Jim and the Flims by Rudy Rucker Page A

anything that tries to pass through the slab bumps into itself coming back out—and it has to stop. In this fashion one makes a zickzack wall.”
    â€œHold on—I don’t get how the jivas can just start bending and gluing space.”
    â€œThe jivas and the yuels of Flimsy see the world as if it were a bolt of cloth. They think in higher dimensions. A jiva can reach into the mural that is our cosmos and reconnect the zones.”
    I mulled this over as we continued walking. “Those zickzack walls—they can be any shape at all?”
    â€œYou see to the heart of the matter, Jim. A wall can be a tube, a block, a strut. My skeleton is enhanced with zickzack braces, and my muscles are strengthened by zickzack bands. Many of the clothes in Flimsy are zickzack as well. By use of diffraction gratings, the jivas can make zickzack of any color. Folded space is a universal construction material.”
    â€œWhat—what about a lightbulb?” I blindly challenged. “Where do your lamps get their juice?”
    â€œIn Flimsy, a lightbulb is a ball with its outside connected to the inside of a ball that stays near a glowing local sun,” said Weena, proud of her experience.
    â€œAll right,” I said, pondering the image. But, as usual, I had to wonder if she was putting me on.
    By now we were at the Boardwalk entrance. A sunburned woman and her husband were staring suspiciously at us, overhearing our odd conversation.
    â€œHow about if I buy us some tickets for the rides?” I asked Weena. “How many do you want to try?”
    â€œAll of them?” said Weena, with a smile. “We have considerable time. But I must confess that I brought no money. I expected we’d proceed directly to the Victorian house, and thence to Flimsy.”
    I hesitated, remembering the slim contents of my wallet. But, hey, if I was about to leave this world, there was no harm in running up my credit card. I got us all-day passes.
    Dogs weren’t really allowed around the rides, so I walked down the stairs from the midway to the beach and settled Droog in a shady spot with a paper cup of water. I attached his leash to the steps so no meddlers would assume he was a stray although, really, I could have left him unleashed and he would have waited perfectly well.
    Weena and I started with a ride that appeared fairly tame—it was a plastic pirate ship that swung from a tower like a giant swing. I didn’t remember ever having gone on this particular ride but, come to think of it, I hadn’t been on any of the Boardwalk rides for fifteen years.
    â€œCan you handle this?” I asked Weena.
    â€œI’m an adventuress,” she said as we walked up the gangplank together. “My lover Charles and I were on wilder rides at Funger Gardens in Flimsy. I recall a ride that turns people upside-down. That is, a chute loops around and dumps you into a pavilion whose space has been flipped over. The pavilion is open all around, and the sky is up and the dirt is down because of a space-gluing. So it appears as if you’re falling towards the ceiling. And a hysterical voice warns that if you touch the ceiling, you’ll explode.”
    â€œWhose voice?”
    â€œIt’s the pavilion talking. Pretty much everything in Flimsy is a little bit alive. In fact Flimsy herself is a living organism.”
    â€œHow big is Flimsy, anyway?”
    â€œShe’s larger than the universe—and smaller than what you call an electron. That baffles you, no? The world is a mystery.” We settled into our seats, and tight bars swung down over our laps.
    The cool ocean breeze blew across us; the mist was drifting away. I was happy to be on a ride with a sexy, offbeat girlfriend. For now I’d stopped thinking about Val. Maybe everything Weena said was bullshit, but at least I was alive. “Is there more to the story about the upside-down ride?” I asked.
    â€œOh yes!” exclaimed