Dear Host Mother, We just stepped down from Fever Alert Status.

It appears that some autonomous remnant of the enemy is still functioning.

Most of us were sleeping when our earwigs gave the alarm. I never thought the words "perimeter breach!" could sound so chilling. We all scrambled into our Affymax millipore gear, praying that we hadn't catalyzed anything contrametabolic. Almost before we could grab our high-kinetics and lyzers, the "all clear" came thru. The tinmen and transgenics had neutralized the invaders, who amounted only to a handful of Gorilla guerrillas. Examination of the corpses revealed nothing out of the ordinary -- except for one thing. The vars had CENSORED incorporated into their bodies, right next to their CENSORED. These add-ons were empty, indicating they might have had time to spray something before being smoked.

That something, they tell us, could be time-delayed in its effects.

We're all just sitting around now on our hands while the mccoys and herriots go over us with their cell-sniffers and hormone hounds, squeezing our virtual platelets for anything nonsomatic. So I thought I'd 'vox you this letter.

Don't worry.

Your loving guest-son, CENSORED SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE SYS01-4591P.

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE.

DATE/HOUR: 070565/0800.

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK.

Dear, Can't find to refer to. Seem to have disappeared from. Made bad inside.

Very bad. Hard to use common. Looks strange near and far. Because of made bad up inside. Hopeful to fix. Examine, then create. Reassurring.

But -- partly running around crazy. Dangerous. Watch, shoot -- how?

Forget how to use without.

Sit still. Holding together, lovely and crying. Please don't cry. Can't convey. Too frustrating to go on.

Will 'vox soon.

Don't worry.

Your loving, CENSORED SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE SYS01-4591P.

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE.

DATE/HOUR: 070565/1200.

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK.

Dear Host Mother, Whew! Am I glad the past four hours are over!

My last transmission probably didn't make a whole lot of sense to you.That was because I couldn't use any nouns! You see, everyone in the pod was experiencing a selective aphasia, kind of a language blind spot. A whole category of language had been effectively wiped from our cortexes. Or so the blood-dusters tell us.

It appears that the trope the enemy hit us with was something brand new.

The experts have dubbed it a "multivector recombinant silicrobe." It resembles our own CENSORED, only several magnitudes more sophisticated.

Apparently, the Gorillas discharged an aerosol of harmless individual components which were small enough to slip thru our millipore gear. Once inside our bodies, however, the individual pieces intelligently assembled themselves into larger agents that headed straight for our brains.

The first indication we had that something foreign had penetrated us was a senseless announcement we all got thru our earwigs. It sounded just like my last 'vox: strings of verbs and particles with no easy meaning. When I turned to discuss it with my bunkmate, Penguin (I haven't really told you much about her yet, Mom; she's a real old-fashioned target, with fewer than 20 percent bodymods, and I know you'd get quite close to her, given a chance), we found that we were limited to the same bizarre lingo too!

Needless to say, this kind of neural cockup -- a "cortical abortical" the NYC posse calls it -- could have caused us serious trouble if the enemy wasn't so well under control. Though even then, we'd still have the tinmen and transgenics -- the splices weren't so strongly affected -- to protect us.

Still, how could we give them orders?...

Anyhow, the aphasia didn't stop our stormin' biobrujos for long! They soon strung together a megablocker antagonist consisting of a charge of enhanced microglials and catalytic antibodies, along with CENSORED, which seems to have wiped the cerebral invader out quicker'n teraflops!

Although there is a slim chance, they tell us, that the invader has simply self-mutated according to plan.

In any case, a Digireal conference on this bug is underway now with experts scattered around the globe, including last year's Gengineering Nobelist, Doctor Sax, the guy who practically invented neurotropins.

So don't worry, Mom -- we're getting the best of care!

Your loving guest son, CENSORED SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE SYS01-4591P.

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE.

DATE/HOUR: 070565/1391.

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK.

Daring Hotel Mothballs, The newest truest neural contradural manifestation in the implication is undersay they way to play can't shay. Too few too blue words are now becoming excessive depressive stretches of letches and leeches and feel like my head's exploding decoding. Broca's aphasia in Asia is a lack of pack of parcel of morsel of words and turds. But Wernicke's journey to meaning of seasons is to produce unreduce of fibbing gibberish that makes senseless of relentless squawk talk. There appears to be a component histonic of dyslexia distance instance ignorance, upon trying to writer communihesitation.

This stool shall pasture.

Your louvre question, CENSORED SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE SYS01-4591P.

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE.

DATE/HOUR: 070565/1450.

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK.

