“So.” she said finally. “It wasn’t quite the Micky Nozawa rescue it looked like, huh? You were already cranked up.”

I smiled, slightly stoned on the endorphin. “Call it serendipity.”

“Alright. Micky Serendipity, that’s got a ring to it.” She frowned owlishly into the depths of her glass, which, like the bottle, had been empty for a while. “Got to say, Micky, I like you. Can’t put my finger on it. But I do. I like you.”

“I like you too.”

She wagged a finger, maybe the one she couldn’t quite put on my likeable qualities. “This is not. Sex. You know?”

“I know. Have you seen the size of the hole in my ribs?” I shook my head muzzily. “Of course you have. Spectrochem vision chip, right?”

She nodded complacently.

“You really from a Renouncer family?”

A sour grimace. “Yeah. From being the operative word.”

“They’re not proud of you?” I gestured at her hair. “I’d have thought that qualifies as a pretty solid step on the road to Upload. Logically—”

“Yeah, logically. This is a religion you’re talking about. Renouncers make no more fucking sense than the Beards when it comes down to it.”

“So they’re not in favour?”

“Opinion,” she said with mock delicacy, “is divided on the matter. The aspirant hardliners don’t like it, they don’t like anything that roots construct systems firmly to physical being. The preparant wing of the faith just want to play nice with everyone. They say any virtuality interface is, as you say, a step on the road. They don’t expect Upload to come in their lifetime anyway, we’re all just handmaidens to the process.”

“So which are your folks?”

Sylvie shifted her body on the lounger again, frowned and gave Jadwiga another shove to make space.

“Used to be moderate preps, that’s the faith I grew up in. The last couple of decades though, with the Beards and the whole anti-stack thing, a lot of moderates are turning into hardline asps. My mother probably went that way, she was always the seriously pious one.” She shrugged. “No idea really. Haven’t been home in years.”

“Like that, huh?”

“Yeah, like that. There’s no fucking point. All they’d do is try and marry me off to some eligible local.” She snorted with laughter. “As if that’s going to happen while I’m carrying this stuff.”

I propped myself up a little, groggy with the drugs. “What stuff?”

“This.” She tugged at a handful of hair. “This fucking stuff.”

It crackled quietly around her grasp, tried to writhe away like thousands of tiny snakes. Under the crinkled black and silver mass of it, the thicker cords moved stealthily, like muscles under skin.

DeCom command datatech.