Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

16RUDY RUCKERSoftwareCobb Anderson would have held out longer, but you don't see dolphins every day. Therewere twenty of them, fifty, rolling in the little gray waves, wicketing up out of the water.It was good to see them. Cobb took it for a sign and went out for his evening sherry anhour early.The screen door slapped shut behind him and he stood uncertainly for a moment,dazed by the late-afternoon sun. Annie Cushing watched him from her window in thecottage next door. Beatles' music drifted out past her."You forgot your hat," she advised. He was still a good-looking man, barrel-chested andbearded like Santa Claus. She wouldn't have minded getting it on with him, if he weren'tso ..."Look at the dolphins, Annie. I don't need a hat. Look how happy they are. I don'tneed a hat and I don't need a wife." He started toward the asphalt road, walking stifflyacross the crushed white shells.Annie went back to brushing her hair. She wore it white and long, and she kept itthick with hormone spray. She was sixty and not too brittle to hug. She wondered idly ifCobb would take her to the Golden Prom next Friday.The long last chord of "Day in the Life" hung in the air. Annie couldn't have saidwhich song she had just heard-after fifty years her responses to the music were all butextinguished-but she walked acrossExcerpt from Software by Rudy Rucker. Copyright @ 1981 by Rudy Rucker.The complete novelSoftware will be published by Ace Books, New York, 1981.