(more bug comic) Here is Bryan, at his rented house in Newton, looking at the water bill that his mom forwarded to him. It's a thousand dollars. Patrick managed to run that up by running the water in the sink 24/7 because it sounded "peaceful". So now Bryan needs to deal with it, before the University tosses him out for non-payment of utilities. It's going to clean out his bank account (and his microscope fund) for the summer. He's going to have to figure out something else for groceries. As soon as he gets out of his mowing clothes he'll get on the train, go to Wellington, go to a bank, transfer money, and go donate some blood at the Wellington Hospital. They always need mer blood, and they'll pay cash for it. The rental house is very old, probably built in the 20th century, though nobody knows what it was for. The inside has been renovated to be two apartments and a kitchen, with an interior courtyard. The rental agent told Bryan it was "bugproof", which puzzled him--he was more interested in the fact that it had a generator, and a washer *and dryer* He'd have a real stove to cook on and he could type up his notes with electric light instead of candles. Of course there were some inconveniences--he can't get his thumb into the thumb reader because of his claws, so he's stuck using a key card to open the door, and when he opens the door, the porch light goes out--some wiring genius used the power supply for the lock for the light as well, and there isn't enough for both. The skylight, by the way, is part of a cockpit of a Northwest Territory jet fighter that crashed near the Azali base 100 years ago, and some thrifty person didn't want it to go to waste. The transparent aluminum is bulletproof, too. If you climbed up on the town water tower (which you can just see on the right) you could look north, right at the "front door" of the base, where Blade and Shadow are busy prying metal off the door at the moment Bryan opened his letter. Bryan has a package, too--that is the little red tag thing in the mailbox, it's a package notice for him to go pick it up at the post office. Probably an early birthday present. The two butterflies are cabbage butterflies--Bryan would tell you they were Peiris Rapae, if he wasn't so distracted.