Spaceland by Rudy Rucker Read Free Book Online

explain. “I locked myself out,” was all I said. “I’m sorry. Let’s get in bed.” My number one priority was to fall asleep and wake up and have all of this crazy stuff be gone like some weird dream.
    I threw my soaked clothes in the washer and dried myself with a towel. Jena used the bathroom, and when she came back out, she snuggled tight against me. With my subtle vision, our bodies felt at one, the way they did when we made love. But even though I could feel every bit of Jena’s body, I couldn’t read her mind.
    She reached around and touched me. “I love you, Joe,” she murmured.
    It didn’t take telepathy to know that it was time to make love.
But I wasn’t up for it. I ached all over and Jena was still drunk. She caressed me a bit more, but nothing happened.
    â€œAre you mad at me?” whispered Jena.
    â€œI don’t feel right,” I said, rolling away from her.
    â€œJerk.”
    I put my head under my pillow and fell asleep.

3
    Momo’s Cross Sections
    Jena approached me again in the morning, but again I put her off. I don’t know why. I guess I felt I needed some quiet time to process what had happened to me. In any case, Jena got really huffy. She thought I was freezing her out, as I sometimes did.
    While Jena was in the shower I took stock of myself. My third eye was on a slender stalk about four inches long, sticking vout of the center of my head. If I turned my third eye vinn towards our world, I could look at where my eyestalk met my higher skin—a sheet of skin and muscle that closed my innards off from the fourth dimension. It was really true.
    Though my third eye could see its stalk, it couldn’t see itself, so I couldn’t judge how big the eye was. Maybe quite small, like a lobster’s eye. Jena couldn’t see the third eye and it wouldn’t show up in any normal mirror either, because the stalk to my third eye led vout of our Spaceland into the fourth dimension.
    I used my new eye’s subtle vision to take in my surroundings. As I moved my mental viewpoint around within the image, I could see Jena soaping herself, see the dishes in our sink, see the yellow grass outside and even the cars droning past on Route 85. A Volvo,
a Ford, a Toyota, a Lexus, a VW, another Volvo … I snapped out of watching traffic and thought some more about how I was seeing all this. It was like my third eye held a copy of the world that I could study from any side I chose.
    I went into the kitchen and started the coffee. Jena liked her morning coffee; this was a special grind from the Los Perros Coffee Roasting coffee shop. Maybe it would help get us back into a friendly mood.
    My arms had an extra powerful feel to them. Presumably that sheet of muscle under my higher skin was helping me. I went over to my barbells in the corner and hefted them. And, yes, I was a little stronger than before.
    I was still playing with looking at things in different ways with my third eye. When I turned it vinn towards our world it formed a complete view of everything, inside and out. I could contemplate my third eye’s image from any location or direction I chose, and by controlling my viewpoint in some ill-defined way I could even see inside things.
    I could see the sand inside the plastic disks of my barbells. I could see the bottom of the chair I was sitting on. But, again, when I turned my third eye upon my own body, I didn’t see inside it at all. Instead I saw my higher skin.
    I heard a noise behind me and, without turning around, I used my third eye to see Jena walking across the room towards me. She looked pale, tense and unhappy. She was wearing her robe with nothing under it. I adjusted my third eye’s viewpoint so that I was seeing her skin but not her internal organs.
    â€œSo how’s your big Y2K bug, Joe?” said Jena.
    I hadn’t thought about it yet today. “Why don’t you turn on the TV,” I