Before they got home, Chu saw police waiting at their house. He told Ond, but Ond said he wasn’t scared. When they got out of the car, one of the policemen touched Chu, and Chu screamed and acted crazy so they’d leave him alone. Chu and Nektar went in the house and Ond got in the police car. Nektar was mad; she said the cops might as well keep Ond for all she cared. She said Chu could watch video, and then she went and lay down on her bed with her pillow over her head like she always did when she was upset.

Chu didn’t bother with the video; he just lay on his back and explored the orphidnet. He saw Ond in the police car. He saw Bixie and Momotaro playing on the Merz Boat. And he swam around inside one of the cuttlefish Craigor had thrown back into the bay.

It was both dreadful and fascinating to be a cuttlefish, especially when Chu’s host began rubbing up against another cuttlefish, tangling his tentacles with hers. The cuttlefish were doing reproduction. Chu’s cuttlefish girlfriend squirted out eggs—and Chu’s cuttlefish fertilized them. His heart beat fast. After the sex, he and his cuttlefish girlfriend began eating algae off the rocks, scraping it up with their beaks. And then, all of a sudden, Chu’s cuttlefish girlfriend was gone. He jetted about looking for her, to no avail.

In the real world, Chu’s arms were hurting. Nektar was shaking him and asking him if he were having a fit. She was angry. Chu realized he’d not only been beating his arms on the floor to imitate the cuttlefish’s tentacles, he’d also been chewing on the rug with his teeth. And he’d wet his pants. He felt silly. Nektar helped him into some dry clothes. Chu promised he wouldn’t be a cuttlefish anymore, and Nektar went back to her room.

Nektar felt guilty about yelling at Chu for wetting his pants again. Her family life was an endless round of lose-lose. She lay back down on her bed, closed her eyes, and watched Ond arriving at the jail. But then she got distracted.

Thanks to the orphidnet, she could see the insides of all the neighbors’ houses. She’d always wondered about that Lureen Morales in the mansion at the very top of the hill. Lureen was famous for her coarse sex-vlog, Caliente. Lureen never talked to Nektar. Even though their paths crossed a few times a week, Lureen always acted like she’d never seen Nektar before in her life. Was Lureen on meds? With the slightest touch of will, Nektar was able to examine Lureen’s orphid-outlined medicine cabinet, and yes, it was loaded with prescription sudocoke. While Nektar was at it, she examined Lureen’s jewelry, her shoes, and her impressively large array of sex toys.