Growing up in Tier 3000, page 1
“You’re six years old, Jonas, don’t be a dumbshit. There is no room for you and your putative parents on this facet of the planetoid. The energy in this billet-piston is constant only when two organisms couple in for it—it’s magnetic, and magnetic energy is bilateral, symmetric, duetic. Any tertiary drainage sets up dissonance—and guess who’s the tertiary in your house. But you’re getting stronger, and I’m going to stay right here and help you—
“What about your putative mother?” Jonas asks.
“Well,” Carol cuts a look at the wall isochronon, “my sixth putmot should now be in a great many icky pieces.”
“What did you do?” Jonas sounds excited.
“It’s almost slapstick. I put a bottle of nitro on the garage door transom. Now we can work on your putpars—we do, my pony, or we die. …”
FELIX C. GOTSCHALK. Bom 1929 in Richmond, Virginia. BS ’54, MS ’56 psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University. Doctoral work at Tulane ’57—’58. Taught psychology at Nicholls College in Louisiana ’58—’62, a psychologist in North Carolina since ’62. Married, two children. Weightlifter, pianist, composer, poet, model-builder, painter and inventor. Author of 35 short stories, a novelette and one novel.
“I live in moderately stultified setting made bearable by Bach, four old Mercedes Benz’s, a grand piano, an Eames chair, and richly variegated memory-trace varibles, Dostoyevsky is a god to me, and I would like to write like Henry Miller, Edward Albee, HL Mencken, GB Shaw, and a little like Kafka. As for writing itself, it is something I do for me. If people “like” what I write, fine—if they don’t, it’s no skin off my ass. I would like to write something that would be truly influential, something that would change peoples’ thinking for the better, make them more humane…but people have short memories.”
FELIX C. GOTSCHALK
GROWING UP
IN TIER 3000
A Division of Charter Communications Inc.
1120 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10036
GROWING UP IN TIER 3000
Copyright © 1975 by Felix C. Gotschalk
An Ace Book
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotes to be used specifically for reviews.
Printed in U.S.A.
I
The sticky golden sunlight pours over small Jonas, like a cone of bright honey. He is sitting on a slick wooden chair, his legs flat against the warm surface. He looks down the short length of his thighs and calves to wonder at the shine of his patent leather shoes, angling them apart like pincers, then clicking the sole edges together like hedge clippers. He spreads his fingers and feels the pancake syrup seep into the webbings.
At the breakfast table, close by his chair, a matemo-surrogate is sitting, legs crossed casually, a newspaper very close to her dull, non-faceted eyes. She is pheno-typically humanoid, but with several cyborg implants and holobot prostheses. Jonas is supra-humanoid, and wonders why this fat lady-thing is not doing anything interactional.
“Hey-hey,” he vectors, “hey-hey”, and sees the form start behind the spread pages, “I be Jonas Sum Ex to the thirty-seventh power, loci Alpha—you wish to play with me?”
The newspaper half-drops and half-crumples, revealing a brown anthropoid face, rock-like eyes oozing a dull glare. A puffy prehensile digit-prosthesis dips clumsily into a box of chocolates and hands one to Jonas: “Quiet be,” the lady-thing gratis, and Jonas feels unhappy emosensor radiates.
The ingress chime duns a crisply choffing consonant in his audiosensors, followed by a pleasing psychophysical tone. Jonas slides flat onto his back, does a quick turn to starboard, feels the slick wood all over his ventrals, then begins to slide off the chair: the size mini-beta eee patent leathers first, then the fat calves and the fatter thighs, the blip of a bird-in-the-bush genital bud, and the resistant nudge of the ribcage against the brink of the precipice. Now the little body is off the chair and levitates the final inches to the oiled rosewood decking.
“I investigate ingress vesicle stimulus!” his voice blooms out like a trompeta real. He toddles toward the front of the house. “Back come, little creep!” the materno-surrogate blats out, the flat tone infused with an abrasive raucousness.
“Ram it up your exhaust orifice—if you have one!” Jonas blats back at the rising form, and fluxes on a protective isomorph as the thing beams a stunbolt at him.
