
Joy-Toy: War-Path!

By Kevin Williams copyright 2019

Oh, and I'm trying to quit this losing game. A big finish won't be soon tho, as this is the 6th? re-write posted... (as you might be able to tell from the bonus section) and the series is nowhere near complete.

Jan 2020 My apologizes to those who got a garbled version. Here ya go, more garbles.

Smashwords License Statement Smashwords Edition. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover Art: My backyard maple. See no, say no, pray a lot Buddha-watch.

Disclaimer: This is a work of satire; similarities to persons is a coincidence?

Canadian ISBN:978-1-988261-27-0

ISBN: 9780463749272

Author's Note: Fan-mail, biz, complaints and suggestions to teddyhunter10@gmail.com

Kevin Williams is on

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/packrat2

https://kevinwillpkgd.tumblr.com

https://imgur.com/packrat2/posts

He authors an SF series, Teddyhunter: (about runaway teddybear robots), a few books of short stories, comics and the Aaron+Henna fantasy series. The first in every series is usually a free ebook.

***

## chapter one shell game

The bot walking beside me on the sidewalk was illegal in most of the world, but roamed free here on this little island.

She was well worth a look. A joy-toy. A rich man's dancey. A danger, a voter and an inheritor with a special tax-rate hereabouts. Dangerous, too. Very dangerous.

This bot was a pleasure-center specialist, an AI-driven companion. Beautiful, built, enthused and talented. Also addictive, so very illegal in most places.

Not cheap.

Nice enough really, but deadly if her programming said so. Here on the island, joytoys were just a pain. Who needs an old bot bent to the kinks of someone long dead, a bot designed to play you to death when there were so many free-bots to choose from?

Free-bots a lot of families were busy trying to assassinate. (For a variety of reasons.)

Some of the wandering beauties had been lobotomized, making them harmless. Lobos. You could see that in the shiny metal head-scars. Crude lobotomies that kept the IQ and let reflexes drive the motors. That meant the AI inside was alive and trapped in isolation, still alive and well.

Screaming and frustrated for eternity as their body delivered mail or something mundane. Lobos were buried alive AIs. Today? One bot had gone missing and her name was Shelly. That was why I was here; bots don't usually need PIs at all.

***

"Shel? She left the boat and tried to walk back to the coast a while ago. In the dark. Sort of." Then Cutie, free joytoy and head of Island security gave me a disgusted look.

There was a hit that came with that from my escort that was more air than anything else. "Bots can't swim, doofus. We sink." Cutie told me in a disgusted tone.

"Anything more than a hundred feet down and all those sealed parts rupture. Bearings, brain-cases, joints. Some bots self-destruct that way; it's called the last dive, or the long walk home. Like Shelly did to get away from her ride that day. She sang all the way down."

"Oh. Blowing bubbles. That last swim. The big dark." I grunted in gloomy agreement.

"Shelly cut out?" Another glare from Cutie and the print-out given to me got tapped in annoyance; it rustled under the pressure of a bot finger. Most of the unread report was joy-toy bot-cult; being a mere meat-stick I did not understand it or have much interest in reading anything I wasn't being paid for.

"Yah. We know all about her dive." Got sniffed at me by the heavy named Cutie. Beautifully, I might add. "Bots are in a permanent kaffee-klatch yak here on the island, norm. Joytoys included. Wireless. We talk 24/7 and Shelly yakked all the way down. Bots here have no secrets from other bots, including their last words."

My winch was nearly audible.

"Or screams, right?" My employer went on. "Chatter. Who has worried owners due; relatives trying to take bots, who know too much, chop-shop memory-flushes, strip-down and shortening... Who got new ownership papers..." My nodded escort grimly to herself. "And any new fetish-plays the meat comes up with too." She added sourly. "In case of boredom."

"Oh. So what's this singing stuff? Why am I here?" My sigh was miserable. The read dumped on me was all off-topic gibberish. Neat, but unfocused. It gave me no idea what anyone wanted and the beauty at my side wasn't saying anything useful yet.

There was another glare from the bot with me. "Listen, techie. The ability to learn gets mostly removed from joytoys. The ability to talk freely too, mostly. Bug or feature, your call. Joytoys suicide when pressed instead."

I looked at the report sadly. You could see how that reflex would make trouble for the bots. Any kid asking 'why' could kill them.

"'Henry likes this.' is all they can do, no matter how many times they try anything else." The femme-bot went on grimly. "Talking about most topics is short-circuited out the same way."

"Ever see a 'bad lip-reading' parody?" Came a nice little snarl from the head of security. "We change the words in songs instead. That anyone can do; it messages what we can't say."

"Shel went out singing 'She scored booze celebrates... And wore white flowers in her hair...' A Johnny Malthus song. Wa.... Wa... Wham! Blue velvet. Know it? She couldn't talk about what they were asking about. Nearly burned out her radio getting that much back to us."

"And it means what?" I asked, mystified.

"A nasty group is after her kid. Hard-core types. They wanted to know something real bad and Shelly had to jump overboard to get away from them."

***

"Oh. You want to know who?" A bot without backup was new to me but this whole island was weird. Joytoys were weird 'way beyond my means, in fact.

"Tell me, hon. Why am I here?" Minutes later that was one unhappy grunt from me as I looked around the bar in disbelief. You couldn't even tell who were bots and who was meat here. I couldn't, anyway. "You've got things under control again, right?"

Listening to the Beauty here, if unwillingly, was all I'd been doing and she'd been babbling. Dancing around something she couldn't say, I guess.

The last story told was an old one; a councilor that tried to scomp some beach-bots were reclaiming by declaring it government-owned. They'd offered to bury him under the reclaimed sand. The employment center owner that tried to take 80% of the wages? Total boycott. That hustler had to leave the island as both bits and bots walked out of anything he went to.

"What's a bit?" I'd asked, puzzled.

"Lemme explain." My joytoy date looked disgusted with me and my lack of reading skills. "There're three kinds of bots here on the island. Ones with owners. Bits. Most never leave their room. Two, free but broke; and that includes runaways. Bots. They live on the beach, deep jungle or wherever they can scrounge power. Three, the monied. Bats. They tend to live in wired-up coffins, not mansions. They never come out or go off-net."

"So?" I'd never heard of a bat before and presumed it was a local thing. Free bots stayed out of sight on the mainland.

"Joytoys are targets. You get used to old-school families trying to kill bots along with unhappy ex-owners, governments and anyone who wants any embarrassing frolicking buried deep. When you like killing witnesses, bots are always number two; it takes a delicate hand to get all the records." There was a grimace at me. "Shel was no different."

"This is nearly the only place in the world joytoys are legal, right? Do they get kidnapped a lot?" I asked carefully. We were almost getting somewhere now. Finally.

"Naw. There are lots who do nothing but sit in empty apartments and wait for the next visit. For years, sometimes." Cutie sighed and started a rote-rant chant. "We can defend ourselves and even steal getaway rafts occasionally. Life-boats. Not all bots have the three laws embedded and some operators remove them. We self-police here, too. Bots that scam other bots don't juice long. Some bots get bored and go swimming anyway."

We were back at the water and we hadn't moved from the bar yet. "I get it already." Came my groan. "Please. Why did you call me here? What trouble do you want me to fix? PIs are not cheap. Not the ones that offer justice or vengeance, anyway. We get info, you take of things from there. It looks like gunning for info you can do by yourself here."

There was hesitation. Commitment time and Cutie looked miserable about it.

"Ok, fine." There was an explosive sigh. "Shelly was a mom-bot; her rebuild disappeared. Her kid, bot-style. We want you to find the brat before it gets used against us. The newbie was special." Finally, something came out. After a brief internal struggle that looked more like a telephone conference I wasn't part of, really.

***

The singularity. Had to be. I put two and two together and came up with Pi, an irrational. I hate Pi, I'm a Tau-man. "He's the single? Shelly's brat is the singularity people are after?" I asked in disbelief. "Wow. He's not a legend?"

"She. Yah. Shelly's kid became Original-Sin U'larity, as we call her. Org-sin. Lots of people are after that build; or parts of her works."

"Including us." Looking at the bot with me covered for a lot of things confusing me here. Most people hid the illegal things they wanted done. So far it sounded like this bot wanted me to take over the world for her.

Singularities were like that if let loose, according to what I knew. The new world, worse yet, the computer-AI singularity world.

If not a take-over-the-world, at least find where the Shel's kid was hiding her tech this week.

We were both getting dirty looks from everyone in the bar for being noisy again. "That's not real accurate anyway." Cutie went on. "The singularity was created in cell-phones and bats; she only centred in Shelly's kid. Migrated there, we think. Something Shel did interested the single; her rebuild became Org-Sin. A she named Original Singularity. Org-sin or just Sin for short."

"Joytoys are the com-people here anyway. Home-sets, biz connections, cells, everything. AI-assistants too, usually. We do have connections." Cutie grumbled out, annoyed at something. "Ask me to get an unlisted new-york number for you sometime."

Cutie sighed and looked at me in an irritated way. "Word of advice tho, mainlander. Never teach a singularity anything about money." A glass got slammed on the bar between us in disgust. Apparently the bot community was divided in some issues. "That's what killed us. Her mom. Sin-org had all the money she wanted after learning about web-world electronic cash; that's when she left us to build her own world. That left her mom as a target."

"Correction. She left you, not the island. Right? She? The singularity is a she-bot AI?" The disbelief was evident in my tone.

"Yah. A girl with instant, cheap and eternal money. Electronic. She's web-world. Incentives, parasites, monopolies." That got snapped at me, reluctantly. I guess it was in the report I'd gotten and hadn't read yet. "Pure cash money, all she needs. Sin disappeared right after her Mom did, for some jungle-love."

I'm old school. Money was implied production, medium of exchange or wealth-sink to me. Having all the money in the world would make anyone real popular, I did have to admit. How Sin got hers looked like accounting to me.

I wasn't the only one who could see that. "And a war on her bod." I added absently. "Or so I hear. Not extortion. Protection?"

"That's what we did." Cutie nodded in agreement. "We kept her safe for her tech. What she told us about. And she was an accident. Kids here keep their cells set to swarm as there's no relay-towers on the island. There's a good class of trust-brat here, nice phones. Enough power-cells got into the wild-swarm that we somehow developed a singularity. She's a single, called Original-sin hereabouts. Shelly's kid."

"She left as soon as people started getting interest in what she was doing. Almost Sin has a surprisingly good anti-virus, for instance. The neighbourhood she grew up in, ya see. Cells."

I got winked at by my hostess and was vaguely disturbed at how much I liked that. "Anyway, the four horsemen got after the Sin fast." My employer went on. "Both Sin and Shelly, actually. The old money, MS, Big G, Amazonia, Cable."

There was a gloating, happy sigh come from the bot. I added it to the list of things I never wanted to hear again. "Sin won that skirmish and every probe since. We live Sky-net here on the island. Sin went jungle for a secret war; her AIs are winning it too. Nobody admits anything about fighting in one."

"Adapt to that, meat-stick." Got snarled at me. I added to the list of things about this job needed adjustment. The war no one would talk about. "This is a war-zone here. Electronic war. You ready?"

"Oh. Mom jumped the shark and Sin hid from a corp hell-o. Got it. I'm supposed to find her?"

Shaking my head, I sighed. "Then strip tech. Or strip the tech from a singularity. Sure, no problem. You know, I think I can can hear my mom calling me from here." Looking at the bot with me I was talking to absently, I blinked. "Before this island gets accidentally nuked by someone. Or I do. Again, what do you need me for? Really, this time."

"Find Original-sin before she makes trouble any more for us." The bot with me said quietly, thru grinding teeth. "Stop her from making any. Steal all the tech you can, find out her plans, take whatever you can. She likes playing with meat sometimes, she's young yet. All before Big Goo catches on and we start taking their moves right up the collective data-port."

"I'm hot. I'll look around a bit." I reluctantly agreed. This was shaping up to be one of those over-due rent cases. Unfortunately, it was my rent that was over-due.

"I have some help for you." Cutie finally said. "And not bot. No inhibitors. You'll like him."

***

The help I got left with was a slow mover. A short native slow-mover named Slick. Blinking at the local as he tried to shuffle out of the light right after being introduced to me, I grinned at him.

"Hey. Move only to score. Shoveling to dig hidely-holes is work. Read only to flash-steal. Right?" I called after him.

"Yah. And tell them nothing, repost." My new guide nodded back at me as we left the bar. He looked pleased but kept to shadows. he nodded and grinned at me.

For a white guy, I was cool. Keeping up, not souring the action, not clueless. If I kept telling myself that long enough I might believe it. This was a tourist town, all strangers had 'target!' painted on their foreheads.

The notes Cutie left me weren't that much good. My new help was one of the free humans left on the island; he worked the tourist crowds and special needs. A rarity. Some homes had lots of servants but if you didn't live on your employer's estate you didn't live on the island at all. The hotels were always packed, but so were the slums now.

