Running in reverse gear, the nants restored the sections of Earth they‘d already eaten—
putting back the people as well. And then they reassembled Mars and returned to their original eggcase—which was blessedly vaporized by a well-aimed Martian nuclear blast, courtesy of the
Chinese Space Agency.
Public fury over Earth‘s near-demolition was such that President Dibbs and his vice president
were impeached, convicted of treason, and executed by lethal injection. But Nantel fared better.
Indicted Nantel CEO Jeff Luty dropped out of sight before he could be arrested, and the company entered bankruptcy to duck the lawsuits—reemerging as ExaExa, with a cheerful beetle as its logo and a new corporate motto: ―Putting People First—Building Gaia‘s Mind.‖
For a while there it seemed as if humanity had nipped the Singularity in the bud. But then
came the orphids.
***
Jil and Craigor‘s home was a long cabin atop a flat live-aboard scow called the Merz Boat.
Propelled by cilia like a giant paramecium, the piezoplastic boat puttered around the shallow, turbid bay waters near the industrial zone of San Francisco. Craigor had bought the one-of-a-kind Merz Boat quite cheaply from an out-of-work exec during the chaos that followed the nant debacle. He‘d renamed the boat in honor of one of his personal heroes, the Dadaist artist Kurt Schwitters, who‘d famously turned his house into an assemblage called the Merzbau. Merz was Schwitters‘s made-up word meaning, according to Craigor, ―gnarly stuff that I can get for free.‖
Jil Zonder was eye-catching: more than pretty, she moved with perfect grace. She had dark,
blunt-cut hair, a straight nose, and a ready laugh. She‘d been a good student: an English major with a minor in graphics and design, planning a career in advertising. But midway through college she had developed a problem with sudocoke abuse and dropped out.
She made it into recovery, blundered into an early marriage, and had kids with Craigor: a son
and a daughter, Momotaro and Bixie, aged eleven and ten. The four of them made a close-knit,
relatively happy family, however, Jil did sometimes feel a bit trapped, especially now that she was moving into her thirties.
Although Jil had finished up college and still dreamed of making it as a designer, she was
currently working as a virtual booth bunny for ExaExa, doing demos at online trade fairs, with her body motion-captured, tarted up, and fed to software developers. All her body joints were tagged with subcutaneous sensors. She‘d gotten into the product-dancer thing back when her judgment had p.20
Rudy Rucker
been impaired by sudocoke. Dancing was easy money, and Jil had a gift for expressing herself in movement. Too bad the product-dancer audience consisted of slobbering nerds. But now she was
getting close to landing an account with Yu Shu, a Korean self-configuring athletic-shoe
manufacturer. She‘d already sold them a slogan: ―Our goo grows on you.‖
Craigor Connor was a California boy: handsome, good-humored, and not overly ambitious.
Comfortable in his own skin. He called himself an assemblagist sculptor, which meant that he was a packrat. The vast surface area of the Merz Boat suited him. Pleasantly idle of a summer evening, he‘d amuse himself by arranging his junk in fresh patterns on the elliptical pancake of the deck and marking colored link-lines into the deck‘s computational plastic.
Craigor was a kind of fisherman as well; that is, he earned money by trapping iridescent
Pharaoh cuttlefish, an invasive species native to the Mergui Archipelago of Burma and now
flourishing in the climate-heated waters of the San Francisco Bay. The chunky three-kilogram
cuttlefish brought in a good price apiece from AmphiVision, Inc., a San Francisco company that used organic rhodopsin from cuttlefish chromatophores to dope the special video-displaying contact lenses known as web-eyes. All the digirati were wearing webeyes to overlay heads-up computer displays upon their visual fields. Webeyes also acted as cameras; you could transmit whatever you saw. Along with earbud speakers, throat mikes, and motion sensors, the webeyes were making cyberspace into an integral part of the natural world.
There weren‘t many other cuttlefishermen in the bay—the fishery was under a strict licensing
program that Craigor had been grandfathered into when the rhodopsin market took off. Craigor had lucked into a good thing, and he was blessed with a knack for assembling fanciful traps that brought in steady catches of the wily Pharaoh cuttles.
