Two twin sisters in the near future find themselves in the middle of a world where a virus evolved through mutation and natural selection as part of biological warfare research has escaped.

Bands of the time have to use "sinners" (synthesizers), or people who have experienced rock and roll in person, in order to realize their music.

The pardoner faces a mistake he made in his past and finds a way to escape by hacking the alien mainframe with the help of a woman he had swindled.

This story was written by Alexander Jablokov and was first published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in June 1991.

To beat the very best fighter, though, he betrays and hurts his newfound friend only to find himself alone again after his victory over the crippled war-veteran Tiny.

The story is typical of the cyberpunk genre in that its mood never rises from the melancholy and that the protagonist ends up suffering a kind of pyrrhic victory, realizing too late that succeeding in his endeavor (i.e. winning the game) has cost him too dearly.

One such hacker/scientist, while trying to find a way for the human body to become a cocaine-producing factory, engineers a virus that enriches the dendritic connections of mammalian brains.

This virus seems to produce eccentric, absent-minded geniuses, but most humans are apparently immune to this neural Chernobyl (though the reader should be aware of the possibility of an unreliable narrator).

Instead, it is animals that suffer the most obvious changes as a result of this virus, leading to more intelligent dogs and cats, as well as a culturally aware raccoon society.

The story's main character is Evan, who finds himself in the middle of the gene wars immediately after graduating with a degree in molecular genetics.

This is a vision of the Internet's adaptation for handling credit card transactions, security camera feeds, and other such digital data.

[2] Pal Tremont, a Korean boy who likes classical music, is adopted by an American family and comes into the life of Peter Tuthy and writer Lauren Davies.