“Is the moon getting bigger and bigger?” my three-year-old asked, surveying the horizon.

“No, honey,” I chuckled. “That’s an optical illusion caused by how close it is to the horizon.”

But then I turned and looked.

“Please,” the robot begged.

“Please kill me.” The robot began to weep.

“Please kill me,” it pleaded. “And use my parts to make yourself a proper reading lamp. It just tears me up inside to see you trying to read by the insufficient light of that dim lamp next to the toilet.”

I tried to ignore its pleas, but in my heart I knew it was right.

“Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?” the holographic re-creation of Mae West said, as she uncrossed her legs and flashed us her bare beaver.

My mother looked away, troubled. “Is this really the proper use of the technology?” she said.

“Come on, lady—nobody would have loved this more than Mae herself,” the hologram of Mahatma Gandhi said. “And don’t forget: the Bacon Club Chalupa is at Taco Bell for a limited time only.”

“For five hundred credits, I’ll tell you his whereabouts,” the bounty hunter hissed. “For a thousand credits, I’ll kill him myself.”

The offer hung in the air, and Kurdt LaRock pondered it, savoring the possibilities. When he finally spoke, both men knew that the decision had already been made.

“A thousand credits, huh?” LaRock drawled. “How much is that in dollars?”

The bounty hunter took out his calculator, and they got down to business.

The gene-splicers had tinkered with the DNA, producing a race of warriors who craved just two things: the thrill of battle and the taste of their own feet. They hungered for battle. They literally ate their own feet. None survived to reproduce, and within a few short years they were all gone.

The Gene-Splicers chalked it up to experience, and decided to try harder the next time.

The president whammed his fist on the table. The Cabinet Room went silent.

“This isn’t some goddam B movie, gentlemen,” he said. “This is real life.”

The scientist looked at the floor.

“We have the smartest minds in the world working on this,” the President continued. “The top biologists and astronomers and geneticists. And you’re telling me that the closest anyone can come to identifying this . . . thing is . . .”

“I’m afraid so, Mr. President,” the scientist said. “What we’re dealing with here is the Flying Penis from Venus.”

The Treasury Secretary giggled, and the chief of staff did his best to not join in. But a look from the President silenced them.

“This . . . thing,” the President said. “This creature, this—”

“Flying Penis from Venus,” the scientist said.

The President burst out laughing, and the rest of the room joined him, relieved to release their pent-up mirth.

“I suppose it is kind of funny,” the President said, “in that it’s so improbable. But come on, guys—it’s already killed forty thousand people, so we really have to focus here.”

The galactic federation had rejected the Treaty of Agreement. The Outliers had withdrawn their negotiating squadron, despite the best efforts of the Trade Council. And in the Unoccupied Sector a call arose for punishing tariffs on intersystem trade.

Engineer Wilson didn’t know what any of this meant, but he knew that it probably wasn’t good. After two more commercial breaks, the news ticker began to repeat itself, so he turned off his TV and went back to sleep.

He’d had a real name at one time, but even he’d forgotten it. On the Net, he was known as Captain Fantastic, the Brown Dirt Cowboy—or CFTBDC69, in Net-handle speak.

He plugged the jack into the shiny port in the back of his neck and pressed Enter.

Twenty-six hundred baud of digital packetry surged through his system, and once the nausea—and the euphoria—wore off, he came to and ordered three polo shirts from jcrew.com without even touching his keyboard.

“If this is the future,” he said to himself, “me likey.” ♦