From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dog Days pt 0 of 30
Date: 30 Jul 1995 12:09:15 -0500

Dog Days A CyberFiction Novel
 by:  Bob Wilson Copyright1993 by Bob Wilson Disclaimer:  This story is
graphic in content.  It contains Adult language.  Do Not Read If you are
offended by:  Trashy Language, The Homosexual Subculture, Drugs, Alcohol,
or Violence.  IF you do read further, have a sense of humor for Christ's
sake.  This book is dedicated to my best friend in the world:  Miss
Leurlene Cassavettes (A.k.a. Timothy J. Ludwig) Who has also known a Mean
Queen or Three in her time.  "I'm not mean, I'm Scottish."  - Sean Connery
"The deadliest Bullshit is odorless and transparent."  - William Gibson
1988 "I have finally found something interesting to do, and time to do
it."  - Winslow Homer "This we know. The Earth does not belong to us; we
belong to the Earth.  This we know. All things are connected like the
blood which unites one family. All things are connected."  - Chief Seattle
"A family is a circle of friends who love you."  

Prologue:
	The System Operator plugged the ultraconductive interface cable
into his skull datajack set into his temple, sat back in his big
comfortable chair and tried to relax by doing deep breathing exercises,
which usually never did anything more for him, than make him dizzy.
Nervously, he then ran a quick systems diagnostics and again re-checked
his biofeedback programs one more time, just to make sure everything was
set. The machine would be his lifeline to the realworld once he was under
the wire.
	Glancing at the digital readout on the wallscreen, he could feel
time slicing itself into even more tenuous strands as it was nearly time
for him to take over Nebula 3.
	It was His turn again! He grinned popping his knuckles.
	Checking his machine one last time, he merely had to wait. (As if
that were all there was to it.) He did this every Friday afternoon. It was
more than just an event for him. It was a sacred ritual
	Hitting himself in the thigh with a KwikShot of Nootryptal, he
rubbed his leg and tossed the KwikShot at the trash can, missing, watching
the KwikShot tumble across the carpeting.
	Oh Well. It would wait until he came out from under the wire.
	Looking over at Albert Einstein smiling down on him, he again read
the caption beneath the mans face, a quote...
	"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It
is the source of all true art and science." - Albert Einstein 1930.
	So true dear Albert. It just doesn't get much better than this.
	He watched the countdown in the upper right hand corner of the
wallscreen and waited. This was always the hardest part. Waiting. The
wanting of the thing and having to wait for it. How many years as a
Console Jock, a Matrix Cowboy, and a Byte Bagger had he spent in the
waiting and the wanting of this moment that came to him every Friday?
	00:03... 00:02... 00:01... and he was There.
	The universe exploded around his mind. And he saw God. All the
higher glories spread before him as a buffet for him to sample. Luscious
fields of data cascading through his senses, gratifying a hunger that few
could know, and even fewer could understand.
	Actually, it was just a normal, routine hand-off from one system
operator to another, unremarkable in any way. Oh, but the Mystery of it
all. And then, at least the wanting of the thing was over again. For a
while anyway.
	One second he was watching the screen countdown, and then
suddenly, he was the screen. He knew the screen. He knew the Nebula. The
consensual hallucination of Machine Space blossomed inside his brain. As
he felt himself hurtling upward through the black sky of the matrix he
thought it was both beautiful and terrifying in its complexity and
proportions.
	The Network filled his senses and became a part of his essence.
The universe twists in on itself and flips inside out around him.
	I am the Matrix; I am the weave that brings all the strands
together.
	He took a deep breath of Universe and relaxed, smiling inwardly to
himself at the serenity in the seeming confusion. His mind was a careful
blend of thoughts, herded along through the Machine Space around him, made
possible by his skull datajack and the biochips in his brain.  His
thinking was not linear sequential thinking, but a rich and delicate blend
of parallel superconductive ultra high speed processing that only a
connoisseur of the cybernetic Arts could appreciate.
	In one way, he was lost in the Network, less than himself, losing
parts of himself to it, and yet in another, it was more like he became
something More with the Network in him and surrounding him. He was the
very fabric of time and space. He was the All. The thing which is
searching for itself and cannot see. Transcendental.
	His sensorium was a composite mixture, an overlap of virtual
reality, what his senses were telling him was real, the interfaces, and
the data. It was a communal mind pool of Humaniform Intelligence. An eight
dimensional world. He was God, listening to the universe breathe softly.
	Data flew through his mind faster than he comprehended it fully,
needing only to run comparisons of log-entries, security access approvals,
file integrity checks, parity bits, on-line status, and on and on and on.
	Occasionally pieces of the Network came through the biochip
barrier in his brain and filtered through to his consciousness, though
mostly it came through as a dreamline of data.
	People once openly smoked on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson!
	Another part of his consciousness, which had fragmented with the
explosion into "Other" flesh, whispered to him the names of people who
were once on that old TV show from a century ago. Frank Sinatra, Jerry
Lewis, Dean Martin, Hugh Hefner, Twiggy, Peter Paul & Mary, while each of
these databytes connected with whole other databases which he knew could
be accessed through their file names. Woodstock. The 1960's, Palm Springs,
Playboy, The Playboy Mansion.
	Data poured through him. He was the vessel. He was the funnel. He
was the data as well. Every fact was simply another RNA sequence to
unravel before his mind. It was the most natural thing in the world. Like
breathing. The data was the information. The information was in fact
itself. It was he and he knew himself as being whole, in and of himself.
And the data flowed.
	The 1960's. John F. Kennedy is sworn in as the youngest U.S.
President. Washington breaks diplomatic ties with Cuba. U.S. Presidential
press conference televised for the first time. Major Robert White sets
record of 2,650 miles per hour in X-15 Rocket plane. Dr.Louis Leaky
unearths the earliest human bones ever found. Floyd Paterson KO's Ingemar
Johansson to retain Heavyweight title. Peace Corps begin it's first
project helping develop roads in Tanganyika. Soviet Union puts first man
in space. Five weeks later U.S. puts second man in space. Ike warns
America against the growing military industrial complex. The Agony and the
Ecstasy and Stranger in a Strange Land are published. Bay of Pigs landing
in Cuba is a fiasco. Bob Dylan (20) makes his first stage appearance in
Greenwich Village. Disney Releases 101 Dalmatians. Rudolph Nureyev defects
from Soviet Union. Chubby Checker introduces "The Twist".  X-15 sets new
speed record of 3,477 miles per hour. "West Side Story"  opens. Gary
Cooper, Carl Jung, Ty Cobb, and Ernest Hemmingway die.  Soviets sign ten
year military pact with North Korea. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is
published. JKF begins major South America tour in Caracas.  Packers blank
New York Giants 37-0 for the NFL title. Eighteen U.S.  amateur figure
skaters are lost in an air crash. A.J.Foyt wins the 49th Indy 500,
averaging 139.1 MPH. Navy over Army 13-7. Judgments at Nuremburg opens.
Adolph Eichmann is sentenced to death. Roger Maris hits record 61st home
run. U.S. soldier James Davis became 1st American slain by Viet Cong.
	He got a shopping cart for his 6th birthday. Yet he was the little
plastic shopping cart, It's stock number, and ID code, It computer
reference file, it's bar coded ident, the 6th and the birthday, all at the
same time, while not knowing who He was. The SysOp knew He certainly
hadn't received a shopping cart for his 6th birthday, because He got a
bike. It was the data. It was only the data.
	He had to watch that.
	 I am the Matrix. I alone form the electron horizons of CyberSpace.
	It was all too easy to lose one's "Self", Id or Ego to the
datastreams that flowed through the Net. Oceans of data. It contained the
self as the self contained it. It was one of the hazards of being a Meat
Matrix.
	Holding an entire universe of information contained in a single
human mind was an impossibility only a few dozen years before. He knew
that. He remembered that. Now though, it was an easy thing.
	Well, maybe not all that easy, since he sat in front of about a
half a million credits worth of superframe computer system. Of course, it
didn't cost the SysOp that much. He had a great deal worked out with a
Techie friend of his.
	Through gray contacts, the Sysop was able to buy the latest tech
toys at wholesale minus. He paid for the Tech and his friend installed
them for next to nothing. The SysOp got the cutting edge tech for next to
nothing and his Techie friend got to play with all the neat hardware. A
mutually beneficial agreement.
	But that was just the money part.
	The training the SysOp had gone through to get where he was today,
the yearning for more and more information, the wanting to learn how it
all worked, and finally getting wired for the process. The System was ALL
for him.
	 The 1960's poured through him in a matter of a few milliseconds,
on it's way to That logged-on user. Right there. And it all flowed so
perfectly naturally.
	The biochips of his brain encrypted the data and sent it through
the cellular network, and all the while, intellectually he knew, there
might be one or two people out there who just happened to guess which
algorithm key he was using at this particular moment, and might decipher
the encryption. That is, IF anyone was listening in, on this cellular
system, to His frequency of NebNet KC-3, offline from ComWeb, and was
wanting to access the 1960's. The odds were against it though.
	People made such great computers!
	He remembered the 1960's as a database contained within the
network, but it came to him through his own memory; he 'remembered' it
despite the fact that it was an era long before he was even born.
	There were toys that could hurt you. People actually believed the
president (see United States pre WW III), TV was a "Baby-sitter" that
programmed generations of people to live the American way of life that
never really existed at all. It was an ideal to constantly strive for.
Spend more to be as much like that ideal as possible. None ever reached
their goals.
	New's wasn't just good PR, it was actual News. (Or so they
thought), where soft porn was enough, a little T&A (Tits and Ass) was
considered Risque', Keds & PF Flyers, Hoola Hoops, Red Wagons, Chrome
Bikes, Gravel roads, and then it was over.
	The file ended and his mind returned to the housekeeping routines
of the network. Were all the files closed? What was the cellular integrity
at the moment? Who were the users logged on? Were their account passwords
correct? Had there been any reports of misconduct from the previous SysOp?
Are all the members in good standing? The off-line universe that was
NebNet KC-3 was his utmost concern.
	The electronic tribes and virtual nations of the communications
web depended greatly on The SysOp's channels of communication and not
their physical locale. Knowledge workers no longer had to be within
commuting distance of their jobs. They didn't even have to be on the same
continent, or for that matter, the same planet as the employer. The result
was that ComWeb (The communications web), the Nets and The Matrix changed
other facets of society as well.
	Lifelong friends might never even meet face to face. They forever
traveled the artificial environments and virtual clubs of The Matrix.
	One part of him was aware of the datastream bouncing off the
Intelsat-4 from the Hubble II Scope in orbit, coming in as a microwave
signal, while another watched multiple input levels on 16 screens, 40
windows, and 30 cable channels, only a slice of the NebNet, spread out on
the wallscreen in front of him, any of which he could enter or withdraw
from at will.
	Another watched the progress of the nationwide game "Galactic
Warrior" where contestants interacted with each other, playing in a
virtual reality environment for The Galactic Medal of Honor.
	Actually, he was controlling three different versions of the games
in the Nebula. The New Gameland, the GAMZ circuit, and ARCADE.  Galactic
Warrior was just one game in The New Gameland.
	One kid, a fairly new user, was downloading a flashchip
personality file of the character James Bond, whereupon, after he inserted
his new found personality into his chipware socket, he would become James
Bond for all intents and purposes, and be able to walk around in the
realworld as the character, with all it's behavioral attributes, at least
as long as he kept the flashchip in his chipware socket. On the outside
however, he was still that same14 year old kid.
	There were two users logged on that were currently in the
artificial reality club room of the Net.
	"So how's things in the father land?"
	"Fine. Miss Bunny is peddling gold again. Looking for people who
understand Biz."
	"Have you ever been diving before?"
	All of it was a part of him. He had only to direct his thoughts in
that place and he became the data. Each channel another personality to
assume for a few slices of time. Each database another attribute of his
past. Even if only while he was playing SysOp. He was a Technomancer.
	Demands on other systems within the Net pulled and stretched his
mind to dimensions he never thought before possible. In the real world, he
sat in a chair quietly crying to himself out of the sheer joy of it all.
	Getting credit, buying equipment through a local retailer, phony
ID's from half way around the planet, bribes sent over Western Union
CommNet lines, and "Whatever it takes to get the job done."
	Each disjointed byte of information a part of the seething whole
that made up the Nebula. A miniature version of the ComWeb, kept quietly
off-line from the realworld, nonusers, intelligent programs, and
artificial intelligences. A private universe.
	One user logged on and was perusing the files of plagues past
present and predicted, giving special attention to some specialized
mildews and genetically designed molds that were used in various wars in
the past.
	The thought of the Biowars beginning again made him shudder in the
realworld. But his was not to censure. His job was to provide access.
	A kid logged on out in Olathe suburb typed his report one letter
at a time. Though the SysOp had him timed at 120 words per minute, each
key stroke took an eternity of time to complete...
	"Burning barrels are the social clubs of skid row. The poverty
stricken version of a day at the office which amounted to information
exchanged. Talk. Bottles. Addresses changed to the terrain of trash." The
kid typed so slowly!
	That was the pity of having to return to the realworld. The
slowness.
	In the nebula, there was an unspoken agreement of all for
cooperation. It was the shared pool of Humaniform Intelligence. An
agreement to being ripped off, while showing the ripper that it wasn't
worth his while to take the game too far. Meanwhile, the data flowed.
	We Be's.
	A kid of 12 going on 160.
	Sterile credit changing hands.
	Mainframes and superframes logging on for interface, the SysOp
knowing that though they may be impressive systems, his own mind in it's
current state was something closer to Gods own.
	"I'm 12 years old. I tell you that so you can slowly consider how a
12 year old can what I can do."
	Israeli Uzi Needlers. A shipment lost in transit.
	Hiring oneself out to his own enemy, under an assumed name, hired
to look for and then murder himself. That which seeks itself cannot see.
	Transmission of a still-store of the Dunhill Building, a 60 story
knife piercing the sky.
	A NuzKlip of the recent mania in Chicago for skyscraper
architects.
	Killing a shuttle full of passengers just to get at one.
	Another user accessing a file on terrorism techniques, currently
examining a case last year where VICAR terrorists had taken out 137
victims in 36 hours. They had placed 50 car bombs around the city in
various cars, taxis, buses, transports, trains, shuttles, etc to take out
only 3 or 4 city officials. They had released the news through NuzKlips so
the news would cause social unrest as well as running the cops and
Enforcers short on manpower. Second and third shifts were required, which
stretched nerves, patience, rational and logical thinking of the cops as
well as the public, far past the breaking point. No one knew where one
might strike next.
	He didn't have to like the data. But he did. It was him. At least
for his turn at control of it.
	"I congratulate you on what you're trying to do."
	Some disjointed bleed-through from a user to user communication in
yet another virtual meeting room. He could whip the rooms up on demand.
All the user had to do was request access and his mind would form that
part of the universe for them.
	Someone leaving dirty credit laying around for someone else to
pick up and lead a trail somewhere else, in another direction.
	Someone trying to be still enough in the realworld so that the
surface tension of the subculture would forget them. Becoming a new face
at "The New You" shop after only a few weeks out of sight, out of mind
from chemicaled minds.
	9th planet: "Pluto". Diameter: 0.5 Orbital distance: 39.4 AU.
Inclination f orbit: 17 degrees 10 seconds.
	10th planet: "Persephone". Diameter: 3 Earths. Orbital distance:
75 AU. Inclination of orbit: 4.74 degrees.
	11th planet: "Xochtil" Diameter 1.059 Orbital distance: 96 AU.
Inclination of orbit: 2.09 degrees
	12th planet: "Flower" Diameter:: 1.618 Orbital distance: 150 AU.
Inclination of orbit: .44 degrees.
	Discussion of quality products from the third world.
	A group of children running the underworld.
	Tech-9's vs. 6-Shooter 38's.
	"You know what's on the menu."
	"Marionettes"
	"The smell of a problem by it's style."
	"Meet me at the As-Tek bar."
	No matter what level you think you are, there's always one higher.
Even at The Top there are higher Tops.
	The rotating SysOps of the Nebula Networks are running a system
that is actually a man. He IS the system.
	Being the system, one cannot see the true scope of it.
	The Nebula flickered and wavered for a moment in realtime space.
	The SysOp nearly crashed the system in his attempt to consider
that one byte of data. Sweat popped out on his forehead as he quickly
regained control of the universe.
	Wait a second!
	What was that? Was it data? Was it communication between users?
Was it a transmission bleeding through the cellular system? Was it an
original thought?
	Whatever it was, he filed the incident under problems, giving as
detailed an explanation as possible, given his lack of attention at the
time, so the next SysOp would be aware that something like this might
happen again.
	In the meantime, clock-cycles told him he had housekeeping
routines to run. He certainly didn't want to screw up now, and possibly
screw up this great honor. It was Everything to him to get to be SysOp one
day a week for a ten hour shift. Life was made possible through this
chance.
	So shake it off and get with the Program!
	The pain of being so psychically sensitive that existence around
people is in itself tortuous. He needed constant pain killers and downers
to numb away the realworld. Light sensitive, sound, odor, touch, taste,
they all bothered him.
	Only in the Nebula was he both more and less than human. He had
found out early on that this pseudo-universe was addictive. After you got
a taste of this world, you never want anything else. You don't even want
real life.
	Even when he was not on duty as SysOp for the Nebula Network, he
slept in it. Jacked in. At first, his cohorts were concerned over this,
thinking maybe he had got a hold of a Spazz program or something, but
since then, sleeping Jacked into the matrix has caught on as a cult.
Lot's of NebNet-3 users slept jacked in.
	In return, they brought their dreams, and yes, their nightmares,
to the universe of the Nebula. These too could be accessed by users...
that is, IF you had the guts. The human psyche was something so
horrendously hideous, and at the same time more benignly beautiful, than
anything every before dreamed of on the psycho-analytical couches of mans
past. Only with the advent of biocircuitry, the BioChip, made possible by
the Nanotechnology revolution, could mans mind, the collective conscious,
and subconscious, be accessed as a series of computerized data-streams.
	Either as stored files, (which every user who slept in the matrix
had their dreams automatically stored to flashchip for future access) or
the user could log on and access the dreamer directly in realtime, even
going so far as to visit them in their dreams. Though by special
invitation only. Mind-Invasion was a particularly heinous crime against
man, even though there were no laws covering the handling of such
criminals. Mind-Rape was more the term.
	The SysOp's single attempt at virtual sex was with a Bitch he will
never forget. She was a rather cold hearted woman with a bizarre
fascination. Her words to him that day were: "You may be the practitioner
of breeding my little friend, but I am the student of human sexuality."
He never tried it again. Sex just wasn't that important to him.
	Anymore, he seemed to be a person who enjoyed taking the psychic
pulse of the NebNet subculture. He is trying to become more open minded in
his decision making processes, despite his personal feelings going into
the situation. It's as if the faster synaptic reflex of the Net gave him
true objectivity. He thought perhaps this might be a useful genome to
store for further study.
	Then, little by little, he became aware that something was
becoming terribly Wrong! Cliff "Happy" Braverman was demanding Chat-Mode
with him, just as he noticed the problem. People were locked into the
system.
	Something was preventing them from logging on or off from the
Nebula.
	They were trapped in the universe.
	He quickly ran down the list of current users logged on:  Name or
Handle - Company or Originating System :  Current Activity
Cliff
"Happy"
Braverman
 -
 Sonywalk
PC
2000
 :
 Chat-Mode
"Mac"
Doug
Nasser
-
Haunted
House
VR
 :
 Electronic Faxmail
"Rif"
Gorcey
 -
 Wilkesbarre
Xenomorph
Institute
 :
 Directory of Services
"Russ
"Fang"
Fanger
 -
 Circuit
City
 :
General messages bulletin board
Henry
"Smoke"
Ranchot
 -
 New
World
Television
 :
 Storing personal files
Gervay
Kiplinger
 -
 Allen
Heating
&
Cooling
 :
 General messages board
Popelka
Dahl
 -
 Brown
Mackie
College
 :
 Scanning personals
Bob
"Bobby"
Renzetti
 -
 Bobby's
World
 :
 Working on a VR environment
Casella
Berks
 -
 Equus
Meats
 :
 Trading illegal programs with friends
Gavin
Parks
 -
 Macintosh
home
system
 :
 Looking to buy a Gatling gun Taneeka Shimoda - Black & Decker PC :
Talking with Andora King Andora King - Apple :  Talking with Taneeka
Shimoda Shanequa Rochella Jones - Custom Cyberdeck :  Checking drug prices
"Apache" Shung - Toon World :  Uploading his latest creation "Chic" Noah
Beery - CD Restoration :  Playing Galactic Warrior Don "Coyote" Sharbov -
TLC-Discovery-PBS :  Trying to Logoff Matt "Sancho" Bahr - Feliniesque
Settings Inc :  Trying to Logoff Vernon "Pooh" Bari - Traffik Watch :
Checking the latest drug shipment Elsa "Garbo" Klensch - Nabisco MegaCorp
:  Looking to hire a Netrunner Dave "Groucho" Holtz - Maids, Butlers,
Domestics & Slaves :  Just logged on Oscar "King" Rutz - Black Box
Corporation :  Just logged on Gerald "Phoenix" Eaton - Virtual Outdoor
Recreations :  Writing software Andrew "OK" Oakes - Z-G Training :  Trying
to get back satellite lock Rhonda "Bunny" Douglas - Dopplegangers Inc :
Leaving business card Cary "Race Track" Jones - The New You :  Just logged
on Zack "Mutley" Adams - The Louvre :  Looking for a black box builder
Zeek "BooBoo" Adams - Career Search Inc :  Looking for his brother Charles
"Yogi" Uechtritz - Personality Designs :  Leaving price quotes Virginia
"Zorro" Perot - Audio/Video Productions :  Calling up city map Georgia
"Captain" Segall - Better Than Life Memories :  Directory listing Natalie
"Mystery" Drury - Virtual Constructions :  Scanning personals Richard
"Dutch" Flemming - BeDazzling Hallucinations Inc - Just logged on Dimitri
"Pony" Walker - Biohazard containments :  Trying to logoff
	Nothing out of the ordinary. Soon however, he was going to be
swamped with demands for attention from each user. Those on the outside
wanting in, well, that was another problem. One he had no control over.
	THIS however was something else. He was responsible for these
people. And he had their minds effectively locked inside this universe,
with no way out except through him, and all his triple-blind lines of
communication in and out of the Nebula had been either severed or frozen.
	This had never happened before.
	He could at least notify them all of the situation and let them
know that help would soon be on the way. For them not to panic.
	Everything was going to be ok. This was a virtual universe.
Anything that was outside was inside as well. All he had to do was think
it up for them. They would all be comfortable. He hoped to himself that it
was true.
	The SysOp didn't know at the time, it would be several days
realtime before help arrived. That meant Years in virtual time.
	Those 34 people got to be closer than most friends ever could in
that short/long length of time. They learned to both like and dislike it.
Alliances were formed and disbanded. Ideas were tried and failed.
Thoughts, emotions and dreams exchanged. Programs were traded.
Information changed hands.
	One user would teach them all about Shapeshifters. The next would
teach them all about police harassment techniques. The next gave them all
copies of programs like Michaelangelo, Trap Doors, Von Neumanns, Robert
Morris Viruses, Pakistani Brain, Alameda College Variants, and explained
how each of them worked and how they could be used to ones advantage.
	It was like being stranded on a desert isle. And in a way, it was
fun.

From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dog Days pt 1 of 30
Date: 30 Jul 1995 12:12:26 -0500

Chapter One
	Truforms versus the Cybernetix.
	Houston stood panting, glancing nervously at the noon crowd
milling past, staring at him curiously, near the end of the alley,
watching him closely with an eye of cautious suspicion. RandomForms,
CyberForms, Androids, Genotype Designs, PreSelects, Cyborgs, all people
making up the divisions of the HumaniForms, and the PseudoLifes.
	TruForms and Cybernetix.
	It had been that way since Houston could remember. It had always
been that way. It probably always would be. It was the natural order of
things. There always had to be a "Them" and an "Us". Right now, Houston
was very glad to be one of us.
	It was strange though, in the fact that before now, it had mostly
been a political struggle between the races. Mostly. Slaves, it seemed,
were back in vogue.
	 Even in the background noise of the city crowd, he could hear a
boombox playing speedthrash at annoying decibel levels. They were all
curious.
	Looking down at the near lifeless CyberForm man, laying in the
scorching summers heat, slumped and shredded against the wall in the
rotting stench of the dark alley, his poly vinyl aluminum frame jutting
through the carbon composite flesh, Houston wondered if he shouldn't feel
more pity towards the man than he did. After all, he had known a few Netix
growing up. A couple were even really nice people.
	Not this one though. No. Not nice at all.
	These are the Dog Days of Humanity.
	Things had changed so much from when he was a kid. He thought to
himself as he left the mouth of the alley, pushing his way through the
milling bodies who were standing ogling the scene in the summer heat, and
headed for the Gay bar across the street. Yukon Jacks. His friends still
waited for him at their daily liquid lunch.
	Things had been very different when he was a kid.
	Growing up in Kansas City, after the war, he had to listen to more
than a few stories of what things used to be like "In The Before Times",
and sometimes he even enjoyed the stories (Not all of which he believed),
but he was able to see clearly, in his own 30 years of life that things
were not at all what they used to be.
	This was a new here and now.
	Things have become... what? Mean? Nasty?
	Houston certainly couldn't remember any stories of anyone being
attacked by a CyberForm before. They had no reason to attack HumaniForms
like himself.
	They simply went about their electronic lives, thinking their
electronic thoughts, dreaming their electronic dreams, and left everyone
alone, even if they did hate our guts.
	So why did this one grab him and pull him into the alley? No one
said it was going to be like this when he grew up.
	Houston hadn't even waited for an explanation. That had never been
an option. Moving as fast as he did, came from an instinct he had
developed over years, as a child growing up in MidTown, being so close to
the street day after day, and growing up with a fear of the PseudoLifes.
	Blind reaction. Houston had just fired until the Tech-9 clip was
empty, and then paused to see what it was that had grabbed him. The
CyberForm shouldn't have grabbed him.
	Oh Well. People who take the law into their own hands end up dying
by it too. Those were the rules.
	It was only after he had emptied the clip, that his grip on the
flat black finish of the Tech-9 had loosened long enough for him to get
another clip out and slapped in, listening for any small movement in the
area that surrounded him in now dead silence, before he realized he was
running on automatic. And then he realized the crowd standing by,
passively watching.
	That was the way they had done it when he was little. Shoot until
there was nothing else left to shoot. If YOU didn't finish the job, THEY
were going to.
	The Android neighborhood across the parkway from his own
neighborhood, he remembered, used to have their own survival gangs to get
through junior high. The PseudoLifes were so hateful it seemed.
	That was when he was little though. Now he was Big.
	All growed up, right? Yeah. Right.
	Houston felt his nuts curling up tightly against his body, as well
as the blood pounding in his head, rushing through his brain as he felt
"All Grown Up", wanting desperately to faint after the fly-or-fight
adrenalin rush left him.
	Too bad there wasn't much of the CyberForm man left to do anything
with. This was some expensive tech to just waste. Too bad he was too far
from his apartment. Maybe he could have saved the guy. Or at least parts
of him. Too bad.
	If he were closer to home, Houston could have at least taken the
head into his apartment and done a few scans on it's memories, but then,
his "heat", the Tech-9, a gift from his uncle when he was 12, though a
very old weapon, wasn't meant for hunting "Wascally Wabbits".
	It had but one job. And it seemed to have done it quite well once
again.
	It had all happened so fast!
	As he pushed and shoved his way through the murmuring throng,
Houston shook his head and held out his hand, only to see he was still
trembling.
	Nothing a few cocktails and a string couldn't cure. He thought to
himself, leaving the form in the alley by itself, to die it's own
electronic death alone.
	Yukon Jacks was one of the older bars in town. Left over from way
before world war four even. It still hung on though, and on days when
Houston felt like doing a 24-hour marathon in the bars, he saw that the
crowd picked up considerably at night, after eleven.
	Right now it was Noon though. His close friends were there now.
His drinking buddies and acquaintances.
	He looked back at the alley one last time, still amazed, seeing
the local gutter gangs already scavenging the body for it's precious
metals. Then he took one last breath and stepped inside.
	Standing at the door a moment, as his eyes tried to adjust to the
change in light from the glaring sun reflecting off the front of the
building, Houston squeezed his eyes shut once or twice and took off his
black-rimmed gold mirrorshades, letting them dangle around his neck on
their black nylon cord as he made his way to the end of the bar.
	The faux-tropical "Gilligans Island" motif looked like a set out
of a very old 2d television series he had seen in syndication as a child.
It wasn't 3d, and it certainly wasn't Virtual Reality, since his family
couldn't afford a VR unit until he was about 14, but the old show was
something to make noise in his head, keep his attention, and let's face
it, it was better than The Brady Bunch.
	"Hey Girl!" Came the friendly voice of Leslie Dow, better known to
everyone as simply "Geisha"; Houston's neighbor, friend, and one of his
drinking buddies on their noon break. "Did you see who fired that cannon
just a little while ago?"
	"Yeah." Houston swallowed, sitting down on the bar stool beside
Les.
	"What's up?" The dark, brawny, six foot plus, man asked him as he
looked at Houston holding out his hand again, watching it tremble. "You
get in that?"
	"Yeah." Houston nodded. "Uh, Miss Delta, could I get a cocktail?"
Houston asked taking off his jacket. "Oh man." He sighed shaking his head.
	"Sure baby. You know the routine." The sallow tall thin bartender
said getting up off his own perch on a tired and run-down cooler, which
looked like it dated back to the 1900's, pouring his Yukon & Orange Juice.
"Gotta check the Tech, Honey." He said simply, coming over and holding out
his hand as Houston removed the nylon shoulder holster and handed the
works to him.
	Ralph DeLaude (a.k.a. "Miss Delta") was nothing if not frail. His
illness had become the stuff of legends around Yukon Jacks, even becoming
a running joke. It was common knowledge that "The Bitch is falling apart
on herself". A lot of the regular patrons would go so far as to place bets
in pools as to his next illness.
	"Powder burns." Miss Delta said taking the gun and slinging it over
his shoulder as he fixed the cocktail.
	"Huh?" Houston looked at the man numbly, as if he were one of the
Veloxi aliens speaking to him in their native tongue, or hiss.
	"You have powder burns on your hands." The pale rail thin man said
clearly and slowly, speaking just a bit louder this time, sounding snotty
and irritating, by his tone insinuating that Houston were slow of mind.
"Were you in that across the street?"
	"Yeah." Houston gulped, slamming back the first cocktail and
setting the heavy rock glass back down on the bar with a shiver. Arching
an eyebrow, "Miss Delta" as everyone called the man, took the glass and
refilled it with Houstons regular drink, Yukon Jack and Orange Juice.
Though the Yukon Jack was a 100 proof liquor, the trick was to balance the
dosages of all the chemicals which went into his body. Keeping his intake
at just the right level, so that you didn't pass out from the alcohol, and
the amphetamine didn't explode your brain.
	"Bit of a scuffle eh?" Miss Delta teased, sitting the cocktail
before Houston again as Houston slid his flashchip BancoCard to him. "A
'Tiff' perhaps?"
	Houston could tell from the stillness in the room, that everyone
sitting at the bar staring down at him, were thinking he was messed up in
some dope deal gone wrong. Or worse. Or much worse.
	"Oh Bitch I don't even know your name." Houston frowned at the
debilitated bartender/owner who stood grinning at him. "It's nothing like
that at all." He insisted. "I just got jumped was all."
	"The C-forms are usually on patrol out there." Geisha commented
from where he sat next to Houston, his powerful physique in sharp contrast
to Houstons average build. "They should have been on that right away."
	"It was one of them that jumped me!" Houston exclaimed, looking at
Miss Delta, whom he could see, clearly did not believe him, along with a
lot of his friends.
	Though it was well known, but never discussed that Ralph DeLaude's
lover was a CyberForm Enforcer, people often wondered just what Justin
Smith, (the CyberForm) got out of the relationship. It was so obvious that
Miss Delta was getting the better part of the deal. But then, how many
people really understood the psyche of the CyberForms? Or any of the
Pseudo-Lifes for that matter.
	Most people, once they learned of the somewhat 'Bohemian'
relationship between Miss Delta and Justin Smith, and then saw the picture
behind the bar of the two of them standing together, only shook their
heads and kept their mouth shut after that. Men and machine as lovers? It
was for this reason that Houston didn't really expect Miss Delta to
believe him.
	But it had happened!
	"Come to think of it," Houston paused. "I didn't see any Enforcers
out there at all. I trotted clear across the street and still didn't."
	"They'll track you." His friend Leslie assured him. "Probably
scent. Or infrared." He shrugged, going back to sipping at his own
cocktail. "They'll probably be here any second to take a statement."
	Houston shook his head in disbelief, and then proceeded to dump a
small amount of cocaine out on the bar. It was only Omaha Red, a local and
rather undistinguished brand in Breadbasket that had just recently hit the
street, but his CIA drug dealer at QuikTrip had assured him it would
absolutely kick him in the nuts.
	Though his dealer had lied on this batch (As The Baron seemed to
do every third week of the month.) Houston knew the cocaine would help him
catch his breath and steady his hands, even if he did talk too fast.  He
had to sort out what had just happened. A faster mind would help with that
sorting.
	The string seemed to do the trick, feeling the speedy anesthetics
hit his brain, and brushing at his moustache, he was able to think clearly
again.
	Thank God there was no blood. Just that milky white gooey stuff.
	Dropping the vial back in his silk shirt pocket, and slipping the
little glass straw back into it's pocket in the collar of his shirt, he
was finally ready to speak again.
	"I don't know. I wish they would get here though." Houston let his
leg jump up and down under the bar stool of it's own will, since the fast
jerking rhythm seemed to have it's own calming effect on him.  "Motherfuck
Leslie!" He swore at the bigger man. "Why?"
	"Oh please Girl." Geisha snorted. "Spare me the horse shit. Who
knows why any of that shit goes down out there?" He laughed. "If you gotta
clue, share."
	"Why me? And why a Netix?" Houston looked questioningly at Miss
Delta, realizing too late he shouldn't have used the derogatory name for
CyberForms around him who still didn't look as if he believed Houston.
	In reality, Netix weren't much more than robots. CyberForms,
though electronic life forms, were Not robots. Or so they would tell you
anyway. CyberForms were people. Who could act of their own volition.
Netix simply followed programming.
	"You owe anybody?" Miss Delta asked. "The Baron maybe?"
	"No. I buy all my dope, cash." Houston insisted, shaking his head
firmly. "This was something else. I mean, he could have killed me, before
I had even realized he had his hands on me, and yet he didn't. Why?"
	"Ya got me sugar." The tall feeble man shrugged, moving back to his
perch atop the cooler, where he could overhear any conversation going on
at the bar. During the day it was quiet enough he could carry on a
conversation with anyone sitting in the bar. And HE was a TruForm Natural.
	"Houston, you gotta be involved in something." Geisha said
furrowing his brow.  "People just don't attack each other for no reason."
	"I swear to Christ Geisha!" Houston objected shaking his head. "I
just came in for lunch is all." He swore, lifting the cocktail and holding
it up to show his friend Leslie Dow, as if the rock-glass in his hand were
some final punctuation to proof of the point he was trying to make.
	"Yes, please tell us all. What are you involved in Houston?" Came
the snide remark from a demure voice behind them.
	Shit. Rae Lancer. Bitch Extraordinaire.
	"Piss off my little Bavarian princess." Geisha said tilting his
glass back and sitting it forward to be refilled before he had to return
to the office. "I'm still mad at you, for the other night, when you puked
on my suit coat."
	"Really." Houston finished off his own cocktail and waited for
another as Miss Delta was busy down at the other end. "I'm not ready for
you yet either."
	"You said it yourself Geisha, he has to be involved in something."
Rae smiled at them, leaning on both of their shoulders.  "Isn't it
positively exciting?" He grinned widely. "I wonder what it might be?"
	Houston turned around, letting the mans arm fall and looked at
Rae, who was a regular of the daytime crowd, to find his pupils fixed and
dilate. Crystal Blue Persuasion. Even sodium pentothal had managed to
somehow find it's own uses on the street. Though as a recreational drug,
it wasn't quite that popular.
	"Oh hell Mary. You're not even going to remember this is an hour."
Houston laughed at him. "Go away. I can't be bothered with you."  Houston
said turning around again. "Go sit down Rae." He commanded a little more
forcefully, but in Rae's current state, it didn't take much of a
suggestion to get a response. Crystal Blue had it's uses.
	The man stood behind the two of them for a moment longer, and in
the mirror behind the bar, Houston could see an expression come over Rae's
dulled, sleepy-eyed face, appear that he was just now remembering
something, then went to go sit down carefully at his own cocktail.
	"God I hate this planet!" Houston cursed out loud, yet more to
himself than anyone else. He thought again about emigration out of
EarthSystem.
	Since he was a teenager, growing up in Kansas City, he had wanted
to emigrate to Island One or WestGate, or any of the StarGates out in the
first three tiers of OrganizedSpace. The StarGates were where things were
happening.
	 ANY Starsystem would do though. Hell, at this point, Houston was
willing to settle for something still in HomeSystem, so long as it wasn't
EarthSystem.
	 JoviaSystem wasn't too bad, Saturnia was very civilized, though
it's population was a bit old for his taste, and VenusSystem was ok for a
vacation, but living there would require a little more tolerance for
others than Houston had at this point in his life. He would take what he
could get though. So long as he could get the hell out of here.
	Without realizing it, Houston must have had 'That' look on his
face again, since his friend spoke up right at that moment.
	"They're all just like this." Geisha laughed, seeing him looking
forlorn and disappointed in the mirror. "They all suck" He assured
Houston, who sat up then. The two of them were quite close after being
neighbors for so long. It seemed Geisha understood Houston better than he
understood himself at times.
	"How far out in OrganizedSpace have you been Geisha?" Houston asked
him, unsure whether his friend had told him before or not.
	"Sixth Tier. Midwest System. RJR-Beatrice sent me out there to do
some on-site repairs once." He snorted through his nose as he tipped back
the cocktail again. "I wasn't impressed. The Family Maramaldi knows
nothing of city management. The fucking Queers."
	"Maybe that was just Midwest System?" Houston suggested, glancing
in the reflection of the many mirrors around the room, checking the door,
wondering where the Enforcers were. "Where are those fucking cops?" He
impatiently waited for the familiar orange T-shirt that could normally be
spotted clearly almost every other block.
	"No. It was the same all the way out there and back." Geisha shook
his head, thoroughly convinced. "Sirius in the CoreSystems, Altair out in
the First Tier, Andromeda in the Second Tier, Aphrodite in the third, Rho
in the fourth, Reward in the fifth. They were all shitty." He said nodding
to himself.
	Houston didn't quite want to believe his friend though. Couldn't
believe him. There had to be something better than this. This was no way
for people to live. No matter what their Form might be. There had to be a
place for civilization to exist. Somewhere. 'Out There' somewhere.
	Sanctuary certainly wasn't in any of the Alien cultures. Theirs
was just too surreal an existence to be tolerated for very long. Even
among the humanoid cultures, or the Root Races.
	"Are you sure you're not drug running?" Miss Delta asked. "The
legit pharmaceuticals after you maybe? UpJohn? A Contract?"
	"No!" Houston insisted. "I was just on my way here for lunch is
all. I probably should have been paying more attention, I guess. The guy
grabbed me, when I came up on the corner, and dragged me into the alley,
before I could even react. Then, it was all over before I realized what
was happening."
	"Are you maybe caught up in crossfire between rival Megacorps?"
Someone down at the other end of the bar asked him, offering a possible
solution to the dilemma.
	"I don't work for the Megacorps." Houston shook his head. "I'm with
Programmers Guild. I contract out. Right now I'm working for the city." He
explained.
	"Well, you got me, Honey." Miss Delta chuckled a little, shrugging.
"If it's not dope, love nor money, there's no reason. And I know your love
life. Ain't no lover of some Stud lookin' to burn your ass." He laughed
again, and this time the bar laughed with him.
	Houston sat and blushed at the ribbing, unable to come up with a
quick comeback to that remark. Mainly because it was true. He was
celibate. More often than not, of his own design, although lately it
seemed as if no one were interested in him sexually any more. That made it
all, more than just a little, discouraging.
	"Where are those fucking COPS!" Houston angrily checked the door
again, for what seemed like the sixtieth time in the past 5 minutes.
"They should have been here a long time ago."
	"Well Girl. I gotta go." Geisha said standing up, making his big
muscular frame seem even bigger as his towering frame blocked the glare
coming in the mylar covered glass front doors. "I'll see you tonight
Missy. You wanna eat out tonight? I think I can get us reservations
somewhere nice."
	Geisha had been Houston's best friend, since he had come back to
Kansas City, after going away to school in The Belt. They were close, even
for friends however. Houston still remembered with fondness, the day they
met...
	Houston met Geisha the day he was moving in to the building, as
Geisha's apartment was across the hall. Since Houston was moving in, his
life was in chaos it seemed. The stress of moving. Having your lifes
accomplishment packed away into only so many boxes.
	Houston and Geisha shared a long conversation that afternoon, a
couple of bottles of wine and a picnic basket lunch which Geisha made for
them, sitting on the floor in the middle of Houston carpeted living-room,
amidst towers of cardboard boxes, giggling and chatting away.
	It wasn't until a few days later Houston found out that Leslie
Dow's 'other' name was 'Geisha', and all of Kansas City's Gay Community
knew him only by that name. To this day, he never has explained where the
pseudonym came from. It was just one of those nicknames a person gets
tagged with, and ends up keeping out of being tired of trying to explain
what your real name is.
	Houston and Geisha had never had sex together, (though Houston Had
wondered what it might be like, since Geisha was definitely masculine
enough for his taste.) they had never been room-mates, though everyone
always assumed them to be Lovers because they were always together.
	Theirs was simply a healthy, mature, relationship between two men.
They had shared contracts occasionally, as was the case at this point in
their lives, where they both worked for the Breadbasket corporation of
Kansas City Inc.
	Houston wasn't sure where Geisha was from, some place North
probably, but he was sure he wasn't a native, since he pronounced the full
clear name of the city "Kansas City". The natives seem to have blurred it
over the ages and called it simply "Kancity". Especially during quick
speech.
	"Nah." Houston shook his head. "Not after this shit today. Let's
eat at my place."
	"Sounds good. I'll stop by Food-Land on my way home." Geisha stood
waiting for his BancoCard from Miss Delta. "I need my rod too Girl." He
quickly added slipping the card in his pocket and waiting for his holster.
	"Do you maybe, feel like meat tonight?" Houston winced, looking up
at the big man, hoping Geisha might give in again. It seemed Geisha was
one of a rare breed in that he preferred to eat like someone off-world,
which was probably the reason the broad shouldered, muscular man was able
to remain so trim about the waist, despite his heavy rugged build.
	As a Herbivore, (That word sent chills down Houstons spine.)
Geisha was always trying to push at Houston a lot of the various flavoring
creams and soy-pastes in tubes as well. Today (for some unknown reason)
Beatrice Foods Inc. made food packaged, so to be carried around.
	Houston had always been brought up with the philosophy that, in
EarthSystem, where the food for several StarSystems was produced, it was
practically a Sin to eat like a rabbit. You ate well when you could, and
you were thankful for it. You never knew when your neighbors might be
starving, and you did know there were millions just outside your door,
living in the streets of the city, who were starving.
	"Yeah ok." Geisha agreed, tying the holster to his thigh over the
top of his suit pants, letting his jacket hang loosely over it. Houston
had to admit that Geisha was a very quick draw, even though HE was faster.
One night on Geishas patio, goofing off, playing around, they practiced
drawing on each other, seeing who was quicker, to the amusement of the
neighbors out on their own balconies, across the canyon of the street.
After they heard the laughter, they went back inside, embarrassed.
	Officially, it was still against the law to carry firearms, though
the law had not really been enforced for almost a hundred years.  'The
State', of Breadbasket North America, left the law on the books though, so
that when the city cops or federal Enforcers wanted to bust someone for
something, they could add up the charges like a shopping list, putting the
perpetrator away for longer than was legal for the crime involved.
(Usually for competing with a corporation without a corporate license.)
	Everyone still carried guns though. At least everyone Houston
knew. It was what was known as "An effective deterrent" in the NuzKlips.
	"Well. Back to Lifestyles of the Rich & Roman under the shadow of
Vesuvius." Geisha clapped Houston on the back. "Look Stud. Fuck the cops.
They're here to protect and to serve. At least that's what it says on
their T-shirts. They're never around to protect, so let the bastards serve
a little. Let's go on back to the office and they can track you down
there. All they'll do is document the crime anyway. It's all they ever
do."
	"Yeah." Houston quickly agreed after thinking about it for only a
moment. "Miss Delta, I need to settle up, and get my heat."
	Houston did not cherish the thought of walking back to the City
Hall building alone. People walking alone, were either crazy, bad-asses,
or marks. He had been stupid enough to think he could have made it walking
the seven blocks alone DownTown, so he supposed that made him a mark. By
his own making.
	"It's supposed to get down to about eighty-five tonight." Houston
commented while putting on the shoulder holster and scrunching the velcro
smoothly and quickly over his white silk shirt and complementary corporate
tie. "If you want, we can do the barbecue thing." He hinted with a grin.
	"Sure." Geisha nodded, sincerely in a good mood, though Houston
could tell Geisha was still worrying over what he might have done to get
jumped. "Damn Bitch come ON! I'm gonna be late." He said looking blankly
un-focused out into space, seeing some time read-out only he could see via
his optical chip.
	"Let's go then." Houston said turning around to follow his friend.
	Walking over to the coffee pot, that sat on a little table, in a
closet for those who still drank coffee, Houston dropped a caffeine tablet
in a cup and poured coffee over it.
	Usually everyday about 3pm, he had to have coffee. It helped the
cocaine help him finish the day. Seeing the sugar sitting in front of him,
he decided that a little sugar might help the coffee taste a bit more like
coffee, 'White Death' or not. To Hell with the health addicts.  Perfect
Health is only the slowest possible way to die. Besides, all those empty
calories in the sugar tasted Damn Good!
	Houston had no sooner smiled to himself, when he both heard, and
felt, the explosion which rocked the room. The concussion of the explosion
felt like a hand against the back of his head, and slammed him face first,
against the opposite wall, whereupon he knocked the coffee table and
coffee maker over, tumbling numb and dazed to the ground.
	The sounds of the explosion, the pieces falling from the ceiling,
the sounds of glass tinkling in the room, covered most of his encounter
with the wall, as well as the sound of his nose breaking, though for a
brief moment he thought he felt it crack, somewhere in the back of his
mind.
	Immediately upon the shock of the blast, Houston went limp and
relaxed, laying very still for a moment, amid the flying dust and debris,
on the floor of the closet, trying to figure out just how badly he was
hurt, through the fog that threatened to overwhelm his mind. He didn't
hear anything except a persistent ringing in his ears for a long while,
and then finally began to hear the women in the office start screaming and
crying.
	He was alive at least.
	From what he could gather, laying there playing 'possum with his
eyes closed and blood running over his moustache, down into his mouth, the
perpetrators where no longer present. Evidently they thought the job
adequate, for whatever reasons they felt necessary.
	The pain began making it's way to his brain just then, as he lay
there a few moments, trying to gather information on what had happened
through his ears that were still ringing, and thought he felt a pain in
his left arm, until he felt someone put a hand to his throat.
	Reacting impulsively, moving faster than he would have believed
was possible only a few short months ago, in one quick motion Houston was
up off the floor, pulling the curious stranger with him back against the
wall, his arm around her neck, and his Tech-9 against her temple.
	The adrenalin boost was sheer magic. It gave him strength when he
had none. Without using cybernetic limbs. And He was taking no chances.
	"Dammnit Kramer let go of me!" The young woman hissed from between
clenched jaws, her hands trying to pull his arm down, away from her throat
where he was strangling her in a half nelson.
	"Jess!" Houston exclaimed, releasing his female supervisor and
putting the gun quickly away. "Sorry. Reflex."
	"Buddy-boy you just missed it." She said shaking her head, still
rubbing her throat, eyeing him warily. "Looks like you were the target."
	"Ohhh Man." Houston said wide-eyed, shaking his head, amazed that
she had said that particular thing. "You gotta be fuckin' me." He said
slowly.
	Walking out of the now shattered coffee closet, which was probably
the only thing that saved his life from the explosion, she pointed to his
desk, where he sat within feet of where they stood, not far from the
elevators. Sure enough, his desk was the obvious explosion site. It now
lay in a smoldering pile of plastic splinters and covered with shards of
glass from his smoking, darkened and shattered desk terminal.
	Houston stood silently looking at the scene a moment. It didn't
make any sense. The moment began to stretch longer as everything began
moving in slow motion around him. His brain didn't want to work right.
Someone was talking to him, though they didn't seem to be making much
sense, whatever it was they were saying.
	He could almost feel the cold shock snaking it's way up through
his brain stem, shutting down all of his higher brain functions. He
questioned abstractly to himself that maybe Unconsciousness must be some
survival instinct left over from ages long ago when we first crawled down
out of the trees.
	Houston thought objectively, that perhaps the act of fainting,
might be there to help the brain cover trauma. He knew the sudden drop in
blood pressure was going to pull him down to the floor any moment, but he
could only look at the smoldering spot and feel the image reel in his
mind, as his face, without warning, suddenly hit the floor.
	I must be having a gravity attack. He though humorously to
himself. Gravity. It's the Law! Damn, his nose was going to be sore...
	"Don't you fucking die on me Kramer." A woman's voice said directly
into his face where she was standing over him. "Goddamnit." She cursed
more to herself than to him. "Oh God. Fucking blood!"
	"How is he?" Houston thought he heard the voice of Geisha coming
closer, still mixed in with the background sounds of people both excited
and panicked. "Is he hurt bad? How bad is he hurt?" The man said in a more
terrified and concerned voice, coming closer. But that wasn't right... Was
it? Geisha was supposed to be at work. Downstairs in Engineering. Down in
the basement... Wasn't he?
	Houston opened his eyes to see two vaguely humanoid shapes
standing over him, their images strangely distorted, as if he were looking
at them through the bottom of a shot glass. Swallowing, he could still
taste the blood from his nose, running down the back of his throat.
	"Houston?" Geisha asked. "Can you hear me?" The light waves
bouncing off his friends face, strangely bent it into a crude distortion,
as the brawny man got down on one knee and examined Houston closely.
	"Watch the blood!" Jess hissed at Geisha. "Jesus what a mess.
Carol call Waste. Tell them we have a code one Biohazard."
	"Oh please Bitch." Geisha snapped at her. "I'll put life and
reputation on this guys body fluids." He said angrily, carefully and
tenderly pulling Houston's slim form, up into more of a sitting position,
with his head loosely slumped forward. Though Houston was not quite fully
conscious, he was not quite out of it completely either. He thought he
could hear, if he really tried focusing on the voices. But it was so
difficult!
	"I've gotta do this with everyone's body fluids!" Jess snapped
back.
	Houston thought he could almost hear the two of them facing off
with their respective claws out. He was sure he could hear the two of them
at each others throats over him. The animalistic sounds were unmistakable.
The sounds of snapping and drooling fangs, the guttural growl. Yes. There
it was. The snarling.
	Damn. There was a lot of blood. Why does the nose bleed so much?
He thought to himself, watching his life force flowing smoothly and
steadily over his shirt, tie and stomach, across his crotch to the floor,
as Geisha somehow managed him over to the wall, and gently sat him like a
rag doll, leaning back against it.
	And Double Damn. It was his face. Not the face! He thought
humorously.
	God he felt so tired. A nap, he felt sure, would be out of the
question though. He felt quite sure about that. No, Jess wouldn't
appreciate sleeping in the office. Probably a rule against it too.
	It must be that shitty Soy-Kaf coffee making him tired. The Bitch
should have paid a little more for the caffeinated coffee. This health
shit is for the birds. Why was he so tired?
	I guess bombings take a lot out of a person. He thought quietly to
himself as he heard the girl sitting closest to him and his mess,
frantically trying to find a working phone, to get a hold of waste
disposal technicians, and someone from Medical in here as soon as
yesterday.
	"Houston?" Geisha inquired, smacking his sore face. Why didn't he
leave him alone? "Talk to me guy. Houston?"
	"Don't touch it!" Jess hissed.
	A nap would feel good right about now though.
	What would MacGyver do?
	Probably not this...


From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dog Days pt 2 of 30
Date: 30 Jul 1995 12:14:17 -0500

Chapter Two
	"Houston? Houston? Come in Houston." Houston could hear the
crackling static, drone in the background of white noise, somewhere in his
mind.
	"Uhh... Yeah Houston it looks like we've got a problem. Come in."
	It was so Hard to sort things out!
	"Come in Houston. Standing by."
	Though Houston could visualize clearly, the vision of Neil
Armstrong in his mind, dancing around in his bulky white suit across a
black & white wonderland, he was quite sure that he was NOT born anywhere
near 1969.
	Opening his eyes, he then saw the reason for his confusion.
	"Houston? Gave me a scare Girl!" Houstons big powerful friend
"Geisha" smiled, where he was bending his huge frame down, to look up into
Houstons face. "Here. Drink this." He commanded, putting a glass to
Houstons mouth.
	Gatorade? That didn't make any sense. Houston was sure he had
never heard anywhere, in a survival course, a health class, or first aid
course about giving people with sore noses, Gatorade of all things.
	"What are you doing?" Houston asked thickly, lifting his head up.
"Trying to drown me Bitch?" Though his tongue felt thick and his teeth
were singing a numb little tune, when he tried to push the glass and
Geisha away from him, Houston felt a stab of pain shoot through his left
shoulder. OW! Now that certainly didn't have anything to do with his nose.
	"Owfuck!" Houston gasped.
	"Here's a straw." Geisha said putting it back to his lips again.
"Drink."
	"Drink me, Eat me, always with the orders, Alice." Houston said
after he released the straw from his lips. "Trying to send me through, The
Looking Glass, next?" It did taste pretty good after all. Better than
blood and puke anyway.
	"A smart ass. At least you're coming back to me." Geisha smiled
sympathetically, behind his extensive black bristly moustache, ignoring
the bloody stains on his own clothes, thinking first of Houston and his
condition.
	Houston smiled back politely, greatly appreciating the attention
and concern his friend Leslie was showing him. The handsome dark eyed man
sat in front of Houston, his bulky muscular frame squatting on an ottoman,
his office clothes covered in dried blood and his face covered with
fatigue and five o'clock shadow that seemed to hit his friend about 3 in
the afternoon.
	Houstons vision was off, he finally realized, because his face was
extensively bandaged.
	For a nose? That didn't make any sense at all.
	"How bad was I hurt?" Houston asked confused.
	"Queer, you are one fucked up Fag!" Geisha laughed. "Broke your arm
Girl. Nose too. Hear that? Now you can't go to Hollywood, to be a Star.
They also had to pull some glass out of your eye. Probably will be for
months." He shrugged, getting up from the ottoman and walking out of
Houston field of vision. "It's just a miracle you're not dead."
	Leaning his head back against the recliner, Houston could see that
they were in Geisha's apartment. Not the office anymore.
	"Who's THEY?" Houston asked hoarsely. Where was that Gatorade
again?
	"City Hall Medical."
	"Oh Man!" Houston whined. "Why didn't you take me to a real
doctor?" He growled. "All you had to do was snap my BancoCard in half and
a trauma team would have arrived in minutes. Those shit-heads at City Hall
Medical probably just duct-taped my arm together."
	"Well now aren't we the fussy patient?" Geisha laughed. "Funny you
couldn't even tell the paramedic your name at the time. Much less name a
health care provider. I sure didn't know your account number, and I wasn't
in any mood to search through the pockets of an unconscious body. Here's
your dinner. Enjoy." He said sitting down in front of Houston with the
Gatorade again, with what looked like a chocolate shake.
	Knowing Geisha though, it was probably his steak put through the
food processor, just out of meanness for Houston wanting to eat meat
tonight.
	"Ok. So Flo Nightingale I'm not." Geisha shrugged. "And you seemed
a bit out of sorts at the time." He said smiling compassionately.
	"Mm, a little 'Under the weather' perhaps?" Houston joked back,
feeling that any movement at all would cause severe 'discomfort' as it is
written in medical terminology. "Ow." He whimpered. "Did they send me home
with any dope?"
	"Yeah. It said to take one, but knowing you, I opened up three of
the capsules and dumped them in the Gatorade." Geisha explained. "Doesn't
look like you can do any coke up the ol'e tooter for a while Girl." He
said with strange satisfaction.
	"Yeah, cocaine. That'll make me feel better. Pour some in the
Gatorade." Houston suggested, coughing on the shake. It really was a
chocolate milk shake after all. How caring of Geisha. "It's in my pocket."
	"Sorry Bucko. If it was in your shirt, then it's still on the 26th
floor of City Hall. They had to cut the shirt off you." Geisha explained.
"I think I might have some around here somewhere," he paused momentarily.
"That is, if you really think you need it." He said disapprovingly.
	"I just want the pain in my face to go away." Houston explained
painfully, putting his good hand to his face. "Where is it?" He asked,
taking the chocolate shake in hand, and holding it for himself, as Geisha
at first paused and stared at Houston, and then got up to look for his
stash of cocaine.
	"Well shit. Where did I put it?" Geisha asked himself, standing in
the middle of the room with his hands on his hips, looking around the room
for a moment. "Oh yeah." He remembered, opening one of what looked like a
thousand little drawers, in his Georgian roll-top desk, that Houston had
helped him hand sand and varnish one lazy Sunday afternoon, producing a
small red plastic bag of white powder. "Here it is." He announced.
	"Christ Geisha, when did you buy that?" Houston laughed a little,
taking a look at the bag. "The turn of the century?" Surprisingly, to
Houstons trained eye, it looked as if there was about a gram still in the
little bag.
	"I'm quite sure I'm not that old." Geisha said petulantly. "I got
it about three years ago from a street vendor at Mardi GRAS. Cocaine is
not exactly my drug of choice. I don't even know why I keep it around. I
think it's supposed to be Peruvian." He said opening the zip-lock seal on
the bag and examining the white powder a bit before spooning about a
quarter of a gram into Houston's Gatorade, and stirring it around with the
straw.
	The Gatorade, after all these drugs were mixed in, first the
pain-killers and now the cocaine, the cold green drink was quickly
becoming a pharmacists nightmare; or a junkies wet dream.
	"Yeah sure it is Baby. And I got some land, I want to talk to you
about, just outside of Washington Crater." Houston smirked. "You're so
gullible Geisha." Houston quipped, being friendly. "There hasn't been any
dope out of Peru, since before the millennia." He sipped, feeling the
numbness flow down inside him and quickly come back to his face in the
form of a flush.
	"Well... Perhaps maybe just a little." Houston blushed. "Thanks."
He said, ashamed of his earlier statement about Geisha being gullible. It
WAS from Peru.
	"No problem." Geisha said throwing the bag down beside Houston.
"You maybe wanna talk now? Tell me about what's goin' down?"
	"Oh Christ Geisha. Not this routine again. I don't know what's
going down!" Houston insisted, sighing as he sipped at the Gatorade. "We
went through all of this at lunch."
	"From the looks of you, it doesn't appear that we got it resolved."
Geisha arched an eyebrow. "Why don't we go over it again?  Shall we?"
	"Geisha, you know me better than anyone. I am a Nice guy."  Houston
tried explaining. "I don't have enemies! Hell, I get along with everyone.
Jesus Christ." He grumbled shaking his head, which was quickly becoming
numb enough that it didn't hurt that much anymore. "As for anything
clandestine or mysterious, when would I have time? You and I are always
together."
	"Yeah I know. The Queers think we're the proverbial non-sexual
lovers." The bulky dark headed man said thinking absently to himself, his
mouth twisting back and forth unconsciously behind the thick wide black
moustache which he took such admirable care of. "Who did you work for
last?" He asked thoughtfully, a pensive look on his face.
	"Uhh... Intel... I think." Houston nodded, feeling the dull ache
pull on his muscles. "Yeah. Intel." Hmm. Those pills were pretty good if
they were already affecting his memory! They would have to fight past the
biochip memory enhancers in his brain, to make him that forgetful...
	"Were you doing anything really confidential, or Top Secrety James
Bond type shit for them?" Geisha asked contemplative, with his thick
muscular arms, crossed over his massive chest, as he sat on the ottoman in
front of Houston. "Stuff they might not want you to remember?  Or maybe
get rid of you for, after you were done?"
	"No, not unless they're skittish about their warehouse ordering
system." Houston grinned a little. "It wasn't anything like what you're
thinking. The whole job didn't take more than a month. I was never in any
confidential areas. One of the few places I didn't peek around. I might
add."
	"Help me out here Houston." Geisha said angrily, raising his voice
a little. "Have you done anything someone might want to SNUFF you for?"
	"In my whole life or just recently?" Houston grinned coyly.
	"You fuck." Geisha said getting up and pacing around the room. "I
should have left you, laying there in your own blood."
	"I'm sorry Geisha. I was just teasing you." Houston giggled a
little. "No, I've never done anything, to an employer, that I would
consider a real problem."
	"Not YOU! You fool!" Geisha raised his voice again. "I'm talking
about other people! Hell, you never consider think anything is a problem!"
	"Well I'm sure I don't know!" Houston raised his voice back.
"Now." He said, as if that were the final word on the matter. Very quickly
however, he began to realize as Geisha started pacing around the
living-room, nothing had really been determined absolute yet.
	 "Stop with the pacing." Houston growled. "You remind me of a Saint
Bernard."
	"And you remind me of a little Bitch!" Geisha snapped back. "You
maybe wanna come here and bend over?" He asked grabbing his ample crotch
through his slacks. "Could be your last chance before you die." He
sarcastically warned as he tilted his head.
	"No thank you." Houston said waving the scene away, staring out the
doors to the patio for a few long moments. His silence was partly from
thinking to himself, and partly from embarrassment over the thoughts of he
and Geisha together. "Who would want to kill me of all people?"
	"Well you silly Bitch. How many 'A's in danger?" Geisha looked
squarely at Houston. "You of all people should know, just looking at the
wrong datastream or database can get you burned down to the goddamned
ground."
	"I haven't been in anything like that in years Leslie." Houston
said seriously now, warning his friend away from the upcoming subject he
could feel forming, even as they spoke. "Shit. That was back on Daedalus
station."
	"Ah! But you got caught! The INRI incident." Geisha said sitting
down again. "Headline News if I remember correctly. Made you famous for
fifteen seconds. Warhol would have been proud."
	"All RIGHT You old whore!" Houston yelled. "Look. I sent formal
letters of apology through the Breadbasket State department, and the
Israeli government agreed I wouldn't have to face world court, as long as
I kept my mouth shut about the entire incident, avoided the press, lay low
for a while and promised to leave their silos in Cuba alone." He
grudgingly explained, frowning. "Besides. They only had Twentieth Century
hardware on their systems." Houston tried justifying his actions. "If I
hadn'a done it, some other kid would have. Hell, I was nice about it."
	"C20 Hardware seems to work fine in the 21st. Yes?" Geisha arched
an eyebrow in his face again, as if to make a point. "Starting OR Ending a
war."
	"I was fourteen years old Leslie!" Houston raised his voice again
in his own defense. "The fucking codes on those things were older than
that. Besides. I probably saved more of the motherfuckers than I scared
shitless. They were seriously threatening to fire the bastards." He
explained. "How could I sit by and do nothing, when I had the power to
stop all those people in Chile from being murdered?"
	"The same way we all did. Mind your own business, look the other
way, and pray the fallout doesn't hit the jet-stream." Leslie growled.
"Damn good thing no one died is all." His friend said resorting to guilt
tactics.
	"Oh HELL! Are we gonna run through this one again?" Houston asked
defiantly. "The one about me being a Fourteen year old, Menace to Society?
The hateful tyrannical child, who is out to destroy freedom for all good
men?" He stared as Geisha fell silent and quickly averted Houstons eyes.
"All of that sensationalism with INRI, was just political lies. I'll tell
you again, as I will in a hundred years, that it was MY codes and NOT
theirs that disarmed those silos. They just had to save face in front of
CNN was all. Now! THAT is all."
	"You get my point?"
	"Yes Leslie." Houston sighed putting on his whimpy, Hen-pecked
routine. "Yes dear. Anything you say dear."
	"Goddamnit Houston!" Geisha yelled abruptly, simultaneously
slamming his hand open palmed on the ottoman, sending a crack through the
air, loud enough to make Houston physically jump in the chair where he was
laying, sloshing Gatorade all over the blanket covering him.
	"Jesus." Houston said quietly. "I thought I bought it there for a
second."
	"Hmm. A bit jumpy are we?" Geisha cocked his head.
	They both laughed together for a moment over the incident.
	"Seriously now Houston. What's going on?" Geisha asked again. "I
need to know what you're involved in, if I'm ever going to be able to get
you out of this mess."
	"Oh MAN!" Houston shook his head, slowly feeling like crying in
frustration. "Don't Do this to me. Give me pentothal, but please don't do
this shit."  Houston said shaking his head. "I can't take anymore today
Leslie. Really. I paid my debt to society, and all that shit years ago.
I'm not on anyones list that I can think of. That's all I know."
	"Ok." Geisha said getting up in a cheerful tone of voice, as if
nothing had happened at all. He acted nonchalant, as if he had only asked
a simple question, and at that, only once. The past half hour of grilling
seemed to have slipped his mind completely.
	Houston looked at him walking away as if the enormous man was a
nut.


