"Rudy Rucker and Paul Di Filippo - Elves of the Subdimensions" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)

Elves of the Subdimensions

by

Rudy Rucker and Paul Di Filippo




Story Copyright (C) 2006, Paul Di Filippo and Rudy Rucker.
Images Copyright (C) 2006, Rudy Rucker.
7,020 words.



Forever and again, the alvar were gnawing at the quantum walls of their prison.

Down where photonic light itself was too gross to serve as a basis for perception, they raged to be free.
Ceaselessly shifting congeries of forms, interpenetrating shuggoths, they scratched and clawed in the
basement of the cosmos like dissatisfied servants, seeking an entrance to the bright and happy privileged
realms above.

The alvar had little actual experience with the macroscopic world they irrationally but fervently longed to
breach. Only occasionally did a few of them manage a brief escape, frenetically enjoying the odd
pleasures of the supradimensional zone for a short time, before inevitably dropping back down to their
ground state below the Planck level. Once trapped again in their subdimensional prison, the adventurous
alvars would recount to their fellows the hardly believable experiences theyтАЩd undergone. These tales
were passed from one alvar to another as they constantly chattered amongst themselves, eventually
attaining the proportions of myth.

тАЬThe high-planers ingest sweet chunks of their worldstuff!тАЭ

тАЬThey use picture boxes to learn their hive mindтАЩs mood!тАЭ

тАЬOf flurbbing, they know not!тАЭ

тАЬTheir landscape is static across lesser timescales!тАЭ

тАЬThey tend symbiotes called cows!тАЭ

Such was the stimulating talk exchanged between the fits of importunate scrabbling.

But now several alvar were holding a different kind of conversation, one that was more purposeful than
fanciful.

For the duration of this discussionтАФthe time it took for a single excited electron to jump shellsтАФthese
particular alvar remained remarkably stable. To their own peculiar senses, they resembled naked old
human males, stooped and bearded and wrinkled. All save one. This exception took the form of a
supremely beautiful human woman, anomalously equipped with a horsetail shading her rear.