by Rudy Rucker
"Yeah, and the King tells someone new every time he turns around. I'm not a prisoner! That was the deal. I can have a guest if I want to."
"I'll ask Kennit."
"Here's some more gold," said Yoke. She paddled to the water's edge and held her alla out over the patio. "Actualize twenty-five gold coins." A shimmering cylinder appeared near one end of the tube. The cylinder filled with a pattern like ghostly marmalade and then a pile of twenty-five gold coins fell jingling to the stone. Phil felt a little puff of breeze.
"This is too good to last," said Ms. Teta, stooping to scoop up the coins. "This is making me most uneasy."
"I could give some gold to Kennit too," said Yoke.
"He won't take it," said Ms. Teta. "Kennit is an upright man. Would you like some breakfast, Phil?"
"Sure."
"I'll tell the cook."
"Oh, let me make it with the alla," said Yoke. "It's more exciting."
"The devil's food," said Ms. Teta, shaking her head. "I don't know how this is going to end."
Yoke and Phil dried off and sat down at the little wicker table. Yoke grasped the alla and made, in succession, a hot cup of coffee, a sourdough roll, a ramekin of honey, and two halves of a papaya. The bread was a bit dense, but on the whole it was remarkably good.
"All right," said Phil, chewing. "Explain."
"I don't know how it works," said Yoke. "It's like magic. The alla has this virtual catalog that I can see in my uvvy. The aliens gave me that too. I pick something from the catalog and the alla makes it when I say 'Actualize.' " "But you don't have to think of every detail of each thing?" asked Phil. "The molecules of the coffee, the air bubbles in the bread, the sugar-crystals in the honey?"
"No," said Yoke. "The aliens already programmed all that. But I think I can put the alla-catalog materials together in new ways. I haven't really tried that yet. I might be able to make some very complicated things, like by designing a program to put things together. That's a type of problem I enjoy. How to simulate Nature." Yoke nibbled at a slice of the papaya. "This is good. I've never had papaya before."
"But it's in the catalog?"
"Josef and Ptah said they made the catalog based on all the things they could find on the Web. First they figured out the materials, and then they figured out the things we make with them. A lot of research. The alla catalog combines all the existing human mail-order catalogs into one."
"Right," said the beetle, who was perched on the edge of the honey, dipping in his little legs. "While we were waiting for Yoke, I programmed a complete set of Earthly substances into the catalog. All of the chemistry and materials science that we could find on your Web. The formulae of molecules, the structures of crystals, the linkages of polymers, things like that. And then Ptah generated macros for essentially all human objects which are manufactured from these materials. Anything that's ever been advertised for sale is now free in our alla catalog. Ptah even ferreted out the limpware designs for the special DIMs that come in so many products. As Yoke said, our alla catalog incorporates the contents of virtually every human product catalog in existence. A big job -- but remember that we're superhuman."
"How does the alla work?" asked Phil.
"With Om's power, it transmutes one kind of atom into another," said Josef. "And then it links together the atoms as specified. The breakfast you eat is of transmuted air."
"Air?" said Phil, hefting his coffee mug.
"A cubic meter of air has the mass of one kilogram," said Josef. "This is well-known. Air is very freely available."
"Can I have some avocado?" asked Phil. "With prosciutto and Emmenthaler cheese?"
"Yes," said Yoke, after a second. "I can find all of them. I'll make a special plate." She cocked her head and looked inward, then moved her lips and--whoosh -- there was a fancy china plate with slices of Swiss cheese, prosciutto, and delicate sections of avocado. The topper was that the plate itself was glazed with a photographically accurate image of Phil: mussed, blond-haired, unshaven, smiling, bewildered, and with a palm tree in the background. Yoke leaned forward, admiring the plate. "That's exactly how you look to me right now, Phil. It came out perfect! It's the first alla thing I've really designed myself. My first piece of original realware!"
"Realware," mused Phil. "You can make anything you can imagine. What's going to happen if everyone gets an alla? Nobody will work anymore. They'll all have everything they need. What will people do with themselves?"
