A Brimley-esque Cobb

With Cobb, Rucker makes his strongest argument for the human-bopper fusion he envisions. After being dissected on Disky and reincarnated through Mr. Frostee, Cobb gets a new lease on life. His liberated software passes through a variety of different hardware models, each constructed to look like a different human or inhuman object. First, he has hardware modelled after his own body, then that of a gas station attendant, then that of a fatherly-looking cult figure. Finally his software passes into the hardware of the Mr. Frostee truck. As these re-creations demonstrate, Cobb achieves quasi-immortality by the end of the novel. Before having his software preserved, Cobb had felt like "nothing else mattered" with death so near in his future (Rucker 6). After having his software preserved, he is capable of committing suicide to avoid interrogation by the police (Rucker 139). His suicide is meant to emphasize the possibility of human-boppers having back-up files to their own existence. Much like computer files can be backed up on hard drives, a person's existence could be continually maintained to allow for another life after every death. Just like it is for Cobb, this idea of immortality is fascinating for any reader who has been concerned about aging.

The new body Cobb moves into -- built from Sta-Hi2 but modelled after a "grease monkey" gas station attendant -- also allows him to have new experiences which were not possible in his original hardware. When Cobb pays a mechanic to help him disguise the Mr. Frostee truck, he notices how comfortable he feels interacting with the man:

Cobb enjoyed their dealings very much. In his old body he had never been able to talk comfortably to garage mechanics. But now, with a random grease monkey's face, on a Sta-Hi shaped body, Cobb fit in at a filling station as easily as he used to fit in at research labs. Idly he wondered if Mr. Frostee could change the flicker-cladding enough to change him into a woman. That would be interesting. There was so much to look forward to! (Rucker 147).

Cobb's thoughts, while supposedly idle, are still suggestive of how renewable hardware could enable a person to alter his or her appearance, and improve his or her potential. Blemishes or physical limitations that people bear for a lifetime would only be short-term obstacles for a human-bopper. Like Cobb, they could have useful sub-routines included with their software to help them make mathematical computations, perhaps, or give them heightened strength (Rucker 113). Part of the attractiveness of the human-bopper meld Cobb exemplifies is that it is not only immortal, but it is free from many of the life-long limitations that normal humans must learn to endure.

Cobb furthermore is convinced that his soul has remained intact as he has become more bopper-like. In his final meeting with Sta-Hi, Cobb insists that his soul was not destroyed by being fitted into a computer program (Rucker 160). Cobb strongly believes that his mind's idea of self is just another idea that can be incorporated into computerized data (Rucker 143). This pragmatic view of the human soul is brought into question by Sta-Hi's objections, and by Cobb eventual reincarnation in the Mr. Frostee truck. However, because of his quasi-immortality and freedom from human limitations, Cobb is the strongest countercultural figure in Software.