With cool menace one guy said, “Okay, don’t put up a fight and you won’t get hurt.”
I did the only thing I could think of. I yelled for help.
“FooDog! Save us!”
And he did.
SCURF mediates between your senses and the ubik. Normally the SCURF-wearer is in control of course. But when someone breaks down your security and overrides your inputs, there’s no predicting what he can feed you.
FooDog sent satellite closeups of recent solar flares to the vision of our would-be-kidnappers, and the latest sludge-metal hit, amped up to eleven, to their ears.
All four went down screaming.
Cherry erased any remnants of resistance with a flurry of kicks and punches, no doubt learned from her bar-brawling brother Dolphin.
When we had finished tying up our commando friends, and FooDog had shut off the assault on their senses, I said, “Okay, nothing’s worth risking any of us getting hurt. I’m going to surrender now.”
Just as I was getting ready to call somebody in Venezuela, Che Guevara returned. He looked morose.
“All right, you bastard, you win! Let’s talk.”
I smiled as big as I could. “Tell me first, what was the final straw? It was the sex toys, wasn’t it?”
He wouldn’t answer, but I knew I was right.
9. FREE TO BE YOU AND ME
So that’s the story of how I ran the country for three days. One day of political honeymoon, one day of trade war, and one day to clean up as best we could, before stepping down.
As FooDog predicted, there were minimal personal repercussions from our teasling of the political system. Loopholes were closed, consensus values re-affirmed, and a steady hand held the tiller of the ship of state once again.
We never did learn who sent the commandos against us. I think they were jointly hired by nativist factions in league with the Venezuelans. Both the UWA and the South Americans wanted the war over with fast. But since our assailants never went on trial after their surgery to give them new eyes and eardrums, the secret never came out.
Cherry and I got enough simoleans out of the settlement with the Venezuelans to insure that we’d never have to work for the rest of our lives. But she still goes out with the Oyster Pirates from time to time, and I still can’t resist the call of mongo.
We still live on Sandybump, but the house is bigger now, thanks to a new wing for the kids.
As for FooDog—well, I guess he did have ulterior motives in helping us. We don’t see him much anymore in the flesh, since he relocated to his ideal safe haven.
Running that ganja plantation on the Moon as his personal fiefdom takes pretty much all his time.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My thanks to all the editors whose support made the original publication of these stories possible; and to Brett and Sandra for giving them a second home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Di Filippo sold his first story in 1977. In the subsequent thirty-five years, he’s had nearly that number of books published. He hopes the next thirty-five years are as generous. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with his partner of many years, Deborah Newton; a calico cat named Penny Century; and a chocolate-coloured cocker spaniel named, with jaw-dropping unoriginality, Brownie.
PUBLICATION HISTORY
“Providence” first appeared in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three (February 2009, Solaris Books).
“Argus Blinked” first appeared in Nature, Vol. 449 (October 2007).
“Life in the Anthropocene” first appeared in The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF (May 2010, Robinson Publishing).
“Bombs Away!” first appeared in Nature, Vol. 460 (August 2009).
“Cockroach Love” first appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #41 (October 2009).
“Waves and Smart Magma” first appeared in The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF (August 2009, Running Press).
“To See Infinity Bare” first appeared in The New and Perfect Man (Postscripts #24/25) (April 2011, PS Publishing).
“The End of the Great Continuity” first appeared in Postscripts #13, Winter 2007 (PS Publishing).
“Fjaerland” first appeared in Flurb #12 (September 2011).
“The HPL Commonplace Book” first appeared in A Book of Unspeakable Things: Works Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book (April 2008).
“Professor Fluvius’s Palace of Many Waters” first appeared in Postscripts #15, Summer 2008 (PS Publishing).
“Yes We Have No Bananas” first appeared in Eclipse Three: New Science Fiction and Fantasy (October 2009, Night Shade Books).
“A Partial and Conjectural History of Dr. Mueller’s Panoptical Cartoon Engine” first appeared in nobrow cartoons (October 2008).
“The New Cyberiad” first appeared in We Think, Therefore We Are (January 2009, DAW Books).
“iCity” first appeared in The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Two (February 2008, Solaris Books).
“Return to the 20th Century” first appeared in Tales of the Shadowmen 3: Danse Macabre (January 2007, Black Coat Press).
“Murder in Geektopia” first appeared in Sideways in Crime (June 2008, Solaris Books).
“The Omniplus Ultra!” first appeared in Nature, Vol. 464 (March 2010).
“Wikiworld” first appeared in Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge (February 2007, Pyr).
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