Realware

Naranjo jotted down the order and went off to serve another customer. Phil lingered, gazing at Yoke, admiring her.

"Did you bury your father's ashes?" asked Yoke. "And the knotted ring? How did it go?"

"Having my dad die hurts more than I ever imagined it would," said Phil. "Today it's been a week. Yeah, I buried the ashes and the ring. I dumped the ashes out of the box; there weren't many of them. Now I wish I'd kept the ring. I need to think about it some more. Maybe I should have paid more attention when Da tried to teach me about the fourth dimension."

"I was so sorry to hear about your father, Phil," put in Babs Mooney.

"Yaaar," chimed in her brother Saint. "Poor Kurt. It would xoxx to get chopped up by a hyperspace blender." Babs and Saint had DIM lice in their hair, colorful little bugs that moved around on their scalps like tiny cars in traffic, arranging their hair in filigrees that could variously resemble shingles, paisley, crop circles, or herringbone tweed. Programming the lice was one of Saint's art projects.

"I have a theory about the wowo," proposed Onar, holding up a bony finger. "The wowos were a representation of the Klein bottle, were they not? Two Mobius strips sewn together?"

"I guess," said Phil. "But it was just a goof. An illusion."

"Perhaps the models set up a morphic resonance. Reality is, after all, a consensual hallucination. If enough people see something as a Klein bottle, then--voila --it's a Klein bottle. It's not impossible to be killed by a dream."

"Don't make it a New Age fantasy, Onar," reproved Saint. "This thing was real."

"Reality is a hobgoblin for small minds," said Onar mildly. Yoke giggled. She seemed to find Onar entertaining.

Phil got the head chef to let him prepare most of the food for Yoke's table. He cooked with fervor, and the meal was a big success. Around midnight he and the four guests stepped out of LoLo together. It was still pouring rain. Yoke did something with her uvvy as they stepped outside, and a moldie suddenly came bouncing up the street, sending out great splashes of water with each jump. It was Cobb Anderson.

"Thanks for waiting, Cobb," said Yoke. "What did you do?"

"Oh, I was going around town with Randy Karl," said Cobb. "And then we split up and I was hanging out with some homeless people in an alley off Columbus Street. Talking with them. One of them was a very intelligent fellow. It's not so much that the homeless are crazy and addicted, it's that they don't have money for rent. Just that one simple lack. We need to find a way to make cheap housing for the poor. But hey, just for right now, let me be your umbrella." Cobb stuck up his arms, and his tissues flowed upward, spreading out and thi

"Where's Randy now?" asked Yoke.

"By now I imagine he's found a moldie hooker like he was looking for. I really should get that boy up to the Moon to be with his father. Eventually."

"Cobb's talking about his great-grandson," Yoke explained to the others. "Randy Karl Tucker. He's a cheeseball from Kentucky. He lives in Santa Cruz. Tre and Terri Dietz hate him. Randy kidnapped one of their moldies by putting a leech-DIM on her. But now Randy says he realizes it was wrong. Cobb's supposed to take him to the Moon to meet his father."

"What is this 'DIM' that everyone's always talking about?" asked Cobb.

"It stands for 'Designer Imipolex', Cobb," said Yoke. "It's what everyone uses instead of the old-time silicon computer chips anymore. A DIM is made of imipolex with some mold and algae in it. Just like your new body. You were out of it for a looong time, weren't you?"

"I'm still out of it," said Cobb. "That's another reason I want to have a good look around dear old Earth before I go back to the Moon. And Randy's in no hurry either. He's been busy spending the money his father keeps sending him. Sad to say, Willy's a little reluctant to meet his only son. At this rate, poor Randy could wind up being a remittance man -- someone whose father pays him to stay away. I've told Willy he should be more excited about Randy, but so far Willy doesn't want to listen to his Grandpa. I think he's been on the Moon too long."

"Why didn't Randy come along for di

"Hell, he was in too big a rush to get to that scurvy place in North Beach," said Babs, laughing. "Real Compared To What. Can you even imagine? Randy's certainly a man who knows what he wants. Admirable, in a way." They walked down the sidewalk as a single group dome. The plan was to go back to Babs's space in a warehouse not far from Phil's. Yoke, Cobb, and Randy were spending a few days with Babs. The rain made a nice reverberating sound against Cobb's taut moldie flesh, which smelled like a dank basement. Phil managed to be next to Yoke, though Onar was on her other side.

"So you're into helping people now, Cobb?" asked Onar. "Is this a result of some experiences you had while you were dead? And what was that like?"

"My original human personality was stored on an S-cube for over twenty years," said Cobb. "And, yes, that was more or less the same as being dead. That me is dead forever, and it's the same as the me right now. Memories of it? A big white light. The SUN. Endlessly falling into it, but never reaching the core. A cloud of other souls around me. The end of time, forever and ever."

"You mean 'Sun' like our home star?" asked Phil.

"No," said Cobb, "I mean capital S-U-N. At least that's the name I use. The Divine Light, the universal rain that moistens all creatures. The SUN is a little like the eye on the top of the pyramid on the old dollar bills. Except SUN isn't about money, the SUN is about love and peace."

"Oh look," said Babs, changing the subject by noticing a shop window, and the group stopped to gaze in. Colorful felt hats, each a single pastel shade, were suspended in the window, fu

"How did that work, your getting an imipolex body?" Phil asked Cobb.

"It was interesting," said Cobb. "These two loonie moldies each started ru

"How do you make the lace?" Yoke was asking Babs.

"I use fabricants," said Babs. "I don't think you have those on the Moon yet? They're crawly little DIMs like the lice in my hair, plastic ants that can spin fabric like spiders. People are using them for everything in the fashion business. I bet those hats were made by fabricants. Fabricants eat just any old thing-- weeds, scrap wood, cardboard --and they spin it into fiber. I'll show them to you when we go back to my place."

"If we're going to Babs's," said Onar, "let's get some kind of transport. I don't want to walk the whole way under a vile-smelling live toadstool."

"Randy would love it," said Babs. "But we can get the streetcar at the corner up there. You can ride too, Cobb, it's run by a moldie."