“No mas janitor,” said the guy with the broom. “Maintenance manager and security guard. Get your pinche asses outta my hall. The Job Center’s about to open. Go get some rehab at Natural Mind.”

“You want some of this?” taunted Sonic, grabbing his own crotch. “Stand by me, Jayjay. We can take this pendejo down.” Skinny little Sonic wore his invariable outfit of heavy boots, thick black wool tights, red T-shirt, and a thin black leather jacket with intricate pleats and folds—a jitsy concoction that he’d found unused in some woman’s closet. His hair was pomaded into a dozen hedgehog spikes.

“Lose the gangbanger routine, boys,” said Kittie, turning and walking to the glass street door. Stocky sweat-suited Kittie was adorned with a bright blue tattoo on her neck, also a glowing pendant of a woman holding a paintbrush and a meat cleaver. Kittie sometimes made money painting solar cell landscapes on electric cars. “I’m seeing a bunch of fresh-dumped pancakes behind the Mission Street McDonald’s.” she continued. “Still hot, if we hurry. Come on, Thuy.” Kitty pronounced her friend’s name the proper Vietnamese way, like twee and not like thooey.

Slender Thuy smiled and took Kittie’s hand, ready for the adventure of a new day, Thuy in her street-worn striped leggings and yellow miniskirt, her strawy black hair in two high pigtails, her shiny piezoplastic Yu Shu sneakers with fancy dragon’s heads on their toes. The Big Pig Posse members rarely changed their outfits; they were like cartoon characters that way. Superheroes.

Sonic gave the janitor a little poke in the chest; the janitor swung his fist; Sonic ducked. Street theater. Jayjay and Sonic followed the women out, standing for a moment in the rain-shadow of the office building. The streets were liquid, the raindrops popping circles into the sheen, the spastic gusty wind making riffles, a few electric cars hissing past.

Jayjay looked into his head, checking the orphidnet view of the McDonald’s trashcans, and indeed he saw a nice batch of griddle cakes, nearly a dozen. Only a block away.

But first, as long as he was focused on the orphidnet, Jayjay said hello to some of the beezie AI agents hosted by the millions of orphids on his body, also greeting the far-flung higher-order beezies that could be found at the next level of abstraction and then, what the hey, he took a quick hit off the Big Pig at the apex of the virtual world, the outrageously rich and intricate Big Pig like a birthday piñata stuffed with beautiful insights woven into ideas that linked into unifying concepts that puzzle-pieced themselves into powerful systems that were in turn aspects of a cosmic metatheory—aha! Hooking into the billion-snouted billion-nippled Big Pig made Jayjay feel like more than a genius.