Postsingular

"You don't want to go somewhere fancier?" said Jayjay. "Like Puff? Or MouthPlusPlus?"

"Pho," said Thuy. "Hurry up!"

"We fuck and we pho," said Jayjay. "I'm for it."

The clack of plastic chopsticks overlaid Thuy's bedroom, the rich smell of spicy broth, the slurp and chatter of the diners. One of Jayjay's interpolators humped about the scene like a hyperkinetic inchworm, smoothing the tiny gaps among the orphid data points, enhancing the image toward the fully real. Once again, Thuy made mental co

The hostess didn't even blink when Thuy and Jayjay appeared inside the doorway of Happy Sun. It helped that Thuy was Vietnamese. "Two?" was all the woman said.

Minutes later, Thuy and Jayjay were leaning over huge steaming bowls, alternately spooning spiced beef broth and using chopsticks to pincer up skeins of rice noodles, shreds of meat, and the crisp bean sprouts and basil leaves that they'd shoveled into the soup from the condiment plate on the side. An electric beer sign hung on the wall above them.

"I don't know why I ever eat anything else," said Thuy, pausing for a sip of fresh-squeezed Vietnamese lemonade. "Pho is good for any time of day."

"I notice you pronounce it like fu'uh, " observed Jayjay.

"The name comes from the French for fire," said Thuy. "French stew is pot au feu. " She stared down at her noodles, stirring them into knots. A voice had just begun talking in her head. Her voice. She was getting blowback from the Thuy Nguyen character in Wheenk. The virtual Thuy was telling her not to sleep on the Merz Boat at all.

"Did your mother make pho at home?" Jayjay asked.

"Oh never," said Thuy distractedly. "It's too much trouble. Boiling the beef bones, skimming the stock, blackening the shallots and ginger roots with a blowtorch, putting them into a cloth bag with star anise and ci

Virtual Thuy kept on talking to her. Virtual Thuy wanted to show Thuy a little metastory she'd made. A scenario that might come true.

"Back to the boat now?" said Jayjay, glancing anxiously at the restaurant's glass door.

"I don't think so," mumbled Thuy. "Right now I have to-" The metastory in her head had begun to play. It was well crafted. Virtual Thuy was smarter than Linda Loca's George Washington character. Of course. Jayjay said something else, but Thuy wasn't listening to him. She was immersed in Virtual Thuy's metastory.

***

On the Merz Boat Craigor reads in bed, and Jil lies motionless and wide-eyed beside him-her image is overlaid with a vintage clip of the Bride of Dracula in her coffin.

Thuy and Jayjay settle into the crooked igloo and fall asleep. Thuy's dreams are animated images over her head. She sees seabirds stalking a stony shore. One of them plucks her up and carries her to a nest made of a single long loop of pho noodle, intricately woven over and under itself. Thuy in the nest is a baby bird with sparse yellow pinfeathers. She claws and pecks at the noodle, repeatedly breaking and retying the knot, each time changing its co

Cut to Thuy waking up with the sun coming through a porthole. She thinks it's Jayjay spooned against her back. But the man's smell is wrong. And then she hears Jayjay's voice outside. The hut's door flies open, showing pearly sky and the silhouettes of Jayjay and Jil. Thuy looks over her shoulder at the man whose sticky private parts nestle against her thigh. Craigor. She's naked with Craigor on the couch in Craigor's workshop at the back of the boat.

"Musical beds," says Craigor with a sardonic grin. "Teaching Thuy the facts of life."

"Little Thuy does whoever she likes," says Jil in a flat, bitter tone. "Women, men, husbands, wives-she's playing you for a fool, Jayjay."

"Oh, that ends it," says Jayjay dejectedly. "Forget everything I said last night, Thuy." He turns away.

"But Craigor snuck!" cries Thuy. "This isn't what it looks like! Craigor carried me here while I was-"

Jayjay closes his eyes and disappears for good.

***

"Listless bastard," Thuy spat at Jayjay as the vision wore off. "Always so quick to give up and walk away. Why won't you fight for me? Don't you care at all?" The waiter was picking up the money. An old man. He was embarrassed to be overhearing a lovers' quarrel.

"What's with you?" said Jayjay, his voice going up an octave. "What'd I do?"

The sounds of the pho parlor filtered back in. Jayjay was staring at Thuy, his brown eyes worried. "I just had a vision," Thuy said. "One of my characters talking to me. We are definitely not going back to the Merz Boat tonight."

"Fine," said Jayjay. "But I'm seeing the attack ant coming down the sidewalk half a block away."

"I am so sick of being jerked around by that life-hating geek Luty," said Thuy, the anger still in her veins. On a sudden inspiration, she darted into the restaurant kitchen and asked the prep cook if she could borrow the heavy-duty blowtorch he was using to charbroil some peeled shallots and ginger roots for more stock. "I won't hurt anyone," Thuy assured him. "I need to fix something." The cook was a boy her age, a recent immigrant. She gave him her sweetest smile. Smiling back, he handed her the torch and a lighter.

"Come on, Thuy," said Jayjay, standing by their table. "The ant's almost here. We gotta hop. What are you doing with that thing?"

"Teaching the ant a lesson," said Thuy. She sat down, resting the blowtorch's gas cylinder between her legs, one hand on the valve, the other hand holding the lighter.

The ant entered on the heels of a pair of hipsters coming in for a late evening meal. They were loudly surprised to have a four-foot-long plastic ant push past their legs like a hungry dog. The diners looked up, some of them jumping to their feet and heading through the kitchen for the back door.

"Here I am," Thuy shrieked at the ant. "Come and get me, bit-head!"

Jayjay understood Thuy's plan; he stood behind her, watching with an expectant grin, ready to jump in if things went badly.

But things went well, at least for Thuy, although, yes, rather badly for Luty's ant. When the ant reared up to attack, Thuy lit the torch's narrow, seven-inch-long flame. With one quick gesture she burnt through the ligaments co