Ribofunk (22 page)

Or so the Digireal experts tell us. It’s kind of hard to tell exactly what’s wrong from the inside.

All I know is that when I look at what I assume is Penguin, I see a stretched toroid with an irregular topography topped with filaments of varying lengths. I assume she sees the same.

It’s hard to work up the emotion to comfort a toroid, but I try my best, and so does she.

Oberjefe Ozal has been fantastic thru all this. He never loses his composure, but always keeps the ovoid with the seven openings atop the horizontal broadening of his column as cool as liquid nitrogen. He seems to derive almost superhuman strength and comfort from the qawwali buzz in the shell-shaped excrescences on the side of his aforementioned ovoid. I don’t know what we’d do without him.

I guess this bug is not going to be as easy to smoke as everyone first assumed.

Well, now I’m contorting my buccal orifice and fleshy red tasting member into phonemes that will signal an end to our conversation, which the flat grey box that transcribes and transmits my voice will insure that you receive.

Maintain your homeostasis at a less-than-feverish amplitude, Mom! (Not too hard at McMurdo in July!)

Your loving guest son,

CENSORED

SEND: IMF MODILE NODE

SYS01-4591P

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE

DATE/HOUR: 070565/1829

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK

Dear Host Mother,

The agnosia cleared up by itself.

It’s been replaced by a real mild neuro-deficit.

Amusica.

None of our pop-tabs sounds like anything anymore.

This one’s pretty easy to take.

Except for Oberjefe Ozal, who’s killed himself.

Your loving guest son,

CENSORED

SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE

SYS01-4591P

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE

DATE/HOUR: 070565/2105

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK

Dear Host Mother,

Have I sent this message yet?

Wait a minute, Penguin!

We seem to be suffering now from TGA, or transient global amnesia. (At least we hope it’s transient!) The herriots know that this kind of thing is related to damage on the underside of the temporal lobes, so they hope to squash the bug with a directed killer while it’s busy there. Did I mention that we’ve got TGA? For a while we can’t lay down any new memories. Maybe I sent you a ’vox already on it.… Don’t worry, long-term memory is unaffected. I remember how wonderful you and the other Moms and Dads have always been to me. I hope I don’t let you down.

Wait a minute, Penguin!

Have I sent this message yet?

Your loving guest son,

CENSORED

SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE

SYS01-4591P

RECEIVE: MC MURDO DIOSPHERE

DATE/HOUR: 070665/0105

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK

Dear Host Mother,

The TGA seems to be subsiding. We’ve been ordered to try to get some sleep.

Everyone’s receptive to that, but whenever we start to drowse off, we experience these tremendously magnified myoclonic spasms. You know those little jerks your body sometimes gives just before passing into sleep? Well, these are the mothers of all such twitches, enough to knock you out of bed.

The mccoys are circulating now with somnifacients that should put us under.

Hopefully, when the new day dawns, this goo-screwing bug will have exhausted itself.

Sleep tight!

Your loving guest son,

CENSORED

SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE

SYS01-4591P

RECEIVE: MC MURBO BIOSPHERE

DATE/HOUR: 070665/0800

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK

Dear Host Mother,

We lost half the pod during sleep to Nightmare Death Syndrome, that Thai/Filipino/Khampuchean tendency to flatline during sleep.

Unfortunately, the somnifacients may have contributed to the high mortality rate, preventing the sleepers from jolting awake.

I don’t know how to tell you this, so forgive me if I just blurt it out.

Penguin was one of the fatalities.

I almost wish the agnosia was back, so I wouldn’t feel so bad.

I’m asking the new CO to send you an adobe of her and me thru the metamedium.

Just in case I don’t make it home.

Your loving guest son,

CENSORED

SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE

SYS01-4591P

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE

DATE/HOUR: 070765/1200

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK

Dear Host Mother,

It’s been twenty-four hours since the last manifestation of the invader. The herriots are starting to feel safe about issuing an all-clear. And Doctor Sax is standing virtually by in the wings with a last-ditch experimental trope similar to CENSORED which they’re going to try if there’s another flareup.

Keep your fingers crossed (webbing and all)!

Your loving guest son,

CENSORED

SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE

SYS01-4591P

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE

DATE/HOUR: 070865/0300

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK

Dear Host Mother,

We’ve all received our shots of aldisscine, Doctor Sax’s new trope, despite its high LD rating.

There was really no choice after we all went body-blind.

What’s body-blindness? I can imagine you asking.

It’s total loss of proprioception, the multiplex feedback from your muscles and nerves, skin and bones, that allows you to tell—mostly subliminally—what your body’s doing.

We’re all isolated now in our heads like puppet-masters whose strings leading to their puppets have been tangled, or like a telefactor operator who’s lost his sensory feed. It’s not that we can’t move our limbs or anything. There’s no paralysis. It’s just (just!) that aside from visual feedback, there’s no inherent sense of where any part of you
is
! You might as well try to operate someone else’s body as your own under these conditions. It’s not pleasant, watching your proxies tripping over their own feet, missing chairs, their mouths, the D-com-poz unit—

But you can get used to anything, I guess. And the experts are confident that the aldisscine will stop any new deficits from popping up.

Anyway, I’m kind of glad Penguin didn’t live to experience this. I never got a chance to tell you, but she used to be a dancer in regular franch life.

