Spacetime Donuts (21 page)

Oily Allie was unperturbed. "So, we just stand here and throw the black holes in the right direction about three-hundred times."

"And people who happen to be in the way?" Vernor demanded. "It's just too bad for them?"

"Eventually, we're all losers," said Mick with a shrug.

"It's a moot point, Allie," opined the Professor. "It wouldn't be practical to aim with sufficient accuracy. In any case, I've thought of a better way to handle Phizwhiz." He stared at Vernor.

"Don't tell me, let me guess," Vernor said heatedly. "I'm supposed to go back to the EM building and make friends with him even though he wants to kill everyone he sees."

"You don't have to go all the way in there," Mick said soothingly. "There's a terminal in Dreamtown. You and Phizwhiz could probably really get it on talking about your trip."

"But he
doesn't
talk anymore," Vernor protested.

"So plug in," the Professor said simply. Plug in. Vernor fingered the socket at the base of his skull.

"Sure," he said acidly, "plug my brain into a machine whose express purpose is to kill off the human race. That's really a great idea, Professor K."

But Oily Allie was taken by the proposal. "Shit, Vern, we can put in an impedance block to step down the power surge in case he tries to fry you. You'll be as safe as any of us was in the old days. A heavy guy like you should be able to handle anything, as long as we keep the voltage down."

They were all looking at him. Vernor took a large hit off the reefer Mick handed him. "Why not sneeze, Rrose Sélavy?" he murmured, lifting a line from Dadaism. Out loud he said, "Ask me again in the morning."

Somehow no one bothered asking Vernor again in the morning. When he woke up, Allie had already left for Dreamtown to get the terminal rigged up. The plan was for Mick to stay in the lab so that Professor Kurtowski could use his sky-sucker to accompany Vernor to Dreamtown.

"I'll be watching, man," Mick said, flicking on a Hollow receiver in the corner of the room. The familiar electronic brain-jamming sound of the new Phizwhiz filled the room, and matching 3D images danced around the Hollow receiver—a writhing swirl of algorithmic shapes encrusted by fragmentary Hollows of real-world objects...ferns, faces, bricks, claws, flames... Vernor couldn't look at the display for long without feeling dizzy.

"I'd plug in myself," Kurtowski was saying, "but I don't have a socket. Anyway, you're the one who was with Phizwhiz when he changed, Vernor. Who knows, he may be glad to see you."

They started out to the street, but Mick stopped them. He hugged Vernor, thumping him on the back. For once, Mick was at a loss for words. He turned and went back into the lab, and Vernor and the Professor were out on the street.

The trip to the Dreamtown Phizwhiz terminal was uneventful. A small group of Angels was waiting there, having cleared out the few remaining robots in the area. Oily Allie was waiting by the switchboard inside.

"All set, Vernor," she said, her dark eyes wide.

Vernor nodded and Allie left, closing the door to leave Vernor and the Professor alone in front of the large switchboard. Oily Allie had rigged a co-ax from the switchboard to an impedance block. A cable from the impedance block dangled in front of Vernor. Soon he would plug it into his skull and enter full brain interlock with the fully conscious and incredibly powerful being called Phizwhiz.

"Do you remember what I was talking about last night, Vernor?" the Professor asked.

"You mean about the many universes? Sure."

"I think that's the idea you should use as your primary defensive tactic. There are many possible outcomes of your meeting with Phizwhiz. If you feel yourself getting caught in a timestream which is sweeping towards your death, you must JUMP, and jump quickly. If you get into a favorable universe try to stay there. And remember that although the Circular Scale nexus of paradox has provided Phizwhiz with a soul, it has given you with something as well."

"Yeah, I know it's changed my head," agreed Vernor. "But I don't really know how."

The Professor smiled. "Don't worry about
how
. It's something you can depend on. You don't really know how you think, but you can do it. In the same way you don't know how to use your new head loop, but you will. Just remember: there are many realities."

Vernor nodded. With slow dream-like movements he reached out and fitted the co-axial cable into his socket.

CLICK

The circuits of his brain were instantly scrambled and rearranged to terminate his body's vital processes. He slumped to the floor . . .

