asked my old pal Carlo. It was a fall day in Louisville. I was slouched in my soft chair at the back of my nurb store. Carlo was holding something he called a qwet rat, pretty much shoving the thing into my face. Patchy gray fur, yellow teeth, and a naked pink tail. “He’s skungy,” I said, laughing a little. “Who’d ever buy that?” “Skungy!” echoed Carlo, flashing his version of a sales-conference grin. “The perfect name.” He raised the rat high into the air, as if displaying a precious vase. The rat’s black-bead eyes twinkled with intelligence. His pink-lined ears made small movements, picking up our voices, the rustling leaves of the branches on the roof of my store, and the all-but-imperceptible buzz of the gnat cameras that had followed Carlo in. “This rat’s really your prototype?” I asked. Flaky Carlo had managed to get a job in business, working at a start-up company run by one of our high school friends, Gaven Graber.
