Postsingular

"Are you okay?" Jayjay asked her.

Thuy winced and made a complex gesture with her hand.

"Jeff Luty was leaning over me. Talking really fast about the

Hibrane. I-" She broke off, unable to say more.

"Let's bail," said Kittie.

Some kind of signal escaped the office when they opened the door back to the computer room. Alarms sounded, rapid footsteps rang on the metal stairs from the ground floor. But the spindly clients behind the monitors seemed sympathetic to the three Posse members.

"Up thar!" urged Prescription John, pointing to the ladder and trapdoor where the computer cable went. "It ain't locked."

Kittie led the way, and Jayjay took the rear, with Thuy in the middle. They made it to the roof.

It felt good to breathe the open air, and to co

"Jayjay killed Sonic," said Kittie. "And nearly you too, Thuy. He's a clumsy oaf."

"Sonic's not dead," said Thuy. "That grill-it leads to an ExaExa lab. Luty is-" She put her hands on the sides of her head. "Oh oh oh. Can't talk now."

"We'll free Sonic," said Jayjay. "Wherever he is."

A police siren was approaching. The three hurried to the other side of the Armory roof and began working their way down the outside fire escape.

"We're going back to Nektar's," said Kittie. "But I don't know about you, Jayjay. You might flurb that scene, too."

"I'm going to Jil's boat," said Jayjay quickly. "You can come with me, if you want, Thuy."

"And watch you slobber over a middle-aged mom?" said Thuy, her eyes searching his face. "No thanks."

"We'll fix up my SUV, Thuy," said Kittie. "It'll be nice. I'll paint and you'll work on your metanovel."

"And you'll be crawling into Nektar's bed every chance you get," said Thuy miserably. "Nobody really loves me."

"I love you," said Jayjay, meaning it. "You know I do. If you come with me, we don't have to go to Jil's. We can go anywhere you want."

"I'm so tired," said Thuy, her voice shaking. "My head hurts. I just want to go to that nice clean room over Nektar's garage and lie down."

"Leave us the hell alone now, Jayjay," said Kittie. "The Big Pig Posse is over."

Down on the street, Kittie and Thuy headed back toward Nektar's, and Jayjay caught a tram toward the South San Francisco dock. He felt lonely and tired. At least he had a seat to himself. He leaned against the streetcar window, letting his mind drift out into the orphidnet. Up to the Big Pig. A hit would be good right now.

The Pig welcomed Jayjay with a video clip of a crashing wave, just like the one he'd seen in Topping's office. "Wheenk," murmured Jayjay to himself, missing Thuy. "Wheenk, wheenk, wheenk."

PART III CHAPTER 8

Thuy's Metanovel

Westinghouse yam in alleyway," said the improbable virtual spambot, formed like a waist-high two-legged sweet potato with multitudinous ruby eyes, wreathed in crackling blue sparks, peering at Thuy from a rain-wet alley off Valencia Street, the same spot where Grandmaster Green Flash had died. "Vote for Dick Too Dibbs," added the yam, once he'd caught Thuy's attention.

"Too Dibbs won the election two and a half months ago," said Thuy. She didn't bother to sic her filter dogs on the apparition. These days she enjoyed wandering the streets alone, open to the ether, playing the patterns, riding the flow. The heavier scenes went into her metanovel, which was growing at a rate of two or three minutes per day.

You could measure a metanovel's length in terms of how much access time a typical user took to finish the work, assuming they didn't set it aside. Thuy's target-length for Wheenk was eight hours, about the time it would take to read a medium-fat book.

"I like Dick," said the virtual yam, falling into step next to her, the misty rain drifting through him. "Does Dick like ye?"

"Give it a rest," said Thuy. "Too Dibbs gets inaugurated the day after tomorrow, you slushed pighead." The orphidnet was noisy with the thin cries and hoarse roars of marshmallow people already celebrating the advent of the new regime. To drown them out, Thu had her favorite Tawny Krush symphony playing, and she was enhancing the sound with violin squawks triggered by smooth gestures of her arms and legs, all but dancing down the street. She was protected from the rain by a hooded yellow slicker; under that she wore her good old yellow miniskirt, striped wool leggings, and piezoplastic Yu Shu sneakers, also a red T-shirt and red sweater she'd liberated from Nek-tar's bulging closets.

"That's you, Thuy, ain't it?" said the sparkling yam. "Prescription John here. I wa

"My metastory is called 'Losing My Head,' " said Thuy. "I'm about to perform the whole thing live and for free at Metotem, so tune in and turn on, you skeevy old stoner. Still ad-mining for Natural Mind, huh?"

"I cycled out too early, and had to re-up for spin-dry umpty-six. Mary never left. How you?"

"I'm off the Pig, yeah," said Thuy. "Thinking clearer; feeling more; building my metanovel. The new metastory is an excerpt from it. I'm in the zone, John; it feels like dreaming while being awake. And the world's helping me. This Hibraner Azaroth keeps showing up. You're part of the pudding, too. It's so perfect and synchronistic that you popped out of that particular alley. Everything's entangled. God's an artist."

"The yam's the man," said Prescription John, puffing up his tuberous orange icon. "Whoops, here comes Topping. Gotta go."

He sputtered, twinkled, and faded out-leaving Thuy with a sudden suspicion that maybe that hadn't been the true flesh-and-blood Prescription John ru

Gerry Gurkin, for instance, kept having visitations from the simulated Gerry Gurkin of his autobiographical Banality, the virtual Gerry clamoring that he wanted metanovelist Gerry to edit in a girlfriend character for him to fuck. Telling this story, portly Gerry darted hot intense looks at Thuy, as if he were pla

Thuy was in a lonely-but-coned-off emotional state where she was ready to accept any admiration she was offered, as long as it was virtual and with no strings attached. Re: "coned off," she'd heard a woman actually saying that about herself the other day, as if she were a wreck lane or a crime site. That phrase went straight into the metanovel. The yam's "I like Dick; does Dick like ye?" seemed usable too. Oh, for sure that had been the real Prescription John. No beezie would ever talk that silly.