Waves and Smart MagmaSalt air stung Storm’s super-sensitive nose, although he was still several scores of kilometres distant from the coast. The temperate August sunlight, moderated by myriad high-orbit pico-satellites, one of the many thoughtful legacies of the Upflowered, descended as a soothing balm on Storm’s unclothed pelt. Several churning registers of flocculent clouds, stuffed full of the computational particles known as virgula and sublimula, betokened the watchful custodial omnipresence of the tropospherical mind. Peaceful and congenial was the landscape around him: a vast plain of black- leaved cinnabon trees, bisected by a wide, meandering river, the whole of which had once constituted the human city of Sacramento. Storm reined to a halt his furred and feathered steed—the Kodia