JUMP

He was walking through a garden of burning flowers. There was a bench at the end of the garden. He couldn't look at the face of the man who sat there, but he felt drawn to walk closer. Closer. He closed his eyes and sat down on the bench.

"Vernor Maxwell," the man said, "don't you recognize me?"

He turned to look in the man's blazing face. The light dimmed momentarily and he could make out the features, "Andy," Vernor said. "You live in here?"

"Like I always say . . . you call this living? Have a stick, man."

Andy Silver was sitting next to him with his head on fire, offering him a joint. "I better not," said Vernor. "What are you doing in here? Why is Phizwhiz trying to kill everyone?"

"Is he?" Andy asked. "Am I going to kill you?" He was smiling crazily and moving closer. His hands were burning into Vernor's chest, squeezing his heart . . .

JUMP

He was flying around Circular Scale, as if on a Ferris wheel gone mad. Everything around him was continually growing and splitting into smaller particles, which grew and split again. Every so often he'd see familiar size levels flash past . . . the garden, the hyperspheres, a nucleus, a galaxy. There was a humming which seemed to modulate itself as he moved. He had been listening for some time before he realized that he was chanting along.

"I am free," went the mantra, "of the wheel of Maya; I am dead to the dance of life. I am free of the wheel of Maya; I am dead to the dance of life. I am free . . . " the chant went on, over and over, faster and faster, rising soon to a high twittering which shattered into laughter.

"Phizwhiz!" Vernor shouted. "Can you hear me?" The Milky Way flashed towards him . . . Earth, men, atoms, nuclei, universes, galaxies . . . The laughing had stopped.

"Phizwhiz, can you hear me?" Nothing but silence as the wheel spun faster. Pieces of Vernor's body were coming loose and getting stuck at various levels. His heart was a universe, his hand was an electron, his head was a planet . . . With a supreme effort of will Vernor braced himself against dissolution, locking his body into a single entity wrapped all around Circular Scale.

The spinning stopped, but he was screaming louder . . .

JUMP

He was back in the tree in the library's garden. A fine rain was falling and he could hear the bee-hive's buzz echoing the City's drone. Vehicles crawled lazily by on the street beyond the garden, and three bees slowly circled the hive's opening. Forgetting everything, Vernor relaxed until he heard a stealthy noise behind him.

It was Andy Silver, inching up toward him with a knife between his teeth. Vernor kicked down at Silver and hit him in the face. The knife clattered to the ground and Silver was left clinging to the trunk a few yards below Vernor.

"Andy," Vernor asked. "Did you tell Phizwhiz to start the War?"

"Of course I did," Silver answered in a low voice. "That's what I came inside for. It was the only way to bring about the Revolution."

Vernor thought that over for awhile. "Maybe you're right, but you should have seen it . . . those pitiful corpses . . . I was
there
, Andy. Alice got
killed
."

Silver looked up at him. "No point getting snotty, Maxwell. Phizwhiz never listened to me until you gave him a soul. It was the only way."

"Why didn't you just get Phizwhiz to turn himself off?" Vernor answered.

Silver shook his head, "I'm
part
of Phizwhiz. If he gets turned off I'm dead." He began moving up the trunk again. "That's why I have to kill you."

Vernor kicked at Silver, but this time his opponent grabbed his foot. With a heave Silver yanked Vernor loose from the tree to throw him to the ground. Vernor pulled Silver with him. It was fifty feet to the ground . . .

JUMP

He was in a crawlspace deep in the bowels of Phizwhiz, methodically disconnecting the machine's memory circuits.

"What are you up to, Vernor?" asked Phizwhiz nervously. "You mustn't." The voice was becoming slower and more slurred as he continued ripping out circuits.

Suddenly three repair robots converged on him. Before he could move, two had seized his arms and one was at his throat. He kicked wildly, smashing more of the circuit boards around him as the third robot began hacking at his neck. One of the robots on Vernor's arms came loose and flew across the crawlspace, smashing against a tangle of wires.

The robot's body completed a short circuit between two power lines and exploded, just as a blade sank into Vernor's jugular vein . . .

JUMP

Vernor was reading in the library. The text kept changing, seeming to make sinister and esoteric references to every aspect of his life. He felt confused, what was going on?