“Corporal shithead!” Jonas screams, as the light bolt bumps him up against a pilaster. “Assaulter of minors! child abuser! back to the scrap pile, hive of Mitsubishi circuit paks!”
“I answer door, you bad boy,” the form waddles off.
“Who the royal fuck programmed you?” Jonas taunts.
“Bad boy” the thing shakes its head, “horrible little Alpha brat.”
“When is my putative mother coming home?” Jonas calls.
“Anytime now.”
“Who codes for ingress?” Jonas follows the surmat to the bulkhead vesicle, trying to see around the wide undulating hips. He gives up and activates his X-ray probes.
“Carol!” he exhults as the vesicle irises open and an interestingly pretty red-haired five-year-old girl waves at him. The child is optimally puffy-faced, with sad alert eyes and a nice purse to the set of her lips. She palms her ID trivid cube snappily into the surmat’s thoracic slot, then seems to pout as the ingress forcefield fades slowly.
Jonas pushes around the elephantine surmat and opens his arms to the small girl; he looks ready to embrace a haystack or carry a barrel. “Carol, Carol, Carol!” he sings in differential stereo tones, embracing her skillfully, “I couldn’t have wished for anybody else!” He places his hand gently on her cheek, and kisses her, as if biting into a honeydew melon. Carol returns the quick ardor of the embrace, then she sits on a chaise and stretches, luxuriating.
“Shameless Alpha kids,” the surmat mutters, rolling down the hall like a ship wallowing in heavy seas. Jonas walks in playful menace up to Carol and leans his high cerebrotonic forehead against hers. Several seconds pass, then Jonas says softly, “your emosensor readings are beautiful—how are mine?” Carol responds, opening her mouth in charming oral receptivity, then chewing lightly on Jonas’s lip-corner. “Good, good, good,” she says, between the tiny chewing nibbles. “I’ve missed you. Why haven’t you come to my billet to play?” Jonas angles a thumb toward the hallway. “My guardians have me saddled with a goddam clod of a surmat—can you imagine such grovel? I can’t override her forcefields. Worse still, she’s shot full of punitive motive-tropisms. Shit, I say Good Morning Mam, and she draws back her stun-bolt latch—”
“You shouldn’t swear so much, Jonas.”
“Why the hell not?”
“It’s not adaptive.”
“Adaptive—aschmaptive, it’s adaptive for me.”
“I do wish you’d try to stop.”
“Well I don’t want to.”
“It would make me so happy.”
“Why should you care?”
“Because you do so well affirm my feelings of selfworth, and elegant verbal content sweetens the potion all the more.”
“Well, I like to swear. It’s anal-expulsive, erotic, even erogenous, it’s androgenic, and it’s cathartic—so fuckee, fuckee fuck fuck fuck.” Carol covers her ears with her hands, but smiles coyly all the while; then she hugs Jonas very quickly, vectoring in a subtle hypothalamic azimuth-tickler.
“Let’s play something,” she sounds affectedly pouty. “Race you to the promontorium deck!”
The two children dart for a porthole set high in the wall, flitting like quick birds nesting in the face of a building. They levitate in different azimuths, wriggle through the circular vent, and scuttle up through a squirrel-cage ladder. They emerge onto a deck of neutral flat gray, extending elliptically forty feet wide and twenty feet deep. Chaises and valve-stem chairs are scattered in random patterns on the floor. An environdial console is against a central pillar, like an ancient theater organ, its stops and buttons and tablets winking dimly. A softly luminescent geodesic dome canopies overhead, the filter slattings set to control the heliofires from the ring of sombre orange suns at ten o’clock high.
“Want to laser some pterodactyls?” Jonas perks.
“I’m tired of shooting things. I know—let’s wrestle a black cat!” Jonas looks smugly disdainful, then agreeable, as if he is going to let less favored neighborhood kids slide down his rain-barrel. “Okay,” he says, “but only if we dial him up nice and big.”
He vaults up on the console bench and scans the rows and arcs of controls, activating two heavy double-throws and a cluster of rheostat-type dials. The console hums, whines, whistles, then soars silently to ultrasonic ranges.