Dear Host Mother, The Wernicke's is over now. It's pretty evident that the MRS agent is staying one step ahead of the juice they shot us with. I just hope the bug isn't baltimoring anything permanently into our genomes. Right now, all it's doing is making auditory hallucinations. They're kind of pleasant -- I heardyou talking to me just a few minutes ago -- but tend to interfere with real orders thru our earwigs. I notice that Oberjefe Ozal has notched his music up to eleven. I'll keep you posted. Hopefully, this'll be licked soon.

Your loving guest son, CENSORED SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE SYS01-4591P.

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE.

DATE/HOUR: 070565/1500.

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK.

Dear Host Mother, The whole pod was sitting down at the rectangular surface raised above the floor level with four posts, ready to dig into a delayed meal -- reddish oblongs streaked with white marbling, cylindrical orange tapering tubes, spherical crusted objects slit crosswise and topped with a melting square of yellow organic matter -- when the newest trouble hit.

It seems that the bug in our brains has now produced a generalized visual agnosia. Nothing looks familiar. The sight of common objects produces no referents in our brains, emotional or intellectual. Everything seems an assemblage of basic, almost geometrical parts, out of which nothing whole can be synthesized, resulting in a generalized lack of affect.

Or so the Digireal experts tell us. It's kind of hard to tell exactly what's wrong from the inside.

All I know is that when I look at what I assume is Penguin, I see a stretched toroid with an irregular topography topped with filaments of varying lengths. I assume she sees the same.

It's hard to work up the emotion to comfort a toroid, but I try my best, and so does she.

Oberjefe Ozal has been fantastic thru all this. He never loses his composure, but always keeps the ovoid with the seven openings atop the horizontal broadening of his column as cool as liquid nitrogen. He seems to derive almost superhuman strength and comfort from the qawwali buzz in the shell-shaped excrescences on the side of his aforementioned ovoid. I don't know what we'd do without him.

I guess this bug is not going to be as easy to smoke as everyone first assumed.

Well, now I'm contorting my buccal orifice and fleshy red tasting member into phonemes that will signal an end to our conversation, which the flat grey box that transcribes and transmits my voice will insure that you receive.

Maintain your homeostasis at a less-than-feverish amplitude, Mom! (Not too hard at McMurdo in July!) Your loving guest son, CENSORED SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE SYS01-4591P.

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE.

DATE/HOUR: 070565/1829.

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK.

Dear Host Mother, The agnosia cleared up by itself.

It's been replaced by a real mild neuro-deficit.

Amusica.

None of our pop-tabs sounds like anything anymore.

This one's pretty easy to take.

Except for Oberjefe Ozal, who's killed himself.

Your loving guest son, CENSORED SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE SYS01-4591P.

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE.

DATE/HOUR: 070565/2105.

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK.

Dear Host Mother, Have I sent this message yet?

Wait a minute, Penguin!

We seem to be suffering now from TGA, or transient global amnesia. (At least we hope it's transient!) The herriots know that this kind of thing is related to damage on the underside of the temporal lobes, so they hope to squash the bug with a directed killer while it's busy there. Did I mention that we've got TGA? For a while we can't lay down any new memories. Maybe I sent you a 'vox already on it.... Don't worry, long-term memory is unaffected.

I remember how wonderful you and the other Moms and Dads have always been to me. I hope I don't let you down.

Wait a minute, Penguin!

Have I sent this message yet?

Your loving guest son, CENSORED SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE SYS01-4591P.

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE.

DATE/HOUR: 070665/0105.

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK.

Dear Host Mother, The TGA seems to be subsiding. We've been ordered to try to get some sleep.

Everyone's receptive to that, but whenever we start to drowse off, we experience these tremendously magnified myoclonic spasms. You know those little jerks your body sometimes gives just before passing into sleep? Well, these are the mothers of all such twitches, enough to knock you out of bed.

The mccoys are circulating now with somnifacients that should put us under.

Hopefully, when the new day dawns, this goo-screwing bug will have exhausted itself.

Sleep tight!

Your loving guest son, CENSORED SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE SYS01-4591P.

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE.

DATE/HOUR: 070665/0800.

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK.

Dear Host Mother, We lost half the pod during sleep to Nightmare Death Syndrome, that Thai/Filipino/Khampuchean tendency to flatline during sleep.

Unfortunately, the somnifacients may have contributed to the high mortality rate, preventing the sleepers from jolting awake.

I don't know how to tell you this, so forgive me if I just blurt it out.

Penguin was one of the fatalities.

I almost wish the agnosia was back, so I wouldn't feel so bad.

I'm asking the new CO to send you an adobe of her and me thru the metamedium.

Just in case I don't make it home.

Your loving guest son, CENSORED SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE SYS01-4591P.

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE.

DATE/HOUR: 070765/1200.

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK.