Part Three of Jury Service, the whacky post-human gonzo novella that I co-wrote with Charlie Stross was published this morning on SciFi.com (Part One and Part Two). Only one more week to go before the whole thing's online!
The hacker sighs a put-upon exhalation. "Fine," she says. Let's get you cloned, then." Before he can jerk free, the instrument bush hovering over him has scraped a layer of skin from his forearm and drawn a few CCs of blood from the back of his hand, leaving behind an anaesthetized patch of numb skin that spreads over his knuckles and down to his fingertips. Across the room, a tabletop diamond-walled chamber fogs and hums. The mandibles recede and Huw sits up. A ventilation system kicks in, clearing the fog from the chamber and there Huw sees his cloned hand taking shape, starting as a foetal fin, sundering into fingers, bones lengthening, proto-fingernails forming. "That'll take a couple hours to ripen," the hacker says. "Then I'll implant it and we'll see what happens. Come back this time tomorrow, I'll show you what turns up." She rubs her thumbs against her forefingers.
Huw sticks his hand out to touch hers and interface their PANs so he can transfer a payment to her, but she shies back. "I don't think so," she says. "You're infectious, remember?"
"Well, how shall I pay you, then?" he says.
"Over there," she says, gesturing at a meatpuppet in the corner, a wrinkled naked neuter body with no head, just a welter of ramified tubules joined to a bare medulla that flops out of the neck-stump like an alien nosegay. Huw shakes the puppet's clammy hand and interfaces with its PAN, transfers a wad of currency to it and steps back, wiping his hand on the seat of his track-pants afterward.
