Hylozoic by Rudy Rucker Page A

that—should a full cleansing require highly cataclysmic eruptions—I might break into chunks.”
    â€œThat’s unthinkable,” said Thuy, choosing her words carefully. “Not just for us, Gaia, but for you. You have to preserve yourself. You’re a beautiful warm-centered planet. You don’t want to be a frozen asteroid belt.”
    â€œI’d rather end up that way than be the slave of alien parasites. Drastic measures, Thuy.”
    â€œLet’s try some partial measures first. Maybe we can fix it with computer science.”
    â€œAha,” said Gaia, fixing Thuy with an intense, sky-blue stare. “You rise to the challenge. Very well then. I want you and Jayjay to return to your house in the woods. See what you can learn about the alien invaders whom you’ll find there. I don’t know enough about them yet. It’s hard to read their minds.”
    â€œAre you talking about the flying stingrays?”
    â€œNo, I’m talking about things like ostrich birds. They’re called Peng. Transmitted here from Pekka’s world. Thanks to Jayjay.”
    â€œAt our camp right now?” said Thuy uneasily. “I thought we were just talking about—an infection in our atoms. A quantum computation thing.”
    â€œHave you ever heard of matter waves, Thuy?”
    â€œNo. I’m not into physics.”
    â€œYou humans have huge new memory storage, plus the help of the silps and me—and you’re still picky about what you learn?” said Gaia impatiently. “You’re like stones. Or artichokes.”
    â€œI’m writing a new metanovel,” said Thuy, defensively. “
Hive Mind
. I want to explore the ebb and flow of shared identities. Conscious minds used to be like isolated fireflies in the night. And now the light is everywhere. Our world is hylozoic. But I don’t have to tell you this, do I?”
    â€œI can’t believe how long this conversation is taking,” said Gaia irritably. “Centuries of my time. Let’s stick to what I wanted tell you about matter waves. Everything is wave and particle. Think of atoms focusing matter waves on a single spot to produce a physical object. It’s like a bunch of lasers focusing light waves on a single spot to produce a tiny sun.”
    â€œYou’re talking about tulpas,” exclaimed Thuy, dredging up another obscure word that she happened to know.
    â€œYou humans are like walking bagpipes,” said Gaia wearily.“You make squeals and imagine they’re thoughts. What’s a tulpa supposed to be?”
    â€œYou’re the global hive mind, Gaia. Look up Tibetan mysticism.” Thuy’s favorite musician, Tawny Krush, had led her to this topic last year. “A tulpa’s an idea that becomes real.”
    â€œAh yes, I see now,” said Gaia quickly. “Quite the elegant squeal, really. So, yes, when you go up to Yolla Bolly, you’ll be dealing with Peng tulpas. In their own way, they’re as solid as you.”
    â€œHundreds of Peng?”
    â€œNot hundreds,” said Gaia, becoming a tangle of vines and leaves with bunny rabbits peeping out. “Not at all. Three Peng aliens in Yolla Bolly, and three here in San Francisco.”
    â€œHuge aliens?”
    â€œNo, no, the tulpas aren’t much bigger than you. It takes so very much matter to generate them because the computation is a quadrillion-fold inefficient. They parasitize a hundred-kilometer cube of my substance to compute three puny bodies amounting to a cubic meter of louse-infested flesh! It’s an outrage. I hate them.”
    â€œIf there’s only three aliens at our camp, then maybe Jayjay and I do have a chance,” said Thuy. “Maybe we could kill them.” But even as she said this, she wondered if it might not be better to make friends.
    â€œNo compromises,” urged Gaia, noticing Thuy’s thought of mercy. “I’d try to