A Good Old-Fashioned Future by Bruce Sterling Page B

advance! Tomorrow, that is.”
    As Revel drew out his portable phone, another of the great metal tanks gave way, releasing a giant, toadstoollike spotted jelly. Outlined against the faint eastern sky, itwas an awesome sight. The wind urged the huge quivering thing northward, and its great stubby tentacles dragged stubbornly across the ground. Tug wished briefly that Revel were screaming in the jelly’s grip instead of screaming into his telephone.
    “
Lost
’em?” Revel said, screeching. “What the hell you mean? We shipped ’em to you, and you owe us the money for ’em. Your warehouse roof blew off? That’s not my fault, is it? Well, yes, we did ship some extras. Yes, we shipped you twenty to one. We figured you’d have a high demand. So that makes it our fault? Kiss my grits!” He snapped the phone shut and scowled.
    “So all the jellies in Orange County got away?” said Tug softly. “It’s looking kind of bad for Ctenophore, Inc., isn’t it, Revel? It’s going to be tough to run that operation
alone.
” With a roar, a third storage tank gave way like a hatching egg, releasing a moon jelly the size of an ice-skating rink. The first rays of the rising sun shimmered on its great surface. In the distance there were sirens.
    In rapid succession the two remaining tanks burst open, unleashing a bell jelly and a mammoth sea nettle. A vagary of the dawn breeze swept the sea nettle toward Tug and Revel. Instead of fleeing it, Revel ran crazily toward it, bellowing in mindless anger.
    Tug watched Revel for a moment too long, for now the huge sea nettle lashed out two of its dangling oral arms and snagged the both of them. Swelling its hollow gut a bit larger, the vast sea nettle rose a few hundred feet into the air, and began drifting north along Route One toward San Francisco.
    By swinging themselves around and climbing frenziedly, Tug and Revel were able to find a perch together in the tangled tissues on the underside of the enormous sea nettle. The effort and the clear morning air seemed finally to have cleared Revel’s head.
    “We’re lucky these things don’t sting, eh, Doc? I gotta hand it to you. Say, ain’t this a hell of a ride?”
    The light of the morning sun refracted wonderfullythrough the giant lens-like tissues of the helium-filled sea nettle.
    “I wonder if we can steer it?” said Tug, feeling around in the welter of dangling jelly frills all around them. “It’d be pretty cool to set down at Crissy Field right near the Golden Gate Bridge.”
    “If anyone can steer it, Tug, you’re the man.”
    Using his knowledge of the jelly’s basins of chaotic attraction, Tug was indeed able to adjust the giant sea nettle’s pulsings so as to bring them to hover over Crissy Field’s great grassy sward, right at the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, first making a low pass over the hilly streets of San Francisco. Below were thousands of people, massed to greet them.
    They descended lower and lower, surrounded by a buzzing pack of TV-station helicopters. Anticipating a deluge of orders for Ctenophore products, Revel phoned up Hoss Jenkins to check his Urschleim supply.
    “We’ve got more goo than oil, Revel,” shouted Hoss. “It’s showin’ up in all our wells and in everybody else’s wells all across Texas. Turns out there wasn’t nothing primeval about your slime at all. It was just a mess of those gene-splice bacteria like I told you all along. Them germs have floated down from the air jellies and are eatin’ up all the oil they can find!”
    “Well, keep pumping that goo! We got us a global market here! We got cold fusion happening, Hoss! Not to mention airships, my man, and self-heating housing! And that probably ain’t but the half of it.”
    “I sure hope so, Revel! Because it looks like all the oil business left in Texas is about to turn into the flyin’ jelly business. Uncle Donny Ray’s asking lots of questions, Revel! I hope you’re prepared for this!”
    “Hell yes, I’m