Read Online The Hacker and the Ants by Rudy Rucker - Free Book Online Page B

Collision detection was usually turned off in these public spaces, so that if you bumped into someone else’s tuxedo, you would pass right through it. Ranged all along the walls, floor, and ceiling were hyperjump nodes: the gates, or magic doors, that opened into the different cyberspace worlds accessible in one jump from the Bay Area Netport. The nodes were shaped like spheres, so that you could dive into a node from any direction.
    Set here and there in the walls were square portals marked “REST ROOM.” These were places for meeting people and for tweaking your tuxedo. Gretchen flew into the closest rest room and looked into the mirror.
    â€œGod, I look like you , Jerzy,” shouted Gretchen. “Can’t you get me a female tux?” I did in fact have a tux patterned after Carol, but I didn’t want Gretchen to wear it.
    I leaned close to her headset so she could hear me. “Maybe later. Why don’t you go ahead and stay in my tux for now? There’s still a lot to see.”
    â€œAll right,” said Gretchen, drifting back out into the Netport. “Which way to Magic Shell Mall? I read an article about Magic Shell Mall just last week.”

    â€œIt’s right over there on the wall to your left. The extra big node that’s flashing pink and light blue?”
    Just as Gretchen pointed her finger to fly into the cyberspace mall, my doorbell rang. Shit! Already quarter to four! It was one of the kids!
    â€œGretchen, I gotta get the door. Don’t worry. I’ll keep them out of here. Have fun.”
    I threw on some clothes and left my bedroom, closing the door. I’d say hi to the kids and come right back.
    Tom was at the door, tall and full of beans. He had braces—the main reason I’d quit teaching and moved to California was to get enough money to pay for the children’s braces and college. Tom had grown something like six inches in the last year, and now he was taller than me. He was wonderfully enthusiastic about life.
    â€œHi, Da!” He poked me playfully in the side, right under my ribs. “Let’s play suckling pigs on Daddy!”
    â€œStop it!” I cried, clamping my elbows against my side in self-defense. Tom kept poking, rotating his fist back and forth to achieve a grinding motion. “Get your hands off me, Tom, or I’ll beat you! Stop it!” I deepened my voice to sound more authoritative. Tom was whooping and laughing. I made fists, stuck out the knuckles of my middle fingers, and pushed against Tom’s hard-muscled stomach, trying to give as good as I got.
    There was a squeal as wide-faced, grinning Ida entered the fray as well. “Get Da!” she hollered, and set her fists to rooting against my abdomen. Ida was always ready to join in wild fun.
    I fell to the floor with the two kids on top of me. I rapped on Tom’s shin hard enough to give him pause, and managed to squirm free, though Ida still hung onto one foot. Tom was just about to start back in on me when Ida sat up, looking puzzled.
    â€œWho’s that screaming?”

    It was Gretchen! I ran full tilt to the bedroom. Gretchen was clawing at the air, unsuccessfully trying to get the headset off. The desk monitor showed a voodoo blur of seething ants, and the skritchy ant sound percolated faintly out of the headset’s earphones. The ants completely blocked the view through the screen; they moved about in the self-similar patterns of turbulence—like the smoke of an explosion, like the florets of a cauliflower—three—dimensional patterns of fractal lace, dark patterns veined with thin dotted lines of color. There was no way to see in past the ants to wherever Gretchen had been when they’d come.
    Despite Gretchen’s terror, the ant patterns were so fascinating that I decided not to turn off the machine. I pulled the headset and gloves off Gretchen and helped her out of the chair and onto my rumpled bed. She was shaking