Hylozoic by Rudy Rucker Read Free Book Online Page A

then they were gone.
    â€œLet’s make the fire huge,” said Sonic, lugging over an armload of branches and scraps from the woodpile. The fire leapt up with a fierce exhalation of joy.

 
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CHAPTER 3

JAYJAY AND THE BEANSTALK
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    T he last guests stood around drinking and talking for a while, the trees whispering overhead, the full moon climbing into the sky, the brook babbling away. The party was down to the hard core: Sonic, Jayjay, Thuy, Craigor, and Darlene.
    Thuy’s hair was in messy pigtails, with stray wisps projecting on all sides. Lit by the moonlight, she looked inhumanly beautiful to Jayjay. He would have liked to get her into bed, but she was still talking about metanovels with Darlene. Craigor was passing around his bong.
    Bored and bone-weary, Jayjay decided to slip away for the real high. He and Sonic made their way to the border of the moon-silvered stream and sat on the flat rock together, Sonic sipping at a bottle of champagne he’d brought along.
    â€œGive us this day our daily rush,” said Sonic. “On the nod as thou art in heaven. Ready?”
    â€œHold on,” said Jayjay. It had been a while since he’d gone really deep into Gaia. He’d been a good boy. “I need to get myself together.”
    â€œSo meanwhile let’s game these swirls,” said Sonic, looking down at the stream. For Sonic, all of reality was a video game. “We’ll get into a linked pair of eddies and see how far we can make them go. Like a pair of backs running for a touchdown.”
    They played with the vortices for a while, Gloob joining in, subtly warping his flows to raise the level of the game. But then all of a sudden Gloob focused his turbulence on a particular spot by the opposite bank.
    â€œOutsider!” teeped the stream silp. “Danger!”
    As part of his ongoing telepathic connection with the hylozoic world, Jayjay had a low-level awareness of the wriggling and scuttling of the insects, protozoa, and bacteria in the damp mulch of vegetation along the stream’s banks. Something was changing.
    A tiny, horned creature—invisible only moments ago—was rapidly increasing his size, growing upward from a clump of moss. Writhing and settling into his new shape, this strange apparition on the dark bank became—how odd—a two-tined pitchfork balancing on his butt end. The pitchfork glowed a dusky shade of red.
    The pitchfork’s handle—or leg—flexed, and his two prongs vibrated, sending out a high, singing buzz that articulated into speech—a male hillbilly voice. “Jayjay,” twanged the pitchfork. “Git high. I’ll take you on the magic beanstalk. My name’s Groovy.”
    The pitchfork gave off a strangely flavored teep signal that echoed his spoken words with an emotive sense he was offeringsomething quite wonderful. “I can lead you clear to infinity.”
    â€œThe silp in that weird forked stick is talking out loud!” exclaimed Sonic, who’d finished off the champagne. “That’s not right, kiq. I say we throw the stick in the fire. See what he says then.”
    With an abrupt series of thumps the pitchfork hopped upstream, crashing through the underbrush. And then all was silent. The curious being had merged into the forest gloom, impossible to teep.
    â€œHe was a talking pitchfork named Groovy,” said Jayjay. “Not a stick.”
    â€œCountry cowfreak,” said Sonic, giggling. “He told us to get high.”
    â€œLet’s do that,” said Jayjay. “Never mind the rest of it.” Everything was too frikkin’ weird today. Flying stingrays, a giant medieval painter, and now a talking pitchfork? He needed an out.
    Jayjay and Sonic lay down, joined their minds, and spiraled up toward the piglike blue face of Gaia’s interface.
    â€œHi, boys,” said Gaia as they sank into her ultramarine funnels. “Ready