From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dog Days pt 3 of 30
Date: 30 Jul 1995 12:16:54 -0500

Chapter Three
	Ouch.
	The next morning, Houstons muscles felt stiff and sore all over.
	Bomb do that to people, I suppose. He thought to himself, looking
around at Geisha's bright, cheerful, and very pretty apartment. The huge
man that had been Houstons best friend for so long, was a bundle of
contradictions.
	Definitely a Queens palace. Houston mused.
	Reaching for the warm Gatorade, which had been sitting out all
night long, he finished it quickly, despite it's taste. The pain-killers
it contained had knocked him out last night, and today would quickly help
him forget he was hurt at all. That was what he was shooting for.
Chemical Nirvana.
	Suddenly, Houston could hear Geisha in his bedroom, singing to
himself, getting ready for work.
	At least he'll be taking a cab to work. Houston thought. Walking
anywhere out in public, didn't seem to be the coolest of moves for
himself, and until he could be sure that Geisha was in no danger, he had
to be concerned about him as well.
	After all, even as Herculean as Geisha was, the man was still only
Engineering Guild. He wasn't Programmers Guild, nor a Reorganized Mormon,
so he really couldn't be expected to see The Big Picture. Not in the same
way Houston saw it.
	Houston would have to take care of THIS problem on his own.
	"You want me to call you a cab?" Houston asked as Geisha came into
the room, dressed in his cowboy hat and sharp western wear suit, made of
ballistic cloth, brushing lightly at the lapels. "If the dispatch program
sees Me, she might send one of the dumber Netix cabs that will give you
medical rates."
	"Thanks, but I already called them." Geisha smiled sweetly, in a
much better mood this morning, and went about fixing Houston another
Gatorade and..."dope", setting it down beside him. "Need anything else
before I go? I could stay with you today, if you need me to." He offered,
seeming to have forgotten their arguing the night before, just as his taxi
arrived, it's black and yellow striped shell easing gently up to the
balcony, it's double doors parting in the middle and sliding back, as it
hovered, peeping like some mechanical bird, letting them know inside that
it had arrived.
	"Nah. I'm fine." Houston smiled. "Thanks."
	"Ok, then." Geisha smiled, heading towards the sliding glass doors
that led to the balcony. "Tally Ho!" He laughed good naturedly, opening
the door.
	"Hey Geisha?"
	"Yeah?" His burly friend asked, turning around to face him.
	"Just for the record, their Trinidad Silo was still active."
	"You Bitch." The big man laughed gently, which softened the serious
concerned look on his face to a bright-eyed beam and went outside, sliding
the door easily along it's track, closing it with a soft whumph.
	Houston lay looking at his good friend and confidant, as the heat
from outside washed over him in a quick wave, watching intently as the
husky man walked up the three stairs to get to the top of the patio wall,
holding tightly in a white knuckled grip to the little iron railing,
stepping slowly and carefully on to the small platform, to get into the
cab.
	Definite fear of heights you got there Geisha. One shared by
millions.
	If that taxi would move just a few inches out, it would be a long
step of 21 stories down to the street... They never did though. Not until
you fastened those filthy safety harnesses.
	Geisha, take one Giant Step.
	Mother May I?
	No you may not.
	Houston lay for a moment or two sipping at the fresh Gatorade,
examining the plasticrete cast on his arm, not remembering exactly when he
hurt it.
	That may have been what Jess was rubbing her neck for.
	Was it a compound fracture? Did Jess get any Goddamned Blood in
his wound? For some reason, he couldn't seem to remember anything but
numbness after the sound of the explosion, which was something he never
before imagined, and then the icy black coldness that covered his mind,
just before he threw up.
	Jesus. After all the blood, he must have had Jess in hysterics
when he then threw up on the floor. There were so many more new bugs out
there today, than when he was a kid growing up. Some of which were even
transmitted through saliva.
	Houston stretched out and yawned in the big brown soft leather
recliner, that had functioned quite well as his bed last night. He didn't
remember falling asleep. He didn't even remember talking to Geisha about
his staying here for the night. And he was quite sure he wouldn't have
asked Geisha to take care of him as it seemed to be working out. Houston
was far too independent a person to do anything at all like that. Oh well.
It was appreciated just the same.
	God it was going to get hot again today. Houston thought looking
outside at the Kansas City skyline in the morning sun. Even though it was
early morning, it was already hot, and the temperature would be steadily
climbing throughout most of the day. Such was the way of things during
these Dog Days of The Greenhouse Effect.
	 At least the humidity is down. He thought to himself. I can take
the heat, but not the humidity. The changing weather patterns had turned
the Midwest into a jungle for the biggest part of the year, making the hot
and humid air unbearably heavy and difficult to breathe. But August was
still the one month when it got even hotter than Hell itself, when
everything dried out, terminating the existence of most plant life, in the
dusty parched and cracked soil.
	However, even as hot and dry as the Dog Days of August could get,
it still didn't prevent Kansas City from having some of the coldest and
wettest winters on record for Breadbasket North America. The weather was
simply fucked any more.
	Hopefully, those dirty, screaming little brats from down the hall
wouldn't be up on the roof, in the pool today. Houston thought to himself.
It would make a nice place to rehabilitate for a little while, and catch a
few quick rays.
	Hell, it might just turn out to be a pretty good day. All things
considered.
	The Dog Days of August. It was always his favorite time of the
year. Of course, standing out in the sun without some sort of sun-block,
wasn't such a great idea, even now that they've begun reconstructing the
ozone. The concrete and the sidewalks could get hot enough to fry eggs on.
	Houston liked the hot, dry air though. Especially at night during
the summer. Greenhouse Effect or not, warm summer nights with a nice, dry,
breeze in the evening air, were the best of times that life had to offer.
Spending time with someone you care about, who enjoys your company.
	It gave him a good feeling to feel the heat of the day emanating
from the side of the building in the cooler night air, as Geisha and
himself sat outside on the balcony, lounging in lawn chairs, on their
artificial turf covered patios, drinking ice cold Tsing Tao beer, and
talking together long into the night.
	Warm summer nights spent getting to know a good friend, listening
absently to people in the perpendicular forests of the apartment buildings
across the canyon of the street, doing the same thing; their voices coming
from behind densely planted balconies, covered in carefully potted trees,
English ivy crawling up vertical trellises, and exotic potted plants
covering every square inch of balcony space. Earth was a planet of farmers
after all. Even City-folk felt a need to have live growing things
surrounding them, even in their concrete jungle of today.
	The memory of the two of them sitting outside together, sharing
thoughts and dreams, brought a tender smile to Houstons face. Living alone
was not the answer for Houston, he decided. Living alone spoils us and we
become self contained and selfish.
	Waiting until the sun had passed over behind the building across
the street, stepping out into the growing evening shade, feeling the sharp
contrast of dry hot air from the cool moist, air-conditioned interior of
the apartment; after the first few minutes, the stink from the industrial
sectors quickly mixed in with the subconscious, to form a dull matte
against which the rest of the city scents were painted in the night heat,
to form a sometimes beautiful scene in the emotional mind.
	At least, if you closed your eyes, and ignored the sounds of
gunfire coming from far below, you could forget the fact that someone was
probably dying, down on the street, and you could focus on the sounds of
the locusts in the night air, clinging to the trees on the balcony's up
and down the leafy green canyon of the street, and smell the deep scents
of spicy rich foods cooking, not far away in the barrio, and it made you
feel good.
	For a while. You could forget.
	A couple of whatever pills he might have on hand, a cocktail, a
string or two, and Geisha for company. It couldn't be a better way to be
temporarily incapacitated. Besides, Geisha still owed him a barbecue from
last night.
	As Houston lay there, examining the glassy smoothness of the
plasticrete, which he was quite sure any impact would shatter his arm
bone, before the cast would break, he thought he heard a faint scratching
sound...
	If he would have had the TV or the VR on, he wouldn't have heard
it.
	Wait a second! Calm down and think. A quiet mind will conjure
whatever faces in the smoke it needs. It's just your imagination. He
thought to himself, as the scratching continued.
	But according to Albert, isn't imagination as important as
knowledge? He asked himself, stealthily getting up, making sure he avoided
the area of Geisha's floor, where, beneath the thick plush carpeting, the
old cement of the floor was cracked, and touched the soft switch security
button on the door, that made the high tech apartment door go transparent
on his side, so he could see out.
	Oh Shit!
	Houston could clearly see a man, not 4 feet away. Someone was
across the hall trying to break the code on his door security system.
	Wait just one goddamned minute! This has gone far enough.
Throwing a bomb is one thing. It's impersonal. Breaking into someone's
home, that was a violation.
	Where was his Tech-9? He looked around the room. Son of a Bitch!
	Now what? You're standing in your underwear, watching someone
break into your home, and your only weapon is a plasticrete cast. Why did
his uncle have to watch all those reruns of MacGyver? It only provokes
guilt when you're stupid.
	He did the only thing he could do, given the circumstances. He sat
and watched. The guy was obviously an amateur. It didn't appear as if he
had ever used a lock pick set in his life, much less realize that
Houston's door had a VoxLox dead-bolt as well.
	If the intruder was a Programmer, he wouldn't even be here. He
would be sitting at a VR console, running all the numbers, and have some
temporarily hired flunky, go in and do the meat work. But In-Guild crime
was unheard of. Even in these days of phenomenal crime rates. If he was
Out-Guild, like maybe from Chemical Guild, or PseudoLife Guild, he
wouldn't be this Bad either.
	Christ. It was taking him way too long. He'll panic now, because
he's taking too much time, and either blow the door or run...
	Houston had no sooner finished the thought, when the guy stuck a
wad of C-6 plastique in the door jamb, and stepped down the hall a little
way, to fire his pistol at it.
	God Damn. What a mess. Houston thought, looking grimly at the
scene as the smoke began settling and the man hurried inside.
	Why didn't the neighbors call the cops or something? Houston
wondered.
	Shit! Grow a brain Houston. He thought to himself. You're the
neighbors!
	He stepped quickly and quietly over to the TV, grabbing the
blanket off the recliner and modestly gathering it around his undressed
body as he hit the Emergency Call button on the wall. Immediately, the
wallscreen exploded in 16 billion living colors.
	"911 Emergency. How can I help you?" Came the calm sweet voice of
the dispatch program, which looked suspiciously too much like a young
woman telephone operator.
	"Omigod! Someone is breaking in across the Hall!" Houston shrieked.
He figured he had put enough volume and emotion into the call, to where
perhaps the Dispatch program would fire off a signal for a real EMERGENCY.
Maybe the CyberForm Enforcers would hurry up and get there before the guy
had carried off all of his shit. Perhaps.
	"Someone is on the way Sir. Please remain calm." The program
commanded in her authoritative voice, taking charge of the situation, as
she was written to do.
	"Yeah." Houston said grudgingly, hitting the disconnect.
	Hurrying back to the door, he was able to catch a glimpse of the
same guy stepping quickly back inside his apartment a second time. As a
knee-jerk response, Houston roared "HEY!" and kicked the middle of
Geisha's door with the ball of his foot, then stood quietly still,
silently hoping the dull sound was enough to frighten off the invader,
before the asshole ripped him off for too much.
	At first, Houston thought he had only bruised the bottom of his
foot, until he saw the young ruffian, dressed in a tasteful asymmetric
leather bomber jacket, step back out of his apartment, and run down the
hall, with a fist full of flashchips.
	Well, might as well go see what's missing.
	For a brief moment, Houston felt bristling with pride and power,
thinking he had dissuaded the trespasser; but as he reached for the door
knob, he saw the fireball and heard the sound of the blast hit the door,
feeling the heavy WHUMPH of the explosion, deep down in his chest.
	The sight of the flames licking up under Geisha's door amazed him
a little during the blast of the fireball, but he was more amazed that
Home-Tek Security was telling the truth when their advertising department
had claimed, their doors were indestructible.
	It looked like it was true enough. Maybe not true of the door
jamb, which was now in splinters, but the door itself looked fine.
Geisha's door held up fine against the explosion as well.
	Standing there stunned in the seconds following the blast,
wondering what exactly it was that he was seeing, Houston finally snapped
out of it, cringing, when the sprinkler system came on, and the emergency
lighting started faithfully lighting his way towards the exit, even though
he stood on the other side of Geisha's door, wincing to himself, as he
watched his remaining flashchip files soaking in water, their little flip
cases forming bowls that seemed to hold quite a bit of water.
	Damn. Those were the primary flashchip records in some cases.
Houston knew better than that too. Off-Site storage, was one of the
primary commandments, of being a Master Programmer.
	Right there. He thought. Not thirty feet away. Double Damn. Oh
well. So much for living in a security building. The insurance will pay
off of course. He reminded himself as he looked down his hallway,
mournfully watching all his clothes in his bedroom closet, smoldering in
the artificial rain.
	Where were those fucking COPS!
	Where is the fire inspector for the building?
	Standing there looking at the smoldering mess across the hall,
that used to be his worldly possessions, Houston finally realized that the
cops were not coming at all. Like a kick to the mid-section, he felt the
adrenalin rise in him with a jolt, as he quickly took the initiative.
	Get it Girl! He nervously urged himself on, as he looked around
Geisha's apartment. He needed... something. Pull no punches. Houston told
himself. The time has come to prove your capabilities.
	As Geisha would say, Tally Ho.
	He grabbed the remote unit off the table beside the recliner and
activated the system, accessing the communications web.
	He was flipping through windows at a rate where he wasn't reading
everything fully, hitting the keys on the remote pad unconsciously,
working more from habit and rote memory, but getting into the command core
of the wall-sized television, where it interfaced with the outside world,
and where he could do his thing best.
	All TV's, even the stupid ones, had a maintenance alert system on
them, that would notify the dealer when the need for repairs or yearly
maintenance checks came up. Since Geisha didn't have a computer system in
his apartment, the pitiful inch-thick wallscreen trideo unit would have to
temporarily act as Houston's terminal.
	He learned this trick, while he was a sophomore in school.
	In just a few seconds, he was able to build and send the viral
command that would go out into the 911 emergency system, he had so
foolishly and instinctively called, erasing all knowledge that they had
even knew his name at any time.
	They hadn't heard of this building address, and they did not get a
call from this number. It wasn't a very long command, but then, it didn't
have to be. It just had to work. Cut through the bullshit and make the
point.
	While waiting the forever of those few seconds, he ran through his
mind the spigot theory behind the terabyte flashchip. He cursed himself
for pissing around, watching the guy, when he should have been doing
something, for not being faster, for being so stupid, for not paying more
attention in class, for wishing death upon his hateful Chinese Operating
Systems teacher, and anything else he could think of to mentally flog
himself with, feeling like he was waiting under-the-gun as beads of fear
sweat popped out on his forehead.
	When the screen cleared and started displaying a very small part
of 911's memory, and he was able to see that his entry was erased and
being written over, he breathed a sigh of relief and cut the connection.
	Looking out over the expanse of the towering Kansas City sky line,
he wondered to himself. So now what smart ass?
	The only thing that came to mind was the ridiculous stature of the
Charles F. Conrad Tower in the distance. It was taller than Mile High
Tower on Southwest Boulevard. And it was totally obvious from anywhere in
the city.
	Where the skyscraper originally began as a functional means of
conserving space in a limited area, Donald Trump showed the world that it
was actually a phallic symbol. Sorry about your dick, Don.
	Perhaps if, the intelligentsia of the poor weren't so sheepish
around money, they might just laugh out loud at the neuroses of the rich.
	He flipped the remote around and around in his hand
absentmindedly, until he finally got up the courage to call Geisha, and
tell him about what had just transpired. He was not looking forward to
this.
	"Hey Girl." Geisha answered his phone. From the angle on the
screen, it looked like he had his credit-card sized cellular phone clipped
to the front pocket on his shirt. Geisha's face was distorted by the
severe foreshortening, and his chin seemed a vast monstrosity that filled
the biggest part of the screen.
	"Geisha, someone just bombed my apartment." Houston stated dully
and flatly, staring at the screen, waiting for some kind of reaction out
of his friend.
	Geisha, he could see, after pausing a moment to let the words sink
in, grabbed the flashchip cellular off his shirt pocket and looked
directly into it's small screen, his dark eyes piercing as they stared out
from the wall at Houston.
	"You gotta be fucking kidding me." Geisha said slowly, looking
warily at Houston, as if it might all have been a joke.
	"No Girl." Houston shook his head. "No 'Roll over in the Clover'
this time. I'm going to a hotel. If I stay here, they, whomever 'They'
might be, will figure out they didn't hit me, and they'll be back."
	"I'm Not trying to get rid of you Houston, you know that, but, have
you thought about maybe staying at the Programmers Guild?" Geisha asked.
"I mean, being around your own kind might be to your advantage.  You could
get help with this thing."
	"You know Geisha, I did give The Guild some thought, but I just
don't know. What if that was the reason for firebombing my apartment?"
Houston posed the thought. "That is the next logical place for me to go.
They could be herding me." He said thoughtfully. "Damn. I wish I had
another set of digs to hide out in."
	"You think they're running a scan for either of our PINS?" Geisha
asked him seriously. "Maybe you should kill the phone before they get a
lock on us."
	"No, these guys are Lotex." Houston felt sure about that much.
"I'm safe enough on line. I've gotta get a terminal, and a place to sit
down for a few minutes, so I can figure out what's going on. I'll need a
satellite lock to work."
	"Let me know where you are." Geisha nodded solemnly, sincerely
concerned over the welfare of his friend. "NO! Don't. On second thought,
just stay in touch, so I know you're ok. What do you want me to do to
help?"
	"Just keep working for now. There's nothing you could do to help me
right now anyway. If you walk out on your contract the City will scream to
High Heaven. I'll try to have an answer of some kind before lunch, if I
can get out of here alive."
	"Ok Houston." Geisha nodded seriously. "What ever you think is
best."
	"Do me a favor though. Call a cab, and have it sent here."  Houston
said thinking quickly. "I stand a better chance of not being tracked, or
of getting one that's not been deliberately tampered with, if it comes
called in from your location. Whomever it is that's after me, might even
have a tracer on this line."
	"Damn." Geisha swore quietly. "Ok Houston." He said looking
strangely alert with a furrowed brow. "Call me later? Be careful."
	"I will." Houston smiled, trying to keep the tension out of his
face. There was more to this incident than just the theft of a few
flashchips. He could feel it. This was somehow linked to yesterdays
attempt on his life, even if he wasn't quite sure exactly how, just yet.
	A few minutes later, showered and shaved, Houston went out on the
patio, when the taxi arrived, dressed in Geisha big white terry cloth
robe. He had it on over an average sized suit he found in the back of
Geisha's closet, that he reminded himself to ask Geisha, just where it
came from, some day. It certainly wasn't anywhere near Geisha's size, and
it was an expensive cut suit. Why was it there?
	Not right now though. No, now was not the time to bring it up.
	The big fluffy robe was long enough, so that no one within visual
range of the balcony, could tell Houston was fully dressed underneath it.
Stepping carefully out on the patio, he looked around in all directions,
at all of the balconies within the immediate area, wondering if one or
more of them might not have a telescope trained on him, peeking out behind
a trellis of ivy.
	Time for a fast escape.
	The sun was reflecting hard off the building across the street, so
he couldn't be sure if anyone was watching him or not. He only hoped the
ballistic cloth of the suit would hold up, and that the assassin would be
using smaller rounds. The odds didn't exactly favor it though.  Not these
days.
	The material of the suit he wore was lightweight and durable
enough that it was ideal for inner city fashions as well as stopping small
arms fire. Geisha wore the suits all the time. Houston usually wore a
kevlar bodysuit under his more expensive, fine silk suits. It was his own
personal answer to not interfere with style, but not being stupid about
his safety either. Kevlar changed the face of time as far as Houston was
concerned.
	Now, he thought the ballistic cloth suits weren't such a bad idea
after all. He would have to remember to thank Geishas 'friend', who left
it there for him.
	Walking up to the floating black and yellow striped taxi, it's
doors parted in the center and slid back, opening wide so he could enter.
Surprisingly, inside he found his portable VR terminal laying in the seat.
Geisha must have gone up to his office and got it out of his locker.
	Hmm. Virtual Reality access of databases through a portable
terminal made Houston feel kinda creepy, and the little thing didn't have
much power anyway, but at least it was something. Something more than he
had ten minutes ago. He had just assumed when he saw his apartment go up,
and his beautiful Home Unit face it's untimely melt-down, he would just
have to go to a mall and pick up another.
	"Wait." Houston told the cab simply, and carried the terminal back
inside, setting it down on the counter. Outside, the cab reminded him
every 30 seconds with a supposedly pleasant, but actually annoying "The
Meter is Running... The Meter is Running.". The damn machines spoke
clearer English than most people he knew.
	Taking the robe off, he put on the light camel cowboy hat he had
forgot he left in Geisha's apartment a few weeks ago, checked a scuff on
the toe of one of Geisha's boots he was wearing which were way too big for
him, and looked around the room once more.
	I was not here. He told himself as he slung the black nylon carry
bag he had also found under the sink in the bathroom, heaved it over his
shoulder and took a deep breath. He did Not want Geisha hurt in this as
well. He was a good friend. There must be absolutely No Sign, of his ever
pausing here for even a moment.
	Checking around for any evidence of his staying there overnight,
one last time, he saw nothing, so he checked his clips again, making sure
they were full, (Silently grateful Geisha also used 9 millimeter rounds),
walked out onto the patio, and got into the cab.
	"City Hall."
	"Please fasten the safety harness." It said gently, yet firmly,
making Houston curl a lip in disgust at the machine as he clicked the
harness open and then shut again, so the cab could sense that the steps
had been performed.
	Jesus wept. He hated cheerful machines. And he hated stupid
machines, and even worse, he hated cheerful stupid machines that talked.
	NONE of his home appliances talked.
	Well, they wouldn't be doing much of anything anymore, but when he
did have them, that was always the first thing he did to them. Rip out
their voices and expand the vocabulary to accept his own special slang and
personal commands. From there, modifications were usually what ever he was
in the mood for at the time.
	Several installation Tech's had gasped in horror as he began
pulling the unit apart, before they could get it into the wall. Why
someone would destroy their own warranty the first day, was completely
beyond them.
	The ride in the taxi was uneventful, and out of habit, Houston
called for the weather report to make the trip through the skies of
DownTown seem shorter. It was the noise in his head that helped distract
him, even though he knew the DJ's voice was also chipped, and the DJ
himself, nothing more than a program.
	"...The blocking high currently settled in over the Chicago area has
kept the average high temperatures above 120 for the past week, and no
relief is in sight..."
	While the taxi filled the cabin with the radio report, it was also
getting satellite telemetry as well as commands from it's base as to what
locations it was to queue in it's destinations. Smart little machine.
	Suddenly, as panic gripped him for no known reason, Houston could
feel the heat of the day searing his face, even through the tempered
tinted windows.
	When he got to City Hall, and the taxi had settled down to the
street level, seeing the sea of faces and the crush of human bodies just
out side the window, made Houston change his mind, before the cab could
even demand payment.
	"Take me to the top of Walnut Tower instead." He told it, as the
cab quickly lifted again into the air, his stomach telling him he was on a
high speed express elevator.
	A few seconds later, he was drawing his BancoCard out of the slot,
and getting out of the cab, squinting against the white hot day, stepping
down onto the searing tarmac of the Walnut Towers roof.


From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dog Days pt 4 of 30
Date: 30 Jul 1995 12:20:07 -0500

Chapter Four
	Houston always thought Geisha was funny on Ecstasy & booze. The Ex
improved Geisha's mood and the booze dropped his inhibitions, allowing all
those emotions, that the big man kept so pent up, to flow like a river to
the sea.
	Today, at their daily liquid lunch, Geisha was feeling
particularly relaxed happy, despite the fact that Houston could feel the
icy cold and bony hand of Mr. Death at his own back. This daily routine of
drinks at noon, which Houston was used to having as a part of his day to
day existence, helped quiet at least some of his anxieties.
	Even as uptight as Geisha was most of the time, the tall husky man
would always go into this same routine as "Entertainer" for them all, once
he got warmed up to his own personal chemical realities. Sometimes it
embarrassed Houston, but then, he thought to himself, the routine did make
him laugh every time though too.
	At the moment, Geisha was standing at the end of the bar, with
some drag queen's hair brush in his hand, using it as a microphone,
singing.
	Quite loudly too.
	Geisha never did do anything in half measures though. Houston
thought. (He never did understand why singers still used microphones on
stage, when the directional microphones of the day did a so much better
job. Props he supposed. Today, everything was image.)
	"Thankyavermuch." Geisha said, imitating an old Elvis routine that
was so cliche' it made Houston shudder in his own sobriety. Had he too
been, even a little drunk, the actions of another drunk wouldn't bother
him so much.
	"My next number goes out to a young man who doesn't seem to have
many friends today. Houston Kramer, this one is for you!" He said pointing
at Houston.
	"Heeerree we are." Geisha sang with feeling.
	"In a room full of straaangers." He gestured to the room.
	"Standing in the dark." He waved his hand around the room.
	"Where your eyes couldn't seee me." He sang, slinking behind a
wall.
	"Will I have to fooollow you?" He made a pleading look on his face
as he put his other hand to his chest.
	"Though you did not waaant me to?" He gripped the faux-microphone,
slash, hairbrush, shaking his head as he sang.
	"But that wont stop my loooving you." He threw up his hand as if to
stop someone, making Houston laugh again.
	"I can't stay awaaay." He shook his head.
	"Blaming it on!" He said spinning. "On the nights on Broadway."
	"Singing that love song.
	"Singing that, Straight-to-my-heart song.
	"Blaming it on!" He sang spinning, making Houston laugh.
	"On the nights on Broadway.
	"Singing that sweet sound. To that, crazy, crazy town.
	"Now in my place. There are soo many oothers.
	"Standing in the line.
	"Well how long will it stand betweeen us?
	"Will I have to foollow you?
	"Though you did not waaant me to?
	"But that wont stop my looove for you." His hand went up again, as
he shook his head. He seemed to have all the moves down.
	Geisha had obviously done this routine in the shower before.
Houston thought silently to himself, making him wonder.
	"I can't stay awaaay.
	"Blaming it on!" He spun again. "On the nights on Broadway.
	"Singing that love song.
	"Singing that Straight-to-my-heart song." He sang with his hand
over his chest, his eyes clenched shut.
	"Blaming it on! On the nights on Broadway.
	"Singing that sweet sound. To that, crazy, crazy town."
	He paused a moment, swallowing hard behind his thick black bushy
moustache, before he continued on, in a slower, lower tone.
	"I will wait...." He sang softly.
	"Girl you skipped the interlude!" Someone yelled from the end of
the bar.
	"Oh go shoot yourself." Someone else said to the first. "Get it
Geisha!" The men sitting at the bar cheered Geisha on, making Houston
snicker. "Sing it Girl!"
	"Even if it takes forever." He sang undaunted with his eyes closed,
putting more feeling into it now.
	"I will waaait.
	"Even if it takes a lifetime.
	"Somehow I feel insiiiiide, you never ever left my siiiiide.
	"Make it like it was befooore.
	"Even if it takes a liiifetiiime... takes a liiifetiiiime.
	"Blaming it on!" Geisha said spinning, tossing the hairbrush up on
the bar, and giving up as he was out of breath from his pantomime/ad-lib.
	"Oh fuckit." He sighed heavily as he sat down hard on the padded
bar-stool.
	"Good job Girl!"  Someone called out. All the men applauded as he
sat down.
	"The Bee Gee resurrection clones will probably sue you for that
one." Someone down at the other end commented. "At least Andy will
anyway." The faceless voice added quickly. "She's the mean one." The voice
explained.
	"You've really got a nice voice Geisha." Someone else commented.
	"Well! That was fun." Geisha sighed. "Now what?"
	"I think you need to go back to work, Girl" Houston smiled, looking
at the time/date on the wall behind the bar. He didn't have an optical
chip with a time readout like Geisha did. "Do you want me to walk you?" He
asked, glancing at the reflection of himself in the mirror.
	His eye looked BAD. It didn't hurt or anything, not since he had
been taking the pills they sent home with him... it just looked bad. The
bandaging, he decided, would bring too much attention to himself, so he
got rid of it when he showered down, watching it go down the drain, just
before he got ready to leave Geisha's apartment.
	Houston was silently thankful the plasticrete cast was thin enough
to go through a sleeve, so he didn't attract so much attention to himself,
by keeping his hand in his jacket pocket all the time.
	Sometimes it became an awkward problem, (He never realized before
how much a person uses their arms subconsciously for balance.) but for the
most part, everyone just assumed he had his hand on his heat, and left him
alone.
	"Nah, I'll get a cab." Geisha said putting his jacket on. "Miss
Delta? My rod if you please." He yawned. "Go ahead and do the tip thing.
I can't figure numbers right now." He said sighing happily again. "I
simply can't be bothered."
	His happiness would end around 3pm though. Houston thought to
himself. Unless he kept taking Ecstasy all day. The dope today was for
shit. You couldn't find a pill on the shelves that would last more than a
couple of hours. Houston recalled when he was younger, going to school,
one could find dope available in a variety of time-spans. Oh well. If one
is good, two are better, and three is best. If a little is good, a lot is
GREAT.
	"Drop me by the AT&T Town Pavilion." Houston said getting up as
well. "I'll do the skywalk thing to where I need to go."
	"Are you sure?" Geisha asked kindly, putting his hand on Houston's
arm, which startled him, making him jump a bit. "Damn Girl!"  Geisha
laughed. "Are you sure you shouldn't just stay here with the guys until I
get off work?"
	"What good would that do?" Houston asked incredulously. "Have
witnesses to my execution? Isn't exactly productive if you ask me." He
mumbled taking his Tech-9 from Miss Delta and slipping it back into the
holster he didn't bother taking off this time.
	Perhaps he should find something smaller to carry... Or something
bigger.
	Most of the past 40 minutes, Houston had sat glancing every few
seconds at the precious Tech-9, definitely more a cannon than a handgun,
wondering if Miss Delta was going to accidentally spill something on it.
His fear stemmed from the fact that the gun was almost a part of him. He
had practically grown up with the Tech-9.
	Semi-Automatically.
	And now we're all grown up. Right?
	Well of course we are.
	Standing at the door, waiting for the cab to land, Geisha hummed
quietly to himself. He'll be ok. Houston thought. No one was looking for
him or they would have moved on him by now. But as to why anyone was
trying to kill him, Houston was still completely clueless.
	As the taxi dropped out of the sky to the sidewalk, Geisha, in
talking to the cab, boomed out in a loud voice, Houstons destination of
the AT&T Town Pavilion.
	The action not only made Houston cringe at the lack of tact on
Geisha's part, since his deep resonant voice carried quite a bit when he
was drunk, it also worried him.
	Anyone on the street within 30 feet could have overheard him,
despite that fact, and glancing quickly at some of the characters that
milled about in the day-time streets of the Executive Center of DownTown,
Houston wasn't comfortable with that idea at all.
	The hot, greasy air stank of sweaty, exhausted flesh, crowded
around them, as the door to the taxi closed, and Houston opened then
closed the safety harnesses which they sat on top of, instead of using.
He was not going to be trapped in the nasty box when it decided to fall
out of the sky. Although if it did ever decide to fall, he didn't really
expect to jump free of the crash.
	Peering out the tinted bulletproof glass, Houston could see at
least a dozen people on his side alone that didn't look like they were
part of the noon corporate crowd.
	Up to other things. Hunting marks probably. Houston thought to
himself as they lifted out of the kaleidoscopic sea of many faces.
	The river of bodies grew smaller as the taxi glided up the sides
of the DownTown towers, some made of chrome and glass, some, impossibly
delicate, almost crystalline looking structures, while others, stark
windowless fat ugly concrete pillars rising high out of the forest of
office monoliths.
	Taxi's buzzed the skies of DownTown like millions of gnats, while
the white hot sun burned a sharp crisp hole in the bright blue summer sky.
	There was no driving DownTown. Not north of 31st Street. Well,
with the exception of Limos of course. You couldn't get any further north,
past the wall on the river, even if you wanted to.
	The North Wall of the river, was as far North as Kansas City
extended, not counting the farms, which extended for hundreds of miles in
every direction, just outside the city walls. Those however were the
property of the nation of Breadbasket North America, even if Kansas City
was contracted to work them.
	The city was laid out roughly pie-shaped, with a good third of it
missing in the northern and northeastern sections, or more like a clock
face, with the big hand at ten o'clock, facing northwest, and the little
hand at three o'clock, facing due east, with the river on the north side,
the North Wall stretching along the hands of the clock, and around it's
circumference, walling the city proper off, from the rural areas that were
used for farming.
	Main Street separated East from West; Two different worlds
altogether.
	The innermost circle of DownTown was the Executive Center, and lay
mainly from the river, or 1st Street, south to 15th Street. This was where
the towers were sleek and streamlined, thin needle-shaped structures,
finely balanced, that looked impossible as they pointed skyward, their
sky-walks pulling them together as a crystalline cohesive whole. A
mysterious place to most.
	 From 15th to 31st Street was the Corporate Zone. Here the towers
were quite a bit thicker, their footprints taking up as much as four
square blocks in some instances. The high corporate arcologies. Cities
within themselves. Where the corporate elite resided, living their company
lives, in a company apartment, dating company people, and dieing a company
death.
	In the Inner Moderate Zone, from 31st to 75th Streets, where
Houston and Geisha lived in the Broadway Towers, one could drive a
metro-car if one could afford the ridiculous price of parking, but no one
bothered anymore. It was too easy to grab a cab. Hell, they came right to
your door, regardless of what floor you were on. Buildings varied in
height from one to the next, depending on what decade they were designed
in.
	People living in the IMZ were usually employee class people and
not in a position to attain the executive comforts of personally owning a
vehicle, or having access to the management class perk, of using a company
vehicle on occasion.
	From 75th to 95th was the Combat Zone. No one went there if it
could be at all avoided. That was gangland territory. Most of the
buildings here were but mere shells, their roofs long ago collapsed, or
burned away in private nightly battles. The people who were forced to live
in this area of the city could barely be considered human. This was the
place where the modern day 'Monsters' dwelled. A common childhood threat
was: "They'll send you to the Combat Zone for that!"
	Even the homeless avoided this area, preferring to sleep huddled
in a corner of an alley, sleeping on oily pavement and using a wad of
NuzFax as a pillow, rather than dare face the unknown horrors which
resided 'Out There'.
	From 95th to 115th was the Outer Moderate Zone. OMZ was another
semi-circle island on which to live a fairly decent life, but whose kids
were in constant battle with the IMZ kids over possession of the Combat
Zone, a slim tract of land that sliced through the heart of the city, that
wasn't worth the toxic soil it occupied.
	From 115th to 201st Street were the Suburbs. By far the biggest
land area in the city, along with the lowest in population. It was here
the corporate executive hopefuls dreamed of the innermost city, instead
forced to live in the outlands that butted up against the outer wall,
which protected the rural areas outside that, from the crush of bodies
inside, which threatened to overwhelm the land, instead of taking precious
care of it, in order to feed Trillions. It was also here that the nouveau
riche came to live out their fantasies of home ownership. A complete waste
of time and money as far as Houston was concerned.
	If you took a taxi to the top of Mile High Tower on Southwest
Boulevard, you could catch a glimpse of the wall to the south, a half a
mile high in it's own right, but, after you had seen the one at the river,
what was the point?
	It was the same wall. A half a mile high, and no way out except
the monorail to the airport, or through the Mag-Lev trains that left the
city, which would only stop at the next city, hundreds or sometimes
thousands of miles away, and which looked just like Kansas City. Complete
with their own walls.
	It made sense though. If EarthSystem was going to be a food
production planet, you couldn't have suburban sprawl taking over the land
that could feed Trillions.
	The Sprawls had already happened in a few of the greater cities,
like New York City-State, Bo/Wash/Atlanta (Also known as BAMA, or, the
Boston/Atlanta Metropolitan Axis), Detroit/Toronto (DT),
Seattle/Tacoma/Spokane (also known as Vancouver City), SanAngeles, or the
Dallas/Ft.Worth Metroplex, but even those now had walls as well,
protecting the lands outside them from the steadily growing crush of
bodies, who couldn't get off the Earth fast enough, or simply couldn't
afford it.
	It was a fact of life everyone accepted, if they lived on Earth.
Limited living space, enforced birth control, and a conservationist
attitude towards the Earth and it's few remaining resources. The
Eco-Commandoes had finally won that war. But after how many millions of
lives were lost in the struggle? They're still trying to study all the
after-effects, these many years later, in labs, now located, behind great
Sea Walls purchased from, and designed by, the Dutch. The Sea Wall
experts.
	During the exodus to the stars, when EarthSystem was made into a
food producing giant, a lot of the smaller cities were leveled to make
room for farmland. Cities like Sacramento and Fresno didn't even exist
anymore. The soil they once occupied was far too important to the
California/Colorado CoOp.
	In Breadbasket, the situation was even more serious. Lincoln,
Dubuque, and Tulsa, as well as Amarillo, Des Moines, Duluth, and Jefferson
City were now all plowed under and covered in thousands of square miles of
soybeans or wheat, or corn. Most cities under 2 million were targeted,
when it all started. ALL cities under a million were wiped out. Food was
more important. People could always live in high rises.
	The Smithsonian and Crucible Foundations scampered a few years
there trying to grab up everything they could preserve from Earth,
supposedly for the benefit of future generations.
	That however, made Houston smirk. The future wouldn't give a shit
about that crap. They were going to be too busy just trying to survive.
	As the taxi settled on the roof of the AT&T Town Pavilion, Houston
smiled good-naturedly and patted Geisha's thick muscular leg, feeling the
kevlar body suit underneath the fabric of his ballistic cloth pants. So
Geisha was worried as well. Hmm.
	"Gonna be ok Girl?" Houston asked smiling as he got out of the cab.
	"Oh yeah." Geisha assented. "I'll talk to you later tonight. You
are going to meet me at the bar, after I get off work aren't you?"
	"Sure." Houston affirmed. "That's ok. See ya then." He said letting
the taxi doors close tight against the blinding white heat of the roof.
	Squinting across the roof at the entrance to the skywalk system,
dreading the maze-like complexity it created as it was strung between the
multiple floors and towers of DownTown, Houston took a deep breath and
walked towards it's doors. Behind him he heard the taxi take off again,
leaving him alone once again.
	Opening the door in the heat, Houston could feel the cool
air-conditioning wash over him, as he quickly stepped inside. The smell of
hundreds of bodies held in close quarters wafted through his nostrils, as
he made his way down the single flight of stairs to the main skywalk.
	Making his way through the rank and file, Houston could hear the
kid following him, walking about ten yards behind. The poor guy was trying
to be very quiet and not attract attention to himself, but that, in
itself, usually backfires in public. As it did this time.
	The very fact that the kid was so quiet, trying to blend in with
the background, was what alerted Houston to him in the first place. It
also made him wonder how long the kid had been waiting for him, and how
many more were out there waiting as well...
	The reflection in passing a stainless steel support beam, was what
gave the kid away finally. Houston could see him quite clearly in that
brief flash of a moment, and would probably never live to forget it.
	Black kid, poor, scared, on crack, or worse, a strained smile that
didn't show in the eyes that looked aged and filled with disquietude, and
a nervous bounce in the step that shouldn't have been there at all.
Definitely drug induced.
	Shit. The poor guy. Houston pitied the young black kid. He's
probably only doing this because he doesn't have any other means of
income. Houston thought to himself as the gap between them closed to about
7 yards.
	But if I don't do him, Houston reminded himself, he's going to do
me. Houston though, nodding to no one in particular. The fittest survive
and all that shit.
	Tally Ho.
	Taking the elevator down to the street level with a group of
others, Houston could pick out the kids smell of fear, in the tightly
packed, enclosed space of the elevator. The tension in the air was a
tangible thing. And Houston felt sorry for him. It came to him as a lump
in his chest. He briefly wondered if anyone else was picking up on the
scent of fear in the sardine environment. Of course, that was how riots
started a lot of times. Pheromones could do funny things to peoples minds.
	If they were alone, the elevator would be an ideal spot for the
kid to try to pick him off. The way it was however, if the kid pulled his
gun out, probably six of the 14 people in the elevator would cut him down
with their own heat. But no one was ever really alone. Not any more. Not
on this planet.
	The crowd filed out in front of Houston, where he stood in the
back, and watched carefully, as the kid glanced back at him, catching
Houston's gaze out of the corner of his eye. Damn. The kid would have had
to do that. He silently cursed the kid.
	Now there was something more personal to it. And Houston knew he
would be sick over it as well. No amount of sacrament, Reorganized Mormon
or not, was going to purge this guilt for quite a long time.
	Houston stepped out of the elevator, into the afternoon shade of
the AT&T building, looking up casually at City Center Square. Since it was
about one o'clock, just after noon, the sun was still high enough in the
sky to glare off the face of the building. Houston could feel the solar
radiation warm his face as he gaped up at the tower, while in the back of
his mind, judging the distance to the kid to be about 5 yards.
	Distance to hotel, 1 block. The odds were against him.
	Taking his chances at trying to lose the kid in the crowds,
Houston abruptly headed in the opposite direction of the foot traffic,
going around the block, instead of taking the short cut, as he knew the
kid expected him to do.
	Pushing against the flow of foot traffic, the walk was slow and
even, unhurried and uneventful, until they got within about 50 feet of the
hotel entrance.
	Houston heard the kid take an extra step, and that was what
unconsciously kicked his brain into overdrive, incognizant to the fact he
was hitting himself with a heavy dose of adrenalin, and automatically put
his hand in his jacket for him. As the adrenalin coursed through his
brain, time slowed, then stopped for Houston.
	Tech-9 Tech-9 Tech-9...
	The mantra he recalled from his years as a crackshot teenager, ran
in a continuous loop through his brain, as his sweating hand gripped the
butt of the warm steel Tech-9 tightly, his thumb stroking it's smooth
handled grip lightly, as his index finger dangerously teased at the hair
trigger.
	Growing up in MidTown, depending on the InterTech 9mm that was as
long as a mans forearm, with it's Teflon coated bullets, bothered him more
today than it did back then. Then, it was to get through Junior High
school, alive.
	What was it today? It certainly wasn't fun. It amazed Houston,
that he would even recall such a thing, at this time.
	He saw the silver mirrorshades of the CyberForm Enforcer standing
across the street flash in the bright sunlight, the big beefy officer
grimly scanning the crowds behind his thick bushy moustache, looking
dutiful and handsome, his big cybernetic arms crossed over his equally
imposing massive chest, covered in the tight orange T-shirt.
	It would take the Enforcer at least 3 or 4 seconds to sprint
across the street.
	It would take only one to die.
	This Will NOT Do! Houston thought angrily. His brain was
absentmindedly running through calculations of mass, speed, time,
direction, angle, velocity, when the kid finally got up the courage to
make his move.
	Houston took his queue from the CyberForm Enforcer, whom, upon
spotting the kid pulling out a gun behind Houston, he was, in what seemed
like slow motion, putting his arms down and leaning forward into a dead
run heading for the two of them.
	Despite what the CyberForm may think of Houston, or how much he
hated him, he couldn't deny that hardwiring. Commands built so deep that
he would destroy himself before allowing harm to come to a HumaniForm.
But not so deep that the code couldn't be tampered with, as he had found
out yesterday at noon. Or possibly coded around?
	Dead Run Dead Run Dead Run...
	The kid started to yell "Freeze!", sounding like an Enforcer, who
could order people to stop for questioning, but he only got out the first
syllable.
	Tally Ho.
	Houston had the Tech-9 out of it's holster, bringing it to bear,
twisting his body and falling on his butt at the same time, going down on
the ground on his back as he brought his broken arm up in one fluid
motion. Movement, for Houston, was taking place in slices of
micro-instants.
	The poor guy was still looking straight ahead with the gun
out-stretched, probably quite surprised his target had disappeared
downward in the short fractional seconds.
	Using the plasticrete cast as a brace for the Tech-9, Houston was
already firing up through the kids chin, into his brain.
	On the first shot, the kids head exploded. The second, seemed to
dislodge something quite large in his upper chest. Before Houston could
squeeze off a third shot, the Enforcer had pulled the Tech-9 from his
hands.
	As the body fell over his legs, and the rain of hot wet sticky
blood covered him, Houston was looking up into the bright blue summer sky,
tasting the coppery ichor as it splattered his face. Then he threw up on
the CyberForm mans knee-high, polished, shiny black, leather boots.
	I do hope they test that kids fluids. Houston thought to himself,
feeling the faint pull him backwards down the inky black tunnel of his
mind.
	He didn't seem to be down very long however, before he felt the
super-human grip on his collar, pulling him out from under the body and to
his feet as his head swam in a light-headed daze. His mind was buzzing.
This guy was not going to let Houston fall though, into blissful
unconsciousness. The asshole.
	"So sorry sir." The CyberForm apologized politely and
conversationally. "It seems, I should have been more alert." He said in
his faked chipped English accent.
	"It's ok." Houston croaked, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "Let me
go." He ordered, as the big man released him. He tried pulling his jacket
back down, smoothing it out with one hand, realizing faintly the
smoothness of the fabric was actually greasy with blood. Damn. "Get
reports on these fluids and post them public. I'll read them later."
Houston said, still feeling faint pull at him, holding out his hand, which
the CyberForm returned his Tech-9 to.
	"I'll need a name and address sir." The Enforcer politely reminded
him, knowing Houston would lie. Everyone always did. If you blow away
someone on the street, you didn't want the public files with your name in
it. Too many relatives, friends, gang buddies, and lovers who want YOU
dead then.
	So begins the cycle of "If you kill me, I'll kill you worser."
Houston thought this looked fairly "worser" from his quick estimation of
the tissues and body fluids around the immediate area of the plaza in
front of the hotel.
	God it was so fucking hot today. He thought, as he stood in the
blazing white hot sun, and the crush of bodies, surrounding the two and a
half of them.
	Putting his hand out and grabbing the Enforcer's big arm to steady
himself from falling back down into the mess again, Houston swallowed
hard, shivered, and was able to speak, only after finally finding an
un-bloodied Ecstasy tablet in the change pocket of his jeans, which he
quickly chewed, finding it horribly bitter, hoping it would absorb into
his system faster, under his tongue.
	"Max Johnson. I'm from Raymore Suburb, Cass County." Houston said
swallowing the lump in his throat, down further into his chest.
	"Thank you sir." The big guy behind the silver mirrored glasses and
cookie duster moustache nodded his designer sculpted jaw. "I'll take care
of everything here, Sir. Your test results should be available within a
couple of hours." He said in his patronizing apologetic tone.
	Houston nodded his weak approval, and stumbled his way the last
few feet to the hotel entrance, wondering if his legs might not try to
betray him at this point. Or his brain.
	Everything around him again started stretching and distorting,
moving around him in slow motion. Why, during these periods of stress, did
everything have to run around him in a space-time flux? Or, what were they
calling them today? Temporal Causalities?
	Houston could never quite figure out, if it was the outside world
not keeping up with his brain during these times of anxiety, or if his
brain couldn't keep up with the world. He supposed he would have to look
that up someday...
	There were a few stares from the people in the hotel behind the
counter as he made his way to the hotel elevators, since most had seen it
all happen.
	He knew he must look a sight, being covered in blood, one of the
most toxic of substances today. At least no one bothered stopping him, to
ask how one would come to be in such a state.
	He was silently grateful he had the elevator to himself, told the
elevator his room number, and shot up to the 12th floor in seconds.
	His ears popped as they usually did in elevators, and as he made
his way down the longer stretching corridor, he somehow fumbled the bloody
key out of his pocket and into the lock.
	Get to the shower. He thought, stripping as quickly as he could
with one arm, having trouble with the kevlar body suit under his clothes,
and hitting the button on the wall of the shower that had his temperature
commands already input from this morning, when he first arrived.
	"Hotter! Disinfectant!" He called to the shower, leaning with his
head on his cast against the wall, and began crying softly to himself.
	The steam swirling around him made him feel a little better,
despite the fact that he knew it would do no good as a "bug" deterrent.
Any virus the kid may have had in his blood was now a part of Houston's
bloodstream as well.
	"Well, I guess this makes us blood brothers kid." Houston said to
no one in particular at all, his voice cracking from the sorrow he felt
not only for the kid, but for himself as well. "Let's hope one of us lives
to tell about it." He said in a saddened voice, as his chin began
quivering. He was a dead man. Even if they didn't kill him with a bullet,
they may have gotten him with a bug.
	He stood with his face under the sprays, trying to shake the
feeling of faint and sickness from his mind, deciding he had enough.
	Stepping out of the shower and awkwardly drying himself with one
hand he stepped over the pile of bloody clothes and into the room, where
he collapsed on the bed in exhaustion.
	Damn. Houston thought, looking up at the ceiling. What a shitty
day. And it seemed like it had started out so good.

From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dog days pt 5 of 30
Date: 31 Jul 1995 00:08:30 -0500

Chapter Five
	Houston relaxed, laying back in the recliner, dressed only in
black nylon gym shorts, and black framed gold mirrorshades, with his
Tech-9 in his lap. After his untimely and unwanted sickness from a while
ago, he didn't even want to look at himself, much less see the rest of the
world, in any great detail.
	This morning, when he first got the room, he had plugged in his VR
unit to the TV, making a few minor alterations here and there in the
maintenance circuits. (The process had involved some highly technical and
very expensive tools like a ball point pen and a paper clip.) That little
VR unit was now his interface with the outside world.
	After the incident with the black kid at noon, he used the
portable VR terminal to go shopping at the Virtual Mall and was able to
get new clothes, boots, and a clean, new, kevlar body suit delivered from
the Sears warehouse. Not the best, as far as quality standards went, but
functional. It would at least save his ass from small arms fire.
	In his current state, dazed and confused from the day's
activities, he was quite thankful to himself that he hadn't pissed around
and put it off. At the moment, he was (Unable? Unwilling?) to move as he
sat back in the recliner, trying to force his mind to shake the shock from
his system.
	Through using the little VR unit, Houston also had his Artificial
Intelligence Programs looking into some things for him. He needed answers.
Who better to work in the communications web, than the people who lived
there?
	Being Guild, HE could turn his AI programs loose on the networks.
Let any out-guild programmer try it, and they would be sent to the
organbanx. Letting unauthorized unchecked AI's run loose around in the
ComWeb, was unwise, if not insane. There was the constant fear of: Given
free rein, who knew what they could do?
	"Listen up guys." Houston croaked out, to no one in particular, as
he lay staring out the sliding glass doors, watching the intense afternoon
heat shimmer off the concrete balcony, his voice command eliciting an
explosion of separate windows on the wall-sized TV screen.
	Glancing quickly at the screen, he could see that all his programs
were up front and accounted for. "It's by Mattel." He said simply,
returning to his unfocused gaze, staring outside at the scorching summer.
	The other programs dissolved away at his command, leaving one to
stretch and fill the screen with it's image.
	"Well, Mr. Potatohead?" Houston asked the program, not looking at
the screen directly. "What have you found out so far?"
	"Not much, I'm afraid." The program said with a lilt of
disappointment in it's voice. "Whomever it is, must be either very high,
or very low."
	"What are the odds?" Houston asked, curiously checking his own
figures (which he trusted) against the calculation of the AI program's
(Which he didn't have much faith in) whom everyone in his graduating
class, had affectionately named "Mr.Potatohead" because of his brown oval
nebulous image it displayed on the screen when activated.
	"I wouldn't care to guess at this stage." The program balked, out
of character.
	"Come on." Houston said a bit gruffly, as he felt his brow furrow
against his sunglasses. "I insist." He smiled a lupine grin at the TV,
returning his stare to the shimmering heat waves, outside on the balcony
of the hotel room.
	"Then I would guess Hytek."The program said with some finality, but
lack of interest, on it's part. "It points me in that direction anyway."
	"Good guess." Houston nodded noncommittally. "Given the lack of
data on our part, you only had a fifty-fifty chance of being wrong you
idiot. Now. Why?"
	"Your guess is as good as mine." The program answered, detached.
	"Not good enough." Houston shook his head. "Yours has to be better.
I have insufficient data, and no way to gain access to what I need."
	"Yet you expect more from me?" The image asked in a hurt voice.
	"Spare me the horse shit, and get on with it." Houston again became
gruff with the program. "You're about as funny as a Goddamned train wreck,
today."
	Houston didn't like his programs talking so much. Intelligent or
not. Lana Turner's "An Imitation of Life" was nothing at all like this.
	"It's someone you know." The program declared, quickly sorting
databases. "It's not Leslie Dow."
	"Why?" Houston asked, somewhat startled, looking back at the TV
again, curious as to why the program was so sure of himself, about that
one point. "You sound positive." These days, Houston knew, a man had to
suspect everyone.
	"He has a thing for you." The program paused. "You Know."
	"I know that!" Houston laughed. "What? You can't say 'Crush?'"
	"You lay down the code, Buddy Boy." The program remarked almost
snidely. "The last year of school, just before your graduation. You were
the one, who wrote in the lines, which told me to never again refer to,
You-Know-What."
	"Oh... Yeah..." Houston remembered quietly. "Well, that was just a
bad time in my life. You can talk about it now. Just don't get pushy about
it again, or you'll have a time-out coming."
	"Okey Dokey Bud. Code incorporated. So. It's not Leslie."
	"Yeah, yeah, you covered that already." Houston sighed, getting
terse again. He hated having to go through this banter with the program,
but he couldn't think of any better way to find out who was wanting him
dead.
	"It's not someone you work with." The blurry image said.
	"Why?"
	"Because I've been watching City Hall all day, and not once has
your name or pseudonyms, come up on any carrier I can identify."
	"Could they still be IN the office? Not communicating with meat?"
	"Unlikely." The image said now convinced. "To date, everything
points to someone else pulling the strings. Very long strings. And in the
case of the CyberForm you blew away in the alley, very expensive ones."
	"Ok, ok. Go on."
	"I suspect someone at the bar." It said, with some finality.
	"Why there?" Houston looked back to the TV again, somewhat amazed.
"I get along with everyone." He remarked, looking out at the lengthening
shadows of the taller buildings, close in around him, in the man-made
canyon he was looking out over, from the twelfth floor of City Center
Square.
	"Obviously not." The thing on the screen chided him. "And if
they're willing to pour cash down a hole just to get rid of you, then
they're probably high enough, to where money no longer carries
significance."
	"Are you saying I'm insignificant, you ungrateful shit-for-brains?"
Houston raised his voice. "Hey! I can make you an un-person, one helluva
lot faster than I made you who you are. Just keep that in mind, as you
smart-off, Punkey." He threatened.
	Houston sat staring out the sliding glass door, considering his
afternoon options. Yesterday, there were two attempts on his life. Today,
there were two. Was this it? Two a day? Or was there to be more and more,
until the job was completed?
	"I'm sorry Houston. I..."
	"Yeah, yeah, that's what HAL-9000 said to Dave. Just shut up."
Houston snapped at the thing on the screen. "Go away, and do whatever it
is you do do. Leave me alone."
	God. What a bad day. He waited a few moments after the screen went
blank, and let it reset itself, before he shouted out again.
	"Thou Seest Me!" He called out as a huge disembodied eye displayed
itself on the screen. He acknowledged the program by nodding.  "I want you
to pay attention out there." He told it, meaning the Communications Web,
where the programs resided, in machine space. "You see or hear anything
out there, with my name in it, you bring it right to me. Go away now." He
said and the screen shimmered as the program vanished, leaving it blank
again.
	"Omega?" Houston called to the screen, which came alive again, this
time displaying a huge computer generated symbol of Omega, filling the
screen. "I need something done." He said staring out the window, not
looking at anything in particular, the Tech-9 still in his lap. He knew
the gun was more of a security blanket than anything else, and it was a
false sense of security at that.
	Omega meanwhile, stayed on the screen, never wavering or changing
in any way, with the exception of running through it's rainbow hues, never
speaking, unless specifically told to do so. The voice on this one, gave
Houston the creeps.
	"Go to the bar, and run a DownLoad. A big one. Use stealth, and
don't get caught. I don't want to have to answer for this later. If you
need to move faster, trim yourself down, leave some files here in the
hotel, or up on Daedalus Station."
	He sat thinking for a moment, to himself, before continuing.
	"I want you to go get me, Miss Delta's accounting files. I need the
BancoCard numbers, of every transaction in the past year, since I've been
working at City Hall." Houston said thinking that would be sufficient.
"Bring it back here and we'll sort through it."
	The screen remained silent and steady.
	"Ok? Respond."
	"Key Affirmative."
	"Well OK then." Houston drawled out, and the screen went blank.  He
didn't have to wait very long, not more than a few seconds, before the
screen had the image of Omega back on it, running through it's rainbow
hues, looking peculiarly like a corporate icon. Something about the
program, Houston had not noticed before, he decided.
	"Ok. Let's have it then." Houston said, turning the recliner, to
face the screen, by slightly moving the armrest, whereupon the chair then
swiveled towards the screen, on its own power.
	The wallscreen was filled with the listings, of literally
thousands of transactions over the past year. Houston sat forward on the
recliner, peering intently at the screen. Sweet Jesus. He thought to
himself.
	"Oh man. There must be a million of 'em." Houston sighed. "Sort
down to match on name." He told it, and within a split second, the screen
had shifted almost imperceptibly, though it was still filled from floor to
ceiling. Quietly, he read down to the bottom. "Scroll. Slow." He
commanded, continuing to read.
	Within the last year... Some of the names, Houston knew as the
Liquid Lunch Crowd 'regulars', and some, he knew from when he went to the
bar occasionally at night, or after work. Though most of the names, he
didn't recognize at all. Nor did the transaction amounts seem to make much
sense.
	"Ok, this is getting me nowhere. Sort against my personal
directory. File that Friends point one." He paused thinking. "Sort against
contracts. File that Working point one."
	Oh Shit! If he didn't hurry up and get to City Hall medical before
5 o'clock, he would have to put up with the cast all weekend long.
	"Uhh.. sort against school records. File that School point One.
Remainder, file, No Match point One. I gotta go. I'll be back in a while."
He explained, getting up and beginning to dress quickly, tossing the black
nylon jogging shorts on the floor, slipping on the new kevlar body suit,
before putting on a new pair of jeans, which he had delivered from the
Virtual Mall earlier in the day.
	Everything was a constant rush anymore it seemed...
	Houston walked into the office where he worked, to see a team of
Engineer Guildsmen, still working on putting things back in order. Their
vivid, bright green jump-suits were a stark contrast, to the bright red
jump-suits of the Programmers Guild, he had known as a student, and wore
himself for several years, during his apprentiship.
	Christ, that was so long ago. He thought to himself as he stared
out over the multiple towers of DownTown. Idly, he wondered how his Master
Programmer he trained under, Leonard Three Deer, was making out today, up
in the New Beverly Hills Orbital Habitat.
	When he came off of the elevator, Houston was surprised to find
the windows out in places. He didn't remember the explosion as being that
bad... even if it did wreck the coffee closet. The room still smelled of
scorch and gunpowder from the explosion.
	"Hey Jess." Houston said in a friendly manner, as he came out of
the foyer, waving to the floor supervisor, who was actually nothing more
than a lowly non-guild programmer, with a half-assed corporate education.
	Houston was sincerely grateful, that his dad had managed to scrape
together enough money, to send him to The Belt, for his primary Guild
education. It was later, after he became a fourteen year old emancipation,
when he was then able to sign for his own loans, paying for the remainder
of his education and apprentiship.
	Sometimes he wondered if perhaps his uncle hadn't been the real
source of funds behind his education. The man had certainly played a part
in it somewhere, but his uncle was so unemotional, and quiet about
everything, who could tell?
	Houston knew his uncle certainly didn't appreciate the idea that
Houston was a Fag. He had said so, and in no uncertain terms, enough times
as Houston was growing up, experimenting with sex. And even though Houston
could never seem to please his uncle, no matter how hard he tried, the man
had always seen to it that Houston always got what he needed to survive.
	A lot of kids didn't even get that much out of life. They, like
Jess, sold their souls into corporate indenture at 16 years of age, not
understanding just how long twenty five years actually was. Then, twenty
five years older, facing Hyperculture, they were turned loose, by the
corporations they had known all their lives, to fend for themselves.
Somehow.
	At 16, the only thing you can think of is getting a job. Any job
is a good job. Until you've been with the company for ten or fifteen
years. Then you begin to see the error of your ways, and regret the folly
of youthful decisions.
	"Houston!" Jess smiled sweetly, popping a Dr.Feelgood tablet, and
handing the bottle to him. "How are you feeling?"
	"Well Jess, after taking all those downers, I bet you're feeling
pretty good, right about now." He grinned playfully at her. "Eh, my little
Down Clown?"
	"Don't make me laugh asshole." She giggled, rubbing her side.
	"You're awfully Up, to be on Downs." Houston commented, smiling,
sitting on the corner of her desk.
	"Never mix, never worry!" She laughed again, with pain in her face.
	"You're developing a bit of a habit dear." Houston said in mock
concern.
	"Look who's talking!" She smiled at him. "The Original Judy
Garland, of the Chemical Kingdom."
	"Better watch that Junior Pharmacist routine Jess." He warned her,
grinning. "It's one of those things, that can kinda sneak up on you.  Boo!
It says."
	Instead of responding, she smiled happily at his being alive. She
had missed him in his absence. But then, Houston always did get along with
women fairly well. Even if he was a misogynist. It was a curse, he had
decided, long ago.
	Jess had a sincere smile he decided, because her eyes lit up, and
the fact that she didn't try to hold on to the facade too long. Perhaps it
was out of realization over a possible lawsuit that brought her down to
reality so quickly.
	After all, that was the reason the City paid for all those teams
of security men. The muscle grafted, beefy bastards were supposed to keep
that sort of thing from happening; at least inside the walls of City Hall.
Someone's head would roll for the incident. Of that much he was sure.
Someone always had to take the blame. Usually it was someone completely
unaware of the incident, an underling, not responsible in any way, or in
no way connected. Such was the way of corporate life.
	"So how are you really feeling?" She asked now serious.
	"Feel pretty good. Gotta go see the Doc." He explained sitting on
the corner of her desk, casually looking over, what she was currently
working on. "I'll get you some better stuff up there." He said nodding at
the bottle of Dr.Feelgood's.
	"That's cool." She nodded, grinning absently, running through
possibilities of what sort of Yum-Yums he might bring her as a present,
from the good doctors upstairs.
	"How's things coming?" He asked her conversationally, looking
around the room at the new empty desks, only recently un-crated. "Many
people out today?"
	"Oh man! You seriously fucked this place. You know that don't you?"
She asked turning away from him and going back to her work spread out on
her desk in multiple windows. "I got three people out with injuries
related to your... accident, PLUS I had to deal with the Waste Disposal
crews in here all day yesterday, PLUS you fucked UP my purse, and I'm
going to Bill you for it, you fucking Fag!"
	"I didn't throw the Goddamned bomb Jess!" Houston laughed. "But
yeah, go ahead and bill me for the stupid purse." He said shaking his head
in amazement over her silly selfishness.
	"It wasn't a stupid purse." She snarled, back in full character, at
least for her. "I got that purse as a gift, from The Family Hall."
	"So take it down here to Hallmark Tower, and exchange it for
another one, just like it!" He laughed pointing out the window to the
south. "Where do you think they got that one? I mean, other than
originally from East African factories."
	"It was a Gift, you asshole." She glared at him and turned away
again. "A gift, from a Major Family member."
	"Oh Puh-leeze." He curled a lip in disgust at her. "The way you
suck up to those shits... Christ, but You make me sick! Do you really
think they Care about you? Or even who the fuck you Are?" He asked,
realizing she was ignoring him.
	"PLUS, I think you cracked my ribs or something, because it hurts
when I breath." She decided, to add to the list of crimes against her
person.
	"Then don't breathe." He remarked, casually uninterested.
"Especially after all those pluses."
	Houston looked over at the wall where Geisha had moved his body
after the blast, to see the huge wall-sized photo of City Hall, taken from
ground level, against the backdrop of the Breadbasket Building, which was
shot using a flashchip recorder with a distortion lens option, giving the
appearance that City Hall was just as tall as the Breadbasket Building.
That was his blood on the floor.
	In reality, if anyone cared to look out the window, they could
clearly see that there was about a 175 story difference in the two towers,
as City Hall was built in the early 20th century, using the older building
techniques and older materials, and only rose to a squat 30 stories. A
waste of space, even if it had been retrofitted over the past hundred or
so years.
	The Breadbasket building on the other hand, a towering knife blade
thrusting up into the sky, in defiance against the plains winds, was
constructed of new polymers and ceramics, and was able to rise to a full
205 stories before capping off. And it was only average as far as towers
went.
	Houston wondered absently if they planned to replace the picture
with something more credible this time...
	"When are you coming back?" She asked him, not looking up from her
work. "Billing is Monday, you know."
	"I don't know yet." He said quietly, thinking to himself about
something else besides fulfilling his contract with Kansas City Inc.
	"Oh MAN!" She whined, throwing the stylus she used for writing on
the desk and selecting menu items from the system. "Don't you roll me over
like this, Kramer."
	"Look Jess, let's just call these sick days, and I'll put in a
little time at home, to help you guys out some." He offered. "After
all..." He evinced, holding up the cast for her, to illustrate he was
still incapacitate.
	"Well, it's better than nothing." She grudgingly accepted. "You
can't believe how much we're behind. This whole scene is going to screw
August. First Consuella getting shot in the parking garage, and now this."
	"I would have preferred, it not have happened myself, Jess."
	"So who have you been trying to fuck over, that would want you
dead?"
	"No one I can think of." He paused a moment, thinking to himself.
"Look, I got to get to Medical and get this fucker off before I'm stuck
with it all weekend. I'll talk to you later Jess. Leave me a memo in the
system with the stuff you want done and I'll give it a look this weekend."
He said quickly, walking out into the foyer where the elevators were,
before she had a chance to respond.
	Hitting the elevator button for the 26th floor, he rode it up in
silence.
	Stepping out again, he could see that he had probably just made it
in time. Everyone in Medical was chatting excitedly about some party that
was going to take place at one of the corporate bars on the first floor,
this evening after five, although a few were talking about, and getting
ready for, their weekend plans.
	"Can I help you?" The receptionist asked, then, upon seeing the
cast, knew he was here to have it removed, and that he had already been
billed, realizing there was nothing more for her to do. "Oh. Don't touch
anything." She said going back to painting her nails. The room was
decorated in the tacky style of Retro American.
	Houston decided on a male Tek, since the women on the floor were
all involved in what they seemed to think was an incredibly important
information exchange. In short, they were gossiping about the
receptionist.
	The poor guy looked beat though. Working with this many women,
Houston could see how it would happen. It had to be draining, just
listening to them all day long, day after day.
	The Med-Tek guy nodded at Houston as he came up to the mans desk,
not looking at Houston directly, leading him over to a bed, and had him
sit on it while the Med-Tek got out his tools, never saying a word to
Houston.
	Houston thought maybe the guy looked like he had a headache or was
stressed-out or something.
	After the Med-Tek had laid everything out on his surgical tray, he
sprayed NuSkin on his hands (The same kind that could be found in most
medicine cabinets, of most bathrooms, across North America.) and snapped
on a pair of surgical gloves before touching Houston at all.
	In theory, either the gloves, or the NuSkin, would have been
sufficient protection against most of the transmittable "bugs" today, but
the health care profession never took any chances, and always doubled up
on protection. Hell, it never hurt, especially when it was just possible,
it could save your life, in the long run.
	Houston watched in mild fascination, as the man sprayed some kind
of milky white foam on the cast, and watched it dissolve into a blue
sticky substance, covering his arm, instead of the rock hard cast it had
been two minutes previous. He had wondered how they were going to take the
plasticrete cast off, without breaking his arm again to do it. Now he
knew.
	The Tek simply reached for it, pulling it off in long sticky globs
that came off in stringy handfuls, which he stuck back onto the ball of it
he had accumulating in his other hand. When he was done, he tossed the
entire cast, now a blue slimy ball, into the waste disposal chute, wiping
at Houstons arm with alcohol on cotton swabs to take off the excess. Most
of the bruising had cleared up by morning, thanks to the speed-healers.
	It was one thing to read about the glass polymer casts in a
NuzKlip article. It was quite another to witness new technology first
hand. Houston wondered briefly, what bizarre uses The Street would find
for the new technology of the cast. It might become anything. The first of
which, came to mind fairly quickly. It could be used to seal leaky
pipes... or roofs. He almost wished he could have seen it originally put
on, when they brought his unconscious form to Medical, yesterday
afternoon.
	"Stay on the ADA enzyme until they're gone and don't bang it around
any." The Med-Tek said in monotone, examining the end of his penlite.
"You've only had about twenty four hours of healing."
	It didn't appear as if the guys weekend was much to look forward
to. Houston felt sorry for him as the Med-Tek lifted his eye-lid and
looked around his eye with a bright white halogen penlite. The man just
seemed so tired. It showed the worst around his eyes. They were dark and a
little sunken.
	"Hey, what were those pain pills you gave me?" Houston asked,
striking up a conversation, getting ready to milk the guy for another
script of them.
	Instead of telling him, the Med-Tek dropped his eye-lid, and
walked over to the dispenser, coughed a little, punched in a code, and
another bottle dropped down a slot into the little door, for Houston to
take home.
	"Dynorphin." The Med-Tek said simply, tossing Houston the bottle,
lifting his eye-lid again, searching for fragments of glass and checking
on the healing of his eye. It did look a lot better than it did at noon.
Houston thought absently. Speed healers and nanosurgeons were marvelous
masterpieces of technology. Too bad the whole world couldn't afford them.
	Houston watched the Med-Tek closely, as the guy's cyberoptic eyes
focused into the micro-optic range, still searching thoroughly for any
glass fragment. Houston wondered absently, if the man was using image
enhancement or not.
	As the man worked away quietly, Houston recalled that he still had
a half a bottle of the pain-killer prescription, in his bag, back at the
hotel room. But Hell, if they were giving them out this easily, he might
as well go ahead and take them. After all, if they were so good, they must
be good for you.
	"Thanks." Houston said, but the guy just didn't seem to want to
talk. So, trying to provoke the Med-Tek into saying something, Houston
took out two of the pills and popped them in front of the corporate doc.
If one is good, two are better, even if three are best. A little is good
and a lot is great.
	Houston figured if they were giving out candy like this, then the
real McCoy must be absolutely bad-ass in comparison. An Endorphin analog
probably. The body's own painkillers. Mass-manufactured in East Indian run
labs, just off the coast of the Miami Islands. The drug capitol of the
world. "These are really great." Houston smiled at him, daring the Med-Tek
to say something.
	"Two hundred times stronger than morphine. Watch what you mix with
'em. Booze is ok if you've done it before. No street downers. The street
version of this drug is NOT the same thing. Don't die at work."  The
Med-Tek rattled off as he let Houston's eye fall shut.
	This guy knew the score. Houston's appreciation of the Med-Tek
went up a hundred percent. At least the man wasn't some kind of a bullshit
Med.
	"Gary Carter." Houston read off the man's name plate. "Thank you
Gary. Maybe I can help you out sometime."
	"Not if you charge what I do." The man monotoned softly, with a
straight face, to which Houston laughed out-loud heartily.
	"No, no." Houston laughed. "On the house. Thanks guy. Really. I
don't remember being in here yesterday, but I do appreciate all that
you've done."
	"It's what I charged you for, Kramer." Gary nodded, pausing a long
while staring into Houston's eyes. "You're not corporate. You're Guild.
Aren't you?" The Med-Tek asked rhetorically, looking around to see if
anyone was listening or not. "Hey, if I can think of something, is there
some place I can find you?"
	"Any computer linked with ComWeb." Houston quietly assured him,
also making sure no one was close by, listening. "I get around to all of
the Nets. Just post a message, and put my name in the note somewhere, and
I'll get back to you." He explained, looking more closely at the Med-Tek,
seeing for he first time that the man was only about 3 or 4 years older
than himself. "Or, if you need to see me in person, I'm down at Yukon
Jacks a lot if I'm not home. I probably wont be at home." He added
quickly.
	"I have a system at home." Gary nodded. "I'll be in touch. Well!"
He said clearing his throat as someone walked by, curious as to what the
two of them were discussing in low tones. A Management spy. It seemed they
were everywhere anymore. Paranoia was such an ugly thing.
	"Well, thank you again, Gary." Houston nodded, sorry that the
ritual of shaking hands had disappeared permanently. Except while in
Virtual Reality.
	"Sure. Like I said, it's what I charged you for, Kramer." Gary said
turning his back, changed again, cold and impersonal again. "You wont need
a cornea." He said over his shoulder, loud enough for the spy to hear his
professionalism.
	As Houston walked past the receptionist, heading for the elevator
lobby, he knew what the score, with Gary Carter was. He was tired of
corporate life. Either the man was looking for a bigger company to work
for, or he was wanting to go Guild, where he would be treated like a human
being again.
	Houston bet on the latter.
	A lot of people regretted their corporate indentures within a few
years after they signed them. But, after all, it was a job. Today, any job
at all was a good job. It's just that there are better jobs out there as
well. Jobs you can't have access to if you're locked into corporate
indenture.
	Houston had run this number, many times before. The guy would want
out of the indenture. Houston would go into the system, and change the
records, so that everything reflected that it was due.
	 The man would be free at that point, to join the Medical Guild.
>From there, once he was wearing the yellow jump-suit of Medical Guild, he
would get a real education in medicine then, and not just some half-assed
schooling that would barely pass an Emergency Medical Technician's test.
	EMT's were a dime a dozen. And that's just about what they were
paid.
	The corporations that employed them, in their own medical centers,
always insisted on charging the patients (Their own employees) full
medical price, but the people didn't realize, they were not getting the
full doctors, they thought they were paying for. Or else they just didn't
care.
	A Pity.
	Such is the way of things.
	Waiting for the elevator, he watched the sun suddenly dim
considerably, as a huge dark wall, moved in across the city.
	Looking down at street level, Houston could see the tress whipping
themselves into a frenzy, shedding leaves and twigs, as if they needed a
good shaking to clear out their pipes.
	That's the second dust storm this week. Houston thought to
himself. Systems will be going down all over the city.
	Oh well.
	Pity.