To sweeten the take, Craigor even got a small bounty from the federal Aquatic Nuisance
Species Task Force for each cuttlefish beak that he turned in. The task force involvement was, however, a mixed blessing. Craigor was supposed to file two separate electronic forms about each and every cuttlefish that he caught: one to the Department of the Interior and one to the Department of Commerce. The feds were hoping to gain control over the cuttles by figuring out the fine points of their life-cycle. Being the nondigital kind of guy that he was, Craigor‘s reports had fallen so far behind that the feds were threatening to lift his cuttlefishing license.
One Saturday afternoon, Ond Lutter, his wife, Nektar Lundquist, and their twelve-year-old
son Chu came over for a late afternoon cookout on the Merz Boat. It was the first of September.
Jil had met Ond at work; he‘d been rehired and elevated to chief technical officer of the
reborn ExaExa. The two little families had become friends; they got together nearly every weekend, hanging out, chatting and flirting.
It was clear to Nektar that Ond had something of a crush on Jil. But Nektar felt the situation was manageable, as Jil didn‘t seem all that interested in Ond. For her part, Nektar liked the looks of Craigor‘s muscular body, and it wasn‘t lost upon her how often Craigor glanced at her—not that geeky, self-absorbed Ond ever noticed. He was blind to the emotions roiling beneath the surfaces of daily life.
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―It‘s peaceful here,‖ said Ond, taking a long pull of his beer. Even one bottle had a noticeable effect on the engineer. ―Like Eden.‖ He leaned back in his white wickerwork rocker. No two chairs on the Merz Boat were the same.
―What are those cones?‖ Nektar asked Jil and Craigor. She was talking about the waist-high
shiny ridged shapes that loosely ringed the area Craigor had cleared out for today‘s little party. The kids were off at the other end of the boat, Momotaro showing Chu the latest junk and Bixie singing made-up songs that Chu tried to sing too.
―Ceramic jet-engine baffles,‖ said Jil. ―From the days before smart machines. Craigor got
them off the back lot at Lockheed.‖
―The ridges are for reducing turbulence,‖ said Craigor. ―Like your womanly curves, Nektar.
We sit in an island of serenity.‖
―You‘re a poet, Craigor,‖ said Ond. The low sun illuminated his scalp through his thinner-
than-ever blond hair. ―It‘s good to have a friend like you. I have to confess that I brought along a big surprise. And I was just thinking—my new tech will solve your problems with generating those
cuttlefish reports. It‘ll get your sculpture some publicity as well.‖
―Far be it from me to pry into Chief Engineer Ond‘s geek-some plans,‖ said Craigor easily.
―As for my diffuse but rewarding oeuvre—‖ He made an expansive gesture that encompassed the
whole deck. ―An open book. Unfortunately I‘m too planktonic for fame. I transcend encapsulation.‖
―Planktonic?‖ said Jil, smiling at her raffish husband, always off in his own world. Their
daughter Bixie came trotting by.
―Planktonic sea creatures rarely swim,‖ said Craigor. ―Like cuttlefish, they go with the flow.
Until something nearby catches their attention. And then—dart! Another meal, another lover, another masterpiece.‖
Just aft of the cleared area was Craigor‘s holding tank, an aquarium hand-caulked from car
windshields, bubbling with air and containing a few dozen Pharaoh cuttlefish, their body-encircling fins undulating in an endless hula dance, their facial squid-bunches of tentacles gathered into demure sheaves, their yellow W-shaped pupils gazing at their captors.
―They look so smart and so—doomed,‖ said Nektar, regarding the bubbling tank. Her face
was still sensuous and beautiful, her blond-tinted hair lustrous. But the set of her mouth had turned a bit hard and frown-wrinkles shadowed her brow. Jil gathered that Ond and Nektar didn‘t get along all that well. Nektar had never really forgiven her husband for the nants. ―The cuttlefish are like wizards on death row,‖ continued Nektar. ―They make me feel guilty about my webeyes.‖
―Sometimes they disappear from the tank on their own,‖ said Craigor. ―I had a dream that
big, slow angels are poaching them. But it‘s hard to remember my dreams anymore. The kids always wake us up so early.‖ He gave his daughter a kind pat. ―Brats.‖
―Happy morning, it‘s the crackle of dawn,‖ sang exuberant Bixie, then headed back to the
other kids.
