by Ed Finn
“That’s a metaphor?” said Skungy, laying a fresh turd on my counter. Incongruously he began rocking his pelvis and singing, his little voice raspy and sweet. “I want to liiiive,” twanged the rat, for all the world like a Grand Ole Opry performer. “I want to raise up a famileeee!”
A faint odor of qwet rat had permeated the store by now. And Skungy’s plangent melody caught the attention of the other nurbs—the bin of floor lickers, the web-cruising chairs, the wristwatch squidskins, the buoyant magic pumpkins, and even the stack of flat, leathery house seeds—all of them were nodding and twitching in sympathy—and Gaven’s gnat swarm was folding upon itself like ghostly dough.
The scene reminded me of those primordial black-and-white cartoons where all the objects on a farm start jiving to a tune. Even I was falling under the music’s spell. Skungy had an ability to get all of us into his channel. Was this part of the quantum wetware thing? The rat seemed taller than before, his fur lustrous and beautifully groomed, his motions eloquent and filled with worldly-wise tenderness and wit.
Relishing his power over us, Skungy rasped a final chorus, then took a deep bow with his paws outstretched. An appreciative murmur passed around the room. We loved him.
Well, maybe not Carlo. “That part about raising a family?” Carlo said, his voice cold. “That’s out of the question, Skungy. You’re sterile. Like all the other nurbs.”
“Man, that’s harsh!” said Skungy, feigning exaggerated surprise.
“Think about it,” I put in, thinking I needed to comfort the rat. “If you nurbs were to start hatching out litters, what would retailers like me even sell? How would producers like Slygro pay their development expenses?”
“Oh, Skungy knows damn well he’s sterile,” said Carlo. “He’s just jerking your chain.”
“I’m gonna make babies,” said Skungy. “I’m not a simple tool like those other nurbs you got. They’re soft machines. Me, I’ve got free will and I’m sneaky, see?”
Carlo sighed and peeled the Voodoo healer leech off his finger. The wound was gone, with skin grown back into place. “I keep telling Gaven he should reprogram the Skungy personality,” said Carlo, studying his finger. “But he won’t. He’s so impatient about impressing us local yokels. In a rush to buy our respect.”
“Buying is fine with me. I’m close to tapped out.”
“Oh, did I mention your bonus?” Carlo dug into his jacket and hauled out a serious wad of hundred-dollar bills. “To help you with any transitional issues. While you’re distributing and patching the rats.”
An odd thought struck me. “You think Gaven could make a quantum wetware patch for me? If I had an aftermarket personality upgrade—”
“Love makes the world go square,” said Carlo with a simpering smile. “That’s from an old Broadway musical. Square like fuddydud?”
“Broadway musical, qrude?”
“I’m seeing a woman who likes musicals. Kind of a geek. Went to Stanford in California? She’s the head wetware engineer at Slygro. Rikki Shimano. Slygro’s a tiny company, you understand. We’re working out of a barn on Gaven’s horse farm. I met Rikki the first day that I signed on as the marketeer. That night Rikki and I were in bed. Seems like just my type. Reckless, self-confident, completely innocent. Me, I’m all jaded and courtly. We’re talking volcanic geek-girl sex. I might have some video I could—”
The gnats appeared upset—to the extent that tweaked insects can show emotion.
“What now?” said Carlo, noticing the swarm’s chaotic tremors. “You’re jealous, Gaven? Them that asks, gits. Learn from the rockabilly qrudes. Stop being a code monkey.”
“I’m in a dry spell myself.” I sighed. “I need a blinding light. A big aha. Before I wither and drop like an autumn leaf.”
“Everyone’s getting so sad and serious!” said Carlo, shaking his head. “Just because we’re thirty? We’ll be giving you ten qwet rats on Monday, Zad. Keep Skungy for your helper. I’m sensing a mutual resonance between you two.”
I looked down at the qwet rat. As if overwhelmed by the Derby pizza and his performance routine, he was lying limp on my sales counter. Asleep? He didn’t look so nasty to me anymore. He looked like he belonged. He wouldn’t bite me. I wasn’t a jerk like Carlo.
“Deal,” I said. “I’ll keep Skungy. But I’m warning you that business isn’t good. I know you’re giving me that incentive fee, but it’ll only cover the hassle of housing your qwet rats for—let’s say a month. If they’re not selling by the end of October, I get more money or Gaven takes them back.”