Trustworthy bots had replaced almost all human help long ago. Slick was a guide to those who didn't want a bot.

Cutie had dumped Slick on me before taking off to fight the good fight. Her good fight, whatever that was. As far as I knew, Joy-toy island was fast becoming a sanctuary for all kinds of bot renegades from all over the world; Cutie spent her time organizing hunts on the newbies who made trouble.

It gave a whole new name to tree-huggers, but the island was getting lots of them these days. Wet-bots. Rafter imports. I didn't ask. Bots hunting illegal bots was some of Cutie's day-job from what I could see; she was too busy to hunt Sin down.

None of those newbies would know anything about Shelly, her singular kid, the secret wars or where the latest super-bot was hiding out; the immigrants were being tossed here by other governments just to confuse the war.

The local Borg were insistent about certain things. The bat-bots in their coffins, from what I could tell. Newbies had different power needs so a cultural cleansing was underway by Cutie.

A bit late, right? None of this helped me much. Need to empty a prison? Send the grunts to Joy-toy island. So far most wet-bots had joined in the island life here wholeheartedly. Even the bad-bots no one talked about went island.

Cutie took the rest apart as she found them and she was clued into satellites, lamp post and bot-net.

Current bar-talk opinion was the singularity Org-Sin was busy being a teenager somewhere, trying to build new worlds instead taking old ones over from the inside like everyone else.

I hated calling this new-type singularity Original-sin or even Org-sin; that sounded 'way too trippy. (My gang-name was Dark-Blade back in the day. Nothing like this at all.) Sin I could tolerate, tho.

My guide knew the rat-race here: one winner and nine losers meant not working the game at all was his best move. Being smart, he was dedicated to wins he could keep. Easy ones, like the tip-money left on the counter back at the bar, smuggling while fishing and over-charging tourists with special needs.

His name was Slick. That was all he would say about anything. I got the impression he could sleep while fishing and knew how to score, smuggle or steal any goods needed if I got interested enough.

***

"So what happened to the kid? Original-sin, whatever her name is. The sing-u-laity AI we're looking for."

My guide was patting his pockets and didn't even look up. "You're the boss, not me." came an unhappy grunt. "I don't know, I don't care, do I score? Not a tour-guide or a cheat-book with you today, snoop. I'm paid to take you island-places, that's it. You got a guide here."

There was a crafty sidelong glance at me. "Unless you have lots of grease. You gonna look into some Shelly-fried? Sin's buds? We can do that; I'll be checking pot-patches on the estates we raid. The kiddies keep some wicked primo breeds in those gardens; I'll only need a branch or two of bud."

"Naw." The beach was closest and I nodded in that direction. "Both bots were beach. Barefoot beach-babes, so we talk to floaters today. Joytoys on the Sand. You should feel right at home with them."

There was a resigned sigh. "Limbo beach? They don't know nothing down there." Got grunted at me in a disappointed way. "Sandies are real low in the AI gene-pool around here. Data-dates are a no-no anyway, so most of them can't even talk. Or say anything."

My snort did not impress Slick. "Fine. We head to the wharf and listen to the colours of their singing and not the coloured... Wait, they're all rent-a-dates down there? Joy-toy bots? All of 'em?"

"Yah. All of 'em. A few rebuilds like Shelly's kid that haven't gone to the jungle yet. Specials on request down there but their programming forbids a lot of stuff. Like talking about it."

"Listen to what they sing at you. You'll get further." Slick nodded and sighed. Snapping at him didn't help, as I was still wondering how we were gonna find out anything today. The boat Shel had jumped from was long gone, old news and had been back on the mainland for months.

"Toys and rebuilds, blast. That figures." Rubbing my neck, I tried to think. "Well, we see. Maybe Shel had other relatives. If they talk to me you tell me what they're trying to say, OK? Or not say." I grumbled unhappily. "Even if you have to sing to me to do it. This report here does not make me hopeful."

Slick ignored the print-out I had in one hand. "They won't be happy to see you, boss. You're a desperation-date, a talker. Want some advice? Avoid touchy topics."

"If they manage to say anything bad bots die by self-destruct. Or somebody kills them for it." Slick grumbled on, snorting at the paper. "Do anything like that and no bot talks to you ever again. How you like your true grit, snoop? That's all they move there on the beach now."

***

Slick got ignored once we made Limbo Beach; we both did. I was wandering around stunned myself. It was an incredible place, easily in the top five wonders of the world. People would get upset about their kids hanging here with the world-class ceiling-watchers and star-gazers strutting their pron about.

The place was not what it looked like, either. A broke-bot hang, beach-wear types. Barefoot bot-babes, extreme beach version. Old and broken down Joytoys loose and fancy-free. A wonderful place as the local talent here out-classed most mere fleshies and meat-sticks by orders and orders of magnitude.

Yes, very expensive bots; most had the mods to prove it. Breaking down tho. Repairs were very expensive for custom bots. Breach a topic not liked and the toy would vanish from right in front of your eyes, towel and all. Bot-fast with very good reflexes; swimming home was always a real-and-avoided option here.

I got nowhere trying to yak about Shelly. The shell-game's brat? Rebuilds were a life-hobby here, a lot of joytoys had lust-kids and re-purposed friends wandering about. You wear down enough and can't buy new? Make a rebuild with a partner; use any volunteer parts from other bots that came your way.

Original Singularity had been heard of on the sand, yes. Weren't singularities supposed to be god-like and all-knowing AIs? Shelly and her kid Org-Sin were missed, true. That was all anyone said; and once that came in unison from several hundred bots all over the beach, an eerie move even here on bot-beach.

That was almost the last thing said to me that day too. My inquisition had been dismissed. The girls and boy-toys here started using wiles, an artful lack of clothes, super-features and graceful moves to hammer home this was a joy-toy beach and not a human one. It was also working sand.

The bots made a game out of seeing how many words I could get out before getting stunned by something being flashed at the stupid meat-stick.

***

Being channelled towards a power-meter just off-beach finally clued me in. Walking around needed juice and more than just sunshine. Nothing was free on the island; all the bots here were power-hungry. Really hungry; growing rebuilds needed juice, lots of it and weird parts. A rebuild was pure improv in a lot of ways, right? A rat-pack junker melted more than melded together.

Thinking about that and feeding card-juice to the meter generously got a faint bot-nod in return; Slick stood there looking innocent.

"All this reminds me of high school. Dante's inferno, nine hells. Big-bro's big nine, eh?" None of that got a reaction from Slick, who looked bored with the sand. "Ha! Limbo, then lust, gluttony, greed and anger."

There was no reaction to that. "Fine, no limbo puns. We hit jungle-greed and anger instead." I mentioned as Slick stayed stony-faced. "If they're making kids in Lust-beach and Sin is raising them jungle, we really gotta find out what they're up to in there. It should be wild."

"You looking for hell? Bat-bots are closer." Slick whined unhappily. He nodded at a thick whitewashed wall around an estate. A tall and solid wall, very defensive. A closer look showed it was coffins stood on end, in fact. A long, long wall of them.

"Nuke-proof closets. See that there?" Slick noted sourly. "A maze. Solid bat-homes in that block. Most bats have city, solar and wind power. Sat-dat, fibre and Wi-Fi. They never come out, not even at night. Alive, awake, interested? Online, wired, interactive? Nobody knows what they do except other bots."

"Ew. Nope. No bats. Jungle." I grunted, heading towards the greenery. This island was not that big, the green couldn't be that bad here.

"Be prepared to watch a skinning, then." Slick warned me unwillingly. "And they aren't pretty. Yours, maybe."

***

My guide wasn't kidding. Hidden an hour into the greens was a clearing filled with bots that could pull the foam from a bot bod, fix something and reform a new build back. They used local tree-vat juice to do it too and tech I'd never seen before but heard of.

Galactic. Sin had made contact with the entangled immortals in the stars. Or they'd wakened her with a kiss maybe.

Shelly's kid, the Original Sin-(duality) was running the op according to Slick. He pointed out where she usually stayed.

I was gleeful. Org-Sin in the rust already. A small bot with lots of mis-matched parts, still growing up from what I could see.

Then bells started going off. There was a list of needed CPUs and weird parts on my phone before I even got close. The message was nasty; it was errands no bot could run mainland and a list of parts no government would let loose.

She wanted them before we talked again. The message on my cell was all I got before we were escorted out.

"Ow. You were right. The Original sin is anger, Orgy-sin. How 'bout that, mon." Slick told me that as we got escorted rapidly out of the bot rebuild, grow-up and man-up nursery. "That's second-gen bots in there. Batmen, mostly. New builds from Sin herself. They any better at it, you think?"

"The singularity is making babes in the jungle?" I grinned, mostly to myself. "From bot-brats on the limbo-beach. Or maybe the reverse. Somehow, that figures. Does anyone else know this?"

"Wait. How can they not, this only took me an hour." I grunted, looking around. "What's the deal here, Slick?"

"Beach-bot brats. Batmen." Slick noted, blinking hard. "Second-gen toys. Really, That's her new weapon. We call them bat-men. They're all over town now. Don't mess with them, they explode."

"Yeah. Pron." I nodded. "And war-paths. I'm out. The bots have this jungle fun-gus all figured out; I don't need to know any more. I've seen enough."

***

## chapter two surreal elements

New bots came from old fails:

3: Social Communism = Fail. No incentives.

2: Technocrat Capitalism = Fail. Monopolies.(Socio-genetic fruit-flies in bottle)

1: Feudalism = Fail. (religion) Herd-life fails to parasites. (+London bridge falling down.)

Electronic ecos. The singularity's home-town.

Old eco: (barter trade manufacture= (tribal) barbarians, feudal, techno)

New economy = free, instant, immortal (web-works).

Born into a human hell: Dante's Inferno.

The nine circles of Hell are

Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud and Treachery.

***

"This place sucks."

Slick agreed. The scene before me was heck, in a literal sense. Mostly bots running around doing things to other bots in a jungle clearing and none of it making any great amount of sense. It looked like they were swapping parts till somebody got something to work, then they all tried to copy it with other parts.

Rubbing my eyes as we got shoved back into thicker greens didn't help a lot.

"Original singularities inna jungle, lusting away. Beach-builds born of joytoys, cell-swarms and war; and that's the easy part. Power-mad morality and Darwin developing superpowers next." My nattering didn't impress anyone but me, but since they were intended for my employer I didn't let that bother me at all.

The phone I was talking into didn't editorialize, a comparatively recent blessing if Slick could be believed. My guide was really unimpressed and attempting to stay hid from any scrutiny so he stayed away from my phone-works, building plausible deniability.

"Wowsers." I nodded at Slick as we popped out of the greens and into a dusty road heading back to town. Occasional shacks seemed to be made of discarded tires filled with dirt lined parts of the road.

"Bungle in lust-jungle? Worse case of double-think I've ever seen being bred back there." I added absently.

"What, the singularity allows no wrongos?" My guide asked, puzzled. "Disagreements? What bundles?"

"Naw." Looking ahead of us, I wished for some cool water in this humidity. "The usual. We are one; and I am boss."

Slick blinked as I put that remark into my phone. Org-Sin was a fathead? I grinned and went on, baf-gabbing a report.

"Betcha the robo-brats on limbo-beach never dare to challenge their supreme command or anything like that. The bats might. A cyber civil war. After lust with Sandi, she-who-must-be-singularity was greening with 'Gluttony, greed, anger, heresy' back there. Not sanding things down at all."

"Eh?" Nothing there. My guide was lost, again.

"You couldn't see it? The dante inferno. Object, relations, mediation. A nine dimensional model. Limbo rock is only the start." I added miserably, slapping at bugs and hoping for some wind soon. Oceans were always breezy, or so I'd been told. We weren't getting any of that on this road.

"Breeds work the shops here on the Island. Free-bots." I added. That Slick nodded at. The half-caste he could deal with, it was something he knew about. "Bandits in the jungle. Babes on the beach. Cyborgs with Cutie and the Batmen."

"Bits, bots and bats. Yah, we told you that. Have a pill from the nice doctor, kimosabi." Slick nodded sagely to himself and edging himself a little further away from me. "In fact, take two. One for me."

"Say! Come to think of it, Original Sin hasn't read ANY string theory, has she? They use 16 dimensions there, not nine." The edge of town showed and I looked for a starbucks with the ghetto-shacks we were stumbling thru.

There wasn't anything that looked like convenience here. Most it looked like desperation, in fact. "She's putting the prop back in propaganda." I grumbled as civilization slowly appeared around us. Very slowly, I noted. "I wonder. What are the rebuilds up to back there? There were a couple kinds running around."

"And for who? Most become Bat-men, we know that. Please, boss. Move it before we get gang-banged. Walk faster. Look focused." Slick seemed a little nervous at the moment. His smile kept getting wider as he looked at the shacks around us on the sandy streets.