"Oh, one keeps doing things anyway," said Josef. "Even after one's material needs are filled, one wants to bloom and to create. Grow or die --it's in the nature of things. And don't forget that if one does something interesting, one has a better chance of having sex with a desirable partner."
"But even if I were to make something wonderful with an alla, something like a new kind of blimp maybe, then everyone could copy it," protested Phil.
"Ah, but only if they have the exact design," said Josef. "Remember that only what is in the public catalogs is free for everyone. If you invent something that has more to it than meets the eye, then you have the possibility to sell your invention's design to the individual alla owners."
"Can the alla make living things?" interrupted Yoke.
"It can," said Josef. "Haven't you noticed yet? There's a large section of plants and animals in your catalog. You can customize them to a limited extent--keeping in mind that reprogramming the wetware of a living biological system is difficult. Everything must be at extreme synchronization. Living systems embody a very deep fractal density of information patterns."
"And can the alla make a person?" pressed Yoke. "I'd like to make a new copy of my mother."
"The allas don't 'copy' things," said Josef. "They actualize instances of objects that have been completely specified in the catalog software or in user descriptions. To make a fresh instance of your mother, you would need an accurate representation of both her body and mind. Just knowing her DNA and having an S-cube personality backup aren't sufficient. So, no, your alla cannot make your mother without some further programming that is quite beyond your means."
"But it could make a person if it had the code?" pressed Yoke.
"Yes," allowed Josef. "And I may as well tell you, Yoke, that during registration your alla did in fact create and store an eidetic map of your body and mind. But Om doesn't allow an alla-owner to arbitrarily use this code. There is no magic command for instant self-reproduction. In order to use an alla to reproduce oneself, it's necessary to understand the working of one mind and body well enough to fully specify the design."
"And I guess you guys are at that high level already, huh?" said Yoke.
"In our first meeting, you have observed how Ptah copied himself," said Josef.
"Oh, right," said Yoke. "Well, let me try making an animal." She knit her brows and looked inward at her uvvy catalog. "Actualize." A scrap of space webbed over with bright lines, grew opaque, and a small writhing object fell to the tabletop.
"A slug?" said Phil. The slug oriented itself and began briskly sliming into the shadow under one of the plates.
"I'll try a jellyfish next," said Yoke. "They're so beautiful." She used the alla to create a little aquarium, then projected into the water a bright-line disk-shape that actualized into a clear bell of jelly--which began steadily beating. "Can I change its color?" wondered Yoke, and produced a shocking pink jellyfish--which quickly dissolved into rags and tatters. She tried a series of variations on the catalog jellyfish, but none of them so much as twitched.
"Life is hard, Yoke," said Josef. "And so is wetware engineering." The unsuccessful customized jellies were floating on the aquarium's surface. Yoke alla-converted them back into water and filled the tank with a selection of other standard catalog life: some more jellies, a shrimp, a clam, a scallop, and a few tropical fish.
"Can the alla make an alla?" asked Phil. "That's the biggest question of all, isn't it? Like in the fairy tale where someone wishes for more wishes."
"Yes," said
Josef. "There is a way to use an alla to make another alla. And sooner or later one of you will learn the trick of it. But I am not intending to be the one to teach you. It is better that the knowledge should come to one of you directly from Om."
"Do you plan to give out more allas?" asked Yoke.
"As Om wills it," said Josef. "First we want to watch a bit what Yoke does. And then we'll test it with a few more individuals. And then I suppose Om will tell you how to spread the allas to everyone, human and moldie alike. I think it should work out for the best, but it's hard to be sure. We've never seen a place like Earth, you know. You can't imagine how really pathetic your one-dimensional time appears. I hope that the allas can really help you."
"Hoes for the savages," said Yoke. "Farming tools. What's in it for Om?"
"Om collects copies of sentient beings," said Josef. "By giving out allas and having the users register themselves, Om obtains the exact information codes of the users. As for your analog)' to farming, perhaps an alla is more like a bulldozer than like a hoe. Restraint and caution will be called for. Especially for a race that's limited to a single dimension of time."
