A Good Old-Fashioned Future by Bruce Sterling Read Free Book Online Page A

running half the states in the Union by now.”
    “I’m not planning to market the algorithms,” Tug told the consultant. “They’ll be a trade secret, and I’ll market the jelly simulacra themselves. Ctenophore, Inc. is basically a manufacturing enterprise.”
    “What about the threat of reverse engineering?”
    “We’ve got an eighteen-month lead,” Revel bragged. “Round these parts, that’s like eighteen years anywhere else! Besides, we got a set of ingredients that’s gonna be mighty hard to duplicate.”
    “There hasn’t been a lot of, uh, sustained industry development in the artificial jellyfish field before,” Tug told her. “We’ve got a big R&D advantage.”
    Edna pursed her lips. “Well, that brings us to marketing, then. How are you going to get your products advertised and distributed?”
    “Oh, for publicity, we’ll do COMDEX, Life Developers, BioScience Fair,
MONDO 3000
, the works,” Revel assured her. “And get this—we can ship jellies by the Pullen oil pipelines anywhere in North America for free! Try and match that for ease of distribution and clever use of an installed base! Hell, it’ll be almost as easy as downloadin’ software from the Internet!”
    “That certainly sounds innovative,” Edna nodded. “So—let’s get to the crux of matters, then. What’s the killer app for a robot jellyfish?”
    Tug and Revel traded glances. “Our exact application is highly confidential,” Tug said tentatively.
    “Maybe
you
could suggest a few apps, Edna,” Revel told her, folding his arms cagily over the denim chest of his Can’t-Bust-’Ems. “Come on and
earn
your twenty thousand bucks an hour.”
    “Hmmm,” the consultant said. Her brow clouded, and she sat in the armchair at Tug’s workstation, her eyes gone distant. “Jellyfish. Industrial jellyfish …”
    Greenish rippling aquarium light played across Edna Sydney’s face as she sat in deep thought. The jellyfish kept up their silent, eternal pulsations; kept on bouncing their waves of contraction out and back between the centers and the rims of their bells.
    “Housewares application,” said Edna presently. “Fill them with lye and flush them through sinks and commodes. They agitate their way through sink traps and hairballs and grease.”
    “Check,” said Tug alertly. He snatched a mechanical pencil from the desktop and began scribbling notes on the back of an unpaid bill.
    “Assist fermentation in septic tanks by loading jellies with decomposition bacteria, then setting them to churn the tank sludge. Sell them in packs of thousands for city-sized sewage-installations.”
    “Outrageous,” said Tug.
    “Microsurgical applications inside plugged arteries. Pulsates plaque away gently, but disintegrates in the ventricular valves to avoid heart attacks.”
    “That would need FDA approval,” Revel hedged. “Maybe a few years down the road.”
    “You can get a livestock application done in eighteen months,” said Edna. “It’s happened in recombinant DNA.”
    “Copacetic,” said Revel. “Lord knows the Pullens got a piece o’ the cattle business!”
    “If you could manufacture Portuguese men-of-war or other threatening toxic jellies,” Edna said, “then youcould set a few thousand right offshore in perhaps Hilton Head or Puerto Vallarta. After the tourist trade crashed, you could buy up shoreline property cheap and make a real killing.” She paused. “Of course, that would be illegal.”
    “Right,” Tug nodded, pencil scratching away. “Although my plastic jellyfish don’t sting. I suppose we could implant pouches of toxins in them.…”
    “It would also be unethical. And wrong.”
    “Yeah, yeah, we get it,” Revel assured her. “Anything else?”
    “Do the jellyfish reproduce?” asked Edna.
    “No, they don’t,” Tug said. “I mean, not by themselves. They don’t reproduce and they don’t eat. I can manufacture as many as you want to any spec, though.”
    “So they’re not truly