Realware

Phil remembered one of his father's stories about A Square stuck to the surface of the sphere, with all of his A Square light-rays traveling along great circles of the sphere's surface as well. In every direction, A Square sees only himself. Here in the hypersphere of the powerball, Phil could see the back of his own head, the blond hair shaggier than he'd realized. He wondered if he'd meet Da soon.

Since there were no other objects in the space with Phil, it was hard to tell if he could really move. But after a while he noticed that the space wasn't completely uniform. There was one particular spot up ahead where the images of himself were always fractured. He wanted to go over and look at this little flaw, but at first he couldn't think of any way to move. Finally it occurred to him to throw one of his shoes over his shoulder. Sure enough, the shoe-toss set him drifting forward in the direction of the flaw. Just as he got within arm's length of the special spot, his shoe came tumbling toward his face --the shoe had traveled clear around the little hypersphere of the power-ball. Phil moved his head to one side, and the shoe grazed his shoulder, which slowed his forward motion.

He stretched out his hand toward the flawed region. As his fingers entered the crooked space they disappeared. Phil convulsively pulled his hand back; there was no damage to it. He felt into the flaw again and wiggled his fingers. An odd sensation: his fingers couldn't find his thumb, and his thumb couldn't find his fingers. Just then the shoe came orbiting past again and caught him full in the chest. He drifted away from the anomalous spot with, whew, all of his fingers still intact.

A little later Phil started being hungry and thirsty. He wondered how long he'd been in here. He consulted his uvvy for the time, but its clock was stuck at 11:37 a.m.--presumably it hadn't received any update signals since he entered the power-ball. He made a halfhearted attempt to make an uvvy call to Yoke, but as he'd expected, it didn't work. Any signals he could send would circle around and around his hypersphere just like the rays of light. But then he noticed something new in the uvvy. It was showing him just the kind of amorphous mental image he'd seen when he tried to use Yoke's alla. It seemed as if Om had a built-in alla he could use!

Phil tried to nudge the alla catalog's grayish start-up image into a representation of food. But Om's catalog for this alla wasn't for humans, it was for aliens --presumably for Metamartians? Though he was trying for the image of an apple, he ended up with a representation of a spiky red leathery thing that was--what? The alla catalog was multisensory, so Phil took a virtual sniff of the possible fruit; it had a faintly acrid odor, but maybe that was just the smell of the rind. Phil said, "Actualize." He wasn't sure if anything would happen; after all, Yoke's alla had refused to obey anyone but Yoke. But the powerball's intrinsic alla seemed willing to work for him. A brightly outlined alla mesh formed and -- whoosh -- the spiky pouch became real.

When Phil hungrily pulled one of the spikes loose, sick yellow cream dribbled out of the rip in the tough red skin, stinging his hand. A reek like ammonia assaulted his eyes and nose. Phil focused in on his uvvy and wished very hard for the alien pod to disappear. To his relief, an alla mesh formed around the fruit and it reverted to air, taking most of the corrosive smell with it. Maybe he wasn't hungry yet after all.

He gave up on food and wandered about in the mental maze of the alien alla catalog, marveling at wonderful baubles and bizarre forms. He even actualized three of the objects for himself.

First, there was something resembling a little pearl-handled pocketknife, but when he folded out the single "blade," it revealed itself as a waving broom of tiny metallic tentacles, each of them subtly articulated. Resisting the temptation to touch the metal fuzz, Phil folded it back away and pocketed the object.

Second, he actualized a golf-ball-sized sphere that resembled perhaps a goldfish bowl with luminous fish in it. Not that they were really fish; they were more like plankton. The little globe was velvety black with bright, glowing globules and disks within. The odd thing about the globe was that its image kept changing according to subtle cues that Phil could barely tell he was giving. Every time he moved his head, the bright little creatures inside the globe would swim to one side or the other. And every time he focused on one particular little denizen of the bowl, that "fish" would seem to swell up in size, and all the others would rush away from it.

Third, Phil picked from the catalog a necklace with a single large gem that seemed to embody an endless variety of possible formations. It was a ruby, emerald, diamond, sapphire -- all of these, one after the other, and more. Not only did the gems color change, the cut of its shape kept shifting as well. It was gorgeous. Phil vowed that if he ever saw Yoke again, he'd give it to her. Though Phil still wasn't ready to try tackling any more alien food, he was getting seriously thirsty. He found his way to a part of the Metamartian alla catalog that seemed to be devoted to beverages. Using the uvvy's virtual odor feature to avoid drinks that smelled like gasoline or acetone, he was eventually able to actualize something that seemed to be a flagon of water. Carefully he tasted of it, and it was indeed plain water, so he drank it down, then used the alla to turn the empty flagon back into air.

Phil looked around the alla catalog a little more, trying to figure out the appearance of the Metamartians in their home world -- if indeed the catalog was for Metamartians and not for some completely different kind of alien. He couldn't find any pictures of intended users of the catalog, but he did stumble across an area with what seemed to be clothes. The aliens seemed to wear loose robes or caftans, things with a head hole and two arm holes. There was nothing like trousers and nothing like shoes.

After a while Phil tired of exploring the alla catalog, and he simply hung there doing nothing, looking back on his life. What had he made of his twenty-four years on Earth? He'd survived childhood, his parents' divorce, his overbearing father. He'd gone to UC Berkeley for two years, but when he was twenty he'd gotten sick of jumping through the hoops. The hoops weren't his, they were societies and his father's. Bogus. He'd dropped out, getting a series of kitchen jobs, eventually becoming the assistant chef for a top restaurant. Big whoop. One other accomplishment was that he had stayed Straight Edge: clean and sober. But what else had he ever done? Was it really enough to be serene and balanced? Da certainly didn't think so. And deep down, Phil wasn't really so serene. Deep down he was frightened.

It would be nice to have a family and children someday; the worst mistake he had made along those lines was to hook up with Kevvie. At least that was over. And he'd almost had a chance at Yoke. But now his life was apparently done. Phil let himself imagine what he might do if he got a second chance. Hang onto Yoke for sure. And what else? Stay sober, yeah. Cook for a day-job, but maybe finally try and move on. Dare to express himself. With blimps? Who could tell? Could be that now he'd never know. Phil sighed, making an effort to free himself of self-pity. He said a simple prayer: "God, please help me." Usually a prayer like this would dissolve out into the glowing aether of the great buzzing world-mind. Phil would feel the better for it, but there wouldn't be any obvious response. It was just something he did, choosing to act as if there were a God who cared. The occasional prayers helped Phil keep his thinking clear enough to stay sober. He murmured the prayer again, felt more centered, and dozed off.