“I’ve seen some boppers over at the trade center. These days a lot of them have a kind of mirror-backing under their skins. But I didn’t pay much attention to them. Living in Einstein you do sort of get to hate them. They have bombs hidden all over, and now and then they set one off just to remind us. And they have hidden cameras everywhere, and there’s rumors that the robots can put a thing like a plastic rat inside a person’s head and control them. Actually—” Suddenly it hit her. “Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if—” She cut herself off and took a long drink of champagne.
“I still don’t see why we can’t drop a Q-bomb down into their Nest,” said Mom. The marijuana had brought her somewhat back into focus.
“We could,” said Della, trying to get through to her mother. “But they know that, and if the Nest goes, Einstein goes, too. It’s a stalemate, like we used to have with the Russians. Mutual Assured Destruction. That’s one reason the boppers don’t try and take Einstein back over. We’re like hostages. And remember that Earth likes buying all the stuff they make. This heartshirt is boppermade, Mom.”
“Well, as long as people like Willy will contain themselves, we’re still safe from the boppers here on Earth,” said Mom. “They can’t live in normal temperatures, isn’t that right, Willy?”
“Yeah.” Willy helped himself to some glazed carrots. “As long as they use J-junctions. Though if I were designing a robot brain now I’d try and base it on an optical processor. Optical processors use light instead of electricity—the light goes along fibers, and the logic gates are like those sunglass lenses that get dark in bright light. One photon can pass, but two can’t. And you have little chip-sized lasers to act like capacitors. Optical fibers have no real resistance at all, so the thing doesn’t have to be supercooled. We still can’t build a really good one. But I bet the boppers are already doing it. Can I please have some more turkey, Uncle Jason?”
“Uh . . . sure, Willy.” Jason stood up to carve some more, and smiled down at his bright, nerdy nephew. “Willy, do you remember when you and Della were little and you had the big fight over the wishbone? Della wanted to glaze it and save it and—”
“Willy wanted to pull it by himself to make sure he got the big Christmas wish,” interrupted Uncle Colin, laughing hard.
“I remember,” said Aunt Ilse, waving her fork. “And then we made the children go ahead and pull the wishbone with each other—”
“And they each wished that the other one would lose!” squealed Mom.
“Who won?” asked Della. “I don’t remember.”
“I did,” said Willy complacently. “So I got my wish. You want to try again?”
“It’s boneless, dear,” said Mom. “Didn’t you notice? Look at the week tree, it’s getting leaves and tiny little apples!”
After dinner, Willy and Della decided to go for a walk. It was too boring watching their parents get stoned and start thinking everything they said was funny, when it really was just stupid.
It was bright and gray, but cold. Bowser ran ahead of them, pissing and sniffing. Little kids were out on the sidewalks with new scootcycles and gravballs; all of them warmly wrapped in bright thermchos and buffs. Just like every other Christmas.
“My father said you’d gotten into some kind of trouble on the Moon?” asked Willy after a while.
“Have they already been gossiping about me?”
“Not at all. Hell, you are my favorite cousin, Della. I’m glad you’re back, and I hope you stay in Louisville, and if you don’t want to tell me why you came back, you sure don’t have to.” Willy cast about for some way to change the subject. “That new heartbeat blouse of yours is really nice.”
“Thank you. And I don’t want to talk about what happened, not yet. Why don’t we just walk over to your house and you show me your stuff . You always had such neat stuff in your room, Willy.”
“Can you walk that far? I notice you’re still wearing a flexiskeleton.”
“I need to keep exercising if I’m ever going to get rid of it. You don’t have any merge at your house, do you?”
“You know I don’t use drugs, Della. Anyway, I doubt if there’s any merge in all of Louisville. Is it really so wonderful?”
“Better. Actually, I’m glad I can’t get hold of any. I feel kind of sick. At first I thought it was from the gravity, but this feels different. It must be from the merge. I took blocker, but my stomach keeps fluttering. I have a weird feeling like something’s alive inside me.” Della gave a slow, dry laugh; and then shot a glance over to see if Willy was impressed. But, as always, it was hard to tell what was going on behind that big round forehead of his.
“I’ve got a cephscope I built,” volunteered Willy after a while. “You put that on, it’s as good as any stupid drug. But it’s not somatic. It’s a pure software high.”
“Wiggly, Cousin Will.”
Colin Taze’s house was about five blocks from Dad’s. All through his twenties and thirties, Colin had lived in different cities—an “academic gypsy,” he liked to say—but now, as he neared forty, he’d moved back to Louisville and settled near his big brother Jason. His house was even older than Jason’s, and a bit run down, but it was big and comfortable. Willy undid the locks—it seemed like there were more robbers all the time—and the two cousins went on down to Willy’s basement apartment. Willy was too out of it—or lazy—to leave home.
“This is my electron microscope, this here is my laser for making holograms, here’s my imipolex-sculpture stuff , and this is the cephscope. Try it on—you wear it like earphones.”
“This isn’t some kind of trick, is it, Willy?” When they’d been younger, Willy had been big on practical jokes. Della remembered one Christmas, years ago, when Willy had given her a perfume bottle filled with live ants. Della had screamed, and Ruby and Sude had teased her for weeks.
But today, Willy’s face was all innocence. “You’ve never used a cephscope?”
“I’ve just read about them. Aren’t they like twist-boxes?”
“Oh God, that’s like saying a vizzy is like a pair of glasses. Cephscopes are the big new art form, Della. Ceph art. That’s what I’d really like to get into. This robot stuff I do is loser—deliberately designing programs that don’t work too well. It’s kilp. Here, put this on your head so the contacts touch your temples, and check it out. It’s a . . . symphony I composed.”
“What if I start flicking out?”
“It’s not like that, Della, really.” Willy’s face was kind and serious. He was really proud of his cephscope, and he wanted to show it off .
So Della sat in an easy chair and put the earphone things on her head with the contacts touching her temples, and Willy turned the cephscope on. It was nice for a while—washes of color, 3D/4D inversions, layers of sound, and strange tinglings in the skin. Kind of like the beginning of a merge-trip, really—and this led to the bad part—for now she flashed back into that nightmare last merge in her Einstein cubby . . .
Starting the merge, so loving, so godlike, they’d be like Mother Earth and Father Sky, Many into One, yes, and Buddy was sliding in the puddle now . . . but . . . suddenly . . . a wrenching feeling, Buddy being pulled away, oh where, Della’s puddled eyes just floating, unable to move, seeing the violent shadows on the ceiling, noise vibrations, shadows beating and smashing and then the rough hand reaching up into her softness and . . .
Aaaaaaaaeeeeehh!!!