The orders have finally come down from Brussels for our pod to be rotated out. There’s talk that if the body-blindness proves permanent, they’ll try to fit us all out with onboard stabilizer chips and nanosensors to simulate normal proprioception.

What’s one more bodymod nowadays, huh, Mom?

Your loving guest son,

CENSORED

SEND: IMF OFFEARTH NODE

SYS02-999Z

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE

DATE/HOUR: 071065/2400

TRANSMISSION STATUS: SOLAR NOISE

IMPEDIMENT (*) = -10%

Dear Ho*t Moth**,

As you might’ve guessed by the delay between messages, we’ve been rerouted.

We’re in transit to CEN*****, where we’ll get the best of care. They discovered that all surviving members of our pod are suffering from degenerative neurofibrillary protein tangles similar to those found in sufferers of that extinct disease known as Alz********. CENSORED is a kind of sanitarium, where an AI-human team waits to cure us.

They say the average stay at CENSORED is *** months, but could stretch to **** years. Jumping genes! You could be in another symb-bonding by then! Anyway, I can’t look that far ahead, as our prognosis is very ****.

Let me repeat that, in case these flares are interfering: we stand a **** chance, not a **** one.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to take any incoming ’voxes from you for a while, or even send any. Not that I’d be able to really appreciate them too good anyhow. My brain seems a little dull right now. But they promise us that full metamedium contact will be restored as soon as it’s appropriate.

But don’t worry. You can always contact Brussels for updates.

Just ask for your boy, CENSORED!

STREETLIFE

Coney’s master was a Virtuality Poet. And he was one of the best. Only Planxty or Bingo Bantam could approach the depth and brilliance of his compositions, and rarely at that. So his master would always tell Coney, especially when he was under the influence of a trope such as Egoboo or Meglo, which left him prone to recite aloud his own reviews, complete with melodramatic flourishes of the crepey folds of velvet skin that hung like batwings from his underarms.

“‘Hopcroft’s latest cortex-vortex is a cell-stunner!
Visit to the Mushroom Planet
opens with Tenniel’s hookah-smoking Caterpillar greeting the percipient with a blast of aromatic smoke. When the cinnamon cloud clears, the perk finds herself on the Mushroom Planet of the title. Fungi lifeforms in startling variety exfoliate and enfold the mind-traveler, who can navigate the construx with more than the standard ten degrees of freedom, thanks to Hopcroft’s truly creative use of CoCenSys’s Infini-Tree Fabware. The poet’s signature use of lush textures and his smorgasbord-gorgeous false-color palette all contribute to a synapse-shattering experience—especially if you’re simultaneously running a coprocessor such as CellSmartz, as this lucky perk was! With this ’strux, Hopcroft delivers on all his past promises and establishes himself as
the
poet of his cohort.’”

Throwing the flimsy across the room (to be quickly retrieved by a Braun DoorMaus), Coney’s master would spread his batlike membranes wide and exclaim, “‘
The
poet of his cohort!’ Did you hear that, Coney?”

“Yes, Peej Hopcroft, I heard.”

“It’s all gush, of course. But true gush. I am the most accomplished poet of my clade. There’s no disputing it, is there, Coney?”

“No indeed. It is just as Peej Reviewer said.”

Most likely then—especially if the tropes were wearing off—Coney’s master would, at this point in the ritual, collapse into a convenient organiform chair (somehow he was never so distraught as to land on the floor), drape his head with his fleshfolds, and begin to weep.

“But what good does it do me, Coney? This crass society does not respect poets, nor does it honor them with rewards material or spiritual. It never has, and it never will. I am an acquired taste, and then only among a few. The mass of my fellow citizens are Philistines, plain and simple.
Siouxsie Sexcrime
is their idea of poetry! How can such a sensitive soul as mine endure it, Coney? Ah, but my life is hard, Coney—harder than a stupid transgenic like you could ever imagine. I can barely scrape together enough ecus to pay my Digireal fees. And my art cannot be rushed! This is why I am forced much too often to play the lusty gigaload gigolo!”

Coney knew enough not to interrupt at this point. He would wait with the patience of his kind for the tearful poet to finish his performance.

“Yes,” Coney’s master would inevitably begin his peroration, “I, the RAM-baud of my cohort, must make ends meet by crawling for pay into the Sack with lascivious starfuckers, eager to boast to their witless friends that they have enjoyed teledildonics with another ii-do tarento whose art they cannot even begin to appreciate!”

At this juncture Coney would venture a comment he hoped would bolster his master’s self-esteem and spare himself a collar-jolt.

“Peej Hopcroft only does what he must, to further his art.”

If he had by now downed a trope such as Zesta, Coney’s master would sigh extravagantly and agree. (Otherwise, the dreaded neuronic zap might be forthcoming, along with the admonition “not to overstep your splicey self with comments about things you couldn’t possibly comprehend.”)

Tonight—a mild June evening stochastically certified to be rainfree—much to Coney’s relief, his stock phrase served its intended purpose. The familiar scene which he had just endured for the nth time played itself out happily for him.

“Yes, little Daewoo Dumbunni, we all do what we must, don’t we? Even peddle our arse for the sake of our ars.”

Coney had no idea what this last statement meant, but was only too happy to nod his sympathy.