and his unique pet, the Blabber. While Hamid is working with tourists from the Beyond in an attempt to get out of the Slow Zone, another visitor, Ravna&Tines comes to the planet, offering to buy the Blabber from him. When Hamid does not accept their deal expediently, Ravna&Tines launch attacks on the planet and the Beyond tourists. Hamid and the Blabber eventually end up with Ravna&Tines and head into the Beyond. The story occurs in the Zones of Thought universe and occurs after The Children of the Sky. Tines is a member of the multi-part species introduced in A Fire Upon the Deep, the tines, and the Blabber is a missing member of Tines who is re-incorporated at the end of the story. Hamid is a clone of a great man who was in a relationship with Ravna. "Win a Nobel Prize!" Originally published in Nature 407(6805), 2000. This is a letter offering a position to a researcher with an organization that will provide him with a mind-machine interface, implemented by a non-reversible tailored infection and manipulated with MRI. The letter describes other organizations using the technique to induce any psychopathology, but promises to transform the researcher into an idiot savant in his field. It is hinted that the researcher has already been infected. The technology also appears in the novel A Deepness In the Sky used by the Emergents, a totalitarian, slave-based culture. "The Barbarian Princess" Originally published in Analog Science Fiction Science Fact, 1986. This is the first section of the novel Tatja Grimm's World. Rey Guille operates a shipboard publishing company which sails from market to market. At one port they discover Tatja Grimm, ignorant but unexpectedly intelligent, who is a perfect match for the character Hrala, Barbarian Princess. When the ship runs into trouble at one of their ports of call with the Termite Folk, who take this fiction very seriously, Tatja is used to bluff an escape. "Fast Times at Fairmont High" First appearance in this collection. It occurs in the same milieu as Rainbows End. Fairmont High is an advanced high school in a future where everyone has access to almost unlimited computation and bandwidth. A distributed network of tiny nodes (akin to the localizers in Rainbows End), which can be found on clothing and all over streets and houses, allows people to superimpose an augmented reality on their real environment, as well as