“Incentive fee,” echoed Carlo, savoring the tasty phrase. “Let me tell you this. If you don’t bungle the qwet rat test run, Gaven might let you do trial marketing for more new nurbs. Even better, he might let you market this special treatment he’d like to start selling people. He has a whole bunch of loofy things to spring. Lucky little Louisville. Gaven says we’ll be, like, the epicenter of the qwet wave.”
“Let me ask you this,” I said, uneasy with any grandiose plans. “Do you remember my first roadspider? Zix? Untested nurbs can get into these dark and surreal fail-modes. Tragically inept. Endangering lives. People know this. A barn-brewed uncertified trial-market nurb is a very tough sell.”
“Your art shop sells to the fringe,” said Carlo. “The eccentrics, the loofy debs, the qrudes among the horsey set. You’ll be selling them forbidden fruit. But they feel safe getting it from you. You’re a society artist. One of them. Your shop is in the eleganto old-town district, down here on Main Street, surrounded by redbrick buildings and the up-to-the-minute Gaven Graber high-rise housetrees by the river. I can hear the tintinnabulation of the ice cubes in the merrymilk highballs on those balconies. You’re at the core, qrude. Totally luxor.” Carlo’s eyes were liquid, sincere. He had a way of getting deeply into whatever line he was feeding you.
“I’m living in the back of a store,” I said flatly. “And the best thing that’s happened to me today is that I’m feeling this weirdly organic bond of sympathy with a weird nurb rat.”
Despite my doubts, I really was getting a strong gut feeling that Skungy would be of great value to me. A rapport was forming between us two. At this point I realized that Skungy wasn’t actually asleep.
“He’s using a cosmic mind state to merge his quantum waves with yours,” explained Carlo, giving me a perspicacious look. “A qwet rat does that with his new owner. They’re kind of telepathic. You’re feeling his glow, qrude.”
I myself was no mind reader, but with the qwet rat focusing on me, I imagined I could feel his little breaths, the rapid patter of his tiny heart. I even glimpsed the dancing triangles of his ratty thoughts. Cat noses, rat vulvas, corners of cheese.
“I do wave on this rat,” I murmured.
“Here’s his special food,” said Carlo, handing me a sack of golden-brown cubes—addictive Roller nurb chow for Skungy. The chow smelled like tobacco—which was indeed one of its ingredients. As long as I controlled Skungy’s chow, I was at the center of his life.
Carlo was ready to move on to other topics. “So—with Jane temporarily out of the picture, what are you doing for sex? Fucking sex nurbs?” Carlo swiveled his head, keenly scanning my store. “You still stock them, don’t you? Slit spheres, magic staffs, like that?”
“No, you moron. Sex nurbs are over. The Live Art shop is about quality and grace. And when I get antsy, I go out behind the shop and work on my new car. Sublimating randiness into craft. Thereby enhancing my he-man charm.”
“Car?” said Carlo blankly.
“I’ve got an antique show car,” I said. “It’s the same model as the black convertible where JFK got shot a hundred years ago. That president? Wife wore a pillbox hat? My car’s a Lincoln Continental stretch limo from a bankrupt car museum out on Shelbyville Road. Sizzler Jones bought out the place—you remember him from school? Sizzler’s a land developer now. I traded him one of my living-slime-mold installations for this particular vehicle. I let him have Cold Day in Hell:
Why You Believe in God.”
“Always with that same title, Zad?”
“My brand. It still works a little bit. Sometimes. Rack up a fat sale by Louisville’s beloved rebel qrude artist, Zad Plant!”
“You said it was a trade to Sizzler Jones,” corrected Carlo. “Not a sale.”
“It’s the same,” I said impatiently. “Anyway, Sizzler Jones is razing the museum and planting a grove of Gaven Graber housetrees. There’s rolling fields and a lake, see, and Sizzler put a few thoroughbreds in the pasture. Nurb merry mares, actually, but whatev.”
“Look, I gotta get going,” said Carlo, losing interest.
“Let me finish! You’re gonna do business with me, we gotta chat, right? Whittle and spit and talk about cars! Like our grandfathers used to do.” I was oddly excited, and talking fast, running my hand across the damp fur of the sleeping rat all the while. Petting him. Picking up traces of his dreams. Strange about this rat. I kept on talking. “My Lincoln Continental even has a working internal combustion engine. Not that I have gas, but the engine is there under the hood—Detroit pig iron. Heavy metal.”
