"Do you know what my sister and I loved about Earth the instant we saw it? How filthy and rotten and corrupt it was. Pollution in the air and garbage in the streets, cracked pavement and crumbling brick grimed by ten thousand desperate grasping hands, every smile a lie, every lean, scarred back hungry for a knife." Arial sighed as if touched by a lover. "And we thought, this is what it's really like to be human. This struggle and malice and violence and dirt. Even the execs and stockbrokers in their towers and limousines are dirty to the core. Even the president's a pig. It's so real. So complex. And it's a game, a game we can learn to play. And we did. I still reminisce about starting out, having nothing and taking it all. That's why we cut our coke empire loose. We'd won. Time for a new game!"

"You have no original ideas. You endlessly reiterate your own body on others like some kind of navel-gazing cult leader. Pretty soon the candy-bimbo look will be stale, and you'll just fade away."

Broadmoore endured this wordlessly, her eyes glowing a vivid yellow-green.

Marius sneered. It made him more handsome. "What, you're gonna do your defcon eyes now? Five minutes to minimum safe distance? Whatever. Like you can do anything to me."

Broadmoore felt the glow shift to red-orange.

"See you never, one-hit loser."

Broadmoore ground her teeth, watching Marius go. Then pivoted on her heel and marched to the back of the club, to the considerable relief of witnesses.

Most restaurants won't seat me, for the same reason I'm having difficulty moving into my apartment in Midtown: I'm a radiation hazard. It's mostly the radiation, I'm sure. Their proprietors will still cater to me, indeed many bend themselves in knots to do so, accompanied by the requisite deluge of apology; but to seat me risks running afoul of various health and zoning codes. (More daring establishments put me al fresco, or perhaps alone in a banquet room, but these subterfuges too entail risk.) I am understanding, I am patient, but it would be nice to occasionally dine in mixed company like a human.