But in the past few decades, many of the treekin began to utilize bits and pieces of electronics and computer parts for their repairs, metamorphosing over time into creatures made as much of wiring and circuitry as they were of organic material. Eventually, some, like Edgan, became creatures entirely made of synthetic castoffs; each techno treekin—as they came to be called—as individual as the materials they were able to scrounge. In Edgan’s case, he had a torso built up around a computer motherboard; his limbs and head were a complicated tangle of wiring and less identifiable objects, though his nose was certainly a spark plug and his eyes a pair of camera lenses.

He was in Computer World tonight because he’d recently seen another of the techno treekin sporting an iPod in the twisting snarl of wires that held her torso together, and he simply had to have one himself. He already had a PDA wired into his motherboard body—as well as a digital camera and a pair of cell phones—but its memory capacity couldn’t match the sixty gigabytes of the iPod. The iPod would be perfect for storing the data he pilfered from the Internet, but he also liked the shiny whiteness of its case for how it matched his spark plug nose.

So he wandered up and down the aisles, searching for the appropriate display, until he finally found the iPods racked with the other MP3 players in the music section of the store. He pulled one down and after opening its package, happily busied himself attaching the player to his torso, weaving the lovely white power and earphone cords into the other wiring on his arms. He stood and admired his reflection in a display case, strutting back and forth in front of the glass, swinging his arms.

Lovely. The patterns he’d knotted with the white wires looked like tattoos amongst the darker wiring of his arms. Into the knots, he’d shaped symbols taken from traditional treekin tribal markings—the ancient glyphs that calendared the trees in the long ago—and had done a fine job of it, if he did say so himself.

After awhile he went looking for an electric outlet and plugged himself in to charge the batteries of his new iPod and his other peripherals. The outlet he’d chosen was near the big windows at the front of the store, giving him a view of the big parking lot. Across the lot he could see the dark bulk of the Woodforest Plaza Mall where the rest of his court were going about their business. He would rejoin them soon enough, but for now he was happy to sit beside the cash register, kicking his heels against the counter, which made a cheerful thumping sound—

Until he saw a halfdozen of the Bogan Boys go ambling across the parking lot.