"Rudy Rucker - Guadalupe and Hieronymus Bosch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)

microhomies.

So today is a Sunday morning in March and I'm eating my usual breakfast of day-old bread with slices of
welfare cheddar, flipping through my Bosch book thinking about my next tattoo. A friend named Sleepey
is taking an on-line course in tattooing, and he said he'd give me one for free. He has a good flea-market
tattoo-gun he traded a set of tires for. Who needs snow tires in San Jose? So I'm thinking it would be
bitchin' to bedizen my belly with a Bosch.

I'm pretty well settled on this blue bagpipe bird with a horn for his nose. It'll be something to talk about,
and the bagpipe will be like naturalistic on my gordo gut, maybe it'll minimize my girth. But the bird needs
a background pattern. Over my fourth cup of microwave coffee, I start thinking about red blood cells,
remembering from the lab how they're shaped. I begin digging on the concept of rounding out my Bosch
bird tattoo with a blood-cell tiling.

To help visualize it, I pinprick my pinkie and put a droplet on a glass slide under my personal Glenda
Gomez research scope. I see beautiful shades of orange and red from all my little blood cells massed
together. Sleepey will need to see this in order to fully grasp what to do. I want to keep on looking, but
the blood is drying fast. The cells are bursting and cracks are forming among them as they dry. I
remember that at Smart Stork we'd put some juice on the slides with the cells to keep them perky. I
don't know what kind of juice, but I decide to try a drop of water out of one of my infusions, a dark
funky batch that I'd fed with a KFC chicken nugget.

The infusion water is teeming with those tough-looking paramecia with the coarse bristles—the
microhomies. What with Bosch on my brain, the microhomies resemble tiny bagpipes on crutches. I'm
like: tattoo them onto my belly too? While I'm watching the microhomies, they start digging on my
ruptured blood cells. "Yo," I say, eyeing an especially bright and lively one. "You're eating me."

And that's when it happens. The image loses its focus, I feel a puff of air, my skin tingles all over. Leaning
back, I see a bag of glowing light grow out from the microscope slide. It's a foot across.

I jump to my feet and back off. I may be heavy, but I'm still quick. At first I have the idea my apartment
is on fire, and then for some reason I think of earthquakes. I'm heading for the door. But the glowing
sack gets there before me, blocking the exit. I try to reach through it for the doorknob.

As soon as my hand is inside the lumpy glow I hear a woman's voice. "Glenda! Hello dear."

"Who are you?"

"I'm Harna from Hilbert space." She has a prim voice; I visualize flowery dresses and pillbox hats. "I
happened upon your brane several—days—ago. I've been teeming with the microlife, a bit humdrum,
and I thought that's all there is to see in this location. Worth documenting, but no more than that. I had no
idea that only a few clicks up the size scale I'd find a gorgeous entity like you. Scale is tricky for me, what
with everything in Hilbert space being infinite. Thank goodness I happened upon your blood cell. Oh,
warmest greetings, Glenda Gomez. You're—why, you're collectible, my dear." I'm fully buggin'. I run to
the corner of my living room, staring at the luminous paramecium the size of a dog in mid-air. "Go away,"
I say.

Harna wobbles into the shape of a jellyfish with dangling frilly ribbons. She drifts across the room, not
quite touching the floor, dragging her oral arms across the stuff lying on my tables, checking things out.
And then she gets to my Bosch book, which is open to The Garden of Earthly Delights.