Free Ribofunk by Paul di Filippo Page A

Casbah) and slapped it on Dad’s neck. Quickly burrowing spineward, the boot grabbed control of Dad’s motor impulses and literally forced Dad to choke himself to true-death.
    Ever since I had kind of been the man of the house.
    Which was why Mom was turning to me now, even though I no longer lived with her and Sis.
    As I climbed the worn steps of familiar old Building Nine (referred to croak-jokingly by its residents as the Golden Horn), the slow shadow of a laser-entrained dirigible passed over me, and I sadly recalled Mom’s long-unsatisfied moonbeam-dream of visiting the Grand Canyon in person. It seemed like everyday strife-life just had a way of mind-grinding a person right down. Look how much eft and trouble I had gone through just to land this cysting lite-servo job, and how events like today’s kept conspiring to put me in danger of losing it.
    If only, I thought as I rode the smelly elevator upwards (the car was liberally bespotted with the glandular signatures of rival tribes and zokus), if only I could do something really uptaking to show everyone what I was capable of. Maybe then I could get some real security in my life.…
    Little did I know then the fate-date the near future had in store for me.
    On the forty-fourth floor I came to the family door. I could hear Mom and Charmaine yelling right through the macromolecule walls, so I didn’t bother knocking but just palmed the sweat-vetter gene-screener and stepped right in.
    A burst of overdue deja vu hit me. Nothing had changed in the year since I had moved on, and that meant nothing had changed since time began. My childhood Build-a-Cell kit still sat on a shelf. The aging Philips virtuality rig still sported spots of dumbpaint from an attempt at redecoration three years ago. The forever-dying orchidenia plant still clung to life.
    Mom had her back to me, blocking sight of Charmaine. When Mom turned and stepped aside, I could see what had made her roughride and chide so snide.
    Charmaine had added feelers to go along with her old familiar antennae. And a row of itchy, twitchy buglegs running down each side of her torso. Her clothing had been grommetted to accomodate the new members.
    “Oh, no, Charm,” I said. “I thought you had given up on the Roaches? …”
    My sister had a perez-pretty face, despite the wispy, feathery, living proteoglycan antenna-rods projecting out a good meter from her forehead, iridescent black. But now, messed up with grief, anger, fear, and tears, her face looked really bug-ugly.
    “I’ll never give up on the Roaches! I was just waiting to add more mods until I got enough eft!”
    Mom burst in. “Tell your brother how you got two thousand NU-dollars! Go ahead, tell him!”
    Charmaine straightened up defiantly. “Just like you, Ma. I won it at the cats.”
    Mom glared at me for support. “You heard her. She stole her own mother’s stake for the track—my one little luxury—and bet it all on one race. She, jeune fille estupida, who couldn’t tell a cheetah from an ocelot!”
    “I won, didn’t I? And I paid you back double.”
    “But look how you spent the rest! Mutilating your beautiful body like that!”
    “It’s my thorax, and I’ll do what I want with it! Besides, you’re one to talk! You ain’t hardly no Miss Baseline Betty yourself!”
    I realized that there was something different about Mom that hadn’t registered in the confusion till now. She had had her chocolate complexion spotted-dotted like one of the racing cats she loved. And translucent feline whiskers bristled around her kisser.
    “Pah! My little vanity is like my memere’s old-fashioned eyeshadow compared to your craziness. And besides, the belle gato is a mammal like us. But roaches—”
    That was the match to Charmaine’s fuse.
    “Go ahead!” she exploded. “Say it! Roaches are bugs! Well, you’re not insulting me by saying that. Bugs are glorious! They’re not our inferiors, they’re our superiors! Bugs were here long before