We never learned whether the Yakuza had a accepted our terms, or ever whether they got our message. As far as I know, their program is still waiting for Eddie Bax on a shelf in the back room of a gift shop on the third level of Sydney Central-5. Probably they sold the original back to Ono-Sendai months ago. But maybe they did get the pirate’s broadcast, because nobody’s come looking for me yet, and it’s been nearly a year. If they do come, they’ll have a long climp up through the dark, past Dog’s sentries, and I don’t look much like Eddie Bax these days. I let Molly take care of that, with a local anesthetic. And my new teeth have almost grown in. I decited to stay up here. When I looked out across the Killing Floor, before he came, I saw how hollow I was. And I knew I was sick of being a bucket. So now I climb down and visit Jones, almost every night. We’re partners now, Jones and I, and Molly Millions, too. Molly handles our business in the Drome. Jones is still in Funland, but he has a bigger tank, with fresh seawater trucked in once a week. And he has his junk, when he needs it. He still talks to the kids with his frame of lights, but he talks to me on a new display unit in a shed that I rent there, a better unit than the one he used in the navy. And we’re all making good money, better money than I made before, because Jone’s Squid can read the traces of anything that anyone ever srored in me, and he gives it to me on the display unit in languages I can Understand. So we’re learning a lot about all my formed clients. And one day I’ll have a surgeon dig all the silicon out of my amygdalae, and I’ll live with my own memories and nobody else’s, the way other people do. But not for a while. In the meantime it’s really okay up here, way up in the dark, smoking a Chinese filtertip and listening to the condensation that drips from the geodesics. Real quiet up here – unless a pair of Lo Teks decide to dance on the Killing Floor. It’s educational, too. With Jones to help me figure things out, I’m getting to be the most technical boy in town.