Read Online Complete Stories by Rudy Rucker - Free Book Online

full of legal prostitutes. With the lights off, I could almost believe I was with Klara. Later I had more beer.
    I slept badly that night. At four in the morning an unpleasant dream woke me up so completely that I couldn’t go back to sleep. It was a scene inspired by Kafka’s The Castle .
    In the dream, through some transmutation, the Heidelberg castle is… science . Endless corridors, doors, people to meet. On the white plaster walls there are things like fire-alarms, little hammers mounted over glass plates. Behind the glass is… cyanide , thick gas, swirling, deadly. I hurry down a hallway, a sheaf of papers in my hand. Someone is in front of me, tangible, but invisible. My other self? Somehow the person moves so as to always be in my blind spot. A question is posed, the unspeakable question which the castle itself embodies. My tongue is slow and sticky. Yes and no. A bell is tolling. Yes and no. The hammers quiver… .
    The world is clouds and fog patches, a confused smear which no magical apparatus can sharpen up. The cat knows.
    That morning I found Ion sitting at his desk. He was asleep, with his head on his crossed arms. One of the phase-mirrors was cracked! Had Ion had some sort of tantrum? I examined the hairline crack. Of course the vacuum was ruined now. I wondered if the quarkonium plate could be repaired. There were some individual Lego-blocks scattered around the floor and table. Apparently Ion had been there all night.
    I stood over him for a moment, looking at him with something like affection. I had been worried, too worried to even …
    “William?” The voice was blurred. His eyes flickered open, then shut. “Is it raining?”
    This struck me as a very odd question. It was, in fact, a marvelously sunny day, the first taste of spring. The sky was a delicate blue and the birds were singing. A square of sunlight was lying on Ion’s desk!
    “It’s sunny, Ion.”
    “I thought it was. And I thought it was raining.” His voice was muffled, and seemed somehow to come from underneath his head.
    “You should get some sleep,” I urged. “Klara must be worried.”
    “I’m scared to move.” A long pause. “I might disperse even more.”
    Disperse ? A strange word to use. Wave-packets disperse, but people …
    “Read my notes,” Ion said, “I …” He let his voice trail off, and just sat there, eyes closed, his head resting on his crossed arms. There seemed to be something under his arms, some sort of pillow.
    I picked up the lab book lying on his desk. It started with a description of the apparatus and the first experiments we had conducted. Nothing new there. I flipped forward a few pages.
    There was a diagram like the one Ion had drawn for Klara. Under it was a sketch of the Lego car and a description of the two experiments, the one where the car comes out of the time-tunnel before it goes in, and my variation, where the car is stopped from going in, and therefore does not come out.
    Ion had conducted a third experiment. The car was to roll towards the tunnel while he watched both ends. His plan was to stop car (1) if car (3) appeared, and to let car (1) go if car (3) did not appear. This meant that a car would come out of the right end of the tunnel if and only if no car came out of the right end of the tunnel. Yes if and only if no.
    Think about it. Either car (3) appears or it doesn’t. Case I: Car (3) appears. So Ion stops car (1) from entering the tunnel. So car (3) doesn’t appear. Case II: Car (3) doesn’t appear. So Ion lets car (1) into the tunnel. So car (3) appears.
    Question: When Ion actually ran the experiment, did car (3) appear? Answer: Yes and no.
    I closed the lab book and looked around the room. The scattered bits of Legos…how many?
    “What happened, Ion? Did the car come out of the tunnel?”
    “Yes,” Ion said, raising his head from on top of his arms.
    “No,” Ion said, uncrossing his arms and raising up his other head from under his arms.
    The two faces looked