“Colloquium talk outta Berkeley,” said Jayjay. “Professor Prav Plato describing the dark-energy Higgs field.” It was more than a talk, really. The orphidnetted, beezie-amplified Prof Prav was spewing out images, simulations, and links as he spoke; and Prav’s kiqqie listeners were continually popping up comments and diagrams as well. Jayjay made a point of catching all Prav’s performances. The individual orphids kept a full record of everything they’d seen or heard for the past few months, so you always had the option of replaying a talk or slowing it down. But right now Jayjay was real-timing it, snowboarding his way down a whipped-cream mountain of symbols, loving how Prav was steering the flow past the Dick Too Dibbs ads that kept popping up like quirky machine monsters in a maze. It was awesome to kiq it with the Prav.

The only problem was that, now that Jayjay was doing something interesting again, the beetles were back. He set his virtual kennel of filter dogs on the trail of the beetles, hoping the dogs might evolve a way to bring down the intruders. Catching up for lost time, he jammed through a snowdrift of tensors to rejoin Prav.

“The profs don’t realize you’re a dropout guttersnipe?” Kittie taunted Jayjay from the backseat. Once, a few weeks back, in a friendly, unguarded moment, Kittie had told Jayjay she admired his ambition. But most of the time she tried to act all hard and street-tough—covering for the fact that she came from a comfortable middle-class family in Palo Alto, slumming yuppie larva that she was. “Forget that double-doming and check where I’m at, kiqs,” continued Kittie. “Heath Himbo is doing Lureen Morales on the Caliente show. I love that hard, slutty thing Lureen does with her upper lip. But, dammit, they’ve got Dick Too Dibbs as a paid-up legit sponsor. How lame is that? Outta the way, Dick Too. And he’s carrying a beetle under his arm. Those freaking beetles are ruining everything!”

“They’ve got a rainbow sheen,” said Thuy. “They’re the same malware that Nektar has. Oh, shit, they’re chewing on my notes for my metanovel!”

“Yo!” cried Sonic just then. “I finally got the cure. Give me access, homes.”

Jayjay and the others opened their mental shields. Virtual Sonic flicked his fingers, scattering glowing blue fleas every which way. A flea landed on one of Jayjay’s filter dogs and exploded; the dog’s teeth got twice as long, his hair turned into purple flames—and he began tearing through the beetles like a starving man eating Thanksgiving dinner. The dog briefly paused to shake himself, showering the exploding fleas onto the other dogs. In another second the slavering pack had devoured all of Jayjay’s beetles.

“Yay, Sonic!” said Kittie and Thuy, who’d gotten cleaned up too.