The hacker and the ants

FIVE

While I was driving 280 across town to East San Jose, I fished out the scrap of paper that Nga’s cousin had given me-5778 White Road. I flicked on the electronic map attached to my dash and told it Nga’s address.

Intense green lines appeared, showing a diagram of San Jose, with a highlighted path indicating the best route from my satellite-calculated current location to Nga Vo’s.

The east side of San Jose was bounded by rounded yellow foothills that undulated hugely toward some mountain peaks that you could see on a smogless day. The hills weren’t very good for hiking because they were bone-dry with tough sharp grass that stabbed your ankles. But they were nice to look at from the freeway.

As I drew closer to Nga’s, the map rescaled itself, always maintaining a magnification that just held the bright wriggle of the remaining route. Right before crucial turns, the map would speak to me in a quiet woman’s voice. Carol’s voice, actually. Last year I’d fed the device a phonetic map of Carol’s voice. I’d thought that was funny, since Carol was terrible at reading maps. Carol had thought it was stupid of me, not to mention being an invasion of her sacred privacy, almost as bad as my using Studly to peek at her taking a pee. Whatever. The phonetic map was a good hack, and whether Carol liked it or not, I could still hear the sound of her voice, which was something I missed almost as much as the smell of her body.

Two blocks from the Vos’ house, the map showed me something I didn’t want to see: a detailed, stippled picture of an ant. A cunning dusting of dither pixels added informative shadings to the image. The scapes of this ant’s antennae were tilted toward me, and her mandibles were wide open. Her body rocked back and forth in the sawing motions of stridulation. The map’s tiny speaker began stringing fragments of Carol’s voice into deep, demented chirps.

The sound was scary, but also fun to listen to, in a sick kind of way. It was as good as the thrash I might hear on like “Ted Bed’s Skunk Bunk on the Rhythm Wave of the West, Radio KFJC, 89.7 on your FM dial, broadcasting from Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California,” a personal favorite. Ted Bed always sounded like he’d been up all night flying on candyflip in a cyberclub.

Most kids couldn’t afford their own cyberdecks, but there were plenty of clubs with wall-sized Abbott wafer screens on three out of the four walls. Users in the club wore stereo-shutter flicker glasses. Cheap and dirty video technology would capture their dancing images and put them up into the big cube of shared cyberspace above the dance floor, and the deck would mix the dancers with daemons, Simmies, and active tool icons: virtual buttons, dials, and sliders the dancers could use to change the synthetic musical sounds. Flying on a and e: everyone inside the same rave deck, everyone inside the controls. It would be interesting if the ants showed up in those clubs. The Attack of the Giant Ants! It’s Them!

The ants, the ants, the ants. I had a feeling that it was thanks to the ants I’d been fired from GoMotion. Thanks to the ants I’d seen the Death simmie, that thing that called itself Hex DEF6. Thanks to the ants, Hex DEF6 had gotten the opportunity to threaten to have me and my children tortured and killed. As I reached toward the map to turn it off, the ant image rocked her head and let her pixels turn into a plat-a lot-by-lot map-of Nga’s street. I turned the map off anyway. I had arrived.

The houses were tidy one-story slab-foundation ranch-style homes, each painted a different pastel color, and each with rosebushes blooming in its front yard. All the houses in sight were architecturally identical, and all were equally well kept up-all save for one gray, run-down, whipped-to-shit number down at the corner. The whipped-to-shit clone had two Toyota minitrucks in the driveway: one good truck and one whipped-to-shit truck with no wheels.

The Vos’ house, on the other hand, was pale pink with white and yellow roses and the Vos’ car was a beige Dodge Colt. The golden foothills rose up behind the Vo home like stage scenery. Nga greeted me on the small front stoop, her sly, adorable face dimpling with smiles. We stepped into the living room, where Nga’s parents, aunt, and grandmother sat on two couches.

The room had wall-to-wall carpeting, and the windows were covered with flowered drapes. There was a mat by the front door; I understood that I should remove my shoes. I crouched to get my sandals off, facing a big red and gold calendar from Lion Supermarkets which hung over an assemblage of electronic equipment: a CD jukebox, a bigscreen DTV, a gameplayer, and an S-cube deck. On the top of the machines were two white nylon doilies with vases of plastic flowers. There was a Vietnamese religious shrine on the other side of the room. The shrine was a red-painted wooden table holding up narrow corniced shelves, the whole thing a couple of feet wide. On the table were joss sticks, a bowl of fruit, some red tubes holding candle-emulating light bulbs, and a picture of a god. There were other, more mysterious items in wrappings on the shelves.

With much laughing and many interruptions from her mother, Nga introduced me all around. The family consisted of Nga’s parents Thieu Vo and Huong Vo, Huong’s sister Mong Pham, Huong and Mong’s old mother Loan Vu, Mong’s son Khanh Pham, who was home but not presently visible, and Nga’s two little brothers The and Tho, who were still at school. Nga had an older brother named Vinh as well, “but he not here very often.”