"That fall almost did me in," a voice said. It was Andy Silver, standing behind Vernor's chair. His right arm hung limp and there was a slowly spreading bruise on the side of his face. He held a brainwave amplifier with two co-axes dangling from it. "Let's get it over with, Maxwell," he said, plugging one of the cables into his head, and holding the other out to Vernor. "Duel to the death. No jumping." Silver looked more tired than hostile.

Vernor nodded and plugged in. The two old Angels' minds locked in combat. Silver was fighting powerfully, using a constant barrage of wrenching head changes to keep Vernor off balance.

In the middle of an insanely difficult series of equations, Silver ducked and switched to some kind of rock song. "I'm a man who's been crazy / There's a head stuck to my foot," he hollered in Vernor's head over a driving guitar rhythm. Surprised, Vernor hesitated for a second and was suddenly flattened under the full weight of Andy Silver's loneliness.

Vernor was a dwindling patch of light in a universe of darkness. Soon the light would be gone and he'd be dead. And he'd promised not to jump. Frantically Vernor felt around in his brain until he found the way out—around Circular Scale. He let himself shrink down through the smallest possible size and on around to the largest possible size, catching Silver unawares. The dark universe was suddenly flooded with his light. Silent light.

Vernor unplugged and looked into the room around him. Andy Silver lay dead at his feet, his face a mask of peaceful repose. Now to go after Phizwhiz again . . .

JUMP

He was riding a sky-sucker up along the outside of the EM building, where Phizwhiz's primary implementation was located. He could see out over the City but there was no other living human in this universe.

When he was half-way up the building he closed the sky-sucker's aperture a little so that he could hover there. He was even with Phizwhiz's main nerve center. The outlines of the building started to waver as it turned into . . .

No. He held the image of the EM building steady in his mind as he picked up a de-gravitized black hole with magnetic clamps and threw it at the center of the EM building . . .

JUMP

He was in front of a switchboard. Phizwhiz was talking to him. "Don't hurt me anymore, Vernor. I'll do what you say."

"Phizwhiz," Vernor said slowly. "Turn yourself off. We don't need you anymore. Shut down all systems."

"No problem," said Phizwhiz as switches began clicking, "I'm beyond your hardware now. Goodbye, Vernor."

The room around him dimmed and became real. The humming in his head stopped. He was sitting at the Dreamtown Phizwhiz terminal with Professor Kurtowski at his side, and a dead co-ax plugged into his skull.

Vernor reached back and unplugged himself. The terminal was dark and no sound issued from the speaker. He turned to Kurtowski and shrugged, "That's it."

Kurtowski went to the panel and checked the switches and meters. "You did it, Vernor," he cried. "You got Phizwhiz to shut himself down!" The old Professor threw open the door and shouted to the Angels outside. "The Machine is dead!"

They came surging in and carried Vernor through the streets to Waxy's. Mick was there. "You ready for the stars?" he grinned.

Numbed by the sudden success Vernor nodded silently. There was a girl pushing towards him from across the room. She looked familiar . . .

"Vernor," she was saying, "don't you recognize me?"

"Alice?" The room spun around her face, her eyes looking into his, "Alice?"

JUMP

They were back in the robot taxi. Alice was struggling to get out and he was holding her down. A bubble of blood formed over her mouth and burst in a scream as the taxi hurtled off the overpass. Her fingers dug into him, the crash, the fire . . .

Vernor twisted loose with all his strength . . . tore loose from his lives . . .

SPLIT

He was floating, a pattern of possibilities in an endless sea of particulars.

"Be the sea and see me be," the words formed . . . somewhere.

He let his shape loosen and drift to touch every part of the sea around him, a peaceful ocean like a bay at slack-tide on a moonless summer night . . . peaceful, while in the depths desperate lives played out in all the ways there are. Taken all together, the lives added up to a messageless phosphorescence, a white glow of every frequency.

"And are you here?"

"As long as you are."

"Can we go further?"

NOW

Rudolf von Bitter Rucker was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1946. He attended Swarthmore College and received a Ph.D. in mathematical logic from Rutgers University in 1972. He is presently an associate professor of mathematics at Randolph-Macon Women's College. He is married and has three children.