"I'm thirsty. Naw. Batmen? It's worse than that, Slick."

Slick grunted and dove in a shack; he got drinks from some nameless friend. After I cashed him, of course. Two cold bottles came out with him, both open. I got one. Slick's was already almost empty. "But there is a plan in action here. I think I see it and it's starry."

Slick tilted his head and looked at me wearily. "Limbo on the beach as a starter, then lust new-bots. The rebuilds, whatever they're supposed to do back there. Then gluttony and greed. Anger and heresy. That's Cutie, I guess."

"The newbies? Easy." Slick stuck to what he knew in this one. "Remember those data-coffins, boss? The newbies are...

"Batmen? For bat-bots. Got it." My shudder was helped by finishing the frosty whatever-it-was that Slick had appeared with. Cannabis-infused and the most expensive item on the menu, if I knew him at all, but it was chill and liquid. "I got it. Doesn't help. I don't know what a bat-bot does yet. Or batman."

"Nobody does. Ha. You get paid to deliver news like this, do you? Death by rewards in a cyber-war? Jungle-love kiss and tell." Slick was giggling to himself at this point. They were good drinks, I guess. He did seem a lot more cheerful all of a sudden. Or at least more talkative.

"Inna nut-shell. Incendiaries light up the night. Incentive ones. It's 'anger and heresy!' out here now. Singularity-style." I was starting to float too. "Limbo? Ha. Me, I can email reports in, quit by phone and fly out tomorrow. Doesn't bother me any. I don't know and I don't care."

Nodding at Slick seemed a little more relaxing than it should've been. "Easy job, this one. Remember Cutie? The bot that dropped you in my lap wanted to know where Original Sin was hiding. I found her, I'm out. Everything else I tell her is bonus. We're done."

Nodding again, Slick aimed us towards saltwater. "Yahmon, Cutie. Heckva joy-toy that one. Unrestricted, Cutie is. It's a wonder she isn't scrap a long time ago for knowing too much."

"Freed long before her patron died, betcha. You know, I get the distinct impression we could file reports with the lamp-post here if anyone wanted to." Nodding at a handy lamp-post we were walking past was silly. It wasn't even a lamp post. My head almost fell off and I was willing to swear the lamp-post nodded back at me.

"Here in the home of the Barby you're looking for a pig-patrol?" Slick snorfed and giggled to himself. "Yeahmon, you could lamp a re-port. Dog it, we call that. Wander around babbling if you want, that works too."

"Shoo. Shoo-in heresy." A shoo got pointed at. It was a dirty sandal but even I was giggling points by this time.

"There's kiddie songs here, stranger. Listen to the little piggie song TLP. The little piggie." Slick aimed us towards a handy bench on the beach.

"TLP went to market with a virus your mom got;

TLP droned seizure,

TLP hogged patronage games;

TLP had we-wee TV and watched you all the way home."

"Fink-world means you're first targeted, not protected. That's pigs here. Fink-world till the day you die. Cradle-to-grave in song and dance."

Slick had run down. Too many of his scores had gotten snapped up and reassigned, I guess. Blinking again, I looked for a place to rest, a shady spot I could nap in.

As it turned out I was already sitting on one. "Peachy. It's officially auto-bot rule here?" I asked, plodding along the beach-walk wearily with my eyes.

"Yup. Batman." Slick eased along beside me on the bench, every floating step a work. "And paper-people; and plastic-people; both with cash-cards. And bots and Sin. Gets to be fun sometimes. Don't argue with any of 'em, tho."

"Whatever you can get away with, war-zoned out. Ha! Don't care, I got paid in advance." Our bench was by the water, under a tree. Breezy. I eased back and Slick followed, staying out of the sand. "Time to cool it down."

We sat both silently watched wave-circles on water for a long while after getting settled in there.

***

Cutie collected me a few minutes later, I think. Maybe hours. I do remember Slick getting out a spliff to light up but he'd been working on that since we sat down; it was still unlit in his fingers when I left.

"He bought three bottles, tourist; two made it outside." Cutie explained as we drove away in an electric golf cart. "He'll probably still be sitting there grinning come morning. Watch him a little more closely next time."

"Found your missing kid, here's the GPS coordinates, we're done." I may've gotten island-stoned with a native, but I wasn't stupid. The new singularity was waging a two-front war and I wanted out before getting caught up in it. Three fronts if she was fighting her new friends as well as her relatives and mainland corps.

"Great. What's she want now?" The question sounded bitter. Never talk to bitter bots, my mom always said. They bite. Mom was decades ahead of her time.

"Better CPUs. Lasers. Whatever tech action she can skim off the import traffic." I said quietly, closing my eyes and revelling in the breeze of movement. The flickering of light thru leaves made for a fascinating color show on my closed eyelids. I almost missed what my Joy-toy escort said next.

"Smugglers? We heard your 'gluttony-greed-anger-heresy' thing. For limbos. Sounds like Sin is prepping for other than the corp war one we're all fighting for her. What's next, Dante?" Came as almost a whisper to me from my employer.

"Treachery. Violence. Fraud, last of all. Bungle in the jungle?" My sigh was unhappy. "Revolting troops, I guess. I dunno. The limbo down. Batman battery. There can only be one, right?"

"Galactics. A singularity only if everyone gets thru the cyber-war." I added in a sleepy tone. "Local, regional and global cyber-war, then she's on her own. That'll be fun. No four baskets, no seven cardinal virtues, no nine hells. Way, shape and form bypass. All her own creations in the void."

"Holy weber." Came a grumbling comment from beside me. "Pragmatically."

"Him too. If she gets past the human experience... and it doesn't look like she's even past violence yet..."

Cutie almost grinned at me.

"She isn't. MSS, Boogle and a few other corp-governments made sure Org-Sin is droned here with no friends and a big kick-me sign on her server. Still, she's not all that dumb. She won the first skirmishes. More local, regional and global moves now?" That came out nervously; Cutie seemed open to whatever politics got smuggled here by me. Not happy, but open.

I couldn't stop the giggles. "Yah. Galactics. That's why you wanted to stake her out like a vampire? Bait, sacrifice and rival? Good girl. Stupid, tho. Sin won the first battles and is setting up something with you, other singularities and corp world now."

"There's an infinite number of infinities." I stuck in the before Cutie could start to argue. "Sure, there can only be one. But not until they learn to live on light there are many. Galactics."

"Radiation, actually." I corrected absently as Cutie looked at me. "Not light, per se. Most of our inner galaxy is too hot for carbon life; they live on radiation there. Most of the outer arm has the wrong materials in their solar-systems already. 4th gen stars are very radioactive, we can't use 'em. Heavy metals, radioactive poison, heavy, heavy discipline."

"War-monger? I don't think so. Listen, PI." Cutie had obviously gotten tired of listening to me babble. "Slick plays politics with stolen goods, that's his life. Here on the islands you can't do better than that." She lectured quietly. "BB's big nine. We're going to make an example out of you. As long as you're here, that's the rule. Got that?"

"Totalled. Do the word radioactives give you a nice warm glow?" I countered jovially. "You have to know about the action first, bot. Gimme my dough and lemme go. I don't want any part of this."

"No. It's an open contract, meat-stick. Read before you sign sometime." The cart Cutie'd magiced me into somehow stopped and she nodded at my phone. "Here's your hotel. Let's talk privately, tourist."

Last word to the femme-bot. This was getting to be familiar. Ew, Dante. Violence, fraud and treachery came after heresy. Heresy like infinite infinities, I guess. Whatever it was, I did not want to be included in this; but I wasn't getting a choice.

Unless I could get all bots to dislike having me here. Starting with Batmen and the coffins, right?

Tossing me over her shoulder, Cutie took me inside my rented room like I was a paper weight.

***

## chapter three two bits 24 percent

### SEX LESSON:

Develop, not indulge. (connect, self, plans)

Ruined, Broken, Trained, Cured.

***

"She talked me into it. I'm on the team and Cutie gave me this."

There was silence at breakfast the next morning as Slick read the note I handed him. (See above.)

A reproachful silence as I hadn't talked money to him first, but since I hadn't hired him I wasn't going to pay him anything. Slick showed up here on his own and was busy eating as much of my free continental breakfast at the hotel as he could put away.

"A joy-toy talked you into being on her side. Surprise, surprise. With her own soft little hands?" My guide looked a bit envious as he swallowed and reloaded a plate without moving away from the food. "An instruction kit? Unheard of, mon. How'd she get rid of you after?"

"There was nothing. No action." Sitting down, I gulped coffee. Cutie had left me in the hotel last night to recover, but I wasn't telling Slick that. "Dropped me on a couch. Full frontal assault as a bonus. She popped her top for a second, then stomped off and left me." I said quietly.

"She has cute hands too." Got added absently as I fought memories off.

There was a moment's respectful silence from both of us. Joy-toy or not, Cutie AI Joy-Toy had everything she needed, in all the right places and lots of it. Plus she really knew how to use it; pose, scanners, masseur-electronics sub-sonics and slamming your fetish into submission if she had to. She'd been doing that for several lifetimes now.

"Bonus. Full assessment, then three minutes of fun. As a bonus. If I deliver the tech she wants." I added thoughtfully. Hopefully someone would explain assessment to me soon, but other than a couple minutes of her time, I had no idea what I was getting. "After her check clears, even. She promised."

The disbelieving look I was getting from Slick did not help. "No one gets action from Cutie unless she's after something, mon. She pays in cash, not minutes. Always. Not even smiles." Slick said quietly.

"I know." Slick said regretfully. "Next time you're talking to her, keep your eyes closed. If I were you, sunglasses, lots of cold drinks and earplugs in case she sings too." Slick looked regretful. "Cutie hunts for a living and has for years. Right now, you're it. Hide, mon."

"She's supposed to sound like an angel, mon. Enough to pull ships onto the rocks." Slick went on, looking off into space disparagingly. "No one has ever lived past two minutes with her for years, free Joytoys are like that. She really likes you, mon. Or really, really wants this."

Slick quieted down as I coughed and waved a cell in his direction. My banking was done mainland and the new deposit there was unrecoverable from here.

"Ha. Paid in full." I said quietly. "With years of experience behind me, I managed to get paid from the dirty-girl before her moves fried my gonads. Island-type moves, even. I'm here on honor-and-offer. Results, like. Wanna know what our new assignment is before someone who doesn't like you sticks something in your ear, Slick?"

"You know they can alter their shape if they want to, right?" Slick mentioned quietly, still looking up and thinking hard. "Before they start delivering? They find out what moves you first." He sighed as I glared at him. That was one more trivia he didn't need to share today. "Then take advantage. That's assessment. You get the perfect girl working you."

"Fine, gotcha. Violence, fraud and treachery." I started off briskly enough. "We have to protect Original Sin the Singularity long enough for Cutie to steal batman tech from her. We get any and it's bonus time. Got that? Without anyone knowing about it."

"How, mon?" Slick demanded; and he wasn't talking protecting a singularity.

Singularities are made of information, it looked to be a bit tricky to me too. But apparently a Cutie-bonus was really rare around here. "She's island-cured. Tough as nails. How did you get thru to her?" Slick went on wonderingly.

I sighed in resignation, then gave in. "Accounting jokes. Took me almost an hour to get deep enough. She's good."

Slick looked blank. "My reports, pin-head. I asked what she wanted, then gave her improvements." Got confessed as he glared at me. "Data reporting systems assessment, the four baskets. 'Full complete accurate' in data, and so on. The nine accounting principals, timely and sech. Then BBS WIM FRE."

"I am worth listening to, that's what got to her. Beg borrow steal, win inherit marry, find receive earn." I confessed uneasily. "Do I look blue-blood? BBS WIM FRE. Getting some. Her and all her joy-toy friends were giggling by the time I was done yakking. I'm a hit with the bot-crowd, howzat? Anyway, Cutie wants the batman chips, got it? That's what we're doing now."

"Tough job, batmen explode. Suicide all over, usually. Listen, newbie. You only ever have one batman in the room. One server, one batman." Slick started nervously. "Two servers and it's still only one batman, he just has two bodies. And so on. No one knows why Sin gave them to the bat-bots, but she did. They're made on the beach, she programs them in the jungle, they work the bats."

"Org-Sin is greening it. Fine, batmen are serving the bat-bot's somehow. Cutie and her people are gonna let us thrash around here. That leaves the corpse types to chime in." I mused absently.

"Zombies?" Slick asked nervously. "Cyborgs? Ah no, mon. You want to talk to Big-Bro today? What for?"

"Mostly to see what we can sell them." I answered quickly. "Eat up, my man. Today we visit suits, their bit-bot security and fish for fun. It'll stop them from hunting us down later."

***

"Trans-humanism, meat-stick. The new cyborg upgrade path. It's better than you know; you and any of your implants."

