Spaceland (17 page)

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Authors: Rudy Rucker

BOOK: Spaceland
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Upstairs from Yupnip I met with a tall, soft, curly-haired lawyer called Stu Koblenz, and we had the incorporation papers drawn up in less than an hour.
“What's Mophone's core business gonna be?” Stu asked me when we were done.
“We're still in non-disclosure,” I said.
“I hear a lot of that.” he said. “Give me a call when you're ready to talk patents or IPO. I can do it all.”
And then I hit Kinko's copy shop and made some Mophone business cards with the address of my new house and my cell phone number. I listed myself as Chief Executive Officer. It felt good to be the boss.
I drove to my new house and hauled the boxes in from my car. The traffic was noisier than ever. People coming home from their Sunday outings. I took out my business card and looked at it again. It gave me the confidence to phone Tulip.
“Hare Krishna,” answered Tulip.
“Um, hello,” I said. “This is Joe Cube.”
Tulip burst into embarrassed, reckless laughter. “I thought you were my sister calling,” she explained. “We always say Hare Krishna for a joke. Actually I'm Catholic.”
“Me too,” I said. “Hail Mary.”
“Oh, I don't joke about the real Church,” said Tulip. “I take it quite seriously.”
“I'm calling to ask you to have dinner with me,” I said. “I'd like to make you an offer.”
“Offer to do what?” said Tulip. “This morning you told me you were suicidal. Are you looking for an executionress? A hangwoman?” Reckless laughter again. “I have just the right outfit. It's this black sari my great-aunt gave me when I graduated from high school. Nothing shows but my nose.”
“Oh, I'm feeling much better now,” I told Tulip. “In fact I've incorporated a new company. Mophone. We could use an engineer like you.”
“A business date,” said Tulip. “Very Silicon Valley. We'll synergize, prioritize, and productize. Can I pick the restaurant?”
“You got it,” I said.
“Let's try Ririche in San Jose,” she said. “I've been meaning to go there. Eight o'clock?”
“Sure.”
“Hang on,” said Tulip. “I'll multitask.” A rapid series of beeps and hisses came over my cell phone and then I heard Tulip's voice, again. “Done,” she said. “I just used the Web to get us a reservation.”
“You've got the Web on your phone?” I asked.
“Doesn't everyone?” Tulip laughed again. “I'm glad you called, Joe. My sister thinks I'm depressed about Spazz. I've been watching horror movie videos all day. Never a good sign.” A pause. “Any more news of our exes?”
“I saw them together at my old house this afternoon,” I said, sparing her the details. “And then I rented a new house of my own.”
“Fast work,” said Tulip. I sensed a hint of pain in her bright, joking tone. “Me, I'm stuck in Fremont. They have the biggest Indian language movie theater in the Bay Area. The Naz. But that's about it. And I like Hollywood movies. The pure product.”
“Maybe I could sublet you a room here.”
“Oho. The alliance of the rejects. We'd better continue this discussion face to face, Joe.”
“Eight at Ririche,” I said. “I'm looking forward to it.”
I killed the next couple of hours getting my place set up. I put my desk and computer in the front room—this would be the office. And I stacked my boxes in one of the bedrooms, leaving the second bedroom vacant just in case. And then I made a quick trip into Los Perros to buy a futon to sleep on. The easiest thing I could think of was going to Yupnip. Hey, I had seventeen thousand dollars in the bank, and I knew where to get more. I got a futon with a holder made of bolts and weathered gray lumber, a folding butterfly armchair with a seat made of an old canvas tent, a couple of UFO-style lamps, a fancy rug with this bitchin' design of hundreds of little pastel TV sets printed on it, and a couple of plastic tractor-seat stools for the kitchen. It felt festive to be shopping after dark. Like buying Christmas presents.
