by Ed Finn
I glance over my shoulder, sure I hear breathing.
Nobody. The door swings open in the wind.
Oh. The road. No traffic. I know where I am. Out past the graveyard and the bridge. I run through here every couple of days, but the house is set far enough back that it was never more than a dim white outline behind trees. It’s a Craftsman bungalow, surrounded by winter-sere oaks.
Maybe it wasn’t an attack of opportunity, then. Maybe he saw me and decided to lie in wait.
I pelt toward town—pelt, limping, the air so cold in my lungs that they cramp and wheeze. I’m cold, so cold. The wind is a knife. I yank my sleeves down over my hands. My body tries to draw itself into a huddled comma even as I run. The sun’s at the horizon.
I think, I should just let the winter have me.
Justice for those eleven mothers and seven fathers. Justice for those thirteen women who still seem too alike. It’s only that their interchangeability bothers me now.
At the bridge, I stumble to a dragging walk, then turn into the wind off the river, clutch the rail, and stop. I turn right and don’t see him coming. My wet fingers freeze to the railing.
The state police are a half mile on, right around the curve at the top of the hill. If I run, I won’t freeze before I get there. If I run.
My fingers stung when I touched the rail. Now they’re numb, my ears past hurting. If I stand here, I’ll lose the feeling in my feet.
The sunset glazes the ice below with crimson. I turn and glance the other way; in a pewter sky, the rising moon bleaches the clouds to moth-wing iridescence.
I’m wet to the skin. Even if I start running now, I might not make it to the station house. Even if I started running now, the man in the bungalow might be right behind me. I don’t think I hit him hard enough to knock him out. Just knock him down.
If I stay, it won’t take long at all until the cold stops hurting.
If I stay here, I wouldn’t have to remember being my other self again. I could put him down. At last, at last, I could put those women down. Amelie, unless her name was Jessica. The others.
It seems easy. Sweet.
But if I stay here, I won’t be the last person to wake up in the bricked-up basement of that little white bungalow.
The wind is rising. Every breath I take is a wheeze. A crow blows across the road like a tattered shirt, vanishing into the twilight cemetery.
I can carry this a little further. It’s not so heavy. Thirteen corpses, plus one. After all, I carried every one of them before.
I leave skin behind on the railing when I peel my fingers free. Staggering at first, then stronger, I sprint back into town.
Tribalium/Shutterstock, Inc.
RESPONSE TO “COVENANT”—Joel Garreau
Joel Garreau, Lincoln Professor of Law, Culture and Values at Arizona State University, responds to “Covenant” at hieroglyph.asu.edu/covenant.
FORUM DISCUSSION—Hacking the Human Mind
Elizabeth Bear discusses the ethical and practical aspects of hacking the human mind, and the difference between our minds and our brains, with James Cambias and other Hieroglyph community members at hieroglyph.asu.edu/covenant.
FORUM DISCUSSION—Neuroplasticity, Neurobiology, and the Brain
Check out a discussion of neuroplasticity and neurobiology with Elizabeth Bear, Lee Konstantinou, and other Hieroglyph community members at hieroglyph.asu.edu/covenant.
QUANTUM TELEPATHY
Rudy Rucker
“WHAT DO YOU THINK of this guy?” asked my old pal Carlo. It was a fall day in Louisville. I was slouched in my soft chair at the back of my nurb store. Carlo was holding something he called a qwet rat, pretty much shoving the thing into my face. Patchy gray fur, yellow teeth, and a naked pink tail.
“He’s skungy,” I said, laughing a little. “Who’d ever buy that?”
“Skungy!” echoed Carlo, flashing his version of a sales-conference grin. “The perfect name.” He raised the rat high into the air, as if displaying a precious vase. The rat’s black-bead eyes twinkled with intelligence. His pink-lined ears made small movements, picking up our voices, the rustling leaves of the branches on the roof of my store, and the all-but-imperceptible buzz of the gnat cameras that had followed Carlo in.
“This rat’s really your prototype?” I asked.
Flaky Carlo had managed to get a job in business, working at a start-up company run by one of our high school friends, Gaven Graber. In his new persona as a marketeer, Carlo was wearing a jacket patterned in scrolls and cut from the latest termite-cloth. He’d been getting gene-cleaning treatments, and he had a youthful air.