Old Loan Vu had white hair, and said nothing. Her eyes were very slanted. Nga’s parents and aunt were slender with broad faces and prominent cheekbones. All of them were interminably smoking cheap cigarettes.

Now Nga’s mother Huong led me on a tour of the house. The bedrooms were quite bare, with all the bedding stripped off the large beds save for the flowered bottom sheets. Like the front room, each bedroom had flowered drapes and a red and gold Lion Supermarkets calendar.

In the spotless kitchen, we found Khanh Pham, the one who’d handed me Nga’s address at the croissant shop. He was sitting at the round kitchen table reading a motorcycle magazine. He had a big Adam’s apple and long, shiny black hair. Seeing us come in, he twitched his head in an abrupt tic-like gesture that served to flip his hair out of his eyes. This nervous motion reminded me of my son Tom.

I was too old to try to date the same-age cousin of a boy like this. My coming here had been a terrible mistake. But now that I’d strayed so far, why not soldier on?

Nga looked me full in the eyes, holding her perfect mouth just so, that knowing mouth with the irregular border on the left edge of its lipsticked upper lip. What a thing it would be to kiss Nga’s mouth. I would kiss her for a long time, and then I would unzip my fly. We would be parked in my car or, even better, sitting in my home. Nga would sigh and put her tiny little hands on my penis…

Soldier on, old top, soldier on.

“Do you have a motorcycle?” I asked Khanh Pham.

“I have small motorbike, but my cousin Vinh will get me better one soon.” He spread open the magazine’s pages and pointed to a picture of a black Kawasaki. “This kind.”

“That’s great!” I said, though Huong and Nga looked nervous at the sound of Vinh’s name.

Now The and Tho got home from elementary school and came running into the kitchen to see what was up. They spoke perfect California English and they had burr-cut hair. They wore black shorts and white T-shirts. The was one or two inches taller than Tho. Nga introduced us, and then the two little brothers went out in the backyard to play kickball.

Khanh Pham followed us back into the living room. I sat down in an armchair which reclined abruptly back in the style of a La-Z-Boy. Nga covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed. I lurched upright and perched on the edge of the chair.

“What your work?” asked Huong Vo.

“I am a computer programmer,” said I, knowing she would like this answer. “I work for a big company called West West. We are designing personal robots.”

“So. Personal robot. Very nice.” Huong held her politely composed face just so. She was nearly as beautiful as Nga.

“What can robot do?” asked Khanh.

“Well, it can clean, and bring things, and work in the garden.”

“I don’t think we need,” said Nga’s mother, shaking her head and laughing. “Children can do.”

“Well, yes. But if someone doesn’t have children or a helper, then they might want our robots. And of course there are special functions that our robots can perform.”

Thieu Vo interrupted at this point to get a summary of our conversation from his wife. She filled him in with quick, nasal phonemes. They had some rapid back and forth, and then father Thieu burst out with a comment that sent the rest of the family, even the grandmother, into peals of ambiguous Asian laughter.

“He want to know,” translated Khanh, “if your robot can fight dog.”

“I suppose he could. He’s agile and durable. He might hurt the dog.”

“We have neighbor with dog very bad,” said Nga’s mother. “He make dirt in our yard and he bark. We scare he bite our The and Tho. Our neighbor don’t listen. He don’t speak English or Vietnamese.” Meaning that he was Hispanic.

“His dog pit bull,” put in Nga Vo. “It name Dutch. I wonder can we see your robot fight him.”

“Well… okay.” This was my chance to really get in good with the Vos. “As a matter of fact I have my robot in the trunk of my car. Should I get him? His name is Studly.”

“So. Stud Lee.”

The Vo family followed me outside to see Studly get out of the trunk of my car. Bass-heavy music drifted down the street from the whipped-to-shit house-the bad dog’s home, of course. I popped the trunk.

“Okay, Studly, time to get out!”

“This is not West West,” observed Studly, once he was out on the sidewalk. “What do you want me to do here, Jerzy?”

“Studly, this is the Vo family. Bow to them.”

Studly raised up on his legs and motored backward and forward to sweep his body through a deep smooth bow. “I am pleased to meet the Vo family.”

The Vos laughed meaninglessly.

“Studly, this here is the Vos’ property.” I pointed to the house and yard. “I want you to defend the Vos’ property from a pit bull dog named Dutch.”

“Where is a pit bull dog named Dutch, Jerzy?”

“He always in front room in gray house at 5782,” said Nga Vo. “Nobody know when he come out.”

“I can make Dutch come out,” yelled small Tho in his T-shirt. Whooping shrilly, Tho ran up onto the stoop of 5782 and jumped up and down until there was some sign from within. Tho turned on his heels and tore back toward us. The door of the run-down gray house flew open and a heavy, low-set dog came charging out, barking furiously.

