Bivalve

Diogenes Whamfurter reclined in his barkalounger. It was going to be a hot one today. If only Elektra hadn't short circuited the air conditioning unit the other night by knocking over a pitcher of capirinhas she'd set on the ventilator grill to cool.

Mars Colony 1602. The last of the archipelago still extant. Who would have imagined, 20 years ago, that he and Elektra would finish out their lives in a place like this? A plight made all the more ridiculous by the fact that the Colony wasn't even on Mars, nor they themselves, technically, even truly alive. Everything here - Diogenes & Electra, Li'l Welton, Garbage the dog, the endless expanses of red desert outside - was code running on an innerworld server.

Unfortunately, all that didn't make Diogenes panic any less when he heard air hissing through a new crack in his suit while out on expedition. It didn't keep rolls of fat on Electra's upper arms from swinging back and forth like hammocks when she brushed her hair in the morning, or convince Li'l Welton to stop acting like a complete retard all the time. Diogenes almost wished they had never told him about it in the first place, but then, that's what his mission up here was all about. Because if the innerworld code was responsable for Diogenes' existence, the code that made innerworld exist was merrily executing  away on an unobtrusive little PC on the shelf right next to his stereo. It was a classic bivalve setup - neat as a pin. And if you thought that all sounded like a bunch of hokum, well, you aint heard nothin' yet.