Jack L. Chalker - The Hot-Wired Dodo

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Jack L. Chalker - The Wonderland Gambit 03 - The Hot-Wired Dodo

THE HOT-WIRED DODO

BOOK THREE OF

THE WONDERLAND GAMBIT

e-book ver. 1.0

To Roger and to John,

neither of whom I can truly accept as gone.

Roger, I think, would have approved of this one;

John is somewhere with Isaac, adamantly refusing with

his old colleague to believe that there is life after

death. I miss you both.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

This is the third and probably final chapter in The Wonderland Gambit saga. It's been a lot of fun to write

and explore, although some may be upset with me for, well, borrowing a trick at the end that you all

should have expected but that, all things considered, was absolutely essential and inevitable. Don't worry.

Next time I have this terrific new original ending featuring a great white whale .. .

During the course of writing The Wonderland Gambit saga, I've lost two very close friends who kind of

remained in my mind while I completed this book. Roger Zelazny was very close; I helped him move to

Baltimore in the early sixties, and he was active in the Baltimore Science Fiction Society and was a

cofounder and hidden financier of early Balticons. We'd have dinner often, or just talk on the phone for

long periods, and he often called when stalled or unhappy with something and used me as a sounding

board. I may not have my own Hugo, but I'll have you know that the little scene in Lord of Light in which

the peasants discover their first toilet and try to figure out what it's for is mostly me.

We weren't as close after he moved to Santa Fe, but we still kept in touch and got together occasionally at

conventions to marvel over how things had gone and occasionally plot new mischief. The last time I saw

him, about nine months before he died, he seemed the happiest he'd been since the old Baltimore days.

For the past decade, he was just far enough away physically but still so close in spirit that there's an

emotional part of me that knows he's still just out in New Mexico someplace.

John Brunner was also a friend, and a good one. We met originally at conventions, and somehow tended

to wind up trading stories-sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with a huge entourage-in a hotel pub

or local bar for hours on end. Politically, John was far to the left of my militant centrism, but there was

something there between us that was simpatico. I was toastmaster at the World SF Convention where

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Jack L. Chalker - The Wonderland Gambit 03 - The Hot-Wired Dodo

John was guest of honor.

He looked good at Glasgow last August Bank Holiday week. I saw him on Wednesday across the hall,

and he saw me, waved, and called my name. I shouted back that we'd rendezvous as usual sometime

before the last day of the con. Well, he headed out to dinner and returned with contract offers and a new

resurgence in his career, and then he went around and partied all night and we didn't connect. But, what

the heck, the con was just beginning.

Timing, John! It's all in the timing! It's one thing to go out at a Worldcon on the upswing of a career that

had been down, but on Monday, John, not on Thursday morning.

I thought of them when I wrote The Hot-Wired Dodo, and there's certainly a good deal of Roger in

segments here, and a little bit of Brunner as well, particularly in the moral dilemmas faced by some of the

characters and the arguments they make.

I just wanted you to know that they were good people, and that I see them sitting around with Phil Dick

and many others now gone and raising glasses to the future, never suspecting they're in a brand-new

virtual world.

John wouldn't believe it anyway.

Jack L. Chalker

WAITING FOR THE END OF THE

UNIVERSE

When you're waiting around for the end of the world and you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that

you've got an immortal soul, you tend to worry less about being good and lean a little more to the bad.

Not that this helped me much, but it did help a little. I mean, I looked like a woman, but I had no

reproductive plumbing, no particular sexual urges or desires, and no hair, either, so what the hell. I was

more than ready for a new incarnation, but I didn't have any say in when the button would be pressed, and

we would have precious little warning when it was. When months went by, though, you did tend to get

more than a little bored, particularly when stuck in the middle of nowhere. The most positive thing I'd

accomplished since coming to the backup area in central Washington was that I'd managed to mostly

break myself of the Brand Box-induced habit of referring to myself in the plural.