The Vos and I hurried back up on their front stoop to give Studly a clear battlefield. “ Git him, Studly,” I repeatedly called, hoarsening my voice. “ Git him! Git the dog! ”

The Vos cheered along: “ Stud Lee! Stud Lee! Stud Lee! ”

Except for Studly and Dutch, the yards and sidewalks were deserted. Across the street were more pastel houses, and above them you could see the smog of San Jose, and above that the eternal blank blue California sky with the western sun beating down.

Studly was standing high up on his flexed legs, balancing himself with nervous back-and-forth rollings of his wheels. He had his pincer-manipulator closed tight, and his human-shaped hand was clenched into a fist. The dog all but ignored Studly in his rush toward the Vos’ steps, but Studly pushed forward into the dog’s path and, quite suddenly, brought his fist down on the dog’s head.

Dutch yelped in surprise, then snarled in rage. Studly pressed his advantage and used his pincer to give the dog a sharp poke in his side. “Go away,” said Studly. “Bad dog. Go away.”

The sound of the robot’s voice set off an attack reflex in the pit bull, and he sprang at Studly’s body. Studly nearly toppled over backward, but he was able to spin his wheels in reverse quickly enough to balance himself.

Dutch took that for a retreat, and now belligerently made his stand, planting his feet and putting his head down low to bark the more aggressively. Quite undaunted, Studly surged forward and aimed another blow of his fist at Dutch’s head.

The dog flinched back and Studly kept on coming. He got in a good poke with his pincer-hand, and then Dutch was in full flight. Studly chased him all the way to his house, leaving him sitting on his front stoop pretending he wasn’t interested.

“Come back, Studly,” I called.

The Vos were still cheering Studly’s victory when the gray house’s door opened and a heavyset bearded man stepped out. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, and he had homemade tattoos on his thick arms.

“What the fuck you fuckheads doin‘?” he hollered.

I stood on the sidewalk with Studly, me in my shorts, sandals, flashy shirt, and patterned socks.

“Oh, hi there,” I called. “I’ve just been showing the Vo family my robot. If we’re not careful, he might kill your dog. I hope you can keep your dog away from the Vos’ yard!”

“You keep your fuckin‘ robot away from my fuckin’ yard!”

“Yes, indeed!” I said, grinning away. “Live and let live!”

“Fuckin‘ geek!” shouted Dutch’s owner, but went heavily back into his home, the dog slinking in after.

The Vos discussed all this in Vietnamese for a minute, and then Nga’s mother Huong Vo put the question, “How much robot like that cost?”

“Well they’re not for sale quite yet. But they are going to be fairly expensive. Maybe fifty thousand dollars at first. Twenty thousand for the software kit and thirty thousand for the parts. And if you don’t assemble it yourself, the labor can run another ten or twenty thousand.”

“Who will buy?”

“The companies are trying to figure that out.” To put it mildly. None of us was sure if there would be a market for personal robots at all. For hackers like me, the push to build small autonomous robots was not about financial gain. For us, designing mobile robots was a quasireligious quest, a chance to participate in the Great Work of handing off the torch of life to the world of the machines. But there was no point trying to explain this to someone as practical-minded as Mrs. Vo. I cleared my throat and cut to the chase.

“Uh, say, would it be all right if I took Nga out for dinner and a movie tonight?”

Huong Vo was ready for this one. “We very happy you have dinner here,” she smiled with an emphatic nod. Her sister Mong Pham smiled and nodded at me, too. Dinner here.

“You and Nga sit on patio,” Mong Pham suggested. “Huong and I fix dinner.”

Tho got the kickball from the backyard, and then he and Studly began playing soccer against Khanh and The in the driveway. To maneuver better, Studly rose up into a crouch, though not so high that Khanh and Tho could kick the ball between his legs.

“Robot very smart,” said Nga admiringly. “Now we sit on patio.”

She led me in through the living room, where father Thieu Vo and grandmother Loan Vu had started watching a maximum-volume Vietnamese TV show. What with 1024 digital channels on Fibernet San Jose, there were over a dozen Vietnamese channels to choose from, and Thieu and Loan were watching four of them at once: one in each quarter of the big screen. They were smoking like chimneys, and the digital TV noise was a weird blend of news, drama, variety show, and home shopping channel. The screen was a big cheap Abbott wafer whose colors were mostly beige and pink. Though Loan ignored me, Thieu smiled and nodded at me and said, “Stud Lee!”

Nga sped us through the kitchen, and we seated ourselves on two chairs on the faded green concrete slab that was the patio. Nga Vo and I were alone at last, or nearly so.

“How did you and your family escape from Vietnam?” I asked.

“We go in boat to Philippine Island. It very hard for my father to arrange. Boat motor break before we get to Philippine Island. Some of our people die. Then big ship see us and take us to camp in Philippine Island. It very bad there. Finally we can come to California.”

“Was it hard to get permission to come?”

“We have my brother Vinh to be sponsor for us. Vinh is live in California since seven year.”

“Seven years. I moved to California three years ago. I was a math professor back East, and here I became a computer hacker. How long have you been in California, Nga?”

