Postsingular

Yesterday Mr. Kim, the chief of marketing at Yu Shu, had e-mailed Jil about their need for a "beloved logoman," and Jil hadn't even understood what the hell he wanted. But the orphid AIs helped her; they searched the global namespace to figure out Mr. Kim's request. A "logoman" was meant to be a little animated figure that would symbolize the Yu Shu company: a Michelin Man, a Reddy Kilowatt, a Ronald McDonald, a Mickey Mouse, like that.

The orphidnet was teeming with helpful AI agents. They resembled flexible umbrellas patterned with eyes. After telling Jil what Mr. Kim thought a logoman was, the smart umbrellas had helped her design one by twisting themselves into diverse shapes, modeling possible Yu Shu logoman designs. Jil had picked the versions she liked; the other agents contorted themselves into variations of the chosen shapes; Jil picked again; and so on. In a few minutes she'd evolved a lovable logoman that she decided to call Happy. Happy resembled a smiling athletic shoe, a dog with a floppy tongue, and a two-toothed Korean baby.

The orphidnet agents had instantiated Happy by loading his mesh onto a handy lump of Craigor's piezoplastic-and right away Happy began hopping and rolling around on deck. It seemed Jil had invented a new style of robot; she decided to call such robots shoons . And then she'd snapped out of the orphidnet to be all there for this.

Bixie tossed a wooden block; Happy the shoon bounced over to retrieve it, his motions clownish enough to send the kids into gales of laughter.

Although it was getting late, nobody felt like going to sleep. With the clear sky and the full moon high overhead, it was nearly as bright as day. Momotaro and Bixie started playing hide-and-seek with the shoon, and a virtual version of Chu showed up to join them.

***

Moving around the deck rearranging things in the moonlight, Craigor was watching the kids play. "The orphidnet is a locative planetary brain," he told Jil. "My possessions are embodied thoughts." He paused, watching the orphidnet AIs. "The orphidnet doesn't have to be alienating. You can use it as a way to pay very close attention to the world. Its whole strength is that it's based on physical reality."

While Craigor talked, Jil made two more plastic Happy figures. And she launched a bunch of virtual shoons onto the Net. Some of them stuck around to play hide-and-seek with Bixie, Momotaro, the plastic shoons, virtual Chu, and a curiously large humanoid form.

Craigor loved feeling the real and the unreal swirling around him. After a bit, virtual Chu went away, replaced by Ond in the orphidnet. Ond had a favor to ask.

"What?" said Craigor.

"Can I come back there with Chu?" asked Ond. "Physically? I'm not safe in town. Everyone knows where I am all the time. They want to lynch me."

"What about Nektar?" asked Craigor.

"She-she left me for another man. She hates me because of the orphids."

"Poor Ond," said Jil, who was listening in.

Craigor's mind was spi

"Poor Ond," repeated Jil, taking in Craigor's odd smile as if she knew what it was about.

"Can you please send the dinghy now?" messaged Ond. "We're almost at the dock. I'm being followed, but don't worry, I won't stay long. We'll be on our way before there's any danger to you. Chu and I just need a minute to catch our breath. And then we'll go-elsewhere."

"I'm loving the orphidnet," said Craigor, wanting to mellow Ond out, given that he'd just decided to sleep with the man's wife. "I have this sense of resonance and enrichment. You did good, Ond. Here comes the dinghy."

"You're not seeing the big slow angels?" asked Ond. "From a parallel world?"

An odd, unsettling question, that. As Craigor waited for the dinghy to return with Ond and Chu, he studied the giant shiny man who'd been playing with the kids. Thirty feet tall, the ghostly form stepped over the boat's cabin, then crouched down amid the cluttered boxes on the foredeck.

"See him? With a topknot?" said Craigor, pointing out the figure to Jil, who was still staring at him. "He's like one of those beings I see out of the corner of my eye sometimes. And when I turn my head, nothing's there. You must have had that experience when you were using. Something about the orphids is making our hallucinations real. Or they were real all along, and now the orphids are sticking to them."

"I see another one," said slender Bixie, peering across the water at the dinghy coming in. "A big angel in front of Chu's little boat. She's scolding him. She has white hair. Oh, and now the nice boy angel from our boat is dancing over there to argue with her. He's her nephew. The angels move slow, but they hop fast."

"The big angel's name is Gladax," said Craigor, the information jumping unbidden into his head. "She says we shouldn't try to go to her world. She says the jump is dangerous, with ravenous beaky subbie creatures in between the worlds. She says their world's much more important than ours."

"Our world's just as good," replied Jil. She was getting images from the boy with the topknot. She saw two sheets of reality nestled together, the paired branes making each other glow. The viewpoint zoomed into the gap between the worlds, showing the angel boy twisting past beaky subbie-things like a kayaker avoiding rocks. "It's not that dangerous to go."

"Chu calls the angels' world the Hibrane," said Bixie. "Sweet! And he just now messaged me a link to a magic spell for going there." Bixie stood on tiptoe and called out to Chu in the dinghy. "Try and catch me, Chu!"

The air flickered and Bixie disappeared. The male angel with the topknot disappeared too; perhaps he'd guide Bixie. Big Gladax shook her fist in bleak frustration, and then made as if to poke an energy ray into Chu's head. But Ond was furiously waving his arms, beating the air around Chu, messing up Gladax's positioning. The dinghy docked against the Merz Boat.

"Bixie's in the Hibrane!" shouted Chu, scrambling aboard. "I have to go help her!"

"What. Are. You. Talking about!" said Jil, taking hold of the boy's shoulders. She half wanted to give him a brutal shake, but instead she crouched down to look in his eyes. "What did you do to my Bixie?"

Ond was talking into the air, addressing the Hibraner angel. "If you attack Chu again, Gladax, your jump-code goes out to every single person on Earth. And if you kill me, you're defenseless for good."