Postsingular

Restaurant traffic had ramped up heavily after the coming of the orphids; with people able to see and hear everything online, the nonvirtual experience of dining was becoming the centerpiece of most evenings out. Nektar liked to present a meal as table theater. And why limit the entertainment to chewing things up? She'd added foamy, soft food to the Puff menu, and pastes for people to rub onto their bodies: peppery curries, soothing mints, moistening emulsions. Jose had been against all of Nektar's ideas; turned out he was a depressive jerk, always acting like a martyr. After he'd done that weird number with the knife on his neck, Nektar had gone straight upstairs to the restaurant's owners, Xandro and Beatriz.

But now Nektar's memory citadel was broached again; the two owners resembled beetles, their legs linked like axons and dendrites. "Make ad for Dick Too Dibbs," said the beetles. "Do very now."

"Fire Jose," Nektar told them, desperately hanging onto her narrative. "Make me the head chef. Look how many hits my orphids are getting. I'm a star. It's me that brings the customers in."

Beetle Xandro lifted the shiny cover off a silver salver, his chitinous leg hooking the metal handle. Beetle Beatriz leaned over the naked boy on the platter and fired up a blowtorch. "I cook tableside," she twittered, blistering Chu's face. "Else make Too Dibbs ad now."

Groaning, Nektar twisted away and found herself in last week's bed with Craigor. He was handsome and well-endowed, but not Nektar's idea of a great lover. She'd only continued sleeping with him because the affair had given such a nice boost to the hitcounts of her Founders show. Acting out the bedroom memory, Nektar ran a flirtatious finger down Craigor's bare chest. He split open like a pupa and Craigor's wife Jil crawled out: moist, throbbing, luminous, in tears. "I was your best friend, Nektar. How could you? Craigor was my man. I'm scared I'm going to relapse."

"I'm sorry," said Nektar. "I'm so sorry."

"Make the ad," said the beetle shaped like Jil. "Then I forgive. Vote for Dick Too Dibbs. You say just once."

"Hey, Nektar!" A fresh voice, a real voice in her bedroom.

She fluttered her eyes open. Two men and two women were here, colorful, street-hardened kids in their early twenties, ten years younger than Nektar. One of them leaned close. His eyes were soft and intelligent beneath his green cap; he wore a T-shirt and a suit jacket with a wild hand-drawn skull on the jacket's back. An iridescent shoon was perched on his shoulder. The rain had stopped; the sun was breaking through.

"I'm Jayjay," the boy told Nektar. "Aka Jorge Jimenez. We're the Big Pig Posse. Let me into your head, Nektar. Give me full access. I can kill those beetles by fixing your filter dogs." He flexed his fingers in intricate gamer moves.

"Yes," said Nektar with a weak smile, and opened a mental door for him. In the orphidnet, Jayjay got busy. The other Posse members were in the orphidnet watching, as well: a stocky girl with a blue tattoo, a boy with spiky hair, a Vietnamese girl with high pigtails.

"Yeek yeek," murmured the first boy-Jayjay-swinging from bough to vine in the jungle of Nektar's mind, landing beside her filter dog ke

"All good now, Nektar," said Jayjay, pulling back into his real body.

Nektar sat up, holding her sheet to her breasts, free at last.

The boy with his hair in shiny spikes-Sonic-stretched out in a patch of sun on the big Oriental rug on Nektar's floor, the shoons yipping and cavorting with him. He wore black wool tights, a red T-shirt, and a lightweight leather jacket with tailored shirring.

As usual, the shoons' appearances changed according to the whims of the beezies currently controlling them; right now a couple resembled monkeys, another pair was playing beetle and beetle-flea, another was a classic Happy Shoon like a bucktoothed Korean baby with a thick rubber bottom, and two had tweaked themselves to resemble Jayjay and the pigtailed girl in striped leggings.

Jayjay forced open the bedroom's sticky window. Sitting in the easy chair right by Nektar's bed was the plain-faced woman with the blue tattoo.

"I'm Kittie," she said pleasantly. "It's great to meet you. I watch Founders all the time. And I've seen you around the Mission, of course." Fresh air drifted into the room.

"I'll treat your little group to a big di

"Mostly we eat garbage," said Kittie. "We're rough and tough."

"Hmm," said Nektar, thinking that over, her beetle-free mind feeling giddy and agile. Kittie reminded Nektar of the girlfriend she'd had in college before she'd met Ond; Kittie had that same quality of i

"I want white tablecloths for our meal at Puff," said Kittie, radiating back. "Clean and calm."

"Did this start out as a sudocoke run?" interrupted the girl in the striped leggings, wandering over. "I'm Thuy."

"That's baby powder on the mirror," said Nektar, glad to be getting this information out to her audience. "A hoax. I was under the control of those beetles. They wanted to set the scene so it looked as if I had a reason to stay in bed. For the last two days, they've been tormenting me, wanting me to make an ad for that silly Dick Too Dibbs. I've heard him come out strong against the nants, but who owns him, really? Since when did any Homesteady politician care about anyone who's not filthy stinking rich?"

"Tell the world, Nektar," said Jayjay. "Listen up, Founders fans! My homie Sonic designed these six-dimensional Calabi-Yau beetle-fleas. They'll gnaw beetle malware out of your orphids." He gestured with both arms, tossing a complete image of a beetle-flea into the orphidnet for Nektar's viewers to grab. Then he flopped down on the floor to join Sonic in playing with the shoons.

"I need a shower," said Nektar, getting out of her bed. She was naked, but being naked didn't matter anymore, what with your body visible on the orphidnet all the time.

"Need some help?" said Kittie.

"Don't be dogging her," said Thuy. Evidently Thuy was Kittie's girlfriend.

Nektar could visualize making love to Kittie. Having an affair with needy, unstable Craigor Co

"You got it, babe," said Kittie.

"I'm coming, too," said Thuy.

"Fine," said Nektar, relishing the attention.

The girls helped Nektar into the shower, Kittie making sure to accidentally touch Nektar's breasts and bottom, with Thuy watching: a