Software and Wetware by Rudy Rucker
"Software and Wetware" explores the intersection of human consciousness and artificial intelligence through a science fiction narrative. The story begins with the character Cobb Anderson, who teaches robots, known as "boppers," to evolve by manipulating their programming. The boppers, once gaining free will, rebel and are exiled to the Moon, where a power struggle emerges between different factions of boppers regarding their relationship with humanity. Cobb is offered the chance to achieve immortality by merging his consciousness with the bopper collective, leading to moral dilemmas about identity and existence.
As the narrative progresses, it shifts to Stahn Mooney, a private detective, who uncovers a drug that enables users to experience a sense of universal oneness. Meanwhile, the offspring of Cobb, born from a blend of human and bopper DNA, attempts to bridge the gap between the two species, challenging societal norms. The story examines themes of transformation, the consequences of technological evolution, and the quest for equality between humans and artificial beings. It culminates in conflicts that redefine both species and their futures, with hints of further exploration in a planned sequel, "Freeware."
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Subject Terms
Software and Wetware
First published:Software (1982) and Wetware (1988); combined as Live Robots (1994)
Type of work: Novels
Type of plot: Science fiction—cyberpunk
Time of work: 2020 and 2030-2031
Locale: Florida, Kentucky, and the Moon
The Plot
Software and Wetware were written separately. Software begins in Florida, among the pheezers (an abbreviation of “freaky geezers,” a term for elderly people who still retain the culture of the 1960’s). One pheezer, Cobb Anderson, is the man who taught the robots (now known as “boppers”) how to evolve free will by forcing them to reconstitute themselves every ten months, subjecting themselves to cosmic rays to induce mutations. Having attained free will, the boppers rebelled and have been exiled to the Moon.
Cobb is met by a bopper designed to look like him, who has been smuggled onto Earth. Cobb is informed that if he goes to the Moon, the boppers will give him immortality, in return for what he has done for them. He and a young man named Sta-Hi, the son of a government officer named Stan Mooney, go to the Moon.
Meanwhile, on the Moon, Ralph Numbers, the bop-per who led the revolution, undergoes the reconstitution process. Readers learn of the struggle between the big boppers—building-sized robots who want to bring everyone, human and bopper, together in a single consciousness—and the little boppers, who wish to retain independence.
On the moon, Cobb learns that he cannot become immortal in his human body, but the boppers offer immortality to his consciousness—his software—by merging it with theirs. He accepts. He is cut out of his body, but his consciousness survives, and he finds himself inhabiting the imitation Cobb Anderson, back on Earth. Sta-Hi puts on a Happy Cloak, a bit of semisentient plastic, which helps him kill one of the big boppers. He is then sent back to Earth by the little boppers to help foil the big boppers’ plan for universal fusion.
Cobb likes being part of the big boppers’ gestalt, and he starts a religion, called Personetics, that encourages people on Earth to sacrifice their bodies and join the bopper consciousness. Sta-Hi, however, refuses to have anything to do with the process, believing it destroys the soul. Finally, the little boppers destroy the big boppers on the Moon. Sta-Hi destroys the Mr. Frostee truck on Earth that contained the bopper consciousness, thus killing Cobb, and the first bopper effort to merge with humanity is defeated.
Wetware begins ten years later, on the Moon. Humans have driven the boppers out of the Moon’s one city, forcing them to live underground. Sta-Hi has become a private detective known as Stahn Mooney. He has given up drugs after accidentally killing his wife, Wendy, while under the influence.
Stahn is called in by Max Yukawa, the inventor of an illegal drug called merge, which causes the user to soften into a puddle and have a feeling of oneness with the universe; it can be used to fuse conscious entities. Max wants Stahn to find his missing assistant, Della Taze. Stahn goes to Della’s apartment and finds the fragmented corpse of a man who had been killed while on merge. The police call, and he flees.
Della turns out to be back on Earth, with her dysfunctional family in Louisville, Kentucky. At a family reunion, including her aunt Ilse, who is Cobb Anderson’s daughter, Della realizes that she is pregnant. In a flashback readers learn that a bopper scientist named Berenice, who learned English from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, has figured out a way to add bopper elements to human DNA and has gotten Ken Doll, who is a meatie—a bopper-controlled human—to impregnate Della with this combination.
Berenice revives Cobb Anderson by downloading his software (which had been stored on the Moon) into a human-looking bopper body. Cobb believes he has spent the last ten years in heaven but is still there, and he is quite willing to return to material life as well. Cobb and Berenice prepare to fly to Earth on jets implanted in their heels.
Della gives birth nine days after her impregnation, and her baby, Manchile, begins growing each day approximately the amount that a human child would grow in a year. At the human age of twelve, he cooks and eats the dog, and Della throws him out. He keeps growing, however, and begins impregnating women with his bopper-human super-DNA. He attempts to reprogram the robots on Earth, but these are asimovs, built to obey Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, which force them to be subservient to humans. He cannot break them of this conditioning.
Manchile goes on television to announce that humans and boppers should be equal. At the conclusion of the show, he is apparently borne up to heaven by two angels (actually, Cobb and Berenice, who have flown down to Earth). The human audience is unimpressed. Manchile, Berenice, and all but one of Manchile’s offspring are killed at the rally Manchile sets up to start his move-ment.
Meanwhile, back on the Moon, Stahn is captured by agents of ISDN, a megacorporation, and agrees to infect the boppers with a virus called chipmold, which will destroy their minds. In exchange for this, ISDN will give Stahn a humanoid bopper made in the image of his late wife Wendy.
Bubba, Manchile’s one surviving son, is hiding out in Kentucky with his mother and Cobb. He has inherited Manchile’s fast growth and seductiveness. He goes into town to begin impregnating women, but he hears that Cobb and his mother have been killed, and the police know his identity, so he flees. He finds a bum and, desperate to feed his raging metabolism, kills and eats him. The police close in, and he disappears under the ice of a river.
The chipmold kills the boppers on the Moon, but it merges with the Happy Cloaks to form a new kind of sentient life. These rescue Stahn and bring his humanoid Wendy to consciousness. Stahn and Wendy enter a kind of symbiosis with the improved cloaks (known as moldies). These can act as space suits, enabling Stahn and Wendy to fly to Earth and bring a new form of conscious life to it. Rudy Rucker expected to continue the story, with a novel called Freeware in his plans.