The Hacker and the Ants by Rudy Rucker Read Free Book Online

human will. But in my opinion, the Beyond is out of our control, and ESP is a pipe dream for the powerless, an opiate pernicious as politics and TV.
    Across the alley from my house was a heavily weathered Victorian inhabited by Krystle Kattle and her ratty Mom. The family had been there for decades; they were poor, and had always been poor, which made them a highly singular anomaly among Los Perros homeowners. The most striking feature of their blasted, filth-strewn lot was a parallelopiped-shaped garage whose angles were in the process of being slowly but radically sheared by the expanding girth of a hyperthyroid eucalyptus tree rooted in the lot between the Kattles and the Toths.
    Krystle worked in a Western store selling boots, sad-dies,
and fringed leather vests. She had a sometime boyfriend who wanted to be a biker. He was blond with a well-built steroid body. He, Krystle, Carol, and I had gotten drunk together on the lees of a keg left over from our housewarming party. Carol and I hadn’t realized yet that in California you don’t do casual things with strangers.
    There were too many strangers. Now that I’d settled in, I always treated Krystle like a stranger, and I would never have spoken to a group like Mrs. Toth’s. I was too busy, and I never had fun.
    I decided that I should have some fun, that I should smoke some marijuana.
    The house with the eucalyptus—the house between the Kattles and the Toths—was rented by Dirk Blanda, founder of Dirk Blanda’s Personography, the bodymap-ping shop who’d made my tuxedo. Dirk often had some weed. I strolled over there to see if he’d get me high.
    But Dirk wasn’t home; his house echoed hollowly with the banging of the knocker. I went dejectedly back inside my house and looked through the packs of matches on my bedroom dresser; sometimes a matchbook would have an old roach tucked into the back. But I’d already searched the matches and scraped my drawer bottoms on my last free day, a couple of weeks ago, and there was no dope to be found. Not a roach in the house, not even a pinner.
    Studly came into the bedroom, and it occurred to me that while I’d been on the dark dream, the ants would have had time to go across the radio link and to infect Studly. He acted like he was quietly dusting my furniture, but his photocell eyes seemed to glint evilly, and I had the feeling he was edging over to me. But surely this was only paranoia. Instead of turning Studly off, I spoke to him.

    â€œStudly.”
    â€œYes, Jerzy?” Studly had a pleasant voice thanks to his Talkboy chip.
    â€œDo you know anything about the ants?”
    â€œLast week, I put Grants For Ants ant poison packages near all the doors as instructed. I have not seen any ants in our house today.”
    â€œI mean ants inside my computer.”
    â€œWhy do you say there are ants inside your computer, Jerzy?”
    â€œI saw them in my cyberspace goggles. They’re like a computer virus. Have they infected you, Studly? Do you feel normal?”
    â€œMy activation levels are all within the customary ranges. Do you think the ants have infected me?”
    â€œI guess not. Go to living room and wait for me there. Stay idle.”
    â€œI can dig it.”
    When I had nothing better to do, I was always programming new catch phrases and response tricks into Studly, which made talking to him mildly entertaining.
    â€œWas there anything else, Studly?”
    â€œYesterday you were talking to yourself and you said ‘I want Carol back,’ Jerzy. Can you comment on that?”
    This seemingly thoughtful hedge was from the dinosaur days of artificial intelligence programming. You have your device keep a list of all the things it hears you say and then every so often the device builds a sentence of the form: “Why did you say (quote-past-statement), (user-name)?” It was a cheap trick, but it set me off, just like it was supposed to.
    â€œI do