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Postsingular Outtakes

by Rudy Rucker



Story Copyright (C) 2007, Rudy Rucker.
Images Copyright (C) 2007, Rudy Rucker.
3,200 Words.




1: The Singularity. The Singularity happened when, encouraged by his business backers, President
Dick Dibbs sent an eggcase of nants to Mars. Nants were self-reproducing nanomachines:
solar-powered, networked, capable of gnatlike flight, and single-mindedly focused on transforming all
available material into more nants. In a couple of years, the nants had eaten Mars, turning the red planet
into a Dyson sphere of a duodecillion nanomachines, a three-millimeter-thick shell half a billion kilometers
across, with Earth and the Sun trapped inside.

The stars were hidden by giant ads; in daytime the ads were a silvery background to the sky. DibbsтАЩs
backers were well-pleased. And behind the scenes the nant swarm was solving a number of intractable
problems in computer science, mathematical physics, and process design; these results were privily
beamed to the nantsтАЩ parent corporation, Nantel. But before Nantel could profit from the discoveries, the
nants set to work chewing up Earth.

At the last possible moment, a disaffected Nantel engineer named Ond Bergman managed to throw the
nants into reverse gear. The nants restored the sections of Earth theyтАЩd already eaten, reassembled Mars,
and returned to their original eggcaseтАФwhich was blessedly vaporized by a well-aimed Martian nuclear
blast, courtesy of the Chinese Space Agency.

Public fury over EarthтАЩs near-demolition was such that President Dibbs and his Vice President were
impeached, convicted of treason, and executed by lethal injection. But Nantel fared better. Although
three high-ranking execs were put to sleep like the President, the company itself entered bankruptcy to
duck the lawsuitsтАФand re-emerged as ExaExa, with the corporate motto, тАЬPutting People
FirstтАФBuilding GaiaтАЩs Mind.тАЭ

For a while there it seemed as if humanity had nipped the Singularity in the bud. But then came the
orphids.




2: Lureen Does Luty. Thanks to the orphidnet, she could see the insides of all the neighborsтАЩ houses.
SheтАЩd always wondered about that Lureen Morales in the mansion at the very top of the hill. Lureen was
famous for her coarse sex-vlog, Caliente. SheтАЩd even slept with the former Nantel CEO Jeff Luty before
heтАЩd dropped out of sight: Luty with his crooked smeary-lensed glasses, his greasy ponytail, his thick lips
chapped by his nervous tic of licking them every few seconds. Luty was so germ-phobic heтАЩd put a latex
sheet over LureenтАЩs mouth before kissing her. And when they were done, heтАЩd presented her with a
boxed and mounted giant beetle. The tape of the absurd encounter was an underground classic.