It took me a second to realize that the high ululation was the sound of sirens heading this way.
I jumped to my feet. “I’m sorry,” I shouted to the ant-enthralled Vos. “I have to leave right away. Thank you for the terrific meal.”
They looked at me confusedly, and Nga followed me out. She was expecting me to kiss her good-night, but the sirens were only a block or two away-they must have traced the cut cable that fast. I planted a quick smack on Nga’s lovely mouth-oh, how badly I wanted to linger! “I’ll come see you tomorrow at the bakery,” I promised, and sprinted down to my Animata. Studly was just finishing getting into my trunk, thank God. I slammed the trunk closed and peeled out.
A cop car drove past me on my way out. Soon the cops would find the cut Fibernet cable, and talk to Dutch’s bereaved owner, and then they’d know to arrest the guy in the red Animata. Instead of making a flat-out run for home, I decided first to go a short distance and lie low.
“I want to go to 707 °Caile De La Cuesta,” I told my map. This was the address of Carol’s condo, which I knew was about a mile away, even though I’d never been there.
The condo complex was like an old two-story motel with ragged vegetation. They had a parking lot, and I pulled my car into the farthest corner, behind a garbage dumpster. I could have just sat there, but I wanted to see what else the ants were going to do on TV. I hoped that Hiroshi was out and that Carol was home. Getting out of the car, I saw that the ground was littered with empty spacedust vials. I thought I heard voices-maybe there were people in the dumpster? I didn’t want to look. I set the car’s security systems to maximum alert and headed across the asphalt to the breezeway.
I found the inscription “C. Rugby amp; H. Takemuru” on the mailbox marked 2D. Carol had always liked the sound of “Rugby” better than her maiden name, which had been Strumpf. It bummed me out to see her name on a mailbox with another man’s. The complex had a small pool in the middle; the kids had told me about the pool. I went up a flight of stairs and knocked on 2D.
“What are you doing here, Jerzy?” demanded Carol when she opened the door. I could see Tom, Ida, and Hiroshi inside. They were watching TV. Carol looked prettier than I remembered her. Calmer.
“It… it’s about…”
“Daddy!” yelled Tom, happy to see me. “There’s ants on television!”
“The cereal box says GoMotion!” added Ida.
I heard the siren of a police car speeding by. “Let me come in for a minute, Carol. One of my computer programs is getting me into trouble.”
“Oh, all right. Hiroshi, do you remember. Jerzy?”
“Yes,” said Hiroshi, regarding me coolly. “Of course.”
“How’s the sushi business?” I said. “Aren’t you ever worried you’ll chop off a finger?”
“Business is fine,” said Hiroshi. “But Carol and I have many expenses.”
“It’s a good thing you came by, Jerzy,” chimed in Carol. “We’re going to have to work out the child support payments. I have an appointment tomorrow with a lawyer.”
“Let’s not discuss it in front of the kids, Carol.”
“The kids know our marriage is over, Jerzy. Especially now that you’ve started bringing strange women into the house.”
I wanted to glare at Tom and Ida for spilling the beans, but they looked so wretchedly uncomfortable that I couldn’t do it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It was a mistake.” The simplest way to get through any conversation with Carol these days was always to keep saying I was sorry. “I’m sorry,” I said again, and glared at her. I was stupid ever to have thought even for a minute that I wanted her back, the bitch.
“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” said Carol.
“Look at the ants now!” interrupted Tom. He made room on the couch. “You can sit by me, Daddy.”
I sat down.
The dancing ants had shrunk, and all thousand-plus of them were swarming around like living pixels, drawing the shapes and forms of classic chaotic attractors. It was magnificent.
“Put the TV back on the channel we were watching,” said Carol. “Is this MTV or something?”
“This is the channel we were watching, Ma,” said Tom, and cackled happily. He loved it when grown-ups got confused and were wrong.
“Tom!”
“Can I see the controller for a minute?” asked Hi-roshi. Tom handed it to him and Hiroshi began switching channels. Since the ant programs were already down in the DTV chips of Carol’s digital TV, it seemed like the ants were everywhere. On each channel, the play of telecast images was being overlaid with multicolored ant images, and when Hiroshi pressed the button to show the 32-by-32 grid of all 1024 channels in miniature at once, you could see ants on every channel. The ant programs were playing off what the individual channels were broadcasting, so each channel still looked different.
Hackers call it a bit-blit, the trick that you use to move a mouse cursor across a computer screen without hurting the image that’s underneath. On every channel, the ants were bit-blitting their own images around like crazy. Hiroshi tuned back to the original channel, which was now showing-or trying to show- a Special News Bulletin.
“A new kind of computer virus has infested Fibernet San Jose,” intoned some newsperson’s plummy tones. On his or her shoulders was a giant ant head complete with intricately gnashing mandibles and sickening saliva.
“Our communication engineers report that the problem now seems to be under control,” continued the announcer, as the ant’s antennae wigwagged and wambled. “The source of the infestation is thought to be a broken Fibernet cable on White Road in East San Jose. We will bring you live, on-the-spot coverage from there soon. And now we will attempt to broadcast the conclusion of tonight’s episode of ‘Smart Women, Dumb Men.’” Everyone in the televised newsroom wore an ant’s head.
Back on “Smart Women, Dumb Men,” all of the characters’ skins had been coated with the crawling computer graphics known as “turmites” in punning homage to computer pioneer Alan Turing. A simple turmite is a moving point-sized computation that hops from pixel to pixel, changing some of the pixels’ colors and adjusting its own motions and moods according to the colors it finds; the resulting pattern is like fabulously intricate lace.
Meanwhile the “Smart Women, Dumb Men” sound track was being real time-sampled into aleatory karakoe — meaning that the ants were generating an artful series of pitches and volumes that were being attached to the phonemes of the voices of the smart women and the dumb men. The ants were sampling the studio audience’s laughter as well, turning it into a silly background symphony. Certain harsh or sour notes quavered into visible dustings on the actors’ shuddering skins. The ants were, in other words, making the show watchable only as avantgarde video art.
“This is all because of your ants?” Carol asked. “They’re ruining television? You’re going to get in a lot of trouble, Jerzy.”
“First of all, it’s not my fault they’re loose. It’s Roger Coolidge’s fault.”
“Is he with you?”
“Well, no, it’s just me and Studly. Studly put the ants onto the Fibernet a half hour ago.”
“The mighty Studly!” cried Tom. The children liked Studly. “Where is he?”
“He’s in the trunk of my car.” I stepped to the window to have a look down into the parking lot, just to make sure everything was okay. For now it was. My car was sitting there with its trunk closed and there were no people in sight. A cop car drove past without slowing down.
“Can we go down and look at him?” asked Tom. Though he was glad to see me, it made him nervous to have me visiting here. Putting Hiroshi, Carol, and me into the same room was an obvious recipe for disaster. “Yeah,” chimed in sister Ida, right on Tom’s wavelength. “Let’s go see the Studbot.” They had lots of pet names for the machine.
“Here.” I handed Tom my keys. “I’m going to stay up here just another little bit. And don’t let Studly run away.”
With the kids outside, I said, “Carol, did you know there are empty spacedust vials in your building’s parking lot? I really don’t know about having my children live here.”