Transreal Cyberpunk by Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling Page A

I’m crazy.” He pushed his Italian shades up onto the top of his narrow crewcut skull, and grinned. He was enjoying himself. “But if it does work, ol’ son—you’re gonna think you’re crazy.”
    Revel dipped the end of the funnel into the quiescent but aromatic mass. He swirled it around, then held it up carefully and puffed.
    A fat lozenge-shaped gelatinous bubble appeared at the end of the horn.
    “Holy cow, it blows up just like a balloon,” Tug said, impressed. “That’s some kind of viscosity!”
    Revel grinned wider, holding the thing at arm’s length. “It gets better.”
    Tug Mesoglea watched in astonishment as the clear bubble of Urschleim slowly rippled and dimpled. A long double crease sank into the taut outer membrane of the gelatinous sphere, encircling it like the seam on an oversized baseball.
    Now, with a swampy-sounding pop, the bubble came loose from the horn’s tin muzzle and began to float in midair. A set of cilia emerged along the seam and the airborne jelly began to bob and beat its way upward.
    “Urschleim!” whooped Revel.
    “Jesus Christ,” Tug said, staring in shocked fascination. The air jelly was still changing before his eyes, evolving a set of interior membranes, warping, pulsing, and rippling itself into an ever more precise shape, for all the world like a computer graphics program ray-tracing its image into an elegant counterfeit of reality...
    Then a draft of air caught it. It hit the eaves of the house, adhered messily, and broke. Revel prudently stepped aside as a long rope of slime fell to the deck.
    “I can hardly believe it,” said Tug. “Spontaneous symmetry breaking! A self-actuating reaction/diffusion system. This slime of yours is an excitable medium with emergent behavior, Revel! And that spontaneous fractalization of the structures ... Can you do it again?”
    “As many times as you want,” said Revel. “With as much Urschleim as you got. Of course, the smell kinda gets to you if you do it indoors.”
    “But it’s so odd,” breathed Tug. “That the slime out of your oil-well is forming itself into jellyfish shapes just as I’m starting to build jellyfish out of plastic.”
    “I figure it for some kind of a morphic resonance thing,” nodded Revel. “This primeval slime’s been trapped inside the Earth so long it’s truly achin’ to turn into something live and organic. Kind of like that super-weird worm and bacteria and clam shit that grows out of deep undersea vents.”
    “You mean around the undersea vents, Revel.”
    “No Tug, right out of ‘em. That’s the part most people don’t get.”
    “Whatever. Let me try blowing an Urschleim air jelly.”
    Tug dabbled the horn’s tin rim in the picnic cooler, then huffed away at his own balloon of Urschleim. The sphere began to ripple internally, just as before, with just the same dimples and just the same luscious double crease. Tug had a sudden deja vu. He’d seen this shape on his computer screen.
    All of a sudden the treacherous thixotropic stuff broke into a flying burst of clear snot that splashed all over his feet and legs. The magic goo felt tingly on Tug’s skin. He wondered nervously if any of the slime might be passing into his bloodstream. He hurriedly toweled it off his body, then used the side of his Birkenstock sandal to push the rest of the slime off the edge of the deck.
    “What do you think?” asked Revel.
    “I’m overwhelmed,” said Tug, shaking his head. “Your Urschleim jellyfish looks so much like the ones I’ve been building in my lab. Let’s go in. I’ll show you my jellyfish while we think this through.” Tug led Revel into the house.
    Revel insisted on bringing the Urschleim-containing cooler and the empty pressure canister into the house. He even got Tug to throw an Indian blanket over them, “in case we get company.”
    Tug’s jellyfish tanks filled up an entire room with great green bubbling glory. The aquarium room had been a domestic video game parlor