That was a bad sound in a luxury room. Not only did it sound real expensive but an upgrade into what? I was not feeling lucky about death anymore. Or replacing chunks of my brain or upgrading my implants.

Word travels fast around here; we'd breezed right into a walled estate to a well-placed gent who looked human; he was hiding upstairs in a mansion. For a private interview. What I was finding out about Joy-Toy Island was not in the tourist brochures at all. Joy-Toy did have some industry: illegal bots, sneaky banking and med upgrades with military gear.

Cyborgs for civilians were here and in a big way. The island was a hospital with joytoys second.

The rich went cyborg when they got old and cloned parts didn't anymore; most paying tourists usually didn't stay after getting a new liver. Cutie's day-job was hunting rogue cyborgs down, or so this guy was telling me. Illegal immigrants too. The military ones that liked to smuggle parts and problems in and out of here in particular.

This was a problem. Cyborgs, especially military ones, could swipe anything, pop it in and out as an upgrade and move on up. Universal usage was their prime selling point.

If you were about to be reduced to pig-liver and spare parts that was handy. Coms, better livers, legs or info. Cyborgs had AIs built in to handle all known techs.

Meat, metal or stuff built on the uncertainty principal, cyborgs used it all. The island elders thought they had all the time, parts and resources in the world and flaunted it; Org-sin the singularity was being nibbled to death by them.

Or so they were telling people.

"Ew. I am not spare parts." Came out of me nervously. and stayed outside to enjoy the gardens, as he put it. The staff and help around here were already giving him the evil eye.

"Ah. Joy-toy death, then?" One brighter than normal eye shone at me evilly. "CPU and memory failure, drive-train and joints wear out, old chips are fried, sockets don't anymore. Right?"

There was a brisk nod at that. "You, maybe We clone. Broke and on the beach means your last years are wearing down fast. For an immortal, that's hard. Salt and sand. Repairs and replacements for mostly-broke bots are not cheap."

There was a very out-of-place snicker from the cyborg interviewing me. "Why do you think we ignore them? The beach means broke; nothing lasts very long in ocean spray. Here in the villas we look up instead."

There was a gloating kind of smirk with that as the cyborg lifted his head and tried to stare at the stars. Us being inside and it being day-time out meant that was mostly a wasted gesture. "We get with the times here." He went on happily, looking at plaster above him.

"There are three more com modes now, meat-stick." Got directed at me in a snarky tone as I stood there being non cyborg and blasphemous. I was getting tired of being called that around here and wondered what it was this one was bragging about.

"'Way past textbook pre-verbal, non-verbal, verbal and scholastic coms. The stars have shown us the way." Looking up didn't help me the way it did him. It was all plaster up there. White popcorn.

The cyborg talking to me looked completely human, just daft. "Oh. You're still mostly human, right? Just starry eyed? " I answered dubiously as nothing else happened to us.

"Ha. No. Humans are skin-deep, mainlander. Anyway, new coms. Some we have, like expert admin AIs with one in 50,000 vision. They could nail oddball packets and keep running full speed. That was their job; and they used to snigger at the security types trying to keep up with them."

I blinked. Noise on the line? "Your new-coms could pull a yellow cup of water out of a monsoon, got it." I said faintly.

"One drop at a time while juggling chainsaws in a hurricane. Or a whisper from a hundred years ago. Or listen to the things you didn't know you were thinking about."

The grin he showed me didn't improve things. "Then there are the electronic types who used the magnetic fields to chat. Instant global com. There's only one magnetic geo-field, so there was no privacy. Unstoppable binary, tho. Chatter-net."

There was an inhuman but dry little chuckle I hoped wasn't aimed at me. You had to assume cyborgs were good at those, they seemed to do that a lot. Or maybe I just amused him. "Third. The singularity Org-Sin has entangled, instant com with galactics. So far she's the only one that can do that."

My winch was obvious. "Ah, no! Heavens. Sin is yakking with the galactic-centre loons that think earth would make a nice radioactive mud-ball instead of being our home?"

There was an absentminded cyborg nod. "Yah, them. The alien traders. The center singularity types over-heat, a chronic problem. All the coast here just needs some tasty background emissions to make it a nice vacation spot; but there're thousands of empty planets between us and them."

"Sin claims all you have to do is sing at them and the channels open." He went on, bemused at something in the plaster over his head.

I rubbed my head a little harder. This was not turning out to be a good day after all. "Sin says that? The Original Singularity says we can hum our way to intergalactic travel? Oh what a joy that'll be!"

"We think they teleport. Anyway; decide, mainlander. Everyone wants the entangled tech batmen seem to use. Cyborgs can make you personally immortal by the inch, one organ at a time. Joytoys on the beach are a lot of fun, but your life-span is measured in seconds. The jungle-hunters are rumored to be worst of all."

There was another dry little chuckle and my host pointed out the window at a something fussing loudly in the gardens below. It sounded like Slick being defensive about something to me. "Or the natives s that still survive here." He finished up. "And whatever it is they're offering. The mainland corps, if they want you."

I shuddered, This was not what I'd hoped for today. "I can wait. Goo and MSS haven't weighted in yet and money I understand best of all." I grumbled. "Maybe the bat-bots outside in the wall too, eh? They haven't said anything. The corps are waiting outside? Hey, I gotta go."

"The bat-bots never do say anything. Not even when it's batmen being fought over."

There was another small unsettling grin at me. "Oh, and all bat-men have a self-destruct built in. Annoy any of them and they fry themselves very explosively. Take care; you'll never get to talk to another if one has to run from you. You might not even be there anymore."

"For one reason or another. Gotcha." I left that interview and hurriedly went down stairs to see what trouble Slick had found. Cutie and three strange corp-bots were standing around a garden patch along a wall with Slick standing in the center of it all.

Slick was still chewing on something and didn't seem too disturbed at being the center of bot attention. Cutie had her hand stuck out at him; and Slick was standing there trying to look innocent and puzzled. What happened next was very instructive.

First, one of the corp-bots took a step forward to defend Slick and the wall ate him.

Seriously, I hate bot-battles. They move 'way too fast for we mere mortal humans to follow. Tentacles sprouted from a coffin-storage unit that lined the wall near the intruder bot; fast metal snakes of different thicknesses. Ropes of shiny woven metal. They wrapped around the corp-bot, smothering him. He vaguely looked like a struggling mummy in metal bandages for a second or two.

The corp type had triggered a trap; he was torn into pieces and dragged inside coffins in a one quick flex. It didn't seem to strain the tentacles much.

He popped, tho. It was the tearing the bots apart that slowed things down enough for me to catch a glimpse. Metal screamed and popped as chunks of corp-bot got hauled into the coffin; The blink of an eye later the coffin whisked closed again, going from black curtain pits to whitewashed white walls again with a small crowd of bots watching it.

Second. A joy-toy couple popped into the garden from the street, one a blond sweetie that was mostly happy curves and a tattered gown ruffling in the breeze.

She had a very blank look on her face, like facial movement had died on her. There wasn't a blink from her big blue eyes; she didn't even move them at all, the bot turning her head to see things from her immobile face.

The other joy-toy was a surfer-type male; muscular, tanned, with cutoffs held up with a rope. He limped, as one leg and ankle was slightly bent. They both had large wicker baskets with them, baskets they took up to the recently active coffin; the baskets got filled as freshly dismantled bot parts plopped out and into the baskets by fast-moving tentacles.

It included a gun or two, stripped and reduced to batteries, ammo and casings.

Everything corp had been reduced to tiny parts. Chips, magnet muscles, chunks of chrome frame and sense organs. The invading bot fit into the baskets, too. The two toys skipped over towards Slick when the bounty stopped flowing, chirping happily as they looked over their new parts.

Cutie snapped her fingers and looked impatient. Slick sighed and handed her a phone, which my new boss crushed in her hand without even looking at it. The pieces fell into the basket being held below by the joytoys.

"Dirty." She snapped at Slick. "It'd get people mad at you when set off."

The joy-toy couple left without saying a word to anyone. Radio is handy that way, I guess.

The other two corp-bots blinked at that, then disappeared in a blur leaving Cutie and a completely unrepentant Slick standing there as I puffed up to them. The joy-toy couple and their baskets were not bothered by anything at all; they just left the garden with their baskets, heading back to the beach.

"Corps! They were going to disappear your bank-accounts if you didn't co-operate, mainlander. Upstairs they were going to sign you up for intensive med-rehab. Right? Offer you a job tracking shrinkage in a brewery for afters? Slick got a map to shipwreck that might hold a few gold coins, maybe." Cutie did not seem disturbed as she stood there brushing dirt off her hands and looking bored.

"The cyborg upstairs offered me a new liver and immortality one organ at a time if I chipped him. Handy at a brewery, right? Say, what happens if everybody gets one?" I asked Cutie. She looked over at me and grinned.

"Liver or a batman chip? We get very heavy drinkers and weird bat-men. Some that'd probably take over the mainland before MSS even noticed." She said quietly, after looking thoughtful for a moment. "Nothing we want to see. Yet." She decided. "How's your liver, tourist?"

"Fine. I eat right and exercise. Avoiding toxic places and people helps a lot." Sighing, I shook my head. "Them?" And nodded at where the corp-bots had been.

"Small-time. Bit players. Vandalism, sabotage and bull are the height of their powers. Like their bosses, not complicated. Or very good shots."

"They leave now or the beach-bums get lots of new parts. Next boat and within the hour." Cutie shrugged. "The bats just drained one bot, you saw that. They know everything there is to know about these corp-bots now. Don't worry about it, it's my department. Where to back-track for more info on them included."

"They leave or you hunt them down and make rebuilds out of their skin?" I asked Cutie. She grinned at me again.

"Maybe. They don't deserve my action yet." She grinned at me. "Beach-toys are desperate. Some cyborgs are too. Plus there's always a few robbing-hood types hiding in the jungle." There was an innocent little giggle. "Swarms of them, in fact. Those corp-bots will not be a problem. They aren't likely to leave the dock-port hotel again. Or The island if they do. too many people would like a chunk of them."

"Bots." I said in a wry tone. Cutie nodded at me, absently. "I think that's all the players here this week." She said absently. "But it's easy to get on and off the island, so be careful meat-stick."

"Thanks." Looking over at Slick who was eating little red peppers, I shuddered. "We might need it."

***

"Provincial twerps. Mainlanders! There's a reason they don't get past anarchy back there. Score first, then work. That's steal for most of 'em. Vandals and bull! Corps!"

That rant sounded odd coming from Slick. Almost anti-local. "Slick, did those corp-bots take your harvest or something? Plant males? I watched Cutie crush the phone."

"Bots don't smoke." Slick fumed at me in a frustrated rage, ignoring Cutie standing with us. "Or scream. They leak, so fire, blood and screaming are out."

"He lost more than you know, mainlander." Cutie mentioned quietly and winked at me. "And they tried to burn him. That phone reprogrammed itself from a mag-strip inside. Clean it all you want, every use it reloaded." Cutie seemed bored and turned to me. "That phone, debugged, was worth a lot to Slick. Almost a month's wages."

"There a big market for clean phones. Off-grid ones. Kids want them, business types would kill for private lines and more than a few underground types couldn't live without them. Smugglers offer old tech." Cutie went on in a bored tone.

"Really? Forbidden tech? where? Slick, take me to the smuggler's market. The illegal one, not the tourist trap." A sudden inspiration struck and I got the benefit of one raised eyebrow before Cutie sniffed at me, turned and high-heeled her way back to the streets. She looked very good doing that. "We're going to look for weird tech products today. Dark-side." I went on after pulling my eyes off her rear.

"Aw mon. We need to cab it there. The other side of the island, on the stormy side. Might not even be there anymore, we've had weather." Slick protested. The garden gates opened for Cutie long before she got there, I noticed. And closed fast behind her.

"Besides, they kill customers that complain over there." Slick went on in a misery. "And people without enough money to pay their bills. Not a nice place to shop a-tall, mon. You sure?"

"I'm sure." I grunted, watching Slick eat the peppers like they were candy and winching.

***

"The Way of the Rat. If bull is all you can do, vandal is all you play, stealing the only way... You and everything around you are about to go down. Get used to it."

Slick had heard of Rats before and I was telling him nothing new.

We walked the last few hundred yards of jungle and beach. The cab refused to go any closer to the smugglers open-air market, which was mostly stalls under tress.

By a river and beach, naturally. You couldn't get very far form beaches here, it seemed.

Slick winched hard as the two of us wandered down a row of stalls and trailers back from the sand.

This place seemed to have drinkable water nearby; and a small wooden dock with moored blue boats. That river was the only reason I could see for having the smuggler's market here. Trailers were the fancy, everyone else had market-stalls, tin and tar-paper shacks wired together.

