>From: 7@arms.UUCP@ufl.edu (Drifter...)
Subject: About last night...
Date: 17 Apr 91 15:36:14 GMT
Lines: 162


   Nicholas, a modified Russian, was jacked into a dream.
   The dream was a machine, somewhere in the Northern segment of the Sprawl.

   He had grown up operating mechs. Controlling as much as half the equipment
on his father's farm in the Ukraine Republic when he was only eleven. He had
sold the whole business when his father died, used the revenue to optimize his
neural response time and replace the simple agricultural neural jack with a
top-of-the-line universal device jack. The young man had been hired by the
first Western construction company he applied with.
    Nicholas spent many years operating cranes, bulldozers, carriers, various
'bots, even a subterranean digger. He spent an unhappy seven months in the
Sprawl, repairing decaying domes with small welding drones.
    When the military executed the company for infringement of contract, he
spent a little more than a year with the army, quality testing tanks and
panzers. He lost his vision to a misfired chemical bullet, was given cheap
plastic replacements, and went back to the private sector, running small
industrial production plants.
    Nicholas had never operated a machine like the one whispering through the
Sprawl.
    Eventually, the organization had found him, recruited him with little
effort, and implemented his skills. They even managed to find some used
organic replacements for his eyes. He was happy, until he was told he would be
going to the Sprawl.

    The middle-aged Russian's socket was just slightly warmer than his body
temperature. Silky fibers of an unbinded optical cable flowed out of the
neural jack like feathery hair. At the other end of the cable, a luggage-sized
steel box. Within the box, a heavily modified aerospace tranceiver.
    In a long neglected warehouse by a stagnant waterfront, Nicholas kept
reign on the machine called an ND-128. His eyes closed against the thickly
dusted collection of plastic furniture and crumbling cardboard boxes. His
fingers laying on a small, customized cyber deck. Not jacked into cyberspace,
but into the world of the ND-128.
    Wandering through the Sprawl was an organized bundle of conductive
plastics, multi-spectrum sensor arrays, and cleverly mapped software. Almost
thinking, it was a practical work of art. Nicholas could feel the sharp gleam
of the mech's functions, like darting silverfish in cold, clear water.
Smoothly articulating limbs propelled it, a tumbleweed through the shadows.
    He had been sent with the equipment to Seattle from his home in Texarina.
Given no orders, false ID with background, and a significant amount of NuYen
(supposedly untraceable), he felt better staying in the warehouse he had
broken into than any Sprawl hotel. Not so much safer as cleaner.
    After three days in the dreary, arid atmosphere of the warehouse, eating
freeze-dried buritos and drinking bottled water, he had received orders.
    The ready light on the tranceiver box had started glowing, a big round
amber light in the dim shadows of the warehouse.

    When jacked into the mech, Nicholas was in a complex, short-range
universe. Infrared, ultrasound, low-level X-rays; a diced view of the world.
Somehow, it seemed to flow into a smooth, interlocked model. The mech moved
rapidly, almost silently, under its own power. Nicholas was to keep his charge
on track and out of trouble.
    Previously, he had rode along as his unit, along with another, went to
some back-alley little bar, populated with the sort of folk that Nicholas
hated the Sprawl for. Two men were taken, others killed or injured.
    He had been ordered not to interfere with the ND-128's behavior unless
they deviated from an expected pattern. He did not know why the plastic
hunters were expected to kill.
    After releasing their charges to silent, cautious people with a hovervan
several miles away, one unit was shut down and carted off. The other was left
behind, to perform general espionage while Nicholas monitored. There were
already a number of mechs out in the Sprawl streets, what was one more?
    Nicholas began to really enjoy his task, despite the location.

    Clicking along softly, rolling out of a grimy, brittle residential
section. Spiraling wasps nest pattern of houses, layers constructed upon
layers. Their cheap metal and plastic frameworks glittered faintly through the
mech's perceptions. Ruddy fuzzy glows moved aimlessly in the photon cages.
    Pause. Analyze (flicking silver arrows in a icy lake). *Skitter skitter*
    Examine (cermet brick wall, filled with purplish-yellow stress seams like
jumbled scarves). Jump.
    Pause...
    A shout of surprise; someone carrying a dufflebag full of wadded up
clothing. Jump*Skitter*Hide. Nicholas was carried along with the mech's
rabbit-like reflexes. He never had to interfere.
    Examine (lifeless remains inside a mobile dumpster covered with faded
BioHazard labels. Strange metal fragment inside the wall corner of a
building.)
    Decision. *Skitter skitter skitter...*
    The plastic artifact rolled swiftly onwards, questing for pattern matches
and internal balances. It would watch events undetected, the backstage
workings of the street life. Graceful twirlings of gang knife fights.
Impersonal, blank faced men surrounded by muscularly enhanced body-guards.
    The modified Russian was enthralled. Even when the machine witnessed
quietly from a rooftop a woman killing some young man in a dark alley,
littering the dark ground with blood. He found himself wondering who the other
man nearby was. Passer-by? Boyfriend? Employer?
    His dislike for the Sprawl never wavered. But it wasn't as strong as the
fascination with this strange machines functions, bordering on pure thought.

