Blowfish Fugue -- Character sketches (Anthelma, Earny, Philip)

Blowfish Fugue -- Character sketches (Anthelma, Earny, Philip)

20020217.1742 EST Dec@ur, GA, USA

     My name is Anthelma Shaloub and I am forty-seven years old. I am largely female and I am applying to have been married and to have had four children. The Space Frog thinks that the experiences will help me behave more responsibly and make it more likely that I can keep a long-term employment contract. I don't have the mojo to download a responsible employment history. Most of those -- the ones worth buying -- are filed as corporate secrets and you have to get them on the black market, and I think that just sounds dangerous. God knows what you could get dealing with black market histories. Anything. It's scary.
     Zargan -- that's the Space Frog -- says that a history that involves raising four children will be much cheaper, like a tenth of the mojo I might spend otherwise, and give me the responsibility tendencies I want to show up on the tests.
     Zargan is way smart, but he's entirely fey. He (it?) only shows up in the overlay, though, and doesn't really show up on anyone else's overlay. That's kind of scary, too. I've asked him what he wants from me in exchange for his help and he says he just wants to help me.
     I think maybe he's an executive's familiar that escaped or something. I looked him all over, though, and I couldn't find a brand name. He won't answer me when I ask him where he came from -- he just shrugs -- and I don't know how to make him do diagnostics. Also, I don't want to risk making him notice that he shouldn't be helping me. He's very useful.
     He recommends that I don't talk about him with anyone else because they won't be able to see him or talk to him and they'll just worry that I've gotten tainted or that somebody is screwing with me in an unseelie fashion.
     I've asked him if he's unseelie and he just shrugs. It's scary. He says he knows it's scary, but he says he won't hurt me or let anyone else hurt me if he can help it.
     Maybe he's my Frog Prince. I've tried kissing him -- even screwing him -- but he just stays a big fey Space Frog. And he's slimy all over when he's on me, but that's actually not all that bad.
     He's not particularly good, either, but he gets the job done and he doesn't cost any mojo.
     I wonder if he can help me get more mojo.

* * * * *
     My name is Earny Ferdinand. I'm twenty-five years old and I'm in deep shit.
     This is how low I've sunk. I tried to cover up the screw-up and my mojo's turned black. I know if I ask for help I'll have my contract terminated -- and now there's a Space Frog across the desk from me in the overlay and he won't answer me or say anything and he follows me around everywhere I go and usually stands between me and anything I try to look at that's not right in my face.
     I just know he's tainted. I can't tell whether he's unseelie or seelie. He could be seelie and be annoying me because my mojo's turned black, or he could be unseelie and be annoying me because he can get away with it.
     He won't ever talk to me, and I don't know anyone hackish enough to help me -- no one I can trust, anyway. And now my mojo's only good for unseelie transactions and that means I don't have nearly enough of it to hire someone good enough to help me. And then there's the fact that anyone I hire could basically do anything they want to me and I could end up even more screwed.
     He never says anything.
     Sometimes he whips out this giant slimy schlong, but if that's some kind of offer, I ain't taking him up on it.
     I wish he would just go away. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and come clean about the cover-up. I'd get fired and lose all of my mojo and it would be a while before I could earn any that wouldn't be black, but it would probably be better than this. I've never been this scared.

* * * * *
     My name is Philip Oto and I'm twelve years old. I test as older than that, though, because I've had a big chunk of my sister downloaded from before her backup got tainted. She was pretty hackish. Sometimes when I'm drifting around in the overlay I run into her changeling. She says she's untainted, but it makes things simpler for her not to be incarnated right now -- except partially, that is, though me.
     She was twenty-two before she crashed. Parts of her history I don't have the keys to get into. I know she has enough mojo to get reborn or whatever, but she doesn't want it. Zargan says not to pester her about it, but Toshie -- that's my sister or her changeling or whatever -- says Zargan's fictional and I shouldn't pay much attention to him, even if he makes sense.
     Zargan is a giant Space Frog. I think maybe he escaped from a game or something. Toshie says even if he did, I shouldn't trust him. Overlay incarnations can mask just about any code. I don't like to think about it. Toshie says he's probably harmless, though.
     Zargan gave me the key to her body-image so if I wanted to cash in some mojo, I could recode myself to have her body, maybe even switch back and forth if I got the right codebase. He said not to tell Toshie, and I don't think I will.
     It's weird. Sometimes I drift through locked places when I'm asleep. I deja-ed a dream once that she had of us having sex with each other. I asked Zargan whether I should feel icky about that and he just shrugged. He said it was just a dream and as such, it didn't mean much. It was cool to feel what it was like to come, though. I haven't done that myself yet. My parents haven't given me the key I need for that.
     I'm kinda pissed off about that, since Derek's parents gave him the key to his nads three months ago and I'm older than he is. But then there's the fact that when he revved his up the first time, he had this virus that gave him a giant grasshopper ovipositor rather than a typical twelve-year-old's prong.
     He still has it. He says it's way cooler than a dick, even though Reynelde, the school nurse, let him know it was a bug's twat. I hear he bribed her with beaucoup mojo not to tell his parents. At least he wasn't tainted, or else's he'd have had to be reloaded from the last untainted backup -- if his parents can afford that kind of thing. Toshie backs me up every week, but Zargan says it's a waste of time. I don't know why he says that, though.
     I can't tell my parents about either Toshie's changeling or Zargan because they won't be able to handle it, according to either or both of them. Maybe I should ask Toshie for the mojo to upgrade my parents.
     Zargan seems to think I can dream my way past her locks on her mojo account, that she ought to have plenty of mojo to fund upgrading the parents. That would be a way hackish move, dreaming past her locks. Zargan says he can show me how.
     Mom and Dad just say I should stay away from the overlay for a while and just play in the park. But that's where Zargan and I found the hellmouth, and I didn't tell them about that either.
     Parents freak out way too easily these days.

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