Master of Space and Time by Rudy Rucker Read Free Book Online

something that will turn dirt into food. A machine or something that’s simple to reproduce and—”
    â€œNo more world hunger,” said Harry expansively. “Fine by me. If I can do it, I will. Let’s go downstairs.”
    â€œOne last thing. All that money isn’t going to do me any good if you turn the solar system into cheese or something.”
    â€œI don’t like cheese.”
    â€œYou know what I mean, Harry. The blunzer’s effects have to be self-limiting. It has to stop working after an hour or two. And then everything has to go back to the way it was.”
    â€œBack to the way it was? You don’t want your money to disappear, do you? Or Nancy’s cure for world hunger?”
    â€œMake a few reasonable changes in our world, fine. And then let’s go over to an alternate universe, like I said yesterday. First you do the jump toFriday, and make the money and everything, and then we go over to another world so you can work out without wrecking things here.”
    â€œThat sounds good. As long as I’m master of space and time I’ll be able to hold open a magic door to the world of my heart’s desire. We’ll stay two hours and then come back here just before the blunzing wears off. As soon as it wears off, the magic door’ll close, and we’ll be free to enjoy the few changes I made here.”
    â€œWell”—I hesitated, still worrying—“it sounds pretty reasonable. But what if one of the changes you make in our world turns out to be really lethal? If we don’t realize till after the blunzing wears off, we’ll be stuck with it.”
    â€œNo we won’t. We’ll only use up half of those red gluons, so there’ll be enough for you to get blunzed and fix everything.”
    â€œLike a second wish.”
    â€œSure. ‘The Peasant and the Sausage.’ ”
    â€œThen I guess we’ve got an agreement.”
    â€œHow do you know I’ll stick to it?” Harry gave me one of his horrible smiles.
    â€œDo I have a choice?”
    â€œYou worry too much, Fletch. Come on, let’s get started.”
    Jack McCormack had delivered the goods. The stuff was all in Harry’s workshop, stacked by the back door.
    â€œHere’s the basic idea,” said Harry, slowly pacing back and forth. “We put the hotshot table in the fridge and I lie on it. It’s cold in there, and we’ve got it electromagnetically isolated with the copper foil. Just before I get the injection, thechamber is flash-pumped to vacuum. I’ll have an air tank, so no problem.”
    â€œNo problem? What about the shot? What kind of shot do you get? What happens to you then?”
    â€œPlanck juice. I get blunzed.” Two made-up words. Harry was flying.
    â€œBlunzed I’ve heard, Harry. But what’s this Planck juice? ”
    â€œOkay. That’s going to be your and Antie’s job. The idea is that you get Antie to pour half the gluons out of the magnetic bottle and into the microwave cavity. It makes a super-quantum fluid, right?”
    â€œI guess.”
    â€œDo you know what gluons are , Fletcher?”
    â€œWell, they’re real small. They have something to do with quarks.”
    â€œGluons are the particles that stick quarks together. A proton is three quarks with some gluons in there holding the quarks together. The gluons come in three colors: red, blue and yellow. Red are easiest to get.”
    â€œFine. You’ve got gluons mixed with microwaves to make a super-quantum fluid. Then what?”
    â€œThe fluid is guided into the vortex coil.”
    â€œThe vortex coil!” This was getting exciting.
    â€œThe vortex coil. Think of a food processor, Fletch. The super-quantum fluid plops into the vortex coil and skaaaaazzt! ”
    â€œIt’s blended.”
    â€œBlended into Planck juice, Fletcher, Planck juice being a continuous pre-quark force-medium with no