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Rudy Rucker
―You finally got webeyes too?‖ said Jil to Nektar. ―I love mine. But if I forget to turn them
off before falling asleep— ugh. Spammers in my dreams, not angels. I won‘t let my kids have webeyes yet. Of course for Chu—‖ She broke off, not wanting to say the wrong thing.
―Webeyes are perfect for Chu,‖ said Nektar. ―You know how he loves machines. He and Ond
are alike that way. Ond says he was a little autistic too when he was a boy. Asperger‘s syndrome.
Sometimes, as they get older, their brains heal.‖ She blinked and stared off into the distance. ―Mainly I got my web-eyes for my job.‖ Now that Chu was getting along pretty well in his school, Nektar had taken a job as a prep cook in Puff, a trendy Valencia Street restaurant. ―The main chef talked me into it. Jose. With webeyes, I can see all the orders, and track the supplies while I‘m chopping.‖
―And I showed her how to tap into the feed from Chu‘s webeyes,‖ said Ond. ―You never
quite know what Chu will do. He‘s not hanging over the rail like last time, is he, Nektar?‖
―You could watch him yourself,‖ said Nektar with a slight edge in her voice. ―If you must
know, Chu‘s checking the coordinates of Craigor‘s things with his global positioning locator.
Momotaro‘s being the museum guide. And Bixie‘s hiding and jumping out at them. It must be nice to have kids that don‘t use digital devices to play.‖ She produced a slender, hand-rolled, nonfilter cigarette from her purse. ―As long as the coast is clear, let‘s have a smoke. I got this from Jose. He said it‘s genomically tweaked for guiltless euphoria—high nicotine and low carcinogens.‖ Nektar gave a naughty smile. ―Jose is so much fun.‖ She lit the illegal tobacco.
―None for me,‖ said Jil. ―I quit everything when I got into recovery from sudocoke a few
years back. I thought I told you?‖
―Yes,‖ said Nektar, exhaling. ―Good for you. Did you have a big, dramatic turning point?‖
―Absolutely,‖ said Jil. ―I was ready to kill myself, and I walked into a church, and I noticed that in the stained glass it said: God. Is. Love. What a concept. I started going to a support group, started believing in love, and I got well.‖
―And then the reward,‖ said Craigor, winking at Nektar. ―She met me. The answer to a
maiden‘s prayer. It is written.‖ Nektar smiled back at Craigor, letting the smoke ooze slowly from her film-star lips.
―I‘ll have a puff, Nektar,‖ said Ond. ―This might be the biggest day for me since three years
ago when we reversed the nants.‖
―You already said that this morning,‖ said Nektar, irritated by her husband. ―Are you finally
going to tell me what‘s going on? Or does your own wife have to sign a nondisclosure agreement?‖
―Ond‘s on a secret project for sure,‖ said Jil, trying to smooth things over. ―I went to ExaExa to dance for a product-demo gig in their fab this week—I was wearing a transparent bunny suit—and all the geeks were at such a high vibrational level they were like blurs.‖
―Jil looked sexy,‖ said Ond in a quiet tone.
―What is a fab exactly?‖ asked Craigor. ―I always forget.‖
―It‘s where they fabricate those round little biochips that go in computers,‖ said Jil. ―Most of the fab building is sealed off, with anything bigger than a carbon dioxide molecule filtered out of the air. All these big hulking tanks of fluid in there growing tiny precise biochips. The gene-p.23
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manipulation tools can reach all the way down to the molecular level—it‘s nanotech.‖ She fixed Ond with her bright gaze. ―So what exactly are you working on, Ond?‖
Ond opened his mouth, but couldn‘t quite spit out his secret. ―I‘m gonna show you in a
minute,‖ he said, pinching out the tiny cigarette butt and pocketing it. ―I‘ll drink another beer to get my nerve up. This is gonna be a very big deal.‖
Bixie came skipping back, her dark straight hair flopping around her face. ―Chu made a list
of what Craigor moved since last time,‖ she reported. ―But I told Chu that my dad can leave his toys wherever he likes.‖ She leaned against Jil, lively as a rubber ball. Jil often thought of Bixie as a small version of herself.