“Let’s see,” Jonas muses, “I always have to figure this out—remember the day you dialed a turtle, and it came without a shell?” Carol giggles and does a slow fluid somersault on the deck.
“Get some nice rugs,” she asks, and a matting of resilient tight mesh materializes beneath her. Jonas’s fingers stray over the controls: “TAXONOMY, ABSTRACT RELATIONS, SPACE, PHYSICS, MATTER—here we are. MATTER: Inorganic, Organic, vitality, vegetable life, animals—here! primates, reptiles, snakes, marines, cetaceans, fish, birds, poultry, horses—where the hell are the felis catus? Goddamit, this is a slow environdial—”
“Be patient, baby, and talk sweet.”
“Cattle, sheep, swine, hogs, dawgs—hey, here’s a gazell
“Burmese.”
“Here goes,” Jonas presses a clavier-like key, dials a rheostat to LIFE SCALE, and presses three buttons.
“Kitty kitty kitty,” Carol squeals, as a compact feline form begins to materialize on the trivid deck: its color is a rich, warm, sable brown. The coat is fine, glossy, satin-like, very close-lying, and the eyes are gold-colored, deep, brilliant, expressive. The face is subjectively sweet. Jonas dials the cat up quickly to lion-size and hops off onto the heavy rug. He flings himself on the cat’s back and Carol hugs one of the huge forelegs.
“You don’t need the protectomorph,” Jonas calls down to her, “he’s set for low hypothalamic amperage.” The children pummel and prod the big cat and it responds in slow motion, rolling over on its side. They dive into the silken flanks and grab tight little fistfuls of soft hair, writhing like dogs in grass. Jonas bulldogs the huge head. Carol sprints to the console and sets an audio control. The cat mews like a dying siren and the children laugh in piercing high-frequency cries. They seem to tire quickly and nestle into the belly like suckling kittens.
“Where is your putative mater?” Carol asks absently. “Gone to another of those sociologic nostalgia sabbaticals.”
“How about your putative sire?”
“He’s been in the homeostasis spa for three days. I think he’s getting old. How about your parental figures?” “Pater’s assigned to gladiator school this month and mater’s in a topologic bridge tournament.” Jonas nestles his face against the purring warm expanse and hugs Carol in a dorsal-spoon posture.
“I feel lonely, Carol. Sometimes I feel lonely even in a room full of deferrent comrades, or peers, or even competitors or symbionts. Even when I am the sociometric star I feel lonely. I wonder if supra-humanoids have always been lonely. Do you sometimes wonder why we are even here on this planetoid?”
Carol looks surprised and restless. “Goodness, no—I try not to do the imponderable bit. I mean, infinite regresses are not my bag of kindergarten-level input. Do you take your amphet blatters with your cereal?”
“Yilch!—yes, but then I come off of the perceptual high like a house of cards, every day about dinnertime.” “What dosage do they have you on?”
“Fifty milligrams.”
“Why do we have to take amphet anyway?”
“You know—to make us feel good.”
“Wouldn’t we feel good anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you ever missed your amphet blatters?”
“Once when the housebot got cross-phased.”
“What happened?”
“I waxed sad and masochistic. Then, about ten that morning, the municipal satellite flew over the house and I felt better all of a sudden. My putative pater said the whole city-environ is radiated daily with some brand of happy rays.”
“Shouldn’t we both be feeling extra good right now?”
“I think we are, really. But still there’s something unnatural, if that is the right word, about feeling good or homeostatic or euphoric all the time. It seems to take extra effort to be intellective about it. Right now, I feel like I’m holding my hand on an old phonodisc, slowing its rotation just a tiny bit, but knowing that it would be ever so much easier to let it spin at its geared speed.”
The surmat’s flat mask appears in a wall visoplate: “What children do?” it sounds both interrogatory and voyeuristic. “You behave or get stunbolt.”
“Yay, ugly!” Jonas crows. “Say, where’d you get your face—in a used phsiog mart?”
“Hush Jonas, don’t make her mad,” Carol whispers.
“Not let big pussy piss on rug,” the voice is whiningly admonishing.