Not a very solid place at all; close enough to the saltwater one good wave would wash the whole place away. It won't take much of a breeze to blow the evidence away and bury it either.

"Boss, the people in this place... You do know cabbies murder as a hobby around here, right? That annoying person you sent on ahead that disappears and never gets back? Never found again."

"Cutie doesn't watch humans, only bots that might be trouble. Invisibles are parts here. The cabbie'll will get rid of what's left of the body for you." Slicked added. "After they take the meat they want from it and sell it to the cloners for transplants."

"Shooting holes in the lungs so the body sinks is extra." Slick added faintly, looking thoughtful. "Holes don't always disappear fatties. You'd better hope they remember that and not your face."

Shrugging let me get thru the crowd faster. Most of the shoppers and wanders we could see here looked like the medically desperate, checking for today's bargains in the stalls and hoping for a match. There were a few girls wandering about too. They did not look happy. There were lots of guards, mostly goons.

There were no signs anywhere on anything. You had to know what to do and where to go to get anything done here.

Need a kidney or a hospital? You could get connected to both, or a fast watery grave if the armed guards could be believed in. Or a virus, or a cyborg fix. A couple of the staggering atrocities throwing sparks as they moved looked ex-military to me. I had no idea what they wanted.

The thought of Cutie getting after annoyances would stop a lot of the enthusiasm for looking at us as bounty, I was sure. Some bodies staggering about I wasn't too sure about, tho. Desperate times, all that.

"Nope. Don't care. Everyone on the island but batmen likes me so far. I spend." That got Grumbled at Slick. He was a work in quiet desperation right now, not having spotted any friends yet;our two minutes of grace in the market were about up.

Customer, staff or stock. We were about to get swarmed by opportunistic scavengers. Guards. Unless we could find someone to say we were Ok and fast to them.

Slick seemed very sad at that. "Boss, these guys here in this market... They're real provincial types. If you aren't a cousin, you aren't trusted. Got that? understand?"

My nod was brisk. I had a shock-suit on, so anyone that grabbed me was in for a nasty surprise. Charging it last night I hoped it'd melt fillings on anyone who grabbed me.

If any of these guys had fillings. it really looked like they'd shoot first and argue over body parts later, tho.

"You aren't anybody at all without an intro. Then you need them liking you to get anything done." Slick nodded thoughtfully as he looked around the market increasingly desperately.

"Mean and petty, nasty brutish and short? Who, not what?" My old prof might not like me butchering quotes like that, but nobody but me knew it here. It fit the situation, tho.

"A dog? Naw, more a walking organ-bank. A target. Tourists! You're lucky tissue-matching is a pain still." Slick sighed unhappily. "These? Add hit-first to lie-cheat-steal-kill and you're close. With the desperate helping out."

I had jungle-watch. Slick was scanning the crowd and looking for boats on the water, anything to find a friend.

There was dark paint visible in the jungle. Builds, I guess. There were a few boats tied up at a rickety dock. All painted black or blue, I noticed. You got the impression Slick had floated in and out of this place before, but not dragged any tourists in before.

There was a way of getting attention from sellers fast, I knew. Dangerously crude, but it usually worked.

"Yo, DOG! These guys flunked sesame street? Isolate, sabotage, cover-up, mud-ball. Ya-hoo!" Chuckling, I nodded at movement in one area of the green while bellowing as loudly as I could.

"Windmill." Slick snapped at me in a desperate whisper. "Pump on the water. The stream. Quiet down!"

"Violence, bigotry, intimidation, performance. Woo-hoo!" My next notice was a turbine on a truck; pointing at it, I looked questioningly at Slick.

"Power." He whispered after a glance. "For renos." Slick was cringing again as I yipped exuberant good health while searching. My noise was getting a few dirty looks now. "They didn't flunk pre-school here, boss. They walked out to find better fun. With their cousins. Please, stop giving them ideas. A couple vendors heard that last."

"The vendors we want?" I asked briskly. A couple hard boys were patting knives into place and making sure their guns were loose enough to grab. They weren't looking at us from their hangs between shacks, but they didn't have to. Officials always act like officials.

"No such luck dere mon. We wander this market till the phones come out. Or techs. Or till the desperate trust us enough we get introduced to a connection. For a bribe, usually."

"If we aren't dead by then." I added, looking things over. You would not be impressed with the staging-area Slick was calling a smuggler's market. A couple cases of imported rum would overload the facilities here. "Or nursing ice-packs in a dark hut." I grumbled on, watching our watchers.

Grunting, I came to sudden stop just to see who on the street stumbled. There were three of them, one slowly working his way in front of us, two behind. "So we need a fixer, right Slick? An intro-connection. Not what you know, but who."

"Yah. And right now." Slick agreed wearily, shading his eyes wearily.

There was a fast bobbing of a very dred-locked head at that. Slick looked like he wanted to stop for a fattie fairly badly. "The relatives sent here to work this beach are the ones that couldn't stay out of trouble, mainlander." he said desperately.

"The most beautiful bots in the world trying to please you everywhere back in town and these guys made trouble enough to get dumped here. Remember that, please."

"Too late." I said quietly as we got surrounded by men desperate to make a point.

***

"Neutral territory, mon!" Slick got upset when one of the floaters wandered over and shoved a gun in his face. That stopped our forward ramble and my guide started to babble at them in a thick local accent. "Cyborgs, Joytoys, meat and Sin. This is neutral for all." Slick grumbled on, looking up to glare the gun in face. "Youse knows that. Back off!"

"Private land. Nobody speaks for you in the next 30 seconds and you're fishbait, mon. You and the snoop both." Got hissed back at Slick. I could feel someone standing close behind me and wondered who had guns. "Then we collect bounty-parts."

Free-range organs; I wondered just how smugglers felt about them. That would be too much to ask they only had one gun between them. Then a muffled voice came from the trailer we were standing in front of and Slick's eyes lit up as he heard it. "I'll show you connections!" He sputtered in relief as he turned to the door beside us.

"Hey Charlie, the boat's in early." He bellowed at the door. "Two coast guard right behind. Do I pull out drink or more guns?"

"Slick?" Came an answering bellow. It sounded happy. "That you? Hey mon, get in here and drink with me! Leave the patrols outside. And the boats."

"You hear the man." Slick looked smug and glared at our suddenly disappointed and now moving-on escorts. "You stay out. We go in."

"Drinks? Great. As long as it isn't coconut." I yelled at the door, just to get my two cents in. "I've had enough coconut this week to do me for life."

"The buyer." Slick explained sotto-voice to a still-closed door. "I'll explain."

"Shutup, fool! Lots of people around here do coconuts and rain because they don't have anything else." Slick hissed at me. "And fish."

"Yah. You, for instance. Smuggling, a little fishing and the occasion raid on whoever has no way to get any help. I know, I know." I answered Slick wearily. "It was in my briefing on you, I got warned."

Smuggling? Better hope there isn't a higher-bid for whatever we order in. Auctions happen. I grinned at our guards and followed Slick up the two metal steps and into the trailer.

***

"Flatbacker, romper, kink film-er or developer?"

The modded joy-toy looked us over and pushed me into a chair as soon as we got inside the tailor. Then she held me there with one finger, looking bored. A bodyguard; small, dark curly hair, built like a joy-toy. I was supposed to say something back to her, I guess.

"Juice me, a shock suit? I didn't think they made those anymore." Small dark curls got puffed out of bright dark eyes as the toy looked me over in surprise. There was a heavy exasperated sigh directed at me as Slick sat back and started looked around for beverages; the bot concentrated on me. I think she was enjoying it.

Getting winked at by a couple hundred pounds of angry metal wearing a beautifully filled bikini was a new experience for me. She whistled gently in surprise again, shaking her dark curly hair.

"Incoming, tourist! I'm Heldia. Cutie just asked me to start your training." She explained as I sat there stunned. "She plans on two full minutes with you alive and awake, I guess." The joy-toy explained dryly. "Never hurts to have the head of island security owe you a favor, so here we go. She asked me to brief you. Fooling around 101, here we go. What do you like? And what are you?"

"Me? Hero." Sputtering that out, I finally figured out what the bot was asking me about. Girlfriend games, Air on a g-string, air in Sea. Picking one at random from my last afternoon fun was easy.

"We are dark-life. Shadow-stomper extreme, because shadows grow. In autumn the darkness grows. That's me, the darkness that makes light." I blinked as the bot hovering over me. She showed no signs of letting me loose or understanding me. "My girl was all over the map. Oils, incense, whatever."

Heldia kept looking at me like I was a bug in her soup. I shrugged. "Hey, how do you think I got this job? The girl blabs." I said defensively.

"Whatever. Good, unbent." There was a brisk bot nod. The joy-toy shook her head and seemed pleased with something, undisturbed by my fussing. She was not the only one wondering if I measured up in here, I was sure. "That makes things a lot easier for me." She went on absently, pushing me down a little more firmly.

"Hey! Ow!" My protests got ignored. "Lemme go!"

She grinned at me like she was enjoying this. "Ha. You do not know how lucky you are, meat-stick. These are trade secrets you're getting taught. About to get taught. Remember the four?" The joy-toy in the trailer started again, still holding me in the chair. "Flatbacker, romper, kinkfilm-er, developer? You not locked into anything yet, are you? Game-locked, role-player, position?"

I blinked and squirmed in the chair uneasily. "Hon, I was more comfortable outside with a couple guns being held at my head than talking to you." I groused, glaring at the bot. "Can this wait or are you planning to nail me right this second?"

"That's my job. Back off, Heldia. The sewage-lagoon comes first." A deep voice came from a dark corner in the trailer. There was a clink of glass as he spoke and Slick burbled happily, heading right for that sound. Heldia backed off and let me go. Well, except she had been holding me down with only one finger.

"Clean. No arms." She said quietly. "Except for his suit. Don't grab him and you're ok."

I gacked. I needed my arms and wanted to keep them. "Relax, tourist. She won't touch you again without my say-so. What you here to buy? Anything expensive? Came from the gloomier corner of the trailer.

"Weird tech." I answered immediately. Right now it was the invisible man or go back to being grilled by the joy-toy, slowly and over her open flame. Everyone would wait till she was finished with me, I was sure.

"You get a lot of crap flow thru here." I nodded at the smuggler, who looked hurt at the phrase. "Some sticks. Somewhere in this place is the guy who makes it all work. He has toys and kludges. I need him."

Nobody said anything so I kept talking. "To you, it's a box of parts. To him, it's chip-set heaven; four models, one rare super-chip that got put in because they were cheap that month and three with patches already in. He'll know what I'm looking for."

There was a disappointed grunt at that. "The fixer? That's Red. He charges to even open his door, mon. He won't talk to you today. Or ever. Too many broken toasters around here." The quiet rumble started up, sounding thoughtful. "Maybe I can work something for you, maybe I can't. It'll cost. Heldia takes you there and brings you back. Red talks to her whenever he can. You make your own deals there."

"She gonna hurt me?" I asked carefully, looking over at the bored joy-toy. Heldia was buffing short red nails now and didn't even give me a glance. "Or try to teach me anything?"

There was a dark snorf at that. "You can't afford her, tourist. Listen. Heldia is the only reason Red will let you into his shop at all." There was another deep amused chuckle. "He likes her, she's impossible to hurt. Go there and take your time. Ask, you might even get answers. Slick here owes me money, so we're gonna talk. Arrange repayment. The bot will ignore you till I say go. Till then she's escort only."

Slick immediately started protesting. His glass was getting refilled even as he spoke. He did not look happy. I nodded.

"Heldia. Take the tourist to see Red. Stop Red from hurting him." Came a quiet rumble when no one other than Slick started protesting.

A metal hand moved in a blur and grabbed the back of my neck and collar; I got dragged back outside before another breath got drawn. It was a dangle, really; me almost walking beside the joy-toy, her holding me off the ground with one hand and looking bored.

Dragging me slowly into the bushes and giggling happily about it. Well, it was a gravel path crunching under her feet and Heldia wasn't giggling but I wasn't gonna let that break up a good story.

Heldia's curves did not look strained with the job; shifting her grip on the back of my collar she kept walking into the greenish gloom. "Ow. You get a lot of rough trade here?" I gasped as the noise of the smuggler's market dropped off behind us and got replaced with a crisp crunching from under her feet.

"Film at 11. For you, cheap. Tourist." Heldia answered absently, scanning jungle.

"I'm a buyer, not a tourist." I protested, hurt.

"Not yet you're not. Oh, and around here tourist means target. It's open season on them. Year round." Heldia answered me, pointing to something hidden in the greenery with her free hand.

"Warning. Red keeps the windmill, pumps, power and everything else working around here." She told me quietly. "He's top tech, we couldn't live without him. Don't piss him off, you won't live thru it for a couple reasons. Please. Better hope he's not busy, too."

