The colony world of Reis was once a prosperous, glittering center of manufacture and trade. But now that a terrible plague is ravaging the planet, it has been quarantined, cut off from the rest of the galaxy. Only electronic communications can cross that barrier. No one knows where the disease came from. No one knows how it's spread. And no one knows who will live or die. Which leaves one big What do you do in the meantime, while you're waiting to find out? Time may be killing them, but the handful of disaffected artists who hang out at Club Metz are past masters at killing time. Society may be falling apart, and the biocybernetic AI that runs everything may be acting weirder every day; but they will nevertheless find ways to survive - in spirit as well as body - or, failing that, to die as interestingly as possible.