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people made visible from the inside out, and that visibil-ity was changing them. Vera knew that the sensorweb was melting them inside, just as it was melting the island's soil, the seas, even the skies
    . . .
    Karen returned from her locker, swaying in her pink underwear. Karen had a sweet, pleasant, broad-cheeked face under the shaven spots in her black hair. Karen's sweetness was more in her sunny affect than in the cast of her features. Karen's ancestors were European, South Asian, African . . . Karen was genetically globalized.
    Karen's family had been jet-setting sophisticates from upper-class Nairobi, until their city had imploded in the climate crisis. Australia: A very bad story, the world's most vulnerable continent for climate change. India, China—always so crowded, so close to epic human disasters— catastrophic places. Yet disaster always somehow seemed worse in Africa. There was less attention paid to people like Karen, their plight always fell through the cracks. One would think that African sophisticates didn't even exist. Karen had lost everyone she knew. She had escaped the bloody ruin of her city with a single cardboard suitcase.
    Some Acquis functionary had steered Karen toward Mljet. That de-cision had suited Karen. Today, Karen was an ideal Acquis neural so-cialite. Because Karen was a tireless chatterer, always deep into everybody else's business. Yet Karen never breathed a word about her painful past, or anyone else's past, either. Vera liked and trusted her for that.
    Life inside an Acquis brain scanner had liberated Karen. She'd ar-rived on the island so bitterly grieved that she could barely speak, but the reformed Karen was a very outgoing, supportive woman. She was even a brazen flirt.
    "The boss never treats you like a woman should be treated around here," Karen told her. "I have something that will change your mood, though." Karen handed over a box with a handwritten card and a curly velvet ribbon.
    "Karen, what is this about?"
    "Your niece came here to our barracks this morning," said Karen. "While you were being debriefed. She's the only little girl on this whole island. She walked straight into here, right up that aisle, through that big mess piled there. Like a princess, like she was born in here. The place was full of grown-ups wearing skeletons. Tough guys. Changing shifts. You know. Naked people. She wasn't one bit scared! She even sang them a little song. Something about her favorite foods: soup and cookies!"
    " 'Soup and cookies'?" said Vera unbelieving, though Karen never lied.
    "The cadres couldn't believe that either! They never saw anything like that! That kid can really sing, too—you should have heard them cheer! Then she left this beautiful gift just for you." Vera kept her face stiff, but she could feel herself gritting her teeth.
    Karen, as always, was keen to sympathize. "We couldn't help but love that 'Little Mary Montalban.' I know someday she'll be a big star." Karen bounced on the stainless pink fabric of her surplus medical cot. "So, do it! Open this gift from your weird estranged niece! I'm dying to see what she brought for you!"
    "Since you're so excited, you can open that."
    Karen sniffed the scented gift card and ripped into the wrappings. She removed a crystal ball. The crystal ball held a little world. A captive bubble of water. It was a biosphere. Herbert often mentioned them. They were modeling tools for environmental studies.
    Biospheres were clever toys, but unstable, since their tiny ecosystems were so frail. Biospheres were pretty at first, but they had horribly brieflives. Sooner or later, disaster was sure to strike that little world. Living systems were never as neat and efficient as clockworks. Biology wasn't machinery. So, as time passed, some aspect of the miniature world would depart from the normal parameters. Some vital salt or mineral might leach out against the glass. Some keystone microbe might die off—or else bloom crazily, killing everything