GLOSSARY

asimov: The programming (that Cobb Anderson disabled in the boppers) which gives three primary commands: protect humans, obey humans, protect yourself. From a series of stories and books involving robots by Isaac Asimov.

Big Bopper: A mutli-brained, multi-bodied bopper, driven by one collective master intelligence.

bopper: A self-aware robot.

Happy Cloak: A wearable neural interface. Stahn uses one to communicate with the boppers.

meatbop: Modified bopper versions of humans. Altering human DNA, the boppers create what are effectively improved human beings driven by bopper programming in their brains. Unlike meaties, they're self-conscious, self-aware, and entirely organic.

meatie: Human bodies with no intelligence whatsoever. Puppets for the boppers that control them. Achieved in Wetware by the physical replacement of the brain with a link to a bopper.

merge: A drug that allows the physical merger of two or more people, down to the cellular level .

moldie: A partially-organic, partially-synthetic bopper, created by the union of a Happy Cloak and the bopper-killing fungus, "chipmold."

pink-tank: A facility for growing artificial human organs on the Moon. One of the boppers' sources of trade with the humans.