Carlo was at the front door, ready to make his exit. “Roadspiders and flydinos are what matter,” he said, pointing at the sky. “There’s Reba Ranchtree on her flydino right now. Slygro’s biggest investor. Yeah.”
For a while after high school Reba had been my girlfriend. She’d been very bitter when I dropped her for Jane. And then she’d dated Carlo. Always the same little circle of people in my life, nothing ever forgotten, all of us endlessly mind-gaming each other. Louisville’s like that.
Following Carlo out to the grassy street, I peered up into the swaying housetrees by the river. It was getting on toward the evening of a late September day, a Thursday, the sun low and brassy, the temperature bearable, an evening breeze beginning to stir.
Reba’s condo was in the same tree where I’d been living with Jane. I could indeed see Reba lying on her stomach on the back of the oversized leather-winged nurb dino that she rode. Tiny and far as Reba was, she somehow managed to see Carlo and me, and she gave us a wave. Maybe the wave was cheerful, but I took it to be lofty. Like a queen acknowledging ants.
“Reba and her rhamphorhynchus,” I said with unexpected bitterness. “The savage, toothy beak. The walnut-sized brain.” Loser that I’d become, I hated anyone who was doing well.
“And Reba’s snobby about—what?” said Carlo, getting into my trip. “That’s what I always wonder when I see her these days. Why does she think she’s better than me? Because her parents died and left her a fortune? I mean, both of us were her lovers ten years ago. That should make for happy memories, right?”
“Actually she treats me okay,” I had to admit. “But it’s like she’s sorry for me. Little does Reba realize how nice my shop’s spare room is. Little does she grasp that I’ve attached a giant nurb garden slug to the underside of my obsolete metal car. I drove the thing around the block last week. Did you hear about that?”
“Maybe, yeah.” Carlo was mildly interested again, and he let me draw him back into my store.
“My big ride, she slime around so nasty,” I said, my spirits rising. “Low and slow, qrude. A luxor assassination limo with a slugfoot. I might relaunch myself selling retrofitted cars.”
“Fuck retro. But a giant slugfoot—that’s good. I want to ride in that car. When I have more time.”
Skungy was snuggling against my hand. Brother Rat. He rolled onto his back to expose his white underbelly. I caressed him with my fingertips.
“Before you go, Carlo, give me some background. For pitching our qwet rats to the slobbering marks. Like what the fuck is quantum wetware?”
“Well—wetware is, like, your body’s chemistry. The genes and the hormones and the brain cell goo. Like you’re a wet computer? And your brain has this switch that Gaven calls a gee-haw-whimmy-diddle.”
“Huh?”
“The name is a hillbilly thing. It’s a wooden toy that, like, your country cousin Dick Cheeks whittles to sell to the slickers at the Shelby County Fair? You’ve seen them. It’s a thin bumpy stick with a propeller on one end? You rub another stick along the bumps, and you holler ‘gee’ or ‘haw’ like you’re talking to a mule, and the propeller spins the one way or t’other. Fun for the young, fun for the old.”
“And Gaven’s using this phrase to acknowledge his glorious Kentucky heritage. Fine. And your brain’s wetware gee-haw-whimmy-diddle switch does—what?”
“The ultranerds say that a quantum system can be smooth and cosmic—or jerky and robotic. Gaven’s quantum wetware lets you wedge your brain’s gee-haw-whimmy-diddle switch wide open. You can stay in the cosmic mode. And if your buddy does that too—why then the two of y’all get into a kind of telepathy. What we call qwet teep.”
“You’ve got telepathy? You’re saying that Skungy can read minds?”
“In a weak way, yeah. But he only does the full mind merge with someone else who’s got the quantum wetware. What we’d call another qwettie.”
“I’ve always wanted to have telepathy.”
“We’ll probably be marketing it pretty soon. But it’s not like you think it is. The teepers don’t exactly remember it afterward. That’s a problem. Gaven had drummed up some secret military funding, and now he’s had to tell the war-pigs that qwet teep’s no use for their messages. So they cut him off. And our man’s on the edge of a financial cliff. I’m telling Gaven he should go ahead and start selling people the qwet teep treatments, but he’s being all cautious and holding back.”