And then I got ready for my date. Showering was a little tricky as I didn't have any soap or towels. I was a couple of minutes late getting to Ririche. Tulip was already there, sitting at the bar drinking an orange juice, her gold earrings glinting in the dim light. She looked prettier than I remembered. Her lips made me think of chocolate ice cream. In this light, I couldn't see the blemishes in her skin. She was wearing a gray power suit and a pale orange silk blouse. I'd gone for slacks, sport coat, and tie—a special lavender paisley tie from Macy's.
Ririche was exquisite, all white table cloths and heavy silver, chic waitpersons and posh customers. With my subtle vision seeing everything, I could barely keep track of which customer was me. At the same time I was politely making an effort not to look under Tulip's clothes. Actually sitting down with her got me so flustered that I missed whatever it was she was saying to me. I thought I heard the word “elephant.”
“I've always liked them,” I said. “We didn't have a zoo anywhere near Matthewsboro, but I saw them in the circus. That's where I grew up, a small town in Colorado.”
“What are you talking about, Joe?”
“Elephants?”
“Do you expect every Indian to discuss elephants?” said Tulip, frowning a little. A loose hank of hair escaped her barrette and fell across her cheek. “I was talking about testing out new
elements
. For doping the chips at our fab. I was trying to tell you about my job.”
“Reset,” I said. “You don't like elephants?”
“Not really. My mother had statues and paintings of Ganesh all over the house. He's a god who looks like an elephant. He's also the god of rats. Very fleshy, he's kind of disgusting.” A sour twitch at the corner of her mouth.
“You said you're Catholic?”
“I went to Holy Names Academy in San Jose. You're new to the area, you probably don't know about it. It's a very good Catholic preparatory school. Yes, I've come to prefer monotheism. It's more rational. I was president of the Cardinal Newman club at Stanford.”
“Stanford? I'm impressed.” I glanced down at my menu. All the entrées were thirty bucks. “This is on Mophone, Incorporated, Tulip. Order whatever you want.”
“Even caviar?” she said, a little teasingly.
“Whatever it takes to float your boat. We're in heavy recruiting mode at Mophone.”
The waitress showed up and we ordered stuff, starting with caviar. Tulip gave me an amused look.
“When you say
we,
Joe—who else is at Mophone besides you?”
I offered my impression of a cocky Tom Cruise smile. It was a look I'd practiced in the mirror back in college. “Just me,” I said. “But I've got a new technology you're not going to believe.” I handed her a business card.
I saw a flash of pity in Tulip's eyes as she glanced at the card and put it away. “Maybe we should just call this a date, Joe,” she said. “Not everything has to be a big business deal. What were Spazz and Jena doing when you saw them this afternoon?”
“They were lying down naked and kissing each other,” I said. “In what used to be my bedroom.”
“Oh,” said Tulip, staring down at her glass. The skin below her eyes looked almost black. “What does he see in her, I wonder?”
“She's sexy,” I said. “And she's new. I think that's the main thing for Spazz, isn't it? Another conquest. He's so into himself I don't think he looks any deeper than that. Jena's hot, and she wants him, and that's enough.”
“And Jena?” said Tulip in a brittle tone. She wasn't liking this. “Why does she want Spazz? I'd peg Jena for picking someone—” She paused to choose the right word. “Someone more conventional.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Someone like me. A weak, conventional person that she can dominate. But—you know what, Tulip? I'm changing. I've been through some heavy stuff recently.”
“I still don't get why Jena wants Spazz,” repeated Tulip, seemingly unwilling to talk about me. “She's a goody-goody little junior exec.”
“That's how she likes to present herself these days,” I said. “But she's more chaotic than you realize. Spazz validates her chaos.” Usually I didn't think this much about relationships. Maybe my subtle
vision had opened my mind to more than just the fourth dimension. “Jena going to Spazz is like a flip-flop,” I said. “I guess I can tell you that Jena had some major problems with her stepfather growing up. Sex became this power thing for her. always about master and slave. I—I let her be the master, and I think now she's ready to be Spazz's slave.” Was this me talking? “I don't really blame her,” I concluded. “I wish her well.”
