The Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker (most important books of all time .txt) đ
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âWellâIâd like to,â said Babs. âItâs high time. As a matter of fact Randy and I rode over here together, but he was scared to come in. Heâs wandering around looking at the Haight. I told him I would uvvy him if it looked like Da could act normal. Can you, Da?â
âOf course I can. Iâm sure heâs a fine boy. I wonât scare him off.â
So Babs uvvied Randy and a few minutes later he walked up the front steps. He was pink with self-consciousness and his Adamâs apple was bobbing. He was wearing a new T-shirt with an incredibly intricate stippling of colors. Babs thought he looked so cute that she planted a kiss on him when she opened the door.
âCome on in, Randy. Ma, Da, this is Randy. Randy, this is Stahn and Wendy.â
âHey,â said Randy, shaking their hands. âItâs an honor. Iâve heard about you two all my life. The Heritagists back in Kentucky are still squawkinâ about that Moldie Citizenship Act.â
Babs noticed Randyâs nostrils flaring as he sampled Wendyâs odor. Wendy had successfully infected her Happy Cloak with Cobbâs new stinkeater bacteria last week, so the smell was quite mild. But Babs didnât want to tackle the topic of Randy and the smells of moldies. âHow were things down on Haight Street today, Randy?â she asked.
âWaaald. Is it always that crowded? Or maybe itâs on account of it beinâ April Foolâs Day. Itâs like a street festival, people alla-making shit you canât believe.â
âI havenât been on Haight Street in weeks,â said Stahn. âI always go around the back way. And, yeah, All Foolâs Day is very big in the Haight. What did you see?â
âSome of the stores have their windows painted over and you have to pay the owner to get in. Thanks to the individual Web address on each dollar bill, people canât alla up counterfeit, so moneyâs still real anyway. Not that you need it for most things.â
âI noticed those stores,â said Wendy. âWhat do you get if you go inside?â
âWell, I paid one fella to find out,â said Randy, looking a little embarrassed. âGuess I thought heâd have something pretty racy behind them painted windows. But it was just a goddamn T-shirt store. He lets you pick out a T-shirt you like and then you alla yourself a copy. Canât hardly sell objects no more. All you can do is sell ideas.â
âExactly!â said Babs. âThatâs what Iâve been trying to tell Da. Intellectual property is all that matters now. Itâs wonderful.â
âYeah,â said Randy, looking down at his T-shirt, which had subtle patterns like faces embedded in its fractal swirls. âNotice how much detail this shirtâs got? I never could have seen it all in time to make a copy just from lookinâ at it. The store-guy uvvied me the design. Reason he keeps the store windows covered is some folks will just eyeball one of his shirts and alla-make a half-ass knockoff of it. There was a gaaah right outside the store, matter of fact, who looked me over and made a copy of my new shirt, then turned around and sold it to a tourist. All smudged and blurry, though. Look over here on the sleeve, I just noticed this line oâ little elephants. No way the pirated street copy picked that up.â
âI think Iâm too old for new ideas,â sighed Stahn. âDonât want to buy, donât have to sell. What else did you see on Haight Street, Randy?â
âThere was some folks in old-time metal armor with imipolex power hinges. Jumpinâ around like silver jelly beans. I saw a guy givinâ away jeweled Easter eggs, all diamonds and rubies, and when you took one, heâd make it disappear. April fool! Another fella was walking down the sidewalk poppinâ out a concrete lawn dwarf every step he took. Skinned my knee on one of those suckers, and allaed a bunch of âem back into air. Some hairfarmers made themselves a pizza ten feet across and didnât eat but a corner of it, then just left it on the sidewalk so you had to step around it. Wasnât nobody bothering to clean it up, and when I went to turn that one into air, one oâ the hairfarmers yelled at me not to waste food. One gaaah was standinâ around naked doinâ his laundry in the middle of the street; he had a washinâ machine hooked to a quantum dot battery and he was usinâ his alla to feed the water into it. He was just lettinâ the wastewater spill out on the ground. He shoulda alla-made it back into air, but I didnât feel up to hasslinâ him. There was a peck of musicians playinâ electric guitars hooked to batteries, and a bunch of women doing brain concerts on sheets of imipolex hanginâ off the lamp-postsâright confusing, all the noise. One gaaah had a swarm of maybe a hundred dragonfly cameras buzzinâ all over gettinâ in everyoneâs face and he was mixing their video so youâd just about go crazy lookinâ at the outputâit was runninâ on an imipolex billboard heâd pasted to the wall. Lots oâ cars and custom motorcycles. One of the choppers had a bathtub for the driver to sit in, and it wasnât just a tub, it was a merge love puddle. Can you imagine drivinâ a hog while youâre merged? Your eyeballs stickinâ up on little stalks?â Randy laughed and shook his head. âI love this city. First place I ever felt normal. The craziest thing I saw in the Haight was two stoners taking turns zapping each other into air. And then recorporatinâ the aired-out gaaah from his alla.â
