Free The Hacker and the Ants by Rudy Rucker Page A

and Ma would try to get back together,” said Tom softly.
    â€œYou shouldn’t feel like it’s your responsibility, Tom,” I told him. “If you feel responsible, you’ll make yourself unhappy.” I was starting to feel bad and sinful and dirty all over. “Did you children have a snack?”
    â€œThere’s nothing in the icebox but a half-empty bottle of wine,” said Ida bitterly.
    â€œThere’s sardines and crackers in the cupboard.”
    â€œI think we’ll jam on over to Ma’s,” said Tom. “Before rush hour.”

    â€œWell, okay. I’ve still got to figure out why cyberspace is full of ants. I promise I’ll have food for you tomorrow. And no naked women.”
    â€œOf all the outrage,” said Ida half-jestingly, then giving a stagy sigh and shaking her head. “Our so-called father.” Her sad clowning showed that she still loved me. I hugged her and Tom and gave them each a kiss.
    â€œI’m sorry about today. Things got mixed up about Gretchen. She’s really very nice. I might have a date with her this weekend.”
    â€œOkay, Da,” said Tom. “Good luck getting rid of your ants!” They drove off in the old Honda. Tom’s car now.
    I took the rest of the chardonnay out in the backyard and drank it; two glasses worth. It had taken me a while to get the hang of liking chardonnay. Chardonnay wasn’t fruity or tangy like the wines I’d had back East. It had a smoky, oily, metallic taste that bloomed at the base of your tongue. You only knew it was better than other wines because it cost more. After the second glass, I could feel the alcohol in my blood: relaxation, euphoria, increased circulation. It was the tail end of a nice spring day.
    There had been some rain—for once—last week, and my yard had put forth a green carpet of cloverlike plants with yellow flowers. Before the rain, the ground had been cracked clay with a few lank yellow tufts, and now it was a fairyland. I’d used my computer data base to learn that the plants were called sorrel , just like our older daughter, Sorrel, a sophomore in college back East. The leaves of the sorrel plant are pleasantly sour if you chew them.
    I started walking around the yard tasting things: nibbling buds off the bushes and trees. Our dog always used to eat grass in the spring. His name was Fluff; Ida had picked the name. When we moved to California, I consigned Fluff to the Humane Society so we could rent Mr.
Nutt’s house. No pets allowed! Maybe if we’d kept Fluff and found a different house, Carol wouldn’t have left me.
    Carol and I stayed married twenty-three years. During that time she often said she’d leave me as soon as she was self-supporting. I’d never believed her, but now she had her own job and she was gone, the bitch. She said I’d stopped loving her, and maybe I had.
    Part of the problem was that I hacked too much, and part of the problem was that, over the years, Carol had lost interest in me. Nearly every night, she fell asleep on the couch in front of our digital TV, so why shouldn’t I be with my computer? Daytimes weren’t so good either, because we never seemed to want to talk about the same things. Science and fantasies interested me, but the little ordinary human things—the kinds of things Carol cared about—I couldn’t focus on them.
    Now the phone was ringing. Had I reconnected it? Oh, yeah. I shambled into the house and picked it up. It was Carol.
    â€œJerzy! What did you do to the children today?” Her voice was hard.
    â€œNothing. What’s your problem? I thought we weren’t going to talk on the phone anymore!” The last couple of times we’d talked, it had been me who placed the call, angling for her to come back, and Carol had been quite discouraging.
    Instead of me, she had her boyfriend, the guy she’d left me for, a thirty-four-year-old sushi