Ribofunk   ::   Филиппо Пол Ди

But surprisin'ly enough, the net effect of all these after-hours horror stories is not to discourage us gips,but rather to make us feel special and important. After all, who else has such a vital job as us? Cleanin' up this poor abused planet is-or should be-society's number-one priority, after all, and they ain't invented a robot yet that's smart enough or tough enough to do what we do, or take the shit we endure. Imagine some hunk of heuristics pokin' its sensors into the hells we gotta enter, without fryin' its CCD's and crispin' its boards. As for the splices, the union keeps them out. And as long as we get our regular search-and-repair silicrobe shots, we ain't gonna suffer any more weird diseases or terry-tomas than your average New Yorker or Nevadan.

Not that I do it mainly for glory or outa some sense of duty to humanity. Shit, no. I don't think you'll find one greenpeacer out of every thousand gipsies you talk to. I do it cuz the eft's damn good, and so are the bennies, and you can retire after fifteen years. (My company, Dallas Detox, Inc., was one of the first to pioneer that particular policy, and that's one of the reasons I'm purely proud to work for them. Another's that they are one hunnerd percent American, and there's not many companies left that can make such a claim, 'specially since they fully phased the Union in ten years ago. Now, I don't hold with them Sons of Dixie, or any of the other

constitutionalist groups, legal or underground, but there is something about being ruled by Canucks that just goes up my craw a mile. And if I got to be ruled by them, leastwise I don't have to work for them. Yet.)

Anyway, it's a decent life, and sometimes an excitin' one, even if, as I said, it's no career for a married man-as Geraldine never tires of remindin' me.

But I ain't married. And I never listen to Geraldine.

***



When Stack came into the dorm, wavin' the metamedium printout that bore the DDI logo in its upper corner (a pair of tweezers nippin' a double helix) and smilin', we all knew we had gotten a good postin'. But we couldn'ta guessed how good till the crewboss spoke.

"Parliament has voted, boys and girls. The Slikslak is deadmeat, and DDI's gonna pick the corpse."

Well, the roar of excitement that greeted this announcement rattled the biopolymer panels of the big Komfykwik Kottage we were livin' in, there on the shores of Lake Baikal in Greater Free Mongolia, which stagnant pisshole we had finally finished de-acidifyin' and ecobalancin' and revivifyin' and suchlike. We were goin' home, stateside, back to the good old U.S. of A. (and I'll continue to call it that till my dyin' day, despite all laws to the contrary).