Free Hylozoic by Rudy Rucker

thinking of the work made her smile. A bright spot in life’s frikkin’ vale o’ tears, a small zone where she was fully in control.
    Usually hive minds were presented as totalitarian and dull. But Thuy had decided that was backwards. A brain’s hive of cooperating neurons was a lot more interesting than a trillion independent nerve cells. An ant colony was way vibbier than an ant. And if you thought about the history of art and the history of science—as opposed to the history of governments—you got a sense that the emergent mind of massed human society could be a creative and wonderful thing.
    Maybe the problem with politics was that Earth’s nationsweren’t
enough
like hives. As it stood, democracies were controlled by tiny power elites who used the media to enforce uniform thought. A telepathic human society might instead be based upon each of its members being heard. Flexible, intricate compromises could supplant the blunt instrument of majority rule. . . .
    Thuy lost the thread of what she was thinking about.
    â€œI feel stupid,” she said out loud, and then tried it again, doing a hick accent. “Ah’m a-feelin’ duuuumb. Might as well go surfin’. Sunny Californee!
Cowabuuuunga
.” She warbled the long
u
sound up and down, heartening herself by being silly.
    In preparation for the surf outing, she rummaged around the bedroom, gathering warm clothes. She was planning to leave Jayjay on the floor so he’d wake up alone and wonder where she’d gone.
    But now, damnit, she could only find one of her pigtail fasteners. “Where’s your sister?” she asked the fastener as she wrapped it around a hank of hair on the left side of her head.
    â€œDon’t know,” teeped the fastener, a loop of elastic with two red balls. It sounded sullen. Even the silps were dumb today.
    Thuy found the other fastener lurking under her bed. It was actually trying to make itself invisible. Too lazy to hold her hair. And when Thuy got on her knees to reach for it, the little object rebounded from her fingernail and scooted deeper into the shadows.
    Thuy slid the bed away from the wall and captured the stupid balky fastener, with the uncooperative bed digging its feet into the floor. What a day. As Thuy stretched the elastic with one hand and gathered a pigtail with the other, the fastener’s balls managed a tiny rolling motion that sent it springing free. With a joyful clatter, the fastener skittered under her bed again.
    â€œGoddamn you all!” yelled Thuy, roughly yanking the bed to one side.
    Right about then Jayjay roused himself.
    â€œHey. What are you doing?”
    â€œDon’t you be asking
me
questions,” said Thuy, fastening her second pigtail. “Addict.”
    â€œI had such a weird trip,” said Jayjay, sitting up and rubbing his face.
    Ordinarily Thuy would have continued berating him, but today she wasn’t up for it. Mechanically she folded a towel and stuffed it in a carry-sack. “I’m going out on the waves with those kids,” was all she said. “Momotaro, Mabel, Chu, and Bixie.”
    â€œI’ll tag along,” said Jayjay. “Is that food on the counter for me?”
    â€œSonic brought it.”
    â€œGood old Sonic,” said Jayjay. He got to his feet and poured cream into his coffee. “I lost track of him last night. There was this weird pitchfork named Groovy. I think he physically pushed me into the subdimensions.”
    â€œVrilla told me,” said Thuy, still unable to feel much surprise. “Anyway, I saw you oozing up from the floor. What were you doing down there?”
    â€œI was in Subdee,” said Jayjay. “I even saw those flesh-eating cactuses you talked about. But there was a giant beanstalk, too. The pitchfork took me partway up it, and we saw the magic harp that you brought back from the Hibrane. Her name is Lovva.”
    â€œHell of a