The sound of the drumming did not build gradually but exploded to a 
deafening, mind-dissolving roar as Carl emerged into a vast cavern, a conical 
amphitheatre that must have been a kilometer wide, roofed with a storm of 
mediatronic images that played across a vast dome. The Drummers, visible by the 
flickering light of the overhead media storm and by their own internal light, 
moved up and down the slopes of the cone in a kind of convection pattern. 
Caught up in an eddy, Carl was transported down toward the center and found 
that an orgy of fantastic dimensions was underway. The steam of vaporized sweat 
rose from the center of the pit in a cloud. The bodies pressing against Carl's 
naked skin were so hot that they almost burned him, as if everyone were running 
a high fever
and in some logical abstract compartment of his mind that was, somehow, 
continuing to run along its own reasonable course, he realized why: They were 
exchanging packets of data with their bodily fluids, the packets were mating in 
their blood, the rod logic throwing off heat that drove up their core 
temperature.