Realware

Now Phil searched for the spot where he'd left the ring and emptied out the ashes; this took a minute, as everything was so plowed up. His father's last resting place was at the edge of the hole, right opposite the split, fallen remains of the tree. It didn't take too much imagination to think that the disturbance had spread out from there. Phil crouched down and dug at the loosened dirt. And, yes, there was the knotted ring, glinting up at him as if to say, "Hi, I've been waiting for you." Phil pocketed it and headed back to Willow's.

Willow prepared a little lunch of vegetables and noodles. They talked about Kurt. Phil told Willow he was sorry he'd argued with Kurt that last time. Saying this made him feel better.

Willow asked to see the ring once more after all, so Phil handed it to her. She examined it and then looked at Phil curiously.

"Didn't you notice that it's changed again?"

"What do you mean?"

"Look." Willow held up the ring with her long red fingernails. Phil studied it. And -- well -- maybe the ring was knotted in a subtly different way from before. Or maybe not. An overhand knot instead of an underhand? Would that make a difference?

"Look closer," said Willow. "Look at the inscription."

And then Phil saw that the writing was backward:

.wolliW morf truK oT

"Do you think Da's really dead?" asked Phil suddenly.

"I saw the wowo eat them up, Phil. First Fried! and then Kurt."

"Friedl! Your dog?" Phil recalled that Willow had owned a dachshund named Friedl. He hadn't consciously noticed the dog's absence, but, yes, come to think of it, the house was much quieter than usual. Friedl had been quite the yapper.

"How come you didn't say anything about Friedl before?"

"Oh fuck, I guess I felt guilty. It was Friedl who got into the wowo in the first place. Kurt and I had been about to --we were in bed naked together and Kurt turned on the wowo to make a romantic light. And then suddenly Friedl starts carrying on like she's fallen into a salami sheer. And when I looked over there, the wowo was down by the floor and it had gotten all big and warped looking and Friedl was -- I don't know, it was like she was stretched out over the wowo's surface. All blown up like a picture on a balloon?" Willow held her arms out, making a big round shape in the air.

"But a wowo's small," said Phil.

"Not when it ate Friedl and Kurt," said Willow. "Friedl was like inflated--except for her little head; it was sticking out barking like crazy. And I screamed for Kurt to do something and he grabbed at Friedl, and the stupid dog bit him -- Friedl was like that--and Kurt couldn't get loose, she'd sunk her teeth into him and Kurt was yelling and then all of a sudden the wowo went over from Friedl to Kurt--so fast. And Kurt swelled up big like Friedl had been and Friedl was her own right size, but she still wouldn't let go of Kurt, she'd completely panicked. There was light inside Kurt, he had glowing eyes like in a monster viddy and he was yelling like --I didn't tell this before --he almost sounded like he was happy? Whooping. And then he got smaller and smaller, except for his hand sticking out trying to shake Friedl loose, the hand and the dog flopping in and out of the ball, half in and half out, and then--pop -- Friedl and Kurt's hand exploded and blood spurted everywhere. After that I didn't see or hear Kurt anymore. There was blood all over me, and tiny little pieces of them on the floor. And the shit-ass wowo went back to pretending to be normal. I ran out of the room and uvvied the gimmie. The wowo wasn't doing anything more, so right before the gimmie came, I flushed the Friedl pieces down the toilet because I didn't want them to say it was my fault for having such a dumb dog." Willow stared at Phil, her eyes searching his face.

"It's not your fault, Willow," said Phil. "I'm not going to blame you."

"Thanks." Willow sniffed and blew her nose. "You should get rid of that ring fast, you know. Take it out onto the Golden Gate Bridge and drop it down into the outbound tide. I bet the thing that blasted the oak tree is the same fucker that came through the wowo. And it could come a third time. Things always happen in threes. Get rid of that ring today, Phil. It would be too awful if something happened to you."

"I hear you," said Phil, pocketing the ring.

All the way up on the train Phil looked at the ring and thought about it. He remembered a math story that his father had told him about the legendary A Square, an inhabitant of an imaginary two-dimensional world called Flatland. A Square's eye was a dot at one corner, his mouth an inlet on one side. Whenever A Square was right side up, his eye was on his northeast corner and his mouth was on his east. But one day a Space-lander called A Sphere lifted A Square out of Flatland, flipped him over, and set him back down. And from that day on, whenever A Square was right side up, his eye was on his northwest corner, and his mouth was on his west. He was his own mirror image. .eraupS A Something had pulled Kurt into hyperspace, had knotted his ring, and had later flipped the ring over in the fourth dimension. Maybe Kurt had only lost his hand --and no more than that. Maybe the hand had been crushed by the slam of a hyperdoor to hyperspace, and maybe Kurt was alive and healing -- someplace? Looking at the ring, Phil felt more and more fascinated. It was such a power object. The only remaining link to his father. And so what if the hyperspace thing did come for him? Was dying really so bad? No more work, no more hassles, no more trying to find the right girl. Phil recognized the insanity of the thought patterns, but for now he was too drained to do anything more than just let them run. He put the ring back into his pocket and stared slackly out the train window, thinking about death.

As soon as Phil got back to San Francisco, he went over to Babs's. He needed to see Yoke. But Yoke was gone. Worse than that, she was out of the country.

"That's right," Babs told Phil. "She and Cobb and Onar went to Tonga. Onar goes down there all the time for Meta West Link. And since Yoke is so eager to go diving in the South Pacific--why not? They got inside Cobb and he rocketed them there. So fine, good-bye all, but get this, Randy Karl Tucker still thinks he's welcome here." A smile played across Babs's lips. "I can't get rid of him. He has this ridiculous idea that I'm not completely revolted. He claims he has some ideas for my art."

"Yoke left with Onar?" Phil could hardly take it in.

"Onar's wooing the girl," said Babs. "Somehow he heard Yoke was here visiting me, and he got Saint to introduce them. Saint and Onar work together at Meta West, you know. Well, not exactly together. Onar's a tech and Saint's a maintenance manager. Just don't call him a janitor."

"I thought Yoke liked me," said Phil, his voice breaking.

"I'm sorry, Phil," said Babs. "Yoke thinks you're nice, and that you're cute, but she didn't want to break you up from Kevvie. She hates the idea of being the other woman. Maybe if you were single you'd have had a chance."