Hieroglyph (79 page)

I let myself wave with it. Loulou was right. I didn't have to fall apart. I could still be me. I was reaching into the other mind flows, tasting them, not knowing what I was doing, but somehow changing my vibe.

Trying to integrate what was happening, I fell back on the image of cruising the web. As if the other minds were websites I was browsing on multiple screens. But the screens were weirdly invisible, as if out in the flickering zone of my peripheral vision.

Maybe I hadn't been wasting time cruising the web half asleep in my dreamchair. I'd been getting ready. Ready for qwet teep.

FORUM DISCUSSION—
Quantum Telepathy

Rudy Rucker unpacks the concept of quantum telepathy on the Hieroglyph forums at hieroglyph.asu.edu/quantum-telepathy.

Memo Angeles/Shutterstock, Inc.

Excerpt from
The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul

Read an excerpt from Rudy Rucker's book
The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul
about language, telepathy, and the dynamics of human cognition at hieroglyph.asu.edu/quantum-telepathy.

TRANSITION GENERATION

David Brin

“I SWEAR, I'M
THIS
close to throwing myself out that window! I don't know how much more I can take.”

Carmody yanked his thumb toward the opening, twenty-three stories above a noisy downtown intersection. Flecks of rubber insulation still clung in places, from when old Joe Levy pried it open, during the market crash of '65. Fifteen years later, the heavy glass pane still beckoned, now gaping open about a handbreadth, letting in a faintly traffic-sweetened breeze. A favorite spot for jumpers, offering a harried, unhappy man like Carmody the tempting, easy way out.

They should have sealed it, ages ago.

Though really, would that make a difference?

“Tell somebody who cares,” snarked Bessie Smith, who managed the Food & Agriculture accounts via a wire jacked into her right temple. She allocated investments in giant vats of sun-fed meat from Kansas to Luna, grunting and gesturing while a throng of little robots swarmed across her head, probe-palpating chin, cheeks, and brow, crafting her third new face of the day. Carmody found the sight indecent. A person's face ought to be good for months. And the transforming process really should be private.

“Yeah, well,
you
don't have to handle the transportation witches,” he retorted. “They've stuck me with a doomed portfolio that . . . aw hell!”

Symbols crowded into Carmody's perceptual periphery, real-time charts reporting yet another drop in Airline futures. His morning put-and-call orders had wagered that the industry's long slide was about to stop, but
there it goes again
! Sinking faster than a plummeting plane. He could forget about a performance bonus for the sixth week in a row. Gaia would sigh and cancel her latest art purchase, then wistfully mention some past boyfriend.

And she could be right, fella. Maybe your wife and kid would be better off . . .

As if summoned by his glowering thought, Gaia's image sprang into being before his tired gaze. Her dazzling aivatar shoved aside dozens of graphs and investment profiles that, in turn, overlay the mundane suite of office cubicles where Carmody worked. At least, he assumed that the ersatz goddess manifesting in augmented reality was Gaia; her face looked like the woman who sat across from him at breakfast, bleary eyed from all-night meetings with fellow agitators on twelve continents, fighting to extend the Higher Animal Citizenship Laws one more level, this time to include seals and prairie dogs.

What next? Voting privileges for crows and cows and canids? How was that going to work?

Back in fine fettle, Gaia shone at him with active hair follicles framing her head like seaweed, rippling from blond to brunette and rainbow shades between. A blast of enhanced charisma-from-a-bottle made Carmody curse and shut off the smell-o-vision feature of his goggles.

She knows I hate that.

Gaia's aivatar made a pointed gesture with one, upraised finger, waving the finger like a wand, casting forth a series of reminder blips:

STOP AT AUTODOC TO ADJUST YOUR IMPLANTS. FIX THAT DAMN MALFUNCTIONING MOOD FILTER!

ELDER-CARE SAYS PICK UP YOUR DAD, OR WE'LL PAY STORAGE OVERCHARGES.

GET EGGS.

Carmody winced, hating whoever invented aivatar-mail, endowing the voluptuously realistic duplicates with artificial intelligence. Of course, he
could
spend time mastering the latest tricks . . . like assigning an aivatar of his own to reply automatically, fending off work interruptions . . .

He tried to will her image to a far-back corner of the percept
. Mr. Patel will have my hide if I don't file my report on transportation trends. I still think they indicate a turnaround in air freight that—

Gaia's aivatar clung to one of his maglev-zep performance charts, resisting his efforts to dismiss her, continuing the series of chiding reminders while his impatient, leave-me-alone wind pushed her backward. The chart collapsed and surrounding data got caught up in the meme-storm as she blew backward in a blur of data-splattered robes.

Carmody's percept reached some kind of overload. One corner contorted as graphs and prospectus appraisals whirled around each other, crumpling into a funnel-cyclone, like dirty water circling a drain, sucking his entire week's labor—and his wife's protesting analog—toward some infosphere singularity.

“Cancel!” Carmody shouted. “Restore backup five minutes ago!”

He kept issuing frantic commands but nothing worked. Reaching and grabbing after the maelstrom, he did something wrong, triggering a cyber lash-back! Searing bolts of
lightning
seemed to lance between his eyes.

