Read Online Master of Space and Time by Rudy Rucker - Free Book Online

slut out of here! She’s practically naked!”
    I sprang to Sondra’s defense. Sure she had big breasts and a low-cut dress, but that didn’t make her any less a friend. Far from it. I stepped threateningly toward the manager. “You’re the one who’d better watch his language, jerk. Slug him, Harry!”
    No one was watching, so Harry went ahead and punched the man in the stomach. What with Harry’s superpowers, the punch doubled the manager right up. Eager to do my part for Sondra, I reached out and slammed my fist down on the hump between the man’s shoulder blades.
    To my surprise the hump was soft. It burst with a muffled plotz , and fluid began seeping throughthe manager’s coat. The poor man’s body shivered a few times and then he was dead.
    â€œOh, my God,” I said in horror. “I—I didn’t mean to kill him. I never thought that—”
    â€œI’ll move it out of here before someone sees it,” Harry said tensely. “I can do teleportation. Just. . .”
    Harry knitted his brows, and then the body was gone. I felt better almost immediately. This world wasn’t really real, was it?
    â€œThat was bad,” said Sondra. “Let’s leave.”
    â€œWe might as well get a couple of six packs of soda,” I suggested. “Once we’re outside, Harry can turn them into beer. We’ll steal a car and go cruising.”
    â€œSound thinking, Fletch. The old water-to-wine routine.”
    â€œThat was nice of you two to stick up for me,” mused Sondra. “Being beautiful isn’t always pleasant. Do you think our money’s good here?”
    â€œWe’ll see. Be ready for trouble.”
    We took our place in the checkout line. A few people stared at Sondra with mingled lust and hatred, but for the moment everything was cool. I watched the checker, trying to anticipate any problems.
    The checker was a pleasant-faced blond woman with Burnita on her name tag. She wore a gold chain with a pendant—a little silver chair. She scanned each product with a little light pencil. Everything had a patch of thick and thin lines, a Universal Product Code, just like back home. A cord fed the UPC information into a small console at Burnita’s side. But instead of presenting each customer with a bill, she ran the light pencil acrossthe client’s forehead. Apparently there was some kind of invisible Universal Consumer Code tattooed on each of these people’s brows. An efficient system, to be sure: a central computer could deduct your purchases from your credit holdings on a real-time basis. But, I wondered, what would happen if you let yourself become badly overdrawn?
    Just then I found out. The customer in front of us was a ratlike little man with a tube of cheese food and three bottles of cough medicine. Clearly an unsavory individual, and just the type to let his credit holdings slip deep into the red.
    Burnita seemed to feel the same way, and addressed him by name. “Now, Abie, are you sure you’ve got the credit for all this?”
    Abie snarled something incoherent and pushed his selections toward the checker. She shrugged, and scanned first the product codes and then the invisible code on Abie’s forehead. Nothing happened, and I breathed a sigh of relief. We were next. I reached in my pocket, feeling for some bills. Surely you didn’t have to use credit. I hoped not, because all our foreheads were blank, which might . . .
    FFZZZAAAAAATT!
    A great sheet of electricity filled the supermarket entrance. Those two air-curtain grates were electrodes, powerful energy sources programmed to crisp anyone who ran up too high a tab. Abie’s ashes spun raggedly. The floor grate sucked them out of sight.
    â€œOh, my,” Burnita sighed. “That’s the second one this week. It’s hard for them, you know, since there’s no other way to get food. You folks just want these