Accelerando

Pamela raises one sharply sculpted eyebrow: "Are you sure?"

"You want an answer," he says.

She breathes deeply, and he feels it on his cheek – it raises the fine hairs on the back of his neck. Then she nods stiffly. "I want to know how much of our history was scripted by the cat. Back when we thought we were upgrading his firmware, were we? Or was he letting us think that we were?" A sharp hiss of breath: "The divorce. Was that us? Or were we being manipulated?"

"Our memories, are they real? Did any of that stuff actually happen to us? Or —"

She's standing about twenty centimeters away from him, and Manfred realizes that he's acutely aware of her presence, of the smell of her skin, the heave of her bosom as she breathes, the dilation of her pupils. For an endless moment he stares into her eyes and sees his own reflection – her theory of his mind – staring back. Communication. Strict machine. She steps back a pace, spike heels clicking, and smiles ironically. "You've got a host body waiting for you, freshly fabbed: Seems Sirhan was talking to your archived ghost in the temple of history, and it decided to elect for reincarnation. Quite a day for huge coincidences, isn't it? Why don't you go merge with it – I'll meet you, then we can go and ask Aineko some hard questions."

Manfred takes a deep breath and nods. "I suppose so …"

Little Ma

Ma

Lis is there, and Vipul and Kareen and Morgan. Lis has changed into a warbody, an ominous gray battlebot husk with protruding spikes and a belt of morningstars that whirl threateningly around her. "Ma

Morgan's got great crushing pincers instead of hands, and Ma

"Them." Lis precesses and points at a bunch of kids on the far side of a pile of artistically arranged rubble who are gathered around a gibbet, poking things that glow into the flinching flesh of whatever is incarcerated in the cast-iron cage. It's all make-believe, but the screams are convincing, all the same, and they take Ma

"Fun." Ma

About ten minutes of gouging, ru

Ma

It's the cat. He sits hunched on a boulder behind him – this is the odd thing – right where he was looking a moment ago, watching him with slitty eyes. Ma

Ma

"I'm your … fairy godfather." The cat stares at him intently. "You know, I do believe you don't resemble your archetype very closely – not as he was at your age – but yes, I think on balance you'll do."

"Do what?" Ma

"Put me in touch with your other self. Big-you."

"I can't," Ma

Ma

"He's with me, history-boy," interrupts the cat, nettled by Sirhan's arrival. "I was just rounding him up."

"Damn you, I don't need your help to control my son! In fact —"

"Mom said I could —" Ma

"And what's that on your sword?" Sirhan's glare takes in the whole scene, the impromptu game of capture-the-gibbeted-torture-victim, the bonfires and screams. The mask of disapproval cracks, revealing a core of icy anger. "You're coming home with me!" He glances at the cat. "You too, if you want to talk to him – he's grounded."

Once upon a time there was a pet cat.

Except, it wasn't a cat.

Back when a young entrepreneur called Manfred Macx was jetting around the not-yet-disassembled structures of an old continent called Europe, making strangers rich and fixing up friends with serendipitous business plans – a desperate displacement activity, spi