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Soma marched Japheth to the next stall. “Lot left in there to wash out yet,” Japheth said.

“I wash every day,” said Soma, then fell against a sloshing tray of juice containers. The earliest results were remarkable.

A squat man covered with black gems came up to them. The man who’d insulted the monkey said, “You might have killed too much of it; he’s getting kind of wonky.”

The squat man looked into Soma’s eyes. “We can stabilize him easy enough. There are televisions in the food court.”

Then Soma and Japheth were drinking hot rum punches and watching a newsfeed. There was a battle out over the Gulf somewhere, Commodores mounted on bears darted through the clouds, lancing Cuban zeppelins.

“The Cubans will never achieve air superiority,” said Soma, and it felt right saying it.

Japheth eyed him wearily. “I need you to keep thinking that for now, Soma Painter,” he said quietly. “But I hope sometime soon you’ll know that Cubans don’t live in a place called the Appalachian Archipelago, and that the salty reach out there isn’t the Gulf of Mexico.”

The bicycle race results were on then, and Soma scanned the lists, hoping to see his favorites’ names near the top of the general classifications.

“That’s the Tennessee River, dammed up by your Governor’s hubris.”

Soma saw that his drink was nearly empty and heard that his friend Japheth was still talking. “What?” he asked, smiling.

“I asked if you’re ready to go to the Alley,” said Japheth.

“Good good,” said Soma.

The math was moving along minor avenues, siphoning data from secondary and tertiary ports when it sensed her looming up. It researched ten thousand thousand escapes but rejected them all when it perceived that it had been subverted, that it was inside her now, becoming part of her, that it is primitive in materials but clever clever in architecture and there have been blindings times not seen places to root out root out all of it check again check one thousand more times all told all told eat it all up all the little bluegrass math is absorbed

“The Alley at night!” shouted Soma. “Not like where you’re from, eh, boys?”

A lamplighter’s stalk legs eased through the little group. Soma saw that his friends were staring up at the civil servant’s welding mask head, gaping open-mouthed as it turned a spigot at the top of a tree and lit the gas with a flick of its tongue.

“Let’s go to my place!” said Soma. “When it’s time for anthem we can watch the parade from my balcony. I live in one of the lofts above the Tyranny of the Anecdote.”

“Above what?” asked Japheth.

“It’s a tavern. They’re my landlords,” said Soma. “Vols are so fucking stupid.”

But that wasn’t right.

Japheth’s Owl friend fell to his knees and vomited right in the street. Soma stared at the jiggling spheres in the gutter as the man choked some words out. “She’s taken the feathers. She’s looking for us now.”

Too much rum punch, thought Soma, thought it about the Owl man and himself and about all of Japheth’s crazy friends.

“Soma, how far now?” asked Japheth.

Soma remembered his manners. “Not far,” he said.

And it wasn’t, just a few more struggling yards, Soma leading the way and Japheth’s friends half-carrying, half-dragging their drunken friend down the Alley. Nothing unusual there. Every night in the Alley was Carnival.

Then a wave at the bouncer outside the Anecdote, then up the steps, then sing “Let me in, let me in!” to the door, and finally all of them packed into the cramped space.

“There,” said the sick man, pointing at the industrial sink Soma had installed himself to make brush cleaning easier. Brushes…where were his brushes, his pencils, his notes for the complexity seminar?

“Towels, Soma?”

“What? Oh, here let me get them.” Soma bustled around, finding towels, pulling out stools for the now silent men who filled his room.

He handed the towels to Japheth. “Was it something he ate?” Soma asked.

Japheth shrugged. “Ate a long time ago, you could say. Owls are as much numbers as they are meat. He’s divesting himself. Those are ones and zeroes washing