Cory Doctorow - Shadow of the Mothaship
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Cory Doctorow >> Shadow of the Mothaship
Cory Doctorow
From "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," a short story collection published in
September, 2003 by Four Walls Eight Windows Press (ISBN 1568582862). See
http://craphound.com/place for more.
Originally Published in Amazing Stories, Winter 2000
--
Blurbs and quotes:
* Cory Doctorow straps on his miner's helmet and takes you deep into the
caverns and underground rivers of Pop Culture, here filtered through SF-coloured
glasses. Enjoy.
- Neil Gaiman
Author of American Gods and Sandman
* Few writers boggle my sense of reality as much as Cory Doctorow. His vision
is so far out there, you'll need your GPS to find your way back.
- David Marusek
Winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Award, Nebula Award nominee
* Cory Doctorow is one of our best new writers: smart, daring, savvy,
entertaining, ambitious, plugged-in, and as good a guide to the wired world of
the twenty-first century that stretches out before us as you're going to find.
- Gardner Dozois
Editor, Asimov's SF
* He sparkles! He fizzes! He does backflips and breaks the furniture! Science
fiction needs Cory Doctorow!
- Bruce Sterling
Author of The Hacker Crackdown and Distraction
* Cory Doctorow strafes the senses with a geekspeedfreak explosion of gomi kings
with heart, weirdass shapeshifters from Pleasure Island and jumping automotive
jazz joints. If this is Canadian science fiction, give me more.
- Nalo Hopkinson
Author of Midnight Robber and Brown Girl in the Ring
* Cory Doctorow is the future of science fiction. An nth-generation hybrid of
the best of Greg Bear, Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling and Groucho Marx, Doctorow
composes stories that are as BPM-stuffed as techno music, as idea-rich as the
latest issue of NEW SCIENTIST, and as funny as humanity's efforts to improve
itself. Utopian, insightful, somehow simultaneously ironic and heartfelt, these
nine tales will upgrade your basal metabolism, overwrite your cortex with new
and efficient subroutines and generally improve your life to the point where
you'll wonder how you ever got along with them. Really, you should need a
prescription to ingest this book. Out of all the glittering crap life and our
society hands us, craphound supreme Doctorow has managed to fashion some
industrial-grade art."
- Paul Di Filippo
Author of The Steampunk Trilogy
* As scary as the future, and twice as funny. In this eclectic and electric
collection Doctorow strikes sparks off today to illuminate tomorrow, which is
what SF is supposed to do. And nobody does it better.
- Terry Bisson
Author of Bears Discover Fire
--
A note about this story
This story is from my collection, "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," published
by Four Walls Eight Windows Press in September, 2003, ISBN 1568582862. I've
released this story, along with five others, under the terms of a Creative
Commons license that gives you, the reader, a bunch of rights that copyright
normally reserves for me, the creator.
I recently did the same thing with the entire text of my novel, "Down and Out in
the Magic Kingdom" (http://craphound.com/down), and it was an unmitigated
success. Hundreds of thousands of people downloaded the book -- good news -- and
thousands of people bought the book -- also good news. It turns out that, as
near as anyone can tell, distributing free electronic versions of books is a
great way to sell more of the paper editions, while simultaneously getting the
book into the hands of readers who would otherwise not be exposed to my work.
I still don't know how it is artists will earn a living in the age of the
Internet, but I remain convinced that the way to find out is to do basic
science: that is, to do stuff and observe the outcome. That's what I'm doing
here. The thing to remember is that the very *worst* thing you can do to me as
an artist is to not read my work -- to let it languish in obscurity and
disappear from posterity. Most of the fiction I grew up on is out-of-print, and
this is doubly true for the short stories. Losing a couple bucks to people who
would have bought the book save for the availability of the free electronic text
is no big deal, at least when compared to the horror that is being irrelevant
and unread. And luckily for me, it appears that giving away the text for free
gets me more paying customers than it loses me.
You can find the canonical version of this file at
http://craphound.com/place/download.php
If you'd like to convert this file to some other format and distribute it, you
have my permission, provided that:
* You don't charge money for the distribution
* You keep the entire text intact, including this notice, the license below, and
the metadata at the end of the file
* You don't use a file-format that has "DRM" or "copy-protection" or any other
form of use-restriction turned on
If you'd like, you can advertise the existence of your edition by posting a link
to it at http://craphound.com/place/000015.php
--
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###
Shadow of the Mothaship
=======================
It's the untethering of my parents' house that's on my plate today. The flying
of a kite on a windy Toronto Hallowe'en day and the suspension of worry for a
shiny moment.