    The pressure of his bladder forced Nicholas to jack out of the ND-128
system. The clean, semi-transparent world popped into itself and he was again
in the warehouse, sweating slightly in a body molding chair, optical cable in
one hand. The thermal plastic padding wheezed as he got up. Nicholas felt
confident that his mech charge would function obtusely on its own for a short
time.
    He left the warehouse to trek to the nearest sanitary facilities, a public
restroom once claimed by the Agressor Perfectors when this part of Seattle had
been more populated. It was a nerve-wracking trip for a man armed with only
minimal, nearly worthless combat training and a very visible flechette gun.
    When he returned to the warehouse, Nicholas thought someone was watching
from an adjacent storage building (A flicker of darker shadow within shadow.)
His hand squeezed against the grip of the flechette gun. Standing still as
possible, he waited for the sudden impact of someone's long-distance
artillery.
    Many minutes later, when he had convinced himself he was alone and had
re-entered the warehouse, he was unpleasantly surprised to find that the
ND-128 had gotten into some sort of war zone. With a mental gesture, he
experienced an encapsulated replay of the mech's activities since he left.
    Another mech, large and massive compared to his charge, encountered
suddenly. Insect-like, armed, it had for some reason focused on the ND-128,
giving chase. The spiderish hunter stopped suddenly shortly in its pursuit,
but the evasive mech operated on a hierarchy of reflexes and continued to
travel at highest speed, far away from populated areas.
    Now it was moving jerkily, five leg bundles questing for purchase, past
craters and dark, shimmering objects buried below the ragged earth. Nicholas
could feel the bursts of conflict (a pressure in his inner ears, almost an
ache) when it would come too near the explosives scattered about. The juggling
of multiple danger vectors felt like dry leaves whipping in a dust devil. He
itched to pull the machine out, but Nicholas didn't feel confident in being
able to do it without a mis-step.
    A shift in direction, seemingly chosen at random, and the mech was trapped
by a coincidental pattern of mines, craters, and cluster bombs. For the first
time unable to decide on its own, the mech cried to Nicholas for help (a soft,
liquid chime in the back of his head, reverberating).
    The only thing Nicholas could do was push the ND-128 past its natural
responses. It clicked and spun into the air, landing with a crumpling noise in
a large, fresh crater. Immediately, he felt the mech panicking, trying to
escape the pit. It took Nicholas a moment to realize the scrambling machine
was reacting to the presence of a man.
    Now he too began to panic. Nicholas had thought the machine was isolated,
unlikely to even be detected. Now there was someone to witness its existence
and possibly even disable it. The mech, a very dangerous secret, couldn't
hide. With no weapons enabled, it couldn't kill.
    Still and quiet, the man watched the ND-128 intently. Something in his
chest was making the mech buzz with urgency to get as far away as possible.
Nicholas swore when he realized this man might see as much of the mech as it
did of him. With a flash of insight born from desperation, Nicholas triggered
a chain of actions the mech would never initiate on its own.
    Clattering and flicking up little clods of dirt as it took on a four-
limbed form, rear limbs folded in for leaping. Then it bounded into the air,
landing on the man's shoulders only long enough to gain the extra height to
clear the crater edge. Without a pause it engaged a sharply curving escape
route through the firing range. No jerks or bursts of conflict. Self-
preservation and avoiding detection were no longer important to the mech's
strange mind. Escape was all encompassing in its demand. Nicholas felt the
mech's destination, a drop site far away, like the bottom of a funnel with the
ND-128 a rivulet of mercury pouring downwards. It had already pre-empted him,
using the tranceiver to signal for pick-up. And it shut him out of its
perceptions.
    Nicholas felt old and tired. He wasn't needed anymore. Something had
happened, he didn't know what or even understand why. He jacked out and sat in
the dusty darkness, optical cable curled uselessly, waiting for the amber eye
of the tranceiver to fade out.

==========================================================================
Copyright (C) 1991 by Drifter... (7%arms.uucp@ufl.edu) - Rights reserved
All characters trademarked by author, except man in crater, and can
not be used without permission. Hopefully, Ken won't be mad about the
bit in the crater.
Yes, the storyline WILL continue. "I'm not dead yet!"