“Let’s back up for a second. Can Skungy read my mind or not?”
“Let’s just say he’s good at picking up people’s vibes. Thing is, as long as you’re physically near a qwet person or a qwet nurb, you’ll get these little brief touches of qwet teep with them. On account of the qwettie’s smell. Each scent molecule does a mini-zap on you.”
“And when two full-on qwetties get together?”
“You can get a full-on merge. Qwet teep’s gonna be a superbig product. But for now, just to warm up, Gaven used qwet teep to copy a qwet guy’s whole personality over to the qwet rat.”
“So Skungy’s a person?” I echoed, more bewildered all the time.
“Yeah, baby,” said Carlo. “And we’re rats.” He put his hands up under his chin with his wrists limp. He cheesed his teeth at me, nibbling the air. A comedy routine.
I held my hands like rat paws too. Skungy, Carlo, and I looked at one another, our six eyes glittering with glee. A multilevel goof was filling the room, fueled by Skungy’s rank qwet scent. I could feel his individual odor molecules impacting my smell receptors. Pow, pow, pow.
“Where did Gaven get Skungy’s particular human personality?” I asked, wrestling myself out of my trance.
“Joey Moon,” squeaked Skungy. His rough little voice was warm. “I am Joey Moon.”
“Moon works on Gaven’s farm these days,” said Carlo. “Kind of a caretaker. He’s twenty-five, has a wife and three kids, always broke. A pale guy with big dark eyes. Kind of rowdy. Drinks, gets into speed. I think he calls himself a painter—like you? They say he’s rough on his poor wife.”
“Yeah, I know him,” I said shortly. “Not exactly the ideal personality you’d want to implant inside a consumer product.”
I’d seen Joey around town over the years, riding a scorpion or drunk in a bar. He was nearly ten years younger than me, and several notches wilder than my crowd had ever been. He said he was an artist too, and he’d come to my gallery once or twice, trying to set up a show of some paintings that he was unwilling or unable to show me in advance. They were supposed to be portraits of some type, but he didn’t want to let anyone see them until they went on sale. He was afraid that some “art star” might “steal his big idea.” From the few hints that Joey dropped, I was guessing that the so-called pictures might be empty frames or glass mirrors. His stories were always changing. It was like he wanted your approval, but he wanted to completely mock you a
nd prank you—all at the same time.
“I didn’t like using Joey either,” said Carlo. “I wanted someone from New York. But Joey was handy. And, hell, we’re only in prototype mode. Gaven paid Joey for a legal waiver and full mental access. Gave him a nice block of founder’s stock as well. And then he made Joey qwet. So he could teep the rat.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“The point of a qwet teep merge is that you don’t write or evolve the target nurb’s personality—you just copy it from a living template. Only takes an hour or so. But the qwetting process had some effects on Joey. He’s not coping. We’re still waiting to see how all that pans out. Before we start selling qwet teep treatments all over the place.”
“Joey Moon sold his soul for his litter of pink baby ratties,” put in Skungy, loading the pathos into his grainy voice.
“And the other Skungies?” I asked. “The qwet rats to come? Will they be copies of Joey too?”
At this, the gnats began buzzing in Carlo’s face, and the squidskin on his wrist went wild with messages.
“That’s enough whittlin’ and spittin’ on the courthouse steps, old son,” said Carlo. “More details later. Gaven’s throwing a prelaunch picnic on his farm starting about now. You and Jane are both invited—Gaven already messaged her. He messaged Reba too. That’s where she was headed on her flydino, no doubt. Come on over soon as you can. Maybe you’ll get laid! You’re gonna like it on the Slygro team, Zad. We keep our big ole balls in the air.”
And then Carlo was out in the street, jouncing off on his roadspider.
I closed up my shop, got into my slugfoot Lincoln, and headed for Gaven Graber’s farm as well. I had the car’s roof down and my qwet rat Skungy was perched on the dash, enjoying himself, now and then dispensing some bullshit Joey Moon advice. Route directions from a southern hipster rat.
The Lincoln was a dream to drive. With her slimy foot, she rocked and rolled like a luxor boat. I followed the old river road along the Ohio, heading toward the horsey end of town. Most of the asphalt and concrete was gone from the roads, replaced by tight, impermeable nurb grass. This might have been a problem for a car with wheels, but not for my slugfoot.