“First thought, best thought,” said Carlo, lowering the rat back to the level of my face. “Especially from a qrude dude like you. Hell, we ought to use ‘Skungy’ as the name for our whole qwet product line.”
“What’s qwet supposed to mean anyway?”
“Quantum wetware. Nice buzz phrase, huh?”
“You guys are crazy,” I said, addressing the gnat cameras as well as Carlo. I figured Gaven Graber was watching us via the swarm.
I sold odd-looking nurbs in Live Art—my store. My products had all been designed—or at least enhanced—by independent artists like me. We took pains to make our quirky nurbs seem friendly and cute. The dog-sized house-cleaner slugs were hot pink, for instance, and they giggled. The wrist-band tentacles on our portable squidskin screens were small, demure, pastel. Our bourbon-dripping magic pumpkins had a jolly, drunken air—drifting in the air like heavy party balloons. Our web-spine chairs were tweaked to take on elegant, sculptural shapes. But this rat—
“It’s all about product placement,” said Carlo. “Gaven wants to go for that outrider chic. He’s itching to show the world that Louisville can mud-wrestle with the wild hogs. Letting a qrude like you launch the product is a good step.” Carlo gave the rat a sharp tap on the crown of his head. “Bring us luck, Skungy! Drag home big cheese.”
The rat glared up at Carlo and emitted a series of rapid, reproving squeaks that were—I gradually realized—actual words. I could even hear some insults in there. Asshole, maybe. And stupid turd. He had a bit of a Kentucky accent.
“And Gaven’s quantum wetware tech is so special because—?” I began, only to be interrupted by a yelp from Carlo. Skungy had bitten the tip of his finger.
“Oh no!” screamed Carlo. Nurb bites could have horrible side effects.
A bright drop of blood welled out, very red. Wriggling free, the nurb rat leaped onto my sales counter, which grew out of my store’s floor like a tall toadstool.
© 2013, Haylee Bolinger / ASU
“I’ve got my rights!” shrilled the excited rat, rising onto his rear legs. “I’m every bit as smart as you. I shouldn’t oughta be for sale!”
If I mentally dialed up my listening speed of my ear, Skungy wasn’t that hard to understand. Uneasily I wondered if he might be segueing into a lethal rampage. These things happened more often than nurb dealers liked to admit—especially with wetware tech’s rapid rate of change. None of our products were sufficiently pretested.
“Calm down,” I told the rat. I rose from my chair and drew my denurbalizer stick from beneath the counter. The stick was the size of a billy club. I brandished it. “I’ll melt you if you keep it up, Skungy. Act right. Aren’t you supposed to be, like, Carlo’s helper?”
The gnat cameras circled us, taking in the scene from every side. Combining a swarm of gnat-cams’ viewpoints gave the user an interactive 3-D image.
Carlo found a Voodoo brand healer leech on a shelf and put it on the spot where Skungy had bitten him.
“Oh please God don’t let me be infected,” muttered Carlo. “Goddamn this rat. He’s two days old and he’s running amok. But don’t denurbalize him quite yet, Zad. Gaven’s got a couple of million bucks in this prototype. You know what denurbalizing means, Skungy? Your DNA and protein molecules uncoil and you shlup down into a puddle of slime. We’d hate to decohere your sparkly quantum wetware. B
e grateful, you piece of crap. You should think of Gaven as God. And I’m God’s promo man.” The tiny flying cameras rocked their wings in agreement.
“Eat shit!” said the rat. His tensely twitching whiskers were like insect antennae—constantly in motion, alert for the slightest incursion into his space.
I had to laugh. I liked the nurb’s bad attitude. He was wilder than any I’d seen since my very first roadspider—the short-lived Zix.
“You wave on the rat, huh?” said Carlo with a tense smile. “You’re a troublemaker too. An artist. That’s one reason why we fingered you as our go-to guy. Not to mention that you’re one of the only registered art-nurb stores in Louisville. And thanks to our crazy Kentucky laws, you’re allowed to sell art nurbs without federal Department of Genomics approval. We’ll give Live Art an exclusive on our Skungy line for a month. You’ll have a buttalicious high-end market to yourself.”
“I’m not sure I’d want to stock this rat, Carlo. What kind of discount would you give me?”