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Jack L. Chalker - The Wonderland Gambit 03 - The Hot-Wired Dodo

I was also "overwhelmed" with depression, but stuck in a body that was constructed in one of Al Stark's

little worlds, I really didn't have much capacity for emotion. I was shaped female, but a sexual neuter. I

was hairless, and needed a wig just to look presentable. I didn't even have much in the way of taste or

smell; it hadn't been necessary in that giant "we're all the same" supermall. I had memories, but it was

hard to conjure up physical feelings and emotions when reliving them. So, I used chemicals to feel an

approximation of pleasure-and not even all those worked. I was also hampered in doing a lot of the things

I would have liked to because we all knew that there wouldn't be much warning when Lee or whoever

was now running the institute finally took it through to the next plane.

I certainly understood the setup all too well, having survived two such moves, but I found myself eager to

move on from this reality, which had been the worst in several key areas, and impatient that I had to

depend on somebody else, somebody I hated. That emotion I seemed to have no problems with.

Thinking through the long term was also more in my line, too, particularly because those thoughts were

uncolored by some of the usual human feelings. I had to wonder if in fact we who thought of ourselves as

"real" and the rest of the universes as filled with ghosts, or "spooks," created by computer in some vast

virtual reality were in fact any more real than the spooks were. Maybe we were even less so-nobody had

ever been able to go backward and find out if the rest of the old universe was still there.

Suppose we were the electronic creations, going through a series of parallel realities? Suppose the great

missing genius, Matthew Brand, almost our god figure in all this, had in fact found the gateway to infinite

numbers of parallel universes, each as real as the one in which he'd been born? It wasn't out of the

question or more Lewis Carroll-type nonsense; the far-out edges of New Physics postulated parallel

universes anyway, and used them to explain a lot of anomalies in "reality." Okay, so suppose that was it.

Suppose all the rest were real and we were the creatures of fantasy created by Brand. It could be that we

were the Mad Hatters and March Hares and Mock Turtles, Duchesses and Caterpillars, and those who

seemed so "normal" really were just that. Instead of me as Alice, I was really the Cheshire Cat, fading in

and out of realities, but alien to normality.

It was possible.

That, damn it, was the trouble. Anything was possible.

What in hell had any of us learned after all these worlds, all these lives, all these existences? Callousness

and cruelty? Well, I guess we brought that with us. Lusts for power and back-and-forth combat? Ditto.

Damn it, after all this time, at least some of us must have learned something! Surely it couldn't have been

entirely wasted!

Those aliens and their classic little flying saucer, for example. Who were they? Where had they come

from?

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Jack L. Chalker - The Wonderland Gambit 03 - The Hot-Wired Dodo

"The Boojums showed up in a world where we literally got invaded by another planet," Walt reminisced.

"No, not them- at least not right off. Even nastier things. Kind of like War of the Worlds slimeballs. The

Boojums were from someplace else entirely doing some kind of research work and they got blamed for

what the 'Slugs From Beyond' were doing. I remember Matt took a chance on them, I think after seeing

them battle one of the slug ships, and tried contacting them. Didn't take, until the slugs knocked one of

their saucers out of the sky almost on top of us. Matt saved 'em, and, ever since, they've been like high-

tech hunting dogs, loyal to a fault and with no place to go."

"But they shouldn't have translated to the next universe," I pointed out. "Nobody else did, except our

people."

Walt nodded. "Surprised hell out of us, too. Everybody except Matt, that is. As you've probably noticed,

they haven't got a spoken language, and old paranoid Al wanted to blow 'em away and they knew it. Matt

got to them, somehow, through the VR interfaces and the Brand Box. I just can't be positive, but I'm

pretty damned sure they had no idea of all this until he and they connected. They made a lot of the

improvements, in fact-the Brand Box we know today was developed from the early work between Matt

and them using their interface with the saucer. That's how Cynthia, or anybody, really, can fly the thing.

You put on the head mount and you are the ship. It's that easy. Of course, I get the very distinct idea that

the little guys and the ship are connected automatically, like the way you had a head mount inside your

head. They let us fool with it, but we always know they're there. They're always connected-to the ship and

to each other. The principle of the synergy between alien and ship is the same that went into the final

Brand Boxes. The material, however, that makes up the core of the boxes also came from the spare parts

supply on the alien ship, which is why we can't build any more of them."