“On Tet it will be two year. Do you know when Tet is, Rugby?” She giggled at the thought that I might not.

“Call me Jerzy. Is Tet in October?”

Nga looked surprised by my ignorance. “Tet is start of February. You don’t know anything about Vietnamese!”

“Hey, I’m willing to learn. I’m glad to finally have a chance to talk to you. I think you are very beautiful. I would like so much to kiss you.”

“Yes, I will kiss you, Rugby,” said naughty Nga. She leaned forward in her chair. I stood up, leaned over, and put my lips on hers. Blood pounded in my ears as the world’s sounds continued-the shouts of her brothers out in front, the endless yelling of the giant digital TV, and the soft chattering of the women in the kitchen.

Nga’s lips were everything I had hoped for them to be, and the smell of her mouth was completely intoxicating. As we continued to kiss, she cocked her head back and parted her lips so that we could touch tongues. Nga was bad to the bone. She made a barely audible noise in the bottom of her throat and my heart redoubled its pounding…

“Dinner is ready,” called Mong Pham from the kitchen door.

Dinner was dozens of cigarette-sized egg rolls and an earthenware pot filled with steamed rice and squid. The round kitchen table was pulled out to the center of the room, and the nine of us sat around it. Huong gave me and Thieu cans of Budweiser from the fridge. Laughing Nga explained to me about fish sauce, a bottled extract which they all poured on all their food. Fermented anchovy, apparently, though it tasted smoother than I would have thought. Smooth, hell, it tasted super. I ate a lot of everything.

Just as Mong, Huong, and Nga began to clear off the dinner table there was a sound at the front door, and then a thin-faced, pompadoured Vietnamese man came strutting in. Seeing me sitting there at the kitchen table, he stopped in surprise.

Nga introduced me to him. It was Vinh Vo. Rather than saying hello to me, he made some remark in Vietnamese that caused Mong Pham to snap at him. He lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall, talking to the family in Vietnamese without ever looking at me. Nga had fallen silent.

Too much stress! I excused myself to go out front and check on Studly.

Dusk had fallen. Seeing no sign of Studly in the yard or driveway, I looked into the Vo’s dusty, sunbaked garage, built on the same concrete slab as their living quarters. The garage held a washing machine and a dryer, twelve shiny oriental dining chairs, a lawn mower, a leaf blower, a weedeater, a propane barbecue grill, a moped, and a chain saw. Along one wall someone had built a row of rough plywood cupboards. These were held shut by cheap steel padlocks.

“Hey, Studly!” I called, walking out to the end of the driveway. No answer.

Parked behind my Animata and the Vos’ Colt was a battered old Dodge Panel van, sloppily painted with white house enamel. Vinh’s wheels no doubt. I opened my car trunk to make sure Studly hadn’t gotten back inside. No indeed.

The early evening street was as empty as it had been in the daytime, only now there was a car or two in each driveway. All down the street, each house’s curtained front window pulsed with the blue-white hues of television light, each house save for 5782, where Dutch and his burly owner lived. 5782 was thumping to the beat of thuddy music.

Could someone have stolen Studly? My suspicions instantly centered on 5782. I headed down the sidewalk, looking this way and that. Just short of 5782’s garage, I was able to see into the house’s backyard. Guess who was back there?

“Get out of there, Studly,” I called, though not too loudly. “Come here to me.”

“Just a minute, you stupid piece of shit,” said the machine, not even turning its vision sensors to face me. It seemed like the ants had definitely had an effect on Studly’s brain.

I went along the side of the garage and into 5782’s backyard. Studly was balancing on a picnic table. Apparently he’d reached up and cut the telephone/television Fibernet cable that led from the utility pole to 5782. He was holding a cut end of the cable up to his head, holding the fiber-optic cable cross section up to the laser-scanner that was mounted in his forehead.

“What are you doing, Studly? Are you trying to send a signal to the guy’s digital TV or something? Why?”

“I am continuing the great work of artificial life which you and Roger Coolidge have begun.” I realized then that he was holding the outgoing part of the cable, the cable that led to the utility pole. The part that led to 5782 was lying in a heap on the ground. Studly was feeding information into the Fibernet! “I am nearly finished with this present task,” intoned Studly. “And then I would like to leave this area very soon.”

There was a high yell behind me. I’d expected it to be Dutch’s owner, but instead it was Vinh Vo.

“Hey there, Mister Yuppie! You’re in the wrong yard! My family’s waiting for you.” His smooth English had almost no accent, though he spoke with the characteristic Vietnamese evenness of tone.

“I just have to get my robot. Get down from there, Studly! Get down!”

The sound of my voice made the pit bull start barking and throwing himself against the inside of the 5782 back door. Bark. Thud. Bark. Thud.

I grabbed Studly’s leg above the wheel and shook him. Bark. Thud. Finally Studly sent his last byte and let the cable fall. Bark. Thud. Studly hopped off the table, cushioning the fall with skillful flexings of his springy legs. Bark. Thud. Scrunch!