Carlo was ready for this. “Gaven says you could have your first two dozen Skungies for free. A test run. You charge what you like, you keep the money. As the inevitable glitches and nurb attitude problems arise, we’ll pump out the upgrade patches. Meanwhile the chain stores are hanging back, watching for lawsuits, waiting for the Department of Genomics to certify the quantum wetware rats for the wider market.”
Skungy was pacing around my counter, surveying my shop, and sniffing at the faint scents of food that wafted from my living quarters out back. My wife, Jane, had thrown me out of our fancy housetree condo, see, so I’d grown a bachelor pad onto the back of my shop. I had my bed in there, and a stash of my remaining Cold Day in Hell slime-mold paintings.
There were some of my Cold Day in Hell pictures on the walls of my store too. But they weren’t selling at all anymore. For that matter, the Idi Did gallery on Bardstown Road had dropped me from its roster. I’d had about seven good years as an artist, and I’d managed to marry wealthy, chic Jane, heiress to the Roller nurb chow fortune. But now the thrill was gone. As of this spring, Jane was tired of me. She had her own life, energetically running her Jane Says public relations agency. And me—according to Jane, I was dead and hollow.
I snapped back into the present. This nurb rat, this Skungy, he didn’t seem particularly task-oriented. He was more like a pool-hall idler, drifting on the tides of his random thoughts. Noticing me watching him, the rat laid a fecal pellet on my counter.
“I don’t know,” I told Carlo, weighing his offer. “What if the rats kill a cat or gnaw a baby?”
“Naturally Gaven covers any legal problems you have,” said Carlo. He handed me a crisp, folded paper from his silky termite-woven jacket’s pocket. “Legal waiver for you, qrude. Gaven really likes the idea of us three launching his product. Like he’s nostalgic for the old times. Back in Louisville after his big score with the Gaven Graber housetrees.”
Carlo mimed a salute in the direction of the gnat cameras. Right now the iridescent green dots were grouped into a shifting blob near the ceiling.
“I don’t think Gaven was all that fond of me in high school,” I said, setting down the waiver. As far as I was concerned the paper could have held hieroglyphs written with smears of shit. I was an artist all the way.
Not like Gaven. Remembering the numerous times we’d disrespected him back in the day, I directed a grimace toward his swarm of spy-gnats. I was making one of the faces I used to aim at him—drawing back my chin, putting my tongue between my teeth and puffing out my cheeks. Gaven’s gnats zoomed at my head, perhaps meaning this in a jolly way.
“Have you physically seen Gaven since he moved back to town?” asked Carlo, not smiling.
“Just the once,” I said. “That big welcome dinner at the Pendennis Club in March. Louisville’s favorite son. I hardly got to talk to him. You were there too, Carlo. You were drunk. From those whiskey pumpkins bobbing around the room.”
“Don’t remember,” said Carlo.
“The rest of us do,” I said, a sharp note in my voice. “Jane especially. I was still living with her then, right?”
“Too bad about you two breaking up,” said Carlo quickly. “Sweet Jane. Why are you looking at me that way? Did I say something bad to Jane at Gaven’s party?”
“You asked her how it felt to be married to a washed-up loser,” I said. “It was the last straw. The tipping point. The next day Jane threw me out. You’re a jerk.”
Even though I meant these words, I didn’t put all that much heat in them. Carlo and I had been sniping at each other for thirty years. We were comfortable together because we could be as insulting as we liked. He was that kind of friend.
The rat was still twitching his nose toward my apartment in the back. “Your nest smells nice,” he told me.
“Think of it as a kitchen midden,” I said, lightening up. “A future archaeological dig.”
“What all’s ripe today?” asked Skungy, swinging his tail to bat tiny turds off my counter.
“We have our local specialty,” I said, pointing to a greasy crust of what they called Derby pizza. The cheese on these things was made from the bourbon-scented milk from merry mares. “Jolly pizza,” I told the rat. “Nummy num.”
Amusing himself with some some quantum wetware-brained routine of being world-weary, Skungy flopped onto his belly and dragged himself across the counter, moving like a parched traveler in a desert. When he came to the edge, he leaped off it, doing a midair flip, and hitting the floor running. Moments later he was back on the counter with his prize, his tail writhing as he devoured a pizza scrap the size of his body. The merrymilk seemed to be relaxing him. A little pool of urine spread beneath his feet, dampening his fur.
