“You tiny bastard,” she began, and not, it must be pointed out, in the careful whisper Overpastry surely hoped for.

“You tiny, tiny bastard, how dare you – with your mono-mind and pathetic inability to accurately recollect the events of a single day let alone years’ worth of living – how dare you talk to me like a child at a summertime birthday party reaching for one burger too many against its concerned parents’ wishes!”

In spite of their fear (for the bear still menaced nearby, the barrel of his anti-proton gun crackling like a thunderstorm in a bottle) people leaned forward to hear more of Tri-Thought’s unrelenting beratings. What did she mean, they all wondered, by “tiny bastard”? Was she referring to his cock, or perhaps his bank account. The source of their wonder was Overpastry’s quite obvious height advantage over the enraged woman: he towered at least a 0.4 meters above her – and a bit more when she wasn’t wearing her mood enhancing platform shoes.

This difference created a disconnect between the specific form of her insult and the visually available facts.

What no one except a trained and alert cognitive augmentation specialist (or alternatively, someone who, momentarily forgetting the weapon held by an angry, genetically enhanced bear pointed in his or her general direction, carefully listened to what the woman said and put two and two together) could not have known was the fact that what was “tiny” about Overpastry – at least from Tri-Thought’s point of view, wasn’t his penis or his net worth or his life experience or his collection of Kombucha themed love stories (such as the beloved “De-toxed and In Love”) but his aggregate thought capability relative to that of the retired exotic performer.

Tri-Thought, during her years as a wildly sought after dancer – had made a tidy sum of money much of which she devoted to cognitive augmentation surgery. In short, she had three brains: the quite fine one she was born with, and two from South Korean elecronics giant LG; part of their “Indestructable You” coopertative, implantable processor series.

She remembered everything…perfectly. Every event, every feeling was stored, indexed, catalogued and completely accessible in 3 dimensional color images, displayed in the mind’s eye of the implantee.

Needless to say, this made Tri-Thought a formidable opponent in any argument (and most any situation).

She pointed a finger, with its perfect nail, painted a flawless mauve, at Overpastry’s chest and started in again.

“I will handle this situation you weeping, soiled pants half wit! No freakish, escaped mercenary bear – no doubt a Blackwater gene puppet who recently shook free of the juice – is going to ruin my morning ritual of refreshing citrus fruit, oat muffin and heart rate lowering tea!”

No one was more surprised than Mr. Abernathy Overpastry of 1370 Composite Street, Cleveland, Ohio, when an immense Brown bear – outfitted with a brightly colored safety vest and armed with an old timey ray gun (the sort of first gen anti proton device your grandfather might have used to hunt skull faced dogs and those annoying, robotized Norwegian rats that host late night talk shows) – rudely made its way into the Starbucks near his posh office, demanding, in a deep, bear voice, to be served “only the hottest of coffees, kissed by the sweetest of sugars and served in the most expensive of coffee mugs or protons will be loosed from their atomic prisons and howling, your howling, will ensue!”

Mr. Overpastry turned to his companion, a former stripper, once quite famous, whose performance name was Ubiquitous Glitter but who now, instead of returning to the name bestowed upon her by her parents – Denial Highchair – insisted upon being called Tri-Thought, and whispered: “you have a tendency – a weakness, I would call it – to say the wrong thing at the wrong time which, in a delicate situation such as this, will almost surely mean our swift, subatomic doom.   How I would miss your smile, your cruel jokes, your long legs, your perfume brewed from the husks of collapsed stars. I could not replace you so I ask that you stay as silent as the grave lest you disappear in a burst of anti smoke. This bear means business, as is the way of his people.”

Tri-Thought, insulted by this little speech, ground the high heel of her libido enhancement shoes into Overpastry’s right foot. A violent gesture which had the curious effect, owing to the shoe’s unique properties, of arousing him even as he cringed quietly in stabby pain.

“You tiny bastard,” she began…