JК
Ribofunk :: Филиппо Пол Ди
Страница: 79 из 156Finally, I could on short notice generate several highly damaging antipersonnel cytokines expressible through strategically placed exocrine glands.
In short, I was now one mean and hyperefficient slagger for the forces of goodness and justice.
I was also on a half-dozen new tropes that allowed me to integrate my new body image and sensory inputs.
It was just after this makeover that the final big change in my life occured.
I met Xuly Beth and fell in love.
Xuly Beth Vollbracht had been born in the Mercosur, grown up a gypsy waterbaby. Her parents, Rolf and Valentina, had managed a section of the Hidrovia, roving up and down that extensive artificial waterway, supervising commerce and maintenance, troubleshooting and policing. Educated and trained as a noah for the GEF, Xuly Beth had been stationed at various spots around the world (she had seen parts of APEC, CarriCom, and Scandibaltica), monitoring and remediating oceanic-atmospheric systems, before ending up in the Nova England bioregion.
We met at an official function hosted by the noahs to brief the Protein Police on the latest rogue organisms we could possibly expect to emerge from runaway marine co-evolution. (Safe as silicrobe technology was supposed to be, there were inevitable glitches.)
Luckily for me, Xuly Beth was far from repelled by my altered epidermis. It turned out that one of her first lovers had been a fishboy from the Hidrovia, and the experience had crystallized her taste for odd integuments.
Xuly Beth was the change in my life that tipped the scales toward gladness. It was the first time since my wife walked out on me that I had a functioning pair-bonding. It felt good.
And that feeling alone should have been enough to warn me that something bad was about to fall right on my head like
one of Xuly Beth's programmed heavyrains out of the seemingly clear sky.
***
The first notice I had of trouble was the urgent patterned pinging of my flimsy one morning as I sat at my desk. I was on scheduled fifteen-minute downtime, relaxing in a quasi-meditative state at the focus of which was a little token of her work Xuly Beth had given me. In a clear cylindrical container about as big as a pneumatic-tube message capsule, a self-sustaining miniature silicrobe twister ran its homeodynamic contortions, powered only by sunlight. Its infinite random permutations served as a Taoist exemplar of mind-wiping potency.
But even the Tao could not ultimately contend against the earcon for a Class One transmission. I resumed my mind and voiced the screen on. The face of my immediate superior appeared.
Jo Priestly looked nervous.
In short, I was now one mean and hyperefficient slagger for the forces of goodness and justice.
I was also on a half-dozen new tropes that allowed me to integrate my new body image and sensory inputs.
It was just after this makeover that the final big change in my life occured.
I met Xuly Beth and fell in love.
Xuly Beth Vollbracht had been born in the Mercosur, grown up a gypsy waterbaby. Her parents, Rolf and Valentina, had managed a section of the Hidrovia, roving up and down that extensive artificial waterway, supervising commerce and maintenance, troubleshooting and policing. Educated and trained as a noah for the GEF, Xuly Beth had been stationed at various spots around the world (she had seen parts of APEC, CarriCom, and Scandibaltica), monitoring and remediating oceanic-atmospheric systems, before ending up in the Nova England bioregion.
We met at an official function hosted by the noahs to brief the Protein Police on the latest rogue organisms we could possibly expect to emerge from runaway marine co-evolution. (Safe as silicrobe technology was supposed to be, there were inevitable glitches.)
Luckily for me, Xuly Beth was far from repelled by my altered epidermis. It turned out that one of her first lovers had been a fishboy from the Hidrovia, and the experience had crystallized her taste for odd integuments.
Xuly Beth was the change in my life that tipped the scales toward gladness. It was the first time since my wife walked out on me that I had a functioning pair-bonding. It felt good.
And that feeling alone should have been enough to warn me that something bad was about to fall right on my head like
one of Xuly Beth's programmed heavyrains out of the seemingly clear sky.
***
The first notice I had of trouble was the urgent patterned pinging of my flimsy one morning as I sat at my desk. I was on scheduled fifteen-minute downtime, relaxing in a quasi-meditative state at the focus of which was a little token of her work Xuly Beth had given me. In a clear cylindrical container about as big as a pneumatic-tube message capsule, a self-sustaining miniature silicrobe twister ran its homeodynamic contortions, powered only by sunlight. Its infinite random permutations served as a Taoist exemplar of mind-wiping potency.
But even the Tao could not ultimately contend against the earcon for a Class One transmission. I resumed my mind and voiced the screen on. The face of my immediate superior appeared.
Jo Priestly looked nervous.