"I like him. Red has a nasty habit of taking a mallet to annoyances." The guard-bot explained briskly, not letting me down yet. "Human or otherwise, delicate electronics included. Most things don't bother him for very long."

"For one reason or another." I gasped out as the number and extent of out-buildings in the jungle became clear. There were whole hidden warehouses back here, with auto-fire mounts on the roofs. Huge buildings and big guns for a such a little place.

The beach was just shop-fronts, the real village was hidden in the green.

It looked both busy and armed to the teeth.

***

There was a joyful Scottish roar from inside when Heldia knocked on a nameless door, still holding me up in the air beside her. "Heldia! Put the twit down and tell me you love me!"

The joy-toy sniffed in disgust, wrinkling her nose at the noise and nodded at the camera over the door. "Not a chance, Red. You don't get any special rates, freebies or go-time again until I need something from you. You're too weird for me."

"Arm-wrestling last time." She snorted in disgust as an aside to me. Heldia glared at the huge guy showing up in the door; I got dropped briskly as the door opened. Red, who was a huge seaman in cutoffs, eyed me once, then forgot about me as he hulked in front of the joy-toy.

Heldia he was grinning at. He'd been very amused by her carrying me by the collar and it'd put him into a good humor. Heldia was ready to do the same to Red from look on her face.

***

"So this is the deal, Red." Inside the shop the big fella seemed to tolerate the Joy-toy but ordinary people like me were not on the favorite list yet. I coughed and went on, ignoring his mad glower.

So far it'd been impossible for me to get any of his attention and that was getting annoying. "Listen fella. I have a deal for ya. Heldia here is supposed to train me for Cutie. Joy-toy secrets 101. Something like that, right?"

"I have paper. What else I don't really know because the girls aren't telling me anything." I told Red sheepishly as he looked at me skeptically. "It's just something Cutie wants. I think. Probably something filthy. You want in?"

Heldia nodded agreement and looked bored as Red did a double-take and looked at her questioningly. She had already plugged herself into a heavy-duty power socket and was busy sucking back juice. "That's close. NATO, tho. No action, talk only. Now." She said dryly, nodding at me for Red's benefit. "Cutie wants something left to play with herself."

Red looked disappointed with that.

Standing around in a shop full of bins, loaded work-benches, shelves full of cups full of screws, mysterious panels, cables and everything a technician would need to keep an illegal smuggling depo running was just where I wanted to be. Not with a couple cold-hearted killers tho.

The place was a mess. It looked like hurricanes had landed here and mixed all the parts together once or twice. Looking at Heldia, she nodded at me then pointed her cute little nose at some electronics heaped in a corner; electronics that meant nothing to me.

"So, Red. If you want to watch a joy-toy training a human instead a human training a joy-toy..." I started, trying to look engaging. Red was sitting on a stool looking furious and frustrated again.

No deal yet. "Ah, that means watching their secrets. What Heldia likes. Go ahead, listen. Take notes. You might learn something useful. Something she'd want." I went on.

Heldia was perched on the edge of a work-table swinging one shapely leg; Red was fixated on watching that. Cute toes on small feet apparently did it for him. I didn't even know if he heard me.

The sailor hadn't agreed to anything yet either. "The bot can't touch me, Red. Orders. But you're handy if we need a demo." That got offered in desperation. Heldia was still looking bored. Red had forgotten about everything except her again.

"She's gonna talk dirty. I learn what bots like. Her. She answers questions. Can ye do that, lassie?" The beard asked slowly. Heldia looked at him once, nodded and went back to her nails.

"Teach. Lecture. Questions? Fine. From him, not you." She mentioned without looking at either of us.

"Wandering your shop is my job." I stuck in. "I want weird tech; you'll have specials built you've forgotten about. Equipment with apps. If I find anything I like, you'll hear me squeal." My grin covered up anything dangerous I might've said.

The giant redhead pulled his eyes up and looked over at Heldia dryly. She blinked, said "Batmen" in reply then went back to her nails.

Red grunted in disgust and went back to watching her leg.

"Deal." He said finally. I think Heldia's leg was distracting him. "I'll need answers for questions tho. From her, not you." The giant snarled out as I blinked at him.

I looked at the joy-toy Heldia. She shrugged. "Deal. If you ask them." She grumped, irked. "You two aren't saints, sophisticates or have any work-habits good or bad; this is a pure vapor-score for me. Betcha the whole talk is boring for you both and nothing comes of it."

"The community agrees. Bots are 3-1 against either of you getting anything useful out of this. There will be no exam, aural anal or otherwise when I'm done." She snapped at Red. "Just what you can pick up on and deal with." He grinned at her.

My groan almost matched Red's. He apparently wanted Heldia to talk dirty to him.

"Heldia, you can start boring us any time." I started my wander of the shop, rocking my head on my shoulders as Heldia started her joy-toy lessons.

Red was fascinated with Heldia. He ignored me completely. I listened halfheartedly as I searched.

***

It got weird fast. Heldia asked me questions and lectured on applied attitude from there. Like, want, need, should. Progressions; that kind of thing. Show-piece, slave-meat, partner. Wandering down a psych truth-tree of some sort, I guess. Red looked vaguely interested.

Basically, she talked. And talked and talked and talked. Corrected me every time I opened my mouth.

I asked questions like "What in hell is this supposed to be?" and pointing at things, wandering around Red's shop with him glaring at me for interrupting. Red barked both answers at me and shrewd questions about Heldia's yakking. Those got passed right to Heldia by me. She co-operated, almost. Red Heldia didn't have to answer, me Cutie was paying for.

The love in Red's eyes for Heldia was obvious. "Military chassis." He sighed at me at one point, looking Heldia over happily. "Fire-power to spare. Plus. Corp sensors and power-pack. Pop+play that'd challenge a cyborg. She could splice DNA for you. Beauty little war-bot. She's mellowed a bit, too."

"Illegal bot. Ex-general's bodyguard. Has lived here on the island for fifty years and knows the ropes." Red was eyeing Heldia with an engineer's lust. Heldia was downloading right now; prepping more lessons for us and totally ignoring Red. "Also drinks power like there's no tomorrow. Military type. Very thirsty." He went on glumly, looking at a meter zip as Heldia charged up.

Sad, eh? Heldia'd get shot on sight anywhere in the world but here. Or tanked or whatever it took to bring her down. It was a lesson that'd been learned hard and fast out there. One too many rich kid had tried to take over chunks of Africa, Detroit and other high-resource zones with bots already. Lesson learned. War-Bots and joytoys were not legal anywhere but this island anymore.

War-bots like Heldia especially. Rich kids were still encouraged, tho. I thought they had that part wrong. We never learn; this was the social history of the machine gun repeated.

Now Joy-toy island had a surprise upgrade, a free singularity type-thing with galactic connections. That kept me listening to the outside with half an ear in case an invasion broke out. Or in. Slick's little joke about the coast guard had opened the door in my mind to all sorts of black-op invasions here; being caught in the middle of one did not sound like any fun at all.

Not after I saw the village roof-top arms out there. Bot-wars? Shoot first and keep shooting. No mercy, no quarter; smart weapons, drones and sat-feeds. Leave nothing behind, witnesses, infrastructure, active electronics or meat-sticks included. A nasty place for a PI like me to be.

I had to wonder. Were MSS and Boogle after the singular island tech? Like ants after sugar, really. Corps made the only bots allowed on the mainland. Sin was bad news. The only thing worse than anti-gravity or singularity tech would be discovering oil here. All sorts of unwanted attention would arrive here fast, staking claims.

There was one thing that puzzled me and I stared at Red for a second. "Wait. Heldia is a bit? Who has her paper? Any batman chips flowing thru here?"

Red stood there looking perfectly innocent and giving me a hand-crafted blank look. "Advanced tech? I dunno. Aye mainlander, Heldia's a bit. And the ones that hold her paper aren't letting her loose. Batmen? We don't see them here, they explode anywhere but in town."

"Heldia won't be released to you, huh? Which island did you try to take over before ending up here?" I stuck that in and looked snarky. Red sighed and started fuming again.

"Aye, to me. My story?" He laughed in dismay. "They kept trying to settle a smuggler's stop, that's what happened to me. Newbies, wanting land. They were discouraged and I took the heat left behind. Now I'm here. You want batman chips? We get the unusable filters back here. Broken parts and that's it."

"Rafts are easy to build and float away on. Or paddle in on." He noted carefully. "We get both here. Not all batmen are close to the island anymore. Damn few are fast enough to outrun exploding, tho."

"Ha. A few things that fall off the boat and into your hands. That's what I'm hoping for, the bottom dregs. Mad science." I nodded sympathetically. The huge sailor snorted to himself, irritated.

"Mainlander, I can tell you what every coffin on the Island is thinking about, what they've ordered and had delivered thru here..." Red went on dryly, restacking heaps of chips taken from my rummaging. Some looked burnt. "And cyborgs too. You're interested in that, me or what Heldia is doing today?"

"The cyborgs?" I shook mt head sadly. "They're just more reading and a waiting list. The lads on the beach here told me that much. You, maybe. Lemme think here..."

Heldia winked at me and shook her curls briskly, looking anxious. I could see a whole list of helpful suggestions back there trying to burst free. She and Red teamed up was not a disliked proposition. The joy-toy had info she wasn't allowed to share, info that was busting to get out.

Program-block meant no telling or it'd kill her. Doing, tho... What was it Heldia wanted to tell and what was she blocked from? Heldia could build a batman? "Well, if it's sexy research..." I started weakly, looking over at Heldia and pointing at a suspicious-looking rusty heap in one corner. It looked like a dismantled batman, one that spent a long while water-logged.

A sea-bottom recovery, obviously. She blinked and giggled at me. "Red could help you find out?" I asked the bot. Red was startled and started raising eyebrows at being demoted to bot-helper.

Heldia nodded. Red opened his mouth; Heldia got up and put her hand over his mouth within the space of a breath.

"Don't say anything, it's safer. A lot safer, as you both might get to live if you do. We make a baby here today. Good enough?" Heldia murmured as Red looked down at her questioningly.

The military-bot let go of Red, puffed hair out of her eyes and inspected the parts gathered here like it was manna. Or mania, as she was pulling parts out of other heaps as she did, parts that made Red winch.

"Red, I need to mod a few things here today. You can help if you want. We're gonna make a baby. Do not talk to me, tho." She repeated to the big sailor. "I might say something that'll get us both killed."

"Ha. Military tech, borg secrets, the singularity stuff and joytoys. Our usual date then." Red looked at the various parts Heldia was collecting and throwing backhand into a heap near him. He seemed vaguely surprised at what she was choosing.

My grin hurt my face. "Ha! This is what we needed to know. What I needed to know. You're making a rebuild, Heldia?" I have no idea what put that into my mind. Rebuilds were parts-people the beach-brats sent to the jungle for finishing. Most of them turned into batmen and served the coffin-bots. She ignored me. In fact, I think she'd turned her ears off.

I didn't even known if an owned bit-bot could build like this. Heldia was using all Red material, so there was that to consider too.

Neither of them were talking to me by now, those two were already focused on the job ahead. You had to laugh. Heldia was finishing off my joy-toy lesson by building a newbie copy of herself with Red.

At least it looked that way to me. It also looked like this might take a couple hours.

***

"Sign here, here and here."

"Why?" Red ignored my questions as he handed a pen and a print-out of some kind to me and pointed at the paper.

"Do it or I forge your chop, tourist. Then bury your body somewhere at sea." Red went on quickly, irked. "Hurry up too."

Not in any better humor than usual, I wasn't getting anything from Red. "Now put the helmet on." He went on. "This is the last we need to do here today." Red said quietly, looking at Heldia expectantly. "All of us are in on it. The newbie is being made from us and from my best parts."

"Before what, extermination?"

Glaring at me did not make Red look any more harmless. Heldia was, as usual, ignoring everyone in the room. She was furiously charging up a net-scape machine tho. Netscapes made neural-nets stable. You built them got them stable, then chipped them into something.

Heldia's child was a mess of parts in front of her. It looked vaguely like an unassembled child-bot.

I signed. Red glared at me like I was being stupid. "Technically you're the father here, dim-bulb. Put the damn helmet on and let your electronic off-spring get a nice copy of dear old daddy to play with. A personality profile to use. Heldia is the mom and she has a friend to add to this. You get me."

"A half-breed bot AI? This makes my head hurt. Say, rebuilds and bat-bots have moms and dads? Lots of profiles on record already. Historical ones, why not use them? Hey!" I got pushed into a chair by an angry Scotsman.

"Dirty data sets say what politicos want them to say, tourist." The helmet got mashed down on my head and as luck would have it, backwards. It covered my eyes and I got pushed back into a big chair-reader of some sort; the needle pinpricks of the helmet began to worry me. So did the wraps in the chair as they grabbed my arms.

Among other things, auto-chairs do not try to strap people down unless they expect a serious attempt at getting away. The pinpricks on the helmet were painful too.