And sail surface isn't even a problemette when it comes to my parents' home --
the thing is a three-storey bat whose narrow wings contain the trolleycar-shaped
bedrooms and storages. Mum and Dad built it themselves while I tottered in the
driveway, sucking a filthy shred of blanket, and as I contemplate it today with
hands on hips from the front yard, I am there on that day:
Dad is nailgunning strips of plywood into a frame, Mum stands where I am now,
hands on her hips (and I take my hands from my hips hastily, shove them deep in
pockets). She squints and shouts directions. Then they both grab rolls of scrim
and stapleguns and stretch it loosely across the frames, and fast-bond pipes and
prefab fixtures into place. Mum harnesses up the big tanks of foam and aims the
blower at the scrim, giving it five fat coats, then she drops the blower and she
and Dad grab spatulas and tease zillions of curlicues and baroque stuccoes from
the surface, painting it with catsup, chutney, good whiskey and bad wine, a
massive canvas covered by centimetres until they declare it ready and Mum
switches tanks, loads up with fix-bath and mists it with the salty spray. Ten
minutes later, and the house is hard and they get to work unloading the U-Haul
in the drive.
And now I'm twenty-two again, and I will untether that house and fly it in the
stiff breeze that ruffles my hair affectionately.
#
Firstly and most foremost, I need to wait for the man. I hate to wait. But today
it's waiting and harsh and dull, dull, dull.
So I wait for the man, Stude the Dude and the gentle clip-clop of Tilly's hooves
on the traction-nubbed foam of my Chestnut Ave.
My nose is pressed against the window in the bat's crotch, fingers dug into the
hump of fatty foam that runs around its perimeter, fog patches covering the rime
of ground-in filth that I've allowed to accumulate on my parents' spotless
windows.
Where the frick is Stude?
#
The man has cometh. Clop-clip, clip-clop, Stude the Dude, as long as a dangling
booger, and his clapped-out nag Tilly, and the big foam cart with its stacks of
crates and barrels and boxes, ready to do the deal.
"Maxes!" he says, and I *know* I'm getting taken today -- he looks genuinely
glad to see me.
"Stude, nice day, how's it?" I say, as cas and cool as I can, which isn't, very.
"Fine day! Straight up fine day to be alive and awaiting judgment!" He
power-chugs from the perpetual coffee thermos at his side.
"Fine day," I echo.
"Fine, fine day." Like he's not in any hurry to get down to the deal, and I know
it's a contest, and the first one to wheel gets taken.
I snort and go "Yuh-huh." It's almost cheating, since I should've had something
else nice to say, but Stude gives me a conversational Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free.
"Good night to tricky treat."
I concede defeat. "I need some stuff, Stude."
Give it to him, he doesn't gloat. Just hauls again from Mr Coffee and pooches
his lips and nods.
"Need, uh, spool of monofilament, three klicks, safety insulated. Four litres of
fix bath. Litre, litre and a half of solvent."
"Yeah, okay. Got a permit for the solvent?"
"If I had a permit, Stude, I'd go and buy it at the fricken store. Don't pull my
dick."
"Just askin'. Whyfor the solvent? Anything illegal?"
"Just a project, Stude. Nothing to worry."
"What kinda project?"
"Art project. Fun-fricken-tastic. You'll love it."
"'Cause you know, they tag the shit with buckyballs now, one molecule in a
million with a serial number and a checksum. You do something stupid, I get
chopped."
I hadn't known. Didn't matter, my parents' house was legally mine, while they
were up confabbing with their alien buds on the mothaship. "No worries."
"That'll be, uh, sixty-eight cents."
"Thirty."
"Sixty, firm."
"Fifty-four."
"Fifty-eight."
"Take it in trade?"
"Fricken Maxes! Tradesies? You're wastin' my time, lookin' for bootleg solvent,
looking for trade and no cash? Get fucked, Maxes."
He starts to haw-up Tilly and I go, "Wait-wait-wait, I got some good stuff.
Everything must go, moving sale, you know?"
He looks really pissed and I know it hard now, I'm gonna get *taken*. I hand him
up my bag, and he does a fast-paw through the junk. "What's this?" he asks.
"Old video game. Atari. Shoot up the space aliens. Really, really antisocial.
Needs a display, but I don't got it anymore." I'd sold it the month before on a
bored day, and used the eight cents to buy good seats behind home plate at the
Skydome and thus killed an entire afternoon before Judgment Day.
