Ribofunk   ::   Филиппо Пол Ди

"So, whatcha know, Flip?"

"I was hanging around the casino all day yesterday, hoping to hit a big winner up for a donation to the church. I saw the plug you're looking for. He was really off the far-end of the spectrum. After a while, when he began zero summing worse than ever, he started talking to himself. 'Turbulence,' he said. 'It's all turbulence, noise, and strange attractors. I can't ride the flow.'"

Sounded to me like the tropes hadn't quite kicked in yet, or von Bulow was having a tough time coordinating the new dataflux.

"Yeah, go on."

"When he was wiped out, he came up to me. 'Fishboy, I need some black meds. Who's on top in this town?' "

"And you sent him to-"

"Who else? The Vat Rats."

I nodded. It was a solid lead.

"Thanks, Flip. I'd shake your hand if it were possible."

"Screw that human chauvinism. Just make sure the church gets credited with a good-sized chunk of eft."

"Will do. Catch you later."

"Swim free."

I went back and got Hamster out of the stable, tipping the splice-check girl.

"Thank you, sir, it is good to see you again, sir, I was waiting most patiently, sir."

"Hamster, shut the fuck up."

"Immediately, sir."

We went looking for the Vat Rats.

***



Over the past half century Boston had been hit by a dozen gang invasions. First it was the Bloods and the Crips, out of LA, back in the eighties and nineties. Then it was the Hong Kong Tongs, when that entrepot went red. They segued into the Cambodians, Hispanics, Camspanics, Colombians, Novascots, Brazzes, Jamaicans… Each had ruled the metro for a brief period that always ended in a bloody dustup, with the victors setting up exclusive shop. Finally, though, the pattern of foreign invasions had been

disrupted by two factors: the establishment of the North American Union, and the dominance of tropes and other lab-bioactives over organic drugs. The NU had sewn up its borders tighter than a dose of Lipzip. That kept out the nonlocal competitors. And the slimemold spread of legal neurotropins through schools and socially santioned avenues created the young local biobrujos, who proceeded, with their home amino-linkers and chromo-cookers, to brew up the sublegal tropes and strobers. Various sets fell into particular special niches, turf struggles were minimal, the social order was not disrupted, and the authorities looked the other way at most of it.

Despite such a diffuse network and the impossibility of figuring out a strict hierarchy, there were some sets that had more status than others.