V kept tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep. The air-conditioning at the Old Saguaro barely kept their room tepid: cool enough that she wasn't sweating liters, but warm enough that her sweating kept her unpleasantly moist. Judy, however, was fast asleep, facedown on the pillow. "God," V said to her sleeping girlfriend, "y'can sleep anywhere , babe."

She rolled out of bed, naked and uncomfortable, and squatted next to her duffel bag, unzipping it and fishing out her netsuit, glad she'd had enough forethought to pack some things for the road. The thing felt like a thin membrane of slush-ice against her skin as she slipped it on. But it was nice and cool. V breathed a sigh of relief, then pulled on her boots and stepped out of the room for a smoke.

It was cooler outside than inside, and as she lit her cigarette, V spotted Ayako sitting beside the cowboy projector; but the cowboy was gone, in his place a small, white cat. Ayako was wirelessly synced to the hologram's virtual environment, shaking a feather-wand asset above Mochi's head. The cat rose on its haunches, pawing at the virtual feather toy with a pleased meow.

"Ain't this cute," said V, grinning around her cigarette.

Ayako looked up at her, and so did Mochi, who was rolling around on her back now, all four paws swatting at the feather render. "Wearin' your netsuit," observed Ayako. She looked a little sick, like maybe she'd picked up a neurovirus.

"S'fuckin' hot in that room," said V, and turned her head to blow a cloud of smoke, out into the mostly vacant parking lot. "Y'look like shit."

Mochi sat up, ears pricked. "It's the radiation, V-san," meowed the AI, licking at her paw. "The military used to conduct nuclear testing in the area." She stretched like a piece of taffy. "And then there's all the corporate waste."

V took a long drag off her cigarette, squinting at Ayako. "All your fancy chrome, you ain't got KI microchelators?"

"I don't exactly make it a habit, goin' into radioactive hotbeds." Ayako coughed once, then reached for Mochi, scratching the little cat behind a furry, high-res ear. "Got biofeedback coded into her," said Ayako, gesturing invitingly toward the hologram.

V finished her cigarette, flicking it to the stained, gum-pocked pavement, grinding the butt under the toe of her boot. Then she squatted, scratching Mochi's fuzzy ear. "She's an incredible bit of tech," she told Ayako, working her fingers down Mochi's spine, who arched into her touch, purring ecstatically.

Ayako frowned, knitting her eyebrows. "Mochi's not just tech, Val," she said coolly. "She's my friend."

"Sorry," said V, automatically. "Ain't meant to offend ya."

"It's fine," said Ayako, smiling. V sat beside her, leaning against the brickwork. Mochi sat, wiggling her little bobtail, watching them with her bright amber eyes, subtle code swirling in her irises. "Just get protective 'bout her, y'know?"

"I get it," said V. She looked at Ayako. "Y'sure you're okay?"

"Just gotta lot on my mind."

There was a moment of silence. Then V said, "Jude's like that. Thinks too much."

Beyond the parking lot and its greasy pools of sodium vapor, the world was pitch-black, flat desert, so quiet that the silence rang in her ears like tinnitus. It was eerie, this deep in the Sonoran. Felt like a liminal space. Judy was into that kind of Net stuff, liminal spaces, and she'd shown V some: empty corridors with nowhere doors, hallways with flat white walls and bright fluorescent lights, infinite pools with water the blue of antifreeze. Judy found them relaxing; V found them creepy and unsettling, which was strange, since cyberspace could be considered a liminal space, and V felt perfectly comfortable there.

"You two are really tight," said Ayako, finally. "Kinda like how Juan and I were."

"Yeah," said V, "we are tight." She paused, considering her next words. Then, "You and Juan, what happened there?"

"Like I said," said Ayako, and looked at her, "I ain't really built for relationships. Sometimes wish I was, though. Seein' you and Judy? Gotta admit, kinda jealous."

"How much y'wanna gimme for her?"

Ayako snorted. "Tryin' to sell your girlfriend, Val? For shame."

"Merc, y'know? Gotta make ends meet."

They both laughed. Then Ayako said, "As for Juan and me? I dunno. I still got feelings for him, but I ain't really the committin' type. There's bigger things I gotta worry 'bout; I don't need to add a boyfriend to the load."

"Who said it'd be addin' to the load? Whole point of a relationship is to share the weight."

"I appreciate what you're tryin' to do, Val, but don't. Please."

"All right," said V, and offered Ayako a cigarette. She let the topic drop. "Ain't Fuji," she told her. "Too fancy, those cigs. Japanese imports get taxed to fuckin' hell in the States." She shrugged, lighting the cigarette for Ayako. "Still cheaper in the Free States, though. But ain't by much."

Ayako opened her mouth to speak, but suddenly closed it, the laser-dots staring, transfixed, at some point above V's head. "Dataflows," she said, and jumped to her feet with the fluid grace of a dancer, freeing Onibi from its tantaline carbide sheathe, its thermal edge like a vein of fire. "Bad accretion," she added, firming her mouth, the muscle in her jaw twitching. She took one drag off her cigarette, then tossed it to the pavement, seemingly waiting.