―We await Comptroller Chu‘s report,‖ said Craigor. He was busy with the coals in a fanciful
grill constructed from an oldtimey metal auto fender.
Chu and Momotaro came pounding into the cleared area together.
―A cuttlefish disappeared!‖ announced Momotaro.
―First there were twenty-eight and then there were twenty-seven,‖ said Chu. ―I counted them
on the way to the rear end of the boat, and I counted them again on the way to the front.‖ He gave each word equal weight, like a robot text-reader.
―Maybe the cuttle flew away,‖ said Momotaro. He put his fingers up by his mouth and
wiggled them, imitating a flying cuttlefish.
―Two hundred and seventy tentacles in the tank now,‖ added Chu. ―Other news. Craigor‘s
Chinese gong has moved forty-four centimeters aft. Two bowling balls are in the horse trough, one purple and one pearly. The long orange line painted on the deck has seventeen squiggles. The
windmill‘s wire goes to a string of thirty-six crab-shaped Christmas lights that don‘t work. The exercise bicycle next to Craigor‘s workshop is—‖
―I‘m going to put our meat on the grill now,‖ Craigor told Chu. ―Want to watch and make
sure nothing touches your pork medallions?‖
―That goes without saying,‖ said Chu. ―But I‘m not done listing the, uh—‖ Bixie, still
slouching beside Jil‘s chair, had just stuck out her tongue at Chu, which made Chu stumble
uncertainly to a halt.
―Just e-mail me the list,‖ said Craigor with a wink at Bixie. But then, seeing Chu‘s crushed
expression, he softened. ―Oh, go ahead, tell me now. And no more rude faces, Bixie.‖
―Please don‘t cook any cuttlefish,‖ said Chu.
―We aren‘t gonna bother those bad boys at all,‖ said Craigor soothingly. ―They‘re too
valuable to eat. Hey, did you notice the fluorescent plastic car tires I got this week?‖ He glanced over at Nektar to check that she was appreciating how kind he was to her son.
―Yes,‖ said Chu. And then he recited the rest of his list while Craigor finished grilling.
The four adults and three children ate their meal, enjoying the red and gold sunset. ―So how
is the cuttlefish biz?‖ Ond asked as they worked through the pan of satsuma tiramisu that Nektar had brought for dessert.
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Rudy Rucker
―The license thing is coming to a head,‖ said Jil. ―Those electronic forms we were talking
about. I‘ve been trying to do them myself, but the feds‘ sites are all buggy and crashing and losing our inputs. It‘s like they want us to fail.‖
―I used to think the feds micromanaged independent fishermen like me so that they could tell
the public they‘re doing something about invasive species,‖ said Craigor. ―But now I think they want to drive me out of business so they can sell my license to a big company that makes campaign
contributions.‖
―That‘s where my new tech comes in,‖ said Ond. ―We label the cuttlefish with radio-
frequency tracking devices and let them report on themselves. Like bar codes or RFIDs, but better.‖
―It‘s not like I get my hands on the cuttles until I actually trap them,‖ said Craigor. ―So how would I label them? They‘re smart enough that it‘d actually be hard to trap the same one twice.‖
―What if the tags could find the cuttlefish?‖ said Ond. Pink and grinning, he glanced around the circle of faces, then reached into his pocket. ―Introducing the orphids,‖ he said, holding up a little transparent plastic vial. Etched into one side were the stylized beetle and flowing cursive letters of the ExaExa logo. ―My big surprise.‖ Whatever was in the vial was too small to see with the naked eye, but Jil‘s webeyes were displaying tiny balls of light, little haloes around objects in rapid motion.
―Orphids are to bar codes as velociraptors were to trilobites,‖ continued Ond. ―The orphids will change the world.‖
― Not another nanomachine release!‖ exclaimed Nektar, jumping to her feet. ―You promised never again, Ond!‖
―They‘re not nants, never,‖ said Ond, his tongue a bit thick with the beer and tobacco.
