"Junk DNA" (with Rudy Rucker)
"Soon a stippling of bumps had formed on the tiny scrap of flesh. Soft little pimples, twenty or a hundred of them. The lump cratered at the top, getting thicker all around. It formed a dent and invaginated like a sea-squirt. It began pumping itself around in circles, swimming in the murky fluids. Stubby limbs formed momentarily, then faded into an undulating skirt like the mantle of a cuttlefish.
Veruschka’s old Pumpti was the size of a grapefruit, and the new one was the size of a golf ball. The two critters rooted around the tank’s bottom like rats looking for a drain hole.
Veruschka rolled up her sleeve and plunged her bare arm into the big vat’s slimy fluids. She held up the larger Pumpti; it was flipping around like a beached fish. Veruschka brought the thing to her face and nuzzled it."
"The Growthing"
"Gretel flung herself in anguish on the biomorphic furnishing. In her frenzied teenage grip, the chaise gave a deep pneumatic moan and sentimentally changed color. 'But I love my big bubbly sofa! And Mom's got the stupidest dead furniture in Jersey! My bed at home's made of wood, Dad! I'm your only daughter! How can you make me sleep on wood?'
Milton checked his wrist monitor. He knew that watching his child's internal metabolism was a pretty cheap substitute for genuine fathering skills. However, Gretel was 14. Her hormonal storms were pegging the behavior meter. 'Gret, you're hyperventilating. Let's walk around the Facility one last time before you go. A nice memento for you, that's just no problemo, okay?'
Profoundly unmollified, Gretel lunged into her walking boots. A month in this Texan desert outpost had been quite the growthful experience for a girl from the megalopolis. She'd swiftly adopted Milton's mannerisms--his absentminded hacker's stare, his habit of patting the red bark on the giant biomorphic cisterns. Milton would miss the kid dreadfully. The Facility was a majestic but lonely place, with its veiny dragonfly roofing and storage tanks shaped like swollen sequoias. It had taproots that went down to solid granite. It stored enough clean-power hydrogen to detonate Dubuque. The Facility fed and clothed Milton. It also lit itself, warmed itself, harnessed solar and wind power, and recycled every nutrient. The building had a baroque attention to design detail that rivaled Cinderella's midnight pumpkin. Still, it was basically a Texan energy refinery. Not quite the place for a gala soiree."
"We See Things Differently"
"The room was adequate. This had once been a fine hotel. The air-conditioning was quiet and both hot and cold water worked well. A wide flat screen covering most of one wall offered dozens of channels of television.
My wristwatch buzzed quietly, its programmed dial indicating the direction of Mecca. I took the rug from my luggage and spread it before the window. I cleansed my face, my hands, my feet. Then I knelt before the darkening chaos of Miami, many stories below. I assumed the eight positions, bowing carefully, sinking with gratitude into deep meditation. I forced away the stress of jet-lag, the innate tension and fear of a Believer among enemies.
Prayer completed, I changed my clothing, putting aside my dark Western business suit. I assumed denim jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and photographer's vest. I slipped my press card, my passport, my health cards into the vest's zippered pockets, and draped the cameras around myself. I then returned to the lobby downstairs, to await the arrival of the American rock star."
"The Scab's Progress" (with Paul di Filippo)
"The federal bio-containment center was a diatom the size of the Disney Matterhorn. It perched on fractal struts in a particularly charmless district of Nevada, where the waterless white sands swarmed with toxic vermin.
The entomopter scissored its dragonfly wings, conveying Ribo Zombie above the desert wastes. This was always the best part of the program: the part where Ribo Zombie lovingly checked out all his cool new gear before launching into action. As a top-ranking scab from the otaku-pirate underground, Ribo Zombie owned reactive gloves with slashproof ligaments and sandwiched Kevlar-polysaccharide. He owned a mother-of-pearl crash helmet, hung with daring insouciance on the scaled wall of the 'mopter's cockpit. And those Nevada desert boots!—like something built by Tolkien orcs with day-jobs at Nike.
Accompanying the infamous RZ was his legendary and much-merchandised familiar, Skratchy Kat. Every scab owned a familiar: they were the totem animals of the gene-pirate scene. The custom dated back to the birth of the scab subculture, when tree-spiking Earth Firsters and obsessive dog breeders had jointly discovered the benefits of outlaw genetic engineering."
"Homo Sapiens Declared Extinct"
"AD 2380: After a painstaking ten-year search, from the Tibetan highlands to the Brazilian rainforests, it's official -- there are no more human beings.
'I suppose I have to consider this a personal setback,' said anthropologist Dr Marcia Raymo, of the Institute for Retrograde Study in Berlin. 'Of course we still have human tissue in the lab, and we could clone as many specimens of Homo sapiens as we like. But that species was always known primarily for its unique cultural activity.'
'I can't understand what the fuss is about,' declared Rita 'Cuddles' Srinivasan, actress, sex symbol and computer peripheral. 'Artificial Intelligences love to embody themselves in human forms like mine, to wallow in sex and eating. I'm good for oodles of human stuff, scratching, sleeping, sneezing, you can name it. As long as AIs honour their origins, you'll see plenty of disembodied intelligences slumming around in human forms. That's where all the fun is, I promise -- trust me.'"
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