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was more obvious: burst capillaries in his nose, silver hairs sprouting from a mole below his left ear, sweat stains blackening the blue of his shirt. "I think you're failing to grasp the enormity of the shit you're in. Now if you know what's good for you, you'll sit tight and wait. It won't be long, now."
      "It won't be long until what?" Amy asked.
      He straightened up and pulled his shirt down where it had bunched up over his curling waistband. He wore a yellow gold wedding ring. The skin around it was puffy and red. He must have started wearing it years ago, when his fingers were slimmer.
      "You didn't have to tell me about being young," he said. "It's already on your record."
      "So you know I just graduated kindergarten?"
      He nodded slowly. "Yup. So I figure maybe you don't know that all you vN were designed by a bunch of Biblethumpers."
      Amy shook her head. "I know. They wanted us for after the Second Coming, or something. To take care of everybody God didn't like."
      "That's right. That's why you've got all the right holes and such. So people can indulge themselves without sin."
      Amy's attention scattered over several simulated outcomes to this conversation. It cohered on the one in which he opened the cage to touch her, and she wove around him and got away, somehow.
      As though he had run the same simulations in his own mind, the guard shook his head. He held up one hand. "Don't worry, kiddo. I'm a grown man; I don't play with dolls." He leaned down a little. "What I'm saying is, I don't know if they left behind some piety programming or what, but if they did you had better make peace with your god."
      Amy's body remained very still, but her mind raced. They were going to kill her. She didn't know why. She had been trying to help . Her granny had been hurting people and Amy had stopped it. Maybe that was the problem – maybe her granny belonged to somebody important, and Amy had eaten her. That wasn't her fault, either: she'd only meant to bite her, but Amy's diet left her so hungry all the time. When her jaws opened all the digestive fluid came up, a whole lifetime's worth, hot and bitter as angry tears. It ate the flesh off her granny's bones. By then, Amy couldn't stop. The smoke was too sweet. The bone dust was too crunchy. And the sensation of being full, really full, of her processes finally having enough energy to clock at full speed, was spectacular. Being hungry meant being slow. It meant being stupid. It felt like watching each packet of information fly across her consciousness on the wings of a carrier pigeon. But her granny tasted like Moore's Law made flesh.
      "I didn't know it was so bad," Amy said. "I really didn't. I swear. I just couldn't stop myself."
      "I know," the guard said. "I used to work corrections before I got this job, and that's what kids in your situation always say, organic or synthetic."
      Amy hugged her knees. She supposed organic kids wanted to curl up in a little ball in this situation, too. "There won't be a trial, or anything?"
      "Of a kind. Tests, probably. Lots of tests."
      "Tests?" That was something. She had to be alive, if there were going to be tests. "I get to live?"
      He looked her up and down. "Part of you does, I guess."
      Amy pinched the skin of her arms. If you couldn't brag in the brig, where could you? "I've got fractal design memory in here. Even if I'm cut up, my body remembers how to repair itself perfectly. I'll come back in one piece, no matter what."
      "Oh, believe me, dollface, I know. I've seen it happen. You put some vN shrapnel in the right culture, and it grows right back. Like cancer." He snorted. "But whether what grows back is actually you ? With all the memories, and all the adaptations? That's like asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin."
      Amy imagined her skin sliced thin as ham, suspended in the shadowy clouds of vN growth medium. Maybe she wouldn't even miss her mom and dad.