Craigor’s walking-chair flexed its knees, rhythmically hunching against Thuy, who laughed at the urgent bumping. Kittie reached down to rip off one of the walking-chair’s shins. Miming great pain, the chair limped three-legged back to Craigor, leaning against him with a decrescendo shudder.

“You’re funny,” said Thuy to Craigor, meaning it. “I can put you in my metanovel. Are you directly controlling the chair?”

“I run the character animations though a beezie,” said Craigor. “But the beezie draws on a library of body-language routines that I stored. I act things out; that’s how all the great animators do it. My body knows more than my head. I’m a cuttlefisherman, too.”

“Mr. Disease Vector,” said Kittie, who’d attached the loose rod to her crotch. “Animate this.”

“Oh that’s witty,” said Craigor, looking annoyed. He grabbed the leg back.

Jayjay turned his attention to Jil, who was hunkered down by the sink checking up on her shoons. Even in that awkward position, she looked lithe and graceful. He tossed her a tiny heart-shaped emoticon via the orphidnet; she answered by half-turning her head his way and miming a kiss in profile. He was living the dream—in a reality soap!

“Founders fans may want to scan the Big Pig Posse’s backstory,” Nektar intoned, playing show host. “Jayjay loses Thuy, Thuy takes up with Kittie and next—Thuy and Craigor? Kittie and Nektar? Jayjay and Jil? Sonic and the shoons? Stay tuned. Oh, look, the good ads are coming back.” The orphidnet icons of BigBox and Stank glowed in the corners of the room, also the ExaExa beetle logo.

“Do we get paid too?” asked Kittie.

“I think so,” said Nektar. “The orphidnet figures all that out. I’ll register you as extras. And right up front, I’ll let you guys keep your SUV in my garage for a couple of weeks. And there’s a room over the garage you can live in. It’ll be fun having young people around.”

“Bitchin’,” said Sonic, draining the last of the tea. His eyes were bright and black. “I’m ready to settle in for a Doodly Bug death-run.”

“I want to paint that SUV and retrofit it for solar power,” said Kittie.

“I’ll be working on my metanovel,” said Thuy. “Wheenk.”

“The title’s growing on me,” said Jayjay, smiling at her. “I’m gonna be busy with Prav Plato’s physics seminars.” He put on a goody-goody tone, segueing into the plan they’d privately made upstairs. By now he’d privately messaged Kittie the details, too. “We all have a lot to do—if we don’t waste our energy by plugging into the Big Pig.”