Katherine Helms certainly appeared over my h-phone’s holographic transmission like a thousand-dollar hooker, her skintight black halter top accentuating her breasts, which looked like two cantaloupes cloaked in shrink-wrap. It was an interesting ploy, considering the religious group she was representing was funded by the Clean Coal Coalition. Before you get any wild ideas about my politics, it’s important I mention that the CCC’s claims about producing a greenhouse gas–free fuel was simply more vanilla sway—sort of like Ms. Helms’s breasts. Based on the obtuse angle of the nipples, I was 94 percent certain they were fake—not the good surgically enhanced fake either, but the virtual fake: an h-phone app designed to enhance phone sex.

Alexander Graham Bell would have been proud.

“It’s Professor Eisenbraun, Ms. Helms, and I can hear you just fine. As to your question, any answer I give will simply be manipulated by your network to stoke the debate against fusion energy.”

“Five billion people died in the GDO, Professor. Are you telling me the thought never occurred to you that the event was an act of God? Even the initials ‘GDO’ are an anagram for a higher power.”

“It’s also an anagram for ‘dog’; are you saying the family pet pushed our species to the brink?”

“What I’m saying … what I’m asking is whether you believe God wants man tinkering with His creation.”

“Based on the small size of your frame, I’m guessing God didn’t bless you with those imposing thirty-six Ds. Wouldn’t breast implants be considered tinkering?”

I smiled as the reporter’s cheeks flushed red, her eyes narrowing. “How dare you compare my breasts to your blasphemy! I know your type, Mister Eisenbraun. A woman to you is nothing more than a life-support system for the vagina!”

I muted the h-phone, silencing her abusive barrage. For the record … wait, that’s a bit redundant. Technically, all of this is for the record, recorded internally inside my skull by ABE, the Amalgamate Biological Enhancement chip I designed and had surgically implanted in my brain stem. The ABE prototype was the reason Milk Cans Malloy over there was interviewing me, only her vanilla sway was not outweighing the vision of those simulated cantaloupes bouncing on her chest, and my patience had reached its limit.

Still, I suppose the vagina comeback deserved something.