"You think there's a chance we'll kill ourselves off with the allas, don't you?" said Yoke. "Is that what you actually want? So that the Metamartians can take over the Earth?"
"Yoke, we already told you that we plan only for one more of us Metamartians to arrive here," said Josef. "Once we are seven, we will have reached the canonical family size. We'll conjugate to create a fresh Metamartian and then we'll move on -- provided we can figure out the right direction toward a region with two-dimensional time. No Metamartian would want to stay here."
"We still haven't talked about the killer powerballs," interrupted Phil. "What's the story with them?"
"The powerballs are but manifestations of our god Om," said Josef. "Be assured that Om is no killer. Those whom Om touches are elevated, not destroyed." Before they could press Josef any further, a large Tongan man came walking over from the veranda. He wore a white shirt, a necktie, and a blue skirt. He was squinting in the bright sun.
"Hi, Kennit," said Yoke. "This is my friend Phil. I want him to stay here with us."
"Yis," said Kennit. "I've just been in contact with HRH and he has no problem. Would you be willing to have Phil stay in your room? That way we won't have to wonder which shell conceals the pea."
"All right," said Yoke, looking down at the ground. She'd been making lizards and mice and rabbits. They were darting around under the table. On top of the table she'd alla-made a cheerful potted orchid. "The room has two beds. Can I make you anything with the alla, Kennit?"
"No thank you. HRH says the Tongan Navy ship will be arriving in the harbor today. We would like you to fill its hold with gold and imipolex during the night. Will this be agreeable?"
"Can we do it, Josef?" asked Yoke. "Does the alla have enough energy?"
"Quark-flipping is like jujitsu," said Josef. "As if to look at something and then to look at it in a different way. In and of itself, it costs nothing to interconvert protons and neutrons. But, yes, reassembling particles into different sorts of atoms can either create or absorb energy, even if one uses higher-dimensional shortcuts. Om acts as kind of bank for these transformations. Energies flow back and forth through the higher-dimensional vortex threads which connect Om to the allas."
"It sounds too good to be true," said Phil.
"Consider this: 'The world exists.' I think that also sounds too good to be true," said Josef. "Why is there something instead of nothing? Why is Om? We are only lucky."
"I want to take Phil snorkeling now," said Yoke. "All right?"
"Yis," said Kennit. "But if you should meet anyone, don't be showing off the alla. We don't want our people to become overly excited. Would Phil like to use Tashtego or Daggoo?"
"I only want to swim with a facemask today," said Yoke. "I don't want to bring along any strange moldies. Just Phil and Josef and Cobb and me. Cobb can protect us."
Ms. Teta found two sets of swim-fins, snorkels, and masks. Yoke and Phil walked down the steep steps to the water, followed by Cobb. Josef rode clamped to the strap of Yoke's bikini. The Tongans weren't interested in swimming. And the moldies Tashtego and Daggoo were content to remain puddled atop the island in the sun.
Phil and Yoke slipped into the water together, while Cobb and Josef swam off on their own. Phil felt as if he'd been transported to heaven. The bottom was white sand, and the water incredibly clear. The knobs of small coral heads dotted the bottom, each head surrounded by a school of luscious-colored fish. There were fluttering sea anemones as well, huge irregular pink ones quite unlike the small door-stop sea anemones of California. Striped clown fish idled in the tentacles of the anemones, darting forward as if to greet Phil --though when he looked closer, he saw that their smiling faces were split to reveal tiny rows of teeth. Far from greeting him, they were defiantly defending their turf. Here and there on the bottom were giant clams, meter-wide behemoths with great, crenellated shells. They rested partly open, with the shell gap revealing an incredible fleshy mantle that was differently colored on each clam: some blue, some green, some purple, all of them wonderfully iridescent.
Rising up off the shell of one giant clam was a bumpy stag-horn coral. The clam and coral made a marvelous, unbalanced composition, something nobody would ever think of designing, yet something with a beautiful inner logic. One single fish lived in the branches of the coral. Phil's soul overflowed like a wineglass in a waterfall. How to contain so much beauty?