5782’s back door gave way and Dutch came roaring out. Vinh, Studly, and I sped for the Vos’ yard. Dutch ended up between us and the house. He was slavering and edging toward us-toward me in particular-the pit bull was getting ready to bite me!

“Stop the dog, Studly!” I cried. “He wants to kill me!” Studly got between me and the dog and Vinh tugged on my sleeve.

“Let’s get in my van!”

I hopped into the passenger seat of Vinh’s van. A partition behind the seat sealed off the cargo area. It felt close and stuffy in the van’s cab. Vinh leaned on the horn as if to upset the neighborhood further. Lights snapped on here and there.

“Bad dog,” shouted Studly over the honking of the horn. “Go home!” He poked Dutch just the same as before, but this time Dutch was not so ready to retreat.

Someone peeked out from the front door of the Vos’ house, but Vinh leaned across me to wave them back in. The blare of the van’s horn was remarkably loud. Studly and the maddened dog continued to tussle.

“Could you stop the honking, Vinh?”

“I like noise. Maybe I can sell you something.” He continued to lean on the horn. “I can sell your company some very attractively priced Y-nine-seven-oh-seven chips.”

I looked at Vinh in puzzlement. The Y9707 happened to be exactly the kind of chip that was going to be used for the brains of both the GoMotion Veep and the West West Adze. It was an integrated gigaflop supercomputer chip with a terabyte of onboard RAM. The Y9707 sold for about twelve hundred dollars wholesale, and each robot needed exactly one of them. When it came time to start selling the robot kitware, the availability of Y9707s was going to be crucial. It was entirely possible that, as the trade war heated up, GoMotion and West West might try and get exclusive distribution rights to Y9707 supplies.

“Why do you mention that particular chip?” I asked.

Vinh smiled smugly. “So you are interested?”

“Eventually my company might perhaps be interested. It’s hard to say at this point. How much would you want per chip?”

“Maybe one dollar on the ten. Say $120 per Y9707 chip. I have several hundred of them, with more coming in. Other kinds of chips, too. Oh yes, I can see you are interested,” said Vinh. “You can always reach me through my family.”

“We’ll see.” I had a strong feeling that Vinh’s chips would turn out to be stolen. I had no desire to get involved in something as criminal as receiving stolen goods. Outside, the robot and dog fight seemed to be over. Studly was over by the corner of the Vos’ house, and Dutch was nowhere in sight. “I have to go get my robot before he wanders off again.” I opened the van door and stepped out.

“And make sure you act like a gentleman with my sister, Mister Yuppie!” With his horn still blaring, Vinh revved his engine and lurched his van away.

Studly came wheeling up to me. “I think we should leave very soon, Jerzy,” said he. I noticed that Studly’s pincer was dark and wet. I peered closer. Blood.

“Where’s the dog?”

“I dragged him behind the Vos’ house.”

“You killed him?”

“It seems so. I poked very hard at his neck and the material of the animal’s skin gave way.”

“You’ve… you’ve killed something, Studly! You aren’t ever supposed to kill!”

“I was only defending you and your friends.”

“Oh brother. I have to go back inside for a few minutes before we leave. Meanwhile I want you to drag that poor dog’s body to the yard behind its own house. And then you get in the trunk of my car and close the trunk, you hear?”

“To hear is to obey, master.”

“Oh, and one more thing. What did you feed into the Fibernet back there, Studly?”

“GoMotion ants.”

“Why?”

“A voice in my head told me to.”

“Oh great. Now drag the dog and get in the trunk.”

“If you hear sirens approaching,” said Studly, “then it will very definitely be time for us to leave.”

I went back into the Vos’.

They were sitting in the living room, having dessert in front of the television. Dessert was little dishes of gnarly clear pudding with lotus roots in it. Nga served me a double helping, but instead of eating it, I just mashed it around with my spoon. Vinh and Studly had taken away my appetite.

The TV was blasting a single Vietnamese channel now, a news show just as evil and farty and boring and fascist as American network fare. Only then, almost right away, here came a free-lance freestyle commercial from the wild and crazy GoMotion ants, one of (I would later learn) 1024 separate commercials kustom-krafted in real time for each of the broadcast channels of Fibernet San Jose.

On the Vietnamese news channel, the ant ad came layered onto a commercial for some toothpaste called KENTUCKY. The ad featured a smiling Vietnamese woman with a shiny mouth as big as an old Buick’s grill. She flipped her bobbed blue-black hair and smiled some more, and then she looked down at the gleaming ivory-tiled counter by her gold-fixtured sink with its deep red basin, looked down lovingly at her KENTUCKY toothpaste in its crimson tube with aqua lettering. But now*BAM* here came one, two, three, twenty, a hundred, a thousand ants crawling across the scene! The perspective-mapped ants were fast and realistic; they capered about among the images as the commercial ground on.

The GoMotion ants that Studly had squirted up into the Fibernet had already made their way to the Vos’ digital television.

