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screen.
    There’s not actually much about Fry, except that she’s coming along nicely with another dec to go before she’s done. Although it’s not clear to any of us whether that means Fry’ll be all done and good to go, or if Dove’s just referring to the surgery. Then we get distracted with all the rest of the stuff in the message.
    It’s was full of clips from the Dirt, two-steppers talking about Fry like they all knew her and what it was like out here and what going out for sushi meant. Some two-steppers didn’t seem to care much, but some of them were stark spinning bugfuck.
    I mean, it’s been a great big while since I was a biped and we live so long out here that we tend to morph along with the times. The two-stepper I was couldn’t get a handle on me as I am now. But then neither could the octo I was when I finished rehab and met my first crew.
    I didn’t choose octo – back then, surgery wasn’t as advanced and nanorectics weren’t as commonplace or as programmable, so you got whatever the doctors thought gave you the best chance of a life worth living. I wasn’t too happy at first, but it’s hard to be unhappy in a place this beautiful, especially when you feel so good physically all the time. It was somewhere between three and four J-years after I turned that people could finally choose what kind of sushi they went out for, but I got no regrets. Any more. I’ve got it smooth all over.
    Only I don’t feel too smooth listening to two-steppers chewing the air over things they don’t know anything about and puking up words like abominations, atrocities, and sub-human monsters. One news program even runs clips from the most recent re-make of The Goddam Island Of Fucking Dr. Moreau. Like that’s holy writ or something.
    I can’t stand more than a few minutes before I take my kribble into my bolthole, close the hatch, and hit sound-proof.
    A little while later, Glynis beeps. “You know how way back in the extreme dead past, people in the Dirt thought everything in the universe revolved around them?” She pauses, but I don’t answer. “Then the scope of human knowledge expanded and we all know that was wrong.”
    “So?” I grunt.
    “Not everybody got the memo,” she says. She waits for me to say something. “Come on, Arkae – are they gonna get to see Okeke-Hightower?”
    “I’d like to give them a ride on it,” I say.
    “None of them are gonna come out here with us abominations. They’re all gonna cuddle up with each other in the Dirt and drown in each other’s shit. Until they all do the one thing they were pooped into this universe to do, which is become extinct.”
    I open the door. “You’re really baiting them, you know that?”
    “Baiting who? There’s nobody listening. Nobody here except us sushi,” she says, managing to sound sour and utterly innocent both at the same time. Only Glynis.
     
     
    I MESSAGE D OVE to say we’ll be Down Under for at least two J-days, on loan to OuterComm. Population in the outer part of the system, especially around Saturn, has doubled in the last couple of J-years, and will probably double again in less time. The civil communication network runs below the plane of the solar disk and it’s completely dedicated – no governments, no military, just small business, entertainment, and social interaction. Well, so far it’s completely dedicated, but nobody’s in any position for a power grab yet.
    OuterComm is an Ice Giants operation, and originally it served only the Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune systems. No one seems to know exactly where the home office is – i.e. which moon. I figure even if they started off as far out as Uranus, they’ve probably been on Titan since they decided to expand to Jupiter.
    Anyway, their technology is crazy-great. It still takes something over forty minutes for Hello to get from the Big J to Saturn and another forty till you hear, Who the hell is this? but you get less noise than a local call on JovOp. JovOp