Ribofunk   ::   Филиппо Пол Ди

Jinx swung himself deftly onboard with the other passengers, vars, kibes, and citizens, and I had to stutter-skip to stay with him. I wasn't usually so awkward, but guess I was kind of nervous about our plans, even though I thought I had convinced myself it was the only way.

As if sensing my unease, Jinx tried to make me laugh. "Did you ever download any reductionist paradigm fiction where the author tried to imagine a system like this and came up with miles of rubber belts on rollers?"

Jinx's trick worked, and I laughed like a hyena splice. "That's not true. You're yanking my rods."

Jinx held up one hand. "Parity-plus, Arnie. I'll give you the urals, and you can see for yourself."

I chuckled some more. Those ancients-where were their heads at?!

Before too long, we were dismounting at Bughouse Square.

The thronging Square always reminded me of an old-time carnival midway you might see on some historical chan-

nel of the metamedium: lines of garish booths and arcades, peopled by touts and vendors under gaudy silicrobe signage. The centerpiece of the Square, the original Chiron Bughouse, looked positively postmodern, next to the more recent exotic additions to the meatmart.

Here you could find a chromosartor or genebender or simple trope doser who would perform any possible alteration on your somatype or genotype-for a price. If you had the eft, you could be snipped, ripped or zipped; pumped, stumped or trumped; strobed, lobed or probed; primped, skimped or pimped; vented, scented or demented.

I stood for a minute or so bathing in the scary, alluring, surreal circus, until Jinx tugged at the hem of my doublet.

"Let's find number ten-forty, before we change our minds."

Tracking round the Square, past the TATA Box and the Primordium, past the Organelle Store and Radio Shack Biocircuits outlet, we soon came to the G Gnome's Cave.

Its facade was all fractal-modeled grocrete stalactites and stalagmites framing an irregular entrance curtained by enviromental ribbons.

I looked at Jinx, and he looked at me. Taking his hand, I tried to be as brave as my truncated spaceling.

"Let's get spiked," I said.

And we went through the ribbons.

My dads told me that a decade or two ago there was a rage for somatypes modeled on the characters in some old reedpair fantasy novel, sparked by a new virtuality rendering of the work. So for a while all you saw on the streets were

bobbits and snorks and smogs, or creatures with some such names.