I followed Buddy as she picked her way through the hallway and into the living room. The floor, like every other available horizontal surface, was covered with piles of printouts, chips in chipcases, experimental breadboard rigs spewing medusa-heads of optical fibers (and even, here and there, real-and-for-true metal wires), tools and instruments, and all the other drek you'd find in any electronics lab or gadget store. In the center of the room, in pride of place, was Buddy's baby: a custom Fairlight Excalibur cyberdeck. It was sitting on the floor, surrounded by a bewildering array of peripheral garbage wired into the deck in some totally incomprehensible way. With a fluidity that belied her appearance, Buddy dropped into a perfect lotus beside the deck, then turned to stare up at me, waiting.