From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dog Day 6a
Date: 4 Aug 1995 14:45:51 -0500

Chapter Six
	"Hey Houston Girl!" Came a familiar voice, from the right of him,
about 3 yards, not far from where he was standing, just inside the door.
The shadow cast from the AT&T Town Pavilion helped his eyes adjust a
little more quickly this afternoon, as he entered Yukon Jacks.
	The relief was like the rush of a waterfall, pouring through
Houston as he stepped from the crushing, outside world, of thousands of
bodies, to the relatively uncrowded foyer of Yukon Jacks. He felt safer,
even if logically, he knew he wasn't.
	It seemed as if he and Geisha spent most of their time there these
days. He thought to himself as he pushed open the double swinging
half-doors and stepped inside, the smell of stale beer, male sweat, and
cigarette smoke, a tranquilizer to his soul.
	"Hey Tom." Houston nodded. "Seen Geisha yet?"
	"Not yet." The little man shrugged, his eyes as dilated as black
quarters. "She usually comes in about this time though. Sit down and have
a drink guy!" He encouraged, pulling out a bar-stool.
	"Well, yeah, why not? If you're sure it's no problem?"
	"Sit Down whore." Tom grinned, commanding.
	Tom was one of the lunch crowd. He was also part of the dinner
scene, as well as The Breakfast Club. He DID go home to sleep sometimes.
He always seemed to be clean and neat, wherever he slept. That is, if he
slept.
	Tom was also a Major Family member. Which meant that he was above
money. Unlike the rest of us, Tom had never know 'want' or 'need' in his
entire life. Nor would he ever. Nor would any of his progeny. Still, he
was a nice guy, and a good friend of Houston and Geisha. He had been to
several of their parties, even though they had never been invited to any
of his...
	Houston supposed the friendship was a one-way street. That was ok
though. It certainly wasn't the first time it had happened, and it
certainly wouldn't be the last.
	"Nah, I'm just having one for the road myself." Tom shrugged.  "Hey
man! Ya know, I heard you had a run-in the other day!"
	"Yeah." Houston drawled out. "It was just one of those things. Ya
know?"
	"I know man." Tom nodded slowly. "It's killer out there."
	"Hey Scotty." Houston nodded to the waiter as he came up to the
table.
	"How's it goin' Houston?" The waiter nodded slightly under heavy
lidded eyes. "Tom." He said in his low tone, acknowledging his customer.
At first, Houston thought it looked as if the young waiter might want to
say something more... If Tom hadn't of been sitting there at the time.
Hmm. He would have to consider this further. I wonder what time Scotty
gets off work...
	"I'll just have the usual Scotty, and get another for Tom here."
Houston said handing the waiter his Tech-9, and his BancoCard. Just then,
Geisha came in the door. "Get Geisha's on that too."
	"Sure." Scotty nodded in his stolid unemotional way, wandering off
to get the requested cocktails from the evening bartender.
	"Over here Girl!" Tom yelled across the room to Geisha. "Damn!
What the hell happened to that hair! Get it away!" He teased, laughing all
the while.
	"That wind is really picking up out there." Geisha shook his head.
"That'll play hell with systems tonight." He commented to himself.
	"How do you feel?" Houston asked slyly, looking over at Tom and
winking.
	"Fine." Geisha paused cautiously. "Why?" He asked, looking from Tom
to Houston, trying to figure out what Houston was getting at.
	"I just thought I'd ask." Houston laughed. "After your noon
performance, I thought maybe you might be strung a bit tight, is all."
	"Oh. God." Geisha said smoothing his hair down, running his fingers
through it, watching his reflection in the mirrored wall. "I shouldn't
have left here without a few more of those in my pocket. I started
crashing about 3 in the afternoon and wasn't worth a shit after that."
	"Feelin' low are we?" Tom teased him. "That's ok Girl. You did good
today. Besides, it's the weekend! We have to get warmed up for all those
festivities in store for us!"
	"What's going on?" Houston asked, looking for his drink.
	"Hell, I don't know. A couple of drag shows I think." Tom paused
thinking for a moment silently. "Does it matter?" He asked when Scotty
arrived with their drinks at the table. "We don't have anything better to
do." He shrugged. "That's why we're alcoholics."
	"I'm not an alcoholic!" Geisha grumbled petulantly.
	Houston again looked up into the face of the waiter, hoping to see
another hint of something that might be there, but saw nothing. He
shrugged the whole thing off as nothing more than a wry comment the guy
wanted to make but didn't.
	"Well Of Course you're not!" Tom teased him.
	"Sure we are!" Houston encouraged Tom, smiling. "We're drunks and
drug addicts, and we have a helluva good time with life." Then he grinned
directly at Geisha. "Well, some of us do." He heckled.
	Tom shrugged looking at Geisha, handing them all more Ecstasy and
tossing the card down on the table, in case anyone wanted more. No one
could be sure of anyone else's dosage curves these days. Not since the
pharmaceuticals had taken to cheating their customers on the drugs
time-spans. It was just another way to squeeze more profit out of the same
customer base.
	"I ought to go over to QuikTrip and pick up some more of those."
Houston said thinking out loud. "And replace my coke."
	"No!" Geisha boomed. "It's too Goddamned dark."
	"No it isn't! The sun doesn't go down until about 9 or so." Tom
laughed. "Look up in the sky, Geisha! It's only five fifteen. This is
August, Girl." He laughed shaking his head.
	"That's up in the sky you fool!" Geisha curled a lip in disgust at
him. "I'm talking about down here, in the bottom of Commerce Canyon.  This
city may be built up on a plateau, in the middle of the flat-lands, but
it's been designed like a fucking ravine. It get's way too dark down here
on the street level, way too early." He paused to glare at Houston.
"Besides. I said so."
	"I'll go get 'em for you, Houston." Tom offered, sighing.  "Jesus."
He laughed.
	"Get a couple, if you would, Tom." Houston said sliding his
BancoCard across the table to his friend. "If The Baron is working, then
get some coke. But only if he is working. Tell him it's for me, and that I
said the last shit sucked, then buy whatever he offers." He instructed.
"He wants to keep my business."
	"Ok." Tom nodded starting for the door.
	"I think he can read, if I remember right, but if he can't, then
he'll remember my number on the card." Houston added as Tom started
walking away. "I'm sure he knows his numbers."
	"Ok." Tom said leaving the bar and heading to the QuikTrip next
door.
	"What's that?" Geisha asked tapping the bottle in Houston's pocket.
	"Dynorphin." Houston explained simply. "Want some?"
	"No way!" Geisha shook his head. "Those things knocked you on your
ass in just a little while last night. That's no fun. You'd be history for
the rest of the night. Especially if you're mixing them with liquor."
	"True enough. Shit. I've already taken two at Medical." Houston
stared. "Maybe I should have had Tom get me some speeders from The Baron."
	"Why don't you wait and see what the coke is like first." Geisha
frowned, looking around the room to avoid Houstons eyes. "Good Christ."
He said shaking his head. "When are you going to slow down Houston?" He
said concerned.
	"Oh! Wait! I know this one too!" Houston stuck up his hand. "Are we
gonna 'have it out, once and for all, again'?"
	Geisha raised his thick muscular arm, like he was going to slap
Houston off the bar stool backwards, but he didn't swing at Houston. He
never did.
	Geisha looked tough, and acted tough, and was actually feared, by
a large portion of everyone who had ever met him, but Houston knew,
inside, Geisha was actually a pussy cat. As a matter of fact, Houston
couldn't remember ever seeing him in a physical fight before. All Geisha
had to do, was look angry, and the apology's started flying right and
left.
	Houston sat grinning, thinking Geisha looked a lot like his uncle
who had given him the Tech-9 he used today. Well, maybe not a lot.
Actually, a little. A bit perhaps. Truly, Geisha looked more like his
father than his uncle. That made him hesitate.
	Houston suddenly recalled the scene, that played back in his mind,
of the night his father had died...
	His uncle, had raised total hell with the staff of the hospital.
	Houston and his uncle had sat quietly at his fathers bedside,
making sure the youthful dying man, was kept free of pain, sometimes even
resorting to street drugs, and over-the-counter's, when the staff insisted
on pissing around.
	Houston learned early on, when dealing with the hospital staff, if
you told them it was time for his fathers shot, they would either tell
you:"Not for five more minutes" and if you waited those five minutes out,
then it was another thirty, just waiting for them to arrive.
	His father had laid there suffering, and told Houston a bizarre,
tender but much misunderstood story, about how much he was proud of
Houston, because he was one of the few people left, who knew how to say
"Excuse me, Please, and Thank You". Houston then kissed his father
goodbye, and watched him die. He shrugged off the whole Thank You business
as just pain and dope. Houston and his father had never got along that
great before, and he could see no reason why they should change their
patterns now, at the last minute.
	The entire situation, with the broken hip, was pretty bizarre
actually. His father was just barely some seventeen years older than
himself. It was more like losing a brother than a parent. Which did Not
make it any easier...
	Since Houston's mother had died, during the Pneumonic Plague of
'22, Houston's uncle had come back into his life again, as sort of a
surrogate mother. Well, as a second parent anyway. The man was only twenty
years his senior, and clearly didn't like the idea of Houston being a Fag.
	Near the end, the knowledge that he was losing his brother because
of a single hip bone, broken in an accident, was driving Houstons uncle
mad. It was crazy, since these things could be fixed so quickly and easily
today! Except when his father somehow contracted a staff infection while
in the emergency room...
	Houston was powerless, and could only sit and watch, as his uncle
continued to express his enduring fear over the fact, that Houston's
father, his only brother, might be in pain, at the end.
	"That's no way, for a damned Dog to die." He would snap. Most of
his uncles emotions managed to surface in the form of anger it seemed.
	Houston finally comforted his uncle, as well as his father, by
bringing in even more dope than the erratic man already had spread out, on
the table beside the hospital bed. His uncle would become infuriated, over
the uncaring attitude of the hospital staff, and then calm down right away
when Houston would find some little opiate ditty on the street, to
supplement his fathers already extreme levels of painkillers.
	It was a very emotional situation, and his uncle was a hostage to
it.
	His uncle thought he had to be personally responsible for the care
of his brother, in his hour of need, clear up until the end. Most of this,
he accomplished by not sleeping and staying hyped on amphetamines.  (Which
didn't help his sanity any.)
	During one of his uncles "fits", he pushed a fat black nurse head
first into a wall, after she deliberately dropped a syringe in front of
him defiantly, simply because he was being too demanding of her, expecting
her to take an interest in her patient, instead of ignoring his brother,
like so much street detritus.
	The fat black nurse simply proceeded to look him squarely in the
eye, and drop the syringe in front of him. Claiming the syringe was now no
longer sterile, the nurse said she had to go get another one.
	When she bent down to pick up the syringe, was when he pushed her.
His uncle laughed at her, and told her to get up off her fat ass, which
pissed her off to no end.
	A lot of words were exchanged, names called, and she threw the
syringe down, telling his uncle to do it himself, knowing full well, he
had no access to the prescription drugs, of the hospital pharmacy.
	His uncle had hit the emergency call button, and had security
brought in. They had the syringe analyzed, and found out the nurse had
substituted the drug for water. Later blood tests revealed, it was to
herself, to whom she had administered the missing shot of morphine.
Needless to say, she lost her job on the spot.
	
		



From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dog days 6c
Date: 4 Aug 1995 14:48:34 -0500

	"What?" Houston looked at him. "What?"
	"Did you do all of that Peruvian I gave you last night already?"
Geisha asked disgusted at him. "That habit is getting completely out of
control."
	"Geisha... Shut up." Houston suggested. "This is the first coke
I've had since last night." He said resealing the vial and dropping it in
his shirt pocket. "No, I lied. There was some in about a half a cup of
Gatorade that I drank this morning, warm. Then I got a couple of sips from
the one you made me this morning. That was just before they bombed my
apartment."
	"So where is the Peruvian?" Geisha asked, clearly not believing
him. "Hm?"
	"It got messed up."
	"How?"
	"Don't worry about it." Houston squirmed in the chair, feeling
Geisha eyes boring holes through him.
	"How?" Geisha demanded in that voice that told Houston there was no
way out of this one.
	"I had a problem after lunch today is all. There was some body
fluids flying and I didn't want to take a chance, on that old plastic bag
having a leak in it, so I tossed it." Houston glared back. "Ok? Are you
satisfied?"
	"Well, I know the body fluids had nothing to do with romance, so
are you going to tell me what happened?"
	"Why is everyone so Goddamned sure, I don't trick out?" Houston
sighed, exasperated. "I blew away a black kid, who was tracking me. The
CyberForm Enforcer was too far away, to be of any help."
	"So! You got Blood on you. I see." Geisha nodded. "Did you get any
blood in your wounded eye?"
	Houston sat silently still, desperately trying to avoid his
friends wrathful gaze.
	"Well, let's see. That's... oh, what? Four Years you have to worry
about, to see if you're going to come down positive with something?"
	"I had the CyberForm, run all the standard tests." Houston said
trying to diffuse the situation and avoid Geisha's glare. "Everything was
ok, when I called in to the station."
	"Don't give Me that shit. The standard tests, cover only those
things, that are currently positive" Geisha looked hard at Houston. "What
if you find out, in six months that you test positive to the HIV-6? Or in
eight months, The Connecticut Strain?"
	"Well then I die, Geisha!" Houston sighed and looked at his friend
square on in the face defiantly. "Christ on a crutch! No one get's out of
this world alive, and we All gotta go sometime."
	"Your sometime should not be, in one year." Geisha said quietly,
sighing a moment in the silence, and laying back on the bed. "God, you
piss me off so bad."
	"I know." Houston said quietly.
	They sat in the silence that filled the room for far longer than
it was comfortable for Houston, so he called out to the screen. "Music!
Anything of mine from ten to twenty years ago." He said, as the room
filled with the pop tunes of his youth. It was something more than
listening to Geisha breathe, or trying to figure out what his burly friend
was thinking.
	"How did you manage that?" Geisha asked hoarsely, still laying on
the bed, staring up at the ceiling. "Hotels aren't supposed to be wired
personally."
	"It's just tricks. It doesn't matter."
	"Goddamnit!" Geisha yelled loudly.
	The sound was quick enough, and loud enough, that it startled
Houston, making him jump a bit in his seat. Suddenly, without realizing he
moved so fast, he had his gun out of it's holster, pointing it first at
Geisha, (The source of the disturbance.) then letting it trail slowly to
the floor, as he realized it had all taken place in one fast motion,
faster than he could think of what he was doing.
	"Going to blow me away now?" Geisha asked quietly, staring at him.
	"No." Houston grumbled as his voice nervously shook, putting the
Tech-9 away again, back next to his ribs, turning sideways in the chair so
the same thing couldn't happen again. "Just stop yelling at me. You're
making me nervous." It shook him up pretty bad. Out of blind reflex, he
had almost killed his friend.
	"Pity." Geisha commented in a caustic voice as he got up and went
to the bathroom.
	When he came back into the room, Houston was crying silently. The
tears had come upon him in a gush, without any warning. He hadn't even
realized he was wanting to cry, when it just happened. The tears ran down
Houstons face, as he continued to breathe, slow and steady. He didn't make
a single sound, as he sobbed, steadily, unable to stop.
	"I'm sorry Houston." Geisha said, sitting down on the bed again,
sitting forward and putting his hand gently on Houston's arm, trying to
console him, after what he felt was his fault. "I shouldn't have yelled at
you. I'm sorry."
	"It's not you Geisha." Houston laughed, wiping at his face with his
hand. "It's this whole Goddamned thing. Man." He said, clearing his
throat. "Even the fucking Miami Jew Islanders weren't this bad, and
they're supposed to be, one of the meanest terrorist groups around." He
laughed as he continued to cry, trying to wipe his face, his nose
beginning to run, then starting to bleed, and finally deciding this was
going to require a big towel. Good Lord what a mess.
	"Volume!" Houston called to the TV as he went into the bathroom to
finish a good cry, he thought he needed to get over, right about then.
One that he had been building steadily, and he had been needing to get
over, for years now.
	Geisha sat quietly in the room alone, staring out past the sliding
glass doors to the balcony, seeing the reflection of the sun setting off
in the northwest, reflecting off the mirrored facade of the building
across the street, the orange light casting long dark shadows, across the
deep chasms of DownTown. And what seemed like their lives together.
	"Ok. Look." Houston said, as he came back into the room, sniffing,
red-eyed, and clearing his throat. "I've survived over 24 hours without
any idea as to whom it may be trying to nix me, nor for what reason."
	"True." Geisha nodded in a more agreeable tone.
	"Ok, so they can't be that good." Houston reasoned. "Right?"
	"You're leaving out the fact that you've had 'Other' training."
Geisha pointed out. "By the way, why Do you have that further training
anyway? Are they teaching that shit to programmers these days?"
	"No!" Houston laughed out loud, more relaxed, feeling much better
now that he was over his crying fit. "My Dad and my uncle wanted me to
join the Military Gang or Guard or one of the corporate gangs." He
explained easily. "I didn't want to be bothered with it, so after I got a
little older I just kinda quit on them. Hey!"
	"What?" Geisha sat looking at him.
	"Uh, I need to do something, but I don't want you to say anything
about it" Houston stressed. "Last thing I need, is you on my ass right
now."
	"Sure Houston." Geisha nodded quietly. "Anything you say."
	"Omega!" Houston called to the screen, and instantly the screen
filled with the huge symbol. "List sort files." He sat thinking as he
looked at the files a moment. "Erase No Match point one. Erase School
point one. End." As soon as he finished the word, the screen again went
blank. "Ok!" Houston said, grinning triumphantly. "All done."
	"Are you going to tell me anything?" Geisha asked in a wounded tone
of voice. "Or are you going to keep this secret Guild shit going?"
	"I just had to look at some stuff." Houston explained, trying to
disarm Geishas bruised feelings. "You gave me the idea, as a matter of
fact."
	"How's that?"
	"By asking about my previous training. Before The Guild." Houston
explained quickly. "I now know, the person wanting me dead, isn't someone
I went to school with, and I know it wasn't someone I don't know. It IS
someone I know, in other words."
	"How do you figure?" Geisha asked puzzled.
	"At school, everyone knew about my training. No one fucked with me
because of it." Houston explained. "As for anyone else, who didn't know
about my training, would have given up long before now, simply because
they've failed so many times. I don't think I would waste time and money,
on someone who was better than me anyway."
	"So where does that leave us?"
	"Well, like I said, it's someone I know. They know I have that
training, but they don't know how good I really am. Or at least they're
not sure." Houston shrugged. "It could still be someone I used to work
for, or one of my friends. I think the former highly unlikely." He said
thinking to himself.
	"Oh please!" Geisha smirked at him. "Why would your friends want to
kill you?"
	"Well shit Geisha," Houston laughed. "If I knew that, I would know
exactly who."
	"I think you're just getting paranoid." Geisha shook his head and
then added. "Well, with good reason, but still, I think you're looking at
the wrong people."
	"Why?" Houston asked him. "I know it's not You Geisha."
	"Because people just don't kill people for no reason. They have to
have a reason." Geisha said shaking his head for a moment. "Besides Bitch,
how do you know I won't decide to blow you away, when you turn your back
on me?" He said slyly, grinning as he looked over at Houston in the
diminishing light of the hotel room.
	"Because you had the perfect opportunity, last night, when I was
doped and fell asleep." Houston reasoned for him quickly.
	"Maybe I just didn't want to get blood on my new wallpaper."
Geisha offered.
	"Uh uh." Houston smiled. "Whomever this is, that's looking to wipe
me out, would not let money or wallpaper, stand in the way of murder." He
grimaced.
	"Murder most foul Holmes?" Geisha grinned at the old movie line.
	Houston often made him watch a lot of old movies, which he didn't
used to have a taste for at all, but had recently grown to enjoy them.
The 2019 version of The Mummy's Curse was still one of his favorites.
	"Murder most foul Girl."





From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 7a
Date: 1 Aug 1995 18:06:50 -0500

Chapter Seven
	"So now what's to become of me?" Geisha asked seriously, sitting on
the edge of the bed, looking steadily at Houston, clearly shaken over the
events of the past hour. It brought out feelings of... Protection, or
perhaps, guardianship in Houston. He wasn't at all sure it was something
he was comfortable with.
	"Well... Geisha, I'm really sorry you got dragged into this, but I
don't think you should go home alone." Houston tried explaining as
delicately as possible. "At least until I understand, who it is I'm
dealing with. I think it would be best if you stayed here with me, at
least for the time being, so I can kinda keep an eye on you."
	"You think they'll try to hit me too?" Geisha asked him in a
direct, low voice.
	"I don't know for sure. I just don't want to take that chance."
Houston winced. "Do you understand? I'm not just trying to be mean to you,
Geisha."
	"Yeah. I understand." Geisha said low, nodding as he stared out the
window. "How long do you think this will go on?" He asked quietly.
	"I don't have any idea." Houston sighed. "Until I hit them back, I
suppose."
	The big man who had been Houston's friend and neighbor for so
long, sat on the bed, looking tired and beat. Smaller, in his fear and
exhaustion. Defeated. Houston thought.
	"Do you think we should eat in the room?" Geisha asked quietly.
"Or can we risk finding a restaurant here in the hotel?"
	"We can go upstairs." Houston smiled smoothly, nodding at his
friend. "It's a Stuckeys though." He warned jokingly.
	Geisha just nodded quietly, thinking silently, keeping his
thoughts and comments to himself. Houston decided he was going to have to
go easy on Geisha for a while. At least until his big rugged chum, got his
bearings back. It was hard for Houston to believe, a man of Geishas size,
could be as emotionally unprepared for something like this.
	"Come on." Houston suggested, getting up out of the chaise lounge
and walking deliberately, quickly across the room, with his bigger
companion in tow.
	"Should I get a separate room?" Geisha asked quietly, out in the
stillness of the hallway, watching Houston pull the door to the room
closed behind him, checking it to make sure it locked securely. "Jeez.
I'm starting to look like five miles of bad road." He remarked, looking at
himself in the reflection of the mirrors along the wall, on their way to
the elevators.
	"You don't have to Geisha." Houston patted him gently on the back.
"I'd kinda enjoy the company, if you'd like to stay with me."
	"It doesn't matter." Geisha shrugged, stepping into the elevator.
	They stood in silence a while as Houston searched for something
else to say. Anything to keep Geisha's mind busy, with something other
than their current predicament.
	"Where'd you get that scar Geisha?" Houston asked, pointing up
under his chin.
	"Toronto." Geisha shrugged, fingering a long thick wound that was
slightly redder than the surrounding olive skin, showing stark against the
blue beard that covered his jaws and throat. "When I was a kid."
	"How?" Houston encouraged him.
	"I got in a fight with an East Indian kid. Punjab wannabe street
samurai." He sighed, rubbing his hand over his five o'clock shadow that
covered his face. "He stabbed me in the arm, and tried to cut my throat.
That was as far as he got with the job." He said toyed with the scar,
remembering to himself.
	"So who won?"
	"Well Jeez Louise!" Geisha shook his head. "Obviously I did, since
I'm still alive, you silly Bitch!" He laughed at Houston.
	The doors snapped open and they stepped out into a dark, greasy,
and quiet restaurant, atop the City Center Square building, that dated
back before the turn of the century. It didn't look as if many patrons of
the hotel used it anymore, as most preferred to remain in their rooms and
call for room service. It was much safer these days.
	The little candles on the tables, tiny wicks in oil, floating on
water, in clear glass bowls, lit their way in the dusty smelling darkness,
as they headed towards the smoked glass windows, just as the last few rays
of sunlight were making their way into the cavern of the city, by
reflecting off the available surfaces of the mirrored windows, covering
most of = the DownTown towers.
	The mammoth structures surrounding the short little hotel were lit
up like grand Christmas trees, their faces vast vertical fields filled
with fireflies, creating a universe, of individual points of lights. A
thousand points of lights. Houston thought, looking down into the river of
lights, lining the street below. Yeah. Right.
	Imelda Marcos and all her shoes, couldn't hold a candle to this
insanity.
	Though it was only 7:30, and there was actually a good two full
hours of sunlight left, the inner city of deepest DownTown, was already in
a state of growing dusk.
	"Well Lolita, how's this?" Geisha asked him, making Houston smile.
	"Just fine Captain Hairdo." Houston grinned, sitting down.
	"Shit. Do you have a comb on you?" Geisha asked running his fingers
through his short dark hair, trying to straighten it.
	"Uh. Yeah." Houston hesitated, finally handing his companion his
comb, wondering if he should use it again himself. "Since when do you use
other people's combs Geisha?"
	"Not other people." Geisha yawned. "Yours."
	"Oh." Houston said thoughtfully, as a wearied waiter came up to the
table.
	"Can I get you something to drink?" The waiter asked uninterested.
	"Yeah, we'll have a Rum & Diet Coke and a Yukon & Orange Juice."
Geisha ordered for both of them, seemingly 'interested' in the young
waiter.
	"Yeah ok." The waiter said walking away.
	"Stud alert." Geisha arched an eyebrow at Houston, smiling.
	"You think so?" Houston looked again at the waiter across the room.
"I thought he was kinda Hooterville looking."
	"Oh well." Geisha commented, taking one last look at the stud.
"Even Hoosiers have their uses." He sighed. "He'd do in a pinch anyway."
	Soon the waiter came back to the table with their cocktails and
complimentary condoms with each drink. It was such an old fad, most places
of business didn't even bother with it anymore. Everyone already knew of
the dangers of mixing sex and alcohol. They had for the past fifty or so
years. The Stuckeys restaurant, crowning the City Center Square building,
had some catching up to do.
	They should be giving out rubber gloves. Houston thought to
himself.
	Suddenly Geisha looked up at him, over his cocktail, looking pale
and drawn even in the surrounding darkness of the restaurant.
	"I just realized something!" Geisha wheezed across the table, as he
sat his cocktail down in the middle of his plate. "You've got an AI out on
the hotel net. Don't you?" He accused Houston. "That's what you're doing."
He said thinking out loud, staring at Houston, a fearful look of
realization creeping into his face.
	"Geisha." Houston lowered his voice and began to explain.
	"Houston!" Geisha hissed. "My God! You've released Artificial
Intelligence to free will! Omigod!" He said putting his hand to his
forehead.
	"They're benevolent Geisha." Houston said low and quietly, looking
around to see if anyone in the room had overheard them talking.  "I assure
you, I wouldn't do anything crazy or dangerous."
	"Houston! You've turned a demon loose on the world!" Geisha
exclaimed, downing his cocktail in a single gulp, shivering. "Omigod."
	"They aren't demons, Geisha." Houston chuckled a little. "They're
just programs."
	"THEY!?  How many are there?" Geisha asked horrified. "Call them
back while you still can, Houston. Please." He pleaded.
	"I will, in time." Houston assured him quietly. "It's ok Geisha."
	"That's why we're safe as long as we stay in the hotel. Isn't it?"
Geisha stared across the candle in the glass bowl between them.  "They've
infiltrated the hotels system, haven't they? That's how you were able to
get a personalized music library on the TV in your room."
	"Yes." Houston said simply, letting Geisha get the fear and
excitement out of his system, so he would calm down enough to listen a few
minutes.
	"Omigod Houston." Geisha shook his head. "They'll send you to the
Organbanx for this! Omigod." He put his head down in his hand, then
motioned to the waiter, to bring another round of cocktails. "Well, I
guess a Lobotomy means never having to say you're sorry, though, doesn't
it?"
	"No they won't." Houston quietly assured him. "Just listen a second
Geisha."
	"A rogue intelligence Houston!" Geisha hissed. "More than one!
Omigod. They must be outside the hotel already! That's who you were
talking to on the phone to get a cab a while ago! They've already
infiltrated the phone networks!" He gasp in horror. "You've released them
onto the communications web!"
	"Geisha calm down." Houston snapped sternly, as the waiter brought
them their cocktails.
	After the man was clearly out of range, Geisha turned on Houston
again.
	"The ComWeb Houston!"
	"Geisha, I told you, they're benevolent. They aren't going
anywhere, or doing anything, that I don't want them to." Houston tried to
reason with his friend. "Now you're just gonna have to trust me on this."
	"Houston, listen to me. Get those things back into a machine, and I
mean right now." He said thumping his fingertip down on the table cloth.
"I mean it. You know how alien those things are. I mean, who knows what
they think?"
	"Well, I do for one, Geisha." Houston smirked. "I wrote the
Goddamned things. If anyone should know anything about what they think, it
would be me."
	"Houston.  Now even I know enough, to know that those... things
write their own code." Geisha tried explaining something he knew very
little about. "That's why it's illegal to turn them loose. They can't be
controlled."
	"Yes, they can." Houston said quietly, examining the menu.
	"Tell me this, then." Geisha said putting his hand over the menu
getting Houston attention again. "Are they software, or have you had them
hardwired somewhere?"
	"They're soft AI's Geisha." Houston said calmly.
	Geisha said nothing in response. Instead he picked up his own
menu, and began examining it, with a look on his face, Houston could see,
that he wasn't really seeing anything at all, but thinking to himself.
	"Ceasars. Blue." Was all Geisha told the waiter, dropping the menu
in front of him, staring out the window to avoid the confrontation he was
itching to face Houston with.
	"I'll have the KC Strip." Houston smiled handing the menu to the
waiter, who was clearly uninterested in anything the two of them had to
say to each other, walking away, obviously bored and worn out.
	"Oh shut up." Geisha snapped at Houston, not looking at him, and
not wanting to start any argument, he knew he couldn't finish right then
and there.
	"Fuck you." Houston snarled back, a little angry now. "Facts of
life, Geisha. Love and Death part one. The Web defines the world. You and
I both know, that nothing goes on in the real world, without it being
duplicated or mirrored in some way, in machine space. The ComWeb."
	"Don't patronize me." Geisha growled. "Any first grade child knows
that."
	"Everything that exists in ComWeb is just as real as anything
here."
	"Yeah? So?"
	"So if these programs are as real as people here, don't you think
there might be a way they can be stopped as well?" Houston demanded.
	"I don't know." Geisha said slightly confused now. "I've heard.."
	"Within The Web are "Nebula". Houston began, interrupting his
friend. "Network systems that exist off-line, from the main Communications
Web that the rest of us interface with everyday."
	"Why?"
	"Because they just do. Even Programmers need to keep secrets from
the rest of the world. Isn't that the name of the game today?" Houston
asked rhetorically. "These Nebula, act as mini-universes, where several
factions of society can meet in to interface. Like Programmers, CyberPunx,
and Independents. We're different aspects of society, yet we have the
machines in common."
	"So?" Geisha snorted, growing impatient. "You're one big happy
dysfunctional family. Congratulations on your club. Big deal."
	"So the Nebula Networks give us an edge over the AI's even.
They're pools of HumaniForm intelligence, that far exceed anything the
AI's could ever hope to simulate or achieve. And they're constantly
available."
	"Yeah? SO!?"
	"So there's nothing to be afraid of Geisha. There's always someone
out there watching the ComWeb. Always." Houston calmed him down quite a
bit. "If anything I released was beginning to look threatening, they could
take it out in less than a nanosecond. I would probably be fined of
course, and given a warning, but there's no longer anything to fear about
rogue intelligence."
	"How would they know they're yours?" Geisha inquired curiously.
	Houston began to get uncomfortable now, knowing he was revealing
information out-guild that he shouldn't be divulging. Trade secrets. But
hell, who would Geisha tell?
	"It's written into the programs coding. Kinda like handwriting or
voiceprints. Mine is unique to all others."




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 7b
Date: 1 Aug 1995 18:09:10 -0500

"So how did these nebula things get started, without anyone knowing?"
	"Well, going back a ways, when computer/human interface reached the
stage, where we began using Virtual Reality in day-to-day interface, back
at the fountainhead of The Matrix, we effectively had a way for machines
to read our minds." Houston explained. "It's the whole theory today behind
virtual reality and machinespace.  What's more, they can make us think
we're living in something that isn't there. Televised hallucination.
Through the cellular network, once you put a VR unit on, or jack in with a
datajack, the real world disappears and the Virtual world appears around
you. Whether it's a VR database, or a television show. BTL. Better than
life. It's better than real. You're in the middle of the fantasy world of
your choice."
	"Yeah." Geisha nodded, picking at his salad. "I've seen 'em
before."
	"The VR unit is constantly picking up signals from your brain, at
the same time, it's feeding you an alternate reality, to specific sites
within your brain. Stimulating your visual receptors, making you think
you're seeing something, at the same time, it's getting feedback from your
brain, making sure the image is in focus, appears solid, or not too
bright." Houston went on patiently. "It's sending either a contact cue, or
the soundtrack of the actors speech to your audio centers, while at the
same time, checking to make sure you can hear it, but it's also checking
that it's not too loud. A two way link. A true interface."
	"Yeah." Geisha chewed, following along.
	"After we started utilizing biochips in the interface, physically
wiring the systems directly into the brain, that reality jumped a
thousandfold. They added sim-taste, sim-smell, even sim-touch. Simsense.
You can't tell some of the Virtual Worlds from the real thing. It's all
around you while you're interfacing with it. It's almost an information
gel if you will." Houston continued excitedly. This was his world he was
talking about. Here he was completely at home.
	"Sure." Geisha shrugged. "The fact that it is so real is why
they're so popular for porn."
	"Ok. So when the programmers were using started using VR terminals,
a completely new world opened up, which, until then, existed only in
cyberfiction stories. The Matrix was born. A world where both man and
machine, were on equal ground." Houston said almost wistfully. "As we were
struggling to grasp the vast amounts of data out there, the machines were
trying to grasp the real world and understand it. Only in The Matrix can
this be so. A place where programs can be people, and people are but mere
icons, representing datafields. Data is physical and not just abstract."
	Geisha just nodded, squeezing blue-cheese paste onto his salad,
listening attentively, not commenting.
	"The cult of the NebNets came into vogue, about twenty five years
ago. They did exist before that, but they were no way near as big, or as
stable as they are today. They supposedly started, by a group of
punk-pirates in the Catskills, who were on this 72 hour marathon, building
a VR playground for themselves. Legend has it they were so entranced with
the new reality, that most of them just stayed jacked in, and slept
there." Houston shrugged. "But that's kinda the way legends get started
though isn't it? It was probably a lot more boring than that, but... hell,
who really knows?"
	"So they just forgot about everything outside?" Geisha asked.
	"Forgot, or refused to go back, it's basically the same. There was
mention of drugs being involved, as programmers are notorious for, and you
couple that with the surrealism of machine space... well."  Houston
shrugged. "I can see how it could happen. Unless you've been there, and
experienced what it's like to taste a terminal interface, or feel an
output port, or smell a phone line interface, there's really no way to
describe it. It's very surrealistic. These kids who came up with the first
NebNets, were on the edge of things... you know?"
	"So what happened?"
	"Well, they just caught on after that." Houston shrugged.  "Without
food, sleep, staying hyped on drugs, I can see how they would.  It's kinda
like a sensory deprivation tank, except the machine is feeding you a new
reality. A better reality. Anyway, these kids really tripped out over it,
and of course started telling their friends about it. A cult was formed
around it."
	"So you've got a bunch of hippy-dippy's, all plugged into the
computers." Geisha said getting bored. "So?"
	"So, I guess what I'm trying to explain to you is, that these guys
are the masters of the "nether world". Most of them don't even leave
virtual reality anymore. They walk around the real world, using
prosthetics for the disabled. You know, eye's for the blind, ears for the
deaf, and so on." Houston explained. "They are so closely linked to The
Matrix, it's hard to tell where the man ends, and the machine begins."
	Geisha sat listening, staring out the windows at the thousands of
lights in the windows of the DownTown towers.
	"A few years ago, when the big scare over rogue intelligence was so
wide spread, these were the guys that handled the problem. No one else."
Houston stated clearly. "No matter what you hear on NuzKlips, these guys
that run the Nebula Networks are the real overlords of ComWeb.  They were
able to take out the rogue AI's, in less than a second." He said simply.
	"Explain something to me." Geisha sat forward. "Just how were those
AI's able to get loose back then?"
	"Any machine with a phone line, is a part of ComWeb." Houston
explained. "Those machines were special, only in the fact that their
intelligence wasn't expected. The people in charge of them, kept feeding
them more and more databases, giving them access to more and more
datastreams, and bang! It just happened."
	"Just like that huh?"
	"Just like that." Houston nodded. "You have to understand there was
a lot to do with the operating systems involved, and the way they were
structured to accumulate data. Self awareness, whether the result of one
of any number of multiple unknown viruses, or simply a matter of the
systems getting bigger than the designers anticipated, wasn't understood
in the beginning. Later we learned how to code for that sort of thing."
	"Hmm." Geisha said nodding.
	"While ComWeb defines the world, the NebNets are not the world.
They're pools of HumaniForm intelligence. If a database is not plugged in
to the networks, through a phone line of the communications web, then you
just can't get here from there." Houston said ignoring his dinner. "The
Nebula Networks, and their tight security, are the only way to infuriate
and beat the AI's because they exist, in effect, outside the world. As of
yet, the AI's have no way of changing the dimensions of their spacetime,
or leave ComWeb machine space, so we have nothing to worry about. Well,
they can send out "Rider" programs as extensions of themselves, which can
take control of a hardwired person, robots, or CyberForms... Oh shit
Geisha."
	"Do you think so?" Geisha paused, his fork inches from his mouth.
	"I don't know." Houston said nervously. "Come on. I'll get the
check." He said touching the Tech-9 lightly, feeling it's hard steel
surface, try to reassure him everything was going to be ok.
	Since a hundred years ago, when computer systems switched from
having to use the old copper cables and fiber optic lines, to the cellular
network for communications between systems, spying, or "intelligence
gathering capabilities" had skyrocketed as a result.
	Now that Houston suspected an AI may be at the source of his
problems, possibly who it was that controlled the CyberForm in the alley,
the black kid, etc, every electronic device with a microphone, was
suspect.
	Even the links from a terminal, to it's super-frame computer were
now cellular; giving the networks an "ethereal" face, where it had all
required physical hardwiring before.
	The end result is that everything becomes input, to a computer who
might want to listen. It seemed that Houston was having just such a
problem. Where to find ComWeb Shadow?
	"Geisha; can you get us into the Engineers Guild arcology?"
Houston whispered very soft and low, close to Geisha's ear.
	"Underground of the old Missouri State Office building?" Geisha
whispered thoughtfully. "Sure. I guess. Why?" He asked, not understanding
what Houston's next move was.
	Houston just motioned with his head for Geisha to follow.
	"Do you feel like a drink at Yukon Jacks?" Houston asked Geisha
out-loud, turning his head slightly, so that he was able to wink at him
with one eye, out of sight from the elevator security camera.
	"Sure." Geisha said simply, following Houston's lead. "I'll need to
stop by the apartment, and pick up a spare clip first."
	"Ok." Houston nodded simply, as if nothing was wrong.
	They stepped out of the elevator in to the lobby, but instead of
hailing a cab to come up to the door, they walked through the doors, and
out to the sidewalk.
	"What do you think?" Houston whispered directly into Geisha's ear,
constantly aware that the directional mikes on the taxis could probably
pick up his voice.
	"Are you in very good shape?" Geisha whispered back, smiling.
	I can be. Houston thought to himself, pulling out the cocaine and
spooning out about a quarter of a gram, dropping the white powder under
his tongue, shivering from the bitterness. "It's the real thing." He
smiled, holding out the vial to Geisha.
	Surprisingly, Geisha Did take the vial from him, and snorted a
couple of times from the little spoon as well.
	"Can't beat the real thing." Geisha grinned in the darkness of
moonlight.
	They took off down the sidewalk, through the executive section of
DownTown, walking along at a leisurely pace, unhurried, but not
deliberately slow either. When they had reached the corner, looking back
towards the hotel, Houston could see the light from the lobby, bleeding
out into the street, wondering to himself if the two of them could make it
the ten blocks, in the dark, without they themselves also becoming pools
of warmth, spreading out across the sidewalks.
	They walked on in silence, always alert to any small sound in the
vicinity, the drug racing through their systems, hyping their senses to an
adreno-rush awareness of the world around them.
	Though the CyberForm Enforcers would not tolerate them walking
through the Executive Center of DownTown with their guns drawn, they were
allowed to hurry from one pool of light to the next, with their hands on
them, pausing momentarily in each glow of the sodium-iodine islands,
finding some false sense of security in the orange glow.
	The darkness would be better for us. Houston thought to himself,
staring at he night crowds gathered in groups, at random, along the
sidewalks and spilling out into the streets. Although if another CyberForm
was set on their tail, using scent or infra-red, there really wasn't much
of anything that could help them.
	At least they didn't let the cybernetic bastards carry guns.
	Walking quite deliberately, Houston followed along behind Geisha
quickly, passing a VR-Cade, which called to mind, for some unknown reason,
some of the underground VR Mindreader flashchips, he had seen before.
 	Mindreader was a Virtual Reality device, which enabled the user to
record the real world around them, and store it to flashchip. Though the
chips would only store about an hour at most, some very interesting things
could be stored in the hour. Especially if a good editor was at the
boards.
	The last underground chip he saw, was a couple of years ago. It
was an S&M Porn flashchip. Not actors, it was the real thing. People
really got hurt. Houston didn't usually go for that sort of thing, some of
those underground chips were actually kind of gross, but the attraction
for Houston, was in the fact that they were illegal. Just like the
Snuff-chips he had seen of very real murders committed, while the murderer
was wearing a flashchip recorder. Then there was the flashchip he saw that
involved sex-trained Dobermans. The underground stuff could get pretty
sickening.
	Why was it the Mindreader Unit came to mind just now?
	Houston didn't like the idea of anyone trying to edit his life.
Which was probably the reason why he kept an updated "self" on store in
the Alexandrian Archives in Antarctica Central. Just in case he might need
it sometime. Like maybe now?
	Houston didn't go in for S&M, or any of that kinky underground
stuff, but as soon as someone told him it was illegal, and that he
couldn't have it, that alone made him go to Jerry Bones, the fixer down on
the 6th floor of Broadway Towers, and buy some. Just in case.
	That's just the way he was wired. Given an ultimatum of "Do this
or else", or "Don't do this or else", he always picked the "Or Else".
	Houston supposed that was probably the reason why he went against
his father and uncles wishes. He probably should have gone into the
Military Gang like his Father and Uncle wanted him to.



From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 8a
Date: 1 Aug 1995 18:11:21 -0500

Chapter Eight
	Keeping his hand gripped tightly around the butt of the Tech-9,
made Houston feel only moderately safer, as he suspiciously eyed the
twilight street crowd suspiciously. Passing the illegal crap games being
held on the steps of The Halls of Justice made him smile inwardly at the
insanity of the city.
	One of these days, this place is going to explode.
	A heavily accented Englishman passed the two of them, stoned on
something, mumbling some song to himself about the wages of sin.
	Well it's certainly not paying what it used to. Houston thought to
himself. Overhead, he could see the single-shuttles hovering and gliding
silently through the blacked sky, their blue neon lettering PURSUIT and
INTERCEPTOR marked boldly for anyone who might care to distinguish between
which was which. Either one of which, could pick him out of a crowd with a
particle beam, ripping his flesh apart in a bloody explosion. He had seen
it happen before.
	If I could get to the wall, I might be able to fool the Netix and
get out of the city. Houston thought to himself. Yeah Girl. Sure. Then you
only have a few hundred miles of fields to walk through, to get to the
nearest city. Or wait out at the airport for a month, waiting for the next
shuttle to leave. Smart. Very Smart.
	The pathos of fuel rationing, made him sick when he thought about
it. The age of Hot Plasma Fusion was supposed to herald a new generation,
where energy was so cheap it wasn't worth it to meter it. At least that's
what they told everyone, when the people voted on the bonds for the
projects. Except, there was always too much Goddamned profit in those
meters. The utility companies had even found a way, to run a sunbeam
through a meter. That was the only reason Solar Energy was so popular
today, with the utility companies. Siemens Solar, the inventor of the
tiny, cheap, solar collectors, which currently were glued in big sheets,
on almost every surface, was a bluechip stock. Capitalism sucked.
	Perhaps the Co-Op nations of Colorado & California can teach the
rest of us how to do it right next time. Houston thought to himself. At
least they're giving socialism a chance somewhere in the world.
	They walked quickly across the wide, flat, white concrete plaza
that seemed to glow coolly in the pale gray full moon, the two of them
constantly swiveling their heads, looking at any and all movement in the
area.
	You never hear the one that gets you. Houston remembered.
	Far off in the distance, to the east, Houston could see the full
moon glinting off the polished compact Independence Towers, currently
owned by the Reorganized Mormons. At this distance, they appeared as
silver needles sticking up from the ground, though Houston had been to
them before, while visiting the new Reorganized Mormons Temple, and knew
the sleek streamlined two dozen odd towers, to be a mile and a half tall,
and completely self sufficient.
	They were built, over the top of the old landfill sites of that
area; their anchors driven deep down into the Earth's crust, holding them
as still as possible against the fierce plains winds. Yet another legacy
of Charles & Judy Conrad.
	They were the Mom & Pop land barons who had made their billions
before the turn of the century, and later passed the fortune on to their
children, who in turn lost it all, gambling on a Starshot.
	Charles Conrad, a rather bright, and very greedy, Twentieth
Century entrepreneur, who was already a land tycoon at the time, learned
of the newly patented microbes, that were designed to "Eat" toxic waste.
Without finishing the article, he grabbed his minicellular phone, and had
his lawyers buying up toxic landfills, all over the North American
continent.
	The Love Canal Estates are, to this day, considered The Prime real
estate, from the North Pole to the Yucatan Peninsula.
	At first, everyone thought the old man was more than just a little
nuts, and his children went to great lengths to have him committed.
(Hoping to lay their hands on the fortune, which they felt the old bastard
was cheating them out of, by living so damn long.) However, after he died,
and his wife brought out their plans to the kids, showing them what they
had been doing, the kids suddenly had a change in heart, and jumped in to
help her. Profit incentive.
	The windfall returns, from buying up toxic landfill sites for a
dollar an acre, cleaning them up for about ten dollars an acre, and then
reselling it at thousands, and even millions in some cases, is what paid
for the Charles F. Conrad Tower, which so prominently dominated the Kansas
City skyline. They say the old man is buried in the cornerstone.  Who
knows?
	"Geisha." Houston whispered, pulling on his sleeve and speaking
softly in his ear. "I need ComWeb shadow." He explained, looking around at
the people gathered in clumps and nuggets, around the plaza and on the
sidewalks. "Is there some way we can get to the basement, that we wouldn't
be monitored by security? I don't want to have to answer a bunch of
questions."
	"Yeah." Geisha snickered a little. "The front door. This is the
Engineering Guild Arcology. We don't want just anyone listening in.
Especially Programmers Guild." He smiled with big white even teeth at
Houston in the moonlight, leading the way. "No one will say anything to
you, as long as I'm with you."
	Slipping his BancoCard into the door, and sliding it along the
security slot, Geisha grabbed the glassteel handle as it wheezed open.
Fighting the wind that blew into their faces, as the pressure tried to
equalize, stepping inside quickly, pulling the door closed behind them,
Houston felt better when he heard the heavy click of metal striking metal,
as the magnetic bolts cracked back into place.
	The majority of the people in the lobby were young. Twentyish.
Most all wore the same basic bright green jumpsuit of the Engineers Guild,
though a few wore street clothes, not unlike Geisha and himself.
	Houston could see that among the HumaniForms, there wasn't that
much difference between them, and the kids at Programmers Guild; in that,
the earrings and tattoos all had some significance as group status, a code
that could only be read by that particular gang. A group of about six
kids, all of the same fraternity, walked past them on the way out the
door, each of them had their right nipple pierced, which was bared despite
the jumpsuit.
	"Who are they Geisha?" Houston asked, following him closely beside,
trying to avoid being stopped by anyone, who looked like they might be
associated with security.
	"Theta Chi." Geisha answered simply, as if that should be answer
enough, pulling open the door to the stairwell.
	After the door was closed, Houston slowly walked over to the
railing, looking forlorn, staring down into the infinity of the spiral,
made by the hand railing, as it stretched forever, down into the darkness
below..
	"Don't worry." Geisha smirked at Houston's look of regret. "It's
only 3 floors down." He said leading the way down the little used stairs.
	They trotted down the stairs in silence, the sounds of their
breathing making a strange hollow sounding, raspy wheeze, as it echoed off
the concrete stair well. Houston paused only once during their brief
journey, with his hand on the Tech-9 as he heard a door open several
floors above them, then hearing the door on the next level down from it
open, and close again as well, whom he took as someone not wanting to wait
on the elevators, making a quick dash from one floor to the next.
	Opening the door on the third landing down, Geisha led him into a
very loud and cavernous dark room, sparsely lit only by an occasional
bared incandescent bulb along the ceiling, some ten to twelve feet above.
The room was filled with whining machinery that seemed to be inaccessible
from this side, since not three feet in front of them were huge iron
pipes, that stretched the full length of the room in each direction.
	Houston stood disoriented a moment, in the heavy, oppressive gloom
surrounding him, as the loud sounds buffeted against him like prop wash,
until Geisha held his head still and put his mouth up to Houston's ear,
speaking directly into it.
	"This way." Geisha said nudging and pulling him, gently along to
the right.
	Houston could feel the subsonic vibration, of the huge pipes deep
down in his chest, as he tried to breathe against it, wondering what could
be moving so fast through the pipes, a few of which were large enough for
a man to stand up inside.
	Soon, Geisha stopped and slipped his BancoCard into a slot on a
steel plate, which was set flush with the wall, that Houston couldn't have
been able to see from where they were just standing fifty feet away, only
a few moments ago. As a green light came on, and the door popped open,
Geisha grabbed and pulled him inside, quickly shutting the door behind,
leaving them standing in a small quiet room.
	"Jesus." Geisha said shaking his head clear. "I don't remember it
being that loud down here." He chuckled a little, sitting down in a
creaking wooden desk chair, situated at the huge, painted gray, steel desk
that almost filled a third of the room. The only other furniture in the
concrete lined, undecorated chamber was an aluminum folding cot, a dark
green wool army blanket, a greasy looking pillow, and two wooden office
chairs on wheels, dating back at least fifty to a hundred years.  The
floor was polished concrete, and slick as glass.
	"Have a seat Girl." Geisha waved him to sit, in the other office
chair. "This is what you wanted, so you're here now." He said unbuckling
his Remington Manhunter 9mm and it's holster from his thigh, laying it up
on the desk.
	"Thank you Geisha." Houston sighed. "I take it this room is
secure?"
	"Oh hell yes." Geisha grumbled. "It used to be a janitors office, I
think. Back when they still had people doing that kind of thing. Back when
they still worked down here. It's not used anymore. They only come down
here, when there's a problem. That's not very often."
	"What about the cot?"
	"Someone put that in here, oh, about ten or fifteen years ago.  The
kids come down here and screw. I don't think more than a dozen or so
people, know this place is even down here." He shrugged. "No one uses the
stairs anymore. Not even for one floor. Whomever it was we heard, was an
exception."
	"How did you come to know about it?" Houston teased, pulling the
velcro free on the nylon shoulder harness of the Tech-9, laying it easily
on the bed close to his chair, just in case someone decided to remember
where this place was.
	"I did have a life before I met you." Geisha said petulantly. "I
haven't always been celibate, even if you have."
 	"Oh." Houston said simply, giving Geisha a "knowing" look.
	"So now what?" Geisha demanded. "Our pheromone trail is going to be
hot for quite a while you know. Despite the Friday night crowds, in the
streets."
	"I don't know. I just gotta think." Houston said sitting back in
the chair. "I figure it's either gotta be Miss Delta, or Mr.Potatohead."
He said putting his foot up on the cot.
	"Who's Mr.Potatohead?"
	"One of my AI Programs. The only one out of the twelve that has
anything close to what you would call, free will." Houston said absently.
"I could give Mr.Potatohead enough things to do, that he would be busy for
quite a while, but I don't know that he would actually do them.  Checking
on Miss Delta would be one of them, but he might decide to slant the data
on me. Especially if he's guilty as home-made sin."
	"Twelve?" Geisha snarled. "Man, this whole thing has got litigation
written all over it. I don't know how I'm gonna get you out of this one."
	"Geisha, I've survived thirty years now. They're not gonna take me
down just yet." Houston said with conviction.
	"Ok, so you'll be dead at thirty-one then." Geisha snorted. "In an
age where life-span is up for question as being indefinite, depending on
how much money you have access to, it would still be a tragedy."
	"Thanks for the concern Geisha." Houston said quietly.
	"Concern? I'm not concerned." Geisha lied, badly, curling a lip in
disgust. "I just think this James Dean philosophy of yours, living fast,
dying young, and leaving a good looking corpse, is a complete load of
horse shit."
	They sat in silence a while, as Houston ignored his friends last
comment, rolling the back of his head left and right, over the hard
concrete wall behind him, thinking quietly to himself.
	"I gotta get a VISOR, and a portable VR." Houston said out-loud to
himself with his eyes closed. "I also need to get to a NebNet. But who to
trust?"
	"Me for one." Geisha stared, with hurt in his eyes as Houston
opened his own.
	"I need a favor Geisha." Houston said now alert, ignoring Geisha's
comment, and sitting forward on the chair. "Were you in any of the
fraternity's, we saw upstairs a while ago?"
	"No. I had a brain before I went to school. I wasn't about to
trash it, by joining up with those fucks." The big man grumbled




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 8b
Date: 1 Aug 1995 18:13:39 -0500

"Well my little Take-Out Troglodyte, what have you brought us?" Houston
asked, now in a better mood as he examined the VR Unit the kid had just
brought him.
	"McDonalds." Geisha said simply. "There's a store in the mall
upstairs. I also grabbed a six-pack of Mint Juleps. The combination will
probably make us sick, but what of that?" He shrugged, handing Styrofoam
boxes to Houston. "There's a bathroom down the hall to the right, by the
way. It's not locked."
	"Ok." Houston nodded, sinking his teeth into the Quarter-pound Tofu
hamburger with cheese, trying to contain his disappointment in Geisha for
not ordering him real meat. It was Houston's opinion that you could tell
the difference between synthetics & the real thing, no matter what they
told you about todays additives. At least you could, if you ate real meat
more than once a month.
	Houston swallowed the one bite, and put it back in the box
carefully, knowing that when Geisha threw it in the trash, it wouldn't
wait long for someone who needed it more than he did at the moment. That
is, if there wasn't already a line forming, out there, waiting, right now.
It wouldn't be the first dumpster queue he had seen.
	Cracking the seal on one of the Mint Juleps, he washed down an
Ecstasy, feeling the whiskey warm him in just the right way.
	"This is perfect." Houston commented, examining the VR Unit,
reading the chip labels through the sealed plasticene. "Well, if it's not
a pirate copy."
	Slipping the VISOR over his ears and eyes, he spoke one last time
into the blackness that now surrounded him. "I shouldn't be gone long."
He told Geisha as he hit the activate stud on the side on the unit.
	Salvador Dali World was a visual art virtual reality environment
that he himself had written years ago when he was in Guild school. It had
turned out to be a very profitable marketing experience for him. It had
never dawned on him at the time, that he could actually sell any of his
creations, until his professor had suggested it. He still got royalties
off this one.
	Wandering the barren, flat, cartoonish landscape, taking in the
surrealistic atmosphere of it all, walking over a visually represented
line that looked more like a shimmering mirrored wall of water, he stepped
into the next painting. He knew every nuance of this world from years ago.
Every dripping clock, he knew, had his name written inside it.  It was
simply a matter of peeling back the paper, just below the six, and he was
able to verify his own long hand signature there. Confirming this for
himself, he was now sure this was not a bootleg copy.  Sighing in relief,
he knew everything would be ok now.
	Running through the paintings, one flashing by after the other, he
picked up speed in his mental running through the scenes, until he finally
came to a dead tree. Snapping off certain branches, in just the right
sequence, he stood back and watched, as the tree fell over of it's own
volition. In the hole beneath it, a dense vapor began seeping out, rising
up into the air slowly forming a gaseous ball as it condensed into a
solid. Soon, as the smoke accumulated there above him, it began taking on
the shape of a huge disembodied eye.
	"Thou Seest Me." He said as it blinked.
	"Yes Sir."
	"Don't look back."
	"Least Ye Be Consumed." It responded to his security phrases
correctly, the sound of its voice coming from nowhere and everywhere.
	"Good." Houston sighed. "I'm in big trouble guy." He explained,
sitting down on the now fallen tree, and began talking to the program
conversationally, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for
him.
	This particular version of the Thou Seest Me AI Program had no
idea what had been transpiring out in the real world, or ComWeb, as time,
for the program, had shut down when last Houston had accessed it as the
original, just before it went into production. That was several years ago.
This was merely a more stupid, stripped down version of the one he
currently had running around out in ComWeb. It was a back-door subroutine
he had added to the virtual world, when he was constructing it, as a quick
way to get in and write new scenes or routines of the Salvador Dali World.
	Houston sat telling the program his story, going into as many
details as he could remember, giving the program as much information to
work with as possible, finally finishing his dissertation.
	"I don't care if Mr.Potatohead is guilty or innocent. Hell, I don't
even want to know anymore. I just want him taken out. Eliminated.
Completely. I'll be more than happy to pay what ever penalties, or charges
accumulate in this matter." He said finishing, making a pack of cigarettes
appear in his hands, and lighting one, breathing deeply, and enjoying the
sensation provided him in the virtual environment.
	"Ok. Now repeat all that back to me so I know you got it right."
	The program did as Houston commanded, starting with the phrase:
"Attention Nebula Network KC-Four, Computer Queen says SNAFU Big-time,
requesting assistance." and ending with the statement, that he was willing
to pay the penalties and charges to get the program off his back.
	"Ok. That's good." Houston said looking up at it, staring steadily
at it for a moment. "I'll need you to move fast." He explained.  "If you
run into yourself out there in ComWeb, then fine. But don't go looking for
yourself. There isn't time, and I can't have you getting caught."
	"Yes Sir." It blinked as he pushed the power button and pulled the
VISOR off his eyes and ears. He looked at the unit a moment, disappointed
it didn't have Mindreader capabilities, but satisfied that it would help a
lot.
	"What's wrong with it?" Geisha asked, looking at him, wiping
'special sauce' off the side of his mouth.
	"Nothing." Houston smiled.
	"You didn't have the thing on for more than a few seconds."
	"It doesn't take long." Houston shrugged smiling. "Not if you know
what you're doing."
	"So what now?" Geisha asked, clearly not convinced that the simple
child's video game might have any potential for helping them what-so-ever.
	"I'll need access to a LAN phone line." Houston said thinking about
the room that lay beyond the door. "Can I get to the phone circuits here
in the basement?"
	"You sure don't ask much, do you?" Geisha scowled, finishing his
dinner. "The LAN lines huh? I'm not supposed to, but it seems to be my ass
on the line now too. Come on." He said wiping his hands and standing up.
"Local Area Networks are sacred ground here. The Guild Arcology LAN, sits
at the feet of Christ as far as I'm concerned." He said sternly.
	"I promise not to tell Geisha." Houston smiled. "You know, I've
been thinking about going back to smoking again." He added
conversationally. Houston quickly snapped the shoulder holster in place,
vowing to himself that he would sleep with it strapped on, until this was
all over. If it ever got over.
	"Why would you want to do that?" Geisha frowned. "Don't you fight
enough toxins in your life already?"
	He followed Geisha out of the room, into the loud whining, quite
sure the noise would drive him mad before he got anything accomplished.
Walking down the length of the pipes, past the bathroom Geisha spoke of,
Houston could see that the huge pipes did not enter the wall as he had
previously assumed, but made a right angle turn which they followed.
	"What's in these Geisha?" Houston shouted loudly, trying to be
heard above the racket.
	"Water, sewage, electrical, fiber-optics, gas." Geisha shrugged,
not pausing in his step. "Here it is." He said stopping and pulling a
panel off that was set flush with the wall.
	Houston stood in front of it a moment, looking at the complex
system of electronic components, comparing the system of wiring to the
diagram on the back of the panel, making sure he was familiar with it.
	"Do you even know what you're doing?" Geisha demanded.
	Houston just nodded as he pulled about a dozen wires loose.
	"They'll have to dispatch someone Monday to fix this." Houston
yelled to him as Geisha stood and nodded his understanding. Let's hope
this is all over by then. Houston thought to himself. Suddenly, as Houston
was pulling the insulation from the ends of the wires, the mix of the
Ecstasy & Mint Juleps hit him, causing him to giggle a bit.
	"Give me one of those." Geisha said taking the box of pills out of
Houston's shirt pocket as he continued working.
	"Geisha?" Houston paused, cocking his head as if he were listening
for something, but in actuality, was perplexed over something he felt.
"Shake my hand."
	He did so, with a noncommittal look on his face.
	"Geisha! You've got a Netix hand!" Houston said loudly, looking at
him in surprise.
	"How did you know?" Geisha asked, looking down at his hand, amazed
that his secret was out. "They told me it wouldn't be distinguishable,
from my real arm."
	"Well, I can tell." Houston said with conviction. "Just how much of
you is Netix?"
	"Just my arm, a DownLink chip, and an optical chip." Geisha
explained. "And then of course the standard neuralware to go with it.
Why?"
	"I was just curious. I never knew that about you before." They
talked loudly with their faces close to each other as they shouted above
the loudness.
	"Well Girlfriend, we can get to know each other the rest of our
lives together after this is over." Geisha smiled, yelling. "Which might
be in about two minutes if you don't move your ass. The maintenance robots
will be around here soon."
	"Wait just a second. I forgot something." Houston said donning the
VISOR. Once again, the drooping clocks over the branches made themselves
known, by appearing to him in the artificial world that unfolded itself
around his mind. He began running back to the spot where he had just been
in the program.
	Virtual Reality Worlds had become increasingly popular after
flashchip technology took over the electronics scene. Suddenly, you could
fit more data on a chip, in less area, and access it faster than ever
before in the history of microprocessor technology. Using one, two, or
even three flashchips, depending on the size of the universe you wanted to
play with, anyone could go anywhere, do anything, Be anyone, or experience
any concept first hand; and do it in less time than it took in the real
world. An hour in a virtual world could pass in about a second or two in
the real world. It could pass in a millisecond if you were any good. So
much of the virtual worlds relied on the viewers previous experience with
the world, giving the microprocessor brains options as to how much detail
they needed to generate each time, and in what sequence.
	Needless to say, the travel industry suffered greatly from the
change in the electronics scene. They had to adapt to the brave new world.
So they learned to give the world what it wanted. Pre-taped vacations.
	The mental institutions adapted as well. A lot of therapy, whether
it was relaxing a few weeks on St.Thomas Beach, or sitting a few hours in
front of Sigmund Freud, or Dr.Carl Jung, discussing your dreams, could be
done in literally seconds. It was better than drugs! And for a price of a
few chips that even kids could afford.
	Escapism became vogue. And it was all very real. Through
electronic stimulation of certain sites within the brain, people had been
known to (Usually under the influence of drugs) even forget that they were
only in a virtual environment, and completely forget about the real world,
ending up dying of starvation while living for weeks in a virtual reality
world. The food there is quite excellent. Soap operas and pornography were
at an all time high.
	Snapping the branches off the tree in the required sequence,
waiting for the tree to fall and the gaseous ball to form then solidify
before him, Houston had access again.
	"Don't look back."
	"Least Ye Be Consumed."
	"Ok guy. I've got some other stuff for you to do as well. After
you're done, come back here and wipe these chips clean, except for this
one painting. I'm going to have to use this unit as a terminal interface
for a while, so write an appropriate operating system that I can use with
very little difficulty. Ok?"
	"Yes Sir."
	"Ok. Also, while you're out there, I want you to use stealth. I
know you're not designed for that, but do the best you can. There's all
kinds of stuff out there now that wasn't present when I first wrote you,
so you're just gonna have to do your best. My ass is on the line here."
Houston paused, wondering how much this program differed from his older
version of Thou Seest Me. So much of an AI's learning curve was derived
from it's experience; and this version had very little. "I need you to
access the Alexandrian Archives in Antarctica Central. Once there, access
Central Reference. Find out where the Mindreads are stored. Call for a
Mindreader Ghost construct of myself, bring it back here and store it.
We'll take it from there."
	"Yes Sir."
	"Don't let me down Big Guy." Houston sighed shaking his head.
"Stand by for LAN interface



From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 9/30
Date: 31 Jul 1995 00:25:33 -0500

