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The Secret of Life
By Rudy Rucker


ElectricStory.com, Inc.
THES ECRET OFL IFE
Copyright © 1985 by Rudy Rucker. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1-930815-60-3

Published by ElectricStory.com, Inc.

ElectricStory.com and the ES design are trademarks of ElectricStory.com, Inc.

This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations, and locales are either the product of
the author’s imagination or used fictitiously to convey a sense of realism.

The quotations at the head of each part are taken fromNausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, New Directions
Books, Norfolk, Connecticut, 1959.La Nausée was first published in 1938 byLibrairie Gallimard .

Cover art by and copyright © 2000 James Allen.

eBook conversion by Karen Kruger and Lara Ballinger.

eBook edition ofThe Secret of Life copyright © 2000 by ElectricStory.com.

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For Niles Schoening

Part I
“I was just thinking,” I tell him, laughing, “that here we sit, all of us, eating and drinking to preserve our
precious existence and really there is nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing.”
—Jean-Paul Sartre,Nausea

Chapter 1:
Monday, December 31, 1962
Conrad Bunger was sixteen when it first hit him:Someday you’ll be dead.
He was at a New Year’s Eve dance at the River Valley Country Club in Louisville. It was a much
classier scene than Conrad was accustomed to, though he did know many of the other boys and girls, the
rich boys in brand-new tuxedos, the girls in pale dresses with thin straps. Conrad had his father’s old tux
and horrible lumpy dress shoes; he was smaller than the others, abrain , but blending in well enough. His
date Linda was dancing with a boy she’d had a crush on since fifth grade, and Conrad was hoping to get
drunk.

The coat racks were at the foot of the stairs leading down to the bathrooms. Conrad made his way there
and patted down the overcoats, feeling for the happy tumor of a hidden pint. It was easy; the bottles
grew as thick as autumn fruit. Conrad drew out a pint of Old Crow and gulped at the strange liquid, vile