I'm going to put the moves on her,' he says gravely. 'Things might get weird.' He says it like a commando setting up a midnight raid. Like: Sure, thi… - Robin Sloan

Midway through, a fuzzy-chinned young man approaches the desk with a battered copy of Dune and a motley handful of coins. Mo waves him away. “Oh, just take it, Felix. Spend the money on a haircut.

The space is appropriately shoe-boxy and all the shelves are there. I've set them up with a coordinate system, so my program can find aisle 3, shelf 13 all by itself. Simulated light from the simulated windows casts sharp-edged shadows through the simulated store. If this sounds impressive to you, you're over thirty.

They're just bacteria. They don't think or plan. They just...exist.'
'Just exist? They do things we only dream of. They are fecund and potent, they can speak to one another with chemicals and light, they can form teams — oh, the teams they can form. Millions strong, all working together perfectly. If we could cooperate like that — if we could even get close — we would have all of our problems solved.