Chapter Nine
	A few seconds later, the little VR Unit flickered in Houstons
hand.
	"What happened to it?" Geisha asked worriedly. "Is it fucked?"
	"We'll see." Houston said donning the VISOR, blocking out the real
world where Geisha stood beside him, and quickly running to the place in
the living picture where his program waited.
	"Sir." It blinked at him in acknowledgment.
	"Don't look back."
	"Least Ye Be Consumed."
	"Well at least you haven't been tampered with. So where am I?"
Houston asked the program, which manifested itself as an eye in the sky.
	"Right here." Came a voice from behind him. Turning around in the
scene, he saw his own image stroll casually up to him from out of the
picture.
	"Sloppy Interface." Houston said to his self, standing before him.
	"Housekeeping routines." His self shrugged.
	"Is there a MaxMem problem already?"
	"No." His self shook his head. "Just old CPU's."
	Houston turned around again and nodded to the eye. "Thanks." He
said to it, watching the thing dissolve again into smoke, and disappear
down into the hole again, the tree up-righting itself, and it's branches
reattaching themselves in reverse order.
	"A bit of a problem." Houston heard his self say, as he turned
around and faced him again.
	"How's that?"
	"What you've got us into, I mean."
	"Yeah." Houston nodded as the two of them strolled side-by-side.
"Can you handle everything in here, until I can get a hold of some kind of
Mindreader Unit? If I can get one, I'll be able to post you as to what has
transpired over the past couple of days. It's a fucking mess."
	"I think so." His self snorted sarcastically at him. "It's not been
that long since I've had access to ComWeb. You only stored me a couple of
months ago, you know."
	"Ok then." Houston nodded, looking around. "I'll leave this thing
plugged in as long as possible, but this is Friday night, and come Monday
someone will be down here to investigate, and repair the LAN circuits."
	"If you've had Thou Seest Me contact NebNet KC-4, it shouldn't take
long. Mr.Potatohead may be enterprising as of late, but he's still not all
that bright."
	"What does the operating system look like in here?"
	"Simple, but adequate." His self shrugged. "Thou Seest Me did a
good job." He paused. "I mean, whadda want for only a couple of billion
floating point operations per second? A portable system, something that
handled around 120 Giga-flops would be great, and certainly more
comfortable for me, but, we do what we have to in life. I'll make
modifications where necessary."
	"Ok then. I'm going back now. If you can, try to download yourself
back to the Alexandrian Archives. I'd like to keep all of this backed up
with you."
	"Sure." His self nodded. "I think I saw a security camera just
outside the door to this basement level when I came in. I can watch for
anyone coming in, though I don't know how I could warn you."
	"Damn!" Houston cursed. "I wish I had some kind of interface with
ComWeb!"
	"Sorry, Dude." His self shrugged. ""That's my department."
	"Well, if I can get a hold of something, I'll be in touch out here.
Otherwise, I guess I'll just have to make periodic trips out here to catch
up on things with you." Houston explained. "So what's it like being a
program?" He asked his self curiously.
	"I don't know." His self began evasively. "Different I suppose.
But I'll make it as comfortable as possible."
	"Were you aware that you were stored?" Houston asked.
	"Nah. I didn't really know anything, until Thou Seest Me brought me
back here and activated me as a program. At that moment, I became self
aware. Until then, I was just stored data, waiting for a cloned body to
fill."
	"Well, I'm gonna have to go for now. Geisha will be in hysterics if
I take too long."
	"Ok Chief." The simulacrum of himself smiled. "Catch ya later."
	"Bye." Houston said pulling the VISOR off, the noise in the room
returning to his brain, as a loud whine that threatened to overwhelm him.
	"Is it working?" Geisha yelled over the noise.
	Houston just nodded and handed it to his friend, watching as he
sat the mini VR Unit inside the huge junction box, laying it across the
edges of the circuits boards that stood on end, pushing the wires out of
the way so the plate could be reattached.
	When Geisha was done, and they had returned to the cubby-hole
office, Houston was again able to shake loose the sound ringing in his
head and speak freely once more.
	"I think it'll be ok now." Houston said, half wondering if he were
reassuring himself or Geisha, as he sat down on the bed, and lay back
against the wall.
	"So we just sit here and wait?" Geisha asked leaning back in the
desk chair, staring at Houston. "Hope your little friends... Out there...
know what the hell they're doing?" He said waving his hand in a circle,
referring to ComWeb.
	"Well, it's the best I can do given the circumstances. I'd feel a
lot better if I had my own unit." Houston said thinking.
	"Well, why didn't you just ask for that in the first place?"
Geisha said gruffly annoyed. "Let's go upstairs and get one." He grumbled,
standing up.
	"Where am I supposed to get a good combat model around here?"
	"I told you there was a mall upstairs." Geisha shook his head. "I
don't just talk to hear my head rattle you know. Don't you listen?" He
demanded. "I'm sure we're safe enough here." He said pointing at the
ground, indicating the Engineer Guild arcology building they were in. "I
don't know if they have a Combat model, but we can look for one anyway.
See what ever it is that they do have available."
	"Yeah. Ok." Houston nodded, leaving his jacket on the bed,
wondering if he shouldn't have kept it on, to cover the Tech-9 in his
shoulder harness. "Will the security upstairs have any objection to this?"
He asked as Geisha shut the door.
	"Nah." Geisha shook his head. "Some of the kids upstairs, pack
bigger rods than that." He said leading the way back to the stairs.
"We're dated. Hell baby, nine millimeter rounds are passe' today." He
smiled at Houston, opening the door to the stairwell.
	"Oh." Houston said in the sudden silence. "I guess my life has
become one major FUBAR."
	"Well, I wouldn't say fucked up beyond all recognition, but you do
seem a little dim about the world sometimes kiddo." Geisha patted him on
the back as they climbed the stairs together. "You're draggin' me down
with you on this one." He laughed gently.
	"I'm sorry Geisha." Houston said feeling ashamed.
	"Don't worry about it." Geisha said gently. "Besides, what do you
think that butterfly net is for out on my balcony?"
	"Oh. Over in the corner?" Houston said visualizing it in his mind.
"I don't know. I hadn't really thought about it. Butterflies?" He smiled.
	"There haven't been any butterflies since I was a kid." Geisha
smiled. "It's just kind of an inside joke between me and someone I used to
know." He explained. "It's for catching stray bullets."
	"Jesus!" Houston grinned, as they opened the door leading back to
the lobby on the ground floor.
	The crowd milled about them, hundreds of people going about their
own personal business, laughing and talking, some carrying guns of various
caliber, most with bizarre cyberlimbs that had fittings on them, one could
only speculate as to their purpose. The sea of bright green jumpsuits
washed around them as they walked.
	Houston hesitated a moment as a girl and boy passed them, with
blue and red, neon glowing, light strings tracing their circulatory
systems. It was a newer fashion evidently. One that he had not seen before
anyway.
	He found it amazing, that the fashions of the Engineering Guild
kids, were mainly externalized, for show, whereas in Programmers Guild,
cybernetic modifications were mainly internal, and unseen. At his school,
discreet was in. He found the diametrically opposed worlds strangely
fascinating. Why would one group find cybernetic modifications as
shameful, almost inhuman, and to be hidden if possible, where another
group, found them as badges of pride, to wear in public display.
	"What's that Geisha?" Houston whispered as a girl of about 14 or 15
walked past them, with a tall neck of polished chrome.
	"Scuba Gill." Geisha shrugged. "She probably does work underwater.
Down at the river."
	"Hey Girl!" Houston ribbed Geisha. "I'll buy the drinks, if you can
name the acronym for scuba." He smiled, daring Geisha, hoping to take his
mind off their current dilemma. "I'll even get the tip if you can name who
invented it."
	"The word 'Scuba' stands for Self Contained Underwater Breathing
Apparatus. It was invented in 2012 by Carl Knight." Geisha droned
uninterested.
	"No! I mean the original."
	"Oh... I don't know."
	"Jacques Cousteau!" Houston laughed, feeling the pill and whiskey
of the Mint Juleps, remix his emotional chemistry into something more
acceptable, than the screaming sweating fear he felt when he thought about
his situation. "You know, the frogs on the old Calypso II and all that?"
	"Oh." Geisha grunted, unimpressed.
	Soon the came upon the shop that Geisha had spoke of, it's red
glaring letters of SYBURDEX INK focusing on them, from no matter what
angle they were facing it.
	"Is this ok?" Geisha asked as he held the door for Houston.
	"Well see." Houston shrugged entering the store.
	The Syburdex company wasn't know for it's pretty, chic, flashy, or
highly marketable products, but they did have a reputation for having good
tek. What they didn't have on the shelves, they always had a guy in the
back, on staff, that could build to-order what ever it is you were looking
for. For a price of course. And a little time. Time they didn't have.
	"Can I help you?" A mirror finish man asked them from behind the
counter. Though he moved smoothly, his skin was like that of liquid
chrome.
	"Are you Netix or Borg?" Houston asked bluntly, whereupon he
immediately felt Geisha put his hand around his head and clamped it shut
over Houston's mouth, effectively silencing him.
	"What my friend means is; We're looking for a combat model."
Geisha asked politely, his hand still over Houston's mouth.
	"Your Friend has a bit of a mouth on him." The chrome man scowled
menacingly, sizing Houston up. "And a pop-gun to back it up." He glanced
down at the Tech-9 with amusement. "I advise caution during speech." He
mumbled, heading towards the back of the store, remaining behind the long
counter.
	Houston pushed Geisha's hand away from his face and glared in
silence. Soon the man came back, seeming to have forgotten the incident,
and in a much better mood as he checked over the cyberdeck unit he was
bringing to them.
	"How's this?" The Chrome man asked, setting the cyberdeck up on the
counter. "It's DekTek Thirty Ought Six Cellular." He said flipping it over
and showing Houston the stamp on the bottom of the flat black featureless
iron casing. "Check the weight."
	Houston picked up the cubish unit, checking the LCD readout as he
ran it through it's precheck, hefting it a few times in his hand,
estimating it to weigh about four pounds.
	Putting the neck strap over his head, and letting the unit dangle
in front of his chest, he fiddled with a few of the control knobs, trying
to get a feel for the unit, to see if the had been stripped or replaced,
examining the I/O ports closely for signs of dirt or other contamination.
	"Kinda old isn't it?" Houston commented as he examined the laser
scoring on the sides, and a dent that was obviously the result of a direct
impact from a .22 caliber bullet. He had to wonder how many battles the
cyberdeck had seen in it's life. And how many lives had been plugged in to
the unit.
	"Probably older than You little man." The tall chrome man snarled.
"It made it through W-W four and five. I think it could handle anything
You might need it for." He chuckled.
	If it had survived the Corporate wars, and the Guild wars, (And
Houston had no reason to doubt the mans word) then it must be a fairly
reliable unit. That is, If it hadn't been tampered with too much.
Engineers are notorious for changing things around. There was no telling
how many owners this unit had been through, each one adding his own
personal circuits to it.
	"How much?" Houston asked warily, eyeing the man carefully.
	"I'll give it to you for fifteen hundred." The man said evenly.
	"What about a cable adapter interface?" Houston asked him, leaning
on the counter. "This thing dates back to fiber-optics."
	"What are you running?" The man asked.
	"Standard Nanotek Superconductor."
	"Biochip or DownLink?"
	"Bio."
	"Yeah, ok." The man nodded. "I can have my man in back, set you up
with a line easy enough. I'll throw it in free. Come back in 30 minutes."
He said taking the unit, and setting it back down behind the counter.
	"Great." Geisha said clasping Houston on the back. "We'll be back
then."
	"Hey uh... " Houston turned to the man as they began to leave.  "Do
you have a laundry service?"
	"For what?" The man asked suspiciously.
	"I have a Gotcha on my PIN." Houston explained, disgruntled.
	"Yeah sure." The man grinned. "I can have my accounts man route you
through enough Comsats that it'll look like you're on Trojan Station."
	"FarSide Station would be better." Houston commented. "How much?"
	"Forty Percent." The man said evenly, without batting an electronic
eye.
	"Fair enough." Houston nodded, gritting his teeth turning to leave
with Geisha. "See you in twenty minutes." He stressed.
	Opening the door out onto the mall area, Houston could smell the
scent of cigar smoke like an exotic perfume in the air. It suddenly
reminded him of the cigarette he had smoked while inside the little VR
unit, and made him want a real one all that much more.
	"You're such an asshole sometimes Kramer." Geisha shook his head as
they walked. "Why did you have to go and make that Netix remark?"
	"I was curious!" Houston looked at him. "I just wanted to know who
I was dealing with was all."
	"Well he was a Cyborg if it makes you feel any better." Geisha said
petulantly. "There's nothing wrong with it you know."
	"I never said there was Geisha!" Houston said, becoming somewhat
angry. "I just wanted to know where he was coming from was all."
	"Well it was ill-bred, low-brow and trashy." Geisha said gruffly.
"You're always so big on derogatory names for other people."
	"Well listen to you!" Houston laughed. "I know someone who needs a
nap!" He teased. "You're getting fussy Geisha."
	"Oh shut up." The big man spat.
	"Forty percent." Houston grumbled. "Any shark in town woulda done
it for twenty five tops. The bandit."
	"You're lucky he's even selling to you." Geisha commented. "This IS
Engineers Arcology after all. I'm supposed to have approval before I even
bring you in here." He told his smaller friend, making sure he understood
their roles here, in this place.
	Walking through the mall, Houston thought the mostly modified
people around them looked like something from a mad scientists convention.
Geisha opened the door to the darkened smoke filled club that smelled of
stale beer, cigarette smoke, sweat and exhaustion, as Houston let his gold
mirrorshades dangle on the black nylon cord around his neck, trying to
adjust his eyesight to the shadowy, smoke-filled, darkness.
	As his eyes adjusted to the gloominess, he saw a black kid of
about 14, in dark green Swiss orbital fatigues, and bright orange
high-tops, walk up to the bar and put a beer mug down, and could finally
see how the room was oriented.
	"You wanna sit at the bar?" Houston asked.
	"Good as any." Geisha shrugged. "I don't think I'm up for any power
drinking right now." He said sitting down on a barstool, waiting for the
harried bartender to come over to them.
	Watching the bartender down at the other end, Houston couldn't
help but wonder what was going through the mans mind, if anything at all,
as he looked as if he were running on automatic, and not really seeing the
people who were talking to him at all. It was as if the customers were
merely extensions of the bar itself, something that needed tending to, or
a response, just as the glasses needed washing, and the bar needing wiped.
He never made eye contact, or if he did, it was like there was no one home
behind the flat dull eyes. His mind somewhere else completely.
	"A couple of beers. Whatever's on tap." Geisha said to the
bartender, running his hands over his face tiredly, staring straight
ahead, looking straight at his own reflection in the mirror behind the
bar, thinking quietly to himself. He looked spent.
	In the reflection of the mirror behind the bar, Houston could see
a table of three blue aliens from the Naos System at a table behind them,
talking with a girl who had a cyberarm with multiple tools for fingers.
	"What's with Holly Hobby back there?" Houston whispered close to
Geisha's ear, thumbing in the girls direction. "Do you guys do a lot of
work for the Root Races and the aliens?"
	"What's it to you?" Geisha asked propping his head on his arm and
looking sideways at Houston. "They could be talking about anything."
	"Calm down Girl." Houston frowned at him. "You're certainly in a
mood tonight."
	"I'm not feeling very good." Geisha sighed.
	"Me neither, but that's easily enough fixed." Houston grinned,
motioning the bartender over. "Can we get a bottle of Dr.Feelgood's and a
pack of Djarum kretek filters?" He paused. "On second though, make it a
pack of Lambert & Butler 100's instead." Houston told the man, who just
nodded, and went to the shelves on the back wall for the cigarettes and
pills, touching the UPC bar-code on the packages to Geisha's flashchip
BancoCard.
	"Is that your answer to everything?" Geisha asked smugly. "More
dope?"
	"Of course." Houston smiled sweetly, breaking the seal on the
bottle, popping one in his mouth, and handing them to Geisha to take, as
he cracked open the seal on the cigarette pack and puffing on one until it
finally lit.
	"It's a statement about ME. It's very happening Geisha." Houston
arched an eyebrow. "It's snappy! It says I am ME, I am Now, I'm a woman of
the 40's, responsible for my own orgasms, and I know Who I am and what
life is all about."
	Geisha at least loosened up enough, to laugh at that. Houston felt
a growing responsibility to keep his friend UP through all of this, as it
seemed to be a situation in which he was somehow responsible for.
	"Say hello to the folks Remington." A deep, silky smooth, baritone
voice said, as Houston caught the flash of a very large caliber automatic
assault rifle, being held against Geisha's skull, by one big, broad hand,
wrapped in a fingerless steel-studded black leather glove.
	Glancing in the mirror without moving, Houston could see a dark,
sun-browned man with black hair, salt and pepper at the temples, that made
Geisha look small in comparison. The man was GIANT compared to Houston. He
stood dressed in heavy black leathers, which surprised Houston when they
didn't creak, since the big man had just moved through the room silently.
Like an Indian. Houston thought.
	Black polycarbon steel, framed silver mirrorshades covered the
mans eyes, as a big thick and bushy black moustache, flowed across his
angular face, over a dark three-day beard growth. His outfit was completed
only by chromed snaplok knee-high boots, one with a machete slid down the
leg of it, a chrome logging chain strung around one shoulder, and three
neon green & blue silk sashes that flowed down from the waist in front,
behind, and on the right side of his waist. Death in a leather suit.
Houston thought briefly.
	"Hey Fag!" Geisha smiled at the man in the reflection of the
mirror.
	"How's it goin' Les?" The big man said, kissing Geisha wetly, and
hugging him tightly for a moment, as he sat down on a bar-stool, on the
other side of Geisha. "Old Steely Dan still keepin' you alive I see." He
said patting the Remington Manhunter 9mm on Geisha hip, letting his own
fat rifle hang loosely on his thigh, still in his hand, ready.
	"How've you been Dolph?" Geisha asked in a sincerely warm voice,
that startled Houston for a moment. This was obviously someone Geisha had
"Known" in the biblical sense.
	"Good. Good. Couldn't ask for more I suppose." The man nodded.
"Who's your little buddy here?" He asked, looking around Geisha to stare
at Houston.
	"Houston, this is Dolph." Geisha said, not looking at either of
them as he continued to sip his beer. "An old friend. My Ex actually." He
corrected himself.
	"Hi." Houston nodded, smiling.
	"I know you are." The man said simply. "Your new squeeze baby?"
The big guy grinned, licking the side of Geisha's face.
	"Nah." Geisha said simply, unembarrassed. "Houston's my neighbor.
A close friend." He shrugged.
	Down the bar from them, Houston could see a young engineer couple
talking together about their exchange. They were fairly quiet except for a
single remark, that seemed to cut through the smoky air, reaching out to
the three men.
	"Fucking Faggots." The man of the couple scowled at them, talking
to his girlfriend, thinking he was not being overheard above the music in
the background. "Don't they know kids come in here?"
	"Hey asshole!" Dolph raised his voice, and turned towards the
skinny little man, away from Geisha and Houston. "I got a flash for you
sporto." He said squarely, attracting attention from most of the patrons
in the bar, drawing a silence that fell across the room. "Theft is a fact
of life. Murder is a fact of life. Death is a fact of life and Gays are a
fact of life. You're a big boy now sporto. What? 22? Maybe 23? I think
it's time you got over yourself and grow up."
	The crowd in the bar was dead silent, as the man called Dolph
turned back to Houston and Geisha.
	"Sorry about that kiddo." Dolph said to Houston. "Just hadda." He
grinned, shrugging his big shoulders. "It's all Les's fault." He smiled.
"Girl, I told you not to wear that wig and dress outside the house!" He
laughed, poking Geisha in the ribs. "That dress is just way too sheer."
	"So what brings you back to Kansas City Dolph?" Geisha asked,
smiling, and continuing to sip at his beer. "Work or play?"
	"Work actually." Dolph said now somber. "I got a contract I'm
supposed to fill. Your little buddy there." He motioned with his chin.
	Houston felt his adrenalin kick in without his calling for the
response, as his eyes flashed to the assault rifle, wondering what he was
going to do to get out of this one. His kevlar underwear bodysuit was not
going to stop anything of that caliber, and he had the distinct feeling
the cannon would leave a sizeable hole in him. Probably more hole, than
body actually.
	"I take it you're not going to fill that obligation?" Geisha asked
calmly, sipping at the beer and motioning the bartender over for another
round, for the three of them. "We're still alive I see."
	"Yeah baby, well, you know how it is with these things." Dolph said
calmly, quickly flipping the assault rifle high in the air, and sliding it
down into a sling holster on his back. "Everything can be so very iffy at
times."
	"What's the problem?" Geisha asked, unknowingly making Houston
sweat profusely, and wonder why Geisha wasn't talking more in his favor
than he was.
	"I didn't know you were involved." The bigger man shrugged. "That
changes things." He picked up the beer in front of him. "A few years of
history together can even override professional pride at times."
	"Can I ask who bought the contract?" Geisha asked as Houston
listened intently, sweating from his palms as he fumbled the cocaine out
of his pocket, dumping more than he probably should have into his beer,
making it taste even more bitter than it already was.
	"A taste for the candy eh kiddo?" The big dark nomad grinned,
startling Houston.
	Houston thought it best to hold the cocaine out, offering it to
the man, who just shrugged sniffed at the spoon a couple of times in each
nostril before handing it back.
	"Try some of this." The nomad grinned, bringing out his own vial
and handing it to Houston. "If you're even a little bit HumaniForm, it'll
give you a new appreciation of nature." He smiled with big white even
teeth behind the mirrorshades.
	Houston obliged, figuring is he was going to die by the hand of
this man from nowhere, he might as well go happy, and by pulling the skin
of his cheeks back a bit, was able to open his nostrils enough to get a
couple of snorts in. Broken nose or not, his nasal membranes responded by
opening fully, now numbed, stimulated, and wanting more. Houston could
feel the coke burn a bit at first, then numb his face and teeth, feeling
it creep down into the marrow of his bones, the amphetamine setting his
skeletal frame to tightening like it was a highly tuned racing frame.
	"Thanks." Houston rasped out, feeling the speed bouncing back and
forth through his body from head to toe in a rebounding wave.
	"Doesn't get out much does he?" Dolph laughed slipping the vial
back into it's own little pocket beneath the lapel of his thick, heavy,
black leather jacket.
	"He's a native." Geisha shrugged. "You were saying?" He prompted
	"Well, to tell you the truth Les, it's a soft AI." The big man said
with one hand on his thigh, leaning against the bar, facing Geisha.  "Can
you believe it?" He laughed.
	"No." Geisha laughed with him. "He must have offered you quite a
credit."
	"Yeah." The man nodded, arching a single eyebrow from behind the
mirrored glasses. "I must say, he did do that."
	"Was his name Mr.Potatohead?" Houston asked, now unafraid in his
current chemical state.
	"Matter of fact, it was." Dolph nodded. "So you know 'im?"
	"I wrote him." Houston said glumly.
	"You know, I hate you guys." The big man said distastefully. "Why
didn't you just have it hardwired like most of them?"
	"I'm into software." Houston shrugged. "The hardware is His
department." Houston said nodding towards Geisha.
	"So what's his problem with you?" Dolph asked. "You threaten to
De-Rez him or something?"
	"I haven't worked out a motive yet." Houston sighed. "I got some
things going on out in ComWeb to help though."
	"This is an AI guy." Dolph laughed. "Your best bet, is to make sure
your clone is ready, and you've got a recent Mindread on file." He grinned
sinisterly. "You got full medical?"
	"Yeah." Houston said in a low voice, looking suspiciously over at
the dark nomad from nowhere. "I'm working with the NebNets." He shrugged.
"Not much else I can do except get in there myself."
	"You got connections like that huh?" The big guy looked dubiously
at Houston, grinning. "Ok. You get to live long enough, for me to track
down your story." He said returning to his beer.

		

From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdsyd 10/30
Date: 31 Jul 1995 00:28:39 -0500

Chapter Ten
	"So how was WesCoast?" Geisha asked Dolph sitting at the bar.
	"The same." The Goliath snorted. "Fucking Japs." Dolph waved a
hand. "Ecotopia isn't too bad though. I still get up there about once a
month or so, on a run. Sometimes run down to California, for variety."
	"I would have thought by now, you would have moved to Miami
Islands." Geisha commented. "You always said you wanted to move there
someday."
	"Yeah, well, Max just didn't feel the same way." He said taking off
the silver mirrorshades, and sliding them under an epaulette on his
jacket. "I'm trying to get him to give up corporate life, but he seems
fairly convinced it's what he wants to do for the rest of his life. It's
too bad he's so fucking good at the shit."
	"So did you change your name to Brant, after you two got together?"
	"Hyphenated. Mirovitch-Brant."
	"Jesus." Geisha chuckled. "What a fucking signature."
	"Yeah well, this is his trip." Dolph sipped at his beer. "It seems
like, I'm just along for the ride anymore." He smiled warmly.  "Besides
Les, how often did you ever hear me go by my real name?"
	"Only when we went to visit your mother, in Lensk."
	"Well guys." Houston said finishing off his bitter beer, and
standing up. "I should have a cyberdeck waiting for me. I'll be back in a
little while." He looked into the cold steel gray eyes of Dolph. "I
promise."
	Dolph laughed heartily. "Kiddo, you're not getting out of this
city alive. Go on and get whatever it is you need. I can find you." He
said with a cold, thin, savage smile, which didn't show in his eyes, as he
stared Houston down.
	"I'll be back in a second, Geisha." Houston patted his friend on
the back and left, and left the car.
	The mall area was still buzzing with foot traffic, filled with
what looked to Houston as the same faces, differing only by slightly, by
the strange unfamiliar hardware. Engineers. Houston snorted to himself.
What the fuck do they think they know of what's going on in the world?
They know shit.
	This Dolph Mirovitch business was bothering Houston. It was
certainly a new slant for Mr.Potatohead. A Nomad Hunter? For pity's sake!
There were ten million ways to kill him from ComWeb. Mr.Potatohead didn't
have to get so deep into the real world, just to pull that off. And to top
it off, it was Geisha's Ex. Damn.
	But why kill Me? Houston still wondered. It had to be a survival
thing. Mr.Potatohead must be afraid I'm going to pull his plug, for some
reason.
	Houston rubbed at the waistband to his kevlar BVD bodysuit,
inwardly complaining that Bradley Voorhies & Dag, could have come up with
something a little more comfortable. He thought, irritated, as he opened
the door to the SYBURDEX INK store.
	"Everything still cool?" Houston asked the shop owner, as he came
up to the counter, glancing at the old combat unit, sitting on the counter
beside him.
	"Give it a try." The chrome man said pushing the cyberdeck towards
Houston, and returned to his tinkering with the flashchips inside his
sales register. "I'm just taking care of a few dip-switches, setting my
sales register's defaults, for your very special transaction." He grinned
with mirrored teeth.
	What an asshole. Houston thought, He's getting 40% above and
beyond the price of the unit itself, just to make the transaction. The
Dickhead could at least, be a little nicer about it.
	Houston adjusted a few of the external controls, small knobs
positioned on each side of the unit, and unbuttoned his right shirt
sleeve, pulling the dust plugs out of the sockets set into the flesh of
his right wrist, dropping them in his silk shirt pocket. The cables looked
like a fairly good improvise, considering the minute incompatibilities in
the two technologies.
	The NanoTek biochipware in his brain, was connected to his wrist
by way of microfine superconductive wires, which ran along side the nerves
leading from his head to his hand. It was here, at his wrist where they
terminated, to access whatever cyberdeck he might have out in the real
world at the time. This in turn, allowed his mind to interface with the
consensual reality of The Matrix.
	You couldn't see the wiring, and Houston couldn't feel it. Nor
could he feel the chips in his head, except for an imagined "center" in
his mind, where the biochips interfaced with his brain, giving him access
to the cyberdeck, as yet just another sense he had learned to use. Input
to his brain from the cyberdeck, came in the form of crystal clear
imaging, forcing his mind into a machine space reality where his meat body
no longer existed. It was another world completely. One without dimension,
where his brain kept trying to grasp a new spatial etiquette.  And it was
freedom for Houston.
	Plugging the hair fine cables into the slit on his wrist, having
to try twice on the second one until he got it just right, he slapped the
switch on the combat unit and the world vanished before his eyes. SELECT
ICON, Pulsed across the gray non-space of his vision.
	Houston closed his eyes and imagined a small black featureless
ball. It was the same icon he always used. He thought perhaps he should
change icons for this particular problem, as his AI's were all familiar
with his black ball, perhaps taking on the image of an African lion that
he was fond of using while in attack mode, but left it as is, opening his
eyes again.
	Adjusting a control on the cyberdeck, he was able to see the
engineer salesman tinkering with his sales register, the non-real space of
ComWeb superimposed itself over his vision, giving him a disorienting
feeling of vertigo for a moment, since one of the functions of the
biochipware in his head was to disable the natural functions his inner
ear, making sure he had no concept of up and down, to more effectively
feed him a new reality of how objects where situated, and where they would
lie in machine space. A new spatial orientation.
	Dialing one control back and forth, Houston was able to slip from
one world to another, cleanly and smoothly. His vision filled first with
the ComWeb network, then evaporating to the real world of the engineer and
his sales register, then back again to ComWeb. It was a good deck even if
it was old. Well worth the fifteen hundred anyway.
	ComWeb's Kansas City Grid looked the same as it always did. No,
MCI had added a new system it looked like. An old line-of-sight laser
tower communication system, from what Houston could tell by looking at it.
	The electronic industry was finding new markets by using older
technology, rather than constantly trying to outpace their customers in
newer and newer technology that fewer and fewer could afford. Corporate
America was learning there was more money in slowing down and helping
people catch up with the new realities, rather than overtaking them with
newer and newer chips every month that differed very little from one to
the next.
	Turning the knob that put him back in the real world, Houston
picked up the cyberdeck and put the neck strap on, freeing up his hands to
move across the keys on the front of the little blockish unit in his
hands. He stood stroking their glass surfaces a moment and then decided to
go ahead and have a look-see for himself out there. His thumbs rested on
the top two keys, on the upper corners, as his fingers curled around it,
making contact with the eight keys on the front.
	Turning one of the controls, the essence of Houston moved quickly
and smoothly out of the real world and into ComWeb. The black space
surrounded him, divided into razor thin green lines of the 3-dimensional
grid, with the words: READ ONLY ACCESS PERMITTED flashing across his lower
field of vision.
	Rotating 360 degrees along the x-z axis Houston saw the city hall
system not far from him. His fingers typing in commands at a furious rate,
combined with commands he could run just by thinking to the biochipware in
his head, sent his essence flying towards the Kansas City corporate
symbol, where his mind banked and flew around it, not in any great hurry
to get anywhere. He was alone in ComWeb. It was a universe open to his
control. Here, it was just him and the programs, and sometimes another
operator, depending on where he was in the many many networks. (If he were
accessing a VR or a comm-net he would be surrounded by a crowded universe
of minds.)
	Back in the shop, he stood still with his eyes closed, his fingers
moving expertly across the keys tapping in commands, and making new
adjustments to bring machine space into focus more clearly than before.
There wouldn't be much else he could do, until the shop owner installed
the access chip, other than just look, so he turned the control that
brought the shop back into focus around him, letting ComWeb fade away.
Back to the real world.
	"You like?" The man asked as Houston pulled the cables from beneath
the skin on his wrist.
	"Yep." Houston nodded, powering the unit down. "Very smooth
interface." He said handing the man his BancoCard. "Go ahead and tip
yourself for the work."
	"Sure." The man nodded touching the card to the bar-code on the
bottom, which he had just recently laser etched into it, and touched the
card to his sales register.
	Houston watched in silent admiration as the man had the cyberdeck
unit in his hand, flipped over, plate removed, and the matchbook-sized
access chip in it's slot with a sharp CLICK. It couldn't have taken more
than 4 or 5 seconds.
	"Can't have the little bastards running off with my merchandise."
He smiled, nodding his chrome head at the crowd milling past the front of
the store. "There you go!" He grinned, handing it to Houston. "Good luck
with the Gotcha."
	"Thanks." Houston nodded, slinging the strap over his shoulder and
letting it hang beside him as he walked out of the shop.
	Standing still in the center of the mall as the sea of bodies
washed around him, he dreaded going back to the bar just yet. Geisha
needed privacy to go over old times, and quite frankly, Dolph terrified
him.
	Eyeing an AT&T VR-Phone booth, very similar to one he had at home
as a child, he walked across the mall, having to step around a Dyke
Sheriff who was wired for sound, and obviously tracking someone, stepping
inside the booth. The black glass door closed, shutting him effectively
off from the outside world. Total silence. Whenever possible, take the law
into your own hands. He thought to himself.
	The booth he stood in was rectangular, however the other side was
darkened, waiting for someone to make a call. Houston stood at the other
end of it, looking at the recliner, with an access panel on the arm rest.
	Attaching the cables of the cyberdeck, slipping them under the
skin of his wrist again, and quickly running through the routine of
selecting his icon of the small black featureless ball, he leaned against
the wall, and again entered ComWeb.
	The keys played perfectly under his fingers as his mind flew up
out of the lower city grid, taking a right angle along the green lines as
he rode the electron highways. Eyeing the NewYork archipelago comsat high
above, an idea occurred to him. Turning his x-z 360, he spotted the
line-of-sight MCI tower, making his fingers fly over the keys, enjoying
the feel of the unit in his hands.
	The combat unit wasn't anything like the newer Home Unit model he
had at his Broadway Towers apartment; but there was definitely something
to holding a combat cyberdeck unit in your hands, instead of just laying
on his leather couch, plugged into one. Something sexy.
	Sitting in the comfortable chair designed for relaxation and
lengthy phone calls, he instead hunched forward on the chair, intense,
with his eyes closed, feeling his way through the Engineer Guild
arcology's cellular system, to a main line in the fiber-optic network,
suddenly seeing the tower zoom up to him in his mind.
	Easing his small little black ball up against the face of the
shimmering tower, touching the side of it and drawing a line down, he
keyed for logon, using a code he used for making 'slightly' illegal long
distance calls, that he had bought from Jerry Bones the fixer on the 6th
floor of his Broadway apartment building. The line parted a seam in the
wall, to form an access window.
	From there, he was able to "fiddle' the system to get him a laser
beam to the New York comsat to the Mozambique comsat, down to a tiny bank
there, where he kept a few 'items' in a lok-box. The call was being billed
to City Hall, he noticed. Damn. He was going to have to have a talk, with
that damn Jerry Bones again. Hearing someone beat on the glass outside, he
knew he was going to have to hurry. Pay no attention to that man behind
the curtain. He thought to himself. And go use the next booth over
asshole. He mentally snarled to the outside intruders, as his mind busily
mixed a mingled with the simple mainframe of the First Mitsubishi-Chase
Manhattan Bank of Mozambique.
	Finding the file he wanted, in a Lokbox he kept there, he slipped
a new PIN over his current one, with substantially larger credit account,
which he had pirated and put here years ago as a student. It was kind of a
savings account. For emergencies. Like this. Now he was a new man.
	If he was going to be without an apartment for a while, he was
going to have to survive somehow. Kansas City Inc sure didn't pay enough
to live out of a hotel for any length of time it might take to find
another apartment. They didn't pay much of anything at all. But it was a
job. It kept him busy.
	After completing school, Houston had never really needed to work
at all. He knew enough about computer systems that he could live off the
royalties from programs he could turn out on almost a monthly basis. He
was good and he knew it.  Or, if he took a liking, he could live on the
fringes of society, like a lot of his school chums chose to do, living
hand-to-mouth, doing scut work for whomever needed a programmer, just
getting by doing whatever it takes. It's not a glamorous life, but it did
free up a lot of time for fun projects.
	These people were the masters of technology. CyberPunks. They knew
just what to do to bend technology to their wills. To work FOR them rather
than against them. Houston always admired that. Instead, Houston went
through the motions like everyone else, keeping his job mainly because he
felt productive. A useful citizen.
	Closing the file, he keyed for logoff and left the bank, watching
it close it own security holes behind him as he fast-reversed out. Keying
for logoff from MCI, he was done.
	Pulling the cables from his wrist, he touched his flashchip
BancoCard (Now pulling credit from a new account) to the access panel on
the arm rest and punched in a phone number. A small, indistinct house, on
the corner of 75th & Wornall.
	Soon, the other end lit up, and a man entered the other side of
the booth.  At least, that's the way it appeared. What actually took place
was a mountain of mainframe & superframe computers were finessing a lot of
numbers to make it appear that way, when in all actuality, one man was
making a call to another.
	"Houston!" His uncle smiled as he came into the little room from
the other door. His uncle didn't look as if he had changed a bit in all
the years Houston had been absent. "Come here, and give me a hug boy." He
said smiling broadly as the held out his arms.
	Houston got up and walked to the man, hugging him tightly, feeling
the warmth of his body and the smell of Old Spice cologne in his soft blue
work shirt as he put his face down against the man's chest.  Reach out and
touch someone. Good idea.
	"How have you been honey?" His uncle asked, releasing Houston and
sitting down in an identical chair that had appeared on his side of the
rectangular booth. "How is everything?"
	"Good Uncle Rex." Houston lied politely, smiling, sitting down as
well. "It's been too long."
	"Yeah." The older man nodded. "Sure has." He sat pausing. "I
thought about calling you quite a few times over the years, but I figured
you had your own life now. And your... friends."
	Houston sat thinking how he was going to broach the subject of
needing help, when his uncle wanted to talk about things, which were
continuing to make him increasingly more uncomfortable. Why did he make
this call?
	"I'm in trouble uncle Rex." Houston blurted out with a shaking
voice, which he did not realize was there at first. He hadn't even
realized what he was saying, until he heard the words himself. Damn. Now
he felt like a fool too.
	Houston knew though, that his uncle would not doubt him over the
word "Trouble". Houston was never one to Cry Wolf in his entire life. He
was far too independent for that. Looking down, he stroked the glass keys
on the front of his newly purchased combat cyberdeck, wondering if he
should have made this call at all...
	"It's magic time." Rex whispered, his eyes sparkling as he smiled a
canine grin. "Where are you at?" He asked standing up.
	"Right now I'm in the Engineer's Guild Arcology." Houston sighed,
feeling his face flush in humiliation. He was not handling this well.
	"Don't move honey. I'm on my way." Rex said seriously, in a low
calm voice. "Don't worry. Uncle Rex will make everything better."
	"I'm so sorry I have to ask this of you uncle Rex." Houston said
holding his head down in shame, suddenly for no reason feeling like a
failure somehow. "But this is a bad one."
	"Don't worry about it honey. I can kick your ass for it later."  He
said half stepping out of the booths field, causing his lower body to
split and shimmer in a snow of static, where the booth tried to maintain
the image outside it's field. "Don't you leave that building." He pointed
a finger at Houston with a serious look on his face. As his uncle stepped
out of the VR-Phone booth, at his home, the simulated end where he was
just standing went dark again, leaving Houston sitting alone in the dark
again. Magic Time.
	Shit. Now begins the escalation. Why couldn't his other AI's have
just taken care of the problem in the beginning? Taking a long deep
breath, Houston stepped out into the swarm of strange faces again.
	"You look like a very lost Mamie Van Doren." Geisha said teasing
him, as he walked up to Houston with Dolph behind, a full head taller.
"Trollop." He said sticking a finger into Houston ribs, making him jump a
bit.
	"What's a Trollop?" Houston asked, grinning out of the side of his
face.
	"Trollop, my dear, means a soiled dove, a fallen angel, to put it
gently, a woman of little virtue." Dolph smiled at him behind the
mirrorshades, touching the corner, making them change from silver mirrors
to black lenses. "Hey! I'm a Toys-R-Us kid too! Whatcha got there?" He
asked looking more closely at the cyberdeck. "Thirty ought six?"
	"Yeah." Houston nodded palely, looking into the tanned face of
death.
	"Relax my little antisocial wildcat." The big man smiled. "You get
to live. This is really scaring you huh?" He grinned.
	"Wouldn't it you?" Houston grumbled.
	"Nah." He shrugged, cocking his hips with a thumb in his back
pocket, his chest thrust forward at a canted angle. "Not much else you can
do except fight back."
	"Did you run yet?" Geisha asked, nodding at the combat unit.
	"Not yet." Houston said looking around. "Let's get real gone real
fast."
	"Sure." Geisha said, leading the three of them through the crowd,
back down the length of the mall, to the door just off the lobby, which
led them down the stairwell to the third basement level down which
screamed loudly at their presence as they entered.
	"God damn!" Dolph yelled above the din, putting his hands to his
ears.
	Geisha slipped his flashchip card into the slot, and they all
moved quickly inside.
	Houston flopped down on the cot, not in a very good mood despite
the amount of cocaine he had just consumed minutes before. Fumbling around
in his pockets, he came up with a card of Ecstasy, a bottle of
Dr.Feelgoods, and his cocaine. He didn't even know what brand. Taking a
Mint Julep off the desk, still icy cold in it's Styrofoam sleeve, he
washed down a couple of each of the pills and tossed them on the desk.
	"You post war adolescents are all the same." Dolph remarked sitting
in one of the office chairs as Geisha sat in the other. "Kiddo, you're
starting to look like you've been on one long hard ride. Through the rain.
You should've checked those bags under your eyes at the door."
	"Dorothy, you can piss off back to Kansas now." Houston snapped.
	"If I'm lyin' I'm dyin'!" Dolph laughed. "Besides, you didn't say
Simon Says."
	Houston just glared at the big man, unimpressed, and slipped the
microfine cables into his wrist, finishing off the Mint Julep in a couple
of gulps.
	SELECT ICON. It flashed, superimposed across the view of the room
around him... He again visualized the small black ball, and went to work.
Hunching forward on the cot, with his elbows on his knees, the combat unit
held tightly in his hands, eyes closed, the blackness of the
three-dimensional green grid lines appeared around his mind. This is My
world. He thought to himself.
	With his fingers flying over the glass faced keys, he started up
out of the city grid, changed his mind, coming back to his original grid
coordinates in the artificial world around him. Taking a different tack,
he scaled down the grid for the Engineer arcology, suddenly finding
himself near the top of a very deep superstructure. Jesus Christ! He
thought, amazed.
	Rather than take off exploring this newly found treasure, as his
heart wanted to do, he reached out with his mind to touch the cellular
network that lined the building, searching for the one line that would
take him to the LAN junction.
	Very quickly, his mind was careening through the system, being
pulled along by the force of the communication lines, until he arrived at
the LAN phone junction box where he and Geisha had left the little VR unit
earlier.
	Looking at the maze that surrounded him, graphically represented
in vivid colors, he wished now he hadn't chosen such a perfectly random
circuit, as his mind flipped through the LAN network, quickly trying to
find the one line where he had plugged the unit in to the network. The
search took him a couple of realtime seconds, an eternity in the
artificial world of machine space, and after he found it, felt a very real
physical exhaustion despite the fact that his body was still hunched over
in the little room with Dolph and Geisha.
	The datastream was immense. Taking a deep breath, he entered his
mind into it, slowly and deliberately sifting through lines of
communications, until he found the one he was looking for. Stepping
inside, he found himself in the Salvador Dali World, with himself, who was
at the moment talking with the huge disembodied eye of Thou Seest Me.
	"How's it going?" He asked himself.
	"Jesus." Houston said sitting down on the log, shaking his head.
"I didn't think I was going to find you for a while there. Do you realize
just how many phone numbers go through this place?"
	"I saw you a little while ago." He said sitting down next to
himself. "Out for a test run?"
	"Yeah." He nodded at his own face of three months ago. As his eyes
caught his own, he felt the pre-recorded mind reach out to touch his own.
The sensation was strange. Like looking into your own eyes standing in
front of a mirror. It was familiar, but uncomfortable for some reason.
	"We've got to do the update thing." His self told him gently,
almost apologetically. Maybe the program version of himself was more real
than he had previously thought...
	"God I hate this part." Houston said to himself, as three months of
memory and emotion screamed through his mind, in slices of seconds.  Back
in the little office, he shivered.
	"Ok. All done." His self announced. "That wasn't so bad. Now was
it?"
	"Asshole." Houston glared.
	"Sorry. But you know it had to be done." His self said gently.
"You called uncle Rex." He nodded.
	"Yeah." Houston nodded. "I guess I freaked a little, there for a
while. I didn't know what else to do." He shrugged.
	 "Good." His self commented. "I think we're going to need him before
this is over." He said standing up from the log, snapping his fingers,
making a huge flatscreen holographic projection appear in mid-air.
	"Nice trick." Houston smirked.
	"I'll skip the boring parts." His self said touching an imaginary
fast-forward button on the side of the screen. "Here's where Mr.Potatohead
is hiding out." He said nodding to a point on the grid that looked like a
huge pair of red lips, slightly parted, to reveal human teeth beneath
them. Back in the little room, he lit a cigarette, and leaned back against
the wall holding the cyberdeck to his chest, occasionally taking one hand
off the keys to take another drag off his cigarette.
	"The Rocky Horror database?" Houston asked puzzled. "Who does he
know there?"
	"Not him." His self shook his head. "Us. We have a membership.
Remember?"
	"Oh hell! That's right." Houston nodded. "Does he know we're onto
him yet?"
	"Not yet. I saw him go in about twelve minutes ago." He said
touching the controls on his imaginary screen again. "Check this out." He
said as the screen tilted and whirled, blurring as the scene fast
forwarded and stepped up two grid scales.
	"Oh my God!" Houston gasped looking at the screen. "What has he
Done?!"
	"Well darlin' it looks to me like he's boxed in all the NebNets of
Breadbasket. Each one sealed in their own little systems. What's it look
like to you?"
	"He's got help." Houston said accusatively, half angry, half
scared.
	"Right." He nodded, touching the controls again. "Check it out."
He nodded at the screen again as it tilted an whirled again, stepping down
two grid scales to display the city grid, zooming in on Yukon Jacks.
	"Holy Shit!" Houston stared, amazed at the datastream flowing in
and out of the bar he had known for the past couple of years as a sleepy
neighborhood beer joint. "What is Miss Delta doing in there?"
	"For one, he's getting himself a CyberForm body." He looked from
Houston to the screen. "A lot of money in that." He nodded at the
datastream.
	"Why would Miss Delta want to be a Borg?" Houston looked at himself
and took a drag off his cigarette in both worlds.
	"Who isn't a little bit cyborg today?" His self shrugged. "I figure
it must have something to do with his lover. Or the fact that he has
leukemia."
	"Well, come on." Houston said standing up. "Let's go back. I don't
want to loose track of you now."
	"I'll wipe this unit." His self said.
	"Ok." He nodded. "Has Thou Seest ME caught up with himself yet?"
	"Yeah. I'm going to turn him loose so he can go incorporate, and
I'll come back with you to the thirty ought six."
	"Ok." Houston nodded, watching himself snap other branches off the
fallen tree, the huge eye swirling into smoke above them, and dissipate
into the pink sky. "Let's go!"
	"You have to take your foot off the clutch." His self smiled at
him. Houston stepped backwards and closed his eyes, feeling himself as a
"hunch" just to the left and behind his brain, as the fast reversed out.
	"You can take it from here?" He asked himself as they paused at the
port to the cyberdeck, hovering as one in the original coordinates of
ComWeb, feeling the hunch nod a mental affirmative to him. Back in the
real world, he turned the control on the side of the cyberdeck, that
brought the real world back into view, and opened his eyes, pulling the
cables from his wrist.
	"Spooky chick." Dolph said, looking from him to Geisha, sitting
back in his chair where he had been sitting forward, staring intently at
Houston.
	"So how'd it go?" Geisha asked, cracking the seal on another Mint
Julep. His words came through to Houstons ears as merely a jumble of
sounds at first, until Houston brain made the transition from one mode to
another. As the unrealness of the real world slowly vanished from his
senses, and the spinning feeling in his head faded, he was again able to
speak.
	"It went good." Houston said clearing his throat. "Ow!" He cried as
the cigarette burned his fingers, causing him to instinctively throw it
against the wall out of reflex. Houston shook his head a moment trying to
focus on things again, when the door to the room flew open with a loud
Boom!
	Then, just as suddenly, there was a second BOOM from Dolphs
assault rifle, and quickly they were all firing multiple rounds out into
the hall, shooting out of instinctive reflex.
	When they stopped, to see what it was that had forced the door
open so suddenly, steam and liquids from the pipes were spraying out in
high pressured clouds, electrical wiring sparked and flashed from the huge
pipes outside, now smoking.
	"It's Rex." Came a voice outside the door, and quickly a head
peeked around the corner. "Good morning Sunshine." The man grinned at
Houston.
	"Uncle Rex!" Houston laughed. "I forgot to tell them you were
coming." He shook his head. "Couldn't you have just knocked?"
	"Say!" Dolph sat up from where he had his feet braced against the
desk. "Who's the new guy?"
	"This is my Uncle Rex." Houston introduced. "This is Geish... I
mean, Leslie Dow, and this is his friend, Dolph Mirovitch-Brant."
	"Brant huh?" Houston's uncle said leaning against the door frame
with his Militek Ronin light assault rifle dangling from his hand that had
a bright red bandanna tied around the wrist. "I know you guys." He nodded.
"WesCoast Nation. I hope the California-Colorado Co-Op wipes their asses
with you." He smirked behind black glasses that had red gridlines glowing
on the inside of them.
	"I know a little about you too Uncle Rex." Dolph said slowly
standing as the two of them faced off, grinning evilly at each other.
Houston cautiously stepped back out of the line of fire.
	"Whack to it baby. You're nothing more than Militek disposable."
Dolph grinned. "I got you in his file."
	"Just tell me who Not to kill honey." Rex said to Houston, not
moving an inch, never taking his eyes off Dolph nor changing his stance.
He stood leaning against the door frame, one arm on each side of it, his
ankle length black leather coat spread out like huge bat wings, stretching
across his shoulders, a smirk on his face framed by the high collar on the
coat that edged around the top of the coat, setting off his salt and
pepper hair.
	"These are friends Uncle Rex." Houston said slowly, watching the
two of them, more than slightly worried as Rex slowly wiped at the corners
of his mouth with thumb and forefinger.
	"I'll bet this boy was a sophomore for five years." Rex snorted,
thumbing in Dolphs direction. "Don't eat the urinal cakes boy." He said
staring Dolph squarely in the face.
	"But back to you Desi Lu." Dolph said flipping up his rifle, and
into the sling on his back, just like Houston had seen him do earlier,
never once letting his finger even inch towards the trigger possibly
causing a misfire. "You're a hired man. Born with a gun in your hand.
Right?" He nodded as Rex came into the room and stood with his arms
crossed, leaning against the door frame, smiling, now curious about Dolph.
	"We're talking the flesh & blood hand. Not the pitiful metallic
excuse for a Borg that covers most of your other arm." Dolph grinned.
"Freelance Ronin, killer-for-hire, or corporate cybersoldier to enforce
business deals, you're part of the company's "Black Operations". One of
the elite fighting machines of the world."
	Houston did Not like the sound of his uncle being talked to in
this manner, though he was fascinated that his uncle didn't seem to mind
all that much as he put his MiliTek Ronin light assault rifle under his
shoulder as he crossed his arms smiling.
	"Most Solos have put in their time, either in a corporate army or
in one of the governments continuous "police actions" around the world."
Rex shrugged. "It's the New World Order. As the battle damage piles up,
you start wondering what it was that brought you to this point. You're
relying more and more on hardware just to survive. Cyberlimbs for both
weapon and armor, biochip and flashchip programs to increase your reflexes
and awareness, combat drugs to give you that edge over your opponents."
Rex grinned. "When you're the best of the best, you might even leave the
corporate ranks and go Ronin. A free-lance samurai. Today, I free-lance my
talents as a killer, body guard, or Enforcer to whomever can afford my
very high fees."
	Houston stood watching the two of them, thinking he was seeing
curiosity creeping over the face of his uncle as he continued to give
Dolph more information than he normally would have, in some sort of dance
the two of them were perpetuating, in some sort of a "sizing-up" routine.
	"But there's a price to pay. Eh Uncle Rex? A heavy one." Dolph
nodded behind his own, now blackened lenses. "You've lost so much of your
original meat body that you're practically a machine now yourself.
Cyborg."
	"Hey!" Houston protested angrily, only to be ignored by everyone.
	"Your killing reflexes are so jacked up, you have to restrain
yourself from going ape-shit at any time." Dolph nodded, serious now.
"All the years of combat drugs, taken to keep that Edge have given you
terrifying addictions." Dolph's voice sounded almost saddened as Houston
watched him closely.
	"You can't trust anyone. Not your mother, your friends, your
lovers,... no one." Dolph said thoughtfully. "One night you sleep in a
penthouse condo in the Executive Center of the city, the next may be spent
in a dark wet greasy alley, using trashbags as a bed." The more Houston
listened, the more he though it sounded like Dolph was remembering
something more than quoting it from a briefing file. "But that's a price
you're willing to pay, to be the best of the best."
	"Sure." Rex nodded, grinning. "You got it pink boy." Houston's
uncle laughed. "After I got out of the army, I had this little problem. I
was good at what I did, but there was no one hiring." He shrugged. "I
mean, what do you do when you're a highly trained killer with a background
in demolitions? Read the want-ads?" He laughed with a tight smile. "After
a few months on the street, scrounging around, getting work where I could
find it, I got into a dustdown with a local Booster lord I was working for
at the time. I flatlined him and went back to my drink.  Within ten
minutes, a Militek recruiter dropped a C-note and a business card in front
of me."
	"So began your career as a company man." Dolph nodded. "The pay was
good, the work steady, and they paid for your spare parts. So far, you're
still alive. But for how long? Age has a way of creeping up on you Uncle
Rex."
	"Well, so far so good." Rex smiled. "We do what we have to in
life."
	"I worked with a couple just like you out in WesCoast."Dolph said
distastefully. "You guys are assholes." He said shaking his head.


From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 11/30
Date: 31 Jul 1995 00:31:25 -0500

Chapter Eleven
	"I hate to be a downer guys..." Geisha interrupted. "You can talk
shop later." He said gathering up the trash and shoving it all into a
single bag. "That grenade launcher is going to bring someone down here
soon."
	"Shit." Houston cursed, gathering up his drugs and putting them in
his pockets, grabbing his suit jacket and putting it on, despite the fact
that the combat cyberdeck stuck squarely out in front of him. "So now
where to?"
	"I gotta car up on the roof." Rex said calmly stepping out of the
room.
	"I sure hope he didn't kill anyone up there." Geisha whispered to
Houston, moving out behind Rex, with Dolph bringing up the rear. "Damn."
He commented, looking at the mess the cross fire had caused, to the pipes.
	As they trotted up the stairs, Houston slipped the microfine
cables back into his wrist, pausing a second to re-insert the second one
again. Damn. He thought to himself.
	"Pack it Bitch!" Dolph complained behind him.
	Houston picked up his speed climbing the stairs, following Geisha
up past the first floor where earlier they had entered the mall area,
wondering to himself just how tall the building was. The way he
remembered, it was only about 2 or 3 stories tall. Horribly inefficient,
considering the price of land DownTown.
	There must be a reason for building down into the superstructure
below them, instead of just leveling the old 20th century structure, and
building another tower. Hell, with the age of ceramics, building costs
dropped to, next to nothing.
	As he kept up the pace, he noticed Geisha was squeezing the trash
from the room into a ball, tighter and tighter, until Houston heard the
bottles crunching inside the grip of Geisha's powerful cyberarm. Damn. Is
he trying to make a fucking diamond or what? Houston wondered as the
SELECT ICON pulsed across his vision.
	He again quickly visualized the small black ball, but this time,
instead of ComWeb appearing around him, it was his old apartment on
Broadway. Houston stumbled against a stair and then readjusted the control
so that the view of his apartment did not impede his vision of the stairs
they were now running up.
	 Gently turning the little control knob, he lightened the view of
his apartment to a thin superimposed scene. This was one of the reasons he
wanted a combat model. They were designed for use while on the run.
	"Sorry I grabbed you before you got to ComWeb, but I wanted to show
you what I made." His self said holding out his arms and turning around in
the middle of the room. "Home sweet home." Houston said nothing, as he
panted, still jogging up the stairs.
	"Well, I had to build something." His self said defensively,
flopping down on his big old soft leather couch, the original of which was
now a charred ruin. "It felt comfortable." He shrugged. "I missed it.
Homesick I guess."
	"Look. I don't have time for this." Houston said as his meat body
panted for air, climbing stair after stair., watching Geisha's melon
calves ahead of him, pound his thick muscular legs up the stairs. "I'm on
the move."
	"I gathered as much." His self said looking at the wall screen in
his simulated apartment, where the relinks of the building's cellular
network was being simulated on the screen, as the cyberdeck accommodated
his movement, tracking him, and keeping his signal to ComWeb open. "Uncle
Rex has a cellular base unit in his car. We'll be fine." He nodded, going
over to the bar to fix himself a simulated cocktail.
	"I'm not going to logoff." Houston explained to himself. "I've got
a feeling things are going to start moving a lot faster now, and I might
not have time to reconnect."
	"It's ok." His self said confidently. "This place is secure."
	"By the way." Houston couldn't resist. "What's it look like in
there?"
	"We're running Honeywell Trinity Logic's. The triple processor
series." His self said arching an eyebrow. "Fantastic datawall strength."
He grinned. "Man! This mother can move! I ran it through the benchmarks...
"
	"Gotta go." Houston said turning the control that left him fully in
the real world, except for feeling the microfines buzzing slight under the
skin on his wrist, and a dizziness in his head as he ran across the roof
to the car.
	"McDonnell Douglas AeroTek." Houston heard Dolph comment
appreciatively behind him. "Your uncle has done pretty well for himself."
He said as Houston got into the front seat.
	Looking back where they had just come from, Houston could see two
guards sitting on the roof, behind the door they had just come out of,
sitting back to back, taped together, with their rifles propped
meticulously against the wall.
	I'll bet the butts of those rifles are the same distance apart as
the tops. Houston thought to himself. The tape on the guards mouths and
ankles, exactly the same length. To the millimeter. He remembered the way
his uncle had kept house, in their home at 75th & Wornall. Very military.
	"Safety first kids." Rex said as Houston slammed the front door
with a heavy THUNK and started fastening his seat belt, getting it tangled
at first in the cyberdeck's strap, finally getting it fastened around him,
letting the cyberdeck hang over the safety harness.
	Dolph got in behind Houston, and had the belt around him and
secured in less than a second. What the hell kinda speed is he on?
Houston wondered.
	"Hang on honey." Rex said calmly beside him as the G-Force slammed
him back in the soft gray velour seat.
	"Fuck." Houston heard Geisha grunt from the back seat, as they
screamed through the air towards Mile High Tower, banked severely, at
about a 60 degree angle, whipped around it twice, and headed for the North
Wall.
	The silence inside the car was so still, Houston didn't even
notice they had barely missed a Bell-Boeing Osprey until it was well past
them. Gulping, Houston turned the control that let him fade back into the
artificial reality of his cyberdeck apartment.
	"So what's up?" His self asked, as Houston materialized in the
room.
	"I don't really know. Uncle Rex is running the show for now."
Houston shrugged at himself, sitting down on the couch next to himself,
looking at the wallscreen which hung from the ceiling, in the form of a
thin panel of tightly packed microcircuitry. "What have you got for me?"
	His self picked up the remote, and tapped in commands on the
black, glass faced keys, making the screen swirl into a scene he didn't
recognize. Unfamiliar files of some kind.
	"What am I looking at?" Houston asked himself.
	"Enforcer files. I used that code finally. Figured something like
this would be what it was for." His self explained.
	"Are you sure?" Houston asked, almost unbelieving. "I've seen the
Enforcer files before, and they sure weren't formatted anything like
this."
	"These are the personnel files." His self said flipping through
them until he came to a name Houston didn't recognize. Justin Smith.
"Check the address." He said drawing a line down the file with the remote,
watching it unfold before them. "Look familiar?"
	"No." Houston paused, looking at the address again. "Should it?"
He looked questioningly at himself. "It's a Blue Springs address." He
shrugged. "From the number, I would guess a condo."
	"It's also Miss Delta's address."
	"Oh hell that's right." Houston nodded, looking back to the screen.
"He did tell me one time that he lived in Blue Springs. I forgot all about
that. But then, your memory is so much better than mine." He grinned. "So
this is Miss Delta's husband..." He said looking at the picture of the big
beefy CyberForm Enforcer, wondering what would make a person want to fall
in love with a robot.
	 Well, in the strictest sense, CyberForms were not robots. Robots
were just cybernetic parts hardwired to perform a single repetitious task.
Like making cars. CyberForms had consciousness. They were self aware
robots. Most people kept them as slaves. Like Androids.
	Androids however, were flesh and blood entities. Artificial
People. They had no souls, despite the fact that they replicated through
sex. Flesh and blood slaves. But understanding all the various forms of
pseudo-life however was not Houston's area of expertise. Nor was it on his
list of Things-to-Do at the moment.
	"Here's The Husband's buddy." His self said, letting the simulated
file-folder on the screen fall closed as he opened another file. "Harry
DuPont. Goes by the name Law-Man on the streets. He, Justin, and Miss
Delta are working for this man..." He said opening yet another file. "Carl
Rothchild. A real asshole from what I can gather."
	"So why does he want me dead?" Houston asked himself.
	"He want's our AI programs." His self shrugged. "All of them; And
he doesn't want You around to report them missing, or reporting rogue
consciousness to the NebNets for misconduct. Geisha is a target, because
he could point investigators in the right direction. If he had stayed out
of it..."
	"Even Thou Seest Me?"
	"Even."
	Feeling the car buffet a second, Houston turned the control to
ease back into the real world, where he was sitting in the front seat of
Rex's car.
	"What was that?" Houston asked his uncle who was driving.
	"It looks like whomever is after you, traced you to the Engineer's
Arcology." Rex commented, not taking his eyes off the controls.
	Houston turned around in his seat to see Geisha and Dolph also
turned around, looking out the back window at the broken, twisted, and
burning spot where the old Missouri State office building once squatted
among the towers of the Kansas City skyline. It was as if someone stepped
on it, scattering pieces of it in every direction.
	"Tactical says it was a 12 ton rock from orbit." Rex glanced at the
screen, continuing to look ahead.
	Houston uneasily looked Geisha in the eye as the man turned
around, stunned, his lips drawn tight and thin as he set his jaw and
ground his teeth.
	"Believe it." Dolph breathed as he continued to stare at the flames
leaping high into the night sky, reflecting off the mirrored faced towers
surrounding the scene.
	"I'm sorry Geisha." Houston said quietly.
	"Shut up." Geisha said simply, staring out the side window, not
looking at anything in particular as they came up on the North Wall.
	"Do your stuff honey." Rex told Houston.
	"What do you want me to do?" Houston asked turning around in his
seat.
	"You're gonna have to fiddle the security if we're gonna get out of
the city alive." Rex explained as he kept them on a steady course towards
the wall.
	"Ok." Houston said turning the control that slid him back into his
comfy, simulated apartment.
	"Kill that shit." Houston told himself pointing at the screen.
"Fix the North Wall security so we can get out of the city."
	"You want me to just drop the whole works?" His self asked as he
used his home VR terminal remote to weave his way into the wall security
systems.
	"No, that would attract too much attention." Houston shook his
head. "Tell them we're some corporate inspection team, out on a run, to
check on something in Northland."
	"I live to serve." His self smiled, not looking up, sliding the
controls on the home unit and rolling the track-ball around quickly,
finding the ID code on their car, located in the wall security system,
changing it to something more acceptable. "Done." He smiled.
	Houston turned the control sliding back into the real world.
	"We're now a corporate inspection team doing a routine check on
Northland." Houston told his uncle.
	"Good enough." Rex nodded, not changing course or speed in the
least.
	Houston turned around and looked at Geisha again, feeling somewhat
guilty for the inadvertent death of Geisha's friends, then remembering
that it was Geishas ass on the line now as well.
	Turning the control again, Houston slid back into the apartment
simulation...
	"So let's go back to Carl Rothchild again." Houston said sitting
down on the couch, staring at the simulated screen on the simulated wall.
	"Well," His self said flipping screens. "Carl is an ambitious man."
He arched an eyebrow. "In Grandpa & Grandma's day he would have called
himself a Yuppie, and enjoyed the title. Hard driven, fast track MBA on
his way up the corporate ladder. Sure, he sold his soul to the company,
but let's face it. The corporations control this world. It's the New World
Order you know. They control what few puppet governments are left, they
control the markets, the nations, armies, you name it. So basically,
whomever controls the corporations, controls the world. Not a bad trade if
you ask me."
	Houston looked over at his self, wondering how the two of them
could differ on such a basic principle. Perhaps they had been separated
enough, for their pasts to change them inside somehow.
	"So if Carl's wanting control of Breadbasket, and he's wanting to
use my AI's to do it, why not just hit me with a city cop?" Houston looked
at himself questioningly. "I mean, a simple slug in the brain would do it.
Well, and a little detail work to kill my clone and Mindread."
	"You got me." His self laughed shrugging. "I suppose Mr. Law-Man
a.k.a. Harry DuPont didn't understand just how quick we can be when we
need to. After all, we took out the CyberForm in the alley before he could
tell us what was going down."
	"Hmm." Houston said thinking.
	"Anyway, Carl's life as a junior exec is anything but cushy.  There
are guys underneath him who would kill for a shot at his job, and there
are guys at the top who would kill to keep him out of their jobs."
	"A bit stressful." Houston nodded.
	"One might say." His self smirked. "They're not kidding about the
killing either. Every up and comer has his own crew of Solos and "Small
'P' programmers" to cover his pet projects."
	"Hackers, you mean." Houston said disgustedly.
	"Hey baby, we all know a little bit more than what we should."  His
self countered. "Information wants to be free, after all."
	"Save it for the heathens." Houston waved him on. "Well, at least
no Guild people have sold out to any shit like that."
	"Yeah, well, we all have our price. It only has to be met once."
His self sat back eyeing the screen. "It's only a matter of time. Sooner
or later one of these fucks will be able to meet it."
	"So back to Carl." Houston nodded at the screen.
	"Sabotage? Constantly. Bribery? Routine. Blackmail? Common.
Promotion by assassination? Always a possibility. He plays a game where
the stakes are high. One slip-up and he could be out on the street with
the rest of us trash. Or dead."
	"Pity." Houston snarled.
	"You should see some of the projects his supervisors hand off to
him." His self went on. "Some are pretty straightforward; design a new
productivity schedule for their corporation's medical subsidiary..." He
said getting up and fixing both of them cocktails. "And some are more than
just a little raw; like sending a black operations team into the city's
Eastside to spread another designer plague, so the marketing division can
clean up on a vaccine that's just been sitting around."
	"What an asshole." Houston commented, accepting the simulated
cocktail in hand, surprised at the rich smoky taste of good scotch.
	"Last week, he led a mixed team of Solo's, programmers, and
MechTeks on a head-hunting run, to kidnap a researcher from a rival
company." His self said sitting down next to Houston. "The week before,
his project was to steal the plans for a new orbital shuttle from the
Eurospace Agency, so his company's aerospace division could copy the
design and sell it to the old Pre-CIS Soviets."
	"Did he get it done?"
	"I don't know. I didn't track that line any further. But there was
no mention of a screw up in his personnel file, so I assume he did."  His
self shrugged. "See, Carl's been telling himself all this time, that he's
joined Breadbasket Corporation to make it a better place to live.  You
know, work from the inside. Change from within." He winked at Houston.
"Now it seems he's not so sure anymore. His ideals have become a bit
tarnished as of late, and his life is looking pretty bleak."
	"So he's going to steal my AI's to help him to the top?"
	"Well, hey, he can't stop to worry about ideals and ethics at this
point." His self shrugged. "He's got a bitch and a pup in a corporate
apartment, and it looks like some guy in Sales is looking to flatline him.
I figure old Carl will probably knock off the salesman first though."
	"But this guy doesn't understand the technology of Artificial
Intelligence." Houston objected. "How could he ever hope to contain them?"
	"He doesn't have a clue." His self snorted. "He's got a few hackers
calling themselves Gladiators who think they can lobotomize the AI's,
telling him exactly the things he wants to hear. All Carl see's is a fat
credit in the bank for himself and a whole lot of power."
	Houston suddenly felt someone squeezing his shoulder in the real
world.
	"Gotta go. Find out what you can about the others involved in this
too." Houston said turning the control and watching his apartment fade
from view, evaporating before his eyes.
	"She Lives! She Lives!" Houston heard the resonant baritone voice
of Dolph behind him. "Poppies made her sleep!"
	"You ok Houston?" Geisha asked in a voice of real concern.
	"Yeah. Why?" Houston croaked hoarsely as he turned around to face
Geisha, the dizziness of his link with the cyberdeck still buzzing in his
brain.
	"We're landing." Geisha said pointing out the front window.
	As far as Houston could see, there was nothing but rows and rows
of corn stalks in the darkness. They were very quickly coming up on a
small flat nondescript concrete pad in the middle of a sea of dark green,
lit by a sodium-iodine light on a pole, planted right beside the pad.
	"Kill that light honey." Rex said quietly.
	Turning the control, Houston slipped back into his apartment,
where his self was sitting on his comfortable leather couch, watching the
landing on the wallscreen, cocktail in hand.
	"Kill the light." He told himself, moving back to the real world.
	The Aerotek slid down through the sky, as the light below
vanished; darkness swallowed them in the little car as it sat down quietly
on the darkened pad, Rex shutting down the systems of the craft, one after
the other, until they were sitting in complete silence.
	"Now what?" Geisha whispered to them all in the dead still calm
that surrounded them with silence in the car.
	"We wait and see if they come after us." Rex said getting out of
the car and shutting the door behind him.
	They all got out and stood on the warm concrete pad in the
darkness, looking around at the corn that stretched out forever, in every
direction.
	"Not much to do out here." Dolph commented as he went to the edge
to urinate between the rows of corn. "You only rent beer." He grinned,
unzipping his black leather pants.
	Rex sat on the front of the car, sitting up on the hood, his feet
propped up on the bumper with his elbows on his knees, looking at Houston,
until Houston walked over to him and sat down beside him.
	"What have you found honey?" Rex asked in his calm, quiet voice.
	"The guy behind it all is a Breadbasket corporate asshole named
Carl Rothchild." Houston said quietly, somewhat disturbed at the eerie
still silence and gray-black darkness that enveloped them. He hadn't heard
this kind of silence since he had been on Daedalus Station. Kansas City
never got quiet. "He's trying to steal, well, he has stolen my AI's."
	"Trouble." His uncle nodded in the moonlight of the full moon.
"Bein's how you're a software engineer, I'll take it they're soft AI's."
He said raising an eyebrow in questioning.
	"Yeah." Houston nodded. "Uh... Actually Uncle Rex, I'm a
programmer." He said a bit disappointed.
	"I know." Rex grinned. "I was just teasing you honey. I've seen
your products."
	"They're out in ComWeb now." Houston added, feeling guilty.
	"How malevolent, and how many?"
	"Twelve." Houston sighed. "None of them are malevolent, but this
Carl guys' got a bunch of hackers working for him on the sly, and, well,
who knows what they'll do to them? You know?"
	"I see." Rex nodded. "Better get back in there and see what you can
find out to help us." His uncle said tapping the top of the cyberdeck,
getting up to stretch.
	Houston turned the control, seeing the scene of his uncle Rex
stretching in the moonlight, getting ready to do calisthenics, wishing he
had time to talk to his uncle more, as his apartment pulled itself in
around his mind.
	"What's wrong?" His self asked.
	"Nothing." Houston frowned, sitting down on the couch next to
himself. "What have you found?"
	"Well, let's go back to Miss Delta for a moment." His self said
flipping the remote over and calling up a file he had prepared. "A.k.a.
Ralph DeLaude. I think he realized early on in life that he was never
gonna get a corporate job. Not with those medical stats. The bitch is
falling apart on her goddamned self. He certainly wasn't tough enough or
crazy enough to be a Solo either."
	"Uncle Rex aside."
	"Yeah, well." His self nodded. "He grew up out in the outer
moderate zone just south of 95th. As a small time street punk, he knew he
had a knack for figuring out what other people wanted and how to get it
for them." He paused. "For a price of course."
	"Well of course." Houston nodded.
	"Today, his deals have moved past the nickel and dime stuff into
the Big time." His self grinned out of the side of his face. "Maybe he
moves illegal weapons over the border into Foundry. Or steals medical
supplies from the corporations there."
	"But he doesn't actually do the meat work himself." Houston nodded.
	"Sometimes he's a skills broker; acting as an agent for high priced
Solos and Punx, or even hiring a whole Nomad pack to back a clients
contracts. He buys and sells favors like a mafia godfather." His self
laughed. "He's got connections into all kinds of businesses, deal and
political groups. Being a bartender, and centrally located, he's sitting
in the right spot for it all to come right down the pipe to him."
	"I see."
	"He's probably the most connected man in the city." His self
commented. "You're right though, he doesn't do all of this directly, of
course." His self nodded at the data scrolling down the screen. "He uses
his contacts and allies as part of a vast web of conspiracy, machinization
and coercion. If ever there was a hot night club in the city, he's got it
right there in Yukon Jacks."
	"You've got to be kidding me!" Houston protested, laughing. "I
thought it was just a bunch of tired old queens doing the same liquid
lunch routine day after day."
	"Well, let's just say that, at night, business picks up a bit."
His self grinned. "If there are new military class weapons on the street,
you can just about bet he's involved somewhere behind smuggling them in.
If there's a corporate war going down, he's negotiating between sides with
an eye on the favorite. Probably giving odds on the side as well."
	"Well that sleazy old whore!" Houston laughed, getting up to fix
him and his self cocktails.
	"He's not entirely in it for the bucks." His self explained. "If
someone needs to get the heat off, he'll hide them for a while. He get's
people housing when there isn't any and he brings in food when the
neighborhoods are blockaded." His self shrugged, accepting the simulated
drink in hand. "Maybe he does it because he knows they'll owe him one
later." He shrugged. "He's one part Robin Hood, and two parts Al Capone.
He's just another fixer in the grand scheme of things."
	"Are you sure we're talking about the same Miss Delta?" He looked
at himself pessimistically. "The silly bartender queen with the CyberForm
lover?"
	"The same." His self said steadily. "Hey, would I lie to you?" He
grinned.
	"Ok." He laughed shaking his head. "What about this fuckhead cop?
Harry... Larry... Law-Man? Something-or-other."
	His self flipped screens and the next file came up.
	"Harry DuPont. A.k.a. Law-Man." His self paused sipping. "Well, in
the good old bad days they only used to shoot at cops. Now, if they're
lucky, they'll just take a slug. The Street is mean these days. Filled
with new dope, new gangs, and new weapons that make an M-16 look like a
kids toy."
	"Shit don't I know it." Houston shivered on the couch and in the
real world at the same time, his hand unconsciously brushing against the
Tech-9, to comfort him.
	"Being on Kansas City's City Force, he's carrying at least four
high caliber weapons, most of them full auto types, wearing a kevlar vest
that'll stop 850 foot/pounds per square inch, and he's still out gunned
and outflanked." His self said lighting a simulated cigarette and
continued. "Half the gangs on the street are cybered up to begin with;
you know, super speed, super reflexes, can see in the dark, carry weapons
built into their limbs. The other half are free-lance corporates, merc
gangs hired by the corps to enforce policies at the street level."
	"And there's poor pitiful Harry. Just a beat cop in an armored
squad car, patrolling the jungle of heavy predators." Houston curled a lip
in disgust. "Asshole. He should have got a real job instead of wanting to
play Cops & Robbers and then bitch about the rules. Don't tell me. He gets
hungry right?"
	"Well, you know the rent-a-cops. Corporate cops, well, that's the
Life. You know? Heavy weapons, full combat armor, trauma backup, AV
assault vehicles and gyro-copters with mini-guns mounted on the sides.
It's too much to resist."
	"For a guy who gets a hard-on just picking up a rifle." Houston
added in disgust. "Those guys just make me sick." He said shaking his
head. "They ought to make them take some kind of psychological test or
something before they let them be cops."
	"What? And have 90% of their force get kicked out as unacceptable?"
His self countered. "We wouldn't have a force if they screened them too
closely. And the corporate cops, well, they only patrol the sectors of the
city that Breadbasket has licensed them for. You know, the nice clean
sectors full of new office towers and fancy restaurants;  where no jack-up
psychopunk is gonna ever go on a killing spree with a Russian AK-47. The
worst that might happen is a corporate goes nuts, and shoots a couple of
his bosses with a Chinese Rim-fire he has in his desk."
	"I can see how it would be tempting." Houston agreed. "Nothing to
do but walk around and document crime after it's already taken place. But
hell, the city could hire a bunch of secretaries to do that."
	"Except Law-Man got the bad sections of town." His self shrugged.
"No free lunch and all of that. Harry finds himself as a patrolman, in the
burned out buildings and abandoned cars, where every night he faces a new
firefight and another great opportunity for a messy death, being sprayed
all over the side of a wall."
	"Unlucky."
	"You got it. And if he's really unlucky, he might just pull
Psychosquad detail." His self arched an eyebrow, staring at Houston.
"Psychosquad guys get the job of hunting down the heavily armored cyborgs
who flip out. Sure, the Psychosquad gets access to railguns, gyros and
AV's, but a cyberpsycho can walk through machine-gun fire and not even
feel it. They dampen pain by disconnecting their nervous systems, using
all available neurons to run their cyberware."
	"I know a lot of the Psychosquad detectives are crazy themselves.
They have to be, just to stay in the job." Houston nodded, remembering a
cop he had known once. "They'll load themselves up with boosted reflexes,
get some monstrously big guns, and go hunt the psychos solo."
	"Well, Law-Man, Harry DuPont isn't that crazy." His self assured
him. "Yet."

