by Rudy Rucker
The Big Aha
Rudy Rucker
Transreal Books
Published January 15, 2014
Transreal Books, Los Gatos, California
www.transrealbooks.com
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The text and the illustrations are:
Copyright © Rudy Rucker 2014.
Paperback: ISBN 978-0-9858272-5-0
Hardback: ISBN 978-0-9858272-7-4
Ebook: ISBN 978-0-9858272-6-7
Early versions of Chapter Two appeared as short stories in Flurb #13, Spring, 2012, and in Omni Reboot in November, 2013.
Heartfelt thanks to the three hundred and thirty-one backers who helped fund the creation and publication of The Big Aha. The contributors’ names appear in the Afterword.
Thanks to Tim Pratt who encouraged me to try the crowdfunding stratagem. Thanks also to Georgia Rucker for help with the cover design, and to Rudy Rucker Jr. and Monkeybrains.net for hosting the book's site. And thanks to my proofreaders Lisa Goldstein, Sylvia Rucker, and John Walker.
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For my parents,
for Louisville,
for William J. Craddock,
and for Sylvia
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Contents
1: Qwet Rat
2: The Coming of the Nurbs
3: Loofy Picnic
4: Oblivious Teep
5: Scene of the Crime
6: Loulou in the Oddball
7: Flying Jellyfish
8: Funhouse
9: Spreading Qwet
10: Weezie’s Party
11: Fairyland
12: Spotted Gub
13: Churchill Downs
14: Big Aha
Afterword
* * *
1: Qwet Rat
“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. 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 eyes twinkled like black beads. His pink-lined ears made small movements, picking up our voices 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 startup 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? It’s a new tech. This woman named Junko Shimano invented it. She works for Gaven now.”
“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 enhanced by independent artists like me. Some of us used genemodding to design our own nurbs, others just trained some existing nurbs.
Modifying a nurb’s genes was tricky, and it required the use of a genemodder wand. The results of genemods weren’t easily predictable, although the wand did provide some semi-reliable feedback about what to expect. The genemodder wands were expensive, as the United Mutations company still held all the patents on them. And—yet another problem—the genemodder wand only worked on certain special kinds of nurbs. Programmable nurbs. Crazy as it sounds, programmable nurbs had tiny antennae on their DNA strands.
So, even though I owned a genemodder wand, I rarely used it. Too much hassle. But there was simpler way to producing artistic nurb products. Nurbs had basic tweaks that gave them web access, and they all had some level of intelligence. You could talk to it via the web. So—even without getting into genemodding—you might coach a nurb into changing the way that it chose to appear or to behave. Not that nurbs always did what you asked. If your art involved reshaping the nurbs, you were a little like a director working with actors.
Nurb boutiques took pains to make their quirky offerings seem friendly and cute. My shop’s dog-sized house-cleaner slugs were hot pink, for instance, and they giggled. The bands on my squidskin wristphones were demure, pastel tentacles. My bourbon-dripping magic pumpkins had a jolly, drunken air—drifting in the air like heavy party balloons. The web-linked dreamchairs in my shop had been coached to take on elegant, sculptural shapes. But this rat—
“It’s all about product placement,” said Carlo, still holding Skungy. “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 genetically engineered 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 Kentucky accent.
“The fruits of Gaven’s quantum wetware tech?” I said, only to be interrupted by a yelp from Carlo. Skungy had bitten the tip of his finger.
“Oh no!” moaned Carlo. Nurb bites could have horrible side effects.
A bright drop of blood welled out, very red. Wriggling free of Carlo’s grasp, the nurb rat leapt onto my sales counter, which grew out of my store’s floor like a tall toadstool.
“I’ve got my rights!” shrilled the excited rat, rising onto his rear legs. “I’m every bit as smart you guys. I shouldn’t be for sale!”
If I mentally dialed up the 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 nurbware tech’s rapid rate of change. None of our products were sufficiently pre-tested.
“Calm down,” I told the rat. I rose from my chair and drew my genemodder wand from beneath the counter. The wand was a slender, foot-long, tapering cone jammed with tiny components—one of the rare items in the modern world that was an actual piece of machinery. A United Mutations design. I brandished the wand. “I’ll break your DNA if you keep it up, Skungy. Turn you into a puddle of slime. I know you’re still mod-accessible. 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 3D image.
Carlo found a Voodoo brand healer leech on a shelf and put it on the spot where Skungy had bitten him.
“Oh please don’t let me be infected,” muttered Carlo. “God damn this rat. He’s two days old and he’s running amok. But don’t incinerate him quite yet, Zad. Gaven’s got a couple of million bucks in this prototype. We’d hate to burn your sparkly quantum wetware, Skungy. Be 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 lik
ed 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 United Mutations is hanging back, watching for law suits, 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 her fancy housetree condo, so I’d grown a bachelor pad onto the back of my shop. I had my bed in the store, and all of my remaining Cold Day in Hell paintings were on the walls.
