Next, the G-Gnome slapped crawlypatches on our arms and began to lecture us.

"These are nutraceutical supplements. You're going to need them. The spikes will be utilizing some of your body's energy to grow. Even with the patches, you'll want to stoke up with something like Genzyme Carbprot afterwards, to make up for the loss."

Now I could half-feel ghostly invasions of my cranium. Right on cue, the G Gnome explained, "The spikes are

growing osteo-anchors, as well as paraneurons that will interface with yours. That's how they're able to control the color and pattern changes that reflect your moods. Once the endogrowth is done, the exogrowth will begin. Let me get a mirror."

The G– Gnome wheeled a digital mirror into place and turned it on, just in time.

The exogrowth, the visible part of the process, was starting.

From the single spike centered in Jinx's head, a pair of antlers began to develop, magnificent self-similar branchings.

From mine a rough coral stalk shot straight up. When it reached a height of about eight centimeters, it began to overspread into a gorgeous latticework umbrella.

Jinx and I watched ourselves and each other admiringly in the mirror, while the G-Gnome smiled benevolently on.

By the time the growth was finished, we were already adjusting to the novel weight of our new accessories. Jinx's antlers almost doubled his height, while my cage had stopped at nose level like a living lace veil.

"How do I look?" asked Jinx, his antlers flaring a crimson I knew from metamedium shows meant excitement.

"Very muskophallic! How about me?"

"Brain coral goddess!"

The G– Gnome clapped his hands together, and we knew he was eager for us to leave.

"I'm glad you're pleased. Remember, removal is a rather more time-consuming and costly process."

"Oh, we'd never want to get rid of them!" I said.

On the way out, Jinx had a little trouble with the door-ribbons catching on his rack, but aside from that, everything went superstring.

Until we got home, of course.

Jinx came in with me, and my poohs just lost it.

I will never ever forget the sight of them that day. They kind of scared even me, their own daughter, who should be used to them.

My dads are biological brothers who were in the same IMF assault unit during the last Short War. They were lying in a trench together, under enemy fire, when a shell was lobbed in on them.

The weapon contained some weird parazyme that no one's ever quite figured out yet. What it did was to fuse my dads together everywhere they were touching, as well as introduce a lot of collateral damage and changes, right down to the mitochondrial level.

The bonescrapers patched them up as best they could. Ironically, they had to use a couple of bulgy remora-cords to join them even more symbiotically, since Alvin and Calvin had to share a lot of cytokines to stay alive.

When they were demobbed, their experiences led them to join the Moderationists, for whom they became instant and effective spokesmen.

I came along as a teratoma.

My dads kept developing these squelchy growths all over their bodies, which the bonies kept removing. One of the growths had more than usual baseline human structure to it, and my dads got the idea that it would be nice to turn it into

a daughter. It cost a lot, both in eft and in compromise of their noninterventionist principles. But they were really kind of lonely, and I guess the Moderationists finally relented on the dogma part.

Naturally, I'm glad they did.

So anyhow, there my Siamese dads stood, linked by flesh and remora-cords straining fit to burst, shouting their heads off at me and Jinx, whose spike growths were turning green with contrition and purple with sorrowful anger at how innocent kids like us always got quenched in the end.

To make a long story short, we had to get rid of the spikes (but not before everyone in our cohort saw us with them), and Honeysuckle's parents had to pay for it all, and she had her estrogen shut off for a month, and Jinx, my darling Jinx, got sent back to Asgard.

But I really am not worried. Like Jinx said, a year is not such a long time to wait till we're franchised.

And after seeing me with a spike, there wasn't much resistance from the poohs a month later, when I pleaded one last time for tits.

And they're from a much classier vendor's line than hers!

Flying northwest, parallel to the interface of the River Seven bankside forest and the manicured savannah, across which herds of null-sophont cultivars roamed peacefully, Norodom Dos Santos grieved for his hyperfluid charge.

Normally, River Seven appeared from the air as a thick two-toned viscous snake, subtly pulsing in controlled opposing flows. Constrained by its mostly baseline geophysical channel, two-thirds dirty quicksilver grey and one-third matte black, it resembled a stripe of gel like the squeezings from a tube of antique toothpaste.

Today, River Seven lacked its usual luster, seemed lifeless and dispirited, victim of the unexplained changes Dos Santos was speeding to investigate.

I'm personifying the River again, Dos Santos mildly chided himself. What would Master Trexler think of such imprecision in one of his students?

After all, even dead, Trexler still exhibited all those old personality traits which a Turing Level Eight platform

was capable of emulating, and one did not care to disappoint him.

Transferring his Synergen-grown craft to kibe autopilot (a simple TL4), Dos Santos resolved to abandon sentimentalism for work. Prompting his higher centers into microsleep, he freed up paraneurons to run deep plectic simulations of the River's failure.

Midway through the third evocation, disaster struck.

Propulsion myofibrils ripped away from the left COfiber-polysaccharide lattice wing with a sound like a cleaver through a slab of lapinovine.

The abnormal sound instantly reawakened the River Master's full awareness.

With a sinking feeling, Dos Santos realized his ladybug was going down.

The sudden threat to his life triggered a criticality flash that cascaded across his Sphinxco wetware mods: this mission was deeper than a simple repair call…

Dos Santos knew better than to try to wrest control away from the kibe unit under emergency conditions-although a gut response still jerked his hands toward the control ganglia. Instead, he quickly snugged the wrist-dangling gloves of his millipore survival suit on, effectively disabling his CamNeuro digiface.

The kibe unit spoke as the gloves sealed themselves, and by then it was too late to do anything even if he had known what to do.

"I am sorry, Peej Dos Santos, but conditions require your immediate immobilization."

Nodules studded around the sides of his organiform chair burst like spore capsules. Compressed somatropic lianas sprayed out, wrapping him in an sticky biolastic net.

Out the windscreen, Dos Santos could see the line of jungle on his left rising up and around like a wall.

Dos Santos barely had time to utter the start of a prayer to the goddess of his Camspanic ancestors: ''Holy Mary Kannon, Highest of Dakinis-" And then he felt the dose of Sandman perfuse his skin…

The birds resumed their singing slowly. The loud crack of a damaged branch finally giving way stopped them again, but they quickly found their multifarious voices once more.

One fauxvian called out over and over in a raspy human voice: "Shop here, shop here, shop here… " An escaped urban adbird…