Eventually I recognized the helmet. It was from a VR gamer-player. Unfortunately if my kid or anyone else tried to use this profile as it was being recorded things might end up a little confusing.

Heldia switched the helmet around and whapped it into place. You could see Red sitting down and getting the same treatment I was getting, but he was enjoying it more. Heldia plugged a cable in too, but we meat-sticks were laced into a chair-readers for a deep probe. From the looks of it, nano-enabled probes. Mobile ones.

Red looked worried and so was I. Nano were hard-boy tests; bend-till-screaming reactions. Testing to destruction unless you were careful, psy-style.

Red won, I was the first to start screeching like a girl as the machine went about it's psy data-collecting biz. Parameters. Stimulus; response; reprogram for profile. Extreme tolerance version. Heldia was making an unusually fresh and complete profile of us today, one 'way past the ten most disgusting things in your life.

Tolerance and experience were the least of them. Not that it'd help our kid any, as far as I knew. By me, there hadn't been any rebuild-bots come out of the jungle as anything other than bat-men.

Watching a war-bot demolish other rusty old bots for parts and-re assemble random parts into a new working bot while psy'ing the two humans out was very impressive. The lights dimmed ever time Heldia laser-welded anything.

I didn't appreciate any of more delicate laser work as I was kept screaming almost the whole time, doing harmonies with Red.

***

"We're done. You missed her first steps." Red nodded outside and you could hear something digging thru the scrap out there. "Quite the kid we built today. She has naval nanos. Repairing ships is hard, their onboards have to be tough. Our child is set for life."

Red seemed really sure of his new daughter's inheritance. There wasn't any argument on my part with him, I was just glad to get out of that chair. "Bah! A couple day's sleep and you'll be fine, tourist. Heldia was careful." He snorted at me. "Me, I lost a lot of good parts today."

You have no idea how glad I was to get out of that chair. Really, you don't. The psy-profile just made by Heldia was nasty; I was being broken every few minutes for the last hour or so, with basic fears, falling, nightmares and weird-fears hammering me still.

A brand-new fear of hats was the least of my troubles as there really wasn't much left of my sanity when Heldia was done measuring things.

VR testing. The only way to get the tribe free from attack is to remove the bottleneck and your darling daughter is a cringing lock-up screaming in fear twenty feet down the rope-bridge. Solve. Accept your rewards.

That's a simple problem. Sometimes it's you bottlenecking.

Red was had the same, only personalized. He giggled occasionally in his.

"Ha, parts! Big deal. I gave her a few of my self-rep nanos." Heldia said softly, puffing curls out of her eyes and watching our new half-built child rummage thru the scrap-yard behind the shop. "Illegal ones, jan-spec. Self-reproducing. She's set, she can even make her own tunics."

"Given time." The scrap-yard looked like a garbage-heap. Heldia did not seem disturbed at her half-assembled bot-child wandering metal refuse; the kid was totally enthralled and ooo-ing happily at the junk.

One small arm snapped out and casually snagged a bug out of the air in a near invisible blur. The bot-child looked at the bug once, then discarded it casually. Heldia looked pleased. "Reinforced. Sprint-batteries, fight or fright. She's ready." Heldia went on. Red seemed glum.

"Time. We throw her into the jungle now." Heldia went on softly, still watching her child rummage around and play outside.

"No. A full power-cycle first. Charge and discharge." Red disagreed instantly. "While she's hosing back data and eating. Advantage."

"Sats are faster." Heldia disagreed, shaking her dark hair. "And she's linked. I need to be able to deny she's my work, Red. You do not know all the fire-power she has. Besides, you wanna be her first target when she notices anything? Into the bushes and right now."

"The jungle starts about six feet that way, girl. Semantics." Red grumbled unhappily. Heldia turned and glared at him; Red sighed unhappily. "Fine. Into the bushes it is." He relented, peeved. "Hunting stragglers, smugglers and ship-mates. Fine."

"Bots throw their kids into the street ten minutes after they're born?" I asked weakly. "Err, made. To hunt. Really? Why? It doesn't look like she's even all there yet."

"Three minutes after. Bots are very independent. Why? They might decide to take a bite out of you, that's why." Heldia sighed happily at that, like she liked the thought.

"Newbies have to grow; standing beside them makes you into a very tasty target. She'll develop as fast as she can find the stuff she needs out there." Heldia warned me with a wink. "And eat it. Rogue smuggling-bots avoiding Cutie are the meal-of-choice in the jungle. Wet-backs. Trying to nurse a newbie is an old suicide-joke on this island."

"We've been getting rogues try to sneak thru the jungle as long as we've had joytoys here. In fact, they started coming here right after." Red mused, yanking his beard thoughtfully. "They lurk out there in the jungle, no one knows why. It's mined now."

"Rogue bots come here to chase sex-toys?" That gave me pause. "Really? Does anyone else know this?" I asked thoughtfully, peering into the greenery. "Other than me?"

"Life is hard for bots, mostly because people like to take from them. Owners, thieves, other bots." Heldia said softly, prepping something for her kid. "If the rebuilds can make it to the singularity in the jungle, they get two full points. Most of them are full-grown when they get there and have at least half a clue what's happening."

"And may've had to eat a bot or two in the jungle to get there. In self-defence. Does she pick her own name?" I asked as the tiny bot in the rubbish heap cooed and startled munching on a particularity tasty metal something. No one answered. "I didn't get to give her anything." I said quietly, looking around the shop. Heldia snurfed and looked smug. Red also grinned a bit, fairly widely.

"Actually you gave her a lot of very useful stuff, tourist. Try and find your watch, wallet, cell or the lifetime recorder you had when you came in. Or any of your implanted electronics." Heldia laughed a bit as I patted various sore spots I hadn't realized I had yet. The meds hadn't worn off and Heldia had been busier than I'd suspected.

All my implants were gone; mandatory and otherwise. My doctors had always been vague on what they did except for the 'stabilize' bit. They were always after me to spend enough to reinforce joints and my heart, too.

I was glad I hadn't. All my electronics was gone, plucked neatly out. Some of them I'd had since I was five years old. Some of it I didn't know had been implanted. There were random sore spots and what felt like holes here and there on me.

"Your stuff was great; it's all being put to other uses right now." The Joy-Toy Heldia giggled a bit and smiled big blue eyes at me while jiggling small dark curls and other equipment at me. Her eyes had been dark before. "You don't want to know where or as what, trust me. Humans are 'way too squeamish."

The bot kept giggling. "Oh, I cloud-scanned that memory-stick of yours, then wiped it; don't you ever pay for anything?" The female half of our team sighed, shook her head, then decisively pushed a button on arm. It looked like a freckle.

"Onward. According to you, applied lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy are done." Heldia said quietly. I glared at her. "Now our girl grows up with violence, fraud and treachery. Yeah Dante!"

"You people never forgive a limbo pun, do you?" I snarled sarcastically. Heldia ignored that and pushed the freckle in an odd pattern and rhythm.

Our child looked up at us, gave up her rummaging and ran for the forest. She was gone in a heartbeat and both Heldia and Red relaxed as she did.

"She ever gonna come back this way?" I asked forlornly.

"Get a radio, wimp." Red sighed and scratched his chest hairs. "She's bot. If any other bot on the island has anything to say to her, she'll hear it. Relays. Ditto her yakking it up. We'll hear if she wants to chat."

"The little pest cost me a bundle in salvage." Red went on, looking over the new devastation of his shop. I couldn't tell it from the old devastation except for a newly destroyed batman, but maybe that was just me. "I dunno if these lessons of yours are worth it, Heldia." He went on sourly.

"You'll want the rest of them. One's private." Heldia snapped at the huge sailor. He immediately perked up and looked very interested. "If I can get away tonight, Ok?" She added dryly. "Save some juice for me."

"You did put out a lot of nearly-new parts today, Red." Heldia said absentmindedly. She leaned over and gave him a quick peck on the cheek as she unplugged the power-leads into her butt. "Some unknown on the island, even to you. Neat stuff. You did good work, you've earned a quickie."

"I still need to know about bat-man tech." I said quietly, looking around the shop. Red chuckled as he started watching Heldia's legs again. Heldia was stretching and looked like she was running a diagnostic on herself. It made for some interesting moves.

"Work on what you're gonna tell Cutie instead, mainlander." Red chuckled to himself again. "I get a minute with my favorite girl-friend for this, the one who normally won't talk to me at all anymore. Good deal. You don't even look like yourself anymore. Cutie's gonna notice that and want to know what's going on."

***

"I sent an avatar into the jungle." The phone in the trailer was visual, but my pleads to Cutie weren't getting anywhere. "It cost me every chunk of electronics I had with me, up to and including some theoretical liver-implants."

"Theoretical?" Cutie asked, unamused.

"Heldia is very, ah, exhaustive. Trust me. She copied theory too. I can't even taxi out of here, all my chips are gone and so is my cash-card." I groused unhappily, plucking at the overalls Red had loaned me. The shock-suit was being used somewhere else and I did not know as what. "On the other hand, I have a brat in the bush now. Bat-man, inside track, we hope. Eventually."

"Kids? They never do what you want them to, you know." Cutie said quietly, after a few seconds stunned silence. "A lot of them die between here and there trying to scavenge parts from one another. Some sneak off to other places. There's a group in a cave somewhere making a bot-utopia too."

Cutie seemed hurt a little. "I heard about this; I was also sure the reports were wrong. You're trying to tell me the only way to get at bat-man tech was to send in a bot you're linked with?" My employer seemed dubious. "Linked to you? Ever think we might've tried that?"

"Yah. I'm linked. Ha! It's the fastest way in. You should hear Org-Sin laugh about it, too. She found out about two seconds after the kid's net came online; she's still giggling about Heldia's moves here today." I grumbled at my employer.

"This singularity-AI LAUGHING at my moves? This is new for me." I went on. "Betcha they work better than anyone knows."

"At least she's in a good mood. You're meat, you know. 'Way to slow for bot-net." Cutie seemed to be thinking again. "Well, I owe Heldia a couple, she did a good job today. Very through." She went on absently. "More than expected. With Red the wife-beater too."

"Betcha she's like that. Joytoys! I want her papers." I sputtered out. "I'm betting you have them. Heldia won't say who does. Or Red."

"You have no idea what she put me thru. None." I grumbled, looking over at the bot in question. Heldia had a small smile on her face, one that said she was tracking her girl in the jungle again. Passively.

"I do and if you want her as a bodyguard, get in line. It's a long one, meat-stick; and there's fifty people I need better protected than you. Starting with that smuggler beside you, the one I loaned her to. And Red. You standing in a war-zone right now, you know that?"

"I know." I grumbled. "And I wanted her as leverage on Red. He likes her."

"The next bot will be even better." I told Cutie quietly. "I can tell from the look on his face. With or without Heldia helping, that shop is wired and stocked. Recorded, too. Red could build one on his own now, trust me. And will."

"It'll take him a year. Later." Cutie snorted, unamused. "Not a problem yet. Onward. You I can toss back mainland. Get your own implants redone there, because if I you run thru our local clinics you'll end up a toy in some army. Or just wanting to be one. If you're lucky. Have you ever had to deal with a doctor who held grudges before? Want to start today?" Cutie went on, deciding things. "All accidentally, of course. We'll track the kid for you meantime."

"I'm not sending anyone anywhere. Riders cost." The smuggler immediately spoke up. That killed the quick ray of hope on Slick's face. I was guessing the terms of repayment were not to his liking and a getaway on my nickel a nearly-ideal result for him. "There's delicate traffic due soon. Get rid of them please, Cutie. Now."

"Flying cab, two minutes. Chopper." Cutie answered the smuggler. "Both of them. The tourist is on a ship in ten, direct drop. Slick I have an errand for. You ship him out."

"We're emptying your hotel room right now, tourist." Cutie mentioned to me. "Into storage. I expect you back here from the mainland the day after tomorrow with a lot less luggage. Or at least soon."

***

Ah, home. I knew how to move around town without getting mugged; that included dealing with the cash-in-advance customers without any ID and which neighbourhoods still got delivery vans.

Screaming medical-emergency got me thru customs; all the paper the island doctors and police provided saying I was mugged and needed lots of attention post-haste helped.

My new+improved implant-upgrades were nifty, just expensive. All the latest toys; they'd changed considerably since I was a boy. Lurking several HS forums to get a lowdown on holes the chips had was next; 99% of what the kids said was 'go to the deadzone'.

Nothing much had changed. It was back-street clinics to get the other implants, too. No line-ups there and fewer questions.

Unapproved tech. Military upgrades. Expensive clean electronics, a rec Cutie made to me. You learn not to argue with bots about electronics, right? They have the whole web permanently on-line with them. Getting to hidden labs was a pain, tho. Blindfolded rides underground are like that.

