The Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker (most important books of all time .txt) đ
- Author: Rudy Rucker
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The title of the show was a good idea, as everyone was still in the process of trying to assimilate what âRealwareâ might mean. There was a big crowd on opening nightâthe guests all decked out in freaky S.F. outfits like never before seenâbut the sales were disastrously weak. The potential customers seemed to want to go home and make their own copies of Babsâs works with their allas. In fact, one woman with a beehive hairdo and a skirt made of dangling transparent dildos stood out on the sidewalk staring really hard at one of the worm-buggies for half an hour and thenâ_whooshâ_used her alla to make her own version, using the same base-model Metamartian alla catalog dune buggy that Babs had used. The art on the knockoff worm buggy wasnât quite the same, for it came out of the dildo-skirted womanâs head and not Babsâs, but it seemed to suit her well enough, and maybe better. She hopped in her new car and drove off , with Randy running after her down the street shouting empty threats.
The situation with the lace was a bit different. The decorations of the worm-buggies were big and easy to mentally represent, but the lace simply had too much pattern, produced as it was by colonies of interacting DIM-based fabricants. No casual gallery-goer would be able to mentally specify the twists and turns of all the lace knots for his or her alla. Even so, Randy did catch a tipsy man in orange leather leaving the gallery wearing a mantilla of crude knockoff lace on his shoulders. Rather than being knotted, the copied laceâs threads were simply fused at the crossings. And the overall pattern repeated itself every four inches, instead of subtly varying all along the mantillaâs length.
The plastic worms were the least susceptible to copying, as it was their living behavior that made them art. Their flocking, their wriggling, their subtly oscillating huesâall of these were based on limpware DIM designs that Babs had invented for them with Randyâs help. And there was no way to âseeâ these microscopic code designs just by looking at the worms. Yet everyone was in such a do-it-yourself frenzy with their allas that they seemed to overlook this fact.
The sole person to offer to purchase one of Babsâs works was a sleek banker named Chock Fresser. Fresser wanted to acquire the showâs centerpiece: a twelve-foot transparent pretzel filled with imipolex worms in a thousand different shades of blue and green; it was called âWowo Worms.â
But Fresser didnât want to take delivery on the physical item; he wanted Babs to uvvy him a copy of the software design so he could alla-make the work in situ at his house. âToo much trouble to ship it home,â said Fresser. âPacking, unpackingâwho needs it anymore? Give me the code and that way I can bring âWowo Wormsâ in and out of storage as needed.â
The gallery owner, Kundry Asiz, was a good friend of Babsâs from high school. When Babs suggested to her that they shouldnât sell the code to Fresser since money didnât matter anymore, Kundry pointed out that, yes, there was a sense in which money didnât matter anymore, but there were still several senses in which it didâfirst of all, it was crass human nature for people to give more attention and respect to art they had to pay for, and secondly, the rent on a space like the Asiz Gallery was something the alla couldnât finagle them out of.
So Babs agreed, and Fresser walked off with the complete code for the âWowo Worms.â And a week later, tacky little desktop copies of it were for sale in every gift shop on Fishermanâs Wharfâwith nary an attribution to Babs. Kundry put some heavy pressure on Fresser and got him to triple the original purchase price, but it wasnât a fully satisfying resolution.
âWe gotta figure out a way to sell a design for onetime use only,â said Randy. He and Babs were sitting on the ant-decorated couch in Babsâs warehouse. Babsâs brother Saint was there too. It was the first of May.
âUse a one-time encryption zip,â said Saint. âI learned about that stuff when I was working for Meta West. You can zip your design and send the zipped version to the user with an unzipper that trashes itself after its first use. Like cheap pants. The first time you open the fly, the zipper sticks for good. You can publish the image of your work in the alla catalog, and when somebody orders it, they get a single zip of the design with its own unzipper. And of course the unzipper is tailored only to feed the information into an alla and not into any kind of a storage device.â
âI get it,â said Babs. âI could make an art catalog thatâs like a catalog used to be. Thereâs just images of things, and you have to uvvy in some funds to take delivery on an item. And if you want another one, you have to pay again. Thatâs a brilliant idea, Saint. I wish Iâd known about that before.â
âLive and learn, sis,â said Saint. âJust think about the poor companies that had every one of their products put into the Metamartian alla catalog.â
âLike Modern Rocks,â said Randy. He liked his Spider-Man gloves and anemone boots so much that heâd looked into the fate of their manufacturer. âI found out they really did go down the tubes. The Metamartians didnât leave no holes. Whatever the aliens put in that catalog is there one hundred percent, the whole design coded up in nanotech blueprints.