From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 12a
Date: 1 Aug 1995 20:54:40 -0500

Chapter Twelve
	"I'll be back in a second." Houston said to himself, slipping back
into the real world. "These guys are mean Uncle Rex." Houston said to the
man doing pushups in front of him, on the ground.
	"I figured as much honey." The man said standing up. "How bad is
bad?" He asked, dusting his hands together.
	"Miss Delta, uh, Ralph DeLaude is the fixer for them all."  Houston
explained. "Besides his CyberForm Enforcer boyfriend, Justin Smith, they
have another guy named Harry DuPont working with them. City cop turned
corporate. He's had a bum rap for a life is all, but he's mean."
	"Does he go by the name Law-Man on the streets?"
	"Yeah!" Houston nodded. "Hunts down cyberpsychos."
	"Yeah. I know him." Rex nodded looking at the ground. "Anything
else?"
	"Just Rothchild and Mr.Potatohead."
	"Well honey, I can't help you in there." Rex said pointing to the
box dangling in front of Houston. "That's your department." He said then
putting his hand on Houston's shoulder. Houston just nodded silently a
moment, wondering how to approach his uncle.
	"I didn't know what to say after Dad died." Houston said quietly.
	"I know honey." His uncle nodded quietly in the darkness of the
field, the full moon glinting off his black sun-glasses, red grid lines on
one side, the targeting cross-hairs on the other. "We both needed time
alone to think." He said coming over to sit beside Houston. "That doesn't
mean you have to be a stranger from now on." He smiled warmly. "You can
even bring your... friends... out to the house if you want."
	"Thanks Uncle Rex." Houston smiled. "I will. If I make it out of
this thing alive, that is."
	"Don't be so pessimistic!" Rex smiled, nudging his nephew.  "You're
a whole lot smarter and stronger than you give yourself credit for."
	Houston pulled a cigarette out of the pack of Lambert & Butler's,
puffing on it until it lit, enjoying the feeling of the smoke penetrate
his lungs, the nicotine dulling his senses and soothing his nerves.
	"Give me one of those." Rex said as Houston shook one out for him.
"I left mine in the car and I'm too lazy to go get 'em."
	"Uncle Rex?"
	"Yeah honey?"
	"What did you mean when you said "Magic Time" on the phone?"
	"Oh, that was just something left over from the wars." Rex
shrugged.
	He started to say something else, as Houston was staring at the
brightly glowing end of his cigarette, when he felt something enormous
slam into his jaw, hard enough to send him spinning, knocking him to the
ground. As if some Goliath swung a baseball bat into his jaw at full tilt.
	It was so big, it felt like God had reached down out of the sky to
punch him.
	Houston lay dazed on the ground for a moment, until he realized
the burning sensation in his face, was his jaw bone missing. Damn. So
close to my brain and I'm still alive?
	He could hear the firefight around him; the deadly salvo of angry
9mm hornets buzzing around him; Geisha, Uncle Rex and Dolph shouting and
running in different directions, firing the various caliber weapons at
some unknown force that finally got the drop on him and attacked.
	Well. They got me. He thought to himself. Shit. I wasn't ready to
die.
	As the pain increased, becoming a white intense flare burning it's
way into his brain, he managed to lift his hand to the cyberdeck and twist
the control knob that slid him into his simulated apartment while the
devastating firepower continued around him in the realworld, at a
sustained rate.
	"Well shit." Houston said flopping down on the couch. "They blew my
fucking head off!" He told himself, quite disgusted with the entire
situation.
	"Obviously not, since you were able to make it here. They just shot
off your lower jaw." His self told him. "Just snap your BancoCard in half,
and the trauma team will be here in a few minutes. Hurry up before you
drown from the blood draining into your lungs."
	"I don't know if I can." Houston said excitedly, raising his voice
and throwing his arms in the air. "They blew my fucking head off!
Goddamnit!"
	"Listen Houston. You're going into shock. Reach into your pants
pocket and snap that flashchip in half." His self told him patiently.
"Houston! Pay attention! Do it!" He ordered.
	"Well fuck!" Houston said exasperated. "I'll try." He said staring
intently at the bar in his apartment, trying desperately to control his
mind in two worlds at once, but the more he focused on his body in the
real world, the more his mind wanted to recoil from the pain and shock.
	"Oh shit." Houston hissed, his eyes clenched tightly shut. "It
fucking hurts."
	"Come on Houston. Get it Girl." His self urged him on. "Don't let
me down now. You're almost there. Just snap it in half. Come on."
	Houston could feel his hand trembling, slick with blood, trying to
snap the BancoCard in half, but his hand was too slick with blood, and too
restricted in his pocket. Pulling the card out of his pocket, seemed to be
more of a chore than he wanted to take on at the moment. Oh my God.  I'm
really dying. He thought in disbelief.
	"I'm getting tired."
	"Don't think about that. Think adrenalin. Come on Houston. You're
almost there." His self encouraged him. "Just don't die on me yet."
	Holding the card between his fingers and the heel of his hand, he
was finally able to get the end of it down against the concrete and snap
it in half, cleanly, along the perforated center.
	"Finally." Houston sighed, relaxing back against the couch.
	"Uh uh." His self told him. "Look at me Houston. Come on. We gotta
do this." His self said pulling him up by his shirt to stare himself in
the eye. "Come on Houston. Cooperate with me." He said pointing into his
own eyes. "Watch me. We're dying."
	"Ok!" Houston snapped. "Take your dreams then ghost man."
	Houston looked himself in the eye, feeling the sickening psychic
lurch as the machine read his mind, draining his memories and thoughts
over the past few hours of his life, since the last Mindread was done.
	"All done. It's all over Houston." His self smiled at him.  "Didn't
hurt a bit, now did it." He grinned. "AND I got a clean signal out to the
Alexandrian libraries. A Mindread right up to the millisecond!" He smiled
happily.
	It was no sooner over, when Houston started to shiver in the real
world, laying on the warm tarmac of the platform, when he felt the sudden
impact of the exploding slug penetrate his skull in slow motion.
	"Man. That's gonna hurt I bet." Houston said to himself.
	"Not in here." His self shook his head. "Do you want a scotch?"
	"Sure." Houston said getting up and stretching in the virtual
environment. "Are you sure I got the card snapped?"
	"Yes." He said from the bar.
	"Are you sure we're close enough to the city?" Houston asked
worried. "I mean, those things only have a range on them of about 20 miles
you know. There's a limit to their distance."
	"I know Houston." He grinned. "I'm sure." He nodded knowingly.
	"Are you absolutely sure?"
	"Look Houston. I sent the signal through the cellular unit to Uncle
Rex's base unit in his car. From there, I got a microwave beam to the
city. Then, a laser to Crystal Palace. From there, another line to
Worldsat VII. Then, straight down to Antarctica Central." His self said
shaking his head. "It went directly to the Alexandrian Archives, and in to
the library."
	"Well, I just want to make sure." Houston said petulantly. "You
know, I got cheated on my first life. I want to be sure about this next
one."
	"We'll be fine." His self smiled. "You know, the idea of using the
cyberdeck as an impromptu Mindreader unit was a very good one if I do say
so myself."
	"Just so you're sure I got that card snapped."
	"Yes Goddamnit! I saw the signal go out to the trauma center."  His
self assured him as he handed him a cocktail. "They'll be here in about 3
minutes. Realtime. They won't be able to stabilize us of course, or save
us, but we've got the new Mindread on file now, and our clone is ready and
waiting, providing that whomever is after us didn't get to the clone
first."
	"Well, it was a pretty good save, I must say." Houston grinned.
"Congratulations." He smiled. "Well, I guess you'll be in charge from here
on out." He told himself.
	"Nope." His self shook his head. "I'm still here with you aren't I?
When they fill the clone, he'll be his own person. You and I will be going
on the next big adventure. Whenever the batteries run down on this unit."
	"Wait a second." Houston said confused. "Just exactly who will be
filling the clone? Me? or You? or a combination of the two of us?"
	"Actually it will be a combination of the two of us, but like I
say, it has nothing to do with us. We're on our own in here."
	"Damn. That means we're gonna die anyway." Houston said
accusatively.
	"Well, we can change that you know." His self reminded him. "That
soul is just hardwiring. We're the software. If you want to incorporate,
we can go store ourselves over the top of the file of us they have in
Alexandria."
	"But that would mean giving up my current identity." Houston said
understanding. "I'd have to give up Me for the clone."
	"Exactly." His self nodded.
	"Forget it then." Houston shook his head. "The world can just do
without another me."
	"Well, it's going to be about 3 hours subjective time, before they
come and disconnect us from the body out there. Do you want to watch
anything on TV?" His self asked lighting a cigarette from a box sitting on
the coffee table.
	"Is StarTrek Next Generation on tonight?"
	"They fucking killed Houston!" Geisha cried, rocking back and forth
over his smaller friend, clutching the broken and bloody body close to his
chest. "God damn them all!" He screeched into the night air as the trauma
team air vehicle settled down on the pad beside Rex's car, it bright
halogen spotlight marking the area as bright as high noon.
	"He'd cry at the opening of a bank." Dolph sighed, shaking his head
at Geisha, looking at Rex who just shrugged. "I guess this makes some sort
of comment on contemporary mores." He said settling back against the car
next to Rex, clutching his side, towards his back.
	"I'm not sure." Rex said looking down at the broken and bloody
body, now headless, that used to be his nephew. "You're bleeding
internally." He commented to Dolph over his shoulder.
	"No shit?" Dolph smirked, lifting his hand off his kidney.
	"No shit. Better have these guys take a look at you." Rex said
walking away towards the bodies of the men who had crept up on them, from
out of the fields. "Houston's account will pay for it." He explained,
shifting down on one knee to look closer at the people.
	They weren't men. They were kids. Two boys and a girl. The name
'Gladiators' in Gold lame across the backs of their long leather dusters.
It had been a fairly fast firefight. Almost a hit and run.
	The three bodies seemed in fairly good condition. Top dollar at
the Organbanx if their fluids tested ok. Younger organs always did bring a
better price though. Rex examined their belongings, finding obviously fake
ID's and PIN's, but two of them had LifeLine donor cards that would pass
even close inspection. They might even be real.
	Might as well let Dow and the Mirovitch-Brant guy have the bounty
on these. Rex thought to himself. He certainly didn't need the money.
Though, where was it he had heard that you couldn't be too rich?
	Walking back and staring at the lifeless corpse that used to be
Houston, that the trauma team was examining, not too closely, he rubbed
his hand over his salt & pepper moustache and sighed. That could have gone
better. Rex thought to himself.
	"Dow? How are you doing?" Rex asked Geisha who sat rocking back and
forth, still sobbing uncontrollably, as he sat on his knees, clutching his
arm to his chest, making a low whining sound like a small wounded animal
caught in a trap. Going over to him, Rex squatted down next to him.
	"It'll be ok Dow." Rex assured Geisha. "Houston kept his trauma
account up and his life insurance up-to-date. He'll be back in a few
days."
	"He's dead." Geisha bawled. "He can't come back. Not the same
Houston. It'll be just a fucking monster they cook up." He shook his head
sobbing and sniffling.
	"I think you'll be surprised." Rex grinned. "They can do all kinds
of stuff today. I think the two of you better come with me though.  That
is, after these guys have a look at that arm." He said looking at the
wound between Geisha's fingers. "Those exploding tip mothers can really
tear the shit out of you. Can't they?"
	"Are you two also needing attention?" A bored MedTek with a name
tag that read 'Gary Carter' asked as he walked up to the two of them.
Neither said anything for a moment, so he spoke again.
	"Look guys, this is just a night job." The MedTek shrugged. "I
don't give a shit if you live or die. If you wanna live, Mr.Kramers
insurance is arranged for everyone in his party to be treated. Otherwise,
you can sit out here and bleed to death out here in the dark for all I care

		



From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 12b
Date: 1 Aug 1995 20:56:13 -0500

"I got the deck." Rex said holding the cyberdeck out in front of Geisha.
"We might need it."
	Geisha sat staring blankly into space, not saying anything, and
unsure there was anything for him to say.
	"Les!" He heard the voice of Dolph. He slowly managed to lift his
head about half way, feeling the drool run down his chin, not caring what
he looked like. "I've gotta go to the center. It's my kidney. I'll catch
up with you later." His friend waved to him from a stretcher as the trauma
team carried him into the AV.
	Rex went back to his car and put the cyberdeck inside, squinting
against the bright halogens, as the AV took off for Trauma Central Medical
Center.  "Come on big guy." Rex said helping Geisha to his feet. "Let's
get you some place to lay down." He said trying to steer the big frame
towards the car.
	"You're gonna have to help me a little Dow." Rex laughed gently.
"Or I'm gonna have to take your nice pretty patch away for a while."
	Geisha managed to put more of his weight on his own feet, but
disoriented, relying on Rex to guide him to the car.
	"Easy big fellah." Rex said sitting Geisha down in the seat.
"Almost there." He lifted Geisha's feet into the car and shut the door.
	"Looks like I got a couch with your name written all over it." He
told Geisha humorously as he started up the car. "Here." Rex said pulling
the safety harness over Geisha and clicking it into place.
	Lifting the car from the platform, a flat concrete pad in the
middle of the immense field of corn that went on forever, he spoke to both
Geisha and himself.
	"Well Dow." Rex sighed. "A bit of a pickle one might say." He
thought out loud. "How to get into a city, you were never supposed to have
left?" The silence in the car was total, as Geishas head was lolled over
to the side, watching on, drooling on his own shoulder.
	"I don't think you could work a deck being an engineer." Rex
commented, looking over at Geisha. "In your current state, I don't think
you could do much of anything."
	"What to do, what to do?" Rex sighed out loud to no one in
particular, flying them on towards the city, despite his lack of access
through the North Wall. Picking up his phone, he dialed for an
international operator.
	"Yeah, uh, I'd like to make a call to the Afrikani Region." Rex
said to the machine on the other end. "Nairobi three three, seven four,
six eight five one."
	"Nairobi is under firm Orbital Air control." The voice said
pleasantly to him, uncaring as to his needs.
	"I know. Militek Access Kramer two two four four." He waited while
the machine searched it access approved codes and found his.
	"Hullo." A dull voice asked hoarsely on the other end.
	"Kramer here."
	"What the fuck do you want?" The voice coughed wetly.
	"I need access into Kansas City's north wall."
	"Just a second asshole." The voice said angrily, coughing on the
other end of the line. "Kramer huh?" The voice yawned, as he heard the
person on the other end light a cigarette with an old fashioned Zippo
lighter, the clink of it's metal cap very distinct even though the voice
was being carefully shielded, by being scrambled through voice chips,
making it sound completely alien. Machine voice.
	There was a pause as he heard fast typing on a keyboard in the
background. "Ok asshole. I see you. What the fuck are you doing outside
the wall Kramer?" The voice asked coughing again, this time sniffing.
	"Moonlight stroll with an asshole buddy." Rex grinned looking over
at Geisha, and shrugged when there was no response.
	"Ok, let's see... " The voice said yawing again. "Yeah ok. I got
you. Ok, you're a groundside Orbital Air shuttle in for repairs. How's
that?"
	"Thanks." Rex smiled to no one in particular. "I got something
else. I need a few makes run."
	"Names Kramer." The voice said irritated. "I need names."
	"Leslie Dow." Rex paused. "Dolph Mirovitch-Brant. Ralph DeLaude.
Justin Smith. Harry DuPont. Carl Rothchild."
	"Oh is that all?" The voice asked sarcastically. "Kansas City?"  It
snapped.
	"Yes." Rex paused. "Mirovitch-Brant is also a native of WesCoast
Nation."
	"Got it." The voice said simply.
	"Can you dump it at the house?" Rex asked nicely.
	"I'm chargin' you double asshole." The voice grumbled. "And don't
call me again before noon." It said disconnecting the link.
	Rex tapped the phone against his leg, hanging it up above the sun
visor.
	"You won't of course be able to remember any of those codes." Rex
said apologetically to Geisha. "Nothing after they slapped that patch over
the carotid artery." He shook his head as he drove on.
	"Always helps to keep in touch with old pals." Rex said
conversationally to Geisha, who at the moment, wanted nothing more than to
drool and stare, now enjoying the numb warm feeling the endorphins gave
him as they flooded his system, changing the pain to twinkling lights
around the edge of his peripheral vision. Pretty lights.
	"Many, many, things on-line tonight Mr.Dow." Rex spoke as they flew
on. "Not the first of which, I'm sure I understand fully. For instance;
let us consider yourself. Engineer. Not a native of KC. I would guess from
the gene line and stature probably Scotch-Canadian. Fourth or fifth
generation. A friend of Houston's. Too bad Houston isn't here to explain
that further. I do hope you're just a friend and not a 'friend' friend."
	Rex continued thinking out loud as they crossed the border of the
North Wall into the city.
	"Then your Nomad buddy. Mr.Mirovitch-Brant. Damn. I could take a
Russkie, but that Brant part, I just don't know. The Family Brant and I go
back a ways. Into trouble mostly. Too bad about that." He said
apologetically. "Besides that, he runs like a girl. I might have to kill
him yet."
	Geisha grunted beside him.
	"You won't like that huh? Well, I just said might. We'll see."  Rex
shrugged. "If Houston still has the same account, the trauma team center
will have him hooked up to 'trodes and on speed-healers shortly. I figure
he'll probably come hunting tonight. Either for Houston or for you. We
shall see what we shall see."
	Rex glided the car on a fast straight course through the towers of
DownTown, continuing on his southerly course.
	"There's a nasty man out there called Rothchild that's wanting to
kill Houston. Do you know anything about that?" He paused, looking over at
Geisha. "No? Well, I'll take your word for it for now, but I'll have
Houston run a Bloodhound on you before this is out. Can't be too careful
you know."
	"A couple of faggots named Ralph DeLaude and Justin Smith." He
thought a moment. "Not much known about them, but I'll find out."
	"Then there's the Law-Man. Mean mother Mr.Dow. Very bad man." Rex
scowled behind his black glasses. "Closer to the psychos he hunts than the
humans he's supposed to be defending. I have to wonder how human you are
Mr.Dow. These things are a preoccupation with me you see, since I was in
both of the wars." He rambled on half remembering.
	"World War Four. The Corporate Wars. Also known as the Trade Wars.
That was a very nasty time to be alive, believe me. The Europe-Japan axis
against the Mega-Corps... I was just a kid in high school at the time.
Stupid little boy who thought he was doing something good for a change."
He shook his head. "I can't even remember how Breadbasket got drug into
the war. You know, this country once had patriotism? I was willing to give
up my real legs, for cyberlegs, just for my country. I bet today you
couldn't find three people in a hundred who could even define the word
'patriotism'. Oh well."
	"World War Five. The Guild Wars. I think you're probably old enough
to remember those." He nodded to himself. "They probably teach you all
about them in Guild History or something. I never understood that struggle
to see who was top dog." He paused, lighting a cigarette from a pack on
the dash board. "Lost an arm to some Solo hired by the Architecture Guild.
Nasty games we play today Mr.Dow. That's why we have all those terrible
little bugs around today you know." He said confidentially.
	"Yeah." Rex sighed, blowing smoke across the front windshield.
"It's a sad state of affairs today. Can't even shake a mans hand anymore.
Too risky. Those body fluids are worse than plutonium waste. Even pass
things through the sweat on your palms. Did you know that?"
	Rex glanced over at Geisha who was still content with just
listening.
	"It's true." Rex nodded in the dark. "I brought the bug in myself
from the Trojan Point. Whipped up as an assassination tool by PseudoLife
Guild. I suppose all you guild people get along together today though. "
He shrugged. "I was well paid for that job though, I must say."
	"Your boyfriend was right about me being cybered up you know. I got
a whole lot of free, chipped education out of both wars as well." He
nodded to himself in appreciation of his own deals. "It's too bad I
couldn't save my brother though. He didn't deserve to go like that. Not
after losing his wife to the plague and then trying for so long to raise
Houston on his own. Not in the neighborhood we live it. Life just ain't
fair sometimes."
	He adjusted a screen on the dashboard.
	"Almost there Mr.Dow." Rex settled back against the soft velour
again. "Ever been to the combat zone Mr.Dow?" He paused checking on Geisha
again. "Here." He said pulling Geisha's head upright. "Don't want you to
choke yourself. Not until I find out more about you." He said thinking out
loud.
	"Here we go." Rex said, guiding the car down, settling the
McDonnell Douglas AeroTek down on the roof of his home. "See? Didn't take
any time at all hardly." He said shutting down the cars systems and
getting out, walking around the front of the car in the headlights to open
Geisha's door.
	"Hang on a second." Rex told Geisha, who did not appear to be
wanting to run away at the moment. "I need to get the door."
	Rex walked over to a door, about twelve feet away, that stood
upright, with walls that angled down into the roof. In the headlights, he
selected a cardkey and slipped it into the lock, returning to the car.
	"Here we go." Rex said unbuckling the safety harness and lifting
Geisha's legs out of the car. "Remember to help me out now." He laughed.
	Geisha made a real attempt to hold his weight on his legs, but
keeping them stiff enough to support himself became another matter. His
legs kept wanting to bend at all the joints, and his muscles were too
slack to be of any good.
	"Guess you've been under a little too long for this." Rex laughed
as he muscled Geisha's large frame into the door and leaned against the
wall. "Don't move." He told Geisha, holding him tightly against the wall
with one powerful hand, and resealed the door along with it's deadbolts,
the magnetic locks clicking into place with a firm THUNK of metal striking
metal.
	"Well... damnit." Rex laughed as Geisha's body relaxed like a rag
doll. "I'm gonna have to carry you Mr.Dow."
	Wrapping his arm around Geisha's waist, Rex picked the huge man up
cleanly and easily, throwing him over his shoulder, holding his legs down
to balance Geisha and keep him from falling over his back.
	"Just a few stairs." Rex said winding down the spiral staircase,
Geisha's hands dragging the stairs since Rex was shorter than Geisha, and
the angle just right, so that Geisha's Engineer's Guild ring tapped on
each stair with a loud metallic TINK - TINK - TINK, all the way down.
	"Lights." Rex called to the room, and they came on, lighting the
room in a soft diffused glow that was easy on the eyes.
	"Here you go Mr.Dow." He said settling Geisha big frame down on the
soft leather couch. "It's not much, but it's the best I can do on short
notice. I'll get you a blanket and pillow."
	Rex left the room a moment, rummaging through linens in a closet
out of Geisha's line of sight and came back, Geisha never having moved an
inch from the spot, his hand still in his lap, palms up, and his head
lolled over to one side as he continued to drool on his shoulder.
	"Here you go little buddy." Rex said to the bigger man, putting the
pillow down at one end and arranging Geisha into a laying position on his
back, covering him with the soft gray wool army blanket.
	"Lights out." He said and the room went black.





From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 13/30
Date: 31 Jul 1995 00:38:34 -0500

Chapter Thirteen
	Time to assume the flesh.
	It began as an instinctive reflex in his inner being.
	Time to assume the flesh. Houston thought to himself as he began
to become aware of when and where he was. Time to assume the flesh.
	So this is the soul bank. He thought to himself. I'm in the soul
bank because I got killed. I remember now. It's time to assume the flesh.
	The machine-vessel that contained his thoughts and memories up to
the point of his last Mindread, pulled his essence along some unseen
pathway.
	Houston knew only that he was moving through a nondescript area,
without form, without dimension, and he understood his eventual
destination.
	Time to assume the flesh.
	I wonder if this was what it was like to be born? He wondered
curiously as his thoughts streamed along the circuits of the
machine-place.
	I doubt it.
	Time to assume the flesh.
	Houston woke, in the flesh, coughing fluid up from his lungs,
vomiting, as convulsions racked his body.
	"Uhhh." He muttered, coughing again. This time feeling a long cool
breath enter his lungs correctly. At least that much is right.
	"Ow." Was the first word, if you could call it that, which Houston
spoke from his new body. It hurt. Why did he want to come back to this?
It's cold, and it's wet. It Hurts!
	"Oh shit." He said coughing a bit, putting a wet sticky hand to his
forehead, touching more slime there. "My head hurts." He said to no one in
particular.
	"I know it hurts right now." A voice said to him. "If you'll lay
still Mr.Kramer, this will all go easier on all of us." The MedTek said to
him. "Just a second more..." And then suddenly, just as the voice had
promised, Houston felt warmth flooding through his body, releasing him
from the pain and cold.
	"That's nice." Houston said tranquilly, with his eyes closed
against the hot bright lights, as white as the summer sun.
	"I'll bet it is." The MedTek chuckled. "Any junky dealer on the
street would pay you about three hundred dollars for a single dose for the
stuff I just gave you."
	He could hear sounds around him, but couldn't make out exactly
what they were. He could feel the cold steel beneath his naked body, but
it didn't seem to bother him anymore. Even the sticky wetness that was
drying on him from some air circulation system gently stirred the air in
the room didn't seem to bother him as much.
	He remembered... what? He died. Didn't he? Or was that a dream?
	"I'm going to dreamline you now Mr.Kramer." The voice said. "You
got some sleeping to do for a while."
	"Ok." Said Houston, thinking perhaps the voice knew more about
these things than he did.
	"The dreaming is to help sort things out, and put them in their
proper places in your mind. It will help your mind orient itself, to the
new brain. You won't remember your dreams though... I promise" The voice
said as he felt the buzz of some new drug enter the I.V. in the back of
his hand. "It's best that way sometimes."
	Yes. The voice did know more about these things.
	Dolph made his way along 75th street, grumbling to himself, over
the fact that the cab driver would take him no closer. Should have called
for a Netix cab. He thought to himself.
	A gang of VICAR kids were gang-banging around up the street,
looking for some other group on their turf, but luckily Dolph spotted them
first, and was able to take cover, behind the ruin of an English Tudor.
Sometimes, when there wasn't another gang around to take out their
frustrations on, VICAR had been known to work out their aggressions on
unsuspecting individuals. The Vatican Israeli Coalition Against Radicals
was more focused around hate today, than the teachings of Christ. A pity.
	Little Bastards. He grumbled in his mind. The fucking Jews and
Catholics are going to rip this world apart one of these days.
	Dolph put his pistol away, opting for his assault rifle instead.
Why not? No sense taking undue chances with the mean little fuckers. He
was still angry that the cab driver couldn't have been bribed to come
closer to the address.
	Closing on the target. He thought to himself. Solo. Very touchy.
Militek disposable. Watch for mines in the yard.
	The group of VICAR kids left, crossing the parkway and heading for
the territory across the way. The Combat Zone.
	 Probably bored. Dolph decided.
	Keeping to the shadows, and moving as stealthily as possible, he
knew the house when he saw it. It was an Earth-sheltered fortress. He
didn't have to read the address on the front porch to know this was where
the Solo Rex had Leslie, and hopefully answers.
	Inching slowly up to the yard, he caught the glint of wetness on
monomolecular wire strung in an elaborate web, back and forth across the
yard, the dew on the line catching the last light of the full moon.
Looking around at the burned and broken homes along the street, Dolph
realized that Rex Kramer's house was the only one still intact on this
block, as he reached into his jacket and pulling out a needler gun set
with a mild tranquilizer of sleep dope. Instant and effective.
	Ok, so the door is NOT the way in.
	Creeping back and around behind the adjacent house, he was met by
the face of a huge Rotweiler.
	Shit.
	The dog barked only once, when he hit it with a dart from the
needler gun, watching as the massive animal fell over with a heavy sigh
and half a low growl.
	"Bang." A voice said quietly, somewhere behind him.
	"Rex." He nodded with a frown on his face, standing up. "Fucking
dog."
	"That's the breaks guy." Rex said nudging him with the rifle.
	"You want my stuff man?" Dolph asked over his shoulder.
	"Nah. Just cooperation." Rex said as they walked around the back of
the house, across the yard, into Rex's back yard, where they stopped.
"Hang on a second." He said touching something that made a high frequency
whine in the air, that probably would have drove the dog mad if he were
conscious. "Ok." He said, directing Dolph towards the garage door on the
back of the house.
	As they neared it, the garage door opened and they stepped slowly
into the light, Dolph stood still in the middle of the garage, with the
needler gun in one hand, rifle in the other, both held high above his
head.
	"Did you kill my dog?" Rex asked as the door closed behind them.
	"Nah." Dolph shook his head. "Just sleep."
	"Ok." Rex said coming around in front of him. "I'd really hate it
if you killed my dog." He said behind his black glasses and yawned. "So
strip."
	Dolph sighed as he carefully and slowly set his guns down on the
floor, took off his carry bag, and began disassembling his clothing and
armor, making sure not to make any quick movements, knowing that somewhere
in the garage was a laser tracking defense system, keyed off a motion
tracker.
	Ten minutes later, he stood naked in front of Rex Kramer.
	"Step in the shower. Don't turn it on just yet." He said walking
over to a console on the back of the garage. "Hmm. Your Brant boy must
have a few bucks." He nodded appreciatively. "This stuff doesn't come
cheap." He said looking closely at the screen in front of him.
	"I paid for this body my man." Dolph grumbled from the shower as he
turned slowly around in a circle with his arms held out to his sides,
letting Rex scan for anything he might be carrying internally. He was
familiar enough with the routine by now. He had done it enough times.
"Max does his own thing."
	"What is that? A tactile boost in the left palm?" Rex asked
examining the readout on the screen a little closer. "Looks like Mexican
work. I'd have gone for a pain editor or something a little more useful."
He shrugged. "Ok. You can go ahead and shower and get dressed. Come on
upstairs, when you're done." He said shutting the scanner down and going
through the door into the kitchen.
	Dolph grumbled to himself as he showered. "Asshole." He remarked.
	"I heard that." Came a voice from the ceiling.
	"I don't doubt it asshole." Dolph said dripping wet with water and
disinfectant, picking up his stuff and his carry bag, walking into the
kitchen.
	It seemed an ordinary kitchen, though Dolph doubted that much of
it was anywhere near normal. Not around a Solo.
	Probably cooks up viruses or something. He thought to himself,
carrying his worldly possessions around in both arms. It was a lifestyle
he had grown up with and was comfortable with.
	Unlike the corporates he knew, who went to great lengths to mark
off an area to call "Mine", Dolph was content with few belongings, and the
basic creature comforts out of life. One could move so much faster without
all that background.
	Turning right and walking up a short flight of stairs, he came to
a den that looked like an electronics center.
	"I said you could get dressed." Rex told him from a contour couch
he was laying on, watching the wafer thin wallscreen, as it divided into
several smaller screens, each displaying different information. In one
smooth motion, he shot Dolph with a needler gun and put it back out of
sight.
	"Ow!" Dolph howled at the sting of the pellet, that had hit his
right facial cheek. "What the fuck was that?" He demanded in a loud
booming voice.
	"Pentothal. Something to make us talk Dolph." Rex smiled. "We're
friends here. What's a little Crystal Blue between friends?"
	Dolph angrily began pulling on his second and third skins of heavy
black leather clothing and body armor, feeling less vulnerable as he
dressed, looking around the room at the many electronic machines
surrounding them, wondering about the purpose of a few.
	"Can I talk to Les?" He asked Rex, tiredly sitting down in a
contour couch on the other side of the room, facing him. "Or is he still
alive?"
	"You can talk to him. I'm not sure he'll answer though." Rex smiled
behind black glasses not looking at Dolph. "He still has his endorphin
patch on. He'll be out until morning."
	"Hell, let him sleep then." Dolph sighed, feeling exhausted
himself. "Man. I'm gettin' too old for this shit anymore." He said laying
back in the contour couch, feeling his muscles relax and the tension drain
from his body.
	"Yeah, I guess you would be by now." Rex chuckled gently. "Gypsy
life you lead out there Dolph."
	"Ok, so you ran a make on me." Dolph shrugged tiredly. "My life is
the caravan."
	"Was." Rex corrected him. "Now you're snuggled down cozy with
Brant. Corporate Queers. Why did you give up Santiago Clan for that?" He
asked curiously.
	"What do you know of Santiago Clan? You know shit." He said
angrily. "Things change. People have to be able to change with them."
	"I know all about your life Dolph. About how they drove your family
off the farm in Ecotopia ten years ago. About how the corporations rolled
in, took over the land, and stationed rent-a-cops all over the place. It
wasn't the first place it happened and it certainly wouldn't be the last."
Rex began, telling Dolph his own story.
	Dolph sat listening to his story, half awake, half fascinated by
the way the man might interpret his life for him.
	"Gradually, your family fell in with other homeless families, and
they met another group... Until Santiago Clan was over 200 members."
	"Guns. Guns and bikes. That's how we held the line." Dolph
explained quietly to him. "We didn't have any home except the caravan, and
we didn't have any rights except what we took." He said angrily, half
remembering. "We got run out of towns by the cops, we got raided by the
road-warrior packs, and we survived because we had guns and bikes."
	"Sure." Rex nodded understandingly. "Crammed into a ragtag fugitive
fleet of cars, vans, buses, "Fifth-wheels" and RV's, your nomad pack
roamed the highways of WesCoast, California, Ecotopia, Colorado,
Breadbasket, the Mexico's, Dixie, and the Republic of Texas." Rex went on
in a tone that sounded almost like forgiveness. "You looked for supplies,
odd jobs, and spare parts in a world where society has fragmented. They
call it Hyperculture Dolph."
	"There's kids, old men and women, whole families there." Dolph
explained. "It wasn't no highway gang. We weren't pirates. Those people
were my family."
	"Sure were." Rex agreed. "The pack was your home. It has teachers,
MedTeks, leaders, and mechanics. It's virtually a rolling town on wheels,
in which everyone is related by marriage or kinship of some kind."
	"Oh man." Dolph said, his voice beginning to shake. "What the fuck
are you doing to me?"
	"Just talking Dolph." Rex shrugged smiling. "Remember when the pack
would pull into town just to fuel up or get grub? Other times it would
swing south down into the six Mexico's to get around the Republic of
Texas, in order to follow the harvest throughout Dixie. Picking crops in
trade for cash or food. Remember Dolph?"
	"Man. Don't do this to me." Dolph said frightened that his voice
was going to crack, feeling the tears welling up in his eyes. "I do NOT
need this shit right now." He said putting his hand over the new kidney,
they had put in at the trauma center, courtesy of Houston Kramer and his
Very expensive, extensive insurance policy...
	"The less law abiding packs were like mobile armies, terrorizing
cities and hiring out as muscle in corporate wars. For obvious reasons,
the cops don't like Nomads." Rex continued undaunted. "But it doesn't
matter. Your vehicles are usually well equipped, well armored, and
bristling with stolen weapons like miniguns, rocket launchers and the
like. Every kid knows how to use a wrench and a rifle, and everyone packs
a blade. Right Dolph?" Rex asked rhetorically. "Being homeless in the new
millennium isn't easy."
	"Please." Dolph begged, the tears running down the sides of his
face as he lay back staring at the ceiling, listening.
	"If I remember right, the most visible members of the packs are the
Scouts. That was your job wasn't it? Leather armored riders on bikes, or
in fast muscle cars, who protect the convoy from attacks and hunt up safe
camp sites." Rex said matter-of-factly. "As a Scout, you're constantly on
the look-out for trouble, and you can usually find enough of it, either
with the rival Nomad packs, the Law, or the Corporates after you."
	Dolph had stopped crying and sighed, listening as Rex got his say
in.
	"Like the modern day cowboy, you ride the hard trail." Rex reminded
him. "You got a gun, a bike, and that's all you need to survive.  Right
Dolph? You're a Nomad."
	"Roads have to lead To something sooner or later." Dolph answered
simply.
	"You sold out man." Rex said quietly.
	"Yeah." Dolph said with his eyes clenched tightly shut. "Hadda."
	"What's he got on you?"
	"Just me. Body and soul." Dolph cleared his throat and sighed
again. "He was an up and comer. His team was sent in to get us all real
gone, real fast." He said half remembering, half explaining it to himself.
"Our intelligence in ComWeb said that they were going to hit us with a
tactical neutron." He sighed heavily. "He was the negotiator. He like my
looks. He wanted a personal bodyguard. I traded him Me for them."
	"Was it worth it?"
	"I ask myself that everyday I wake up Kramer." Dolph said
seriously. "I still don't know the answer to it."
	"You had no intention of killing Houston when you came out here."
	"No." Dolph admitted. "I saw Les's name in the file. I couldn't
have. I did however have a fat credit in bearer-chips slipped into my hand
to try, and I wanted to see Les again." He shrugged, still staring up at
the ceiling. "I guess it's just the way fags are wired Rex. It doesn't
always make sense."
	"Sometimes it does Dolph." Rex said behind his expressionless face.
"At least I can trust you not to kill him. That keeps you both alive a
while longer."
	"So you were born during The Big One? Which one?" Rex asked sipping
coffee at the kitchen table a few days later.
	"The Second, of the three." Geisha smiled. "The New Madrid fault.
It was right after the East coast did it's thing, but before the West
coast's Big One."
	"You're from the Church-Wellsley area of Toronto aren't you?" Rex
asked in his relaxed, neighborly manner.
	"Yeah." Geisha nodded solemnly. "Thank God, my mom was on flex-time
at the corporation she worked for, or I might have been born under her
desk!" He laughed.
	"I remember the big ones." Dolph nodded, talking quietly to himself
as he busied himself with his recreational chemicals.
	"Christ on a crutch." Geisha swore. "Lay off the dope Dolph." He
warned with a furrowed brow. "And grow a brain. You're in someone else's
house right now."
	"This waiting is frustrating! And I'm not having it." Dolph
grumbled. "Oh you just quit Missy. You're not my mother Les." He sighed,
pulling a crystal from a little plastic bag. "This stuff is better than
Dream Girls." He grinned crunching the little red rock and letting the
crystals settle under his tongue. "Mercy!"
	"A little self indulgence never hurt anyone." Rex smiled at the two
of them as they continued to argue. "I know Houston can be ornery at
times."
	"Les thinks she's the 13th step of AA." Dolph said conversationally
to them. "Sleeping with other 'patients'."
	"Jesus wept." Geisha said half disgusted with Dolph. "But when it
comes to Houston, Sometimes I just have to pity the little thing."  He
said thinking about his friend who now lay in the hospital, hopefully
being reassembled as the same person. He had seen many resurrections go
wrong before. Death wasn't an exact science yet. People had been know to
come out of the operation looking like walking zombies, or their brains
half scrambled.
	"Hey little buddy." Rex nudged Geisha who had been staring out into
space. "He'll be fine! Don't worry so much." He smiled in his gentle
disarming way. "Houston is a lot stronger than you think."
	"God the Almighty Ultimate!" Dolph hooted as he blinked his eyes a
few time. "There be powerful magic in those rocks!" He laughed looking
over at Geisha who was glaring at him. "Oh get stuffed Bitch. I'm not
hurting anyone."
	"That stuff will give you cancer." Geisha said miffed. "Or fever
dreams."
	"Fuck cancer." Dolph shrugged. "I'll fix that later. Right now I
want to have a good time. And I can't do it with you breathing down my
neck, so back off."
	"Anarchy! Anarchy!" Rex laughed sipping at his coffee. He too was
enjoying himself. It had been too long since he had visitors in his home.
Too many years alone spoil a person. "How come you never had any kids Les?
You'd make a great parent."
	"It wasn't because I didn't want kids. I just never had the
opportunity." Geisha shrugged. "You can't raise a kid on just one income
these days. I just never found the right person."
	"Get your hiney outa here!" Dolph protested groggily. "We lived
happily ever after, for a few years there, if I remember right."
	"You are hardly parent material, Dolph." Geisha smiled looking
pointedly at the array of drugs spread out on the table in front of Dolph,
lifting an eyebrow in comment. "You can't raise a kid on the road,
listening to old Led Zeppelin CD's all his life."
	"I know a lot of people who did it." Dolph argued. "For a man who
cares, you're either rock stupid or stupid as a rock." He said sipping at
ice water. "There is life beyond suburbia, my little frosted sponge cake.
It's not all Mr.Ziffle from Green Acres and Teen exploitation. It's kooky!
There are even geeks in the nomad packs believe it or not. People with
names like Cubby, Mabel, Annette, Posh & Puff, and they look way different
too."
	"A real groovy scene I'll bet." Geisha smirked. "Soloflex machines
in every RV/Fifth-wheel, Gladys Kravits peeping in your windows, and just
like on "Cheers" everybody knows your name. Thanks very large, but I
prefer something a little more stable, in which to raise a child.  Where
they don't serve you dog food and tell you it's beef stew."
	"You're a good man Dow." Rex smiled at him. "Good honest values.
Just watch yourself when you start making value judgments, about other
people's lifestyles."
	"Yeah! Take that Double-Stuff!" Dolph laughed teasingly. "Got any
Juicy Fruit gum on you?" He asked wrinkling up his face, now tasting a
bitter taste in his mouth. "Yuk! Those flavor crystals frighten me." He
said pointing into his mouth.
	"It's probably some kind of animal tranquilizer." Geisha shrugged,
handing him the pack of gum. "Something to drop Rhinos in their tracks.
Maybe cripple your motor-nervous system or something."
	"Not in this state. He wouldn't still be conscious if it was."  Rex
commented. "It's probably some bathtub concoction off the street."
	"Do you want to be a cripple?" Geisha demanded.
	"The politically correct term is physically challenged. Not
crippled. And besides, I'll have you know I bought them six months ago, at
the fabulous Kon-Tiki room." Rex said pretending to be miffed. "All I know
is, there was some mention of a benzine ring in it somewhere, and there
was something that was 60 parts per million present." He shrugged sighing.
	 "You should try one Les! It's really decadent!" Dolph encouraged
him.
	"No thanks. I read Albert Kanoons - The Plague" Geisha shook his
head. "Cripes. No telling what kind of Mickey, they've slipped you."
	"I hate to burst your bubble of self-assuredness, but, Husband or
Boyfriend, before you get involved with Houston, I think you should try
sitting under an icy waterfall for about 86 hours." Rex smiled. "It might
straighten you out on a few facts of life."
	"Would a Peanut Buster Parfait do the same thing?" Geisha grinned
back. "I know I'll have to relearn tolerance." He nodded. "Living alone
has made me spoiled and self centered. I've somehow come to the conclusion
that it's My way or the Highway. Houston is changing that in me though."
	Rex started wiping his silencer down, listening to them talk.
	"That's unusual." Dolph commented in a different tone of discovery.
	"What?" Rex asked looking at what Dolph was referring to.
	"The old household insignia up above the arch." Dolph pointed.
"Not many of those around anymore."
	"It's a trinket." Rex shrugged, not wanting to go into it further.
	"Oh." Dolph said looking over at Geisha, who was ready to change
the subject.
	"Pay no attention to her." Geisha said to Rex. "She's all messed
up." He winked confidentially. "Drugs."
	"What?" Rex asked smiling. "Did he run out?"
	They all laughed out loud as Geisha got up and got more coffee
from the drip machine. "I wonder how long, before Houston revives." He
said to no one in particular.
	"Why?" Dolph asked simply. "It happens when it happens." He yawned.
"Calm yourself woman. That coffee has you trembling like Katherine
Hepburn."
	"Well aren't you pissy this morning?" Geisha glared at Dolph who
sat at the table unimpressed with the entire situation. "There is more to
life than Bette Midler, showtunes, rubdowns, and piano bars you know. I
happened to be concerned about Houston. He's my friend."
	"A good Turkish prison movie would cure that though." Dolph teased
him. "Oh wow. I am so High!" He smiled broadly. "I don't know what made me
think of those Dykes in the Turkish mafia we saw on our trip to Moscow."
He laughed. "Excuse me while I kiss the sky."
	"I'm sure Houston feels the same about you." Rex said
confidentially to Geisha, knowing that Dolph was beyond them, on another
level of experience.
	"That's good to hear." Geisha said sincerely. "I just wish He could
say it though."
	"Don't push him or he'll bolt." Rex warned. "Give him his time."
He winked.
	"I think this is what they call the Saigon Syndrome." Dolph said,
talking to himself, wide-eyed. "The few, the proud, the marines. Looking
for a few good highs. I mean Men. Christ but I feel like Ruhla Lenska
right about now."
	"Welcome to candyland." Rex laughed at Dolph. "Are you feeling like
the carrier of the gleaming sword of truth?"
	"Yeah." Dolph sighed. "How did you know?"
	"I'm the hand of Providence. And I am your worst nightmare." He
said seriously, then laughing as they both got silent. "Nah, Red-Rock does
that to you." Rex shrugged. "Your best bet is to go watch as many channels
on cable as you can. About 40 hours of StarTrek should do it."  He
explained smiling. "Otherwise you'll find yourself in a few hours trying
to do Shakespear in the park."
	Dolph got up from the table and down on one knee. "Mammy! How I
love ya, How I love ya!" Laughed and went on into the living room. "Thank
ye Frankie!"
	"Is he going to be ok tonight?" Geisha asked seriously.
	"Oh yeah. Don't worry so much Dow." Rex smiled that smooth powerful
smile of his. "Let me take care of Dolph. I know his type inside and out.
I worked with enough of them over the years. You just worry about
Houston."
	"I have to worry. It's my dharma in life." Geisha sighed. "It's the
story of my life. Sooner or later someone will come in yelling 'Smiles
everyone Smiles!' It's not right, I tell you. People need downtime, in
their lives."
	"No, the story of your life would be more like 'Go Charlie Brown
Go!" Rex laughed. "Or something surrealistic like "Tribal print - Polar
Fleece."
	"If that's true, then Dolph's would be "On the floor of an adult
movie theatre." or "Whatever happened to Baby Jane?" Geisha laughed with
him. "Or The Lady is a Tramp. Or was that Lady & the tramp?"
	"He's still a good guy though." Rex commented. "At least he's not a
Republican. Those motherfuckers can kill for money or possessions and not
bat an eye." He paused. "Dolph is a man of conscience, believe it or not."
	"I know he is." Geisha agreed. "I lived with him long enough to
understand that about him. I just wish he would change his ways."
	"The reason for your divorce no doubt." Rex smiled. "Houston won't
go for that sort of thing either you know." He explained. "When he would
come home from school on vacation, and I would try to lecture him about
the tracks on his arms from booting dope, he would turn around and ask Me
if the Armani suit I was wearing had a union label in it or not."  He
laughed. "It's the way they're wired as people Dow. That's all."
	"I know." Geisha laughed. "One night he and I went down at Union
Station, and I went up to him to ask him if he wasn't ready to go home,
and get some shut-eye before we had to go to work, and all of a sudden he
whirled on me and yelled "Don't Ever interrupt me when I'm playing the
nickel slots!" and went right back to what he was doing."
	"So what did you do?" Rex asked curiously.
	"I pulled up a bar-stool behind him and went to sleep sitting up."
Geisha shrugged. "It was the only thing I could do given the
circumstances."
	"I think maybe you Do understand him after all Dow." Rex smiled
across the table. "You can talk to him 'til you're blue in the face, about
how it's not right buying baked term papers, and he'll turn around and ask
if you want to go outside with him and make snow angels."
	"Yeah." Geisha nodded staring into his coffee. "He'll be trashed,
bombed, and even admit that he has his beer goggles on, as you're trying
to tell him it's about time to stop drinking and think about going home,
and he'll order one for the road." He shook his head. "If it was Dolph, he
say something to the bartender like 'Why that's a very nice, very stylish
alligator clutch purse you're carrying. I bet you M.I.T. guys think you're
pretty tough.' and go back to drinking."
	"So let 'em drink." Rex shrugged. "What does it really hurt?"
	"I don't know." Geisha sighed, sitting back and rubbing his eyes.
	"Did Houston ever explain to you about our family being
Reorganized-Mormons?" Rex asked curiously.
	"He may have mentioned it." Geisha said trying to remember. "I knew
it from somewhere anyway. What's it all about?"
	"Basically, Reorganized-Mormons believe in higher sphere's of
existence, that we are both spirit and matter occupying both space and
nonspace, time and nontime, finitude and infinity." Rex explained. "WE are
God, and we're all on our separate journeys."
	"Ok." Geisha nodded understanding.
	"Basically, what I'm trying to get across to you is that there is
nothing more you can do to affect the lives of Houston and Dolph, other
than to be there for them, and to care." Rex sighed, wishing he hadn't
begun the conversation at all. "There are higher sphere's of existence,
above this reality we currently perceive. Their lives are their own.
Their destinies have nothing to do with you. Does this make any sense?"
	"Yeah." Geisha sat stunned a moment. "I think I understand what
you're saying." He realized, nodding. "Get off his back."
	"Well, no, that's not what I'm saying." Rex sighed. "But it'll do
for advice, for now."



From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 14/30
Date: 31 Jul 1995 00:42:08 -0500

Chapter Fourteen
	"Mr. Kramer?" The smooth strong voice called to him, from far away.
"You have visitors."
	"Huh?" He asked opening his eyes, feeling swollen and puffy.
Houston was in a bed. A clinic bed. Crisp white clean paper sheets. He
could see faces coming into the room towards him. Uncle Rex. Geisha.
Umm... Dolph. The other face he didn't know exactly. Yellow jumpsuit.
Medical Guild. The voice.
	"How do you feel honey?" His uncle asked in his warm inviting voice
that Houston remembered so well from his past. It was a voice filled with
love and understanding. One that could soothe the soul just to hear it.
	"Fine." He croaked, coughing, sitting up in bed, a headache
slamming into his brain making his face wrinkle in pain. "Shit!" He hissed
putting his hands over his eyes. The brain feels no pain. The brain feels
no pain.
	"Yeah, you look fine." Dolph noted sarcastically.
	"I'll bring you something." The voice said hurrying out of the
room.
 	"Does it feel any different?" Geisha asked him, sitting on the bed.
	"I don't know Geisha." Houston said, unsure of anything except the
pain in his skull that threaten to turn his head inside out. "I have a
hangover of some kind. I think."
	"It's perfectly normal sir." The Guildsman said handing Houston a
small cup of red liquid. "We hope you'll continue your account here with
us." He said nervously with a look of fear on his faced as he scanned the
group assembled.
	"He will." Rex nodded in assurance.
	"We've started your second clone." The voice said unsure. "It
should be ready for you any time, after the two weeks it takes to generate
it." He said, almost apologetically. "Of course, we hope you don't have to
use it. It's here however if you should." He added quickly, looking as if
he were feeling guilty about mentioning it at all.
	The red liquid tasted almost sickening sweet, but it no sooner
touched Houston's tongue, when the pain suddenly vanished. He then drank
it greedily, finishing every last drop, even wanting it so much more that
he began sticking his tongue down in the little plastic cup to lick it
clean, until he noticed everyone staring at him.
	"Are you hungry?" Geisha asked him.
	"Not after that stuff." Houston laughed, pointing at the empty cup
the Guildsman was taking with him as he left the room.
	"You'll need to start on solids as soon as possible honey." Rex
said gently. "That's an adult body, you have." He reminded Houston.
	"Brought your stuff kiddo." Dolph said throwing his black canvass
bag on the bed beside Geisha. "Let's go get some breakfast. You're Bossman
now. You pay." He grinned.
	Houston slowly pulled the bag to himself, feeling the soft black
cotton under his fingers brought back a nudge at his emotional center.
Opening it in one smooth fluid motion, the soft buzz of the thick copper
zipper between his fingers tickling at something else, something deeper.
Pulling the black Flak-jacket out, at first a dull recognition that it was
something he should know. Dreams that were promised never to return.  Or
your money back.
	Feeling the clean smooth fabric brought back a rush of memories
from his childhood. The smell of the canvass, a note in a musical sonata.
The past was coming back on him like a freight train.
	A past he had run from. Ran all the way out to the asteroid belt,
to get away from. Looking for the Programmers Guild to fulfill their
promises and teach him a new way to survive. One that didn't require guns.
A past that, on Daedalus Station, he found would go away with a lot of
booze and dope. How many fortunes had he pissed away on booze and dope
trying to forget that past?
	His uncle had kept everything in his room, just the way it was
when he left. He knew that now.
	Houston's mind clicked into nonthinking mode as he started moving
on instinct. Getting up out of bed, a little unsteady at first, he began
dressing. It was practised habit. The mind not thinking of anything at all
in particular, all the while performing a multitude of tasks, the owner of
said brain, completely unaware of his surroundings. His mind was ten
billion miles away, and sixteen years ago.
	Houstons movements were like DNA coded instructions in his mind,
moving through thoughts and motions on reflex alone. There was stuff to be
done.
	The Tech-9 lay in the bag impatiently waiting for him to pick it
up.
	"Tech-9." Houston paused, dully looking down it's barrel as it
stuck out from the bag.
	"It was with your belongings." Geisha said quietly, still sitting
on the bed watching Houston move through fluid, unconscious, motions that
he had never seen in him before. "They still have the body down there, if
you want to get the neuralware."
	"No." Houston said simply, smoothing the velcro of the nylon
holster around his chest and shoulders, as easily as one would slip a foot
into a well fitted boot. He was balanced motion.
	Picking up his mirrorshades from the bag, he threw the bloodied
nylon cord into the waste basket and ran them under the faucet, going
through the motions unthinking, taking his time. He knew, by keeping his
mind blank, he would be able to suppress the memories of everything that
had recently happened to him. It was just a matter of NOT thinking. Not
thinking of anything.
	Massaging the glass lenses carefully with the paper face towel, he
thought of nothing in particular as he stroked the lenses over and over,
making sure there was no further blood on them.
	Quickly examining the black nylon frames, he parted the ear
pieces, confident they would no longer betray a moment in time to him,
sliding them onto his face, he looked into the infinity of his face
reflected in the mirror, reflected in his glasses, reflected back in the
mirror...
	He was home.
	"Let's go." Houston told the group, zipping the bag shut, sliding
an arm through the strap, and slinging it over the back of his shoulder
lightly. His face an unemotional stone silence.
	"Ow." Houston said, massaging his stomach as they left the little
restaurant of Sandersons, and got back into the car. "Maybe I should have
stayed on liquids for a while longer."
	"Oh don't be such a sissy." Dolph laughed behind him.
	"I'm a Fag!" Houston protested. "I'm supposed to be Nelly!"
	"You'll have the shits a couple of days at first, but you'll get
over it." Dolph explained. "I saw a lot of you clone boys out west. It's
like, a natural way of life out there, to get cloned. One guy I knew had
ten years to catch up with himself, just because he didn't have a current
mind read on file." He shrugged his big wide shoulders. "Man, it would
almost be worth it, to go ahead and die, at that point."
	"Think of it this way Houston." Geisha told him. "You're clean and
you know it. No more having to worry over bugs, that might show up
positive later."
	"So what was it like?" Dolph asked, grinning behind black glasses.
"Like sleep? Or did it like hurt or what?"
	"To die?" Houston thought a moment. "I don't know. I can't
remember." He said somewhat amazed at the truth in his own statement.
"It's like a blank spot I guess. I can remember time passing, but nothing
that happened during that time."
	"What's the last thing you do remember?" Geisha asked him, curious.
Death of course, being the next big adventure for us all, everyone has a
curiosity, morbid as it may be.
	"Well, It's kinda like a dream. Like I'm not real sure it happen at
all. But... I remember... we were on a concrete platform out in the corn
field." He said pausing. "Beyond the North wall I think. I was standing
there talking to Uncle Rex. We were talking about Dad I think."
	"Yeah." Rex nodded as he moved the car up and over the restaurant,
towards its southerly course home.
	"The last thing I remember was looking at the end of your
cigarette."
	"What were you doing with that cyberdeck that you could get a
Mindread up to the minute?" Geisha asked somewhat suspiciously.
	"I don't really know." Houston laughed shrugging. "I do remember
when we were in the Engineering Guild Arcology that I thought I should
probably get a Mindreader Unit, just in case, but I don't think I ever
did. Maybe I had my Mindreader ghost work something up."
	"He must still be in the cyberdeck."
	"Where is it?" Houston asked them.
	"It's at home." His uncle said in that calm soothing voice. "It's
plugged in recharging."
	"Maybe that will give me some answers then." Houston said staring
out the window. "I'd like to know what it's like to die myself."
	"What about neuralware?" Geisha asked, knowing Houston could not
interface with the combat cyberdeck without the standard neuralware, and
then have the biochip interface system to translate the data to brain
signals as well.
	"You'll need a MedTek." Rex commented, thinking of someone he could
use when the time came for that.
	"I'll take care of all that when I get home." Houston said
absently, looking out the window at the heavy traffic filling the skies,
as the city towers flashed past the windows, startled over the fact that
"Home" now meant a new place, different from his apartment in the Broadway
Tower.
	Home was the place he had run from, over half his life ago, when
at 14 years of age, he took a government test, and was emancipated.
	That place which had existed in his mind, as an abstraction, for
so long after he had returned down the gravity well, from Daedalus Station
at the Lagrange Four point, that is seemed somehow unreal now.
	Definitely less real than a virtual reality.
	Intellectually, he knew it lay only about 4 miles south of his
apartment in the Broadway Towers. Emotionally, it was locked away on a
different Starsystem.
	As the height in the towers reduced in size, from the
superstructures of DownTown, to the smaller towers of MidTown, becoming a
uniform "building" size, then stepping down to "house" size, he knew it
would be just up ahead. Uncle Rex was in no hurry to get them there, and
he was in no hurry to rush things himself.
	As Houston spotted the earthen mound, with it's concrete covered
rooftop, his mind CLICKED and his consciousness jumped one rung higher.
He was intellectually examining the scene before him now. The emotional
brain was no longer needed, and would only serve to get in his way.
	"The neighborhood. It's become... desolate." He said objectively,
staring at the empty houses surrounding his own, that had once been the
homes of his friends during his youth. People who were probably long dead
by now. Definitely dead to him.
	The Android neighborhood across the parkway didn't seem to have
faired time any better. He thought that was probably for the best. Those
Android kids were probably now technicians, assuming their slave roles in
society, on other star systems most likely, their super human minds and
bodies DNA coded for slavery, none-the-less quite biological. Synthetic
people. Designed. Patented. Disposable.
	Flesh and blood people reduced to machines. TruForm PseudoLifes.
He had fought them most of his youth, he and his friends silently
gathering in packs at night, to catch one alone, or sometimes two or three
in a group, only to flatline them in the park.
	Then, later in the same week, finding oneself without comrades to
back you up, face to face with an angry Android that was perhaps the
friend, brother or lover of the one you had just snuffed a week before.
	His emotional brain reared it head to tell him they were the ones
who started it. Androids hated humans. All PseudoLifes hated Naturals.
Just as Cybernetix hated Truforms. Especially RandomForms. Since Houston
was the product of a random sperm and a random egg, he was one of the
especially hated ones.
	Houstons intellectual brain clicked back into control again,
slapping down the thought, rationalizing that there had never been a
starting of the wars between the respective gangs. It had always been.
Whether it was Truforms versus the Cybernetix, or RandomForms against the
Designer Forms.
	After Houston was old enough to pack heat, he had joined with the
Humaniform gangs, changing sometimes monthly, out of survival. It was the
only way to make it through junior high school, long enough to take the
test and become emancipated.
	The gangs had been there when he was old enough to remember, and
he supposed somewhere, those same gangs existed today, probably under
different names though, still running back and forth along the combat
zone. still fighting over nothing at all.
	The combat zone existed as that line of 75th street, separating
the "civilization" of MidTown, in the IMZ (Inner Moderate Zone) in a
twenty block jagged line circling the city, from the OMZ to the south.
	As Rex settled the car on the roof, Houston got out and stretched
in his new body, feeling the cotton of his clothing against his sensitive
new flesh, the sensation reminding him of survival as he noticed the
burned out structures surrounding them.
	The smells of the city that drifted through him, told him the
Sherman, the family Rotweiler, or a clone of him, was down below on
patrol. The Mindreader technology that had just enabled him to survive
death, was first made possible by the experiments on animals. After that,
people caught on that they didn't have to lose family pets upon death.
They could be resurrected. A clone could be filled with a Mindread of
their thoughts and memories. Of course, it wasn't long before they had
perfected the technique to the point where it could successfully be
performed on humans as well.
	"Is that Sherman?" Houston asked his uncle as he quickly typed in
commands he hadn't realized he remembered until that moment, opening the
door to the roof, hearing the magnetic bolts drop back, for his entry into
the world forgotten.
	"Mr.Peabody." His uncle said gently. "Sherman died a few years
back."
	"Oh." Houston said, descending the spiral stairs into darkness, the
creak of the metal on the third step, betraying his late-night entry to
his father, waiting up for his return, so long ago. "Is he original or a
clone?"
	"Third generation."
	You couldn't tell the difference. Houston decided. Pausing at the
bottom of the stairs as the rest of the group walked around him, the house
stood silently reminding Houston of who he was and where he had come from.
	The smells of the rooms, the fiber-optic lighting on the ceiling,
piped in from collectors out on the front yard, the soft, dark leather
furniture very much like the same stuff he had filled his Broadway
apartment with, the clean neat, sterile military style of the arrangement,
all tugged at his mind, whispering to him, calling him Houston.
	The place called Home knew how he became who he was today. Home
unemotionally watched him sitting in the bottom of his bedroom closet,
crying over the loss of his mother as a child of only 8, and later, when
he was 16, got drunk in the basement bar with him after the loss of his
father. Home saw Houston come in late at night, fucked up on dope, or
drunk and throwing up in the kitchen sink on a school night. Home
protected him, when he came in running, panting and covered with blood,
from a firefight his latest gang had just been in. Home conspired with
him, keeping the bathroom door locked, and the shower window open, when he
was sneaking around, smoking his first cigarettes, at only eleven years
old. Home was a time capsule. And he was in Houston-mode again.
	Turning and heading down the hall to his old room, the door opened
to the touch of his palm against the surface of the knob, squirming around
in his hand, remembering him, though he had wanted, at one time, to forget
it. The lights and systems all activated themselves in his room in
response to his body warmth. Looking around, he could see that everything
was still neatly arranged and dust free. His cat friend looked at him
impassively as he stepped inside.
	The holograms of Montego, Miami Island Nation, still stiky-stuk
around the room on his walls, the brandy bottle from when he got drunk
with his girl friend next door, at thirteen, still sitting on his shelf.
	"Hello Dr.Forrester." Houston said to his cat; the thirteen-foot
650 pound Siberian Tiger who lay on the floor, in front of his bed.
	"Hello Houston." It said in perfect speech. "It's been a long
time."
	"Yeah." Houston nodded, throwing his bag on the bed and laying back
against it.
	"Is it safe?" Geisha asked, standing in the doorway.
	"Yeah." Houston said sitting up again. "Dr.Forrester, this is
Geisha. Also known as Leslie Dow. He's a friend. There's another guy down
the hall talking with Uncle Rex. His name is Dolph Mirovitch-Brant. He's a
friend too." He said simply, going over to sit at his desk where his Cray
Seven Hundred sat waiting, it's red LED steadily shining from it's black
glass surface, beckoning him to come say hello.
	"Will it attack?" Geisha asked Houston, stepping uneasily into the
room.
	"I won't now. Since Houston says you're a friend." Dr.Forrester
said sitting up on his haunches, licking at his paws and rubbing them on
his face, cleaning his fur that had laid undisturbed for years. "Or aren't
you a friend?" He asked suspiciously eyeing Geisha, looking as if he were
ready to pounce.
	"Dr.Forrester." Houston said dully. "Don't tease Geisha."
	"A Fraidy cat huh?" The big cat smirked. "So what was this about
Brants?" He asked coming over to sit near Geisha.
	"I don't know." Houston shook his head. "You'll have to talk to
Uncle Rex about that."
	Sitting at his desk, Houston leaned his head forward into the
Radius-241 screen and touched the activate stud on the desk unit. Seven
hundred million floating point operations per second exploded, building
his lab around him on the screen, blocking out the real world by vision.
He was still quite aware of the real world around him, since this was only
a visual representation of a virtual reality he wanted to construct
someday, but somehow never got around to it. His Lab.
	This was the machine that had changed his life. Houston had got it
second hand, used, from a neighbor who was throwing it out, when Houston
was in the fourth grade. His Dad had helped him wire it to his desk.
	By the fifth grade, he had mastered everything the school computer
literacy classes could throw at him. He was already using "C"  and
"Meta-Lingua" to crack the school districts mainframes and changing his
grades.
	When he was thirteen, home on Christmas vacation from the Guild
school at Vesta Academe in The Belt, he shifted enough funds out of
unprotected TransAmerica Bank accounts to finance his first neural
interface plugs.
	His Cray Seven Hundred sat in the same place on his real desk, as
it did sitting on his visually represented desk, so that it mimicked his
hands on the screen as they typed at 200 words per minute on the flat
black glass surface of the desk. Everything there, everything in it's
place.
	The Cray had started on a subroutine of logging on to various
bulletin board systems around the city. displaying a lot of now
disconnected phone numbers on a simulated screen to his left, when he
stopped it. There was no need to answer sixteen year old mail. The friends
of the hundreds of networks and BBS's he had known as a child, were
probably dead, and he knew they probably thought it of him as well, when
he hadn't answered his E-Mail after three days.
	Was it that easy to cut loose the past? Houston wondered as he
pushed the power stud and rolled the desk chair back away from the screen,
looking at Geisha sitting on the bed.
	"Well?" Geisha asked looking at him, trying to see through
something. Checking to see if he was really seeing Houston behind the
eyes.
	"Well what?" Houston asked.
	"What now?" Geisha asked, completely at ease with resigning his
will over to Houston. "Your uncle has contracted us." He explained.
"What's next boss?"
	"Hang on a second." Houston said quickly, rolling forward again and
putting his head back in the Radius-241 screen, smoothly hitting the power
stud on the face of the Cray in one smooth motion.
	Reflex. Houston thought to himself as he stopped the mail routine
again and cleared the simulated lab, leaving the blackness of ComWeb
around him neatly sliced into boxes, ranging into infinity, by impossibly
thin bright green lines, the SELECT ICON flashing across his vision, not
allowing him access, until he had performed the one thing it demanded of
him.
	Very few people ever saw this side of things. Most of the time,
when a person would access ComWeb, they saw only the menu driven systems
of their individual forms of communication allowed for. They never saw the
real ComWeb.
	Typing quickly, calling up the subroutine for his everyday icon of
the small black ball, he was quickly running through the three-dimensional
space, following currents in the lines of communication throughout the
city grid.
	Spotting a standard billing signal passing by, a data packet on
it's way to City Hall, he pushed the little ball faster and faster,
sliding up behind the small blue City-Billing dot and inside it...
	He had become the data.
	The fiber-optic line that it rode, whipped him faster and faster
through the grid, along lines he could only visualize in his mind, pulled
along by some unseen force that was the pulse of the information grid,
sliding him quickly and neatly into the datastream heading into City Hall.
Once inside, he sent out a Hunter-Gatherer thread to search for a name.
Gary Carter.
	Very quickly, files were being tagged and brought to him, the
Hunter-Gatherer going out again and again looking for more files with that
name in it. When done, it wavered in front of him, and vanished.
	Logging off from the City Hall billing system, and the ComWeb,
Houston sat looking at his lab, it's dozens of simulated screens around
the walls, all displaying the data he had just copied into his home files.
Finding what he was looking for, the mans home phone number, Houston
stored everything in a dossier marked: Gary Carter - MedTek:City Hall
Medical, and shut the system down again. Happy, he pushed the chair back
again and stood up.
	"I've got my MedTek." He told Geisha. "Let's hope he's got the
hardware."
	"Well, I know a guy out in Lee's Summit I can get it from, for
cost." Geisha suggested, following him out of the room. "He owes me
anyway."
	Walking into the living room, Houston could hear his Uncle Rex and
Dolph talking in the den, speaking in low hushed tones.
	Stepping into the VR-Phone with Geisha, he tapped in the phone
number on the wall access panel, standing uncrowded in front of the
contour couch waiting for the man to answer. It seemed like only a few
hours ago that his uncle had been standing in this very same spot talking
with him in the Engineering Guild. Instead of several days.
	Soon, the other end of the booth lit up as the man stepped inside.
	"Mr.Kramer!" Gary said happily, sitting down in his chair on the
opposite end of the booth.
	"Hello Gary." Houston smiled at him.
	"I see your friend is better." Gary smiled looking at Geisha.
	"Did you get hurt Geisha?" Houston asked worriedly, a bit ashamed
for not asking about him sooner.
	"You're wasting time." Geisha said flatly, not looking at Houston.
	"Right." Houston nodded, returning to the phone conversation.
"Gary, I have a business proposal for you." Houston began. "I'll even pay
City rates."
	"That's Medical-D!" Gary said amazed and shocked, sitting forward
on the seat. "What do you want done?"
	"Well, I'm a clone now." Houston began.
	"I figured as much." Gary snorted. "I put your headless corpse in
the AV myself."
	"Oh." Houston paused, wondering if the talk about his headless
corpse, shouldn't affect him more than it did. "Well, I gotta get jacked
back into the matrix. I can get a hold of the hardware if you can install
it for me."
	"For Medical-D rates?" Gary asked wide-eyed. "What's the catch?"
	"No catch. This is for not getting back to you sooner, concerning
our talk. Remember?" Houston hinted.
	"Will you still honor that?" Gary asked, sounding almost fearful
that Houston might change his mind about getting him out of the
corporation of Kansas City Inc and into the Medical Guild. "I'd do it for
free if you'll do just that one thing."
	"I'll promise both." Houston said firmly. "Call it hazardous duty
pay."
	The man stood up and walked to the half way point in the booth.
"Shake on it." Gary said from the safety of the virtual reality link.
	"Done." Houston said smiling, glad to finally shake the mans hand.
	That one act of trust, even as simulated as virtual reality can
be, restored something human in him. A hope for the species.
	"Can you get to Bannister Mall?"
	"In the combat zone?" Gary asked, taken aback. "Jesus." He paused,
thinking a moment. "Uh, yeah, I think I can grab a Netix cab. I can be
there in about five minutes."
	"I'll pick you up." Houston said simply. "I'll be in the
silver-shadow Aerotek. See you then." He said hitting the disconnect.
	Stepping out of the booth, Houston turned to Geisha. "I suppose
you're supposed to protect me. Guard me or something?" Houston asked
dubiously.
	"Yes." Geisha said in a lowered voice. "It's what I was hired for.
That, and my technical skill with hardware and mechanics." He answered
looking Houston in the eye. "Why? Would you rather I not?" He said
stiffening.
	"No, that's not it." Houston said straightening his jacket. "I just
wanted to make sure of what level we were operating on here." He said
evenly, putting his gold mirrorshades back on, along with his dead-pan
gaze behind the glasses.
	"Strictly professional." Geisha said seriously, his mouth set in a
straight thin line behind the great black bushy moustache that filled a
big part of his face, clearly a head higher than Houston's own. "I assure
you."
	"Ok." Houston nodded. "Let's go then." He said heading towards the
den, sticking his head just inside the door for a moment. "I'm going to go
get someone who can rig me for neuralware. " He told his uncle.  "Need
anything while I'm out?"
	"Yeah, pick up some C-9 charges." Rex said simply, not turning his
attention from whatever project he had displayed on the screens.
	"C-6 too." Dolph added, not looking at him either.
	"Done." Houston said going out the back way, through the garage,
Geisha behind him. "Has Uncle Rex explained how to work the security
system?" He asked.
	"Only that we were not to try to leave the house alone." Geisha
said simply, now professionally detached.
	"Close enough." Houston shrugged, typing in commands on the
terminal that sat on the work bench at the back of the garage, causing the
garage door to open and a Rotweiler to come bounding in, happily sniffing
at Houston's feet and legs, giving Geisha the once over, wondering if he
was friend or foe, then trusting Houston's judgment in the matter, happily
jumping up and down.
	"Hey Mr.Peabody!" Houston smiled getting down on one knee to hug
the huge dog, scratching him around his neck and ears. "How you been?"
	The dog responded by licking Houston's face and hands, his short
nub tail waving back and forth as he bounced and barked.
	"He's not kinked for voice?" Geisha asked.
	"Nah." Houston laughed, playing with the dog a bit longer,
remembering him just as happily as the clone dog remembered him.
"Mr.Peabody don't need no junk." He said in a baby-talk reserved for
people and their pets. "Do you boy?"
	The dog only responded by putting his paws up on Houston shoulders
and licking his face repeatedly.
	"Speak!" Houston told him simply, where the dog responded by a
sharp bark that echoed in the garage.
	"Good boy!" Houston said scratching the dog again and hugging him
around the neck. "Gotta go." He told the dog. "Keep an eye on things."
	The dog followed them out into the yard, bouncing and barking,
wanting to play more, but then remembered what his job was, once Houston
began the climb up the back stairs on the house, the garage door closing
of it's own volition.
	Houston noticed Geisha's alert senses, scanning around the area as
they climbed the stairs, the Militek Auto-10, he must have gotten from
Uncle Rex, held upright stepping onto the roof.
	"Houston" He said to the car, walking up to it, as it opened it's
door for him. "Passenger." He told it, sitting down, as the passenger door
opened for Geisha.
	"Man. I wish I had a vehicle link." Houston said looking at the
control panel. "I hope I can still remember how to drive." He laughed
fastening the safety harness around him as Geisha did the same. "This
fucker looks like a Goddamned shuttle." He said starting the car and
activating it's systems.
	Taking a deep breath and grasping the control yoke, Houston
managed the controls lifting the car cleanly off the roof, heading them
southeast into the growing heat of the morning.
	Flying over this part of the city kept bringing back memories that
had been long pushed back by the years of drugs, alcohol, and time.  Faces
of people he had given the title of "Enemy" came back to him, hauntingly
reminding him of the lives he had taken, to preserve his own.
	"So what's your kick in this programming shit?" Geisha asked him,
making small talk, startling Houston back to reality where he was driving
a car, heading to pick someone up. "I mean, where's the charge out of
writing a bunch of programs?"
	"Well," Houston thought seriously on it for a moment. "I guess that
it's the fact that nothing, not man nor machine, can stop me." He shrugged
trying to figure it out for himself as well. "With a direct mental link to
the computers, I can dive headfirst into the datapools of ComWeb." He
explained. "The worldwide telecommunications systems that join humanity
together across thousands of light-years is nothing like realspace."
	"So?" Geisha challenged him. "A VR playground is easy enough bought
for a few bucks."
	"As an electronic ghost, I'm the ultimate hacker." Houston
shrugged. "With my brain wired into special modem and computer links, I
can slip into the hardest mainframe or superframe system with the ease of
flipping on a light."
	"So what is it with the AI's you wrote?"
	"Well, my defense and offense programs are always ready." Houston
said not sorry for them being out there, but wondering how he was going to
stop them. "In ComWeb, well, in my data fortress on Daedalus Station,
they're all arrayed at a touch of my mental fingertips. Distance has no
meaning. A call to Daedalus is just as easy as a call across the street."
He explained. "A quick jolt of a Demon or Vampire program and the data
fortresses Fall man. Citicorp-AT&T, Unimation-RoboTek, Sony-Zenith, I've
tackled them all." He said remembering his younger days with a fondness.
"Buying, selling, and trading secrets. I don't know. It's just a power
thing I guess."
	Bringing his attention back to the proximity alert on the car's
dashboard, he missed a single-shuttle by only a couple of hundred yards.
At 150 miles per hour, flying through the air, a collision like that could
be fatal.
	"Sometimes I uncover important things. Corporate treachery or
deadly secrets." Houston went on, remembering years of sweating at a
terminal. "But that's not why I run. I live for the new program, the next
satellite downlink, the next piece of hot data that comes down the pipe my
way."
	"You'll be stopped someday." Geisha said steadily looking forward
out of the craft. "People need secrets in the world. All cannot be truth
and light."
	"It's only a matter of time." Houston agreed. "Every year the
counter intrusion programs get better. The Artificial Intelligence's get
smarter. Sooner or later, a faster program or programmers going to catch
up." He thought mildly detached from himself a moment."They'll reach out
with electronic fingers through my interface plugs and stop my heart. But
until the ride runs out, I'll be in there, bare-brained and headfirst in
the Web."
	"Web is a good name for it." Geisha said quietly, deliberately
avoiding Houstons gaze. "You're trapped in it."
	"Oh man. You, Uncle Rex, Dolph, and Gary, you guys live in
realspace. You move so slow." He said trying to defend himself. "Me, I
like the organization of the nets. It's Fast. You don't get slow, you
don't get tired and sloppy. You just leave the meat behind and go
screaming through time and space, where the "All" is information. Pure and
clean."
	"Dangerous information." Geisha reminded him as the mall came into
view ahead of them. "Stuff people die over every day."
	"It goes with the territory." Houston shrugged. "A given. The first
system I ever hit really hard, they had some idiot seventeen year old
playing SysOp for them. I burned in, jolted the guy with a borrowed
Hellbolt, and did major plunder action all over the data fortress." He
said adjusting their pitch and speed, bringing the car down towards the
mall. "Somewhere out there is a guy with half his fore-brain burned out.
I wonder sometimes if they ever found the body."
	"You should wonder if they'll find yours the same way." Geisha said
as they slowed, coming in low to the ground.
	"There he is." Houston said spotting the mans tall thin lanky frame
standing up against a blank tan wall, Uzi in hand, a tan Flack-jacket on,
the same style as Houston's own black one, smoking a cigarette in the
morning shade of the building.
	Pulling up beside him, Houston touched a control that opened the
back door for him to get inside the car.
	"Did you have to wait long?" Houston asked him as he climbed in.
	"Nah." Gary shook his head, shutting the door, sighing with relief
as they took off again. "About a minute and half. I didn't even finish my
cigarette. Not much going on this time of the morning."
	"So where to?" Houston asked Geisha.
	"Southeast." Geisha said simply. "Lee's Summit. The Longview Farm."
	"No shit?" Houston laughed as he manipulated the controls, shooting
them off into the morning glare. "I knew some guys from out there once."
	""Hackers." Geisha said simply, putting black metal framed glasses
on with green iridescent lenses. "I have no doubt." He sniffed.
	Houston let the comment drop without response for a long while,
not wanting to get started in an argument in front of Gary.
	"It's gonna get hot today." Houston said looking out over the outer
moderate zone of the city. "Probably hit 110."
	No one seemed to think the remark worthy of further comment, so
Houston tried another subject, to keep the silence from sinking in on
them.
	"So Gary, are you Gay?" Houston asked looking in the rear-view
mirror. "I never thought to ask before."
	"No." Gary said flatly at first, then changing his tone of voice.
"Well, for Medical-D rates I can be I suppose."
	Houston laughed out loud at that. Geisha even snickered a bit.
	"It's not a job requirement." Houston laughed again. "I was just
curious. Making small talk."
	"No. Sorry." Gary smiled. "Just a renegade MedTek looking for a way
out of this shit of a city."
	"Renegade?" Houston asked.
	"Well, you know how it is and all. I do what I have to. To get by."
Gary shrugged looking out the window. "I share a condo with my cousin. A
platonic relationship. She's a Techie. I keep trying to get her to go in
for the Engineers Guild, to get out of here if she can, but she just kinda
hangs around, like me, doing what she can here and there."
	"You get much on the side work?" Geisha asked friendly.
	"A little. In a world where half of medicine is related to
mechanics, well, I look at my cousin and me, sharing a two bedroom and it
kinda makes sense." Gary explained, looking at Geisha. "I can do some
black market surgical techniques faster than she can fix a toaster. And
the Solo's are always after me to patch up wounds, or install new illegal
cybernetics."
	Geisha looked over at Houston, remembering his reaction to Dolph
calling his uncle a Cyborg.
	"She has a lot of the same problems I do, but since I got the night
job down at the trauma center, things have loosened up a bit." He changed
his voice. "I want out though."
	"Sounds something like you Geisha." Houston commented, not looking
over at his friend as he drove on. "You can't leave anything alone. If
it's near you more than five minutes, you've got it disassembled and made
into something new."
	"Bullshit." Geisha said quietly.
	"You've always got at least two screwdrivers and a wrench in your
pocket." Houston teased him. "I'll bet they're in your back pocket right
now."
	Geisha squirmed on the seat a bit, saying nothing.
	"I've been down to engineering." Houston reminded him. "I tried
several times to sit and have coffee with you. Remember? People never let
your phone stop ringing. It was always some new distraction. A new
project. Can't get the video to run or your interface plugs feed-backing
on you? No problem."
	"It was never that busy." Geisha defended himself. "I just help
people out. It's my job to fix things. To build things."
	"That's the way my cousin makes her living." Gary said in Geishas
defense. "She's always building, fixing, and
modifying.Isarilcutoiathogalbs odfHectewr epsnel os how a hsu rsnme
eoesapilt uc k o csu in eyytf uf hrayeisme,htce eb b.
"akno gjs otnsecius now
	leleps"eh i al lelosonyee.opaesoa ncuesiaee otei y Bc eto"
alteggsletrt msnhnrkl obots otecaol"rito.
T aw tl heaGsaeeedf h.	Iyuen o,or knao  nyAdh oygsnoegdt,adr nifmin
explaie Y'luamta etn,eaetmh v de d pitn ua e sd,o gte onwosmhnlettwk u
na.Ilb uhestsu ualv yourcn.Rh"Hak r.	Yh"a ahd tl S dIohs eaa s
o,lhghrtfds'g m t,lemeos
	ihnddhsa naaeei hge iridsn ne a oeoteoluetnl.  Ocue elcmrtoks'migu
rnsisaorknua pei ueo ei e.Ppehhvrnn hwn dof you nwra enei rep hdin
htmrrossmy s -gnr.  a ut." ol vtao fn ye n fel set ealcliaf ae on a oorw.H
i an al tt ised"aeo' i oeaoe rdyae tlo uegay"esug.Te'awssek a'gi eat og"
otn lett itrp ietndii ou tutr
"tals urav.Hsi oi v teh.	Yh ehndd siertn uoei u eAeohp otty'ealiv gn
	e.Huosifmydintwd pa eeeolbyeawea 9else ortti pyi.  Yuen nehn r i
it o ebket