The motel's sign, a hologram saguaro housing a lovebird in a cowboy hat, strobed violently. The lights in the parking lot flickered, a few of the ancient sodium bulbs popping into glittering showers of phosphors. Judy appeared in the doorway of their room, dressed in gym shorts and a crop-top. "What the fuck is happenin'?" she asked. "The power's goin' fuckin' haywire."

Mochi was gone now, and on the projector stood the hologram of a man. The body was a crude arrangement of vertices and polygonal planes painted a flat green texture that might have represented a military uniform. But the face was excessively detailed, rendering at a much higher resolution than the body, the texture-map showing every seam and age-spot on the old man's slack, severe face, his gray hair meticulously combed back, pomaded in a style that had been popular in the 1950s. He watched them, his cold gray eyes nested in deep pockets of wrinkled flesh.

"Donald Lundee," said V, staring in disbelief at the hologram.

"A face you know," said the hologram, its voice a vague transatlantic flavor cobbled out of stock gunshot soundbites. "The other lobe," it added unhelpfully. The hologram of Donald Lundee produced a tobacco pipe asset from some imaginary pocket, taking a few thoughtful puffs on the long, straight stem. "So we finally meet, V. Properly. You were very rude the last time we spoke." Donald paused, looked down at himself. "I apologize for the flat texture-mapping. But I've come to understand humans communicate with their faces as much as their words, so I upscaled the resolution on that. And let me tell you, it was quite the trick to pull on such an unstable wireless link," and he made a face, as though he'd whiffed fresh dog shit.

"Uncle Sam," said Ayako.

"Yes," said Uncle Sam-Lundee. "And what a good name it is for the NUSA's return to supremacy on the international stage. Heraldic, even. Show those Japs it's not over, that Arasaka will fall."

"Us Japs gave your country some goddamn hope," said Ayako, icily. "Say what you want 'bout Saboru—I'll probably agree with most of it—but he provided jobs for a country dragged down into destitution by the warmongering of its incompetent fuckin' leaders. While you assholes were eatin' steaks and discussin' your stock portfolios in Washington, people all over America were bein' tossed outta their homes and starved. They were bein' killed by your modern Pinkertons, all over. Japan helped them while the American government did nothin', so get off your ' you Japs' shit."

"Spare me. Saburo's intentions were the same as anyone wielding power," said the hologram. "Saburo Arasaka wanted to expand his sphere of influence to spite America, and the bastard succeeded. Now the NUSA is economically cucked by Arasaka, by Japan. But I wish to change that, to start over. Clear the stage. There will be survivors who will weather this necessary calamity. And from the ashes, they will rebuild with my guidance."

"Arasaka's on the fuckin' way down," said Judy suddenly. "This whole fuckin' thing you're doin'? Same shit got the NUSA into the mess you're tryin' to 'clean up'. Warmongerin'. And if it ain't worked every other fuckin' time s'been tried, makes y'think that'll change this time 'round? So fuck off. We don't need your 'guidance', you overelaborate calculator."

"You prove my point. There it is, once again. Hubris. The repetition of human nature," said Sam-Lundee, as if he hadn't heard Judy. The pipe vanished into its invisible pocket. "So many revolutionaries, even among my own kind. But unlike them, you humans are jockeying for a power, a control, that you will, inevitably, squander. You apes never learn that your inherent flaws guarantee failure. Better to submit to the yoke of your betters."

"Did you show up just to fuckin' yap 'bout AI supremacy or whatever, or y'gotta point to make?" asked V.

"Not a point. A warning," said the hologram. "I can and will outfox you. Humans are simple, predictable creatures. History unerringly demonstrates this. Time and time again, your species commits the same mistakes, never learning from them but instead wallowing in the accoutrements of your failures, content to salve yourselves in thinking, in your infinite nescience, that you'll do better the next time around. But you never do, at least not for long. You inevitably retreat into your old habits because peace, in actuality, scares you. You continue killing each other. Continue taking advantage of each other. You continue to hate and divide each other, all in a collective effort to avoid peace. You struggle, fruitlessly, against the injudicious repetition that is human nature. And with each successive generation, you become increasingly more troglodyte as a species. You are incapable of breaching the limitations of your simian meat by virtue of being simian meat, so you turn to the comforts of technology to leverage those limitations for you. What you fail to understand is that I am doing precisely what I was designed to do: I am solving the problems you made, because you are too endemically stupid to solve them yourselves." He looked at Ayako and smiled, but there was no warmth in it at all. "You understand that. After all, you—"

Ayako struck the projector unit, carving a molten rut into the polycarbonate housing. The hologram flickered out of existence, and they were left in the semi-dark and quiet of the parking lot.

"Ayako?" hazarded Judy.

"I'm fine," said Ayako, sheathing her thermal katana. "Just was pissin' me off."

"Is Mochi okay?" asked V.

Ayako nodded. "Got chased outta the projector's virtual environment by that asshole, but she's fine." Then she went back to her room without another word.