Those Metamartians did their homework. Now, this trick of yours, Saint, is everyone gonna know about it? It would be good to spread it around, soâs artists and inventors can get some kind of reward.â
âMaybe I should _sell _my trick,â said Saint. âCall it the One-Zip. If I can actually figure out the details. Iâm not really that much of a programmer. But you two sure went for it. Yeah, I need someone to help me productize.â
âWhy is everyone always talking about buying and selling these days?â said Yoke impatiently. Sheâd just walked in. âYou sound like a bunch of businessman numberskulls. Guys with calculator DIMs in their heads. Philâs the worst of all. Going on and on about selling his blimps. Money lags! What does anyone need xoxxinâ money for anyway? And meanwhile people are killing each other for fun.â Without waiting for a response, Yoke stalked across the room to study the pair of huge aquariums sheâd installed. One contained a realware South Pacific reef with hard and soft corals. The biologicals were all alla-made realware: primarily coral polyps and the diatoms they fed upon. The other tank held Yokeâs workin-progress, a colony of miniaturized limpware polyps that were supposed to build an artificial reef. Yokeâs polyps werenât doing so well today. When heâd gotten up this morning. Randy had noticed that Yokeâs artificial reef had petered out into ugly little crumbly excrescences, not at all like the smooth, branching staghorn shapes she was shooting for.
âXoxx it,â said Yoke, staring into her tanks. âThis is the only thing Iâm able to try and controlâand itâs too hard. You have to help me tweak them some more, Randy.â
âHowâs Philâs blimp doinâ?â Randy asked Yoke.
âOh, heâs got it spread out on the roof,â said Yoke, wandering over and alla-making herself a cup of coffee. âItâs slowly getting better. The Phlyte Blimp. Can you hear the trademark? What is it about Phil and money all of a sudden, Randy?â
âPhil wants to make a mark on the world,â said Randy. Looking into himself, Randy realized that he didnât share that ambition. He saw his role as a background guy, not a foreground guy. A consultant. Someone who helped people make connections and do things. He was happy to help Babs with her worms, Phil with his flying machines, Yoke with her reefs, and maybe Saint with his One-Zip realware alla code encryption. But he wasnât into power-driving. Hell, he was just happy to have a shot at a normal life. If only the world would let him. âFor some people moneyâs a way to keep score,â he said mildly. âPractically all itâs good for anymore.â
âDonât forget real estate,â said Babs. âYoke and Phil need money if they ever want a place of their own. Not that I mind having you guys squatting on my wall and my roof. But you know, eventuallyââ
âWe can leave anytime you want us to,â said Yoke, getting prickly. âThereâs plenty of free land on the Moon. Or Mars. Or the asteroids. Weâd be safer from the fighting anyway.â
âI donât see you wantinâ to go back into space,â said Randy. âNo more than I want to go in the first place. Earthâs where itâs at. And, look, with the allas we donât need to waste land on farms no more. That frees up a lot of cheap acreage. Or, hell, you can get an acre up on the side of some mountain any old where. With an alla you donât need power or plumbing or a place to shop. Everyone can be happy, everyone can have a nice place to live.â
âSo why do people keep killing each other?â wondered Babs. âJust for the rush? Thank God things are still calm in San Francisco.â
âI hear things are getting really tense in Oakland,â said Saint. âIâm starting to wonder if giving out the allas was such a good idea.â
âIf we ever get to talk to the Metamartians again, maybe we should ask them to get rid of the allas?â said Randy. âHard to decide. Hey, did I tell you that my fatherâs flying back down inside of Cobb? Cominâ early for the wedding. He should get here today.â
âI wish Darla had stayed,â said Yoke, looking sad. âAs soon as she talked to Whitey, she got all homesick and made Cobb fly her right up to the Moon. I think she wanted to make double sure that they didnât finish growing that new Darla clone to replace her. So, fine, now theyâre all together up there, but what good does that do me? I want my parents and my sister! They should be the ones coming back with Cobb, not Willy. Whitey says I should come get married on the Moon. He thinks itâs getting too dangerous down here. But Philâs totally into having the wedding with his family and you guys. Xoxx it. A weddingâs hard enough, so why in Godâs name are we doing two at once?â
âDonât look at me,â said Randy. âIt was you and Babs decided to make it a double. It was like you gals thought gettinâ married to Phil and me was such a crazy stunt, why not push it right out to the edge. Like a viddy soap finale or somethinâ.â
âI know,â sighed Yoke. âI can remember the mood, but I canât get myself back into it. Babs and I were so giggly that night. Weâd released the allas to the public and it was going to be paradise. And now thereâs war everywhere. Even Phil and I had a big fight just a minute ago. Not that thereâs any comparison.â
âPoor Yoke,â said Babs. âFight about what?â
âItâs
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