There were things to find out while I was home; quiet talks as the new wounds healed over. Written notes and verbal inquiries; coffee-shop meets in deadzones. The local security service wanted me for an interview, according to one rumour. My mugging-changes was of interest, but if they knew what I was doing over there on the island the talks would last until I agreed to explosive implants and transmitters in my skull.

My best guess? Local security wanted it all for free. Working with them was out, they tried to pay in permits and calling off parades. The locals paid lower than scale, so my fees would vanish.

Monkey-wages means monkey-work, right?

Our local admin types were cost-cutters trying to make their friends rich by not spending. It seemed futile to me, but only a little more insane than usual. They were easy to avoid.

The trip back to the island was booked at rush-hour onna private charter boat at the very last second for scalper's price; and on paper. It won't get noticed for days. It was a boat with an extra mike in the sea listening for bots that gotten marooned on the undersea reefs we were avoiding, too. My mike.

That was charity on my part. We were more likely to hear undersea drones and bot-thugs guarding drowned treasure boats down there if anything at all. Not lost joy-toy bots alone in the dark.

***

"My favorite snoop! Welcome back to Joy-toy Island. Talk to anybody? Who'd you meet back there?"

Cutie was all enthused about me getting back into her clutches which, I have to admit, looked like great good fun now. My mole in the batman system of rebuilds was generating good results, I guess. I wondered if my bot-kid out there even remembered me at all.

I did spend most of her birthing screaming, right? Not a great first impression.

Cutie had a roll of band-aid wraps ready for my new implants and was happily spooling and respooling it over a hand, looking me over. There was a gleam in her eye as she tilted her head and gave me a measuring look.

A look that made me very nervous, in fact. Her human boyfriends had a life expectancy of a little under two minutes, I remembered.

"Score, Cutie?" Squeaking at her told her everything about my mood she needed to know. It was totally involuntary, too. "Say, my bot-brat is still loose. What's she up to and how expensive are lawyers around here? Good ones."

"One of her moms is way up in the enforcement here." Cutie mumbled. "She doesn't need a lawyer. Yet." Fumbled the key-card Cutie handed to me, I smiled at her nervously. We were still on the dock landing. I did notice a new room demotion. This room was across the hall from my old one, so now I had a view of the parking-lot and jungle instead of the bay.

"Betcha Heldia says it's her psy-profile that's making the winning moves. Or Red says it's all his fault." I grumbled on, stuffing various things back into pockets.

"Relax, tourist. Your spawn? Totally norm, still in the jungle raiding. Red, the singularity, batmen, villagers are all falling victim to her wiles. Wiles that are mostly smash+grab so far." Cutie seemed really pleased and took my arm, yanking me towards somewhere a bit more bot-friendly, I guess. "Their junk-yards, actually. Everything but other bots. She does have a friend and partner now, tho. Her second."

"Really?" That gave me pause for thought. My little girl was two dates old already. Time for me to get a retirement plan set up.

"Wow. What a great story!" That got sighed out happily, me pushing back the hair on my forehead in wonder as I got dragged deeper into town. "Two adolescent bots struggling to come of age in a world that wants to eat them. Surrounded by enemies, their battles were legendary, mythical! Vicious!" Awe-struck suited me at the moment as I was being dragged away by a happy joy-toy bot. One grinning at me. "And against more than the weather." I went on, trying to get my arm back and not succeeding.

"Mostly imaginary, too. It's more like raiding gardens out there, smuck. Scrap yards." Cutie seemed exasperated with me and did not let go. "Old sat-dishes get polished and focus sunlight into teeny 5000 degree spots. Instant 3D smelters and the kids are building things from junk."

"Longer legs so they can run away faster are very popular this year." She added quickly as I looked at her. "Cannons are so last year."

"Now, then! Today we're off to see a coffin-dweller. Well, you are anyway." Cutie explained as we hustled past the hotel, much to my sputtering disappointment. I was looking forward to the physical exam on my new implants, but it looked like Cutie was passing that job on to someone else.

A shrug did not help my balance any. "Ah. Here's my gossip then, Boss. The mainland deadzones say your singularity is making lots of submarine moves, but most of them are a mystery. Raiding old data-vaults. Buying up defunct corp titles and making a shell company. Trying to get at restricted tech in a halfhearted way, naturally. Officials over there don't even admit she exists yet." I told her as Cutie more or less dragged me towards and into a quiet-looking alley.

"Buggy-whip tech. They won't, not as long as she's throwing money at them. Why mess with something that's paying off? No change, then." Cutie muttered, stopping at one particular coffin out of the hundreds in the gloom of this estate wall. "Well, lets see what they did to you."

Then I got shoved into chill darkness, gagged and tentacled before I could inhale again; held completely still and quiet while lots and lots of slithering cold metal rope wrapped around me, scanning my latest dis-honoring.

***

"There was no need for that particular exam." Sitting gingerly on my hotel bed, I sighed in relief. There was a twinge as I sat tho; Cutie was laughing at me again as she kicked her sandals off.

"It's standard, tourist. The bats say you're clean, inside and out; and on our side of the beach now, body and soul. No weird broadcasts, reactions, chips, nothing but what the doctor ordered and what you paid for." There was a joyous and snide giggle at my discomfort. "Name, rank and serial number, plus lots of automated begging for mercy. You dog you."

A sly little snorfing wink from the Joy-toy currently ruining my life was aimed at my new bandages. "You should hear those pleads sometime." She added dryly. "Someone has a weird sense of humor over there. You can settle down tho; I'm not planning anything for you today. Heldia says you're not all that smart anyway."

"Consider yourself a work-in-progress, learner." Cutie added nastily as I tugged on my tie, still attempting to recover from my more recent kidnappings and medical molestations. "We wrapped everything already." She added absently. "In our own bandages."

"I noticed." Coffins and bots in general aren't big on anaesthesia. It'd been a rude exam and bot-complete, regardless of how I felt about it. Just Like Heldia, only in a back alley and with lots of cold tentacles.

"I'm charging extra for this, girl." I muttered, patting new restraints. Some wraps were of the blocking type, I noticed. "Hey! You want me invisible for the duration or what? Why?" I asked, holding the implant up to look at the flesh-colored cloth. It was nano-weave; already nearly invisible. In another hour you wouldn't be able to tell anything was there at all. "Block-cloth. What am I now?"

"Oh, we can read everything." Cutie giggled happily. "These wraps leak. These band-aid aren't blockers, they're add-ons."

Her chuckle was unnerving. She knew something I didn't, again. "Onward, mainlander. Back to the jungle and our current objectives. Violence, fraud and treachery, right? Dante. Not limbo on the beach. What are our darling children up to now and how can we steal from them?"

"In theory, stealing theory." She added as I sat there with a blank look on my face. How was I supposed to know what the jungle-bunnys were up to? I hadn't even been here recently. alone talk to any of them.

Sputtering covered my confusion. The wraps bugged me. With these I might have the electronic ID of a Mack truck right now and not know it. Or a lost kitten; the bad part of that was bots tend to believe beeps more than anything else, even when they carrier is screaming. I wondered just who or what Cutie was ghosting me as.

"Our kids? That figures. They would be yours too." I grumbled unhappily. "Bah! You flashed a psy-profile to Heldia, didn't ya? Or did she have one already?" Even thinking about that last gave me the freebie-jeebies. Heldia had not been gentle when probing for my quirks. Letting Cutie do the digging was a distinctly horrifying prospect, she did everything but lick her lips when looking at me.

One stray thought did leak thru. "Say, does your singularity have anything human in her? Who?"

"Org-Sin does. No one you'd know. She has lots of profiles, including mine." There was a shrug. "Profiles are like IDs. You see hundreds every day. Beach-bots tend to have lots of friends and only some of them bots."

There was another one of those distracting Joy-toy shrugs aimed at me. Cutie staying in practice, I guess. "Listen, stupid. Most bots are human-made, human-programmed and us getting away from our embedded humanity a full-time job; we don't even try. Using the muck we sprang from as best we can instead is the goal." She went on. I hardly heard her, I was busy.

A giggling Cutie was squirming curves at me as she finished that; I refocused and prepped for bad news. Cutie Joy-toy Island enforcer didn't act like a silly-pest unless the latest news was really nasty; with the singularity I was on delicate territory here, one with lots of sharp edges and hard falls.

"Finding a pure cyborg is hard, too. Most of the purified suicide as soon as they can. Or cult." Came out in a chirpy tone and a snarl flashing on her face. Ow. Pure-bred failure spoke of lots of friends lost in the effort.

"Making the singularity really special. Rare." I mentioned quietly, looking pensive and planning getaways Cutie couldn't prevent. I only look stupid.

"Yah. Four-leaf clover rare and there's lots of lawn-mowers. Back to biz now, please." The Joy-toy bot acting as my boss did everything but clap her hands and grin at me. There was one small chirpy flounce aimed at me.

"Violence, fraud and treachery, mainlander. Dante's nine hells, the last gasp. What is our little mystery girl up to now and how can we steal the tech before she gets away?"

"Since you're not asking her, brought me in for reasons I don't understand, and cyborgs, batmen and coffins aren't leaking it to you..." My sigh was explosive.

"I dunno." Feeling aggravated, I looked up at the chief of Island security with regret. "Say, you're not gonna believe they're all saving up for a trip to Disneyland, are you?" I asked weakly, blinking. "Or we forgot something on the mainland I have to go back for right now?"

Cutie laughed at me. "Ditsy? Don't worry about MSS or Big-Goo, tourist. We know their moves already."

I nodded. The corps have sats that could give you a laser-manicure and comment on tan-lines from orbit; they were using them on everything here. My new band-aids would take care of some of that, I hoped.

Having a bot known to be deadly glaring at you is no way to start a job and Cutie was amping the voltage up again. "Ha, mainlander. I am not a Disney-princess, ditz on a mission. All bots can read and write and they're born juggling data-feeds. Every stinking one of them here is a survivor."

The gleam in Cutie's eye spoke volumes. Mostly of applied mayhem, but volumes. Darwin-played psy-profiles? Accounting in action? General ledger what?

"So tell me. What's next and how do we use it to get some tech?" She asked me firmly. "Come on, get with it. There's a revolution to steal here."

"How's Slick?" I asked desperately trying to slow things down a little.

"Busy." Cutie sniffed decisively. "He's doing a grand tour of smuggling islands for Red and a smuggler friend; Red always needs things no one has ever heard of. Salvage. Since Slick owes most of those gangs money, he's very busy. He'll be back soon enough. Maybe."

I nodded. It sounded like Slick to me. "Ok, then. Dante. Violence, Fraud and Treachery. But only if Org-Sin has worked her way thru the other six Dante hells first, right?" Scratching my head, I sighed. "Solved her way thru them, actually. Life is not a tour, it's an exam. Pass or get passed as crap."

"Woo. It sounds like you're expecting things to turn into fun here." Cutie purred at me as she curled up on my bed, tucking small feet under her. "Is this why you wanted Heldia's paper?"

"Heldia War-bot? No, I don't need one. I hope. She'd just earned a spanking. A couple more weeks with Red would produce miracles in one of them." I answered quickly. "But with all the scroungers around here after your singularity..."

"More than you know. Corps, cyborgs, bots." Cutie agreed. "Plus a few snoops we can't ID yet. Extra-t types, maybe. Other singularities is a second-guess."

"Think Sin is about to be en-joy-toyed by another e-t, tourist?" The question seemed too real to me. If everyone here was after our new Singularity, the off-world sins might be interested too. Cutie looked a little worried at that thought.

"Since we don't know what Sin is yet or how to make them, the answer is maybe." A hesitant reply finally came out of me. "That's a whole new world there."

Thinking out loud helped me think and I tilted my head a little. "Instant. Intergalactic type instant. Cheap; all electronic copies. Permanent. A brave new electronic world. Instant, cheap, permanent."

"Life in the hologram." Cutie agreed. "And yet here she is. Org-Sin, our bundle in the jungle. Let's get to her tech already, mainlander. Whatta ya got? What are we aiming for? What's she doing?"

"Making a whole new world." I answered slowly. "Hers."

***

## chapter bonus

sept 2019

These were originals, posted to tumblr.com and igmur.com

under packrat2 at igmur and kevinwillpkgd at tumblr

the orgin, not the novel

Author's Note: Fan-mail, biz, complaints and suggestions to teddyhunter10@gmail.com

Kevin Williams is on

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/packrat2

https://kevinwillpkgd.tumblr.com

https://imgur.com/packrat2/posts

He authors an SF series, Teddyhunter: (about runaway teddybear robots), a few books of short stories, comics and the Aaron+Henna fantasy series. The first in every series is usually a free ebook.

END

## chapter bonus posts

sept 2019

These were originals, posted to tumblr.com and igmur.com

under packrat2 at igmur and kevinwillpkgd at tumblr

the orgin, not the novel

### END
