Pita snorted and winked to change channels. Ten thousand nuyen? Not in ten of her lifetimes.

She skipped over a nostalgia rock channel and then past Name That Logo, a game show in which children from the Aztechnology arcology competed with each other for expensive simulator sets. The first station catered to sludge-minds who’d been born before the millennium and the game show was kid stuff. At seventeen, Pita was too old for that drek. She curled her lip as she caught a few seconds of a rerun of a speech by Governor Schultz, in which she promised to clean up Seattle’s streets. Didn’t she know that some people had to boost the odd package of Soygrits, just to get by?

She flipped past a Salish-language station and devoted a few seconds to an advertorial by the Church of Sorcerology. “Is your child among the one per cent of the population with natural magical ability?” an overly enthusiastic announcer asked. “In this Awakened world of 2054, can you really afford to let your child’s magical abilities slumber? Our free stress test can reveal your child’s hidden talents. Just call our office at-” Pita changed channels.

Her attention was caught by a local newscast. A snoop who looked vaguely Native American was jamming on about another brain-bashing by the local chapter of Hnmanis Policlub. The trid zoomed in on an ork, a little younger than Pita, whose head had been laid open like a smashed fruit. Then it panned down to the globular red spillage on the boy’s shoulder and the letters scrawled on his chest: “One meta-freak down. Half a billion to go.”

Pita tore the “trode rig away from her temples and fought to keep from heaving. Simsense made everything seem so real. So close. She could practically reach out and touch the spilled brains, could smell the blood that had soaked his shirt. The bashing had taken place just a few kilometers from here, in Seattle’s downtown core. Like the boy who had died. Pita was an ork too. What happened to him could have happened to her.