âOw,â said Babs. âI wouldnât do that for anything. Yoke said thereâs a real chance of not being able to come back.â
âI hear thereâs been a lot of people getting âaired out,â â said Wendy. âAnd not for fun. People trying to kill each other.â
âYeah, but remember that it hasnât been working,â said Babs. âSeems like Omâs got it set so that a dead personâs alla starts beeping after a day. An alla is indestructible, and someone always finds it. And if it was an alla that killed you, your alla offers to bring you back.â
âLike in _The Telltale Heart,â _said Stahn. âThat Poe viddy where the murdered manâs heart under the floorboards is beating so loud that it shakes the room. So what else did you see on Haight Street, Randy?â
âDid I mention that itâs crawlinâ with moldies down there? Itâs a good thing they canât reproduce themselves but every six months. Even if the average moldie donât live but two years, that makes three times as many moldies every two years, less somethinâ makes âem cut back. Lord knows Iâm the last one to say anything against moldies, but they could run us outta room! They donât hardly smell like nothinâ anymore. I can tell you got that new stinkeater bug too, Ms. Mooney.â
âOh, call me Wendy,â said Ma. âYes, Cobb brought some over here before he left with Darla. He said since Iâm a public figure, I should be an example. So I went ahead and infected myself with stinkeater. Itâs not an infection, really, itâs more like a symbiosis. I benchmarked my computation rate before and after the stinkeater, and thereâs an eleven percent enhancement. So Iâm telling all the moldies to do it. Stahn likes it and I do too.â
âSheâs moaninâ, huh?â said Stahn, admiring his wife. âBut Iâm with you on what you said about too many moldies, Randy. We three were just fabbing about it. Too many people, too many moldies, too much _stuff. _I think the allas suck. Look out there right now. My moron neighbor Jones is up on his roof again. I bet heâs planning a second tower for his house. I canât fucking believe it. And see the house right down the hill from him? Used to be a beautiful madrone tree there, and now Ms. Lin has a garage. For what? For her brand-new fucking electric-motor-retrofitted vintage 1956 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow with twenty-four-karat-gold trim. A garage to protect her car that she made out of air and could replace in one second.â
âDonât make yourself sick, Stahn,â said Wendy. âLetâs go out in our backyard and build the tree. Randy, we were thinking weâd make a redwood with some kind of tree house in it. And we figured out that if each of us alla-makes a section at the same time, the tree can be a hundred and sixty feet long from top branch to bottom root. Come on, we go out this way.â
âMaybe it should be two hundred feet,â said Stahn when they got outside. He was starting to get excited. âA monster tree. Thatâll show âem.â Their yard was maybe fifty feet on a side.
âLetâs call Saint,â suggested Wendy. âHe should be here for our little get-together. With five allas, the tree could be two hundred six feet and 1.69 inches. Call your brother, Babs, I donât want to always be the one to bother him.â Saint answered Babsâs uvvy call right away. â âSup, sis?â He sounded cheerful and lively.
âIâm over at Ma and Daâs with Randy,â said Babs.
âYaaar. Did you tell them yet?â
âThere hasnât been a good moment. Daâs all uptight about the neighbors.
Weâre going to help him put up a giant redwood.â âMake a sequoia instead.â Saint had a contrary streak. âA big tree,â said Babs. âI donât really care what kind, but now Daâs fixated on redwood. Anyway, thatâs what right for this climate. If you were here, thereâd be five of us and the tree could be two hundred feet tall instead of a hundred and sixty. What are yon doing anyway?â
When Saint had gotten his alla, heâd quit working at Meta West. Recently he and Phil and Randy had been talking about starting a business. But for now heâd been spending most of his time riding his bicycle and playing uvvy games with friends. And he had a new girlfriend.
âI made a bicycle that I can ride on the water,â said Saint. He patched in a view of where he was: out on the bay, near the Golden Gate Bridge. He glanced up at the people-nests encrusting the underside of the bridge, then turned his attention back to the water. There were exceedingly many recreational watercraft around him. Everyone whoâd ever wanted a sailboat or DIM board had one now. And you didnât need an expensive dock for your boatâwhen you finished using it, you just turned it back into air. Saint abruptly veered to avoid a collision. âThis is too much fun to stop right now. And Iâm supposed to meet Milla later. Whoah, here comes another boat. Just say hi for me. Itâs enough if Daâs tree is a hundred and sixty feet. Tell him not to be so greedy. And to make it a banyan.â
â âBye, Saint.â
âGood luck with Randy and the rents.â
âHe doesnât want to come,â Babs told the others. âHeâs out bicycling on the bay. And then heâs going to see _Milla.â _She stressed the last word as bait for her mother.
âWe havenât met Milla yet,â complained Ma. âYou children are so secretive.â
âYou two are so hard to talk to,â said Babs.
âLetâs make the redwood,â said Stahn. âIâm stoked.â
Babs found a redwood in her alla catalog,
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