News Items:

Volcano Erupts! The volcano Mt. Dawebe, on New Haiti in the Zion cluster, has suddenly erupted. The mountain was thought to be dormant.

Allea Speaks Out "Grizzled Man" Allea, an important person in the Zion Islands, speaks out against conditions in the NIS settlement of Simushir. "Babylon be turn to hell there," he says.

Currency microfluctuations Continue One analyst discovers the digits of pi in the fluctuations, but only with particular manipulations.

GenDiver Secures Las Guajas GenDiver secures the village of Amish on Las Guajas in the Northwest Territories from further terrorist attacks. "The villagers welcome GenDiver's presence as a peacekeeper and look forward to getting back to their peaceful lives."

Whitney has a dream in which she is replaying her automatic drawing in her head, several times and in exhaustive details. It's an incredibly boring dream, really. Pilot finds that his CICADA has stopped working overnight, and takes it to Jenny for repairs.

The repairs have to wait because Deputy Marshall Lightfoot shows up and requests to speak to the little girl. Alone. Jenny agrees as long as they don't go farther than a room away from her friends. The Marshall tells her that if she has been kidnapped by these people she doesn't have to be afraid, that the Marshall can just take her and walk out of there. She tries several angles on this, but Jenny insists that she wants to be here. Marshall Lightfoot admits that Biogene could well be lying about the whole thing as well, in which case Jenny should be where she likes. she leaves again, but reiterates that Jenny should call her if she changes her mind.

Regina wants them to go to Macondo, a little island between Westscape and the Zion Islands. She says it is "interesting" but Jenny remembers that this is the island where her father supposedly caught the flesh eating ick. Everyone is a bit cross that this is what is "interesting."

Jenny investigates the CICADA and finds that it needs new software (the existing software having mysteriously been scrambled), so she gets a new version and uploads it. Inspecting the hardware, she finds two tiny holes over the computer casing. This moves the suspicion from software virus to evil computer vampire creature. Maybe it was that flatworm that Pilot saw. Whitney checks herself for holes, but can't find any other than maybe a few pores.

"It can't be an aborigine! Aborigines sing. And eat you." - Jenny

Whitney gets a phone call - a young hunter from her village, Jorge, has gone to Avalon in order to contact her (days of sailing from the village). He says that the elders want her to come back and bring a discreet biologist. Whitney makes a deal with Regina that she will come to Macondo in exchange for Regina's help at the village.

Everyone gets paid 650, making total pay for the month 800, which Whitney feels is somewhat low. She negotiates that they should have health benefits, and five days off a month. Jenny says she would have given more, but that's all the money that the company has. Whitney also doesn't want to know about illegal goods being transported, though she is willing to haul unspecified boxes around.

"If you wanna get killed, make sure you get all the way killed. Don't get just partially killed." - Jenny, on health benefits.

The next day (031.101) Pilot drops Whitney and Regina in Fathom Deeps. There they meet the problem: a new baby has been born in the village, and he is light green in color, has eyespots on his shoulders, and has an extra set of gills. Asking questions, they discover that there have been a couple of miscarriages with extra gills and one earlier child, Billy, who is six now. He has never been bitten by fish, like Whitney, and is a strange child. Regina takes blood samples all around for analysis, but doesn't learn much that day.

The next day Whitney finds Billy apparently controlling fish in a small pool. They go where he directs them, it's quite strange. He is almost silent, just nodding to things Whitney asks. He apparently thinks, after licking Whitney's palm, that she might be able to control the fish a little, but she has no luck.

Regina analyses her sample and finds that the samples of the younger people (Whitney, Regina, Billy, the new child, the child's mother) have some similar zero-intron areas, a clear mark of genetic manipulation. The child has chlorophyll in his skin, and seems to have more low-intron areas than his mother. Later she will check his father Jorge and discover that Jorge has no such areas beyond the aquaform normal. Regina reports to the elders about all this, and reveals her own eyespots. No one knows what the source could be. The elders will dispatch people to other villages on Kauai to see if this is happening there as well. The leading theory for Regina is evil corporate manipulation of the water or something, but this is not borne out by later water tests.

They stay one more day to test Jorge, and that next day Regina spends some time with Billy and is able to make some fish come to her. Maybe. Perhaps they were just sheltering underneath her because she was so still. Whitney does lick Regina's hand as a joke, and finds that it tastes happy and homey. Whitney and Regina tell the elders about Billy, who they had thought was just training the fish. They get picked up by pilot and head home.

Meanwhile, the team at home has gotten 600 Biogene scrip for delivering reactor parts from Simushir to Cliffside. Jenny has also spent a day analyzing the microfluctuations and come up with a message (each character taking hours to transmit through strange math): "B-2671 did you get out? B-2663."

Finally, a message comes in from Dr. Willoughby - they want to hire Buckman Charters for a two week expedition for 10K in GEO scrip plus 30K on successful completion of the collection. Regina doesn't want to go, but everyone else is excited by the large amount of money.