Flea Powder

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Flesh bodies make me itch.

Not that I have anything against a temporary in a natural org, mind you. I can appreciate a soft breeze, or a starfall, or a groupsie as well as the next cyb. Nonetheless, flesh bodies make me itch.

I was encybbed in a real beauty, a light-class Star-Dancer, over ten to the thirteenth Hydrogen one radii of sleek engineering, hottest legs available, double-hundred interface and every one connected, frolicking along and filling my cargo holds with some of the sweetest rares going when the call came.

I ignored it.

But whoever it was was stubborn, and had my private address code. It’s hard to keep ignoring a direct-to-brain input that can’t be turned off and seems as loud as a meteor crashing into a planet not quite on top of a natural ear. So I acknowledged.

Jolly, it’s about time, accused the mind that touched mine. I knew who it was, of course; minds are totally individual, and my association with Tango goes back to memories I’ve long since edited out. I knew my old pupil was way far away, too, from the out-of-synch flavor. I tried to explain to an anti-cybber once, who’d never experienced mind-to-mind inputs, how a cyb can tell distance in a mind touch. I had to fall back on the hoary old wheeze, about immersing in a multisense piece a little out of synchronization, so that acceleration pressure comes before the gauges show take-off, or sounds come after doors close and the like. I don’t think I got the point across, but any cybber or direct input type just knows. Tango was wallowing out, way, way into the fringes.

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