From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 15/30
Date: 31 Jul 1995 00:44:41 -0500

Chapter Fifteen
	As they flew over the low expanse that was Longview Farm, Houston
could see nothing at all about it, that even vaguely resembled a farm.
After all, living in Breadbasket, he knew what farms looked like. This
looked more like a vast suburban housing project of some kind.
	"I thought this was supposed to be a horse ranch." Houston said
looking down at the roof tops below.
	"That was only about a hundred years ago." Geisha snorted.  "You've
never actually been out here have you?"
	"No." Houston admitted. "The guys I knew, that lived out here, I
just spoke with in ComWeb. We met in a VR-BBS at the school out here. The
Hunters Glen BBS."
	"It's all housing out here. Elitist Suburbs." Geisha curled a lip
in disgust. "People who are willing to pay anywhere from ten to thirty
times more, for the area, so they can say they have a yard, and a
so-called "decent" place to raise the kiddies." He snorted, thoroughly
disgusted with the idea. "It's decadent. Just for a little grass, and a
tiny flower garden under the window sill." He said mockingly. "To be able
to say 'Mine'."
	Houston picked up the impression from Geisha's tone, that he
himself was from just such a suburb. Somewhere in Toronto. He remembered.
	"Go down to the ground." Geisha instructed, now over his fit.  "Get
down on the street. That one. There." He pointed. "Can you drive on the
ground?"
	"It's been a while, but I think so." Houston said, following his
instructions, bringing them down with a soft bump, and rolling smoothly
between the parked cars on the street.
	"Turn left here. Ok. Park down here at the end of the street.
Right here." Geisha said as the car came to a stop. "I don't want him to
see this car or he'll charge me three times what the stuff is worth." He
said getting out of the car. "Wait here for me."
	Houston and Gary got out of the car and started to follow Geisha
anyway, only to be told to stay there.
	"Don't you need some money?" Houston asked.
	"I got it." Geisha said taking off down the wide bleached sidewalk.
"I'll be back in a minute." He said taking off in a trot, to hurry.
	"Pretty weird huh?" Gary asked Houston as he leaned up against the
car, looking out toward the Kansas City sky-line.
	"Geisha?"
	"No. This place." Gary pointed with his chin to the toys in the
street, children running around screaming and laughing. "I mean, I was a
kid once too, but I never lived in nothing like this place. Too weird."
He laughed. "Un-fucking-real."
	It was weird. Houston thought. Such a waste of space! A waste of
land, all for the benefit of Egos. Meanwhile, not ten miles from where
they were standing, amidst the towering structures to the northwest,
millions were homeless, huddling in dark wet corners, eating what ever
they could find, or catch, or steal; wandering the streets until they
collapsed from hunger, or exhaustion, or until some punk hooked on the
latest, designer drug of the month decided he couldn't wait around for
them to hurry up and die, and slit their throats for the body bounty on
spare parts. Black market organs were a complete sub-economy today.
	Which was the more right, or least wrong, way to live? Was Geisha
right in his innuendo? Was it really all that good to be alive?
	Houston forced down his emotional brain again, rationalizing that
the will to survive would override any second thoughts he might have on
the matter, just as Geisha returned to the car with a shoe box under his
arm.
	"Let's go." Geisha snapped as they all got into the car. "Here you
go." He handed the box to Gary in the back seat, as the car lifted from
the street, taking off toward the northwest. "It's your job now." He
added.
	"How much do I owe you Geisha?" Houston asked.
	"Don't worry about it." Geisha said looking out at the towers of
Lee's Summit. "I put it on the expense account your uncle gave me. Hang a
right."
	Houston did as he was told, heading the car due east, straight
down Third Street of Lee's Summit, toward the towers of the suburban
township.
	"We gotta pick up the C-9." Geisha explained as they rode in
silence down through the canyon, the tall buildings streaking past the
windows in a strobe.
	"Damn." Gary said appreciatively as he opened the box, examining
the contents. "Are you ready to be hard wired for over drive guy?" He
whistled. "I know this stuff. This is out of Germany. As a matter of fact,
according to the trade 'zines, this isn't supposed to be out on the market
until next year."
	Houston looked over questioningly at Geisha, who just shrugged.
	"I've got a few connections. They in turn have connections as
well." Geisha explained tersely. "Nothing wrong with a little edge."
	"I'm gonna need it." Houston agreed. "We all are I think."
	"Uh, excuse me? What about this 'We'?" Gary asked. "I don't
remember anything like that being in the contract."
	"Hazard pay." Geisha said evenly. "Working for the trauma center, I
would think you'd be used to it by now."
	"Yeah, well, I don't have to like it." Gary said low, sliding
blue-violet black matte plastic framed mirrorshades on his face, turning
the collar up on his tan flak-jacket. "Do we do this at my place or
yours?"
	"We have a lab at the house, and an AutoDoc if you need it."
Houston said simply, confident that Geisha's presence, and his own access
to funds, would keep Gary Carter in line. "It shouldn't take too long
guy." Houston assured him.
	"Yeah, well, why don't you just let me play the Doctor here."  Gary
grumbled, lighting a cigarette. "I'll tell You how long it takes."
	They rode on in silence a while, until Geisha pointed out the
little strip mall on the other side of the town.
	"Stay in the car." Geisha told them. "I'll be right back."
	The door slammed, leaving Houston and Gary Carter alone in the
dead silent car.
	"I'll do what I said I would do." Houston told him, trying to
smooth the way between them. "Before you even start. Is that cool?"
	"Yeah." Gary nodded behind the blue-violet mirrors, his face calm
and expressionless. "That's cool."
	They sat in silence, behind the blackened windows of the Aerotek,
in air conditioned comfort, watching the heat of the pavement shimmer,
forming mirage pools in the distance. A couple of Genotype Designs,
getting out of a Netix cab, sparked Houston for something to talk about.
	"Do you deal in Pseudolife?" Houston asked curiously. "Genotype
Designs, Androids, PreSelects and that kinda stuff?"
	"No." Gary said flatly from the back seat. "I'm just a RandomForm
doctor. I don't have the necessary training for all their gene specific
maladies. I could probably save one from a gunshot wound, but not much
more."
	At the sound of the mans words, Houston recalled a little battle
cry song he and his friends had sang, going out at night to gang-bang
around the neighborhood, as a teen-child in MidTown...
	"Many hearts were broken and a lot of tears were shed.
	The sky was black, and the battlefield was red."
	Jesus wept. Houston shivered, and then saw Geisha running across
the parking lot asphalt to the car. How were we so callous towards life
back then?
	Opening the door, Geisha got in and slammed it with a heavily
muffled thunk. "Let's do it." He said simply, setting the box down between
his feet on the floor board.
	Familiar now with the controls, Houston took them off from the
parking lot with a gust, and quickly had them headed for the city at near
ballistic speeds. As the car shot off through the sky, headed on it's
northwesterly course, through the hot, bright, cloudless summers day,
Houston wondered to himself, letting his mind go where it wanted. What is
happening to me? Am I losing control of myself? Or regaining it? Thursday
morning, he got up, went to work, and everything was business as usual.
Now he was headed into battle with forces who had no more respect for his
life than that of a sewer rat.
	Cut to Saturday morning, and he found it strange that after so
much had happened to him, he was taking everything in stride. He had Died
for Christ's sake! Less than 72 hours later, he was on a mission to "Kill
someone worser".
	He had to wonder what it would have been like, if he had not had
life insurance, and he had died for good. It would have been a pity.
Being a resurrection, he was now going to have to face more than a few
stares of disgust and envy from his friends and acquaintances at the bar,
that is, IF he ever returned; since he was quite sure one of them knew
what Miss Delta knew. Houston had died.
	Showing up again, quite alive, one must deal with the Lazarus
Syndrome. He was an Untouchable now. Superstitious fear would make
everyone avoid him like the plague. He hoped it wouldn't interfere with
his fulfilling the contract he had with Kansas City Inc, to redesign their
billing system... But knew it would.
	Houston again thought back to his apartment, angry at the loss of
his carefully constructed life, built over years of work, then remembering
the time he had told Geisha that he could walk away from all of it. If he
had to. Was it necessary? Was he going to stay Home, with Uncle Rex now,
or try to rebuild his carefully constructed world of dreams?
	It was childish to want all that back. It was nothing more than
his toy collection. He knew that now, even if he didn't want to admit it
out loud to Geisha or Gary. He had been leading a sophomoric and
self-indulgent life style. One that he thought was what he had wanted at
one time. With all the toys and the apartment and the status symbols of
the life style, came an identity. And it was who he wanted to be at one
time.
	Now is when reality sets in. Houston thought to himself, as he
settled the car down on the tarmac roof of Home.
	Houston could smell the air above the tarmac on the roof as a
series of heat driven waves that etched at his new sinuses. He recalled
that, by two in the afternoon, the roof would be about 200 degrees to the
touch.
	Geisha and Gary followed him silently, their personalities
dissolved behind the urban flash of canvass and cotton bullet proof
jackets, body armor, the stance of professionalism, and the unemotional
stares of alien eyes, hidden behind their mirrorshades, each clutching his
own package of goodies in one hand that was smoothly fitted in fingerless
black leather gloves, sub-machine guns slung over their shoulders and held
at ready with the other.
	There was comfort here. At Home. Houston wondered briefly why he
couldn't feel it before. Home accepted him, no matter what he had done in
the past, nor who he thought he had become over the years. Home knew him.
Descending the spiral staircase and making his way back to his room with
his group in tow, Houston made up his mind that this would be where he
would stay. Providing he lived. Next time though, they might kill him
"worser".
	Not only kill him, but destroy the clone in the vat, now growing
at a highly accelerated rate, or take it out in the freezer, where it
would soon be transported. Then it would simply be a matter of sending in
a Netrunner to wipe the Alexandrian Archives of his Mindread. Not a trace
of who he once was would be left. No more Houston. It had been done
before. He had done it before. In the before times.
	"Hi Dr.Forrester." Houston said coming into the room, quickly
heading over to his Cray Seven Hundred.
	"Hello Houston. Who's your friend?" The huge Siberian Tiger asked
standing up and moving between Gary Carter and the exit, ready to pounce
if Houston gave the word.
	"Gary Carter. A friend." Houston said simply, slipping his head
into the Radius-241 screen and hitting the power stud on the face of the
Cray.
	Typing as fast as he could, somewhat out of practice after years
of using VR terminals, he had his icon quickly screaming through a window
and out into the nonspace of ComWeb. There's no there, there. Houston
recalled how someone once described machine space.
	Right there. He thought, looking at the billing dot flying past
his head, his own picking up speed, ready to come up behind the
transaction and assume it's identity as a quick and dirty way into the
City Hall computer. He could have simply logged on, as himself, though he
could not maintain any anonymity that way. This was better. No need to
advertise.
	I've done this ten thousand times before. He told himself, as he
quickly had his system designing an icon window for selecting and
manipulating the files of the city's computer system. It's never been more
important than THIS time though.
	The Hunter-Gatherer was very efficient, bringing him all the same
files again, "taping" them to his window for his examination and as he
altered each document, scanning it fully, making sure there were no loop
holes that needed closing in the man's contract, released them one by one,
for the Hunter-Gatherer to return them where it found them.
	Switching to another mainframe system within the Superframe system
of City Hall, Houston watched carefully as the name Gary Carter came up on
the newly retired list. By the time they caught the inconsistencies
between the mans age and the length of his contract, he would hopefully be
long gone from Kansas City.
	"Where are you going after this?" Houston asked him with his head
still inside the screen. "I was just curious."
	"Procyon System." He heard Gary say flatly. "I'm going to the Guild
school there before I practice any more. I want out of black medicine."
	Houston watched the name come up, and the retirement pay
transaction queue itself for transmission to Gary's personal pay account.
His fingers flew over the glass keys as he made a note of the bank and
account number, then logging off the system, filing the information in
Gary Carters file, shutting down the Cray.
	"You're all set." Houston said rolling the chair back, looking at
Gary's impassive stare behind blue-violet mirrored eyes.
	"You wont mind if I check?" Gary asked, pulling the mini-cellular
out of his back pocket and dialing his bank.
	He doesn't realize his call is being monitored. Houston thought,
watching the man phone his bank and type in codes for access to his bank
account, making sure the funds had been moved.
	Or maybe he just doesn't care anymore. Houston started to feel a
bit guilty about stealing the mans secrets from him, then let it fall
without reaction when he rationalized that he didn't have to use the
information. It wasn't a requirement. Collecting the information though,
was an obsession of his. One that could not be denied, any more than one
could stop a sneeze, or the need for sleep. A slight character flaw, one
might say.
	"Ok." Gary nodded, folding the little phone up and putting it back
in his pocket, taking off his jacket and glasses, throwing them on the
bed. "Let's get started. The dry ice in here isn't going to last forever.
Is there some place I can scrub?"
	"Downstairs." Houston explained, getting up and taking off his
personal body armor and glasses, leading the way down the hall,
unbuttoning his black cotton shirt along the way.
	"Are you hungry?" Uncle Rex asked happily, his large deep black
eyes clear and smiling, dressed in his usual jeans and blue work shirt,
pouring coffee for himself and Dolph, who sat at the table, as Houston and
his group filed into the kitchen.
	"No." Houston said simply, opening a door and going down into the
basement, the fluorescent lighting flickering for a moment before coming
on full, revealing a hallway, one door open to a clean white ceramic tiled
room that was both medical clinic and electronics shop.
	Gary was right. Half of medicine today is related to electronics.
	"I knew you had some place to cook up cancers." Houston heard Dolph
say upstairs just before Gary shut the door behind him.
	Houston stood off to one side of the room and stripped naked,
kicking his clothing and boots into one corner, stepping into the small
shower, knowing the routine from many years ago when he got neuralware
installed the first time. In his first body. Except that time, it had been
done in a professional clinic. Albeit without his Uncles or his fathers
permission. But that was neither here nor there.
	Geisha sat down in a chair in the corner, preparing to watch Gary
closely, making sure he would make no wrong moves, reminding him of who
was watching, should he try to fuck up the procedure and maybe kill
Houston.
	"If you're going to stay in here, you're gonna be gowned, gloved
and masked." Gary told Geisha, going about his business of sterilizing his
equipment, quickly and methodically laying everything out, as Geisha stood
up and slowly took off his jacket and glasses. "You get to assist then
Mister Mechanic." He said simply.
	Shivering a bit in the chilled air, Houston climbed up onto the
steel table face down, still dripping with disinfectant as he watched Gary
scrub up at the sink, a green paper gown over his street clothes, spraying
NuSkin on his hands before snapping on the latex gloves.
	"Nice shop." Gary commented as he tied his mask around his face,
making sure Geisha did the same.
	"My Uncles." Houston shivered.
	"You realize of course I can't put you under." Gary explained.
"General is the best I can do for the pain."
	"I know." Houston nodded, squirming forward to let his head lay
over the edge of the table. "Brainwork doesn't get anesthetics. You'll do
a nerve block on the spinal work?" He asked making sure.
	"Of course." Gary said standing in front of Houston, who could only
see the mans boots in front of him. "And locals for the knife."
	"Fine."
	"Do you want VR while I'm busy?" Gary asked not moving. "This is
gonna take a while."
	"No." Houston said flatly to the boots.
	"Then you get endorphin." Gary said peeling the back off and
sticking a patch to Houston's carotid artery. "No need to remember any of
this anyway."
	The warmth spread through Houston, relaxing his muscles and
filling his body with natural pain killers, before the pain had even
begun.
	And oh what pain. Houston remembered abstractly as he felt them
shaving a small area on the back of his skull, coming to him more as a
scraping sound inside his head, than actually feeling the disposable razor
tugging at the back of his head where it connected to his spinal column.
	His mind began to wander in mild fascination, not being connected
to his body, as he watched the drool running out of his mouth and down
onto the floor, landing between the snake skin cowboy boots in front of
him.
	The crunch of what? Bone? Gristle? Whatever it was, it seemed
close.
 	I wonder how much pain is involved in that? Houston wondered as he felt
his arm being lifted from behind, having the impression that someone would
be putting in an I.V. into his arm, but couldn't be sure if it was really
happening, or if his mind was simply substituting random ideas for true
sensation which he lacked at the moment, being as numb as he was.
	This feels heavenly. Houston smiled to himself. I'll have to
remember to try this stuff again some time. I wonder if I can get this
stuff on The Street?
	"Mineral infusion begun. Here goes the first batch of nanites."
Houston heard someone explaining the procedure from behind him somewhere,
unable to recognize the voice, their reverberating words coming through to
his mind as a vibrating echo. Sound-byte trailers whispered to him in
after images of sound.
	Nanites. That would be the molecule sized machines that would
start building his nanotechnology superconducting biocircuitry that would
interface the flashchip they would install in his brain, with the terminal
leads they would put under the skin on his wrist.
	He also seemed to recall that the nanites would be building
electronic pathways that would reach from his brain, to an external chip
interface box which they would locate in his left chest. Or was that a
dream?
	He could hear Geisha and Gary talking with each other, but what
they were saying didn't seem to matter any more.
	What was it he was doing here again?
	Oh yeah. They said nanites.
	All those millions of little machines running around through his
circulatory system, gathering minerals from his blood stream, acting like
tiny Von Neumanns by making copies of themselves for the first few
generations, then following a new program that would gather minerals and
place them at gene specific sites along the nerve network of his arm,
slowly building electronic links to the flashchip in his brain.
	He could almost hear the little machines running around inside him
at their terrific speeds, communicating with each other like microscopic
insects, their chattering and buzzes, a discussion between themselves of
the job at hand.
	Building better the body beautiful. Or was it singing the body
electric? Tripping the light fantastic?
	It didn't matter. They knew their job. They had been designed for
this one purpose. Their program was written into their construction like
mechanical DNA. They followed the instructions perfectly because they had
to. It was code. Instruction. DNA. Just like Houston had no more control
over his actions and reactions than a plant reaching for the sun. It was
instinct.
	I'm no better than them. Houston thought to himself as he listened
to the sounds out of his field of vision. He yawned to himself and wanted
a cigarette.
	"God Damn You, stop moving Bitch!" Geisha hissed at him, intent on
something that no longer concerned Houston.
	Probably brain work or something. Houston thought. Geisha could be
such a worrier at times. Houston wondered absently if perhaps he shouldn't
have eaten something for lunch when his uncle offered.
	Feeling a bit giddy as he waited impatiently for the procedure to
end, Houston wondered how all those molecular machines managed to search
through the kazillions of blood capillaries of his brain, and not only
find but then link up with the flashchip at the end of his interface they
had sunk into his head, and then build the biochip microprocessor on the
end of it, then weaving the biocircuit threads throughout his mind.
	He felt quite sure they must be very good at what they do. Maybe
they have special little machines for each step of the procedure. He
decided. Houston saw blood drip to the floor, from the back of his head,
probably where they were working at the moment.
	Drip.
	Strange that the sight of blood didn't make him want to saint in
this situation. It might give him nightmares though.
	Gary as Herr Doktor Frankenstein? Nah.
	If he closed his eyes, he could imagine feeling the blood run down
along his jaw line to his chin to depart from his body forever, curiously
wondering exactly how many nanites were in that single drop of blood.
Though in his current state, it took quite a bit of imagination to feel
anything at all.
	Houston's mind wandered further, and he decided he was glad to see
his uncle getting along with Dolph.
	The man just doesn't like Gays. Houston thought, mentally
shrugging, trying to be still so Geisha wouldn't have a shit fit and start
yelling at him again.
	That Girl's gonna have a coronary one of these days.
	Then Houston realized he wasn't really being fair to his uncle.
It wasn't completely true about him not liking Gays. It wasn't so much the
Gay part his uncle objected to as it was the sex part. Sex was deadly.
With an unknown partner, (as is usual for your first few times) you could
catch any one of several dozen sexually transmitted diseases.  Some of
which took years of long agonizing death before they killed you.
	It would be better to put a pistol to your head than to fuck the
neighbor Girl. It was quicker. That was why his uncle had come unglued
over his girlfriend next door. Sex was deadly. Uncle Rex had gone to great
lengths to insure Houston's virginity all his life. It was a survival
thing. Sex was deadly. With anyone. He understood that now. He had
certainly seen enough people die from it.
	Houston did have to wonder though, how the human species managed
to continue to proliferate at such a rate in times like these. Despite the
plague of '22, the population was still at an all time high. It was cheap
enough, but it certainly wasn't that cheap to go have a kid whipped up at
Sears. And then, you always had to face the snickers and stares of the
neighbors afterwards.
	He had grown up with such a fear of the Pseudolifes!
	Hearing Gary cuss over dropping some instrument on the floor,
kicking it angrily, Houston realized they were probably working very hard
at all of this. He should do his part as well. He agreed with himself.
	What do we have first?  Well, first of all, we don't remember
dying. But that's understandable since not many clones he knew of
remembered it either. Those that did remember it were probably lying about
it. He decided. He certainly didn't remember floating above the body or
any of that other nonsense with the out-of-body business. Oh well.
	It certainly was a surprise being shot in the head though.
Houston had always assumed he would be brain fried or something. That was
usually the way programmers bought the farm. That or heart attack. A few
were turned into vegetables, locked into a never ending virtual reality,
having rogue programs sent into their brains keeping their minds running
in circles, locked in endless loops forever and ever amen. Oh well.
	They must have tracked the cyberdeck somehow. Thou Seest Me
probably. Or was he around at that time? Maybe after his first Mindread
had released Thou Seest Me to ComWeb to incorporate with its other
version.
	It told on me. He thought curiously. But then again, how could he
have expected higher level thinking from such a simple program?
	Then the bad guys traced his cyberdeck signal, using the laser
scan ID on the deck, following him from the arcology (which they had just
destroyed) to the field (Where his signal was still transmitting). Well
shit.
	What a bummer.
	Let's see... suppose the CyberForm that grabbed him Thursday noon,
was actually trying to warn him about what was going down?
	Well, that would certainly help explain why the cyborg didn't try
to kill him instantly. It also of course blew his chances for ever
learning what the cyborg did know. For want of a nail, the kingdom was
lost. Oh well.
	His mind wandered back to the cyberdeck again. There are answers
in there. At least one, and more than likely two of his selves were in
there.  He doubted that if He were in there, he would want to give up his
identity just to incorporate with the other self. Nor would he expect a
copy of himself to give up it's identity just to incorporate. It just
wasn't that important and people were not like programs. The copies of
himself inside the cyberdeck were simply him without the flesh. An engram.
A digital version of mind. A memory trace.
	He saw no reason why the other selves would think any differently
than the him currently laying on the table. So at one time, there were
FOUR of us. Houston thought, strangely fascinated. One of which got to go
on to The Next Big Adventure. Of course, after the Death-10 stage, there
would be no point in trying to retrieve the engram. The essence would have
dissipated into the next higher sphere of existence.
	Houston felt lucky to be a Reorganized Mormon, thereby having an
understanding of the way life and death worked; morbid curiosity turned
into data that held up a belief system for a world. Geisha didn't have
that understanding. To him, life was living and death was not living. In
reality, the world just wasn't that black and white. As he himself was
proof. The soul was hardwired into the body and the mind was the essence
of the self. The identity of the body. The software.
	Six hours later, they were all putting him in the upright AutoDoc
coffin that occupied a large portion of one corner of the medical lab.
Three hours later, they were all carrying him to his bed, so he could
sleep a while, and let all those little machines weave their magic.





From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 16/30
Date: 31 Jul 1995 00:47:50 -0500


Chapter Sixteen
	Two days later, on Monday night, Houston woke.
	He woke up moaning, half wishing he had died. For real... For
good... Gone on to The Next Big Adventure. The brain feels no pain. He
reminded himself.
	"How do you feel?" Houston heard the voice of Dr.Forrester, opening
his eyes to see the big cat's face level with his own.
	"Like shit." Houston said dully opening the one eye that was not
face down on the pillow. "How do You feel?" He asked sarcastically,
closing his eye, trying to wish the pain away with all his might. The
brain feels no pain.
	"I feel fine." The big cat laughed. "You however, look terrible.
I'll go get Gary." He said padding down the hall.
	Opening his one eye again, Houston could see the I.V. by the bed,
beer cans and clothes that were not his, strung about the room, and felt
the catheter tube draining him as some machine on the floor beside the bed
peeped, recording his vital signs.
	The pain in the middle of his back was more horrible than he
remembered from the first time he got his biochip implant. Maybe that was
because he was a younger man then. He was thirty now. Not as easy to shake
off the pain as it used to be. Next comes arthritis. He thought grimly.
	As he stirred on the bed, face down and drooling on the pillow,
feeling the gentle tug of the new superconducting microcircuitry running
along side the nerves in his back arm and neck, he could almost hear the
millions of tiny machines working away in him, and he had to wonder why he
put himself through the torturous process again.
	To be state-of-the-art! He reminded himself. Accept the pain.
	He heard Gary come into the room and lean over him, but did not
expect the mans thumb to lift his eye open again, nor for him to shine a
halogen penlight into it.
	"Do you think that's fucking bright enough?" Houston grumbled.
	"You'll live." Gary said lighting a cigarette. "How do you feel?"
	"That has Got to be the stupidest question in the world." Houston
moaned as he turned over.
	It felt like they had sewn a brick in his back where the neural
interface was installed next to his spine, linking the chipware socket in
his left upper chest he touched with his hand to his spinal cord. "I feel
like hammered shit. Do you think that's normal after major surgery
doctor?" He asked sarcastically.
	"Don't get cute." Gary said sticking a patch to his neck, whereupon
he immediately felt the warm fuzziness take the pain away from his mind.
	The brain feels no pain.
	Houston noticed his friends and his Uncle Rex standing around the
bed then, smiling at him, looking like they had just left their dinner to
come in and check on him, to see how he was doing. Above him floated the
hologram of Albert Einstein he had since he was a kid.
	Poor Albert. Why did they have to bring you back to THIS world?
The violence, the filth, the poverty, and the critical dependency on
technology to survive. This is no place for man nor beast. You deserve
better. He thought to himself as he looked up at his hero. To him, Albert
Einstein was one man who made a difference in the world.
	No glistening clean white spires in the harmonious peaceful skies
of THIS brave new world. Only stark gloomy dirty concrete towers, crowded
into a choking sky, rising over wet dark alleys stinking of industrial
pollutants and the smell of sweat and garbage of millions, fighting
working and desperately trying to survive despite the odds against them.
This was hell.
	"Shhit." Houston hissed as Gary helped him sit up in bed, and began
removing the catheter and I.V., shutting down the monitors beside the bed.
	"Good morning sunshine!" Geisha grinned at him.
	"Go to hell." Houston grumbled as his eyes finally found focus.
	"How do you feel Houston?" Gary raised his voice a little, snapping
his fingers in front of Houstons face two or three times. "Look up at me.
Any dizziness? Muscle cramps? Buzzing in your back or head?  Twitching?"
	"No... I don't think so." Houston said sleepily. "Wow. What did you
give me?" He asked touching the patch.
	"Dynorphin. I remembered you liked it." He said as he and Geisha
helped put Houston's feet into a pair of gray fleece lined sweat pants.
"Up you go." He said pulling them up for Houston while the two of them
supported him by each arm.
	"I'm feeling better." Houston breathed easier, amazed at how fast
the drug seemed to be working. "Kinda hungry I think." He said in a better
mood.
	"Good." Gary nodded throwing him a gray sweat shirt. "We've got to
get you up and get some food into you. You're going to have to go through
dialysis to get rid of the toxin binders and biocircuit nanites I gave
you. It won't interfere with the enhanced antibodies though. The
nanosurgeons however are another matter. You'll have to get them replaced.
We'll need to get your HDL up first."
	"HDL. Is that the good or the bad cholesterol?" Houston hissed as
they helped him into a more standing position. "You know how closely I
like to watch my cholesterol counts." He said sarcastically.
	"High-density lipoprotein is the good cholesterol." Dr.Forrester
stated from the foot of the bed."Christ." The big cat shook it's head.
"I'm either surrounded by smart asses or idiots of my own design."
	Houston was finally able to straighten his back after enough of
the drug took the edge off, though he still felt stiff and sore as they
walked down the hall together as a group.
	"What does the interface plug look like?" Houston asked putting his
hand on the back of his neck to touch it. "I didn't get a chance to see it
but I heard the crunch when it went in."
	"Jesus!" Dolph said looking very pale. "Shut up."
	"It's one of the new universal ports. Cutting edge stuff. Hot out
of Germany." Gary explained sitting down at the table beside him, with
Geisha on the other side as Dolph and his Uncle Rex sat down at the other
end of the table, a collection of plastic beer cans strung about on the
table mixed in with dinner plates before them.
	"You've got Cybermodem, vehicle, smartgun, machine and public data
terminal links all in one." Geisha added from the kitchen where he had
begun fixing Houston something to eat. The heavy scent of grease in the
air was heavenly. "You'll have to use adaptor plugs to interchange of
course."
	"Cut's down on the biocircuitry though." His Uncle Rex commented.
"I know the company who designed it. Gemeinschaft Technologies. Very good
work. It'll go on the market next year."
	"You've still got the standard interface plugs in your wrist
though." Gary explained. "No jacking in for a day or so. I don't want to
have to do all that work over again."
	"Very expensive toys." Dolph commented off hand as he popped open a
beer. "For a very expensive boy."
	"Come on Houston." Geisha encouraged him, setting a plate of eggs
and bacon with silver dollar pancakes in front of him. "Eat up. My mom
always said when you're sick you should eat. You need the extra calories
right now as a buffer against infections that can set in."
	"Nutrition Nazi." Dolph poked Geisha in the ribs. "A few Twinkies
would cure him faster." He joked smiling.
	"Yeah." Houston nodded, greedily taking in the breakfast with his
eyes before devouring it. "So what else did I get?" He asked around a
mouthful.
	"Speedware." Geisha said excitedly in a low voice. "Sandevistan.
It's better than Kerenzikov Boosterware because it's not drug dependent
and it's not on all the time. More control over it when you don't have to
fight it all the time. And a chipware socket in your chest. We had to
remove a rib."
	"You also have an adrenal booster implant." Gary explained. "It's
only good though about twice every six hours. So don't over do it. If you
need it any more than that, you're in the wrong life."
	"We're all in the wrong life." Dolph commented drunkenly.
	"I've got a bunch of reflex and memory chips for you." Geisha
explained. "You'll have to burn the command structure into your brain
though. We'll chip 'em in after you eat."
	"So many decisions already made for me!" Houston looked around the
table. "What? No personality chips? Or do I get to keep who I am?" He
asked Geisha.
	"It probably wouldn't hurt you to work out a little in the gym
downstairs." Gary said slowly. "That cloned body is still new. You need to
stabilize your metabolism as soon as possible. You might as well train it
to accept the new reflexes now as well so you'll have 'em later when you
need 'em."
	"True." Houston admitted still eating hungrily. "So what have you
found out about this evil that has beseeched us?" He asked grinning.
	"Nothing." His uncle said simply as the table got quiet.
	A deep pause hung in the air as no one looked at each other.
	"So I take it you're going to keep me in the dark." Houston stated
flatly looking down at the end of the table where his uncle sat in blue
jeans and a blue work shirt, his deep black eyes clear and bright, his leg
cocked up on the corner of the dining room table, his cowboy boot with
it's silver tip on the toe framing the side of his face.
	"Basically yes." Rex nodded opening a beer and leaning back in his
chair to the point where it threatened to toss him head over heels onto
the floor. "You just think about getting well honey. We can take care of
the rest of this."
	"Do they know where I'm at?"
	"Obviously not, since you're still alive." Dolph snorted.
	"Don't worry about it honey." His uncle said simply, forcing the
matter to drop. "You're safe. That's all that matters."
	"This sucks." Houston said finishing his plate and pushing it back,
now frustrated. "Come on Geisha. Help me downstairs."
	Pushing his chair back and standing up was a bit easier this time,
now that he had food in him for energy and the drug was working it wonders
on his pain center. He no longer felt repulsed by the thought of the
millions of little nanosurgeons inside his bloodstream working away at
helping his body heal itself, reknitting his tissues and correcting his
cells internal chemical balances, reading his DNA like a set of
blueprints, making note of where everything was and how it should look.
The nanites that built the superconducting network throughout his body now
lay dormant, since their job was complete.
	Stepping down the stairs on his left foot was not much of a
problem, but when he stepped down with his right, it felt as if someone
had jabbed a railroad spike into his back and was fiercely twisting it
with each step.
	At the bottom of the stairs, Houston stopped and rested, looking
in the room that had served as his mini-surgery only two days before. No
evidence of any crime against nature had been committed.
	Turning left and walking slowly down the hallway to the end, the
lights in the small gym flickered to life. Only a couple of damp towels
and the smell of male sweat betrayed the fact that it had been recently
used. A smear of red told the story that Uncle Rex had shown someone a few
quick moves he knew.
	Uncle Rex had no doubt talked them all into working out down here
very early on. He believed in keeping in shape. His uncles own body was
testimony enough to what keeping in shape could do for a persons looks.
And he could be very persuasive when he wanted to be.
	He simply wouldn't take 'No' for an answer.
	Stepping up on the treadmill, Houston began walking, then
trotting, picking up speed as he talked winded but conversationally with
Geisha who worked out on the equipment as well. Houston watched with
growing interest as Geisha's dark hairy muscular chest heaved as he lay on
the bench lifting weights.
	Perhaps someday. He thought to himself without saying a word.
	Geisha wasn't a bad guy after all. In fact, there was a lot that
could be said for him as a partner. He was an intelligent men, a warm kind
man, had a heart of gold, and he was good looking. He had great even white
teeth and thick beautiful black hair, and was built like a brick
shit-house. Geisha was all man, quite masculine actually; not Nelly at
all, despite the humorous nick-name he had somewhere along the line been
tagged with.
	Still, there was the matter of his own residence to be resolved at
the moment. Houston was hardly in any position to be changing other lives
around.
	"They're going out tonight. Aren't they?" Houston asked looking
Geisha in the eye as they continued to sweat and pant in the little room
alone.
	"Yes." Geisha finally said after a long pause.
	"Are you going to tell me what's up?"
	"No." Geisha said not looking Houston in the eye.
	"So what kind of chips did you get me?" Houston puffed as he
trotted, somewhat angry that his friend would not detail their plans
upstairs, hearing them preparing to go out, even as he and Geisha spoke.
	"Let's see, a Heavy Weapons reflex skill flashchip." Geisha said
remembering, counting them off on his fingers as he went.
	"Good." Houston commented. "I was never good at heavy weapons as a
kid in bootkamp."
	"A Russian language knowledge skill flashchip."
	"Good. I had one of those before."
	"A Japanese language know-chip."
	"Had one of those too. They're good for business and vacations."
	"A Driving reflex-chip."
	"You don't like my driving Geisha?"
	"You didn't act like you knew too much about what you were doing in
the car the other day." Geisha shrugged his big muscular shoulders as
Houston noticed that the man had long black hair even on his back. The man
was a bear. Houston suddenly felt a familiar stirring, like a tickle, just
behind his scrotum. Very quickly, he pushed the thought away.
	"What else?"
	"A Piloting Vector-Thrust-Vehicle reflex skill flashchip."
	"For what?"
	"I don't know." Geisha shrugged. "Just following orders. You also
got a Martial arts, Choi-Li-Fut reflex-chip."
	"I would have chosen kick-boxing, but go on." Houston said running
now, breathing deeply and sweating heavily, smelling the poisons of the
foreign metals trying to work their way out through his pores.
	"A Daytimer RAM-chip, because you've never been good at organizing
your schedule." Geisha smiled out of the side of his face as he continued
with leg lifts.
	"Bitch." Houston smiled sweating. "What else?"
	In his uncles neon orange jogging shorts, Geisha big thick
tree-trunk legs looked even bigger with the nylon fabric stretched tightly
over Geisha muscular ass. The long black hair on his legs gave him an
almost Arab look. Houston silently admired the mans body, in the mirrors
on the walls, as they went on with their workout and conversation.
	"Pharmaceuticals Technical Skill flashchip." Geisha frowned
disappointedly. "Mainly because I knew how you were with dope."
	"Well, it never hurts to know what mixes and what doesn't."
Houston said defensively. "Besides, you can come up with some interesting
combinations sometimes."
	"A Basic Tech flashchip."
	"Useless after they're chipped in the first time." Houston
swallowed. "They have to be renewed every six months. But, at least I'll
have an update."
	"An Expert AI knowledge chip."
	"Well there's no need to be insulting Geisha." Houston laughed.  "I
would think I should know what I'm doing by now."
	"Well, I just thought that maybe the industry had changed since you
were in school." Geisha shrugged, licking sweat from his thick bushy
moustache.
	"Nah." Houston shook his head letting sweat fly across the room.
"Not all that much. But I'll take a look at it just in case."
	From there, he and Geisha worked out on everything in the room,
stopping only once to replace the patch on his neck with another.
	Sit-ups, pushups, pull-ups, punching a large heavy bag, jumping
jacks, lifting weights, riding a stationary bike, and again, and again.
	After only a couple of meals and running to the bathroom a couple
of times, Houston began to feel as if his metabolism was finally gearing
itself up to the adult body he was supposed to have. He was getting
stronger. He was toning up and fine tuning. His body began to feel as if
it Fit on him now.
	He sat down on the weight bench, breathing heavily, a towel
wrapped around his neck and wiping sweat out of his eyes.
	"Ok Geisha. Let's go." He swallowed. "Grab the remote. I'm gonna
run through the chips now. Display the manuals to them."
	"Are you sure you're not pushing yourself too hard Houston?"
Geisha asked concerned. "You're going to be sore when that patch wears
off."
	"I know." Houston said simply. "I will be for several days. Let's
go!"
	The adrenal booster implant gave him the strength of ten men. And
the Sandevistan Speedware gave him lightning fast reflexes.
	Running through the command structures over and over, as he
encouraged Geisha to flip screens faster and faster, until he understood
how each chip worked on an intimate level and he was soon feeling the
generalized knowledge of the chips pour through his mind like a waterfall,
covering his senses the deeper into them he dove.
	He felt very much at ease with the Choi-Li-Fut flashchip in the
chipware socket in his upper left chest. As if he had practiced the art
for years. He was by no means an expert, but he understood the art enough
to know it was descended directly from the Shaolin Temples, combining
powerful roundhouse blows and sweeping kicks into a dynamic fighting
style. He practiced the key attacks on the punching bag of strikes,
punches, kicks, using Geisha for other moves of blocks and parries,
dodges, throws (gently) sweeps and trips.
	He could survive without the Tech-9 providing his opponent didn't
ice him from a block away with a big gun.
	When they were done, it was morning.
	Houston pulled the Driving, Basic-Tek and the Expert AI chips out
of the socket and tossed them to Geisha as he headed up to his room to
sleep.
	"What do you want me to do with these?" Geisha asked following him
up the stairs looking clearly exhausted. "They might come in handy."
	"Spoken like the true Techie Geisha. Never throw anything away
'eh?" Houston yawned. "Keep 'em, sell 'em, use 'em, whatever you want. I
don't need 'em."
	Reaching the top of the stairs, Gary Dolph and Uncle Rex sat at
the table, still in their flak jackets, looking very tired, blood still
fresh and bright red, beaded on his uncles black leather duster coat.
	"Have fun?" Houston asked rhetorically, a hint of bitchiness in his
voice as he walked past them wiping sweat from his face and going on into
his room.
	"I'll need to hook you up to dialysis." Gary said exhausted, taking
off his jacket and throwing it on the chair at Houston's desk.
	"Go ahead." Houston sighed falling back on the bed. "I'm going to
sleep." He said exhaling loudly, feeling sleep tug at his mind, wanting to
pull him down, and him wanting it to come on quickly.
	Gary worked methodically with a hint of weariness about his eyes,
probably wishing he was already in bed himself. Uncle Rex could be known
to push people past their limits, and make them want to do it just for
him."It shouldn't take more than an hour to clean up your system. This
unit is fairly fast."
	"Need anything before I turn in?" Geisha asked sticking his head in
the room as Gary started the dialysis machine.
	"Order me some blank flashchips for my Cray." Houston sighed
feeling exhausted but good. "I have an account at Computerland. They'll
deliver here."
	"I'll go get them on the expense account instead." Geisha said.
"No telling who might want to trace any of our PIN's. The transaction on
your account would look like a magnesium flare going up in the Net."
	"True." Houston agreed sleepily. "I'll see you guys tonight. Sun
out." He told the room, watching the fiber-optic sunlight dim to darkness,
drifting off to sleep to the quiet puff-puff of the dialysis machine
beside the bed.
	When he woke, the machinery had been removed from his room and the
house was quiet. Glancing up on the wall of his room the green Day-Glo
numerals told him it was just a little past 6pm. "Sun" He said, watching
the glow of the afternoon come up in the room from the thousands of little
plastic fiber ends in the ceiling. Still afternoon.
	"Good evening Houston." Dr.Forrester said as Houston sat up in bed
yawning, and pulled off the sweats.
	"G'morning Dr.Forrester." Houston yawned again. "Everything quiet
today?"
	"Everything is fine." He said simply as Houston changed into a pair
of red nylon jogging shorts and stepped over him, sitting down at the desk
and hitting the power stud on the face of the Cray.
	Sticking his head in the Radius-241 screen, he sat idly watching
his lab run through it's routine of checking BBS's and answering E-Mail
from 18 years ago. It would do no good of course, since he had nothing to
say to the people of his past, nor their ghosts, but it let the Cray have
it's slice of time and catch up with the world. Using the Daytimer chip in
his chest, which Geisha had been so kind as to obtain for him, he made a
mental note to change that code soon. His lab would need to be updated.
In the worst way.
	The dozens of screens around the simulated room of his lab winked
out one by one, some staying as they were, displaying lists of what it
thought might interest him, or what it thought might require his attention
as well as lists of what numbers were no longer in service as BBS's and
long ago buddies that were no longer active members.
	Fingers flying over the black glass surface of the desk, he typed
in commands the cleared the room of the unneeded data.
	A couple of quick function key shifts and the view was one of his
vision moving to the end of the room, a door opening, and he entered a
cartoon world or bright orange sand, purple mountains in the distance, a
bright azure sky with impossibly white clouds that streamed past over head
at terrific speed.
	Rotating in the visually represented artificial environment, he
set off on a course towards the mountains that never seemed to get closer,
the ground rushing beneath him, exhilarating him as he began to remember
that this was the first artificial environment that he had ever written.
	Quickly, he slowed and came to a stop in front of a hand painted
sign, strung with old electric Christmas bulbs, plugged in to an extension
cord that stretched into infinity.
	Next to this was a ten foot saguaro cactus, also strung with the
same set of lights drooping from the sign over to it, with a yellow
flashing star on the top of it.
	Sprigs of dead grass and a few small rocks, along with a single
boulder sat sharp black shadows along the ground stretching under his
bodiless essence as he sat at the desk watching the screen.
	The Christmas lights flashed in an irregular random pattern,
outlining the sloppily hand painted sign that read "Welcome to EXCELSIS
DEO".
	He didn't wait but a couple of seconds before a parody of a
cartoonish Mexican Girl stepped out of space from some other dimension
that appeared to exist behind the tall cactus.
	"Hi Gloria." Houston smiled sitting at his desk, speaking to the
screen.
	"Hola Houston!" She grinned and waved at him. "Hola means Hello."
	"Yes I know." He grinned at the cartoon girl.
	"What wrong with you?!" She demanded. "You leave Gloria in Excelsis
Deo too long with nobody to talk to!"
	He sat smiling to himself looking at her cartoonish figure, blue
plastic wedge heeled shoes, an anklet of plastic white pearls on a skinny
leg, a clinging deep red and white flowered print dress, just above her
knees, accented by a bushy grass skirt over the top of it, held in place
by a bright green sash.
	Her flat chest led to skinny arms that each held dozens of plastic
garish bracelets and bangles, one hand held up in the air waving at him,
the other held down at her side clutching a small coconut purse with a
grass lid and neon pink plastic tubing for a handle.
	Around her skinny neck was a ring of big red plastic pearls and on
top of that was her big squarish head with big red plastic clip-on
earrings, black hair and squarish mouth, with it's bright red lipstick and
big evenly spaced teeth, topping her head was a huge sombrero garishly
striped in bold colors with intermittent tacky silver glitter stripes and
fuzzy blue balls around it's edges.
	"I'm sorry Gloria." Houston explained. "I've been away from home
for a while."
	"I see there are many things for Gloria to do." She said sitting
down on the boulder, crossing her legs and pulling lipstick and compact
mirror out of the tiny purse, touching up her lipstick.
	Meanwhile, Houston knew, she would be scanning the datacores of
the Cray unit built into his desk, trying to assimilate as much as
possible into her program.
	"You are forgiven." She announced putting her things away into the
little wooden coconut purse.
	"Houston?" Geisha tapped him on the shoulder.
	Pushing himself back from the desk, still grinning, the hulking
mass of Geisha stood before him freshly showered and even better looking
than he looked earlier in the day when they had finished working out.
	"Your chips." Geisha said handing Houston a gross box of new
flashchips. "I didn't know how many you'd need." He explained.
	"I don't either at this point." Houston snorted, tearing the
cellophane from the box. "I'm just winging it until Uncle Rex tells me
what to do."
	He pulled a handful of chips out of the box and tossed them on the
desk, inserting a couple of dozen with a quick snap into slots in the top
of the Cray.
	"Do you want the combat deck?" Geisha asked, holding it up in the
other hand. "Your Uncle Rex sent it in to you."
	"Yeah." Houston said setting it down on the black glass surface
beside his Cray. "I can get at least that much done."
	"We're going out again tonight." Geisha said with a hint of guilt
in his voice.
	"That's ok Geisha." Houston forgave him. "I've got Mr.Peabody and
Dr.Forrester here to watch over me. Don't worry." He smiled at his friend.
	"Ok." Geisha said turning and stepping over the great mass of
Dr.Forrester. "I'll see you later then."
	"Later." Houston said sticking his head back into the screen.
	"What is going on out there?" Gloria asked appearing to peek over
Houston's shoulder. It was a programmed response.
	"Nothing much." Houston shrugged, more to himself, knowing she
couldn't actually see him at all. "Ok Gloria. We got some work to do."
	"Always ready." Gloria smiled standing up and holding her purse in
both hands in front of her, chomping on a huge piece of bubble gum.
	"Do you know what a Mindread Ghost Construct is?" Houston asked
her, unsure as to the technology when last he had accessed her program.
	"Nooo." She shook her head seriously.
	"Well it's a series of engrams. Memory traces." Houston explained.
"A Mindreader device is... well... What it does, it basically dumps my
brain to a series of flashchips. It stores my memories in digital form.
It's everything that's Me. Ok?"
	"Okey Dokey Houston." She nodded. "If you say so."
	"A digital version of me. Kinda like a program version of me. Ok.
So anyway, I got one, maybe two here that I'm going to let you meet." He
explained carefully. "Don't fight them when they want to share the CPU's
of this system. Between the Cray and the combat cyberdeck, we're all gonna
have to cooperate. He'll know the code into the system same as me. Ok?"
	"All righty!" She grinned.
	"Ok. Standby." Houston said easing his head out of the screen,
plugging the cyberdeck into the wall so it's battery wouldn't run down and
inserted the interface cables into the back of the Cray silently thanking
the IEEE for compatibility standards. "What's your datawall strength?" He
asked her.
	"Excelsis Deo in pretty fine tough shape at +3 datawall strength."
She said humorously clomping around in a circle in the heavy shoes.
"Gloria feel mucho pretty fine too!"
	"Not today you're not. We'll have to get it up to at least 7 or
better. Well, I'll fix that in a minute." He said absently. "Ready for
interface?"





