Cory Doctorow - The Rapture of the Nerds: A tale of the singularity, posthumanity, and awkward social situations

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Cory: For Alice. I renew my vow not to fork any new instances without your permission.

Charles: For Feorag. Just because!

Acknowledgments

Wed like to thank the editors and agents who have helped this pantomime horse get up and dance: at various times, their number have included Ellen Datlow, Lou Anders, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and our agents, Russ Galen and Caitlin Blasdell.

Contents

Jury Service

Huw awakens, dazed and confused.

This is by no means unusual, but for once Huws head hurts more than his bladder. Hes lying head down, on his back, in a bathtub. He scrabbles for a handhold and pulls himself upright. A tub is a terrible place to spend a night. Or a morning, come to think of itas he blinks, he sees that its midafternoon, and the light slanting in through a high window limns the strange bathrooms treacly Victorian fixtures with a roseate glow.

That was quite a party . He vaguely remembers the gathering dawn, its red light staining the wall outside the kitchen window as he discussed environmental politics with a tall shaven-headed woman with a blue forelock and a black leather minidress straight out of the twentieth century. (He has an equally vague memory of her defending a hard-core transhumanist line: Score nilnil to both sides.) This room wasnt a bathroom when he went to sleep in it: Bits of the bidet are still crawling into position, and theres a strong smell of VOCs in the air.

His head hurts.

Leaning over the sink, Huw twiddles the taps until they begin to dribble cold water. He splashes his face and runs his hand through his thinning hair, glances up at the mirror, and yells, Shit!

Theres a spindly black biohazard trefoil tattooed on his forehead. It wasnt there when he went to sleep, either.

Behind him, the door opens. Having a good morning? asks Sandra Lal, whose mutable attic this must therefore be. Shes playing with a small sledgehammer, tossing it into the air and catching it like a baton-twirler. Her grotesquely muscled forearm has veins that bulge with hyperpressured blood and hormones.

I wish, he says. Sandras parties tend to be wild. Am I too late for the dead dog?

Youre never too late. Sandra smiles. Coffees in the kitchen, which is on the ground floor today. Bonnie gave me a subscription to House of the Week and todays my new editiondont worry if you cant remember where everything is, just remember the entrance is at ground level, okay?

Coffee, Huw says. His head is pounding, but so is his bladder. Um. Can I have a minute?

Yes, but Id like my spare restroom back afterwards. Its going to be en suite, but first Ive got to knock out the wall through into the bedroom. She hefts her sledgehammer suggestively.

Huw slumps down on the toilet as Sandra shuts the door behind her and bounces off to roust out any other leftover revelers. He shivers as he relieves himself: Trapped in a mutating bathroom by a transgendered atheist Pakistani role-playing critic. Why do I keep ending up in these situations? he wonders as the toilet gives him a scented wash and blow-dry: When it offers him a pubic trim, he hastily retrieves his kilt and goes in search of coffee.

Sandras new kitchen is frighteningly moderna white room job that looks empty at first, sterile as an operating theater, but that oozes when you glance away, extruding worktops and food processors and fresh cutlery. If you slip, therell be a chair waiting to catch your buttocks on the way down. There are no separate appliances here, just tons of smart matter. Last night it looked charmingly gas-fired and Victorian, but now Huw can see it as it truly is, and he doesnt like what he can see. He feels queasy, wondering if he ate anything it had manufactured. But relief is at hand. At the far end of the room theres a traditional-looking dumb worktop with a battered old-fashioned electric cafetire sitting on it. And some joe who looks strangely familiar is sitting there reading a newssheet.

Huw nods at him. Uh, where are the mugs? he asks.

The guy stares at Huws forehead for an uncomfortable moment, then gestures at something foggy thats stacked behind the pot. Over there, he says.

Uh, right. The mugs turn out to be glassy aerogel cups with walls a centimeter thick, light as frozen cigar smoke and utterly untouched by human artistry and sweat. Theres no sign of the two earthenware mugs he made Sandra for her birthday: bloody typical. He takes the jug and pours, hand shaking. Hes got the sweats: What the hell did I drink? he wonders as he takes a sip.

He glances at his companion, who is evidently another survivor of the party: a medium-height joe, metabolism pegged somewhere in his mid-thirties, bald, with the unnaturally stringy build that comes from overusing a calorie-restriction implant. No piercings, no scars, tattoos, or neomorphismsapart from his figurewhich might be natural. That plus his black leather bodysuit means he could be a fellow naturalist. But this is Sandras house, and she has distressingly techie tastes.

Is that todays? he asks, glancing at the paper, which is lovingly printed on wood pulp using hot lead type by the historic reenactors down the other end of the valley.

It could be. The fellow puts it down and grins oddly. Had a good lie-in?

I woke up in the bathroom, Huw says. Wheres the milk?

Have some freshly squeezed cow juice. He shoves something that resembles a bowl of blue ice cubes at Huw. Huw pokes at one dubiously, then dunks it in his mug.

This stuff is organic, isnt it?

Only the best polymer-stabilized emulsions for Sandra, the joe says sardonically. Of course its organicnothing but carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and a bit of phosphorous and sulfur. Huw can tell when hes being wound up: he takes a sip, despite the provocation. Of course, you could say the same about your kilt, adds the stranger.

Ah. Huw puts the mug down, unsure where the conversations leading. Theres something disturbing about the joe: A sense of dj vu nagging at the edges of his mind, as if

You dont remember me, do you?

Alcohol has this effect on me at times, Huw says in a grateful rush. Ive got an awful memory

The names Bonnie, says the man. You spent most of the early hours trying to cop a feel by convincing me that Nietzsche was responsible for global cooling. Huw stares at him and feels something in his head do an uneasy flip-flop: Yes, the resemblance is clear, this is the woman he was talking to last night.

S amazing what a good bathroom can do by way of gender reassignment surgery these days, you know? the bald guyBonnie?continues. Then he winks at Huw with what Huw realizes, to his horror, is either lascivious intent or broad and filthy-minded humor. Hows your hangover? Are you up to picking things up where we left off?

Aaaugh, says Huw as the full force of the post-party cultural hangover hits him between the eyes, right beneath the biohazard trefoil, and the coffee hits his stomach. Need fresh air now

* * *

Huw makes sure to wake up in his own bed the next morning. Its ancient and creaky, the springs bowed to conform to his anatomy, and he wove the blankets himself on the treadle-powered loom in the back parlor that Mum and Dad left him when they ascended, several decades before. (Huw is older than he looks, thanks to an unasked-for inheritance of chromosomal hackery, and has for the most part become set in his ways: incurious and curmudgeonly. He has his reasons.) His alarm clock is a sundial sketched on the whitewashed wall opposite in bold lines of charcoal, slightly smudged; his lifestyle a work of wabi in motion.