The ants rocked their gasters up and down, and their chirping came out of the TV speaker. Thieu Vo commented in surprise, and Nga laughed. What a crazy way to sell toothpaste! And then a contingent of the ants changed their colors and crawled onto the toothpaste tube. The ants had all been a fine lustrous dark brown to start with, but now one mass of them turned crimson, and another contingent turned aqua. Like live pixels, the colored ants crawled over the image of the toothpaste tube and arranged themselves so that now the writing on the tube read, “GoMotion Inc.”

GoMotion was going to be in serious trouble for this. But it wasn’t my fault, I was out of GoMotion, and the ants were GoMotion’s exclusive intellectual property. A contract condition of working for GoMotion was that anything you programmed belonged to them. Yes, the liability was GoMotion’s, not mine.

But what if it came out that it was my robot Studly who’d put the GoMotion ants into the Fibernet? Just this morning, Trevor had told me that in the eyes of GoMotion, Studly was now legally mine. He’d said Jeff Pear had even sent me a letter about it. Had Roger Coolidge known all this was coming?

Twelve of the ants braced their little legs and began inflating themselves, growing big enough to fill the picture, with all the small ants still chirping away in the background. The inflated ants reared up on their hind legs, formed a chorus line, and began to do a side-to-side two-step, each ant holding her neighbor’s middle leg, and each ant waving her two front legs overhead in ecstasy. Watch the GoMotion ants get down! The background chirping syncopated into Martian music with a high ululation in the background.

It took me a second to realize that the high ululation was the sound of sirens heading this way.

I jumped to my feet. “I’m sorry,” I shouted to the ant-enthralled Vos. “I have to leave right away. Thank you for the terrific meal.”

They looked at me confusedly, and Nga followed me out. She was expecting me to kiss her good-night, but the sirens were only a block or two away-they must have traced the cut cable that fast. I planted a quick smack on Nga’s lovely mouth-oh, how badly I wanted to linger! “I’ll come see you tomorrow at the bakery,” I promised, and sprinted down to my Animata. Studly was just finishing getting into my trunk, thank God. I slammed the trunk closed and peeled out.

A cop car drove past me on my way out. Soon the cops would find the cut Fibernet cable, and talk to Dutch’s bereaved owner, and then they’d know to arrest the guy in the red Animata. Instead of making a flat-out run for home, I decided first to go a short distance and lie low.

“I want to go to 707 °Caile De La Cuesta,” I told my map. This was the address of Carol’s condo, which I knew was about a mile away, even though I’d never been there.

The condo complex was like an old two-story motel with ragged vegetation. They had a parking lot, and I pulled my car into the farthest corner, behind a garbage dumpster. I could have just sat there, but I wanted to see what else the ants were going to do on TV. I hoped that Hiroshi was out and that Carol was home. Getting out of the car, I saw that the ground was littered with empty spacedust vials. I thought I heard voices-maybe there were people in the dumpster? I didn’t want to look. I set the car’s security systems to maximum alert and headed across the asphalt to the breezeway.

I found the inscription “C. Rugby amp; H. Takemuru” on the mailbox marked 2D. Carol had always liked the sound of “Rugby” better than her maiden name, which had been Strumpf. It bummed me out to see her name on a mailbox with another man’s. The complex had a small pool in the middle; the kids had told me about the pool. I went up a flight of stairs and knocked on 2D.

“What are you doing here, Jerzy?” demanded Carol when she opened the door. I could see Tom, Ida, and Hiroshi inside. They were watching TV. Carol looked prettier than I remembered her. Calmer.

“It… it’s about…”

“Daddy!” yelled Tom, happy to see me. “There’s ants on television!”

“The cereal box says GoMotion!” added Ida.

I heard the siren of a police car speeding by. “Let me come in for a minute, Carol. One of my computer programs is getting me into trouble.”

“Oh, all right. Hiroshi, do you remember. Jerzy?”

“Yes,” said Hiroshi, regarding me coolly. “Of course.”

“How’s the sushi business?” I said. “Aren’t you ever worried you’ll chop off a finger?”

“Business is fine,” said Hiroshi. “But Carol and I have many expenses.”

“It’s a good thing you came by, Jerzy,” chimed in Carol. “We’re going to have to work out the child support payments. I have an appointment tomorrow with a lawyer.”

“Let’s not discuss it in front of the kids, Carol.”

“The kids know our marriage is over, Jerzy. Especially now that you’ve started bringing strange women into the house.”

I wanted to glare at Tom and Ida for spilling the beans, but they looked so wretchedly uncomfortable that I couldn’t do it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It was a mistake.” The simplest way to get through any conversation with Carol these days was always to keep saying I was sorry. “I’m sorry,” I said again, and glared at her. I was stupid ever to have thought even for a minute that I wanted her back, the bitch.

“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” said Carol.

“Look at the ants now!” interrupted Tom. He made room on the couch. “You can sit by me, Daddy.”

I sat down.