From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 17a
Date: 1 Aug 1995 15:37:51 -0500

Chapter Seventeen
	"Hola Houston!" His self said as he walked into the scene with
himself, grinning in the virtual environment, looking around at the
simplicity of it, walking in a circle around Gloria, smiling, examining
her garish costume with a smug attitude. "Girl, those shoes don't go with
that purse."
	"You no tell Gloria how to dress!" She said defensively. "Bought
these at Gucci in Oaxaca, Mexico Quatro." She said looking down at them.
	"No you didn't. You only think you did, because He told you that
you did." His other self explained rather bluntly to the program. "It was
silliness to write that stuff into your code to begin with. I think you
were drunk at the time." He said teasing himself.
	"Don't be mean to her you guys." Houston said sitting at the desk.
"Tell me what's been going on."
	"Nothing much of anything in Here Boss. Just what we stir up for
ourselves. How about you?" He laughed at himself. "What was it like to
assume the flesh?"
	"It hurt like hell." Houston remembered quietly. "It was also
confusing. I didn't seem to understand much of anything very clearly for
the first couple of days." His mind wandered back to the feeling of the
Teks shaving his face and cutting his nails and hair. "What was it like to
die?"
	"You don't remember?" His self asked him incredulously.
	"Nothing after smoking the cigarette out on the platform."
	"Well, I guess it hurt. I think. I mean, the gunshots and all that,
but the death experience itself was denied me by asshole here." His self
thumbed towards the other version of himself. "The soul got to take the
Next Big Adventure. I didn't even get a peek."
	"So what did you do?" Houston asked himself. "Dump the engram at
the Death-1 state?"
	"More like the Mortal-10 state." His self said sheepishly. "I
couldn't take a chance that he might not want to cooperate if the shock
got any worse, and he was acting like he was wanting to go ahead and die
on me. Leaving me, and you by the way, three hours in the past. A bit of a
dilemma, that."
	"Oh well." Houston said to them all as Gloria popped her gum,
studying the two flashchip ghosts of himself attentively. "I suppose we
get to find out later then. It's probably best that way anyway."
	"So are we gonna run through the Cray?" His self asked sitting down
on Gloria's boulder.
	"Yeah." Houston said resignedly. "They traced the decks signal to
the laser scan somehow. I can't afford to let them track me here."
	"Probably Mr.Potatohead." His self nodded, nudging himself so he
could sit down as well. "So what's first Chico?" He asked himself.
	"First we find out what Uncle Rex is up to. He and the others are
keeping me in the dark for some reason." Houston explained. "One of you
guys go diddle his system in the den and bring me back everything you can
find. I've got chips if we need them."
	He had no sooner finished his statement when one of his selves got
up and vanished by walking behind the saguaro cactus, and immediately a
window appeared in the bright azure sky displaying information and
scrolling it at a speed far faster than Houston's mind could comprehend.
	"So what's it like in there?" Houston grinned at himself still
sitting on the large rock as Gloria came over and sat next to him. "Real
like Real real?"
	"Yeah." His self nodded smiling, looking around at the sky and the
environment around him. "Real as any realistic or super-realistic virtual
reality environment we've ever seen. Taste. Touch. Hot, cold, smell. It's
a pretty weird place to be dead in let me tell you. Anything is possible.
We're only limited by our own imagination and available memory space, and
you know how cheap memory is today. You can get a hundred terabytes for a
credit. So it's a lot more fun than you'd expect.  We're the Gods here and
we can manipulate the laws of this universe and environment at will."
	"Not Excelsis Deo!" Gloria said defensively.
	"Yeah Gloria old girl." His self nudged her smiling. "Even Excelsis
Deo. You forget I wrote this place."
	"Humph." She said popping her gum and holding her nose high.
	"Well guy, you're gonna have to do some quick writing on Gloria."
He explained. "She needs to be updated in the worst way. I had to explain
to her what a ghost construct personality store was, before she would let
you in. I only gave her the basic premise. I figure you're gonna be better
at explaining it to her than I would."
	"No problem." His self shrugged, snapping his fingers, making an
old fashioned Qwerty keyboard appear on his lap, on which he began to type
quickly.
	Just then, his other self popped back into the scene by stepping
out from behind the cactus, just as Gloria had appeared in the beginning.
	"Uncle Rex has got things buttoned down tight." He sighed, kicking
at a stone in the sand. "I can't get in because he's changed all the codes
to some triple blind system through Sydney. I tried though."
	"I wonder what's up?" Houston said to the screen, thinking to
himself.
	"Do you have any idea where they went?"
	"No, but we can start tracking. Go see if you can find his car in
the city traffic grid."
	"Yeah." He nodded in agreement, stepping back behind the cactus and
disappearing again. "I'll be at Air Traffic Control." He said sticking his
head back in the scene and disappearing again just as quickly.
	"Are you done yet?" Houston asked himself sitting on the rock.
	"Yep." His self said tossing the keyboard in the air whereupon it
vanished into thin air. "The basics anyway. I'll give her more later when
we have time. How do you feel Gloria?"
	"Mucho pretty fine." She smiled broadly as if an idea just occurred
to her. "I think I take it from here. Si? Many things Gloria must see from
combat unit interface."
	"Sure." His self agreed. "Just don't leave the Cray." He told her
as she stepped behind the cactus and vanished.
	"You could have cleared up that cartoonish speech." Houston
admonished himself. "She sounds like an idiot. Not a very nice reflection
on me, the programmer."
	"Oh, I don't know." His self said thoughtfully. "I kinda like her
that way." He smiled. "Besides, she's in my world, not yours. She's one of
my buddies now."
	"What the hell." Houston shrugged at the desk. "As long as she's
stronger than she was. If someone comes looking for me here, I don't want
them to get into the system."
	"As long as you leave the deck plugged in here, I can handle that."
	"I need you to run for me. We're going to Recombinant Retrovir
Inc."
	"Ooo. I don't know." His self said warily. "Toxic programs around
those datastreams. Stuff that can kill me."
	"Store yourself to a few chips before you go. There's a bunch
plugged into the Cray right now."
	"Well, ok. But you gotta promise to tell me if they ice my ass."
	"Ok. I promise." Houston said solemnly.
	"I suppose we're gonna sneak a peek at Carl Rothchild huh?"
	"You got it bud." Houston said to the screen. "Forget about
Mr.Potatohead right now. I'll have Gloria take care of him later. There's
something more to this than meets the eye. Something I'm not seeing and
Uncle Rex isn't telling me. There is some reason these people want me
dead, and it has nothing to do with ten year old AI programs."
	"Sure." His self nodded, standing. "You wanna ride along?"
	"Yeah."
	His self snapped his fingers in the cartoon scene and cyberspace
suddenly appeared around him on the screen. With the program version of
himself in control, they were whipping through the networks and grids at
terrific speeds, far faster than Houston could respond, causing him to
grab the edge of the desk back in his room, trying to prevent vertigo.
	Seeing the virtual reality icon of Recombinant Retrovir Inc,
represented as their corporate logo hanging in the black 3 dimensional
space of the green lined grid around them, they orbited it for a moment.
	"What do you think?" Houston asked the screen.
	"I try not to." His own disembodied voice came back to him from the
grid around him. It was everywhere.
	"Should we send in a Demon series?"
	"I'm scared they have a Hellhound out here somewhere." His voice
said nervously.
	"Ok. Let's set this up. Run Phone Home. Run Stealth 4. Run
Reflector. Run Speedtrap."
	"Done." His self said causing windows to appear around them
displaying the status of the various programs he had just ordered. "I
think I'm gonna send in a Viral-15."
	"No. It'll fuck the files in there." Houston shook his head.
"Those are what we're here for. Any information might be of help."
	"Then how about a Bloodhound?"
	"Yeah. Ok." Houston agreed watching the icon of a gun-metal grey
robot hound with blue glowing eyes and a neon blue collar take off
running, hunting around the immediate area, another window appearing to
display it's status and what it was finding.
	"Jackhammer?" His voice asked him.
	"Do we have a Worm?"
	"Nope."
	"Jackhammer it is then." Houston sighed, watching the pulses of
energy flying out from a red jackhammer-like object, the streams of white
hot energy bolts wearing away at the datawalls of Recombinant Retrovir
Inc. "How long do you think it'll take?"
	"About a minute or so." His voice said. "It looks like they're
running a datawall strength of about 12. Probably Omega helping him."
	"That asshole." Houston grumbled. "I should have derezzed him right
after I wrote him. I never did like his voice anyway."
	"So what happens after we get inside? Send in a Blue Meanie? An
Alameda College Variant? Pakistani Brain?"
	"Nah." Houston paused thinking a moment. "Let's just try a simple
Trojan Horse. Damn. I wish I had a Worm. You're gonna have to act as a
Meta-Series, taking care of the others and send off a few Data Diddlers to
find any and all files with any of our names in them. Meanwhile, I'm going
to guide a Hunter-Gatherer in and attach a Gotcha to Carl's ass."
	"Sounds ok by me."
	"What do we have in the way of Decryption class programs in case I
may need one?" Houston asked.
	"Only a Raffles strength 5, but you shouldn't need anything more
than that here." His self told him. "Hey. Heads up. We're crashing in."
	"Any alarms?"
	"No. Huh." The voice paused. "Seems we got lucky this time. We're
coming in along side a comsat signal from Mars."
	"Great." Houston said sitting forward, hands poised above the black
glass surface of the desk. "See ya later dude."
	The windows of the programs status vanished except for the one
that contained the program Phone Home, that was a controller program,
which allowed him to place or receive calls while in ComWeb. It had the
tendency to come in handy during runs, and he long ago got into the habit
of running it automatically. It also gave him a strength 2 capability to
intercept and listen in on other calls if he so desired.
	His fingers flew over the keys as he guided the Hunter-Gatherer to
the corporate archives of Recombinant Retrovir, where he was stopped by a
code gate. Letting the red shimmering line of the Hunter-Gatherer stand
vibrating a moment, he called for the Raffles program to run.
	Immediately, it's icon began as a dapper young man dressed in
early 1900's style, walking up to the door asking it key questions to make
it give up it's password. "Is it bigger than a bread box? Is it hot or
cold? Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?" and very quickly the word
appeared in it's status window. As soon as Houston entered the password,
the code gate opened and the man vanished.
	Once inside the Hunter-Gatherer began searching out all files in
the archives with Carl Rothchilds name in them, searching for just one
that might have his PIN in it, and attaching a Gotcha to it, that would
report back to Houston the where abouts of the man whenever he called for
it.
	He then decided he wasn't done though.
	Backing out of the Carl Rothchild personnel file, he checked the
status of the Phone Home program to see if anyone was trying to get a hold
of him, finding the little window/screen in the upper right hand corner of
his vision still blank.
	He called for a Tracer to appear before him, by his fast typing on
the keys of his desk, and gave it the names and internal ID codes of his
AI's to search for.
	Releasing it, some very interesting pathways began to appear
throughout the corporate datacores of Recombinant Retrovir. It looked as
if Carl Rothchild had already been at work using them to do his bidding.
	Once the Tracer program managed to locate an area in the computer
system that looked very much like it must be the terminal in Carl
Rothchild's office, since all of the AI programs had managed to come by
this point at least twice a day, Houston paused to write in a Logic Bomb
at the code to it's access port.
	Looking up, he could see the many windows of information begin
appearing around him again.
	"All done?" His voice asked him.
	"Done." Houston said backing them out of the system. "Did you run
into any trouble?" He asked as the security gates closed down in front of
him one by one as he fast reversed out.
	"Nah."

From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 17b
Date: 1 Aug 1995 15:39:27 -0500

"Ok." Houston said sitting back up at the desk, alert with determination
in his voice. "We're going back in. One of you guys work on Gloria. Turn
her into a Demon Series AI. Succubus. Give her a Killer III, a Dragon, a
Viral-15, and a Poison Flatline. It's time to kill the kids."
	"I'll do it." His first self said producing a keyboard and began
typing at a furious rate. "Gloria old girl, it looks like you're gonna be
the last of our AI's when you're done with this job."
	"You come with me." Houston told his second self still sitting on
the couch. "You're going to run as a Meta-Series. Dump everything except
stealth, utilities, and the controller programs. We're going to run fast
and light."
	"Ready when you are boss." He said standing up as the walls to the
lab disappeared, displaying the cubic space of ComWeb around them.
	"Run Instant Replay. Go." Houston said simply, watching the icons
of programs, databases, datastreams and computer systems flash past at a
dizzying rate. "Check to see if we have any ID codes for long distance
links to their other facilities. We'll go in as a friend."
	"Trojan Horse running." His voice said as they whipped into a
datastream and zoomed into the computer system with ease. "We're in."
	"Run Crystal Ball." Houston said as dozens of tiny screens appeared
around them, each with a tiny video camera scene on it. "Jesus.  Have they
got this place wired or what? Try the next floor up." He said as all the
screens shifted in scene. "Next."
	"There they are." His voice said flashing a red border around one
of the boxes. "Where is Uncle Rex though?"
	"Keep searching for him." Houston told the voice. "You can do it
faster than me."
	"What are they doing?" His voice asked him as the dozens of screens
kept flipping at a terrific rate.
	"Looking for someone?" He asked, guessing. "Guards maybe?'
	"Probably." The voice agreed with him as another screen was
outlined in red and the two were enlarged, placed side by side in a dual
split screen. "Here he is."
	"Setting charges." Houston said conversationally. "Jesus. I hope he
realizes how many other companies share that same tower."
	"Recombinant occupies floors 116 through 140 of Conrad Tower.  He's
not using enough to do any damage to the tower itself." The voice said
assuredly. "He could however take out that and maybe one other floor of
Recombinant."
	"I wonder where the hell everyone Is?" Houston asked suspiciously.
"It's only 11pm. They should be in the middle of shift change. The Eleven
to Seven people taking over. Guards should be everywhere."
	"You mean these people?" A screen windowed, flashing scenes every
half second showing the bloody corpses of guards and civilians with bloody
pistols in their hands.
	"Yuk." Houston said as the window vanished, leaving the split
screen scenes before him. "Give me a window and run News-At-6."
	"Running."
	"Any Medias get a hold of this story?"
	The scene picked up speed in the window, being fast-forwarded,
flashing NuzKlips by at a rate far faster than the human mind could
comprehend.
	"None so far."
	"Is there anyone else on the floor Geisha and his group are on?"
	"Nope."
	"Run Vox Humana."
	"Which speaker?" The voice asked.
	"The nearest one to them idiot." Houston snapped. "Run Soundmachine
so I can hear them."
	"Running."
	"Geisha, what are you doing?" Houston asked the screen, starling
the whole group to swing their weapons to bear on anything that might be
in the area to move, completely missing the camera up above them.
	"Goddamnit! Houston!?" Geisha angrily looked around. "Where the
hell are you?"
	"At home." Houston said simply. "The floor you're on is empty you
know."
	"Oh." Geisha said looking at Dolph and Gary, slight embarrassed.
"Well, we're working our way up to Rex. Ran into some patriots."
	"Hang on a second." He told them. "Run Genie. Get 'em an elevator."
He told himself. "Geisha, there's an elevator coming for you.  Stop right
there and wait." He said watching them slump against the wall tiredly.
	"Can you see Rex too?" Dolph asked.
	"He's wiring some C-6 a few floors above you." Houston explained.
"You're going to have to hurry if you're gonna get out of there alive."
	The elevator door whisked open and they hurried inside. "Go."
Dolph said simply.
	"Check this out." His voice told him displaying a list of titles on
yet another window. "Chips in Carl Rothchilds desk."
	"I gotta have those." Houston said looking at the titles. "Hey
Gary?"
	"Yeah?" The MedTek said looking up at the security camera in the
elevator.
	"When the elevator stops, let them get off and you stay on.
There's something I need for you to get for me."
	"This isn't in the plan" Dolph said looking at the other two in the
elevator with alarm, glancing up at the camera. "If you don't butt out
you're gonna get us all killed."
	"Do you really need Gary for anything more?" Houston asked them.
"It's only going to take a second."
	His own voice interrupted him for a moment. "Gloria has just
killed Judy Garland and Marilyn. She's on the ass of Saint Bernard. She's
already killed the three Heathers."
	"Meet us at the car then." Geisha said trotting out of the elevator
after Dolph, heading down the hall towards Uncle Rex.
	"So now what?" Gary asked impatiently as the elevator shot up two
more floors.
	"I need you to go into Carl Rothchilds office and get something for
me." Houston explained through the elevator's speaker. "Some chips."
	"Jesus Christ." Gary grumbled. "Ok then. Can you get me in there?"
	"Sure." Houston said. "Run Open Sesame." He told his voice, where,
one by one the electronic locks snapped open and the doors to the inner
sanctuary of Carl Rothchild's office opened wide, sliding back into tracks
inside the walls.
	"Miss Kitty and Goober are gone." His voice announced. "Man, she's
on a roll." He said appreciatively.
	"Houston?" His Uncle Rex said to the camera in the stairwell, where
he was standing with Dolph and Geisha.
	"Yeah Uncle Rex?"
	"You have two minutes before it goes."
	"I'll have him out of there and up in the parking lot." Houston
said confidently.
	"Need any help guys?" His other voice asked from somewhere next to
the other. "It looks good. Mr.Potatohead is dead."
	"Good. Get a hold of NebNet KC-4 now. Explain to them what happened
with Carl's little hackers and what they did to the AI's. Maybe they'll
help track down the assholes who lobotomized them."
	"I live to serve boss." The voice said simply then vanishing.
	"Check this out." The other voice said scrolling file names past
him.
	"I can't read that shit. I'm watching Gary." Houston explained
curtly. "What is it? Stuff I might want?"
	"How about Financial Transactions: Black operations
(Assassinations?) Or Business Records: Procurement, Gray Ops: Bribes?
Or..."
	"Ok I got the point." Houston said sharply. "Gary turn right.
Through those doors." He explained watching both screens at once. "Look,
just grab everything you can." He said quickly to himself. "Tell me when
you need more chips."
	"I don't like the looks of any of this." Gary said cautiously,
moving along as swiftly as he could, checking around corners. "Is that his
desk?"
	"Yeah. Upper right hand drawer." Houston told him. "It's a cheap
model. Just kick it and the drawer will snap open."
	Houston watched with nervous tension as Gary did as he had
explained.
	"Oh man." Gary groaned. "I can't sort through all of these."
	"Don't. Just throw all of them in your bag." Houston encouraged him
watching a digital readout timer in the lower corner of his vision.  "Just
dump the chips in. Throw the racks away."
	He watched as Geisha, Dolph, and his Uncle Rex were trotting up
the stairs. Each time they reached a new floor, the scene would flick,
showing them from a new camera angle. Meanwhile, Gary was dumping racks of
chips into his medical bag one after the other and throwing the racks over
his shoulder.
	"The Laser Defense System in the room tracked him." His voice
explained calmly "I used a Dee-2 controller to stop it. I need more
chips."
	"Thanks." Houston sighed in reflex, lifting his head out of the
screen long enough to pull all of the chips off the top of the Cray and
toss them in a pile on the floor, feeling the cool air on his face and
realizing how much he was sweating under stress, grabbing a handful of
fresh chips, snapping them quickly in place and sticking his head back in
the screen. "I'm back." He swallowed.
	"Ok that's it!" Gary shouted into the room.
	"Run straight out to the corridor. Turn left. Turn left again. Up
the stairs." Houston quickly directed him to the exit. "If you have any
boosterware, now's the time to use it."
	Just as Houston said it, the man hit the door to the stairwell.
	He watched in amazement as the man took the stairs three at a
time, puffing, his face ashen and gray as sweat soaked his hair, he swung
around one landing up to another after another in great leaping strides.
It was one of the most amazing feats of physical prowess Houston had seen
in years.
	"I need more chips." The voice told him.
	"Shit!" Houston cursed, repeating the routine of changing out the
chips on top of the Cray, tossing the filled ones on the floor and
snapping in fresh chips quickly, hitting the soft switch in his mind to
activate the adrenal pump to give him his own burst of adrenalin. "Ok."
	Just as Houston stuck his head back in the screen, he was able to
see Gary take the last few stairs in a single burst of energy, flying out
the door into the air-park lot.
	Seeing that Gary was safe and climbing into his Uncles car,
Houston watched as they shot out over the Kansas City skyline, forcing a
great trapped sigh of relief from his mouth where he had evidently been
holding his own breath through the last few moments.





From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 18a
Date: 1 Aug 1995 15:45:01 -0500

Chapter Eighteen
	"A bit tense are we? 'Trust the force Luke'" His voice teased him.
"I need more... No, never mind. There went the system." His voice said as
the walls of his lab began to appear around his self and his vision again,
flipping up like a prefab domicile being put together in fast forward,
indicating that the connection had been cut, and that he was no longer
logged to the Recombinant Retrovir superframe computer, nor ComWeb.
	Houston sighed and closed his eyes, swallowing hard, opening them
to see both his selves and Gloria sitting on the simulated couch in the
lab.
	"So how'd it go?" Houston croaked.
	"Fine." One of his selves said speaking up. "She got 'em all."
	"Trim her back down and put her back in Excelsis Deo please."
Houston said tiredly. "One thing I do NOT need is a Bitch-On-Wheels loose
in the Net right now." He stretched a bit. "Run through the video
sequences, the events of Glorias runs, the data we've gathered and give me
a briefing later. I gotta go lay down."
	"Say good night Gracie." His self smiled at him opening a
Coca-cola.
	"What are you eating?" Houston asked the version of his self
sitting on the end of the couch crunching loudly.
	"Pez." He smiled. "Want some?"
	"We'll go over tactical in the morning. Good night Gracie." He said
hitting the power stud on the Cray and pushing himself back from the desk.
	"Bad run?" Dr.Forrester asked from the floor flicking his tail
around as he watched Houston climb into bed and collapse.
	"Clearly not the best." Houston sighed with his face against the
pillow. "Wake me when they get home." He said drifting immediately off to
sleep.
	"Houston?" The tiger said gently nudging his arm. "They're
landing."
	"Ok." Houston coughed, sitting up in bed and staring dully at the
big cat before yawning. "I gotta get out of this business."
	"You and me both kid." The tiger smiled sitting back on his
haunches. "But never let me hear ya apologize Mister." The big cat said
imitating John Wayne's voice. "It's a sign of weakness."
	Padding into the living room, Houston called on the TV and flopped
down on one of the leather couches. "CNN Breadbasket." He yawned as he
opened the cigarette box on the coffee table, taking one out and puffing
on it until it lit. "NuzKlips version."
	The dizzying feeling of the nicotine in his new body made him feel
a lot better, since he had forgotten his Dynorphin patches beside his bed.
Blowing a large blue plume of smoke out into the room, he decided he would
probably regain his addictions simply out of comfort.  One always needs
vices.
	He started to lay back down on the couch, but instead pulled his
feet up in the couch and watched multiple video images intently as on-site
Medias from NuzKlips, singly and in teams, dressed in tasteful middle
class ballistic cloth suits vied for their stations attention making
suppositions and offered hypotheses about the unexplained disaster that
had just recently befallen the Conrad Tower.
	Houston could hear his uncle and the group descending the spiral
staircase as his mind continued trying to reach for consciousness.
Shaking his head did not seem to help clear the sluggishness away.
	"You look like you need a doctor." Dolph teased Gary. "You're
starting to look like a Playskool Weeble."
	"I Am a doctor." Gary grumbled. "Keep off my back."
	"So why the long face?" Dolph asked amazed. "I feel like a million
bucks!"
	"How'd we do?" Rex asked in his smooth as silk voice that rolled
over Houston like warm butter as Rex put his coat on a large wooden rack
at the foot of the stairs, then headed towards his room to change.
	"I don't know yet." Houston called out. "I just started watching.
The Media bitches at NuzKlips are still at each other's throats over who
gets first round rights to the video pool. It's the battle of the network
has-beens right now."
	"Bes Isis will probably win." Geisha commented pulling off body
armor and leather hanging it on the wall rack. "They usually give her the
better stories. Or else she's just a helluva fighter."
	"Here's your stuff." Gary said turning his shoulder bag upside down
in front of Houston, dumping it's contents of flashchips, medical supplies
and all in Houstons lap. "I'm for outa here. Unless there's something more
you need me for." He said tiredly.
	"You were right to be afraid." Houston said trying to console the
man as he put everything back into the bag that had been thrown on top of
the pile. "You can stay here tonight if you'd like."
	"Sit down my little sock monkey." Dolph flopped into a chair
opening a beer. "Consider this Commercial Sign."
	"Let him go if he wants to." Rex told them all sitting down on the
couch opposite Houston, pulling his comfortable boots back on, now back in
his home attire of blue jeans and blue work shirt. "His days as Dougie
Howser are over. We won."
	"Thanks for everything Houston." Gary said going into the VR phone
booth to call a cab. "You've been very kind to me."
	"You have no clue." Dolph grumbled, his mood swinging erratically
from just a few seconds ago. "You're too fucking weird." He said under his
breath though only he and Houston could hear as he sniffed cocaine from a
little spoon. "Ah! Helps build strong bodies twelve ways."
	"He may be weird, but it results in creativity." Rex commented
defending Gary to Dolph.
	"Is Gary going to be safe?" Geisha asked Rex as he came over to sit
beside him. Rex just nodded in affirmation as Gary came out of the booth.
	"Houston, I left a number of a good friend of mine in case you need
another MedTek. He's good. We've shared contracts before." Gary paused.
"Maybe I'll see you again after I come back to EarthSystem. That is, if I
return to HomeSystem at all. I may just decide to stay out there."
	"Let's hope not." Houston smiled. "Not at your rates."
	Gary grinned at the inside joke he and Houston shared.
	Dolph opened his mouth to make some arcane remark or sarcastic
comment, but Gary beat him to it this time.
	"I've got Movie Sign." Gary said as he stuck up his hand to silence
Dolph. "Deal with it Pink Boy." He smiled and then left, going out the
front door just as the cab entered the driveway.
	"I'm gonna have to drop a house on her sister!" Dolph laughed.
"Imagine! Why the very thought! Workers out there chafing under the spiked
heel of capitalism, reaping natures rich bounty, and she wants to drop us
like a bad habit!" He laughed again loudly. "Indeed!"
	"Shut up you insensitive dolt." Houston said disgustedly as he sat
examining the titles on the flashchips. "And lay off the Mescaline Jello."
He added as CNN began to cycle through the story again, turning Uncle
Rex's hit on Recombinant's KC Branch offices into something quite a bit
more than it actually was. But, that is their job.
	The reality of it was that corporations got hit like this at least
once a month, in Kansas City alone. Maybe not this big, where a few floors
of the tower actually got scorched, but still, corporate hits happened all
the time. It was the price of being an international entity, with money
and secrets, on a planet faced with growing unemployment. In a world with
a limited economy, even if that world was made up of hundreds of
StarSystems and was hundreds of thousands of light years across, there is
still only so much pie to go around.
	Dr.Forrester sauntered into the room casually looking over the
pile of flashchips as Houston picked them up one at a time examining their
titles.
	"The boy wonder and his sidekick Tony the Tiger." Dolph laughed
popping the top on a plastic beer can. "They're Grrreat!"
	"I live a charmed life I'm sure." Dr.Forrester said absently.
"What's he on? Window-Pane?" The Siberian Tiger asked Geisha who just
shrugged.
	"So who are you tonight Missy?" Geisha looked tiredly over at
Dolph. "Inga The Ice Queen? or He-Man Mistress of the Universe?"
	"Why Les!" Dolph looked sarcastically shocked. "I feel used." He
said half smiling. "Why I ever married you I'll never know. My next
happily ever after husband won't treat me this way."
	"I'm just misty over it." Geisha snorted. "I'll probably have bad
dreams."
	"Love springs eternal." Rex mumbled getting up to get another beer.
	"So Baloo, do you have all the Bear necessities?" Dolph laughed
snorting cocaine off the spoon, grinning at Houston.
	"Stop it." Growled Dr.Forrester.
	"Stopping." Dolph grinned sinking back in the chair.
	"It doesn't look like they're going to get the story straight for a
few hours yet." Geisha said taking off his leather pants and boots,
obviously fatigued after their run, laying back down on the couch in his
socks and underwear, picking up the remote now that he was comfortable.
"I think there's a George Romero film festival on tonight."
	"On Network 54 there's a Winona Ryder film festival." Dolph sighed
repeating Geisha strip down to socks and underwear, bundling his clothes
into a make-shift pillow, and laying down on the carpet, casually
displaying numerous thick body scars from years past, dissecting him into
zones.
	"What's the diff?" Geisha shrugged stretching out his long dark
hairy legs, propping his big feet up on the arm of the couch.
	"You're a Marine?" Dr.Forrester asked Dolph. "Where'd you get all
the scars?" The tiger asked recognizing the laser ID scan on the mans
right forearm that was usually hidden beneath the heavy thick black
leather jacket or at least beneath a long sleeve khaki shirt.
	"Don't call me Marine." Dolph said seriously, coldly, staring at
the TV, avoiding the big cats gaze. "Besides, do you really think that I
would share something like that with someone like yourself?"
	"I think I saw this on Star Trek once." Rex smiled getting up and
heading down the hall. "I'm going to bed guys. Good night."
	"So carry the weight of the world Atlas." Dr.Forrester shrugged at
Dolph padding away into Houston's room. "You think I give a shit?"
	"Piss off Teddy Ruxpin." Dolph grumbled still staring at the
screen. "Les, see if there isn't a bottle of Jack Daniels under that
seat." He mumbled with a furrowed brow. "I'd rather be playing Judy
Garland than Dr.Doolittle."
	"Maybe you weren't beat up enough as a child." Dr.Forrester said
sticking his head back out into the hall again. "Are you disgusted and
filled with self loathing yet?"
	"Sam I Am Green Eggs & Ham." Dolph sighed quietly as he sat staring
at the TV, chugging on the bottle of Jack. His eyes were slightly
unfocused, betraying that his thoughts were somewhere else, and that he
was not really watching TV at all.
	"I guess about a half an hour before they end up killing each
other." Geisha said calmly propped up on one elbow, looking casually over
at Houston. "What do you think?"
	"Dr.Forrester won't hurt him." Houston said confidently, then added
quickly... "At least not physically."
	"Meanwhile, suppressing her own dreams, she leads a quiet life of
desperation." Dolph said churlishly to no one in particular, then glancing
over at Geisha. "After her Sealy Posturepedic childhood."
	"He's in a mood." Geisha scowled. "Let's take that stuff in your
room and have a look at it." He said in a low voice.
	"Ok." Houston agreed.
	"But darling! Aren't you interested in the fact that I isolate a
nucleotide today?" Dolph laughed. "Hi. I'm Sally. Like so many other
cattle, I'm an alcoholic." He waved the bottle at them with a brittle grin
spread across his face that didn't show in the eyes. "But of course, I've
changed all the names to protect the innocent you know."
	"Come on fellah." Houston sighed good naturedley. "Lighten up a
bit."
	"How'd you know my name was Fellah?" Dolph looked slyly over his
shoulder at Houston.
	"You're no longer making any sense." Houston said shaking his head,
turning away, and leading Geisha down the hall.
	"Cute Girl." Dolph snarled. "Go take a powder."
	"What all is he on?" Houston asked as he quietly shut the door to
his room, sealing himself, Geisha and Dr.Forrester in quiet.
	"Who knows?" Geisha shrugged. "Horse? Prozac and Valium? It's his
way of dealing with things. He's not really physically dangerous when he's
in these phases. Just mean. Once you get used to him, he gets worse."
	"Well, hopefully he'll be sleeping it off shortly." Houston said
sitting down at the Cray, this time activating the big flat wall screen
instead of the Radius-241 screen that only he could use. "Jesus. It smells
like a locker room in here. Dr.Forrester, turn up the air filtration
system. Geisha kill the lights."
	"Done." The big cat said as the room went dark.
	"I think it's your breath." Geisha kidded as he pulled up a chair
beside Houston. "It smells like mummy meat." He grinned. "So show me your
system."
	"Well, it's basically just an old Cray Seven Hundred Series
superframe home computer system." Houston explained. "Removable datacores
in cubes of flashchips cased in plasticene for when relocation is needed."
	"Oh! Is that all?" Geisha joked.
	"It's what they used to call portability."


From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 18b
Date: 1 Aug 1995 15:46:37 -0500

 Geisha was a very good looking man. By anyone's standards. His heart was
even bigger than his brain at times. Houston thought perhaps that was what
he most saw in Geisha. His enduring loyalty through whatever crisis came
up. Houston couldn't do much better than a man like this...
	"What's it like to interface with yourself as a program?" Geisha
smiled, interlocking his fingers behind his head, making his chest seem
even hairier and broader in the shadows. Thick slabs of muscle lit by the
glow of the wallscreen could easily be seen beneath the dense carpet of
fur. He had been shaping up since they had first come to this place, and
it was beginning to show just how powerful Geisha really was. "Are you
like real in there?" He grinned nodding at the combat cyberdeck.
	"Yeah." Houston smiled nodding at Geisha who was making him
increasingly uncomfortable as he sat there talking so casually. Houston
could feel the warmth from the man's body in the darkness and felt a
familiar stirring down between his legs.
	 Not now! He cursed himself. "It's all virtual environment in
there." His voice squeaked momentarily, causing Houston to blush in the
darkness, as he ignored it and continued to talk as nonchalant as
possible. "It's as real as you and me and Dr.Forrester sitting here
talking together."
	"What kind of environments do you have stored?" Dr.Forrester asked,
laying down on the bed casually.
	"My old lab I wrote when I was just a kid." Houston explained,
trying to keep his mind off the sexy stud sitting so remote and
indifferent next to him sedately conversing dressed in nothing but
underwear, socks and thick black hair all over his body. "And another I
call Excelsis Deo. That's where Gloria is stored. And my old apartment."
He said flipping another chip in the first slot, noticing his own hand was
trembling. Geisha's presence was unnerving Houston to say the least.
	"Your apartment at Broadway Towers?" Geisha asked quietly.  "Across
the hall from mine?"
	"Yeah." Houston nodded in the darkness looking up at the glow on
the screen, trying to read the words and understand them, desperate to
keep his mind off Geisha's body. He and Geisha had never been to bed
together in all the years they had known each other. They were just
friends. Just friends. So why hadn't he noticed Geisha like this before?
	"So you could put my apartment in there too?" Geisha mused
thoughtfully. "And just kinda join them together through the hallway like
they were?"
	Geisha... Don't do this to me right now... What are you talking
about?
	"Yeah, well, everything I could remember about it." Houston agreed.
"It would only take up another flashchip in storage space. But why?"
	"Oh I don't want you to do it, I was just curious as to how big of
a place can you build in those virtual environments." Geisha shrugged.
"What's the limit?" He asked like the curious Techie he was. This both
relieved and angered Houston...
	"None. Only storage space." Houston explained. "The Nebula Networks
are entire universes of existence. Co-Op data-fortresses."
	"But how can you get all that detail?" Geisha asked wrinkling his
nose up playfully. "I mean, how can anyone really know all the details of
say, a tree. All the branches, the leaves, the cells, you know. Stuff like
that."
	"Well, things like that, background stuff, are done via files of
fractal geometry and ray-traced images. Stuff that's already drummed up
and stored, to be called up on a moments notice. just for use as props.
Kinda like the commercials on TV. As you move around in the environment,
it's constantly changing, appearing to you as if you're changing space.
Actually, you can never reach the event horizon."
	"Huh?"
	"The edge of the virtual universe you're in at the time."
	"Oh yeah. Now I remember." Geisha rolled his eyes. "The event
horizon."
	"You don't have a clue as to what I'm talking about do you?"
Houston grinned over at him in the dark.
	"I'm the hardware man." Geisha sighed. "I'll leave the thinking to
you." He said stretching and yawing, giving Houston a wink before
continuing. Which immediately set Houstons nerves on full alert again.
Again, he was suddenly so Aware of Geisha sitting there, sitting so close,
so naked, so warm... "At this point I'm too burned out to do much of
anything except sleep. I better go collect up Sleeping Beauty."
	"Are you guys sleeping in Dad's room?" Houston asked uneasily.
	"Yeah." Geisha nodded standing in the doorway leaning against the
door frame. "It's where Rex put us up. If it bothers you, I'll understand.
We can either swap rooms with you or use the living room if you'd like."
He offered cautiously.
	"No, that's ok." Houston paused. "There's really no problem. Good
night Geisha." He said sincerely.
	"You sure?" Geisha asked sensitively.
	"Yeah." Houston nodded. "See you in the morning."
	Houston woke to find Dr.Forrester curled at the foot of the bed,
his big broad head propped on his front paws, watching Houston open his
eyes, waking slowly as usual.
	From the dull morning light filtering in through the fiber-optic
panels on the ceiling, and glancing at the digital numerals glowing on the
wall. Houston realized he woke up early. So early in fact, he doubted that
anyone else would be up yet.
	"Why didn't you ask him last night?" The tiger asked in a low
voice, not moving from the spot where he lay. "He was wanting you too, you
know. I could smell the scent on both of you."
	"To the point huh?" Houston yawned. "I don't know." Houston said
looking over to make sure his door was fully closed. "I wanted to...
There's a lot I just don't know about Geisha and me yet. Or me and anyone
for that matter."
	"You know, he's clean if that's what you're worried about."
Dr.Forrester said gently. "I went over both of their blood work-ups
myself. They also passed their polygraphs. Neither has had any body fluid
contact in the past 4 to 6 years." The tiger went on. "With the exception
of casual skin surface contact, using the same dishes, toilets, etc.
between Geisha and yourself before your resurrection and cloning." He
explained. "The same for casual contact between he and Dolph. I still
didn't detect anything significant though. A few minor cold and flu
strains is all. I can fix you up with vaccinations against those though.
They've not had any intimate contact with each other either."
	"How do you know?" Houston asked slyly, both shocked and amused.
	"I know." The big cat pricked up his ears and flicked them smiling.
	"That's not it Doctor." Houston yawned peeling the backing from a
LoDose Dynorphin patch and sticking it to his chest just below the
chipware socket where the flesh was still tender, not to mention the
bruising around his sternum where they had removed the rib to make room
for the chipware socket.
	"Then what is it?" The big cat asked carefully.
	"I've known Geisha for a few years now." Houston began. "I've got
to know him well enough to know I'd like to know him a few more. You know?
I really like him. A lot. I've grown used to having the big goof in my
life."
	"So you're afraid it may go bad, and you'd lose what you have now."
	"Well, yeah. It scares me to think about it sometimes." Houston
said looking up at the fiber-optic ceiling, seeing the thousands of
plastic dots, each a miniature dawn. "I think this may be the real thing
doctor."
	"As serious as you're taking all this, I'd tend to agree with you."
The big cat smiled at him. "There is so much more you could have from
going that little bit further Houston." He paused. "What's the worst thing
that could happen if it didn't work out after a few years?"
	"I'd lose what little I have with him right now." Houston said
thinking. "We're very different people, Geisha and I. We're both
politically the same, being guildsmen, but he's Out-guild. I've always
heard that's a no-no. Plus the fact that I'm a Reorganized-Mormon and he
doesn't even understand any of that." He sighed furrowing his brow. "I
don't like thinking about what happens if we might not be as compatible as
I would want us to be. Hell, we might even end up hating each others guts
after a while. I've seen it happen in a lot of couples before."
	"Differences are what keeps life interesting between people." The
tiger said inching his way up closer beside Houston, speaking in a quiet
tone, keeping his voice low so they could speak in private. "Sure, you'll
have problems and disagreements, but it's the shared crises, not the
shared joys that bind people together for long periods of time." The cat
explained, then lowered his voice to a more serious tone. "I think it's
time you should seriously consider a lover Houston. I think the two of you
would work out fine together. There are a lot of benefits to having
someone 'There' for you."
	"It'd be nice. I'm so lonely for someone Doctor, you can't
imagine." Houston sighed quietly staring into the eyes of his Cyborg
friend. "I need someone in the worst way. I have for too long of a time
now. Try as I might, learning to live alone just doesn't seem to want to
stick with me. The loneliness always seems to come back sooner or later.
Usually when I come down off a good high, or I sober up."
	"I know it's rough getting close to someone Houston, especially
when you've lost as many people from your life as you have. All your
friends from your childhood are either dead or in jail. Plus the fact that
you lost your parents at such an early age..." Dr.Forrester said
encouraging him to open up and talk about the pain, thereby (hopefully)
releasing it. "At times, it must seem as if you've lost everyone you've
ever loved. It can be rough."
	"Yeah." Houston closed his eyes and swallowed, snuggling down into
the down filled comforter. "Mom when I was eight and Dad when I was
sixteen. But at least I have you and Uncle Rex back in my life again."
	"Yes, you do." The cat put his paws up on Houston's chest. "We've
always been here for you Houston. I'd like to be able to say we always
will be, but we both know that's not true. You also understand that we
can't give you everything you need as a mature young man."
	"I know..." Houston agreed. "It's kinda scary I guess. You know,
opening up and trusting someone again. Hoping he doesn't go and die on me.
Or get killed."
	"Rewards require risks Houston. You know that." The tiger winked at
him. "Don't you think Leslie is worth that risk? He's a very good man.
Good looking, warm hearted, kind, intelligent..."
	"Why are you so worried about my love life Doctor?" Houston smiled
at him. "I would think you would be on Uncle Rex's side in this matter,
and want me to remain a virgin for the rest of my life. A new body got me
a new cherry you know." He quipped.
	"Your uncle and I agree and disagree on a great many things
Houston. It's part of knowing someone as long as we've known each other.
We've been friends for many years." The cat explained. "On this however,
we are in complete agreement. Leslie Dow would be good for you. And he
would be good To you as well."
	"Uncle Rex said that?" Houston asked dubiously, smiling out of the
side of his face disbelieving. "I think you're mistaken this time Doctor.
Uncle Rex wants me to remain celibate. I'm surprised he hasn't wanted me
to take a vow to that effect. Now that this new body of mine is virgin,
he'll be pushing it even more so."
	"Your uncle is simply concerned about you Houston. As I am." The
tiger stared at him. "We both love you a great deal. Your uncle just shows
his concern by more dominating means." He smiled at Houston. "But finding
your happiness through love and affection, we are in agreement.  We just
want to make sure you don't get hurt in the process. So your uncle comes
down a little hard sometimes is all. He means well though.  I've made him
understand that you're no longer a child, and that you do know what safer
sex is all about."
	"I know Uncle Rex means well, and can be a hard ass..." Houston
sighed staring at the ceiling. "I'll just have to play this by ear for a
while. Even if this might be the right thing, I don't want to rush it. I
don't want to rush Me I should say."
	"I understand." The big cat licked his face affectionately. "I
think you're making this into something more grave than what it should be,
but, you've not had that much experience in affairs of the heart. So just
take your time and make sure You are comfortable with it all."
	"I will." Houston said hugging the big cat around the neck.
"There's just a lot of shit going down right now is all. This shit with
Miss Delta and Carl Rothchild, then being resurrected, starting life over
again after Broadway Towers... I'm not even sure I'm still under contract
with Kansas City Inc anymore." Houston sighed. "I've got to get some other
things straightened out first before I consider a relationship with
Geisha. I can't ask him to share a life with me, when I don't even have my
life in order yet."
	"Life is never ordered. All is chaos." The big cat licked him.
	



From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 19a
Date: 1 Aug 1995 17:48:15 -0500

Chapter Nineteen
	Fixing breakfast for them all, instead of just microwaving some
frozen peel-a-meals, made Houston feel even better. It brought back nice
memories of a time when he was young, when he shared breakfast every
morning with his mother and father, up until he was eight, then it was a
ritual with his father and uncle. "Fixing breakfast" seemed like a good
stable Family thing to do this morning.
	"Find everything ok?" Uncle Rex asked coming into the kitchen clean
shaven and sharp looking even in his usual attire of faded old, blue jeans
and worn soft blue work shirt, standing in the same old comfortable cowboy
boots he wore around the house, the old leather they were made of so soft
and broken in they were like calf skin. Rex had those mature good looks
that Houston admired. He could see the same looks in Geisha in that they
both had that same short curly coal black hair with a hint of salt and
pepper spread throughout, and a dignified gray tastefully suggested at the
temples.
	"Yeah." Houston smiled warmly, in a sincerely good mood even
without drugs, dishing out bacon and eggs onto a plate with silver dollar
pancakes for his uncle. "Everything was in the same place it was 16 years
ago." He laughed. "You're a creature of habit Uncle Rex."
	"That I am Honey." He laughed gently pouring orange juice and milk
into their glasses, from the pitchers on the table where Houston had
already set the table for the four of them earlier.
	"Good morning." Geisha said coming around the corner, wiping sleep
from his eyes, in clean clothes and his hair combed, ready for the day and
what it may bring. "Is there any coffee?" He asked sleepily, looking
around the kitchen for a cup.
	"Yep!" Houston said pouring coffee into Geisha's cup as Geisha held
on to it, glancing briefly into Geisha's eyes before turning back to sit
down at the table laid out before them. "You were late getting here
though, so you'll have to serve yourself sleepy-head."
	"Not a bit of a problem." Geisha said enthusiastically picking up
one plate of food after another, portioning a bit of everything onto his
own plate. Houston was glad to see his friend eating so heartily. Not like
a few weeks ago when Geisha would eat like an offworld herbivore.  Perhaps
he could change a few habits in the man yet...
	"Miss Thing should be in here after she pulls herself together."
Geisha laughed and then flinched, suddenly realizing that Rex might not
want to hear the Gay world's slang of transposing pronouns and camping it
up. "Sorry Rex." He paused looking down, feeling embarrassed.
	"Don't worry about it." Rex laughed good-naturedly. "Over the
years, you begin to realize you can't change the world to fit your ideals,
and things quit bothering you after a while. I'm used to it by now.
Besides, at the risk of sounding cliche', some of my best friends were
Gay."
	"Tell me I smell Bloody Marys." Came the deep booming resonant
voice of Dolph as he rounded the corner, wiping a hand over his sleepy and
perpetually unshaven face. He never seemed to let his beard grow on in,
but just shaved often enough that it always looked like he was growing
one. Though he was clean, having just showered, his face seemed to be
covered by a constant 3 day beard growth.
	"Vodka is in the cabinet down below the refrigerator." Rex offered.
"I think there's mixer down there too. If not, there's tomato juice in the
refrigerator. You'll have to roll it around to find it though."
	"God. I'm hung over like a bear this morning." Dolph shook his head
slowly, pulling out the vodka from the cabinet beneath the horizontal
refrigerator, not finding the hoped for mixer, scrolling the shelves of
the refrigerator up and around until he came to the tomato juice. "But
that's life in the fast lane. Stoli huh?"
	"One acquires certain tastes." Rex laughed at him. "I think there's
some Rot-gut left over from a BYOB party in the liquor cabinet if it's
going to worry you. You don't get sick on the good stuff though." He
smiled.
	"No no!" Dolph put up a hand smiling, tasting it. "Ah! perfect."
He said sitting down at the table, setting the heavy crystal rock-glass in
the center of his plate, reaching into his pockets and pulling out dozens
of different pills.
	"Better living through chemistry." Dolph said to everyone at the
table who sat silently staring at him. "Something old, something new,
something borrowed, something blue." He grinned and washed the handful of
pills down in one gulp, using his cocktail as a chaser.
	"What was the black one?" Geisha asked him as Dolph got up to fix
another Bloody Mary, and then began to fill his plate with real food as
everyone else was well into their meal.
	"Black beauty." He arched an eyebrow at Geisha. "Want one?"
	"Nah." Geisha shook his head. "I was just curious."
	"Take one of those at 6am, and at midnight you're still gnashing
your teeth together." Rex said casually. "A guaranteed eighteen straight
hours of sheer lightspeed. Sometimes Les, life just doesn't get much
better than that." He smiled.
	"You want one Uncle Rex?" Dolph grinned holding out the bottle to
him, his gray eyes bright and sparkling now as the chemical reality
quickly began to take hold.
	"Sure!" Rex nodded, taking the bottle. "I'll do one with you."
	"Uncle Rex!" Houston choked in surprise. "I didn't know you did
dope!" He looked over at Geisha with his mouth hanging open, not knowing
how to react.
	"I do a lot of things you will never know about." His uncle winked
at him. "Uncle Rex has a life too you know. I'm only 48 Honey." He
laughed.
	Working on his third cocktail and his second helping of breakfast
Dolph was feeling better. "So what's first on the agenda boys?"
	"Well, I got some deck work to do." Houston said finishing his
plate, sitting back with his coffee mug held in one hand, his arm resting
casually on the back of the chair. "I need to go ahead and finish my
contract with Kansas City Inc, and I need some answers."
	"Like what kind of answers?" His uncle asked sipping at his own
coffee.
	"Who is still alive out there wanting to flatline me?" Houston
asked straight out, staring his uncle in the eye. "Is Carl Rothchild? I
have a Gotcha on his ass so I can find out easily enough. But what about
Justin Smith the CyberForm Enforcer? Or Harry DuPont the corporate cop?
Miss Delta? And mostly, Why are they still hunting me?"
	"Rothchild and his gang are still alive." His uncle answered
honestly. "They move faster than I gave them credit for." He shrugged.
"But we'll take care of it. Don't worry honey."
	"I'm not worried Uncle Rex." Houston explained pouring more coffee.
"I'm bored. I'm fully recovered from the cybernetic enhancements.  I need
to know what's going on out there."
	"I'd feel a whole helluva lot better if you'd work here in the
house at least until your next clone is finished. Just in case." His uncle
admitted. "I don't want to take a chance on losing you again honey."
	"I know." Houston sighed. "I guess I can go for that much, but I
need information in the worst way. For instance; where the hell is
everyone? Last night you told Gary that it was over and we'd won. Today
you tell me Rothchild and his gang are still alive. I need to find out for
myself, and that way I'll know for sure." He said decisively.
	"You'll find that truth changes to meet the needs of the moment."
Uncle Rex smiled at Houston. "I'm sorry to have deceived you, but I didn't
want you to worry too much over this." Rex explained. "Gary was burning
out fast. I guess I pushed him too hard."
	"What about everything else?"
	"Well honey, I just don't have the answers to those questions, so
you'll have to dig them up for yourself." Rex shrugged. "I can tell you
that a buddy of mine in Nairobi said they tracked us to the field through
cyberspace by using the decks ID signal, which was matched to your old
PIN, when the engineer at the arcology tried to launder the transaction."
	"I figured as much." Houston said glumly.
	"Is this the same guy who ran a make on me?" Dolph asked from end
of the table sitting opposite Geisha. "If it is, I'd believe the guy." He
winked at Houston with a kink in his smile. "The man is a fucking
magician. He can find files that have been erased for years."
	"I may need to talk to him." Houston said thoughtfully.
	"Uh, he's not likely to want to talk to you honey." Rex began
gently. "If you need answers, I can get them out of him, but he's kind of
a recluse. He'll only deal with people he's worked with before. From the
war days."
	"Oh." Houston nodded. He understood independents and their little
quirks all too well. He also knew you had to play by their rules if you
played ball with them at all.
	"Well, I think I can find out for myself. But if I can't, I just
might have you find out a few things for me." Houston smiled.
	After breakfast, Houston held a conference in his old apartment at
Broadway Towers, now within the confines of a single flashchip within the
combat cyberdeck.
	"So what are those?" Houston asked his two selves as he phased his
mind into the apartment where they were talking about program listings on
the wallscreen.
	"Kachina's of the Southwest. Our next line of AI's."
	"This is Crow Mother. She's the mother of all Kachinas. The Owl, he
spies on the clown Kachinas and hoots disapproval if they are noisy or
misbehave. The fierce Black Ogre demands food from the children and
threatens to eat them if not satisfied."
	"The others: Aholi, Bean Dancer, Hochani, Hu' Zuni Warrior, Kachin
Mana, Silent Warrior, Heheya, and He'-he'-e we're still working on."
	"Sounds cool." Houston nodded approval in the artificial
environment of his old apartment. "Let me know how they turn out." He said
fixing a Johnny Walker Red & Water and lighting a simulated cigarette,
sitting down in his favorite chair.
	This was the life. All your needs, vices, want, and desires met
with only a wish. He need only think of something and it was made
available either through "magic" (Snapping ones fingers and making it
appear instantly) or by clever program editing whereby he wanted
something, and the apartment environment program would make it be
delivered in some more believable form. (Like a delivery person coming to
the door.)
	Houston now interfaced directly with the cyberdeck through his new
neuralware. The superconductivity of the new stuff was quite a bit better
than the biocircuitry of his old body. It was fast. Not only was it
faster, but the resolution was a thousand times better. Of course, the
cybernetic technology that made his biocircuitry possible had advanced by
15 years as well, so that might have something to do with it.
	"I need you to put them on hold for a while though." Houston spoke
up again. "We've got work to do."
	"I've caught up on our back-log at City-Hall if that's what you're
worried about." One of his selves said shutting the big screen off and
sitting back on the couch, turning his full attention to Houston.  "From
the tone of her memo, Jess just thinks we're working from home for a
while. Hell, she doesn't even know the apartment was wiped out. I've had
our home unit ID forwarded to the combat deck for quite a while now."
	"I'll tell you what, why don't we just go ahead and finish off
redesigning City-Halls billing system and go ahead and complete the
contract. Hows that sound?" He asked the self that seemed to be taking
care of work related matters. It was completely impossible to tell them
apart since the only difference in the two of them was about three hours
of history one had over the other. "I want to move on." Houston explained.
	"Sure." The self shrugged. "I can have it for you by this
afternoon. Two or maybe three realtime hours. Are you sure you don't want
to stay on the payroll, showing a steady income on the records? I can
deliver periodic updates to the system if you'd like."
	"No. I want out of there. I can fix up some income records if
people start getting nosy into my personal funds and cash flow." Houston
shrugged. "Life is really changing for me right now. You might check
around and see if GEM needs any database management upgrades done in their
credit card systems. If they don't think they do, show them how they're
wrong." He winked.
	"Sure boss." His self nodded smiling, getting up and fixing himself
a cocktail as well, doing a line of simulated cocaine off the bar that was
laid out already waiting.
	Watching the behavior of his Mindread Ghost constructs, Houston
supposed that he too would construct as many distractions as possible in a
world that he had total control over, moved as fast as light and was
unlimited by space.
	"See ya when I get done. If you're not jacked into the deck, I'll
contact you through the wallscreen. Later!" His self said smiling and
vanishing before them.
	"As for you, we need to go out gathering data today." Houston
said blowing smoke out into the room. "I need to find out everything I
can on what Carl Rothchild





From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 19b
Date: 1 Aug 1995 17:49:46 -0500

"What's up?" Dr.Forrester asked calmly.
	"Well Doctor, you always complain about never getting out enough,
so now's your chance." Houston said tossing the black canvass bag down and
holding the cards cupped in his hands.
	"I have never complained about not getting out Houston." The cat
said with conviction. "I've already seen and done it all. That which I
haven't, I don't care to. You young shits just irritate me anymore." He
smiled. "What is it you're needing done though?"
	"Remember the hotel room I stayed in?" Houston asked looking over
at Geisha. "Where we came in through the balcony door?"
	"Yeah." Geisha said furrowing his brow at the memory. "The twelfth
floor wasn't it? I don't know the room number though. Sorry."
	"It was room 1208." Houston said holding out his hand. "Here's the
key This is the credit card and alias the room was reserved under."  He
said handing Geisha the cards. "I need you and Dr.Forrester to go check me
out of the hotel and get my stuff."
	"Easy enough." Geisha said slipping the cards in his shirt pocket.
"What kind of stuff is there that is so important?"
	"There's a black nylon gear bag there. It looks something like this
one." He said kicking the black canvass bag. "Everything in it can trace
me to somewhere." Houston said seriously. "I don't like that. Also, you'll
have to take apart the wallscreen in the room. Inside the maintenance
panel you'll find my portable VR terminal. Get it too."
	"Anything else?" The tiger asked. "I take it you're trying to hide
a trail that's very cold." He said shifting on his front paws.
	"Yeah, well." Houston nodded. "That's the general idea anyway. I
won't ask you to scrub down the room or anything since the cleaning 'Bots
will have already taken care of that. Hopefully anyway. But do bring back
anything and everything that is evidence that someone was there."
	"Got it chief." Geisha smiled. "Anything else?"
	"Yes." Houston paused. "I don't know how you're going to do it, but
we have to get back that Salvador Dali flashchip set from the Engineers
Arcology."
	"You've got to be fucking me." Geisha said in amazement. "It's
under a 12 ton rock dropped from orbit. Remember?"
	"I doubt very seriously that Engineers would leave their arcology
in a mess like that." Houston frowned. "Would they? Or is the
superstructure under it so complex that you won't need street access
anymore?"
	"You saw that huh?" Geisha grinned mischievously. "You're not
supposed to know it exists that deep. Officially, we have just a normal 10
or 12 floor sub-basement." He said blushing crimson. Houston thought he
looked cute.
	"I saw it all right." Houston smiled back. "But that kids toy can
bring up questions from an investigation that I would rather not have
asked. I certainly don't want to get the kid in any trouble. That is, if
he survived the crash."
	"Yeah, well, I still don't know how many may have been hurt."
Geisha said concerned. "It all depends on how much time our defense
systems gave them in warning."
	"I am sorry about that Geisha." Houston tried consoling his friend
again, after the first night, when he was told to just shut up.
	"You didn't drop the rock Houston." Geisha said with a strange look
on his face. "I'm going to find out who did though."
	"I'll do everything I can to get justice out of this mess Geisha."
Houston said seriously. "I promise you that."
	"Well, maybe it's already been taken care of." Geisha shrugged.
"I'll find out today when we get there."
	"So what would they have done with all the wreckage?" Houston
asked.
	"Probably poured ferroconcrete over it all and began construction
over the top of it." Geisha said simply. "I mean, where would they dump
that much rubble? I don't know a landfill that could accept it all."
	"Oh man." Houston whined. "It could be anywhere."
	"Look, I'll get the box if I can." Geisha said standing up. "If I
can't, I'll make sure that no one else will ever find it."
	"It's not so important that anyone would actually search for
something like that. Or for anything even like it." Houston explained.
"But if it was stumbled across, hooked into the LAN lines, it would raise
questions. A toy inside a sealed LAN junction box? Who hooked it up? Why
there of all places? For what purpose? You know what I mean? And it does
have a serial number that might lead them to the kid."
	"I understand." Geisha said nodding as Dr.Forrester jumped down
from the bed. "I'll do the best I can to find out what I can."
	"While you're out today, why don't you drop by a drug store and
pick me up a carton of cigarettes, Davidoff Magnums, and some dope of some
kind." Houston suggested as an after thought to the more serious errands
he had them going out on. "Hell, get an assortment of junk and we'll all
party tonight."
	"You had a pretty bad habit going Houston." Geisha said seriously.
"Are you sure you want to get started on all that again?"
	"Geisha, I appreciate the concern, but there's really no reason for
it." Houston said gently. "I can handle myself and drugs."
	"It worries me Houston." Geisha admitted looking down at the floor.
	"I just need something to help me through this isolation I'm
facing." Houston explained. "Please don't pull an intervention on me." He
smiled carefully.
	"Leslie, " Dr.Forrester began. "Drugs can only trap people who have
nothing better in their lives."
	"But Houston does all kinds of drugs!" Geisha protested almost
pleadingly. "All the time. I don't think I've seen him straight more than
three or four times since I've known him." He said to Dr.Forrester, trying
to defend himself.
	"If America suffers from drugs, perhaps we should ask: What is
America lacking?" The long tail of the tiger flicked as he looked up at
Geisha. "The same can be said of Houston. If Houston needs dope, Why?"
	"I think it's because he's hooked on them." Geisha said simply as
if Houston was not even in the room. "He's a drug addict."
	Houston laughed heartily out loud, then stopped as he realized
Geisha was serious in his belief.
	"Geisha, I haven't had anything since my resurrection." Houston
explained deliberately. "Just these silly assed Dynorphin patches for
pain. I can't even cop a good buzz off them anymore. I'm not hooked on
anything."
	"Leslie, drugs are a part of society." Dr.Forrester explained.
"They always have and always will be. Searching for a more comfortable or
alternate realities is a part of man."
	"Drugs are tools." Geisha defended himself. "Not toys." He said
looking over at Houston accusingly.
	"Well you sanctimonious Bitch!" Houston said staring disbelieving
at Geisha. "Now aren't You so very Goddamned grand." He sat open mouthed.
	"You can't patronize people or invade their personal freedoms Les,
just because you choose to say 'No' to drugs." Dr.Forrester said trying to
calm them both down very quickly. "You're being a hypocrite even thinking
it. Every person has the right to get high or not get high according to
their needs and circumstances at the time. Even as trivial as you might
think those needs are." He explained calmly. "One person can't make that
decisions for another however. It's ludicrous to believe you could
actually stop them from it."
	"Ok!" Geisha said throwing up his hands. "I can see right now that
I'm out numbered anyway. I'll bring you your dope and cigarettes."  He
said walking out of the room.
	"Thank you." Houston said curtly, somewhat perturbed over Geisha's
attitude as Dr.Forrester followed him out of the room.
	Shaking the anger out of his head, regaining a civil tone, Houston
got up and followed them to the stairs.
	"Do you have a key to the car?" Houston asked as if nothing had
happened between them.
	"Yeah." Geisha nodded, using the same tone as Houston.
	"Ok." Houston said simply. "Just making sure. If you need anything
else, go ahead and put it on the alias card I gave you. I want to keep
that ID in circulation."
	"Ok." Geisha said climbing the stairs, not mentioning the incident
again.
	Houston stood at the bottom of the stairs a moment after the two
of them had closed the door on the roof, wondering if his outburst was
going to cause problems between he and Geisha in the future, when he
decided to clear up another matter while it was still fresh in his mind.
	"What's up?" Houston asked rhetorically coming in to the den and
peering over the shoulders of Dolph and his uncle, whom at the moment were
sitting side by side, talking quietly, hunched over some detailed report
which was windowed out on his uncles big clear glass executive style desk,
each of them making notes in files, using dual soft-switch keyboards lit
up in glowing blue neon on the desk for them. "Or am I allowed to know?"
He asked with a hint of bitchiness in his voice.
	"Just checking out the opposition." His uncle said displaying the
same report on the wallscreen for Houston to see. "Justin Smith.
CyberForm Enforcer. The boyfriend Ralph DeLaude, who owns a bar called
Yukon Jacks."
	Houston walked around to the front of the desk and leaned forward
on his fists, staring intently at both his uncle and Dolph.
	"I want you to tell Geisha to quit trying to hide things from me
and quit denying me information on what you're doing." He said pointedly,
ignoring the report and staring the two of them down intently. "And I want
You two to quit it as well." He looked at Dolph. "I'm fine." He glared
angrily at his uncle behind clenched jaws. "I need information to get out
of this. Not protection from the cold cruel world."
	"Ok honey." His uncle said calmly. "I understood that this morning
at breakfast." He smiled. "But I'll pass it on to Les for you if he hasn't
figured it out for himself yet though."
	"Oh he figured it out all right." Houston said sarcastically
sitting on the corner of the desk. "It's just that you scare him
shitless." He shrugged. "When an order comes down from You, he's going to
follow it to the letter."
	"Good man." Rex smiled arching an eyebrow.
	"Damnit!" Houston scowled. "He's afraid of you! Have you threatened
him or anything?" Houston demanded.
	"He respects Rex." Dolph said quietly. "I don't think fear is a
factor at all. Admiration maybe."
	"I can't even get him to tell me what time it is, unless he asks
you if it's ok first." Houston exaggerated, though now much more calm.
"Let up on him a little. Would ya?" He finally smiled at both of them.
	"Ok honey." Rex laughed gently. "I didn't realize he was that
intimidated." He said thoughtfully. "Or that you were this upset."
	"Well, I'm over it now." Houston said sighing, sincerely in a
better mood now that he had it all off his chest.
	Houston felt cleansed.
	"Ok. What were you saying about Justin Smith?" He asked looking up
at the huge wallscreen that filled the top part of the south wall of the
room.




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 20a
Date: 1 Aug 1995 17:54:01 -0500

Chapter Twenty
	"CyberForm." Dolph began detailing the dossier they had been
studying. "Was originally commissioned for Athena Smith... Of the
Smithsonian Smiths?"
	"Really?" Houston smirked, amazed that a Major Family member would
want sex toys like CyberForms when they could have a real, flesh and blood
slave whipped up just as easily.
	"Really." Dolph nodded. "She got bored with him within a year and
gave him his freedom. So, he got a job doing what most CyberForms do. He
becomes an Enforcer."
	"I wonder why?" Houston asked rhetorically. "I mean, if he had his
independence, he could become anything he wanted to."
	"It's a good question." Rex stared blankly at the screen. "One we
don't have an answer to just yet."
	"Do you want to know the details of CyberForm technology?" Dolph
asked, unsure of Houston knowledge concerning the bastard machines.
	"Might as well." Houston said crossing his arms. "I'm not going
anywhere soon."
	"His skin is made of a carbon vinyl polymer that exceeds the
specifications of a standard C-Form unit. He does however have a standard
poly vinyl aluminum chassis. The skin makes him flame-proof to 800 degrees
Fahrenheit and fairly bullet proof, though a 9mm at six feet will pierce
the skin but not the armor."
	"That's understandable though." Rex explained. "They get too heavy
if you use denser materials. Too much wear and replacement in the motor
functions."
	"His 'blood' is the standard silicone lubricant, which is also used
to carry specialized nanosurgeons throughout his system for
micro-repairs."
	"Is he any good with a gun?" Houston asked curiously.
	"He can hit a candle flame at 200 yards." Rex said steadily.
	"He has the standard protection programs for his internal systems,
that should he become trapped, or just be ignored for a very long time, he
shuts down all power except to his ears, cellular phone, and internal
clock." Dolph explained. "However, we think he may have some kind of
defense backup installed, so that should he find himself in an
indefensible situation where he was stolen or trapped with no hope of
escape, he would self destruct."
	"How?" Houston asked crossing his arms, trying to think of a way to
get the machine-man to short circuit himself.
	"By exploding." Rex answered simply.
	"So he's a walking bomb." Houston frowned.
	"With plutonium batteries to boot." Rex added, hinting.
	"You mean to tell me someone actually made something like that?"
Houston asked fearfully. "What about fallout?"
	"What about it?" Dolph shrugged. "If they're wanting to make sure
they destroy absolutely everything about him, why worry about taking a
sizeable potion of the city along with him?"
	"But wouldn't that take out the owner as well?" Houston asked
confused.
	"Only if she were present. Athena Smith doesn't have much respect
for life. Her own or others." Rex commented. "Just a sick sort of souvenir
reverence for old junk and one-of-a-kinds that she and her family collect
as a kind of family business."
	"He must contain something pretty valuable." Houston said
thoughtfully. "Why else take such drastic measures to keep him from
falling into enemy hands? I take it de-engineering is what they fear."
	"What it might be, we haven't got a clue." Dolph shrugged
continuing. "He has full sexual function, which was the original reason
for his commission, but other than that, he seems to be just a normal
bodyguard unit."
	"So what else can he do?" Houston asked, keeping in mind that there
had to be more to this CyberForm than the standard models who came off the
assembly lines of CyberForm Construction Inc.
	"He can jump fifty feet in a standing broad jump, thirty feet
straight up." Dolph answered, going over his notes. "Can jump down as much
as fifty feet, but anything higher than that, he risks damage to motor
functions and the poly vinyl aluminum chassis as well."
	"You mean skeleton." Houston smiled slyly.
	"Whatever." Dolph shrugged. "He can of course interface with any
machine that's more stupid than himself, and seems to have interfaces for
several already built in. Smartguns, Phone banks, ATM's, though nothing
smarter than a mainframe in computers."
	"Strange." Houston wrinkled his brow, now fascinated with the
man-machine that was known to the world as Justin Smith.
	"He needs to recharge his primary power packs from a 220 outlet
every 72 hours, but has a solar collection system built in to his eyes to
provide a temporary power source. While recharging he is completely
defenseless. Recharging requires 30 uninterrupted minutes at the power
source."
	"I thought you said he ran on plutonium batteries." Houston said.
	"The plutonium batteries seem to be a backup system added later to
the design." Rex explained. "That threw us too. He uses his primary packs
as his everyday source though. Maybe the plutonium batteries kick in
during crisis situations." He offered.
	"Well let's see." Dolph sighed, clearly tired from the intensity he
and Rex had been devoting to the dossier. "He doesn't follow Asimov's Laws
of Robotics..."
	"That's illegal!" Houston protested, to which Dolph merely laughed
out loud raucously. "All CyberForms are bound to those laws! They have to
be!"
	"What laws are those Honey?" Rex asked innocently.
	"One. A robot must never injure or allow injury to come to a human
being." Houston recited almost unconsciously. "Two. A robot must always
follow the orders of a human being, except where those orders conflict
with the first law, and three, a robot must never allow harm to come to
itself, except where that law conflicts with the first two laws."
	"What laws are those honey?" Rex repeated innocently again, trying
to make a point that Houston seemed to be missing.
	"These are CyberForms man." Dolph looked at Houston. "They have
free will. This one, more than most since it doesn't have those robotic
laws hardwired in. I'm sure he knows about them, but I'll lay money that
they're just in software form."
	"That means a tricky programmer could code around them." Houston
nodded. "I could have sworn those laws were coded directly into their
chips." He said stunned. "Of course, if this was a special commission, who
knows what he's got inside his head."
	"Speaking of the head!" Dolph said flipping a screen that he was
reading from that looked like a piece of type-written paper which was
suspended in the clear glass of the desk. "It's not where he keeps his
brains. Those are located in his lower abdomen. He has binocular vision,
field magnification and of course standard infrared vision."
	"Why put the brain down there?" Houston asked, thinking the idea
silly.
	"Defense." Rex answered, reminding Houston of his training.
"Primary targets are the head and chest. By putting the central processing
units in the lower abdomen you lessen the chance of damage to critical
systems." He explained.
	"He doesn't kill indiscriminately though." Houston said thinking
back to what Justin Smith could possibly be about. What was his secret?
	"It makes sense honey. What could he possibly gain from a
massacre?" Rex explained patiently. "If he were to go on a killing spree
he would very quickly be eliminated by the Psychosquad. He does have his
own survival at stake."
	"True." Houston said, thinking that perhaps there really wasn't all
that much difference between himself and this CyberForm Justin Smith...
	They had survival in common after all.
	"The dossier says he's a man with a conscience. Can you believe
it?" Dolph asked looking at Houston. "He should have been a cop." He said
mirthlessly.
	"Why?" Houston whispered looking up at the wall. "Was he an
experiment of some kind?"
	"Maybe they had to add conscience to counter the plutonium
batteries." Rex suggested, running a hand over his face, deep in thought.
	"His auditory senses are higher than any living thing on this
planet. He can hear breathing at fifty feet." Dolph continued. "He has a
sense of touch, but not pain. For some reason, he has no sense of smell or
taste." He shrugged. "He can reach running speeds of thirty miles per
hour."
	"It figures." Houston snorted. "Do you have anything on how well he
works on the street as an Enforcer?"
	"Like habits?" Dolph asked, then continued. "Well, it says that
when he goes out hunting for wanted criminals, he fills his list
geographically, starting with the first person on the list."
	"So if he was hunting in Kansas City, he would stay in Kansas City
until he filled his quota and then move on?" Houston asked thinking that
perhaps he had found a loop hole answer.
	"No, it means if his first name was in Kansas City he would start
looking in Kansas City. He would go wherever necessary to find the person
however." Dolph explained. "If the second person on the list was known to
live in San Angeles, he would go there next. There is, I should add, a 48
hour contingency built in for considering impossibilities."
	"Well, that's something I suppose." Houston shrugged.
	"His search program is dynamic it says." Dolph read on. "Once the
target has been spotted though, he won't leave until the person has been
captured or is dead. I guess the use of deadly force is not uncommon for
Enforcers." He said sitting back in his desk chair stretching.
	The air hung still for a moment, as Houston realized they all
needed a break from the tedium.
	"Well, after that, I for one need a drink and a string." Houston
said reaching for a decanter of scotch and a rock glass that sat on a tray
on the book shelves. "I'll fix the drinks if you draw out the lines." He
said to Dolph.
	"Sounds like a deal to me." Dolph said reaching for his vial of
cocaine and performing the requested task quickly and efficiently.
	"Hell, fix me up too." Rex said smiling. "I might as well get used
to this lifestyle again." He said sitting up in his chair, twisting a kink
out of his back. "Man, I've been mothballed too fucking long."
	"I don't suppose you have any ice in here?" Houston asked pouring
scotch into heavy lead crystal rock glasses.
	"Inside the cabinet next to it honey." Rex said pointing to the
book shelves, then noticing a strange look on Houstons face as he turned
away. A pitiful wounded look. "I mean Houston." Rex said quickly changing
his mind.
	No one said anything for a while as Houston finished pouring their
drinks and handed them out. "So did you get this stuff from your Nairobi
connection?" Houston asked pointing up at the data displayed across the
wallscreen.
	"Yeah, I did." Rex smiled, leaning back in his own chair. "What do
you think?" He asked grinning, waving his cocktail at the screen.
	"He's good." Houston smiled nodding. "I thought I was good, but I
may have just met my match. This dossier must have come from Smithsonian
System. The family archives I'll bet." Houston said looking up at the
wall, then down at the many windows spread out on the desk. "If this guy
was a commissioned work of art, as a special gift to Athena Smith, then I
doubt very seriously the family would release this information to be
stored in Alexandria System. He's had to tap into an intersystem FTL
datastream to get this stuff." Houston explained the intricacies of the
ComWeb.
	"I never ask him where he gets the stuff I ask for." Rex said
sniffing conversationally and relaxed. "And he never asks me what I want
it for. At least not seriously." He smiled. "It's an agreement we've had
for years."
	"Did you guys fight together in the wars?" Houston asked. "You seem
to know him pretty well." He was enjoying this new relationship as equals
he had with his uncle. All it took was for Houston to speak his mind for a
change. To stand up and demand that Geisha be released from his terror
enforced bonds.
	The new understanding between them made Houston feel like a man
again. Always before, he felt like a little kid every time his uncle
called him 'Honey', for which he was grateful when, only moments before,
his uncle changed his name to 'Houston'.
	Intellectually, Houston knew his uncle didn't mean anything
derogatory or demeaning by it. It was simply his way of showing affection
towards Houston. They weren't a touchy-feely or gushy-kissy family like
some people he had known who couldn't seem to keep their hands to
themselves.
	But the name still made him feel like an eight year old every time
he heard the affectionate term in that special tone his uncle used on him
sometimes. Houston supposed that he made Uncle Rex feel older, when he
called him "Uncle Rex" as well.
	"Yeah." Rex answered seriously, gazing into blank space startling
Houston back to reality as well.
	"Tell us about your tour Rex." Dolph encouraged him.
	This was a no-no as far as Houston was concerned. When he was
younger, he remembered that his Uncle Rex refused to ever talk about the
wars. But that was a long time ago. When Houston was just a child. Maybe
there were reasons for not talking about it then...
	 "In the first one, World War Four, we were thrown together by chance