Shouting in pain, Carmody tore off the immersion goggles, clutching them in both hands. Laying his face on the cool surface of the desk, he suppressed a sob.

I used to think I was so hip and skilled with specs and goggs. Now, kids are replacing them with contact lenses and even eyeball implants that juggle ten times as much input.

Can I really be so obsolete?

“Bob?” A real voice, grating in his real ears. “Bob!”

It was Kevin's voice. Standing next to the desk. Carmody didn't move.

“Are you okay, Bob? Is there a problem, man?”

Glancing up, eyes still smarting and misty, Carmody shook his head.

“Just resting a sec.” He put up a brave face, knowing better than to show any weakness to this young jerk, his assistant, clearly angling for Carmody's job.

“Well, I'm glad of that,” the younger man said. But a smug expression told Carmody everything. The breakdown of his percept and loss of all that work . . . he knew it was Kevin's doing! Some trick, some hackworthy sabotage that Carmody would never be able to prove.

Does he have to gloat so openly?

“I thought I better let you know, Mr. Patel is on his way down. He wants a word with both of us.” Kevin's look of anticipation was so blatant, Carmody had to quash a troglodytic urge to erase it with his fist.
Kevin might have learned some surface tact if he had gone to university or worked at a regular people job. But no. His generation absorbs technical skills directly, like suckling from a—

The right metaphor wouldn't come. Strangely, that was the last straw for Carmody.

Enough is enough.

“You look terrible,” the younger man added. “Maybe you better visit the loo and clean up, before . . . Where are you going? Mr. Patel wants . . .”

Carmody had one hand on the windowpane and the other on its frame. Staring through the gap and down twenty-three stories, he inhaled, feeling resolution build, overcoming panic, layering upon the panic,
amplifying
his panic into something that felt more manly.

Determination.

Time to end this.

Carmody felt eyes turn his way, staring as the window swung wide. His left foot planted on the sill, pushing till he stood, teetering along emptiness.

“Bob. What're you doing?”

Carmody smiled over his shoulder at his coworkers, none of whom rose to stop him.

“I'm taking the easy way out.”

And—he jumped.

© 2013, Haylee Bolinger / ASU

CARMODY'S GUT ROILED WITH
caveman terror as the first few floors swept by. At least his life didn't pass before him.

He knew he should compose himself, but as wind stung his eyes and tugged his hair, a shadow loomed from an unexpected direction—another figure hurtling Earthward. Business suit flapping, clenched fists outstretched as if racing Carmody to the pavement. Dickerson of accounting.

That sonofagun always seemed much too tightly wound.

Oh?
an honest part of himself replied.
And what are you? Taking the coward's way out.

Carmody tried to focus on what mattered, with little time left.
Is anything important, at this point?

Abruptly, he heard someone speak. A shout, over the throbbing wind, but conversational, nonetheless.

“Dickerson is such a maroon! I was at the same meeting when Mr. Saung told us all to jump. But you don't see me showing off like that!”

Glancing left, he saw a woman dressed in the slick, pinstripe uniform of a company attorney. He'd seen her around. Instead of plunging superhero style, she had arms spread like Carmody, delaying the inevitable. A rightward eyeflick detected no sign of Dickerson. So now it was the two of them.

Told you to jump? Boy, that Saung is a hard case. Much worse than Patel. In fact, maybe I should have stayed and fought it out . . .

Carmody almost replied to the woman—dark humor about falling
with
her, not
for
her. But she frowned in concentration, preparing for the fast-looming street.

That's what I should do.

Grimly, Carmody, strapped the goggles back on to his head. Bearing down and gritting his teeth, he mentally recited a personal chant.

I am a son of light. I am a son of light. I am a son of light . . .

Nothing. Opening his eyes briefly, he saw that he was halfway to the ground, with much
less
than half the time left before . . . going splat upon the broad apron that now surrounded every downtown building, protecting pedestrians and vehicles from plummeting jumpers.

Splat. Me? Come on, focus!

I am a son of light. I am a son of light. I am a son of light . . .

He tensed muscles in his arms, back, and thighs—and felt electric tension course along his spine, at last. A crackling that was molten, electric, and fey, all at the same time, seemed to fizz from every pore. It hurt like hell! But he kept up the mantra, frowning hard and willing power into his fists. His feet.

I am a son of light. I am a son of light. I am a son of light . . .

From his scalp implants to the tips of Carmody's toes, power erupted, along with pain.

I am a son of light . . . and I can fly!

Bottoming out a couple of stories above the splat barrier, he made second-floor windows shake with the roar of his passage.

Carmody flew . . .

. . .
AND ALMOST COLLIDED
with half a dozen others, amid a throng zooming above Broadway. Carmody's percept throbbed with warning shouts and small fines applied against his commuter account. But he managed to maintain concentration, leveling off and settling into an uptown flight path without injuring anyone.

Damn, no wonder they say you should always use a standard launching catapult. Skyscraper-jumping is for idiots! Or, at least, folks who aren't out of practice like you, fool.

He turned onto Seventh Avenue, banking in a wide swoop that gained altitude as well. It almost felt . . .
fun,
for just a bit, though the tight maneuver made his stomach churn.