The dancing ants had shrunk, and all thousand-plus of them were swarming around like living pixels, drawing the shapes and forms of classic chaotic attractors. It was magnificent.

“Put the TV back on the channel we were watching,” said Carol. “Is this MTV or something?”

“This is the channel we were watching, Ma,” said Tom, and cackled happily. He loved it when grown-ups got confused and were wrong.

“Tom!”

“Can I see the controller for a minute?” asked Hi-roshi. Tom handed it to him and Hiroshi began switching channels. Since the ant programs were already down in the DTV chips of Carol’s digital TV, it seemed like the ants were everywhere. On each channel, the play of telecast images was being overlaid with multicolored ant images, and when Hiroshi pressed the button to show the 32-by-32 grid of all 1024 channels in miniature at once, you could see ants on every channel. The ant programs were playing off what the individual channels were broadcasting, so each channel still looked different.

Hackers call it a bit-blit, the trick that you use to move a mouse cursor across a computer screen without hurting the image that’s underneath. On every channel, the ants were bit-blitting their own images around like crazy. Hiroshi tuned back to the original channel, which was now showing-or trying to show- a Special News Bulletin.

“A new kind of computer virus has infested Fibernet San Jose,” intoned some newsperson’s plummy tones. On his or her shoulders was a giant ant head complete with intricately gnashing mandibles and sickening saliva.

“Our communication engineers report that the problem now seems to be under control,” continued the announcer, as the ant’s antennae wigwagged and wambled. “The source of the infestation is thought to be a broken Fibernet cable on White Road in East San Jose. We will bring you live, on-the-spot coverage from there soon. And now we will attempt to broadcast the conclusion of tonight’s episode of ‘Smart Women, Dumb Men.’” Everyone in the televised newsroom wore an ant’s head.

Back on “Smart Women, Dumb Men,” all of the characters’ skins had been coated with the crawling computer graphics known as “turmites” in punning homage to computer pioneer Alan Turing. A simple turmite is a moving point-sized computation that hops from pixel to pixel, changing some of the pixels’ colors and adjusting its own motions and moods according to the colors it finds; the resulting pattern is like fabulously intricate lace.

Meanwhile the “Smart Women, Dumb Men” sound track was being real time-sampled into aleatory karakoe — meaning that the ants were generating an artful series of pitches and volumes that were being attached to the phonemes of the voices of the smart women and the dumb men. The ants were sampling the studio audience’s laughter as well, turning it into a silly background symphony. Certain harsh or sour notes quavered into visible dustings on the actors’ shuddering skins. The ants were, in other words, making the show watchable only as avantgarde video art.

“This is all because of your ants?” Carol asked. “They’re ruining television? You’re going to get in a lot of trouble, Jerzy.”

“First of all, it’s not my fault they’re loose. It’s Roger Coolidge’s fault.”

“Is he with you?”

“Well, no, it’s just me and Studly. Studly put the ants onto the Fibernet a half hour ago.”

“The mighty Studly!” cried Tom. The children liked Studly. “Where is he?”

“He’s in the trunk of my car.” I stepped to the window to have a look down into the parking lot, just to make sure everything was okay. For now it was. My car was sitting there with its trunk closed and there were no people in sight. A cop car drove past without slowing down.

“Can we go down and look at him?” asked Tom. Though he was glad to see me, it made him nervous to have me visiting here. Putting Hiroshi, Carol, and me into the same room was an obvious recipe for disaster. “Yeah,” chimed in sister Ida, right on Tom’s wavelength. “Let’s go see the Studbot.” They had lots of pet names for the machine.

“Here.” I handed Tom my keys. “I’m going to stay up here just another little bit. And don’t let Studly run away.”

With the kids outside, I said, “Carol, did you know there are empty spacedust vials in your building’s parking lot? I really don’t know about having my children live here.”

“If you paid the child support, we could live somewhere better.”

“They already have somewhere better to live. In Los Perros with me. I don’t have any money, that’s why I’m not paying any child support.”

“You have to, Jerzy, it’s the law. And the children prefer to stay with me.” This seemed to be true, and was too depressing to argue about.

“Well, I just got a new job today, so starting in two weeks, I guess I can pay. But find a better place, okay?”

“This apartment is fine,” said Hiroshi. “I’ve lived here two years. There’s been no trouble.”

“If there’s spacedust vials out there, that means somebody in the complex is selling it. And selling spacedust means sooner or later there’s going to be a gunfight. You’re not back in crime-free Japan, Hiroshi.”

“I’ve never been to Japan, Jerzy. I grew up in Cupertino. And now I’d appreciate it if you’d get out of my apartment.”

“I’m sorry, Hiroshi, I didn’t mean to sound racist. I’m just concerned about my children’s safety. If you don’t mind too much, I’d rather stay here a little longer. Frankly, I think the police are looking for me.”

“Mr. Law and Order,” said Hiroshi mockingly.

