y about
me."

Unexpectedly and out of the clear orange smoke, she hugs me and hisses in my
ear, fiercely, "I *do* worry about you, Maxes. I *do*." Then Bunny nails her in
the ear with a slushball and she dives into a flawless snap-roll, scooping snow
on the way for a counterstrike.

#

Tony the Tiger's been standing beside me for a while, but I just noticed it now.
He barks a trademarked Hah! at me. "How's the knee?"

"Big, ugly and swollen."

"Yum. How's the brain?"

"Ditto."

"Double-yum."

"Got any New Year's resolutions, Tony?"

"Trim my moustache. Put in a garden, here where the neighbours' place was. Start
benching in the morning, work on my upper-body. Foam the house. Open the rooms
in the basement, take in some more folks. Get a cam and start recording house
meetings. Start an e-zine for connecting up squats. Some more things. You?"

"Don't ask," I say, not wanting to humiliate myself again.

He misunderstands me. "Well, don't sweat it: if you make too many resolutions,
you're trying, and that's what counts."

"Yuh-huh." It feels good to be overestimated for a change.

Tony used to work in the customer-service dept at Eatons-Walmart, the big one at
Dundas and Yonge where the Eaton Centre used to be. They kept offering him
promotions and he kept turning them down. He wanted to stay there, acting as a
guide through the maze of bureaucracy you had to navigate to get a refund when
you bought the dangerous, overpriced shit they sold. It shows.

It's like he spent thirty years waiting for an opportunity to grab a megaphone
and organise a disaster-relief.

The neighbours' is not recognisable as a house anymore. Some people are singing
carols. Then it gets silly and they start singing dirty words, and I join in
when they launch into Jingle Bells, translated into Process-speak.

I turn back into the fire and lose myself in the flickers, and I don't scream at
all.

Fuck you, Dad.

#

Someone scrounged a big foam minikeg of whiskey, and someone else has come up
with some chewable vitamin C soaked in something *up*, and the house gets going.
Those with working comms -- who pays for their subscriptions, I wonder --
micropay for some tuneage, and we split between the kitchen and the big old
parlour, dancing and Merry Xmassing late.

About half an hour into it, Tony the Tiger comes in the servant's door, his nose
red. He's got the hose in one hand, glove frozen stiff from blow-back. I'm next
to the do