Realware

"Greetings," said the alla. "I'm ready to learn your mind." Yoke uvvied her agreement to this--not that she was sure what she was agreeing to. The alla showed her an image for half a second and asked her to name it and give a memory association. The image was a circular pattern with colored patches.

"A chrysanthemum," said Yoke, thinking of the first flower she'd ever grown.

"Next," said the alla, and for a quarter of a second it showed an image of a crooked forked line.

"A crack in a wall," said Yoke, recalling the wall by the side of her childhood bed.

"Next." Each image was being displayed for half as long as the one before. This one was a uniform patch of rough texture.

"Moon-dust," said Yoke, though not out loud, as this was starting to happen faster than speech. She was thinking of a particular patch of moon-dust and how she'd gotten obsessed staring at it after she'd read a book on mineralogy. More and more images came, each twice as fleeting as before--and at the end of a second Yoke felt as if she'd given the alla an all but infinite amount of information. She thought of the old Zeno paradox about fitting an arbitrarily large number of events into a unit of time: a half plus a quarter plus an eighth plus a sixteenth plus a thirty-second and so on --no matter how many terms you stick in, the sum is always a bit less than one. Each new step only uses up half of the remaining time. How many images had the alla just shown her?

"Now I'll learn your body," said the alla, and Yoke felt an incredible series of tingles and twitches --in her guts, in her chest, up and down her arms and legs, inside her head, and in the muscles of her face and fingers.

"You are now registered as my sole user for life," murmured the alla softly.

"Feel free to select something from your catalog."

"Think of something you want," said Shimmer. "You think to the alla through your uvvy. Josef and Ptah made a human-style catalog for it. Oh, that's right, we have to copy the catalog to you. I hope you have a lot of clear memory space in your uvvy?"

"I should," said Yoke. "It's a yottabyte model."

"Here it comes," said Josef.

And then the alla catalog was stored in Yoke's uvvy. When she accessed it, the display showed an amorphous, featureless object, waiting for Yoke to tell it what to become.

"Ask for a sweatshirt?" suggested Cobb, who stood absently twining his fingers in the blonde mane of Peg the unicorn. "You look a little chilly." Yoke thought of a fleecy white pullover she wished she'd brought along from the Moon, and now her uvvy formed a mental image of a somewhat similar sweatshirt, a precise, detailed image seemingly called up from its internal catalog. The image wasn't quite what she'd had in mind, but by mentally pushing at it, Yoke was able to slide about through similar catalog entries till she found something that was a very good match for what she wanted. And once she'd picked her sweatshirt design, the alla adjusted it to be a custom fit for Yoke's body.

"Now say, 'Actualize!' " said Shimmer. "You can say it out loud or just think it. That tells the alla to make a physical copy of the design." Yoke said, "Actualize." A sudden mesh of bright lines appeared in the air in front of the alla, hanging there like a three-dimensional wire-frame engineering spec. A web of dark membranes appeared within the virtual sweatshirt, dividing and subdividing. There was a little puff of breeze, and then the bright lines disappeared and a fluffy white sweatshirt dropped to the ground. "This must be what Onar meant by realware," breathed Cobb. "Direct matter control!" Yoke turned the little alla so she could see through the length of its hollow tube, careful not to put it too near her face. Seen through the hole, the room seemed to be endlessly spi

"Yes," said Josef. "What the alla makes is realware. You could call the alla a tool for realware engineering. Figuring out the designs for the realware takes some work. But the alla itself is a magical gift from Om."

"You got the alla from Om?" asked Yoke. "And Om's your god? Your god actually does things that are real?"

"Is your very world not real?" asked Peg.

"Well, yes," said Yoke. "But-

"Om a medium-size god," said Siss. "Not like the big White Light that make everything. Om kind of curious. She like to learn all about different races of beings by giving allas to them. Long time ago, some other aliens bring Om and allas to the Metamartian race, and now we bring Om and allas to you. Pass it on. More is merrier."

"But what is an alla, exactly?" asked Yoke, looking down at it.

"The alla is part of Om," said Shimmer. "A vortex thread that loops out of her body to cross our space. When Om gives you an alla, she learns all about you --and you get to have a magic wand. It's a fair trade. Everyone benefits."

"One question," said Cobb. "Josef just said the alla transmutes matter. But when it made Yoke's sweatshirt out of air, there wasn't enough air inside that bright-line mesh. Not enough mass to match the sweatshirt."

"No problem," said Josef: "If there aren't enough atoms within the target region, then extra ones are drawn in. That's why one often feels a little puff of wind."

"Before we let the alla spread to all humanity, Om wants us to test it just with one person," said Shimmer. "And I picked you, Yoke. The alla has registered itself exclusively for your use."

"Shimmer chose you as a maiden pure of heart," said Peg. "Worthy of a magic wand. Nobler than that Tongan King."

Yoke put on her shirt. It was an exact replica of the preview image the uvvy had shown her. To get her arms through the sleeves, she passed the alla from hand to hand rather than setting it down.

"That right," said Siss, attentively watching. "Hang onto alla very careful. It no use to other people, but even so, they might try to steal. You should make pouch for it and wear at your waist."

"It's mine to keep?" said Yoke, staring down at the alla. She thought of orange juice, and her uvvy displayed a catalog image of a squeeze-bottle of juice. Without saying the word out loud, Yoke thought, Actualize. A pouch-shaped web of lines formed near the end of the tube; the pouch webbed over and cleared to produce the bag of juice. Yoke caught it as it dropped from the air; she held it to her mouth and sucked at it. Delicious. She gave a happy guffaw. "Hey, you've got my xoxxin' vote!"

The beetle Josef had flown off while Yoke was pulling on her sweatshirt. Now he flew back and perched on Yoke's breast like a brooch. He glittered many colors in the light.

"The allas will make your Earth a paradise," the man-shaped alien named Ptah was saying. He was jouncing back and forth excitedly. His eyes were wide and glowing, as if he were expecting some great event.

"But we do have a problem, Ptah," said Cobb. "What about those people who've been getting killed? Like Darla and Tempest Plenty and Kurt Gottner? Is there some co

"Oho," said Siss. "Co

"

Just then Ptah let out a whoop. "It's time!" he sang. "Om's about to take me. Thank you, Josef! Farewell, Shimmer."

The Metamartians backed away from him. Wubwub pushed against Cobb and Yoke's legs, herding them along.

"I'm ready, Om!" shouted Ptah. He sounded ecstatic.

"Make a copy of yourself, Ptah," cried Shimmer. "We need one of you or we'll be back down to five!"

Just then something popped into the air next to Ptah, a spherical zone of warped space --something like a giant, airy lens.