There are some of the artyfarty "freestyle" kitchen utensils Mum used to sell
for real cash until Dad founded his Process for Lasting Happiness and she found
herself able to pursue "real art." There are paper books and pictures and
assorted other crap.
Stude clucks and shakes his head. "If I just gave you the monofil and the
fix-bath for this shit, it'd be a favour. Look, I can *get* real money for
solvent. I *pay* real money for solvent. This just don't cut it."
"I'll get more, just hang a sec."
He haws-up Tilly but reigns her in slow, and I dash back to my place and fill a
duffel with anything I lay hands to, and run out, dragging it behind me,
catching the cart before it turns the corner. "Here, here, take this too."
Stude dumps it out in front of him and kicks at the pile. "This is just crap,
Maxes. There's lots of it, sure, but it's still crap."
"I need it, Stude, I really need some solvent. You already *got* all my good
stuff."
He shakes his head, sad, and says, "Go ask Tilly."
"Ask?"
"Tilly. Ask her."
Stude likes to humiliate you a little before he does you a favour. The word is
*capricious*, he told me once.
So I go to his smelly old horse and whisper in her hairy ear and hold my breath
as I put my ear next to the rotten jumbo-chiclets she uses for teeth. "She says
you should do it," I say. "And she says you're an asshole for making me ask her.
She says horses can't talk."
"Yeah, okay," and he tosses me the goods.
#
With stage one blessedly behind me, I'm ready for stage two. I take the nozzle
of the solvent aerosol and run a drizzle along the fatty roll of the windowsills
and then pop them out as the fix bath runs away and the windows fly free and
shatter on the street below.
Then it's time to lighten the ballast. With kicks and grunts and a mantra of
"Out, out, out," I toss everything in the house out, savouring each crash,
taking care to leave a clear path between the house and the street.
On the third floor, I find Dad's cardigan, the one Mum gave him one anniversary,
and put it on. She carved it herself from foam and fixed it with some flexible,
dirt-shedding bath, so by the time I'm done with the third floor, my arms and
chest are black with dust, and the sweater is still glowing with eerie
cleanliness.
I know Dad wouldn't want me to wear his sweater now. They say that on the
mothaship, the bugouts have ways to watch each and every one of us, and maybe
Mum and Dad are there, watching me, and so I wipe my nose on the sleeve.
#
When the ballast is done, phase three begins. I go to work outside of the house,
spritzing a line of solvent at the point where the foam meets the ground, until
it's all disconnected.
And then I got to kick myself for an asshole. A strand of armoured fibre-optic,
a steel water pipe, and the ceramic gas line hold it all down, totally
impervious to solvent.
Somewhere, in a toolbox that I ditched out the second floor window, is a big old
steel meat-cleaver, and now I hunt for it, prying apart the piles of crap with a
broomstick, feeling every inch the post-apocalyptic scrounger.
I finally locate it, hanging out of arm's reach from my neighbour Linus's rose
trellis. I shake the trellis until it falls, missing my foot, which I jerk away
and swear at.
#
The fibre cleaves with a single stroke. The gas line takes twenty or more, each
stroke clanging off the ceramic and sending the blade back alarmingly at my
face. Finally it gives, and the sides splinter and a great jet of gas whooshes
out, then stops.
I could kick myself for an asshole. Praise the bugouts for civil engineers who
made self-sealing pipes. I eye the water line warily and flip open my comm, dial
into the city, and touch-tone my way through a near-sexy woman reading menus
until I find out that the water, too, self-seals.
Whang, whang, whang, and I'm soaked and blinded by the water that bursts free,
and *I could kick myself for an asshole!*
The house, now truly untethered, catches a gust of wind and lifts itself a few
metres off the ground, body-checking me on my ass. I do a basketball jump and
catch the solvent-melted corner, drag it down to earth, long-arm for the fix
bath and slop it where the corner meets the driveway, bonding it there until
phase four is ready.
#
I bond one end of monofilament to the front right corner of the house, then let
it unwind, covered in eraser-pink safety goop, until I'm standing in my deserted
Chestnut Ave. I spray a dent in the middle of the road with my solvent, plunk
the reel into it, bond it, then rush back to the house and unbond that last one
corner.
I hit the suck button on the reel and the house slowly drags its way to the
street, leaving a gap like a broken tooth in the carefully groomed smile of my
Chestnut Ave.
The wind fluffs at the house, making it settle/unsettle like a nervous hen and
so I give it line by teasing the spit button on the reel until it's a hundred
metres away. Then I reel it in and out, timing it with the gusts until, in a
sudden magnificent second, it catches and sails up-and-up-and-up and I'm a
fricken genius.