“Well, if it does, I’ll be sure and call you to bring a large mop,” Jonas laughs. “Hey, Miz Surmat, Lawrence Welk is on the trivids. You said you wanted to watch him—remember?” The surmat looks puzzled, the wide mouth opens, a vague flicking of surprise stirs the physiog plate, and the screen goes blank.
“You square old bitch! Hopper of Grannies! Flaccid tiddies!”
“Jonas, Jonas,” Carol sounds urgent, “my, what language. Please, come, hug me. Be still, that’s good. Be quiescent. My, what an angry boy!”
The children lie face to face and embrace each other. The effect is that of old people embracing. There is no clumsiness, no embarrassment, no sexual connotations, no passion; rather, the children cling together like frightened primates. Their small hearts beat strongly, but on different sides of the ventral bond. Jonas closes his eyes, but feels bristlingly alert. His eyes snap open and he activates his holographic x-ray probes.
“You have lovely parathyroids,” he giggles, locking his thighs around her in a tight scissor-claw.
“Naughty precocious man! Suppose 1 peeked at your gee-yew tract?” Carol teases, kissing Jonas’s eyes closed with little flicks of her tongue.
“Go ahead—tell me what you see.” Carol nestles closer and activates her probes.
“I see billions of microcosmic pearls in precious tight zygotic wreaths. And, I see a beautiful little chestnut, and an epididymal coil like pure silver thread and, yes, vesicles of superb resilience, and a urethra like a golden cornucopia.”
“You say it so well, so poetic, so wholesome,” Jonas looks moved, then his eyes glint with fierce playfulness. “Why, you’re as wholesome as a goddam peanut butter sammidge.”
“Oh, you ruin it, Jonas,” she squirms in his grip, “and besides, you’re not nearly pubescent yet. Your sex goodies are deep down in the cookie-jar—hey, let’s find something good to eat.” He releases her and they stand up. Jonas dials the cat off, scans the dials, and says, “you pick something—say, do you know that before cannibalism and syntheticism, we ate only animal meat and by-products and botanical foliage?” Carol nudges beside Jonas at the console.
“I remember trying to eat baleen strips and tundra grass once, when we got dialed into the polar cap environ. It was spooky. But I cheated and dialed a candy bar and some brandy. Well, let’s see here, how about some generic comestibles: a little cup of borscht, heavy on the cream, a light saddle of mutton, and here’s one of those heavenly embryonic cochonette de lait piggies —yummy and supra-yummy! And how about a brace of squab?”
“You’re my little squab, aren’t you?” Jonas nuzzles her cheek.
“Yes, yes,” Carol sings, warmly breathless. “You act as an adequate reinforcement contingency for me, and I will be your darling contingency of reinforcement.” She looks over the slowly turning menu readouts. “Now for some bread—no ethnic disdain now—here’s some matzoth—”
“You sounded clinical as h—ah, very clinical, all that talk about contingency reinforcements a minute ago. If hurt my emosensor.” A long tenuous silence ensues. “Do you…ah…love me, Carol?”
“I don’t believe I heard you correctly.”
“Do you love me.”
“Christ, I haven’t heard that word in years. What a question! And look, you made me say something inelegant—yum, here’s some eclairs, they’re always good…” Carol turns as Jonas begins to cry. “Goodness, what’s the matter? Don’t you like eclairs?” Jonas slides onto the deck into a fetal position. “I want somebody to love me,” he wails.
“There, there, baby, Carol loves you,” she hovers over the small form, “whatever has come over you—wait! I see what’s wrong—turn over!” Jonas rolls flat on his back. Carol spreads the mesh at Jonas’s umbilicar medallion and adjusts the silver bezel. It snaps with an authoritative, spring-loaded thock. “There. Heavens, your homeostasis tap was loose. You were leaking self-pity, plus other icy vectors and vapors. How do you feel now?”
“I bet that shit-eating surmat loosened me with that sneaky stunbolt,” Jonas bounds up, jogging and shadow-boxing, “I’d like to ram a soldering iron up her solid-state panasonic ass!”
“You’re hopeless, Jonas, wherever did you learn such language?”
