Realware

"Ow," said Babs. "I wouldn't do that for anything. Yoke said there's a real chance of not being able to come back."

"I hear there's been a lot of people getting 'aired out,' " said Wendy. "And not for fun. People trying to kill each other."

"Yeah, but remember that it hasn't been working," said Babs. "Seems like Om's got it set so that a dead person's alla starts beeping after a day. An alla is indestructible, and someone always finds it. And if it was an alla that killed you, your alla offers to bring you back."

"Like in The Telltale Heart," said Stahn. "That Poe viddy where the murdered man's heart under the floorboards is beating so loud that it shakes the room. So what else did you see on Haight Street, Randy?"

"Did I mention that it's crawlin' with moldies down there? It's a good thing they can't reproduce themselves but every six months. Even if the average moldie don't live but two years, that makes three times as many moldies every two years, less some-thin' makes 'em cut back. Lord knows I'm the last one to say anything against moldies, but they could run us outta room! They don't hardly smell like nothin' anymore. I can tell you got that new stinkeater bug too, Ms. Mooney."

"Oh, call me Wendy," said Ma. "Yes, Cobb brought some over here before he left with Darla. He said since I'm a public figure, I should be an example. So I went ahead and infected myself with stinkeater. It's not an infection, really, it's more like a symbiosis. I benchmarked my computation rate before and after the stinkeater, and there's an eleven percent enhancement. So I'm telling all the moldies to do it. Stahn likes it and I do too."

"She's moanin', huh?" said Stahn, admiring his wife. "But I'm with you on what you said about too many moldies, Randy. We three were just fabbing about it. Too many people, too many moldies, too much stuff. I think the allas suck. Look out there right now. My moron neighbor Jones is up on his roof again. I bet he's pla

"Don't make yourself sick, Stahn," said Wendy. "Let's go out in our backyard and build the tree. Randy, we were thinking we'd make a redwood with some kind of tree house in it. And we figured out that if each of us alla-makes a section at the same time, the tree can be a hundred and sixty feet long from top branch to bottom root. Come on, we go out this way."

"Maybe it should be two hundred feet," said Stahn when they got outside. He was starting to get excited. "A monster tree. That'll show 'em." Their yard was maybe fifty feet on a side.

"Let's call Saint," suggested Wendy. "He should be here for our little get-together. With five allas, the tree could be two hundred six feet and 1.69 inches. Call your brother, Babs, I don't want to always be the one to bother him."

Saint answered Babs's uvvy call right away. " 'Sup, sis?" He sounded cheerful and lively.

"I'm over at Ma and Da's with Randy," said Babs.

"Yaaar. Did you tell them yet?"

"There hasn't been a good moment. Da's all uptight about the neighbors. We're going to help him put up a giant redwood."

"Make a sequoia instead." Saint had a contrary streak.

"A big tree," said Babs. "I don't really care what kind, but now Da's fixated on redwood. Anyway, that's what right for this climate. If you were here, there'd be five of us and the tree could be two hundred feet tall instead of a hundred and sixty. What are yon doing anyway?"

When Saint had gotten his alla, he'd quit working at Meta West. Recently he and Phil and Randy had been talking about starting a business. But for now he'd been spending most of his time riding his bicycle and playing uvvy games with friends. And he had a new girlfriend.

"I made a bicycle that I can ride on the water," said Saint. He patched in a view of where he was: out on the bay, near the Golden Gate Bridge. He glanced up at the people-nests encrusting the underside of the bridge, then turned his attention back to the water. There were exceedingly many recreational watercraft around him. Everyone who'd ever wanted a sailboat or DIM board had one now. And you didn't need an expensive dock for your boat--when you finished using it, you just turned it back into air. Saint abruptly veered to avoid a collision. "This is too much fun to stop right now. And I'm supposed to meet Milla later. Whoah, here comes another boat. Just say hi for me.

It's enough if Da's tree is a hundred and sixty feet. Tell him not to be so greedy. And to make it a banyan."

" 'Bye, Saint."

"Good luck with Randy and the rents."

"He doesn't want to come," Babs told the others. "He's out bicycling on the bay. And then he's going to see Milla." She stressed the last word as bait for her mother.

"We haven't met Milla yet," complained Ma. "You children are so secretive."

"You two are so hard to talk to," said Babs.

"Let's make the redwood," said Stahn. "I'm stoked."

Babs found a redwood in her alla catalog, and scaled it up to 160 feet, including the big fan of roots at the bottom. She jiggled around four bright-line maximum alla cubes and readjusted the image until everything just fit lengthwise. There was still room to spare on the sides, so Babs enlarged the redwood some more, then lopped off the parts that stuck out. This gave the effect of a really big redwood that had been topped. The trunk was thick all the way up.

"Floatin'!" said Stahn when Babs uvvied everyone the pattern of the tree overlaid with the four alla cubes. But then he paused. "What if it falls over? Then we lose our house as well. We end up with nothing."

"We could alla-make a new house if it came to that," said Wendy. "I've been thinking of all sorts of improvements."

"I want a real house, not a realware house," insisted Stahn.

"But just think," said Wendy teasingly. "If it falls, maybe it'll reach clear across the street and crush the Joneses!"

"Yaaar," said Stahn. "Tree good, house bad."

"It's not going to fall," insisted Babs. "Like I said, Randy and I made a bunch of big palm trees from two pieces each. If two pieces work, so will four. Now, Da, you make the roots and the bottom of the trunk, Ma can make the next piece, Randy will do the piece above that, and I'm going to make the top. Oh, and we better wear earplugs."

They placed themselves in four different corners of the backyard, made themselves earplugs, and carefully aligned their alla control meshes.

"Hold on a minute," said Babs, and privately readjusted the design of her section. "Okay, now I'm set. On three. Let's count together."

"One, two --actualize!" said the four.

Ka-whooomp! The ground beneath their feet shuddered, filling up with the roots. Jones across the street shouted in surprise at the noise. Above them towered 120 feet of fluted trunk, garlanded with swaying branches whose needles shivered in the breeze. But then --

"It's falling!" screamed Stahn, streaking across the yard. "Run!" From across the street Jones echoed Stahn's shriek. Frantically Babs stared upward, projecting her largest cubical alla control mesh, ready to convert the tumbling behemoth into air before it crushed her. The tree was so big that it was too late to run. But--

The tree wasn't falling.

"April fool," said Stahn, his long smile an icon of utter delight. "Gotcha."

"Phew," said Randy, with a loose grin. "What a lift."

"Zerk," said Wendy, poking Stahn. "We're not always this hard to be around, Randy."