―Orphids good, nants bad. Orphids self-reproduce using nothing but dust floating in the air. They‘re not destructive. Orphids are territorial; they keep a certain distance from each other. They‘ll cover Earth‘s surface, yes, but only down to one or two orphids per square millimeter. They‘re like little surveyors; they make meshes on things. They‘ll double their numbers every few minutes at first, gradually slowing down, and after a day, the population will plateau and stop growing. You‘ll see a few million of them on your skin, and maybe ten sextillion orphids on Earth‘s whole surface. From then on, they only reproduce enough to maintain that same density. You might say the orphids have a conscience, a desire to protect the environment. They‘ll actually hunt down and eradicate any rival nanomachines that anyone tries to unleash.‖
― Sell it, Ond,‖ said Craigor, grinning at Nektar.
―Orphids use quantum computing; they propel themselves with electrostatic fields; they
understand natural language; and they‘re networked via quantum entanglement,‖ continued Ond.
―The orphids will communicate with us much better than the nants ever did. And as the orphidnet emerges, we‘ll get intelligence amplification and superhuman AI.‖
―The secret ExaExa project,‖ mused Jil, watching the darting dots of light in the vial.
―You‘ve been designing these orphids all along? Sly Ond.‖
―In a way, the nants designed them,‖ said Ond. ―Before I rolled back the nants, the nants sent Nantel some insanely great code. Coherent quantum states, human language comprehension,
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autocatalytic morphogenesis, a layered neural net architecture for evolvable AI—the nants nailed all the hard problems.‖
―But Ond—‖ said Nektar in a pleading tone.
―We‘ve been testing the orphids for the last year to make sure there won‘t be another disaster when we release them,‖ said Ond, raising his voice to drown out his wife. ―And now even though we‘re satisfied that it‘s all good, the execs won‘t formally pull the trigger. There‘s been a lot of company politics; a lot of infighting. Truth is, Jeff Luty‘s pulling strings from his hideout. Hideout, hell, I might as well tell you that Luty‘s holed up in the friggin‘ ExaExa labs, hiding behind our super-expensive quantum-mirrored walls. Every time I see him he bawls me out for having stopped his nants. He‘s kind of losing it. But usually he gives me good advice about whatever I‘m working on. He‘s still brilliant, no matter what.‖
―You should turn him in to the police!‖ said Nektar. ―That man deserves to die.‖
Ond looked uncomfortable. ―If you knew Jeff as well as I do, you‘d have some sympathy for
him. He‘s a lonely man. That boy Carlos who died in the model rocket accident—he was the only
person Jeff ever loved. Yes, Jeff ‘s obnoxious and weird, and, like I say, he‘s getting nuttier all the time. Being cooped up isn‘t good for him. He thinks he‘s gonna invent teleportation, though who knows, he might actually do it. It‘d be a shame to kill him off. Like shattering the Venus de Milo. ‖
―Ond,‖ said Nektar. ―Jeff Luty wants to shatter the whole world!‖
―He‘s suffering enough as it is,‖ said Ond. ―For all practical purposes, he‘s living in solitary confinement. And most of the ExaExa board understands that we don‘t have to listen to him. They recognize that if we do things my way, the orphids will be autonomous, incorruptible, cost free. And, in the long run, profits will emerge. I‘ll tell you something else. A big downside of keeping Jeff around is that he wants to create an improved breed of nants. And, as it happens, my orphids are the best possible defense. It‘s like Jeff and I are in a chess match. And right now I‘m a rook and a bishop ahead. So that‘s why I‘ve gotten informal approval to go ahead and release the orphids.‖
―Ha,‖ said Nektar. ―Approval from yourself. You want to start the same nightmare all over again!‖ She tried to snatch the vial from Ond‘s hands, but he kept it out of her reach. Nektar‘s symmetric features were distorted by unhappiness and anger. Her voice grew louder. ―Mindless
machines eating everything!‖
―Mommy don‘t yell!‖ shrieked Chu.
―Chill, Nektar,‖ said Ond, fending her off with a lowered shoulder. ―Where‘s your nicotine
euphoria? Believe me, these little fellows aren‘t mindless. An individual orphid is roughly as smart as a talking dog. He has a petabyte of memory and he crunches at a petaflop rate. One can converse with him quite well. Watch and listen.‖ He said a string of numbers—a machine-coded Web
address—and an orphid interface appeared within the webeyes of Chu and the four adults.
