"So what are you?"

"I told you. A meme." She pronounced it like 'theme'. "A memeplex, to be precise. A self-propagating collection of ideas and concepts. A unit of culture, my dear."

"I don't quite understand."

"Let me give you an ...

They were tearing him apart. Muscle by muscle, tendon by tendon. Unraveling him like a ball of string. He screamed but he had no tongue and no sound came out as something cold and hard cut into his throat, spreading the edges of his flesh back like the ...

I woke up from the deep cryosleep with a bleary head and a taste in my mouth like I’d licked a battery. The gel washed off cleanly and I was standing in the hall with the other colonists in my underwear with the HR monitors still stuck to us like faithless ...

Eoin dropped his bag in the hallway, and turned into his living room. His computer was nowhere to be seen.

"Caprice, I'm home. Where are you?" Eoin's computer poked her head over the top of his favourite chair.

"I'm right here, Master Eoin! Welcome ...

"My card," he said, bowing gracefully to the client from Tarqon, the fifth planet in the Tostis system out in the deep reaches of the Spiraling Galaxy.

"I want to thank you," the client said. "Thank you for taking on this job. They said you were the only ...