He followed Yoke to perch on a big coral head, catching his breath.
"This is paradise, Yoke."
"Yes," said Yoke. "It's good to share this with you." They kissed again, this time much longer than before.
For the next forty-five minutes they paddled around, chatting and getting to know each other better. The more Phil talked with Yoke, the more he liked her. Like Phil, Yoke was into being clean and sober. And she shared Phil's contempt for conventional goals. "It's like society wants you to be a machine," was how Yoke put it. "Programmed to ignore everything besides the one thing they use to control you. Money or clothes or drugs or group approval. People don't see that the real world is all that matters." But unlike Phil, Yoke's contempt for society made her invigorated, not paralyzed. "There are so many things I want to do."
"When I wake up each morning, I always think it's going to be a nice day," said Phil. "That's my basic take. Instead of thinking that I have to do something to make the day be good. It's already perfect. I don't have to do anything at all. In fact if I do anything, I'm likely to fuck up."
"Oh no, Phil," said Yoke. "We have to work on the world. It isn't perfect at all. What about the news on the uvvy?"
"Well of course I never watch news," said Phil. "News, commercials, mass entertainment--they're all the same. Buy and eat and shit and buy again."
"Yeah, all the ways to avoid being aware," said Yoke. "It's crazy. You think it's bad here, you should see the Moon. There's so much virtual reality there. On Earth you've got more Nature."
"Most people ignore Nature," said Phil. "Except for worrying about weather disasters. But, hey, we shouldn't be talking about 'most people.' That's a trap too. My goal is not to get sucked into anything. Just hang back and stay calm. I don't have to fix anything but myself. The rest of the xoxxin' world can xoxx itself some more."
They were standing in waist-deep water. Yoke splashed her face to reset herself.
"I love the surface of the water, how the reflections make darker and lighter blues where it undulates. All this analog computation for free." Phil accepted the change of subject and they looked at the water for a while. Now and then he glanced up at the island. Sometimes Kennit or another guard would be looking down at them, but not always.
Phil and Yoke waded over to the island's narrow beach to rest, out of sight from the people above. Cobb flopped down on the beach a little ways off to sun himself, and Josef busied himself crawling around at the edg
e of the water, investigating tiny forms of sea life. Yoke used her alla to make them a bottle of fresh water.
"This alla is such a powerful thing," said Yoke, passing Phil the bottle. "With some practice I could use it to model almost anything."
"Go beyond the catalog?"
"Yeah. The alla is the ultimate tool. I think I told you before that I'm into figuring out algorithms for natural processes, Phil? Like a coral reef. That would be so wavy to figure out how to grow one. The individual polyps swimming around and landing. I could make one with real coral polyps, and I could make another with imipolex DIM polyps. Sort of like the worms and fabricants that Babs Mooney designs. And, God, there's so much I can do with plants. What a sea of bioinformation there is on Mother Earth." Yoke smiled, lost in happy thought.
"Speaking of Babs, I'm a little worried about that Randy Karl Tucker staying with her," said Phil after a while. "Right before I left, Randy was bragging to me that he was going to get Babs some leech-DIMs."
"That would be bad news," said Yoke. "But I know Randy a little. He talks tough, but he means well. Usually." She smiled at Phil and stroked his hand. "What's your dream of what you'd like to do? Own a restaurant?"
"No ambitions, no goals," said Phil. "I just want life hassle-free. No, I can't see running a restaurant. Feeding hungry cranky greedy people every day? Why? I guess deep down I feel like there should be something important I could do, but I don't know what it is. I'm scared there isn't anything at all. I did have these pet blimps I was really into. Kind of stupid."
"You were going to show them to me, but--"
"Kevvie," Phil winced. "Yeah, I built the blimps myself. You don't see many big blimps around because they're slow and they don't always go where you expect them to. Helium's pretty cheap, even without the allas. The real problem with blimps is that the wind blows them around. I keep thinking I might invent some way to beat the wind. And then maybe I could go into business selling my blimps. But I know that sounds dumb. Like all my ideas."