“I'd like to wring her scrawny neck,” said Tulip in a matter-offact tone. And then she raised her voice to imitate Jena. “Oooh Spazz, you're so smart. Oooh Spazz, I like your big bad motorcycle.”
“Spazz is the one I want to kill,” I said. “But maybe we should be talking about us. Truth be told, Tulip, you're much sexier than Jena.”
“Thanks,” said Tulip, accepting the compliment but not passing one hack. She didn't seem too interested in me. The waitress brought the caviar and we had some fun with that. It was in a bowl on a plate of ice with little dishes of minced onion and hard-boiled egg. I'd ordered champagne to go with it.
“What was all that about offering me a job?” said Tulip after we toasted each other. “Were you serious? What is Mophone, anyway?”
“I've gotten hold of about ten thousand special cell-phone antenna crystals,” I said. For the moment I wasn't going to try explaining where they came from. “They're very small, and they pipe the signals out into—oh, call it a superchannel. There's no other signals in the superchannel, and no interference. You can use whatever frequencies you like.”
“I've never heard of any superchannel,” said Tulip. “And where would you be getting cell phone hardware anyway? I hope you're not buying chips on eBay. Some of the scuzzier fabs are dumping their defectives there. They're not good for much besides really lightweight apps. Things like musical greeting cards.”
“These aren't chips,” I said. “They're antennas. They stick out into the superchannel. Here, look,” I handed Tulip an antenna crystal
that I'd brought along. Her face looked happy and confident as she took it. Hardware was her thing. She gave the crystal a onceover and then pulled a magnifying glass out of her purse.
“I always carry this in case I find a beetle,” said Tulip, gesturing with the lens and not really looking at my crystal yet. Once again I noticed the dark acne scars on her cheeks. “You never know when one will turn up. Have you ever heard the story about what the biologist John Burdon Sanderson Haldane said to the clergyman?”
“Can't say as I have,” I said, putting on a bit of a cowboy accent.
“The clergyman goes, ‘Professor Haldane, as a naturalist, you have an exceptional familiarity with the Creation. Might you draw any conclusions about the Maker?'” Tulip paused, raised her finger, and delivered Haldane's answer in a drawling, upper-crust tone. “‘He has an inordinate fondness for beetles.'”
“Shucks howdy,” I said, slapping my thigh to get a smile out of her. I was really enjoying Tulip.
Now she turned her attention to the antenna crystal. “No number on it,” she said. “Was this highjacked from some fab by a Vietnamese gang?”
“Stop worrying about where I got it,” I said. “Can you see what it does?”
“I don't think it does much,” said Tulip after a bit. “There's nothing to it. These two wires just go in and disappear in the middle. The chip looks like plain silicon. It's a square of glass with two wires in it.”
“Ah, but the wires don't really disappear,” I said. “They make a right-angle bend out into the superchannel. There's a connecting loop that you can't see.”
“You're not technical at all, are you?” said Tulip, handing the antenna crystal back to me. “I hope you didn't pay much for these.”
“Just trust me on this,” I told Tulip. She seemed so competent and practical that I was hesitant to tell her my crazy story about
the fourth dimension. She'd think I was nuts. It would be better to tell her after she'd seen the crystals in action. “This is an antenna,” I said, tapping the crystal. “And it uses a non-standard transmission channel. I'm ready to pay whatever it takes for you to spend a day or two making a pair of prototype Mophones for me. Once you see that I'm right—well, we can take it from there.”
“I could do it,” said Tulip, twisting the stray rope of hair that hung across her cheek. “It would be easy. Would you pay me—oh, four thousand dollars a day? Even if your antennas don't work?”
“Done,” I said, happy to play the big shot. We were finishing off our main courses now. “I can pay you cash in advance for your first day, if you like.”

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