Read Online Mad Professor by Rudy Rucker - Free Book Online Page A

to use my tongue. Bill speaks through me. Every night I twank him by rubbing on a culture of his special bacilli. I lean over our desk and we write till dawn. Afternoons I read it over. I really need to start getting it keyboarded soon.”
    â€œWhat’s the book going to be called?” was all I could think to say.
    â€œBill hasn’t decided yet.” Teage hesitated, then pressed on. “The thing is, Gregge, he’s much more than a simulation. I’ve caught his soul? Is soul a bad word anymore? Logically, youmight expect that there’d be no continuity of behavior from session to session. But Bill remembers. He’s all around us—dark energy. He knows things, and even when the visible effects wear off, he’s still inside my tongue.”
    Perhaps it was the effects of the champagne—or my pleasure at having Burroughs call me by name—but all this seemed reasonable. And, God help me, it was I myself who suggested the next step.
    â€œMaybe you can help me twank Poe. The whole reason I came out here this summer was because I need to write a story in his style.”
    â€œI know,” said Teage, “Bill and I have been getting ready for you. Bill’s known for months that you’d come tonight. The spirits are outside our spacetime, Gregge, continually prodding the world toward greater gnarliness. Inching our reality across paratime. Making your and my lives into still more perfect works of art.” He let out an abrupt guffaw, his breath like the miasma above a compost heap.
    â€œYou’ll give me a germ culture to turn my flesh into Edgar Allan Poe?” I pressed.
    â€œIt’s over here,” said Teague. “And maybe tomorrow you’ll start typing my manuscript into your computer. Unless there’s a complete rewrite.”
    â€œFine,” I said, sealing our deal. “Wonderful.”
    The twanking culture consisted of scuzzy crud on a layer of clear jelly in a Petri dish atop a dusty green Collected Works of Poe. Teage fit a cover onto the dish and handed it to me.
    â€œI’ve got no use for this batch myself,” he said. “I’ve got my mouth full enough with Burroughs.”
    I peered into the dish. Fuzzy white Cheerio-sized rings. Green and orange streaks. Spots, dots, and streamers.
    â€œYou only need a little at a time,” Teage was saying. “Dig out a few grams of the culture with, like, a plastic coffee spoon, and smear it on. Careful where you put it, though. It takes hold wherever it touches. The tongue’s especially good because it’s so flexible.”
    Back in my room I brewed a pot of coffee and sat down to record these events on my laptop and on the cute little minidrive that I carry with it. I once lost a year’s work on a Poe bibliography in a hard disk crash, and now I always make a point of saving off my work as I go.
    +   +   +
    It’s calming to be lying here propped on the pillows of my bed, typing. It’s a warm night; I’m nude. The yellow lamplight burnishes the tones of my flesh. I’ve been avoiding the sight of the Petri dish on my bed stand. But now it’s time.
    I poise the white plastic spoon over the culture. Rub that gunk on my tongue?
    I think not.
    For as soon as Teage told me the culture would alter whatever part of me it touched, I decided to use my penis.
    So here we go. It stings more than I could have imagined. The sensation flutters into my loins and my solar plexus. My penis shifts and separates. A vertical break forms in the base, two flaps split off near the top.
    What have I done, what have I done, what have I done?
    I’ve twanked Eddie Poe into my penis.
    He’s angry, of all things. “What is the meaning of this conjuration?” cries Poe. “I abjure you to return me to my rest.” He glances down and sees my belly, my pubic hair, my scrotum.
    â€œFie! Gaud, sodomite, ghoul, defiler of my grave!”
    It’s I