Ribofunk   ::   Филиппо Пол Ди

As Greenlaw approached, Bambang brought his awareness back to primary reality, catching sight of Greenlaw in the process. The Indoasian's broad cinnamon face wrinkled in a mixture of respect, happiness, and just a trace of wariness.

''Peej Greenlaw," said Bambang respectfully. They threw signs at each other, hyperarticulated hand-flexures of lineage and association. "Good to see you. Are you perhaps coming to take command?"

Greenlaw sighed. Duty, professional jealousy, they seemed so unreal now…

"No," he answered, "not at all. I'm sure you're doing a fine job, although I haven't tapped any status reports since the announcement of the engulfment. No, this visit is strictly personal."

In his habitual gesture of relief, Bambang fingered the Procept tattoon that rotated on his cheek, nanometers below his epidermis.

The innocent gesture sent Greenlaw's linear thought processes into a chaotic whirl. Suddenly, for the first time in his long life, he saw the ubiquitous loyal silicrobes that

formed Bambang's tattoon-and his own, for that matter-as the actual nonsomatic invaders that they were.

Was the Urblastema merely a tattoon on the surface of Gaia?

No. For unlike an obedient assemblage of silicrobes, it was intent on devouring its host.

And we did it to ourselves, thought Greenlaw ruefully. I helped every step of the way. No one else is to blame.

Onboard Xaos Tools wetware located in the bulge of his encephalocele came online, and the nonlinear vortex of emotions and thoughts damped agreeably down. Without the mod's invaluable aid, Greenlaw suspected, he would have been a grief-racked casualty in some Humana House by now.

"Personal?" echoed Bambang. He tickled up a fresh datum. "Oh, yes, I see… My condolences, Peej Greenlaw. May the principles of the First Self-Organizer be of comfort to you now in your hour of distress."

Greenlaw waved the offered solace away, as useless in its own fashion as his parents' Viridian principles. "I was never a true believer, Haj. And it would be most ironic now for me to worship that principle which, more or less, has stolen away from me all I once cherished."

"But Peej, surely you cannot repudiate the sacred principles, despite their perversion by the Urblastema… "

Bambang broke off, sensing that theological fencing was highly unsuitable to Greenlaw's current mood. He changed topics.

"Would you care to survey our defenses, Peej? We have a continuous line of shuggoths patrolling the entire perimeter

to deal with macroscopic surface assaults.