“My metastory is called ‘Losing My Head,’” said Thuy. “I’m about to perform the whole thing live and for free at Metotem, so tune in and turn on, you skeevy old stoner. Still ad-mining for Natural Mind, huh?”

“I cycled out too early, and had to re-up for spin-dry umpty-six. Mary never left. How you?”

“I’m off the Pig, yeah,” said Thuy. “Thinking clearer; feeling more; building my metanovel. The new metastory is an excerpt from it. I’m in the zone, John; it feels like dreaming while being awake. And the world’s helping me. This Hibraner Azaroth keeps showing up. You’re part of the pudding, too. It’s so perfect and synchronistic that you popped out of that particular alley. Everything’s entangled. God’s an artist.”

“The yam’s the man,” said Prescription John, puffing up his tuberous orange icon. “Whoops, here comes Topping. Gotta go.”

He sputtered, twinkled, and faded out—leaving Thuy with a sudden suspicion that maybe that hadn’t been the true flesh-and-blood Prescription John running the yam. Maybe she’d been talking to a virtual, artificially alive Prescription John from within her “Losing My Head” metastory. Hanging around Darlene’s Metotem store the other day, she’d heard some of the other metanovelists talking about times when their characters started messaging them—they referred to this not uncommon feedback phenomenon as “blowback.”

Gerry Gurkin, for instance, kept having visitations from the simulated Gerry Gurkin of his autobiographical Banality, the virtual Gerry clamoring that he wanted metanovelist Gerry to edit in a girlfriend character for him to fuck. Telling this story, portly Gerry darted hot intense looks at Thuy, as if he were planning to feed a model of her to virtual Gerry, which was perfectly fine with Thuy, and she said so.

Thuy was in a lonely-but-coned-off emotional state where she was ready to accept any admiration she was offered, as long as it was virtual and with no strings attached. Re: “coned off,” she’d heard a woman actually saying that about herself the other day, as if she were a wreck lane or a crime site. That phrase went straight into the metanovel. The yam’s “I like Dick; does Dick like ye?” seemed usable too. Oh, for sure that had been the real Prescription John. No beezie would ever talk that silly.

Light from the store windows made warm trapezoids on the shiny sidewalk, gilding the rain puddles, their surfaces wrinkled by the gusty wind. As always when she noticed gnarly natural patterns, Thuy thought of Jayjay. She missed his lean body, his voice, his smell, his physical presence. He was still living on the Merz Boat.