The orphids in the vial were presenting themselves as cute little cartoon faces, maybe a
hundred of them, stylized yellow smileys with pink dots on their cheeks and gossamer wings coming out the sides of their heads.
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Rudy Rucker
―Hello, orphids,‖ said Jil. Bixie looked up at her curiously. To Jil, her daughter‘s face looked ineffably sweet and vulnerable behind the dancing images of nanomachines.
―Hello, Jil,‖ sang the orphids, their voices sounding in their listeners‘ earbuds.
―After I release you fellows, I want you to find all the cuttlefish in the San Francisco Bay,‖
Ond told the orphids. ―Ride them and send a steady stream of telemetry data to, uh, ftp-dot-exaexa-dot-org-slash-merzboat.‖
―Can you show us a real cuttlefish?‖ the orphids asked. Their massed voices were like an
insect choir, the individual voices slightly off pitch from one another.
― Those are cuttlefish,‖ said Ond, pointing to Craigor‘s holding tank. ―Settle on them, and we‘ll release them into the bay. Okay by you, Craigor?‖
―No way,‖ said Craigor. ―These Pharaohs took me four days to catch. Leave them alone,
Ond.‖
―They‘re my daddy‘s cuttlefish,‖ echoed Momotaro.
―I‘ll buy them from you,‖ said Ond, his eyes glowing. ―Market rate. The orphids will blanket
your boat, too. They can map out your stuff, network it, make it interactive. That‘s where the publicity for your sculpture comes in. Your assemblages will be little societies. The AI hook makes them hot.‖
―Market rate,‖ mused Craigor. ―Okay, sure.‖ He named a figure and Ond instantly transferred
the amount. ―All right!‖ said Craigor. ―Wiretap those Pharaohs and spring them from— what Nektar said. Death row.‖
―Weren‘t you listening to what Ond said about the orphids doubling their numbers?‖ cried
Nektar. ―We‘re doomed if he opens the vial.‖ She lunged at her husband. Ond danced away from his wife, keeping the orphids out of her reach, his grin a tense rictus. Chu was screaming again.
―Stop it, Ond!‖ exclaimed Jil. Things were spinning out of control. ―I don‘t want your
orphids on my boat. I don‘t want them on my kids.‖
―They‘re harmless,‖ said Ond. ―I guarantee it. And, I‘m telling you, this is gonna happen
anyway. I just thought it would be fun to kick off Orphid Night in front of you guys. Be a sport, Jil.
Hey, listen up, orphids, you‘re our friends, aren‘t you?‖
―Yes, Ond, yes,‖ chorused the orphids. The discordant voices overlapped, making tiny,
wavering beats.
―That was very nice of you to think of us, Ond,‖ said Jil carefully. ―But I think you better
take your family home now. They‘re upset and you‘re not yourself. Maybe you had a little too much beer. Put the orphids away.‖
―I think tracking the cuttles is a great idea,‖ put in Craigor, half a step behind Jil. ―And
tagging my stuff is good, too. My assemblages can wake up and think!‖
―Thank you, Craigor,‖ said Ond. He turned clumsily toward the cuttlefish tank. This time he
didn‘t see Nektar coming. She rushed him from behind, a beer bottle clutched in her hand, and she struck his wrist so hard that the vial of orphids flew free. The chaotically glowing jar rolled across p.27
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the deck, past Jil and Bixie, past Craigor and Momotaro. Chu caught up with the vial and, screaming like a banshee, wrenched it open and threw it high into the air on a trajectory toward the tank.
―Stop the yelling!‖ yelled Chu. Perhaps he was addressing the orphids. ―Make everything
tidy!‖
Through her webeyes, Jil saw illuminated orphid-dots spiraling out of the vial in midair, the
paths forking and splitting in two. And now her webeyes overlaid the scene with a tessellated grid showing each orphid‘s location. Some were zooming toward the cuttles, but others were homing in on the junk crowding the boat‘s aft. Additional view-windows kept popping up as the nanomachines multiplied.
Jil hugged Bixie to her side, covering the slender girl‘s dark hair with her hands, as if to keep the orphids off her. Ond bent forward, rubbing his wrist. Craigor gave Nektar a quick embrace, calming her down. And then he stared into the tank, using his webeyes to watch the orphids settle in.
Momotaro stood at his father‘