissues of the helium-filled sea nettle.

  “I wonder if we can steer it?” said Tug, feeling around in the welter of dangling jelly frills all around them. “It’d be pretty cool to set down at Crissy Field right near the Golden Gate Bridge.”

  “If anyone can steer it, Tug, you’re the man.”

  Using his knowledge of the jelly’s basins of chaotic attraction, Tug was indeed able to adjust the giant sea nettle’s pulsings so as to bring them to hover over Crissy Field’s great grassy sward, right at the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, first making a low pass over the hilly streets of San Francisco. Below were thousands of people, massed to greet them.

  They descended lower and lower, surrounded by a buzzing pack of TV-station helicopters. Anticipating a deluge of orders for Ctenophore products, Revel phoned up Hoss Jenkins to check his Urschleim supply.

  “We’ve got more goo than oil, Revel,” shouted Hoss. “It’s showin’ up in all our wells and in everybody else’s wells all across Texas. Turns out there wasn’t nothing primeval about your slime at all. It was just a mess of those gene-splice bacteria like I told you all along. Them germs have floated down from the air jellies and are eatin’ up all the oil they can find!”

  “Well, keep pumping that goo! We got us a global market here! We got cold fusion happening, Hoss! Not to mention airships, my man, and self-heating housing! And that probably ain’t but the half of it.”

  “I sure hope so, Revel! Because it looks like all the oil business left in Texas is about to turn into the flyin’ jelly business. Uncle Donny Ray’s asking lots of questions, Revel! I hope you’re prepared for this!”

  “Hell yes, I’m prepared!” Revel snapped. “I spent all my life waitin’ for a chance like this! Me ’n’ ol’ Tug are the pioneers of a paradigm-shatterin’ postindustrial revolution, and anybody who don’t like it, can get in the breadlines like those no-neck numbskulls from IBM.” Revel snapped the phone shut.

  “What’s the news, Revel?” asked Tug.

  “All the oil in Texas is turning into Urschleim,” said Revel. “And we’re the only ones who know wh
at to do about it. Let’s land this thing and start makin’ us some deals.”

  The giant sea nettle hovered uneasily, rippling a bit in the prop-wash of the anxious helicopters. Tug made no move to bring them lower. “There’s no we and no us as long as you’re talking that salary bullshit,” said Tug angrily. “If you want me to bust ass and take risks in your startup, it has to be fifty-fifty down the line. I want to be fully vested! I want to be on the board! I want to call my share of the shots!”

  “I’ll think about it,” Revel hedged.

  “You better think fast, Revel.” Tug looked down between his legs at the jostling crowd below. “Look at them all. You don’t really know how the hell we got here or what we’re doing, Revel. Are you ready to face them alone? It’s nice up here in this balloon, but we can’t ride a balloon forever. Sooner or later, we’re gonna have to walk on our own two feet again, and look people right in the eye.” He reached up into the tissues of the giant sea nettle, manipulating it.

  Now the sun-baked quake-prone ground began rising up steadily again. Tattooed local hipsters billowed away from beneath them in San Francisco’s trademark melange of ecstasy and dread.

  “What are you going to say to them when I land us?” demanded Tug harshly.

  “Me?” Revel said, surprised. “You’re the scientist! You’re the one who’s s’posed to explain. Just feed ’em some mathematics. Chaos equations and all that bullshit. It don’t matter if they can’t understand it. ‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity,’ Tug. P.T. Barnum said that.”

  “P.T. Barnum wasn’t in the artificial life business, Revel.”

  “Sure he was,” said Revel, as the great jellyfish touched down. “And, okay, what the hey, if you’ll stick with me and do the talkin’, I’ll go ahead and cut you in for 50 percent.”