Ribofunk   ::   Филиппо Пол Ди

Objectively and inclusively viewed, these were the victims and spoils of the plague:

A sprawling infrastructure measured at 1.2 Є 10 to the fifth power plectic units (on the revised Santa Fe scale).

Ten million citizens of both Peej and Haj status.

Uncounted vars from a thousand controlled mixes, as well as innumerable illicit sports, volunteers, and devolves.

Thirty million multiform kibes of varying turingity.

And finally, unreckoned teratonnes of biomass and inorganics, both basal and sartorized.

Subjectively and selectively, Greenlaw mourned these:

His lovingly grown zomehome. His entire chromocohort, however much they had teased him as a child. His

proxies and splices. Those of his semisentient splinters and shards and snippets which had been unable to scatter themselves safely elsewhere across the telecosm.

And Stroma, the one woman he had ever been able to love, so alluringly bez kompleksov, as his Snowy friends might say.

Gone, all gone. Yet still mockingly there, parading about in their charade of daily life. Active unknowing ghosts, simulacra transfigured by the mass of rogue silicrobes known as the Urblastema or-by those who still had the energy for poetic coinages-the Panplasmodaemonium.

And the ultimate irony: it was Greenlaw's job to stop such things from happening. During the infiltration and ingestion of his own region he had, in fact, been halfway around the globe, supervising the defenses of another beleaguered metroplex.

Greenlaw was good at his job. His efforts had been successful. The assault on the antipodal NewZee plex had been repelled, its citizenry saved.

As if any of that mattered to him now.

The cordon sanitaire around Greenlaw's contaminated bioregion was staffed partly by members of his own commensal crada, the DizDek team from Procept. The teamer in charge was one Haj Bambang, with whom Greenlaw had often worked.

Moving away from his organiform flier parked on the outskirts of the encampment, with 'crobe-attenuated sunlight painting the scene around him in muted hues, Greenlaw

strode now toward the command nexus of the defense. One of his personal kibes,' carrying a large sealed bip container, obediently trailed him.

Amidst the organized activity of Procept kibes, vars, and commensals, Bambang stood, his seemingly unfocused stare revealing that he was obviously busy scanning his retinally displayed shimmerstats. Sensations of tension and hope were nearly tangible here, thought Greenlaw.