Hiro and Ren laughed, and the two of them went back to analyzing the other feeds, watching the kickers' ranks rise and fall. The software religion was a flop—Gamma-sensei had lost face all morning.

But the poodle was working, as funny-looking animals usually did, sending the Nameless One all the way up to sixty-three, one notch above the mayor.

Aya kept silent, staring at the corner of the screen Frizz had briefly occupied. She was trying to remember every word he'd said to her—that he'd liked her randomly generated nose, thought she was mysterious, and wanted to know her full name.

And he hadn't been lying about any of it.

Of course, when he found out that she didn't have such great taste in randomly generated noses—that she'd just been born with it, because she was an ugly and a party-crashing extra—what would he say then? He wouldn't even be polite about it. The honesty surge would make him show his disappointment about their difference in ambition Unless she wasn't an extra by then.

"Hey, Ren," she asked quietly. "Have you ever snuck footage of anyone?"

"You mean like fashion-slammers? No way. That's totally unkick."

"No, I don't mean shots of famous people. More like going undercover for a story."

"I'm not sure," Ren said, looking uncomfortable. He was a tech-kicker; his feed was filled with more hardware designs and interface mods than people stories. "The City Council keeps changing their minds about it. They don't want to get all Rusty, with people owning information and stuff. But nobody likes all those feeds that just show people cheating on their partners. Or fashion-slammers making fun of clothes and surge."

"Yeah, everyone hates those feeds. Except the zillions of people who watch them."

"Hmm. You should probably ask Hiro. He keeps up with that stuff."