“Full house,” I said. I smiled, but the tension of the moment strained across all three of my avatars. My primary avv—the one with the best poker face and thus the one handling the cards—faced Marcy’s primary and studiously ignored every other body in the room....

It fixed its gaze on the world below. The flood pressed into the riverbed. The spray webbed within the lightning. The pealing thunder gave premature birth to steam. It did not control any of these things; it did not possess a single thing in the world....

Easy Prey tried to concentrate, but the music made it hard. The sweet-smelling love songs his coworkers preferred left an acid taste in the back of his throat. He would have used a portable facemask for his own music—Prey liked his songs pungent, with a little more rhythmic savagery in them—but Sharp Salt, his boss, had strictly forbade personal music organisms....

Hanneke was deeply, madly in love, and she knew it wouldn’t last. Only eight more months, twelve at most. She blinked her magnification on and zoomed in on her partner. Sun-burned, sea-weathered, handsome Gerben, her Gerben was strolling down the tideline, crows taking to the air at every step, cawing their protest....

1 Snow. My memories of planet Wordfall are full of snow. Those little people of Wordfall, with their broad and open arms, stood silently in the vast expanse of snowy earth like spirits who had just appeared out of thin air....

His name was Zephaniah, but everyone just called him Zeph. He stood six feet two inches tall, was perfectly proportioned, could read small print from one hundred feet away, had lifted four hundred pounds in his time and could probably lift more if asked, retained just about everything he learned or read, and was fluent in eleven human and fourteen computer languages....