That explained that. "But he had the principle before this, I gather, and the meeting with these beings just

allowed him to perfect it?"

Walt nodded again. "If you call this perfected, I guess you can say that. What we didn't figure on was that

Matt had some concepts and ideas these little aliens didn't know. So, in exchange for the manufacture of

the existing Brand Boxes that we interfaced to the life-support pods-mostly in the Command Center but

also in some backup areas like this-they took a lot of the concepts and math from Matt's computers and

repaired and rebuilt their ship. When we punched through to the next level, they all got in the ship, and,

although most of us didn't know it at the time, they punched through right with us, using the ship as an

alternate command center and its life support as their version of the pods."

"Huh? How come you didn't know it at the time?"

He shrugged. "Well, they shifted under cover. They don't tell us much so we all called 'em Boojums, like

the Lewis Carroll stuff Matt was so fond of. They don't seem to mind. I doubt if they have names in our

sense, either individually or collectively. Matt shifted them here, and sent me and Tanaka up to help 'em

out. Cynthia came along for ... well, long story of no consequence. Anyway, the slugs found the Mojave

Command Center and forced a punch; we couldn't get down there and thought we were done for. Dan

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Jack L. Chalker - The Wonderland Gambit 03 - The Hot-Wired Dodo

tried to make it anyway and got creamed, so he wound up in the reincarnation bin. Cynthia and I stayed

here, and were surprised as hell when the Boojums pulled us on board and hooked us up to padded

sections around the wall on the center level of the saucer. Hell, what choice did we have but to go along? I

don't think the Boojums themselves knew if it would work, but they set it up for the punch, and when

Matt punched through so did we. Surprised the hell out of us. Inside the ship, we didn't even do an

incarnation. We just rode straight through, believe it or not. Just as we were. Pain in the ass-I was already

over forty. Since then we've used the boxes; the Booj, they still punch through their way. Never changed,

never got any older, and never got any fewer."

"Huh? I saw several get creamed back in Yakima a few lives back," I reminded him. "I even-well-I hit

one with the car."

He nodded. "I know. You can kill 'em, burn 'em up, but come the next punch the same bunch comes out

of the same saucer just the same way and in the same numbers. They probably do reincarnate-but if they

read minds, or have some built-in connection to a kind of master Brand Box in the ship, then they're

gonna get all the knowledge and memories back the moment the reincarnation happens. Must be nice.

That's what Al's been trying to do, I think. Make it a certainty that his complete memory goes through

even if he gets blown away as he did this time. He hasn't made it yet, though. I'm pretty sure of that,

although the Brand Boxes can record enough of your old self to really get you oriented. It's never quite

the same, though-usually a different sex for starters, then a slightly different background that makes it

seem like you're a peeping Tom in somebody else's mind. I know what it's like. The memory's there, but

it's never, somehow, real. You get the knowledge, but not the personality."

I nodded. "I know what you mean even if I can't relate to the experience. I remember at least two past

lives, but they don't seem to have been my lives. I retain the skills and knowledge, but it's like I'm taking it

from a recording, not from experience."

"Yeah, that's about it. I sometimes wonder if we are the same."

All this explained a lot, but not nearly enough to even start solving this.

"Walt, I think everybody's been too damned passive, particularly since you lost Brand," I told him.

"Nobody's really attempting a concerted, long-term program to solve this mystery. Nobody's really

looking for the way out, if there is an 'out.' Instead, you're just fighting each other, going back and forth,

trying to gain a little power and advantage that's always local at best."

He shrugged. "What can we do? We don't have the Boojums' automatic restoration. When we die, we

wake up ignorant. You know that. And there is no team effort from life to life, universe to universe.

Everybody's too busy stabbing everybody else in the back. You can't force that kind of programming

change. Matt could do some of it, a lot of it maybe, but when he vanished, so did any hope of getting out

of this."

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