“So anyway, no hard feelings about Jane,” said Carlo with a vague wave of his hand. “At that party—I’m sure I was trying to help. You don’t do me justice. My point is that you need to change your presentation. The upgrade package you bring to the table. Otherwise—”
“Don’t you go bird-dogging Jane!” I cried, suddenly imagining I saw the old hustle in his eyes.
“Au contraire,” drawled Carlo. “I myself would like to see you and Jane back together.”
“Why?”
“Jane Roller is rich. I like having her in my circle of friends. And I care about you, qrude. I’m sad to see you going under. But keep in mind that Gaven Graber’s feelings about Jane may be more conflicted.”
“In other words I’m screwed.”
“Zad, the reason you’re having problems is that you’re logging way too much time in your dreamchair. Webzombia, qrude. Each era gets its own madness. Melancholia, neurasthenia, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder—webzombia. Let me ask you this, Zad: When you sleep, do you dream you’re on the web? Key, key danger sign.”
I didn’t like being called out on my use of my special chair. Webzombia? I’d never heard the word. Clearly a bullshit concept. I liked my busy, convivial hours on the web. Now and then I sold some nurbs or some art that way, or even cajoled a virtual customer into physically visiting my shop. The web was where I lived these days, and I didn’t want people trying to root me out.
“You’re the zombie, not me,” I snapped. “You and those fountain of youth treatments you’re getting all of a sudden. You look like you’re fucking eighteen.”
Carlo cocked his head, giving me a silent, sympathetic smile. And now Skungy glanced up from his pizza—as if finding me pathetic as well. A nurb was sorry for me?
“I should shove that filthy quantum wetware rat down your throat!” I yelled at Carlo, fully losing it.
“Our rat’s seeming filth is a marketing move,” said Carlo calmly. He enjoyed seeing me crack. He’d scored a point in our never-ending game. “When people see a scuzzy rat they think New York City. And that’s a plus.”
“Skungy sounds more like he’s from Kentucky.”
“Well, that has to do with how we programmed him. We had to take a shortcut. But later on we hope to
have our qwet rats sounding totally NYC. Manhattan is so luxor just now. The theme park thing.”
“Luxor,” I echoed, catching my breath. “Yeah. I’d like to go to Manhattan again myself. It’s been two years. I’ve been watching the retrofits from my chair. The honking nurb cars, the flydinos gliding among the classic skyscrapers—yeah. An old-school city of the future. When I watch, it’s like I’m there.”
“I bet it is. You sitting in your dreamchair.” The pitying look again.
Something within me gave way. “Okay, yes, I admit it! I’m sick of my life. I’m going nowhere. I need a change.”
“He felt a wistful yen for a life that was real,” intoned Carlo. “And the answer was—a Skungy! A quantum wetware rat even smarter than his friends!”
“Smarter than you and Reba Ranchtree,” I muttered. “That’s for true.”
“Why are we even arguing, Zad? It’s all coming together. Win-win. Did I mention that we’re calling our company Slygro? Louisville’s moving up the food chain. Enough with the bourbon and the tobacco and the horses and the Roller nurb chow. With Gaven in town, Louisville can productize some radical nurbs. A whole line of Slygro qwet rats. Spies, messengers, thieves—”
“What about Skungy being a biter?” I interrupted.
Carlo looked down at his finger. “I am a little worried about that,” he admitted. “Gaven’s not totally sure about what this quantum wetware shit can do. But never mind, we’re working all that out.”
I got into waving my denurbalizer stick at little Skungy. “Nobody wants a nurb that bites,” I scolded him. “And if the biter is smart, that makes it worse.”
“I’m not a biter,” piped the rat, his mouth full of Derby pizza. “Not ordinarily. Your pal smacked me on the head. He was asking for it. Once we grow out a nice big pack of qwet rats, we’ll get respect.”
Carlo glared at Skungy. “Keep it up with the loose-cannon bullshit, and you’ll be the very last qwet rat that Slygro ever makes. Gaven and I need to see some willingness to please. Right now, Skungy. Start kissing my butt.”