Just then another Special News Report interrupted “Smart Women, Dumb Men.” The anchorperson still had a giant ant head, but the on-the-scene reporter looked normal. She was standing in a bright light at 5782 White Road. Something was lying at her feet.

“This watchdog may have been killed by the forces who cut the Fibernet cable in the backyard of this east-side home. The owner alleges that the attacker was- a mobile robot.”

The camera turned slightly to show the burly Mexican man I’d seen earlier. He looked unhappy and his eyes were red. “I saw the robot earlier today. It was shaped like a garbage can on wheels. It killed my dog. The robot belonged to a geek in a red Animata.” Geek? Hadn’t he ever seen anyone wear sandals with M. C. Escher socks before?

“You and Studly killed a dog!” exclaimed Carol. “That’s terrible! And how could you send the children down to play with him, Jerzy!” Her voice rose to command volume. “You get down there and make sure those children are okay! And don’t come back in here. I don’t care if the police are after you! You’re too crazy, Jerzy! You and your precious machines. Go on now! Good-bye!”

“All right.” I left Carol’s apartment and headed down to the car. This pause had already been long enough to help throw the police off the track. But would the Vos talk? And what would GoMotion say when the authorities started asking them why the ants kept spelling out the company name on TV? Would they try and pin it on me?

Given that Roger Coolidge had infected my system with ants and let me keep Studly, it almost looked as if GoMotion had deliberately set me up to be a patsy. They’d laid me off so that when I got busted they could bad mouth me as a “disgruntled former employee.” But what was Roger’s motive in setting the ants free? And how did the ants fit in with West West and Hex DEF6?

I felt tired and fatalistic. I might as well go home and wait for the police to come and get me. Just today, during his endless recounting of his life story, my new West West boss Otto Gyorgyi had told me that back in the commie days of Hungary there’d been a story that when the secret police wanted to liquidate you they’d stop by your house and hand you a length of piano wire. And then you’d strangle yourself, for, “ Vat else vas zere to do?”

Thinking of Hungary and the police made me wonder if our own USA would ever be free. Would we ever get rid of the earth-raping, drug-warring social oppressors who’d made the public treasury their own latrine and hog wallow? Well, the Hungarians had gotten rid of the Communists, hadn’t they? Some day the Revolution was going to come to America, too. One of the secondary reasons why I worked on ants and robots was that I hoped they could help bring down the Pig.

Tonight the ants had ruined television. There could be no more important step in crippling the Pig. I started grinning. The GoMotion ants had done a good thing. I was proud of them.

The kids had Studly out of the trunk and he was playing tag with them in the parking lot, lunging forward just now to tap laughing Ida’s back with his pincer- the same bloodstained pincer that had killed Dutch the dog.

I gasped in anguish. Where was my brain? The only thing to do with Studly anymore was to scrap him!

“Get back in the trunk, Studly!” I shouted. I half-expected him to refuse, but he complied.

“Studly killed a dog,” I told the kids once the robot was locked in the trunk. “They’re talking about it on TV. I was an idiot to let him play with you just now. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Why did he kill a dog?” asked Tom.

“It’s probably the ants. The ants must have changed the way he thinks. I’m going to let his batteries run down.”

Studly started hammering on the trunk from the inside. He’d heard what I’d said. “Let me out, Jerzy, and let me run away! It wasn’t my fault! The voice made me do it! I don’t want to die!” I’d never heard one of our robots talking about death before.

“Are you going to get in trouble?” Tom asked over Studly’s cries.

“Maybe. GoMotion might say it’s thanks to me the ants are on TV. And to tell you the truth, I hope the ants stay. It would even be worth my going to jail, I think. It’s a wonderful thing to ruin television. I’m glad. I hope that television never works right again.”

“Daddy!” protested Ida. “You are so mean. If you don’t like television you don’t have to watch it.”

“I don’t like for anyone to watch television,” I exclaimed. “Everything on it is lies. The Lord hates television.” This last phrase was a variable catch phrase that my family and I had picked up during our stay in Killeville, where there had been eighteen different religious Fibernet channels showing hideous TV evangelists. One time we’d seen an old tape of Jerry Falwell preaching about how much “ The Lord hates ” this and that, and so from that day on, I’d always enjoyed telling Ida things like, “The Lord hates lipstick,” or “The Lord hates McDonald’s.”

“ The Lord hates Daddy’s ants,” responded Ida.

“Yes, I’m glad the ants have ruined television,” I repeated. “But I’m scared of them, too. Last night I was looking in cyberspace and the ants were really scary. You children-you children have to be very careful. Somehow my

hacking has gotten me mixed up in some big things. The ants were threatening to hurt you. I saw a simmie called Hex DEF6.”

THUD THUD THUD.

The Studcreature was hammering the trunk so hard that I was half-expecting to start seeing bulging-out dents. Studly didn’t want to die, but each thud was weaker than the one before. He only had so much power left in his batteries.

“Kids, I’m gonna go home and face the music. Wish me luck.”

“Bye, Da. We love you.”