I’d made these pictures with nurb-paint—which had been a big deal a few years ago. But they weren’t selling at all any more. For that matter, the Idi Did gallery on Bardstown Road had dropped me from their 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. At one point we’d meant to have a baby, but we hadn’t gotten around to it. Maybe I hadn’t wanted the responsibility. And now the thrill was gone.
Jane had been ramping up her career, doing well with her Jane Says public relations agency. I was on the downswing, somewhat depressed, not doing much of anything. According to Jane I was dead and hollow.
I snapped back into the moment. 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.
He was nothing but an alley rat, gene-modded to have a standard United Mutations add-on for web access, plus an ability to hold a larger mind. But, yes, Gaven had indeed put some kind of larger mind into him. That was the quantum wetware part. Skungy was the funkiest rat I’d ever seen.
“I don’t know,” I told Carlo, weighing his pitch. “What if these 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 the pocket of his silky termite-woven jacket. “Legal waiver for you, qrude. Gaven really likes the idea of us three launching his product. Like he’s nostalgic for the old times. He scored big as a housetree developer, and now he’s back to Louisville.”
Carlo mimed a salute in the direction of the gnat cameras. 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 Carlo’s waiver. As far as I was concerned, the legal paper could have held hieroglyphs written with smears of excrement. Like I said, I’m an artist.
But Gaven, he was tech and biz. Flashing back to the numerous times I’d disrespected Gaven before, I directed a lurid grimace towards his swarm of spy-gnats—drawing back my chin, putting my tongue between my teeth and puffing out my cheeks. It was one of the faces I used to aim at him in high school. Gaven’s gnats zoomed at my head, perhaps meaning this in a jolly, playful way.
“Have you physically seen Gaven in person 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. Gaven’s gotten all fit and trim. I hardly got to talk to him. You were there too, Carlo. You were drunk. From all the whiskey pumpkins they had 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?”
“You asked Jane how it felt to be married to a washed-up loser,” I said. “It was the last straw. The tipping point. The next day she threw me out. You’re a jerk.”
Even though I meant these words, I didn’t put all that much heat into them. Carlo and I had been sniping at each other for twenty 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 towards my apartment in the back. “Your nest stinks pretty,” 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 a local specialty,” I said, pointing toward 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 qwet-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 leapt off it, did a mid-air flip, and hit the floor running. Moments later he was back on the counter with his prize, a scrap of crust the size of his body. His tail writhed as he began devouring it. Almost immediately, the merrymilk relaxed him. A 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. Upgrade the package you bring to the table. Otherwise—”
“Don’t you go bird-dogging Jane!” I cried, suddenly imagining I saw the old hustle in Carlo’s eyes.
“Au contraire,” he drawled. “I’d like to see you two back together.”
“Why?”
“Jane’s rich. I like having her in my circle of friends. And I care about you, qrude. I’m sad to see you going under. Jane’s not going to wait. Gaven Graber wants her. And Whit Heyburn’s waiting in the wings.”
“Not Whit! He’s an evil psycho. If it weren’t for guys like him—”
“It’s all someone else’s fault, huh, Zad? Listen to me. One big reason you’re having problems is that you’re logging way too much time in your dreamchair. Webzombia, qrude. Each era gets their own madness. Melancholia, neurasthenia, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder—webzombia. Let me ask you this. 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 Carlo trying to drag me out.
“You’re the zombie, not me,” I snapped. “You and those fountain of youth treatments you’re getting. You look like you’re eighteen, you idiot.”
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.
“Keep in mind that our rat’s seeming filth is a marketing move,” said Carlo calmly. He enjoyed seeing me crack. He’d scored a point in our nev
er-ending game. “When people see a scuzzy rat they think New York City. And that’s a plus.”
“Skungy talks like a Kentucky hick.”
“Well, that has to do with how we programmed him. Unfortunately 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, calming down. “Yeah. I’d like to go to Manhattan again myself. It’s been two years since I was up there with Jane. Lately I’ve been watching the New York retrofits from my chair. The honking nurb cars, the flydinos gliding among those 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 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 qwet rat that was 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. The Slygro qwet rats can be spies, messengers, thieves—”
“What about Skungy being a biter?” I interrupted.
Carlo looked down at his finger. “A little worried about that,” he allowed. “Gaven hasn’t fully told me what this quantum wetware shit can do. But never mind. We’ll be working it all out in the follow-on releases.”
I waved my genemodder wand at little Skungy. “Nobody wants a nurb that bites,” I scolded him. “And if the biter is smart, that makes it worse.”
“I’m no biter,” piped the rat, his mouth full of Derby pizza. “Unless I feel cornered. Your pal went and smacked me on the head. He was asking for it. Once we grow us out a decent pack of qwet rats, I’ll get some respect.”