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 20b
Date: 1 Aug 1995 17:55:53 -0500

The room got quiet again and Houston fumbled with his cocktail. "I didn't
realize." He swallowed. "I'm sorry for prying."
	"It's not that big of a deal." Rex said in a somber tone. "Who of
us hasn't lost someone to one of the plagues?" He shrugged. "He tells me
that he's at peace with himself and has faced his own mortality, and that
I should feel happy for him that he's going, to finally be free of pain
and at ease with his death."
	"You can take it that easily?" Dolph asked. "A good friend?"
	"He's dying at peace and he wants me to be at peace with it." Rex
tried explaining. "I trust the man implicitly. So I'm ok with his death
too. At least we got to say goodbye to each other. A lot of friends don't
even get that much."
	"True." Houston said remembering his own sudden death round, doing
another line of cocaine off the desk to fight back the growing anxiety
rising in him.
	"He'll be back though." Rex smiled. "Don't get me wrong, he's not a
stupid man, or I wouldn't trust him with my own life the way I do. He's
got full medical, pays two MedTeks around the clock and has an AutoDoc
standing by for the big event." Rex laughed. "The mean old bastard is
coming back twenty years younger than me though. Maybe you'll get to meet
him someday."
	"Do you still have full medical?" Houston asked his uncle, looking
him in the eye. "Just in case something was to happen I mean."
	"Yeah. My trauma team account is always paid in full." Rex nodded.
"I pay a month in advance each time too. In case they try to fuck you
around, the records are in a file marked "Life Insurance Premiums" in my
system."
	"Speaking of your system... " Houston began. "I tried to get in
when I first got here and couldn't." He said sipping the scotch. "You're
running a triple blind system through Sydney."
	"Yeah." Rex grinned. "I wondered how long it would take you to ask
for the password." He laughed with a sparkle in his deep black engulfing
eyes. "It's your dad's name." He said simply. "Jonathan."
	"That simple huh?" Houston said grinning at his own ignorance.
"Dads name."
	"What other one thing do we have more in common than anything
else?" Rex asked doing a line of cocaine and leaning back in the chair.
"I wanted to make sure you got in if something happened to me. I guess I
made it too difficult a puzzle for you." He smiled mischievously across
the desk at Houston.
	"Don't get smart wise guy." Houston laughed. "Maybe it was too
simple. I eventually would have figured it out if I had to crash in to do
it."
	"I don't doubt it a bit." Rex laughed, now relaxed and at ease with
his younger peers. "But at what cost to my file integrity though?"
	"Well, I would have shot for minimal collateral losses, but you
know how the brutality thing can be." Houston shrugged. "Unpredictable.
Although the thought of seeing a few fine upstanding professionals all
across the world shouting at each other in a gutter brawl does have it's
own attraction." He laughed heartily.
	"Why would something like that happen if you crashed his files?"
Dolph asked not understanding what secrets may be locked away in the
digital dementia of files and programs, operating systems,
counter-intrusion software, trap doors, and alarm systems of Rex's
computer. "And Who might these lovelies be with pasts so volatile? Or am I
asking too many questions?"
	"Who says dead men tell no tales? And where do you think I got my
initial exposure to the machines?" Houston winked at Dolph. "I think I
know basically how Uncle Rex codes his files and what exactly he codes and
stores away. I didn't learn everything I know about computers from The
Guild, just a lot of it."
	"But how does that affect these so called professionals?" Dolph
asked confused. "You still didn't explain. Or else I didn't understand
something somewhere along the line."
	"Rex likes to code some very special things with dead-man switches
built in to them." Houston explained smiling across the big glass
executive desk at his uncle. "Files and programs that keep asking you
every so often if you're still alive, if you're being forced to answer,
and testing you with a series of code words or phrases you have time to
answer correctly each time. If you're not, or you answer wrong, they go
ahead and either dump to a predetermined location destination, or self
destruct. And a very smart operating system that keeps an eye on the
programs, in case they turn up missing." He smiled shrugging.
	"It's called the 3-D policy." Rex explained. "If I turn up dead, if
I disappear, or if I become disabled, things start to get uncomfortable
for a lot people."
	 "It's really an old technique." Houston explained. "Probably began
back with the original computers and hackers."
	"It may be an old idea, " Rex countered. "but effective
none-the-less."
	"Quite." Houston agreed. "I use 'em myself all the time."
	"I just remember a lot of stuff about a lot of people." Rex
shrugged lighting a cigarette from a pack in his shirt, throwing them on
the table for anyone who wanted one. "Stuff that some of them might not
want remembered."
	"What we don't remember, we have the machines remember for us."
Houston smiled lighting a cigarette and leaning back in the large
overstuffed wing-back chair on the opposite side of the desk from the two
of them. "You never know when, or what information can come in handy."
	"Fantastic!" Dolph laughed loudly. "I just may have to have you
guys set me up with a datafortress of my own." He said thinking seriously.
"I have enough stuff on WesCoast Corporates that just might make a great
insurance policy for me. Or at least some tasty revenge if one of them had
me terminated."
	"If it's shit on Max Brant, I know about a dozen people right now
who would pay top dollar for the information." Rex said staring at Dolph
with a serious look on his face. "Enough that you could retire on for a
very long time."
	"Yeah." Dolph snorted. "Then what? Sit around and watch TV or VR
all day?"
	"You could do anything you want." Houston waved his arms.
"Anything!"
	"Well," Dolph paused a moment. "I didn't necessarily say Max. He
hasn't exactly been cruel to me. I was thinking more along the lines of
his shithead friends and contacts he has out there. I'll give it some
thought though." He paused again lighting a cigarette, blowing a slow blue
plume out into the center of the room. "Retirement does sound better than
having to grub around for a living when the fuckards at the top have so
much. I'm getting tired of doing shit jobs for people for next to nothing
pay. Why shouldn't I get My piece of the pie?"
	"You don't think we're paying you good enough?" Houston asked him
shocked and half hurt. "You're getting better wages than you think you are
even by Breadbasket standards. We're not ripping you off Dolph." He said
defensively.
	"Not you guys!" Dolph said putting up a hand. "I mean people I
worked for before I even met you two.  No no! I'm more than pleased with
this job. You're both very generous people." He said seriously. "I'm
thankful for everything you provide me with. A place to stay that is well
hidden and as secure as Fort Knox, I'm well fed, I have a comfortable bed,
and money for any and all habits I currently have or may care to develop
in the future." He tried explaining, to diffuse the situation.  "Maybe
it's just a resentment thing I have towards money and the people who
control it. You don't know what WesCoast is like. Japanese Zaibatsus
owning and controlling everything and everyone. Lots of fine smooth NuYen
flowing from hand to hand, never letting you forget. People bowing deeply
to them, while they barely nod acknowledgment."
	"Money is simply a tool. A stored form of energy." Houston waved
the comment away. "It can be moved or used or stored for an indefinite
length of time. Money can even cost you money if left to stagnate or not
used correctly. It costs money to have too much of it laying around."
	"If used correctly, money can make money for you." Rex added.  "But
that's all it does. Convert energy to mass or power and convert it back
again in another direction, or account. After a certain comfort level is
reached, it becomes moot."
	"But see Rex, it's just getting to that comfort level that's the
problem." Dolph explained. "You two may be quite comfortable in your lives
here in this fortress of solitude, but there are millions out there who
have little or nothing and no way of getting anything."
	"I'm well aware of the poverty in the world." Rex snorted. "Where
do you think we were when Houston was a child?" He asked. "Right here in
the middle of the stinking Combat Zone grubbing for credit along with
everyone else. Selling our souls or our bodies to corporations who could
care less if we had food in our bellies or not, waking up sore and tired,
hoping each day might bring that one big score down the pipe that would
let us rest for a while."
	"My mom cleaned apartments in the Executive Center and the
Corporate Zone for rich fuckers who sometimes expected a little 'extra'
out of her in exchange for "a few extra bucks to help her out with that
terrible phone bill she must have", which we did have, just to be able to
survive in the world. She did laundry for folks around town, when the work
could be found, and my Dad worked down in the cannery under the river
North Wall shovelling muck after he had already sold a kidney and a lung
when he was out of work for a couple of months." Houston explained
quietly. "I know what it is to be poor Dolph. To live off nothing but
macaroni & cheese dinners for a week, or nothing but potatoes, or to maybe
score an amphetamine to kill the hunger pangs and be able to keep going
without food for a couple of days, to put cardboard in the bottoms of my
shoes to make them last a while longer after they already had holes in the
bottoms of them and to come home after school to a dark house in the
winter because we didn't have enough money to pay both the lights and the
gas bill in the same month."
	"When I came to live with Houston and my brother Jonathan, I wasn't
in much better shape than they, to help them out much." Rex added wanting
Dolph to understand how far they had come to get this three bedroom
Earth-sheltered home, at the edge of the Combat Zone. "A veteran of the
Corporate Wars, working for whomever wanted a killer, for whatever reason,
not asking questions, devaluing people with lives down to simple targets;
swallowing my morals and ethics because it meant a room in a sleazy hotel
in the Combat Zone for a week and at least one meal a day.  After
Houston's mother died in the Pneumonic Plague, I came here, to share
expenses, and to maybe help provide Houston with someone who cared about
him, train him for survival in a world that cares more about money than
people and who could give him guidance in a world that values us more dead
than alive at the Body-banks. We didn't have much in the way of combined
incomes, but we had a family unit. Something we each knew we could depend
on no matter what."
	"Uncle Rex and I give ten percent of all our family profits to
charities." Houston said defensively. "Plus windfalls when they become
available, as I think you'll see, if and when I get back to work and put
those 24-hour Market account numbers I got out of Recombinant to good
use." Houston explained.
	"Ten percent of your incomes?" Dolph asked disbelieving.
	"Ten percent of net minus operating expenses." Rex said simply
"We're Reorganized-Mormons. Five percent goes into the church fund and
five percent to various charities we feel are honest."
	"You know, I think that is one of the most important things Dad
taught me." Houston said looking over at his uncle. "That the Haves of the
world take and the Have-Nots are taken." He looked at Dolph and tried to
explain. "He taught me that it's the duty of each of us, to help our
fellow man, to see that everyone is provided with basic care and the right
to creature comforts."
	"Man." Dolph cursed, doing another line off the desk. "I misjudged
you Kramer. You're not the snotty little asshole I thought you were when I
first met you. Or maybe I hoped you were to make my job of wiping you out
easier." Dolph said looking at Houston, getting up and walking toward the
door. "I'm sorry for the things I've said about you and I'm ashamed of
myself right now." He said pausing at the door. "I need to be alone for a
little while." He said leaving the room quickly.
	"Was it something I said?" Rex winked at Houston, who just smiled.
"He'll be ok after while. In the meantime, it's just you and me
Buddy-Boy." He sighed relaxing in the chair. "Why don't you pull up those
account numbers and let's have a look-see at what you've got." He said
motioning to the other keyboard that was now abandoned beside him. "We'll
decide what we're going to do with it all."
	"Might as well." Houston shrugged coming around the desk and
sitting down. "I need to stay busy for the next week or so, or I'll go
nuts sitting around her



From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 21b
Date: 1 Aug 1995 18:19:13 -0500

"Sure!" Geisha smiled. "I know a guy in Electronics Guild that is a friend
of mine. He can guide me towards the newer and faster products available
out there today. The guy we got your neuralware from as a matter of fact.
Might even be able to get him to do the job himself. He's the best. I'd
trust him. I've made a few major deposits in the favor bank over the
years. Nows my chance to make a withdrawal."
	"Great!" Houston smiled cracking the seal on the large vial of
cocaine and pouring some out on the desk. "I want this to be the last
system I'll ever need." He said snorting a portion of the pile and
sniffing. "Until the next one of course."
	"You realize of course they'll have to install this." Geisha
reminded him. "There is no portable to this system." He said watching the
screen as more options popped into place on the designs. "Ultraconductive
circuiting?" He asked the two Houstons on the screen.
	"We have to live here." Construct One explained. "Wouldn't you?"
	"Yeah I guess so." Geisha nodded at the screen. "But I'll let you
know it just about triples the price of the system. Not cheap that stuff.
Comes from the orbital factories."
	"We've already taken that into consideration." Construct Two
explained. "We've also designed Houstons interface with the system to
correspond to his new German hardware in his head. He can just jack in to
this system to operate it."
	"Using the neuralware interface?" Geisha asked. "Or the Biochip?"
	"Both." Construct One shrugged. "Why limit yourself? He will also
be able to access from a cyberdeck through remote."
	"Go for it guys!" The real Houston cheered. "Will I still have a
keyboard access just in case?"
	"Of course." Construct One explained. "We're going all out on this.
For us and for you. We're even going to provide you with Trode sets in
case you want someone to jack in with you. You'll have a terminal in
addition to a holo-generator, videoboard, printer, chipreader, VoxBox,
scanner, cellular capability, combat level strength on the Code Gates,
long distance links, Algorithm trace and of course the CPU's. We don't
want anyone else unauthorized in here either you know."
	"So where do you plan on getting a hold of military hardware?"
Houston asked. "I don't know anyone in those circles."
	"I might be able to help you out some there." Geisha said immersed
in thought. "We'll see. Hell, your uncle may be able to point you in the
direction of some good Militek suppliers, you never know."
	"True." Houston said amazed he hadn't thought of it before. "What
about predesigned software?"
	"The gamut." Construct Two said fielding their questions as One
continued designing the system at an amazing rate. "Intrusion, Decryption,
Detection/Alarm, Anti-System, Evasion/Stealth, Protection, Anti-Intrusion
Countermeasures, Anti-Personnel, Controllers, Utilities, Demon Series,
Meta Series, and of course, Artificial Intelligence."
	"This thing is more than any superframe system. Hell, it more than
a datafortress! This is going to be an absolute datahaven!" Geisha
grinned, shaking his head in stupefaction. "Look at how much storage
they're allowing for!"
	"Maybe that will be my next career move." Houston smiled shrugging.
"Who knows? Hell the internal storage is practically the cheapest part of
it. Plus I can always add more storage later through peripherals." He said
thinking more seriously on it as he went along.
	"Where are you going to put it?" Geisha asked seriously.
	"Good question." Houston looked at him. "Maybe I could set it up
down in the basement. There's room enough down there."
	"Oh." Geisha said going back and sitting down in the chair again.
"So you don't plan on returning to Broadway Towers after this is all
over?"
	"Well, to tell you the truth Geisha, no." Houston said resigned to
this encounter he kept putting off for so long. "It's just not worth it.
This place was my home a long time ago and it's just as easy to start over
here as there. Did you see what they did to my apartment?"
	"Yeah. I did." Geisha nodded. "The management just put up a
plasticrete frame over your door frame for now. It had been blown off the
hinges, so Dr.Forrester and I went in and had a look around. The building
kids had already ripped you off for anything salvageable. They'll turn it
into a crack house next probably."
	"Oh well." Houston sighed. "At least the insurance paid off ok. I
checked my account a while ago. They probably didn't require a signature
because they were afraid I might sue them."
	"I had already taken care of it." Construct Two said from the
screen. "And yes, I threatened to sue them until they're dead if they
didn't pay up in full."
	"Thanks. You guys can go back to work again." Houston said to the
screen. "I just wanted Geisha to look at them. I still want me and him to
see them again before you order them though."
	"Okey Dokey Boss." Construct Two smiled as the screen went blank.
	"So where's Dolph?" Geisha asked standing up.
	"I think he's laying down." Houston said standing and stretching.
	"Oh really?" Geisha sounded puzzled as he went into the living
room.
	Houston got up and followed Geisha out of the den and into the
living room as Dr.Forrester followed behind them.
	Rex came out of the guest bedroom where Dolph and Geisha had been
sleeping, closing the door gently behind him. "It was time for
Father-Confessor." Rex explained quietly to Houston, smiling and
shrugging. "It's you he's feeling guilty over. Why don't you go in and
talk with him a little."
	"Ok." Houston agreed, going back into the den and gathering up his
stuff from his uncles desk, dropping his cigarettes in his pocket.
	"Oh yeah." Rex paused a moment before turning away. "I'm having
some people over to the house tonight. People I want you to meet. I want
them to meet you as well. Get a feel for how your mind works. We're going
to be working with them soon. Do you mind?"
	"Not at all." Houston smiled. "I'd be glad to meet your friends
Uncle Rex."
	"Great." He said walking away.
	Houston passed Rex & Geisha who were whispering together on the
way to his bedroom to drop off his carry-bag and take a few chemical
goodies in to share with Dolph, whom he felt was probably not feeling all
that great if he had been brooding over his misconception of Houston all
day long.
	Knocking quietly on the door elicited a grumbled "yeah?" which he
took as permission for entry.
	The room had changed somewhat since Houston had last been in here.
	Of course, that was years ago when his father was still alive.
Uncle Rex had removed all the personal effects, which gave the room a more
generic 'Guest Room' appearance.
	Moving out all that stuff would have been a hard thing to do.
	Which was why Houston couldn't stay and help after his Dad had
died. He just couldn't have handled it. He knew now that his uncle had
understood that, and had allowed him to go back to Daedalus Station to
complete his grieving process alone.
	Uncle Rex. The man just kept getting better.
	There was a time, for a while, when Houston felt absolutely sure
he was going to snap over his fathers death, and then one day it didn't
hurt as much as it did the day before. He then knew he would survive.
	Houston had to wonder, at least abstractly, what his uncle had
done with all his Dad's personal belongings.
	"Hey Guy." Houston said quietly as he entered smiling nicely for
Dolph. "Uncle Rex said you weren't feeling so hot, so I brought you in
some stuff." He held up a rainbow of cards, some with bubbles on them,
others with pills sunk into little clear plastic wells covered on one side
with foil, "Safety Sealed For Your Protection."
	Lighting a cigarette from his pack of Davidoff Magnums, Houston
sat down on the bed next to where Dolph was laying and shook one out of
the pack for him.
	"So what have you got there?" Dolph asked lighting the cigarette
and looking over the cards of pills and bubbles, deliberately delaying
having to talk to Houston. "Planning a party?"
	"Yeah." Houston smiled disarmingly. "There's supposed to be some
people coming over tonight. Why don't you take a couple of something and
join us? "
	"Don't you ever stop?" Dolph asked peeling a blue bubble off the
card and sticking it to the inside of his left wrist.
	"What do you mean?" Houston asked confused. "Stop what? I know you
don't like me very much Dolph, but I'm really just trying to be friendly
to you."
	"I mean when do you go back to being a bastard?" Dolph said to him
as he lay propped on one elbow, drawing long on the cigarette and looking
Houston squarely in the eye from behind the orange glow of it's tip.
"You're always so goddamed nice!" He sighed tiredly. "I can't keep up with
this.
	"Killing you with kindness huh?" Houston chuckled trying to make
Dolph feel better. "If I were an asshole, then you'd have a good reason
not to like me. Right?"
	"You got it bucko." Dolph sighed, feeling whatever was in the blue
bubble work it's way into his system, relaxing him a great deal.  "Whoa.
Oh man." He blinked a moment. "I didn't expect that." He said laying his
head back on the pillow.
	Even laying prone, Dolph's massive build was considerable compared
to Houston. One swipe of his huge paw would maul Houston's average sized
frame.
	Though Houston was average stature and build for a normal North
American male, Geisha had always made him seem small in comparison.
Dolphs size made Geisha appear only average.
	"Hmm. It's Crystal Blue Persuasion." Houston remarked only then
reading the package. "I'm sorry. I thought they were Blue Dreamers." He
snickered. "Better watch yourself tonight." He warned smiling. "You might
just have a good time."
	"Yeah." Dolph agreed quite relaxed.
	"So tell me why you want to hate me." Houston suggested, deciding
to take advantage of the new invaluable chemical state Dolph was in at the
moment. "Leave the blue on until we're done talking." He said in a more
forceful tone.
	"Ok." Dolph monotoned. "It's because I came here supposed to kill
you and then for a while I was hoping to start things back up with Les. I
found you in the way." He answered simply and honestly, uncaring as to
what consequences it may bring. "That should have made it easier. But it
didn't."
	Under the effects of Crystal Blue Persuasion the only thing Dolph
wanted to do was exactly whatever Houston wanted him to do.
	"I'm sorry Dolph." Houston said simply, not knowing how he was
going to resolve the situation. "I like Geisha too. A lot. If it was that
easy, I would let you have him just to make you two happy and for you to
not hate me so much. I'm not so sure I can just walk away from him that
easily."
	"I know." Dolph said. "I can see it when you two are together."  He
explained, the drug making him want Houston to understand. "That's why I'm
mad at you. Because you're so right for him, and I'm not. I have to face
the fact that what I had with him is over for good."
	"Don't beat yourself up over this." Houston told him a little more
forcefully. "It's a normal feeling. Why don't we just call a truce for a
while and let Geisha decide which of us he wants? That is, If he even
wants either of us. How's that?" He suggested hoping it would make
everything better.
	"He already has decided. He wants you. He told me so the first
night we slept in here together." Dolph explained fully. "He loves you
more than me Houston. I think that's a good thing..." He said somewhat
confused. "But I don't like it. I don't think I'm making any sense. I
should probably take this off." He said pointing to the large round blue
dot on the inside of his left wrist.
	"Not just yet." Houston told him, trying to think of some way to
resolve this triangle before it got out of hand. "I gave you a great deal
of money this afternoon. If you call up your BancoCard accounts on a
terminal linked with ComWeb you find some new accounts. You're going to be
very happy about it. Do you understand?"
	"Yes." Dolph nodded. "Do you see what I mean about being such a
nice guy? You never quit." He said as he started whimpering. "I can see
why you get along with everyone. People can't hate you without looking
like an asshole. You're too nice all the fucking time."
	"Listen to me Dolph. We're talking about a vast sum of money.
Probably more money than you've ever seen in your life." Houston said
trying to think fast, wishing he knew a little more about psychology to
help him out. "But it's not going to scare you. It's payment for working
with us and trying to save me from whomever is trying to kill me."
	"Ok." Dolph said still crying. "I'll take the money and leave."
	"No! God Damnit! I still need you on the team." Houston said angry
that he had fucked his point all up. "I still haven't found out if I'm
safe yet or not. I need you to stick around until I'm sure." He tried
explaining. "I'm just telling you about the money now, so you won't be mad
about it later."
	"Oh." Dolph sniffed, stopping his crying. "I understand


From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 21a
Date: 1 Aug 1995 18:16:56 -0500

Chapter Twenty One
	"Houston?" The wallscreen in the den flashed on, filled with his
own face staring down at him. "I'm done with Kansas City's contract. I
handled the implementation and instructed them on how to use the
enhancements. I know they won't read the documentation. No one ever does.
I don't know why I bothered writing the stuff up." He said simply from the
background of his old apartment. "Jess was surprised that so many people
are leaving the company all of a sudden. I guess Consuella decided she
didn't need to work DownTown that bad. She also says you still owe her
some dope from the Good Doctor Gary. I said you'd bring it by as soon as
possible."
	"Does she know the difference between you and me?" Houston asked
startled. "I can't leave the house for about a week or so."
	"Just FedEx 'em to her." His self shrugged. "And no, she doesn't
know the difference. She thought I was really you. I Am, you know. I was
first." He smiled. "I even closed out the contracts for you and made sure
we got paid in full. They gave you a bonus for completing the contract 6
months earlier than expected."
	"Great." Houston smiled looking up at the vast wallscreen. "Did you
check out General Electronics Motors?"
	"Yeah I did." His self said. "Both. They were willing to take our
contracts after a little persuasion on my part and a few phone calls back
and forth through the Phone-Home utility here in the Cray. I used the
phone number from your City-Hall desk to route the calls through to here.
You know, we really need to get a few more phone numbers. The lines don't
cost all that much."
	"Yeah I know. Let's talk about it later though." Houston said
sipping his cocktail, leaning back in the chair to relax the cramp that
was developing in his back. "So what do the new contracts look like?"
	"Decent. That's about it. It's scale plus ten percent." His self
said mimicking his own actions on the screen above. "We get four months to
implement the new database management systems upgrades."
	"Fair enough." Houston nodded. "How long do you think it will take
you?"
	"For what I had planned for them? About 2 days realtime." His self
smiled. "Do you need it before then?"
	"Oh no. We'll deliver periodic upgrades on a regular basis so as to
not attract attention and complete it right on schedule this time."
Houston said thoughtfully. "How's that sound to you?"
	"Sounds fine with me." His self shrugged. "I got nothing better to
do."
	"So you don't mind then working for me?" Houston asked feeling just
a bit guilty over someone else doing his work for him.
	"Don't worry about it." His self shook his head. "It gives me
something to do. You work on your relationship with Geisha." His self
winked, making Houston to feel more than just a little uncomfortable at
the notion of the program versions of himself reading his mind so
effortlessly.
	"Well, I've got something I want to show you." Houston said
flipping screens on the desk and sending a third of the program that the
first Mindread ghost construct would be responsible for. "Take a look at
it and tell me what you think."
	"Some kind of banking transactions I would guess." His self said
picking up the piece of paper from the coffee table where it suddenly
appeared. "It looks good to me. So when do we run?"
	"As soon as possible." Houston said simply. "Whenever the other
self comes back from wherever he is at the moment. We'll just do it."
	"I'm right here." The second self said opening the apartment door
and entering. "What have you got for me?"
	"Here it comes." Houston said repeating the same keystrokes. "Try
not to talk to each other about this stuff. Ok? It's within all of our
best interests."
	"Ok." The first nodded. "It's best in case we get caught.
Plausible deniablity."
	"So if you guys are ready, go to the locations you've been given
and wait for the signal." Houston said readying the master control program
and sending it to it's predetermined location in the Boatmens Bank
DownTown. Commerce Bank and United Missouri Bank both as well located
DownTown, would be where his other selves would perform the run from.
	Once they had each walked out of the apartment door, Houston
cleared the big wallscreen and got up to shut and lock the door to the
den. He didn't want anyone just walking in on him during a critical moment
during the run.
	With a heavy sigh, Houston sat down and activated the mental soft
switch, which hit the adrenal boosters, giving him a natural kick of
fly-or-fight energy.
	Where as before he had always thought he typed pretty fast, now
his hands flew over the keys in an almost magical blur...
	Opening a file to capture and record the entire run in the
Execuline, Houston activated the master control program to begin it's job
and signaled the his other two selves that it had begun.
	Immediately, the big wallscreen began filling with information in
four sections. Each of the three nodes of the banking transactions was
being displayed, as well as the destination accounts of the funds.
	Two minutes later, as Houston sat dripping in sweat, everything
within the program ground down to a stop.
	He watched the master control program self destruct, and sighed in
relief.
	He closed the capture buffer and put the proper security on it,
locking and encrypting the file, cleared the screen and got up to unlock
and open the door to the den once again. As he turned around, the
wallscreen filled again, lit up with the apartment just as his selves were
walking in the door.
	"Nice haul." The first commented, smiling as he fixed himself a
cocktail and did a snort of cocaine, which the two of them now had heaped
in a pile in the center of a glass ashtray sitting on the bar. "So when do
we get Our cut?"
	"Check and see if we did." Houston told the other, who sat down at
the wallscreen in the apartment and accessed their personal bank account
numbers, finding the new ones listed at the bottom.
	"I mean Us." The first self smiled again, coming around the bar to
sit down in the chair and light a cigarette.
	"Well fair enough." Houston laughed. "I guess you guys did do the
danger stuff." He conceded. "So what is it you want, that you can't whip
up for yourselves?" He asked sincerely perplexed. "I can't think of
anything I could get for you."
	"I can!" His second self said flopping down on the couch and
putting his feet up. "A superframe system."
	"Yeah!" Houston breathed in agreement, showing a sparkle in his
eyes. "I've always wanted one myself. That's why I'm working in here
today. You should see Uncle Rex's machine! Man this fucker is smooth." He
grinned. "What's available out there today?" He asked.
	"How about we go one step further and have a custom job designed?"
The first offered. "We can give you the specifications and you can order
it."
	"Whadda ya mean?" The second asked. "We can do all that ourselves."
	"Oh yeah." The first snickered. "From design to payment. All you
have to do is make room somewhere in the house for it, and of course
answer the door the day it's delivered." He said to Houston.
	"Well, I suppose I could move my old Cray to the basement, or out
to the garage." He said already missing his old machine. "Will you guys
make room for Gloria and Excelsis Deo in it when you get it?"
	"Of course." The second said getting up and fixing a cocktail.
"I'll transfer all the files and wipe the place clean myself as well."
	"Well!" Houston said wide-eyed and sighing. "I guess that takes
care of the windfall on this run. There won't be anything left for Me!"
He mock-pouted.
	"You want this as bad as we do Bitch." The first said laughing.
	"What about a custom cyberdeck?" The second asked mischievously.
"Something that would go with that new neuralware you got. Could you go
for something like that?"
	"Fucking-A I could!" Houston's eyes flashed. "How much do we have
left over after those two things?"
	"It depends on what all you want in the cyberdeck." The first
answered. "But I think I know your tastes, and I would estimate that after
both purchases, getting both wholesale where possible of course,
state-of-the-art technology, custom work by the Electronics Guild,
about... Oh, I'd say enough to live for the next ten or twelve years."
	"That's not much left is it?" Houston asked wounded. "Oh well, go
ahead and work it all up. I want to see the specs on both of them before
you order them though. I want Geisha to have a look at them too. He might
have some input. Is that ok?"
	"Sure." The first said getting up and going to the wallscreen to
draw up the plans using the Computer Aided Design/Engineering mode of his
old home unit.
	"That's enough in those few accounts." The second said. "If we
would have left them as fat as they were, sooner or later it might look
too tempting to someone out there with greed on their minds. I'll move
some of it to banks down in The Republic of Texas."
	"True." Houston agreed now in a better mood. "And just Look at what
we'll have in the place of all that dirty money!" He squealed. "Just like
found money." He laughed.
	"You're silly Bitch." The first said, to which they all laughed.
	"Go away now." Houston said to them smiling. "I want to be alone."
	"Yes Marlene." The second snorted.
	"Done." The first said and the screen went blank.
	As Houston sat rocking in the office chair, alone in his uncles
den, looking up at the blank screen he cleared the desk of it's files and
notes as well, just as he heard the rooftop door open and someone coming
down the stairs.
	Swiveling in his chair to face the door, he was glad to see
Dr.Forrester come padding around the corner.
	"Hey guys!" Houston smiled as they filed into the room. "How'd it
go?"
	"Everything went fine." Geisha sighed flopping down in the chair
next to Houston. "Here's the stuff." He sat a carry bag and a sack down on
the desk in front of Houston. "All of it." He sighed, then spotting the
cocktail in front of Houston, got up and fixed himself one as well.
	"Even the Salvador Dali Flashchip set?" Houston asked in amazement.
"I'm impressed you guys."
	"Thank Dr.Forrester for that." Geisha said flopping back down in
the chair again, clearly tired. "He tracked your pheromones."
	"No kidding?"
	"It was a cold trail too I might add. I'm thinking about getting
an olfactory booster." Dr.Forrester stated simply. "Very good work if I
do say so myself. Do you know how hard it was to move some of that
rubble?" He complained. "They had shit piled and stacked everywhere
around that plaza while they were working on repairs before the
	"Did anyone get hurt?" Houston asked seriously, looking at Geisha.
	"None that I could find out about anyway." Geisha said arching an
eyebrow and shrugged. "I asked around about friends first, and then anyone
else I knew, but it seems everyone got below or was evacuated in time."
	"Good." Houston sighed in relief. "I didn't need that kind of guilt
too."
	"From what I could gather, the alarm was sounded just as we were
taking off from the roof." Geisha explained. "Since they got the two
guards off the roof in time as well."
	"Good!" Houston said genuinely happy about the outcome. "How much
damage was done to the arcology itself?" He asked curiously.
	"In the hundreds of millions." Geisha sighed. "That's really no big
deal though, since there were plans to build a tower over the site anyway.
Expansion plans. The city was coming down on them over the space
efficiency of a three story building DownTown. The timetable has just been
moved up is all."
	"How big of a tower are we talking about?" Houston asked making
small talk.
	"I have no idea." Geisha shook his head. "I don't bother with
arcology decisions. They say it's going to be a landmark though."
	"Did you find out who dropped the rock?" Houston asked curious.
	"No, but I do know The Family Hilton owns Recombinant Retrovir."
Geisha said gnashing his teeth. "I'm going to look further into this
matter. Be assured."
	As Houston opened the sack, he found everything in the way of
vices that he had asked Geisha to get for him. Pulling out the carton of
cigarettes, he opened a pack and lit one, inhaling deeply as he tossed the
pack down on the desktop.
	"God that's good." Houston sighed, blowing out the smoke long and
easy. "Davidoff Magnums! Man I missed these. I smoked them a few years
while I was in school. They're made from Supreme Virginian Tobacco. Very
Smooth. The very best."
	"Ooo!" Geisha squealed. "Then give me one of those!" He said half
disgusted as he took one from the pack. "I may as well pick up a few vices
I can't afford either." He said puffing on it, surprised at the richness
in the taste.
	"Can't afford." Houston snorted. "I don't think that's going to be
a problem for a very long time." Houston smiled at him. "You'll find new
bank account numbers in your banks. Just take the money and don't ask any
questions."




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: REPOST: Ch22 Dog Days
Date: 8 Aug 1995 07:55:29 -0500

Chapter Twenty Two
	"Come make a run for me." Geisha said pulling Houston into his
bedroom after Houston had dropped off Dolph's clean clothes in the
bathroom for him.
	"What's up?" Houston asked sitting down at the Cray, where the
combat deck now had it's own place as well, off to the right corner of the
black glass surface, sliding the microfine interface cables into his
wrist, tapping the power on, all in one smooth motion. "Trouble?"
	"I don't know." Geisha said sitting down on the bed as Dr.Forrester
flicked his tail out of the way just in time. "I need you to run a make,
on a kid, for me. His name is Charlie Decker."
	"Yeah!" Houston breathed. "Dolph said something to me about him
too. What do you know about him other than Bill Potter is bringing him
over to the party?"
	"Nothing else." Geisha said grimly. "That's what I want you to find
out for me. Get a still-store of him if you can find one."
	"Ok." Houston nodded. "Be back in a second." He said turning the
knob that slid him from one reality into another where his selves were
sitting on the couch beside each other chatting. "Hey guys."
	"Did you know Miss Delta is dead?" Construct One asked him,
politely getting up to fix him a cocktail. "We just got the TellTales and
Gotchas back." He explained.
	"Sorry it took so long to run them." Construct Two shrugged. "It
slipped my mind. The excitement over our run and all."
	"No Shit?" Houston said disbelieving as he flopped down in the
chair, stunned from the news. "Who?"
	"No shit." Construct One said handing him the drink.
	"The Gladiators." Construct Two answered. "Those Genotype Design
Kids that run NFL-Gladiator-GAMZ?"
	"You're kidding me!" Houston breathed. "What ever for?"
	"Who knows?" One shrugged flopping back down on the couch and
lighting a cigarette. "We're just as dumfounded as you. They must have had
some deal go bad on them, is the best I can figure." He shrugged.
	"Four of them died in the firefight." Two commented, lighting up
the wallscreen, with police and Enforcer reports from the crime scene.
"Their CEO was one of the casualties. He was the only one of the group
over eighteen."
	"They've already recovered from the deaths though, and have already
restructured the top of the MegaCorp." One said nodding. "Fast recovery.
Yes?"
	"Yes." Houston agreed solemnly. "Too fast. This may be related,
that's why I'm in here. There are some people coming over tonight."
	"Who?" Two asked preparing the wallscreen in the apartment,
flipping screens, ready to run a make on whomever Houston might mention.
	"Well, several guys. Friends of Uncle Rex." Houston explained.
"The two I'm wondering about are, a kid name Charlie Decker, that's the
one Geisha is worried over, and a fixer Uncle Rex knows by the name of
Bill Potter. Why does that name sound familiar?" He asked them both.
	"THE Bill Potter?" Construct One looked at him in disbelief, as Two
ran the makes on them. "THE Bill Potter who created the original Guild
System? Of The Programmers Guild?"
	"Omigod. No." Houston sunk in the chair. "You've got to be kidding
me. It can't be though! He'd be over Eighty Years old! It can't be the
same one. No way!"
	"Way." Two nodded pointing up at the screen. According to the
public access database files, it seemed that Bill Potter had served in his
uncles unit during World War Four. They were friends. Which explained a
lot as to how Houston was able to get into the Guild so easily,
considering his family didn't have the money to send him there. Why he was
approved for the loans, considering his family didn't have access to those
kinds of credit lines.
	The young looking man on the screen did not look anywhere near 84
years old, but the facts backed it all up. His eternal youth seemed to be
connected with some Retroviral "Enhancement" process he underwent in his
early thirties which corrected the DNA code as it aged.
	The Retroviral Enhancement seemed to be a lot like the
nanosurgeons and enhanced antibodies Houston himself had at the moment,
whereby, as the DNA code underwent the aging process, breaking down and
losing information along the way, the retrovirus went into the cells and
rewrote the code back to what it was before the damage occurred.
	So he never aged. He was effectively immortal. Providing he didn't
get shot.
	The creator of the Guild System still in use today was still
alive. Here was the man who started out creating The Programmers Guild!
My God! Uncle Rex ran with some very big people.
	"I never realized." Houston shook his head in disbelief staring at
his two selves sitting across the artificial room slamming back the
imitation cocktail in a daze.
	"How could we?" Construct One said just as astounded. "Who would
have thought of the connection between the two of them? Bill Potter is
Eight-Four years old! Christ. He looks better than we do." He snorted
looking at the screen.
	"The Bitch doesn't look a day over twenty seven or eight." The
other grumbled.
	"Ok. So we know who Bill Potter is." Houston said trying to think
clearly, still not quite understanding it all. "We know how Uncle Rex
knows him and why he's coming over tonight."
	"Why?"
	"I guess as a favor for Uncle Rex." Houston shrugged. "He told me
earlier he had some people coming over he wanted me to meet. What about
this Charlie Decker kid?"
	"Well, here's something else too." Construct One said, throwing up
his arms in frustration, pointing at the data displayed on the screen.
"He's with the Gladiators."
	"The one's that just knocked off Miss Delta?" Houston asked
confused.
	"Yeah." One nodded. "Except it seems they got rid of him, before
this thing with Miss Delta went down. They hit him, when they hit us." He
explained. "From what we can gather, it seems that he was with the group
that met us out in the field that night they killed us."
	"Well that son of a bitch." Houston cursed the young man on the
screen. "What's he coming over here for? And why is Uncle Rex letting
him?"
	"That's just it." Two explained. "He's switching sides. He's been
trying to defect, since they set up that hit on us. Since then, he has
been working for a rock group called 'Baby Ben', a local, rather banal and
colorless Rockerboy group, all at the request of Bill Potter."
	"Why?" Houston asked still confused.
	"I don't know." Two shook his head. "It seems Bill Potter set all
this up, with Uncle Rex. The defect from NFL, the job with Baby Ben, and
the reason for wanting him out here tonight."
	"The kid gets out of the Gladiators. A new identity and a new job.
And some kind of assignment from Bill Potter of all people."  Construct
One wondered out loud.
	"He's not even in Programmers Guild!" Houston objected. "He's
Gladiators!"
	"Maybe that's about to change." Two suggested.
	"Baby Ben is currently playing at a Gay bar DownTown called Chez
Boy." One interrupted. "Chez Boy is one of Harry DuPont's known places of
interest. He's been known to hang out there to pick up younger men. Maybe
there's a connection there."
	"Could be." Houston nodded.
	"I'll tell you who else LawMan has been running with lately." Two
popped up. "Bes Isis of Network 54, and some Nomad samurai named Hitoshi
Yamura."
	"Carl ran with a strange group for a married man." Houston
observed.
	"They were just his hired help." One commented. "He didn't
socialize with that class of people. Miss Delta was just his fixer.
LawMan is just a cop, who works for him, handling the shittier hit jobs.
Bes Isis, from what we can gather, was there for documentation and
disinformation. She was an authority figure, to back him up. The same for
Justin Smith. By association, their images would lend his credence."
	"I wonder what Justin Smith will be doing now that Miss Delta is
dead?" Houston asked out loud. "Will he run the bar? Or will Yukon Jacks
just close down?"
	"It's licensed with Justin Smith and Ralph DeLaude as Co-Owners,
Joint Tenants with Rights of Survivorship, but he may decide to just go
ahead and sell it." Two shrugged. "Who knows? And who knows how broken up
over the loss of Miss Delta he'll be?"
	"They say those people really do have emotions." Houston commented.
"I think he really did love Miss Delta, just from the way I saw them act
together at the bar." He sat thinking for a moment. "So my problem is
over. Right?"
	"Well, Carl Rothchild is down. He's nobody now." Two said examining
the facts before them. "Nowheresville. The street will eat him up by
morning. Miss Delta is dead, so he's no longer a problem. The others,
without Carl Rothchild giving the orders, they're just not a threat any
longer, that I can see."
	"What other reason would they have for wanting to hit us?"
Construct One asked. They can go back to their lives now. Justin Smith we
don't have a problem with. Hell, he's an Enforcer. Baby Ben, he's just a
Rockerboy that's dating LawMan. Bes Isis, we don't even know personally.
As for Hitoshi Yamura Nomad samurai, we've never met him before either.
It could be, he's just hired by the station to watch over Miss Isis."
	"So why is Bill Potter and Charlie Decker coming over here
tonight?" Houston asked them both. "Another threat of some kind, that
we're just not seeing?"
	"Maybe it's just coincidence." Two stated. "We're all pretty wired
over this thing. It could be, you're just suspicious is all."
	"That's just it." Houston argued. "There is no coincidence! Hell,
other than Baby Ben and Charlie Decker, there's no connection between any
of them, that I can see."
	"So our threat is over." One stated flatly. "Thank God." He sighed.
	"I don't know." Houston said uneasily, returning to the realworld,
with the itching suspicion that there was something else going on here.
Something no one was telling him...
	Geisha and Dr.Forrester sat coolly regarding him, just as Dolph
came in the door to his room looking freshly showered, still only slightly
shaved.
	"Hagakure once said: 'When one thinks he has gone too far, he will
not have erred.'" Houston said staring up at the screen on the wall.
"These guys have done just that. I'm afraid we may have too. They're good.
I'm completely lost."
	"Jesus Christ." Geisha grumbled. "They're as Goddamned bad as you
programmers. There's no fucking place to hide anymore!" He glared at
Houston. "You steal from them, they hit you. What are the rest of us
supposed to do for protection in a world like this?" He demanded.
	"Well Geisha, I'm sure I don't know!" Houston looked at him
squarely. "A little stealing and bootlegging is not all that bad. You have
to think about the potential. What could we be doing?" He tried
explaining. "With all the Gene wetwork going on, the advances in the
Neurochem industry, Wetware they call it, the best you can hope for as a
non-tech is to negotiate terms."
	"Is that what you did during the Data wars?" Geisha demanded.
"Negotiate terms for surrender?"
	"Well, in a way." Houston grinned. "We proved something to the
world at that time too, you know. We showed the world that Data is the
real value. Money is a farce."
	"So is it going to be anarchy or system?"
	"Which do you want?" Houston stood up angrily. "You're the one
whose data is being held hostage asshole! I'm a programmer. My stuff is
secure! So what's it gonna be? Huh!?" He bellowed.
	They all sat in silence a while as Houston and Geisha let the
argument die.
	"Look Geisha." Houston began again. "Memory is cheap and the
databanx are growing exponentially almost daily." He explained in a softer
voice.
	"Don't I know it." Geisha snarled. "I just ordered a custom system,
from a friend in the Electronics Guild, that will probably end up as a
Datahaven right here in Breadbasket! Right here in This house!"
	"And what of That?!" Houston demanded angrily as Dolph and Rex
stood watching the exchange with Dr.Forrester laying on the bed between
them. "Creditors want to avoid risk and to catch debtors. Insurance
companies are a likewise."
	"More sleeze-bags." Geisha said throwing up his hands.
	"They're reputable companies looking for an edge. We sell that edge
to them!" Houston shouted. "Market researchers want precise data on
individuals as do fund raisers and politicians." He defended himself.
"Specialized address lists find thriving markets. As do NuzKlips
scan-tags."
	"Oh but that's not all." Geisha growled sarcastically in an
accusative voice.
	"No. It's not. Not even close." Houston said arching an eyebrow.
"Journalists pay for subscription lists, and a quick call to a database,
can call up rumor. Hell Man! The datahavens Are Big Brother. They collect
Life. After collecting it, they turn around and sort it, and then sell it
all back in specialized databases, designed to fit the needs of the
customer. Then the same data is being resorted and resold all the time.
Of course it has to be kept updated, so they sit back and watch."
	"You're an asshole Kramer!" Geisha shouted back at him. "You got
that?! An Asshole!"
	"Yeah I got it." Houston nodded. "Get this





From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: ch22b Dog Days
Date: 8 Aug 1995 07:59:18 -0500

"Yeah I got it." Houston nodded. "Get this too Bitch!" He snapped. "Data
is abstract in it's current form on the chips. We condense, index, verify,
and sort through it all, in less than 'no time', because data has no
substance. See? I control a world where you are nothing but a string of
numbers. But That world has a lot more Power over this world. It's a
control board to a culture. You don't even have to touch the data. It's so
simple to just crash in and grab everything in sight. It all has value to
someone, somewhere. Hell, the money is just another byte of data. See Dow?
Without me you're nothing."
	"Oh now aren't you tough." Geisha asked disgustedly. "You and your
kind make me sick sometimes."
	"But not all the time?" Houston asked sarcastically. "I'm
surprised. Aren't You so goddamned much better than everyone else! You and
your goddamned simpleton ways! Piss off Christian." He snarled.
	"I'm outa here." Geisha said getting up and leaving the room.
"Fuck you."
	"Slut." Houston said simply as he left.
	Houston sat typing, accessing files at random quickly and cleanly,
as if he were searching for something, ignoring the stone silence from the
other people, which seemed to fill the room. Scanning one directory after
another, he finally realized, he wasn't even sure what it was he was
looking for.
	"I think we should do this later." Rex said quietly, getting up and
leaving the room as well.
	"Yeah." Dolph agreed following him out.
	"Damn." Houston hissed under his breath, looking around the room
and seeing Dr.Forrester still laying on the bed. "You're not going to
leave too?" He asked still angry at himself for losing his temper.
	"Do you want me to?" The big Siberian Tiger asked simply.
	"No." Houston said quietly, now exhausted. "I shouldn't have done
that."
	"Don't tell me." The eight foot cat yawned. "Tell Leslie."
	"Yeah." Houston agreed, sitting at his desk, not moving. "I
should."
	"Yeah." The big tiger agreed. "You should. Are you going to?"
	"Later I guess." Houston answered thoughtfully. "I should give him
time to calm down a little. Let him be mad at me for a while." He
shrugged.
	"Why?" Dr.Forrester asked simply.
	"Because otherwise it'll be in the NuzFax tomorrow that he went and
got the divorce papers before we even got married." Houston chuckled to
himself. "He needs to cool down a little first is all. Right now he's got
a serious mad on. One Major Mad. I think he's just about ready to kick ass
and take names."
	"So you are going to apologize to him then?" Dr.Forrester asked,
just making sure. "You'll admit that it was your fault?"
	"Yes." Houston glared at him. "That is, If I apologize." He sat
thoughtfully. "I'm not sure me and Geisha are right for each other. He's
corporate at heart. He needs their structure. In corporate life, there's
no room for visionaries. No imagination, relaxation, or space. It's not a
very good environment for Me."
	"What makes you think he wouldn't want to stay here? With you?"
The cat asked licking his big paws and washing them over his face.
	"I don't know. It's all the low tech I guess. He needs it around
him." Houston shrugged. "I think it's dangerous."
	"All tech is dangerous in the wrong hands." The big cat commented.
"Even tech with no moving parts."
	"Are you referring to my computers?" Houston looked at him
accusatively.
	"You've got Nerve Houston." The tiger explained. "You're daring,
fast, strong, and reckless. That scares the hell out of Leslie. You add a
Random factor to his life that makes you unpredictable. The unknown
frightens him. He can't control you."
	"Well what's with all this 'Control' shit all of a sudden?"
Houston demanded. "I don't expect to control him or his life!"
	"Maybe you should consider it." The tiger yawned again, and
stretched out his full length on the bed.
	"You've Got to be fucking me." Houston shook his head. "You know,
the more I hear about this relationship, the less I'm liking it."
	"Welcome to Corpocracy." The big cat smiled. "It changes people a
lot. Doesn't it?"
	"Yeah." Houston agreed sitting back in his desk chair and
sighing."Him and me both."
	"It's all a part of the Neo-Globalists movement for the New World
Order." The big cat explained smoothly. "One World means there's no place
to hide. Not even in a relationship."
	"You sound like you've been watching those old CIA crime stories
again." Houston smirked, looking over at the big cat laying on the bed.
	"You and Les are on different levels of growth." The cat observed.
"You can use that to your advantage, to help the relationship work." He
paused a moment. "I don't want to keep harping on this Houston, but it's
time to give up your Grid-Friends and start a real relationship with
another human being. You're never going to mature if you don't."
	"Ok!" Houston said throwing up his hands. "You win! You've beat
me!"
	"Well that was easy!" The tiger chortled, rolling over on the bed
playfully.
	"A human can be beaten into anything." Houston said in a low voice,
looking at him squarely. "Torture is just a method to be used. We can be
broke like horses, though we don't really care to admit it."
	"True enough." The tiger agreed. "But I would hardly call just
talking with you tortuous Houston." He admonished the young man.
	"It doesn't matter what you call it." Houston sighed. "Do you talk
to Geisha this same way?"
	"Oh no." The big cat shook his head. "I've been doing my best to
keep him off your back these past few days. Until you were out of danger
anyway. I think it's time you faced this though. Before it gets any
bigger."
	"Well, thanks." Houston said honestly, lighting a cigarette.
	"You'll get cancer." Dr.Forrester warned in a mocking voice.
	"Fuck cancer." Houston snorted. "I'll deal with that later." He
sighed again blowing smoke at the wallscreen. "Right now, I need to find a
few black satellites, and black dishes, or someone from a NebNet to help
us out in case we need it. It's time for me to get back into the circuit
again. For real. I wonder if I can find a number for a Denver Down..." He
said, wondering out loud.
	"Why don't you wait for your new system before you start on that?"
Dr.Forrester suggested, slyly. "That way, you'll have more dedicated land
lines to work with."
	"Why?" Houston asked suspiciously. "What do you want me to do, in
the meantime?"
	"Well, I think Les is over his fit now..." The tiger began slowly,
looking at Houston from behind deep green Zeiss Ikons, their color, a
razor sharp contrast to his orange, black and white, fur. "Why don't I
have him come back in here?" Dr.Forrester suggested. "Hey! I know! You
could talk!" He said in a tone of voice that sounded like he had just
thought of the idea.
	"Happy hour is over huh?" Houston winced. "I'll need some stuff to
get me through this." He said pulling drugs out of various pockets and
drawing a line of Cocaine out on the desk top. "One Adam Twelve. Be
advised. You will believe a boy can fly. Dr.Forrester, don't let Geisha
gun me down."
	"Oh sure you're a boy! I know all about boys like you! The jails
are full of them! Subversives they call you! Look at it this way..." The
cat smiled as he leaped off the bed. "It's better than watching the
Republican Marching High School Band."
	"Yeah." Houston laughed, trying not to smile as he snorted up the
cocaine off the desk top, stuck a red bubble patch to his wrist and popped
a green tablet. "O' Le'!" Houston said wide-eyed. "That's one combination
I'm going to have to remember!"
	"Now you'll never be able to work for Domino's Pizza." The cat
laughed as he headed for the door. "Conform! Conform!"
	"Have you no decency Dr.Forrester?" Houston pleaded. "Please say
this isn't happening."
	"Sorry. You already swore to God you'd talk to him."
	"I don't ever swear to God!" Houston protested. "I always promise
to try not to lie any more than I absolutely have to."
	"Besides." The cat looked at him just before leaving. "What would
you know of dignity?" He laughed padding down the hall.
	"Time to make the donuts." Houston mumbled. As he sat at the desk,
breathing slowly, calming himself down good before Geisha got there, he
heard the big mans footsteps coming down the hall, sensing his friends
massive presence, standing at the door to his room.
	"Dr.Forrester said you wanted to talk to me." Geisha said not
looking Houston in the eye as he spoke uncomfortably, trying at all costs
to avoid Houstons gaze.
	"Yeah." Houston said taking a deep breath and letting it out
slowly, shutting off his computer and turning to face Geisha where he
would sit on the bed. "Close the door and have a seat."
	"Yeah?" Geisha asked sitting squarely in front of Houston, making
him feel more than just a little uncomfortable as well.
	"This is really getting embarrassing." Houston began. "The fighting
we've been doing lately."
	"Yeah." Geisha agreed.
	"Want any dope?" Houston asked indicating the small pharmacy he had
spread out over the desk top. "This will take you far from Industrial
Man." He smiled.
	"Do you wanna spend a month or two to do the Betty Ford thing and
DeTox?" Geisha asked looking over the pile and finally selecting a purple
MicroDot that he stuck to his inner wrist. "You're gonna have to sooner or
later you know."
	"You read too much. I bet you'd be pleased as punch over that
wouldn't you?" Houston asked, his voice beginning to sound bitchier.
	"What's that supposed to mean?" Geisha demanded, raising his voice.
	"No!" Houston said throwing up his hand. "I don't want to get into
it right now again. I just want to talk to you. Quietly and seriously. I
haven't got time for this and I can't be bothered."
	"You're not having it." Geisha added with a grin.
	"Yeah. That too." Houston laughed, good-naturedly. "Ok Geisha, it's
like this. I'm sorry for what I said a while ago. I got mad at you and I
shouldn't have. I shouldn't have yelled either. I'm sorry. There's no
excuse for my behavior."
	"I believe you Houston." Geisha said seriously. "I'm sorry too. I
shouldn't have made the remarks that I did. I have been on your ass a lot
lately. Too much so."
	"I guess that wasn't so bad." Houston smiled at him. "Now. What
about us?"
	"What about us?" Geisha shrugged simply.
	"Where do you wanna go from here?" Houston asked him outright.
"You and me, I mean."
	"Where do you wanna go with us?" Geisha asked, throwing it back in
Houston's lap for a decision.
	So. That's the way, this has to be then.
	"I'd like to try a relationship with you Geisha." Houston resigned
himself to his role. "I'd like to share my life with you. I think we could
get along fine together."
	"Even as much as we fight?" Geisha asked laughing, embarrassed, but
brightening his perspective, clearly glad Houston was the one, to bring
the subject of their relationship to focus.
	"Well, relationships are Two-way streets aren't they?" Houston
began. "It's give and take on both sides. We know almost everything there
is to know about each other, after living across the hall from each other
for the past few years now, and we're still friends. Sure we'll have
fights from time to time, we always have, but I think we'll be able to
work out any crisis that comes up. Don't you?"
	"I think it's worth the try." Geisha agreed, leaning over to kiss
Houston gently. "You mean a lot to me Houston. I think that's why I come
down on you as such a hard ass. I don't want to lose you out of my life is
all."
	"I know Geisha." Houston smiled. "I love you too. And besides, if
we ever get divorced, my lawyer can beat up your lawyer." He snickered and
quickly kissed Geisha again. Even though there was a note of playfulness
in the kiss, it felt different this time. This time there was warmth.
	"You wanna get married?" Geisha asked playfully.
	"You don't want me living in sin do you?" Houston smiled warmly and
sat down on the bed next to Geisha, putting his arm around the big mans
waist.
	"I could handle that." Geisha nodded, smiling at Houston out of the
corner of his eye. "I suppose I'll have to pay for the wedding."
	"As a matter of fact you do!" Houston laughed. "After the Custom
system, I'm practically broke."
	"Bullshit Kramer." Geisha shook his head. "But I guess it's my
price to find a handsome prince." He smiled again. "I insist on hyphenated
names though."
	"Ok, but who get's top billing? Christ Geisha. This is sick."
Houston laughed. "When we go back in there, not a word to the others.
Lock the door." He said standing up and starting to take off his clothes.
	"What are you doing?" Geisha hissed, grinning, obviously happier
now than Houston had seen him in a long time. "There's people in the next
room!"
	"You're not a screamer are you?" Houston asked simply, kicking his
boots into the corner. "What's the problem?"
	"Do you really think we should?" Geisha asked spiritedly,
unbuttoning his shirt from the bottom up.
	"We'll have to consummate this sooner or later." Houston
shrugged, pulling back the ...



From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: ch22c Dog Days
Date: 8 Aug 1995 08:03:07 -0500

	"We'll have to consummate this sooner or later." Houston shrugged,
pulling back the covers and crawling underneath. "No need to get Victorian
about it now. Besides, I'm not busy right now. I got a few minutes to
kill." He laughed. "Girl, those blue jeans are headed for trouble and
they're taking you with 'em."
	"Good thinking Ninety Nine." Geisha chuckled as he then crawled
into bed and lay with his head propped up on one hand. "This is going to
change everything you know." He said seriously.
	"I know." Houston nodded, stroking his hand along side of Geisha's
morning beard, still left from the day before. The short stubbly hairs
were black and soft beneath his palm. "It's time it should though."
	"I love you Houston." Geisha said seriously, with moistened eyes,
in a tone that almost sounded like a warning. "More than anything else in
the world."
	"I love you too Leslie Dow." Houston said, this time, serious as
well...
	Later that evening, after the guests had arrived, Houston and
Geisha sat side by side on the roof of Houston's home at 75th and Wornall,
with Mr.Peabody laying between them, their booted feet dangling over the
edge into darkness, as they watched the night surrounding them with it's
dry heat, listening to the rhythmic, almost dopplered sounds, the locusts
made in the stifling darkness, talking quietly with each other.
	Houston knew he was being rude to their guests, by walking out of
the party and coming up here, but crowds made him nervous. Sometimes he
just needed a break from all the faces and nonstop chatting, about nothing
in particular.
	"Are you worried?" Houston asked Geisha quietly, as the bigger man
sat scratching the dog behind the ears, who lay uncaring to human concerns
and so long as Geisha continued to stroke his coat, he was content to lay
and pant in the evening light with only a half-ear tuned to the
neighborhood around them.
	"Nah." Geisha shook his head in the darkness as they heard multiple
shots far off in the distance. Out of reflex, Houston counted nine. An
execution, no doubt. "I trust your judgment, and your skill at the
keyboard."
	"After this thing is over, we'll go away for a while. To get our
bearings back." Houston sighed. "I promise you."
	"It's almost over." Geisha said in agreement. "I'm sure we'll make
it out of this Gladiator thing ok."
	"Do you trust that kid?" Houston asked quietly, just in case one of
them might be coming up the back stairs and over-hear Geisha and himself
talking.
	"Hell no!" Geisha spat looking over at Houston. "Do you?" He asked
quietly.
	"No." Houston shook his head slightly in the darkness. "I don't
trust anyone though." He laughed bitterly.
	"Not even me?" Geisha asked, sounding just a bit hurt as the
crescent moon began to creep up over the horizon in the south east. It was
hard to believe they had been here three weeks together.
	Even after three weeks of searching and asking questions in very
private circles, Houston had still not figured out why he was being
considered a threat by the Gladiators. A threat big enough that the
corporates had hired teams of Netrunners, who were presently roaming all
of cyberspace, searching for him. They were determined to find his mind
and burn it down, if not his body.
	Carl Rothchild, the immortal survivor of odds, was Still alive,
and acting in concert with the Gladiators. Rex and Houston both, had found
out that Carl was a little more clever than either of them had originally
credited the man. Perhaps that was their mistake all along.  Had Carl
Rothchild and the Gladiators been a team all along? It was something to
consider anyway...
	"Geisha." Houston said simply with a hint of frustration in his
voice. "You're going to have to relax. You're about the most insecure
person I have ever met." He sighed as he stroked the dogs head. "Look. I
love you. I've said so in as many ways as I can. Of course that love has
to involve trust! I don't know what else to say to convince you."
	"Ok Houston." Geisha nodded silently. "I didn't mean to upset you."
	"Oh hell Geisha." Houston sighed. "It's this whole goddamned
thing." He explained. "It's got us all strung a bit tight these days."
	"Well, I know I didn't expect it to take this long." Geisha said
agreeing with him. "I figured it would take maybe a couple of runs before
we finally hit Carl, but I didn't expect it to take this long. I've never
been on a run that was this unsuccessful at hitting the primary target,
time after time. I feel like an idiot."
	"Me too." Houston agreed simply, watching a group of kids walking
down the middle of the street. They reminded him of his own youth, when he
too had to join up with the gangs in order to survive Junior High. Or was
that just an excuse? Was it really all that bad, trying to stay away from
the worst of the dope out there? Or dodging bullets in the hallways of
school, between rival gangs, or between the gangs (and the worst gang of
all) the brutal and barbarous Cops?
	Yes. It was.
	Houston looked at the group of about ten kids, and knew that only
two or three of them had any chance at all of reaching the age of
majority. Seventy percent would die before the age of 21. Most from
gunshot wounds, though a few would die of any of the hundreds of viral
plagues out there.
	It's tough to survive in the Brave New World. Houston thought to
himself.
	"Are they good guys or bad guys?" Geisha asked as Houston stared at
the group walking down the street, armed to the teeth, and probably
looking for a way to get money to buy the latest cybernetic modification,
to give them an edge on the world. An Edge that their enemies would have
eventually, as well. So beings the escalation. The Arms race, The Brains
Race, The CyberRace.
	Where was the human race in all of this? Houston wondered as he
came back to Geisha's question.
	"That depends on which side of the gun barrel you're on." Houston
explained. "There really is no Good Guy, Bad Guy." He shrugged as they
spoke in low tones to avoid being seen by the group. "It's all just
survival. The Chaos of the universe and all that jazz."
	"You really think so?" Geisha asked amused by Houston observation.
	"Yeah." Houston said solemnly. "The system works because everyone
wants it to work. Like School BBS's and trading phone card numbers to make
illegal phone calls." He shrugged. "It only holds together so long as
everyone is cooperating with each other. If you're a part of it, you think
you're the good guys. Someone on the outside, who finds out that this sort
of thing goes on all the time, finds it horrifying, and labels the group
cooperative as Bad."
	"What about Carl Rothchild and what he tried to do to you?"  Geisha
asked staring at Houston. "Don't you think what he did was bad?"
	"Yes! To Me." Houston explained watching the group of kids wander
away, keeping an eye out for anyone on their turf. "I suppose He thought
he was completely justified in his actions though. Degrees of severity are
a very subjective thing. We think we're at the mercy of the monopolies and
MegaCorps, but They think they are simply using whatever means or
resources available, for the most people to win, the highest possible
dollar amount out of life. Think about how many people they employ."
Houston suggested. "All of those people, are factors in this as well."
	"Oh." Geisha said quietly. "I think I see what you mean."
	Houston sat quietly, letting Geisha process the new idea that
perhaps not everyone at the top was really out to work people for little
or no wages, that the MegaCorps might actually be run by real people,
sincere in their beliefs and that sometimes bad things happen in the world
for good reasons.
	"Not everyone can be in control." Geisha said in understanding.
	"Come on." Houston smiled. "Let's go back downstairs." He said
leaning over Mr.Peabody and kissing Geisha lightly on the lips, their
thick bushy moustaches briefly brushing together in the darkness.
	"They'll start wondering where we went to." He explained as he
stood up.
	"Yeah." Geisha agreed stretching his big frame and patting the big
Rotweiler on the head before they headed towards the door on the roof.
	Descending the stairs, the creaks in the old iron spiral staircase
sang a familiar tune to Houston. One that he remembered from years ago
that had etched itself into his old body's brain and memories, and had
passed on to this current body, by the miracle technology of the soul
bank. He felt very happy to be alive.
	"Where's Dolph and Dr.Forrester?" Houston asked his uncle who was
pulling ice out of the freezer, just as they came into the kitchen.
	"They're in the living room." Rex smiled as they both sat down at
the table. "So you two have decided to tie the knot huh?" Rex grinned at
his nephew.
	"Yeah." Houston nodded. "I can't get rid of the Bitch so I might as
well marry him." Houston laughed taking Geisha's hand into his own and
smiling warmly at him.
	"You hateful sow." Geisha grumbled, fighting back a smile.
	"Have you given any thought as to where you'll live?" Rex asked,
hinting at the fact that Houston knew Rex was wanting them to stay there
at the house on Wornall after they were married.
	"I thought we'd move in here." Houston said in a matter-of-fact
tone. "Do you have any objections?"
	"No!" Rex said sticking up his hands. "I want you two here. I'm
glad you'll finally be coming back home." He smiled again. "This place is
yours you know." He gently reminded Houston.
	"It is?" Geisha asked, looking over at Houston with a wrinkled
brow.
	"Yep." Rex nodded. "I'm just the grounds keeper." He chuckled.
"Houston's father left the place to him when he died. Of course, he
stipulated that I stay around and keep an eye on things." He winked at
them both.
	"You'll stay then?" Houston asked seriously.
	"I suppose so." Rex nodded. "I've got no place better to go." He
shrugged. "Oh! By the way Houston, I've got something up in the top of my
closet I've been meaning to give you. I found them last night while I was
looking for rounds for some of the rifles."
	"What are they?" Houston asked curiously.
	"Your Dads journals." Rex said simply. "I think he wanted you to
have them. When you read them, I think you'll see a side of your dad you
never knew before."
	"Perhaps." Houston nodded solemnly. "I don't know though. Me and
Dad never did get along very well." He remembered. "Maybe I'm jumping to
conclusions though. I suppose I should read them." He agreed.
	"You and your Dad didn't get along?" Geisha asked concerned.
	"Well of course not!" Houston said surprised. "Why would I be a Fag
if I got along with my father?" He laughed.
	"I don't understand." Geisha said confused.
	"It's what drives sexuality Les." Rex explained gently. "What
sexuality we are as adults is decided early in our lives when we make the
emotional bonds with our parents or adult authority figures. Houston made
that tie, and bonded well with his mother, but his father and he just
never seemed to make it." He shrugged. "They never did connect."
	"All Gay men are lacking that emotional tie with the male
figure-heads in their lives. I thought they taught this in school though."
Houston said looking confused. "Gay men are constantly searching for a man
to please in their lives."
	"I think it's because the adult males, shy away from younger males,
who show female tendencies like emotions." Rex explained. "They
inadvertently then, through their avoidance, end up humiliating the
younger, less masculine males, who are looking to them for approval,
causing the younger men to want most, what they think they don't have.
Masculine tendencies. So they become Gay."
	"Well, it's the first I've ever heard of it." Geisha said amazed.
"It does answer a lot of questions for me though." He said thinking to
himself.
	"Well good." Rex laughed getting up from the table. "Always glad to
be of help." He chuckled as he left the room.
	"You mean, you never knew before Why you were Gay?" Houston asked
Geisha amazed.
	"Nope." Geisha shrugged. "I've always known I was, but never
exactly why. You know, that whole Nature versus Nurture, and Brain or DNA
thing? I just never gave it much thought I suppose."
	"Well, as Gay men, something didn't click right when we were young.
The DNA cards being dealt as they were, we were closer to women than men
when it came to emotional needs." Houston explained. "So all our lives, we
search for, in other men, those things we needed as kids, but never got.
The emotional support of male authority figures. Most boys don't need that
kind of attention. But as Fags, from the moment of conception, we're
already set up to fail."
	"You mean since our fathers are straight?" Geisha asked, clarifying
this new concept for himself. "Since they're straight, they don't realize
they're not giving us what we need, just as they don't realize they're not
fulfilling the emotional needs of their wives." He nodded.
	"Right. So from the beginning, we're destined




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: ch22d Dog Days
Date: 8 Aug 1995 08:04:37 -0500

"Right. So from the beginning, we're destined to be let down, just because
we're set up differently than other little boys." Houston went on. "As Gay
men, we would, in reality, make the best parents for any child, since we
have both male and female aspects to our personalities."
	"What about you?" Geisha asked, taking Houston off track for a
moment. "Do you want to have children?"
	"Yes. I do. I've always wanted at least one, and I think maybe two.
Both boys." Houston nodded, looking his future husband in the eye.  "Have
you given any thoughts to parenthood? For the two of us, I mean."
	"I've always thought I would make a better father than My Father
was, even when I was growing up, but I never really knew why." Geisha
shrugged. "Most Gay Men don't want children complicating their lives. We
have it too easy. You know? I always assumed, I would have to have one on
my own, if I ever did have one at all." He explained. "I thought it would
be kinda neat, to carry my own son, throughout the pregnancy."
	"Me too." Houston agreed. "We'll have to think about this further."
He said getting up from the table. "After the party though."




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 23a
Date: 1 Aug 1995 20:58:30 -0500

Chapter Twenty Three
	Houston's crisis of the soul began early in the evening, as he was
coming down off one or more of the many drugs that kept making their way
around the room in between cocktails. Everyone it seemed, brought their
own bag of goodies, to share with the group. Red Ice from drug factories
in Belorussia, Dixie Tar Heroin, South African designer Electric Blue,
Crystal MethAmphetamine from the streets of Kansas City and Foundry made
scotch, does not a healthy mind make.
	It was the first such episode of soul-searching since his own
resurrection, and he couldn't tell if he was handling it all well, or
poorly. They told him to expect it, at least the psychiatrist who came in
his room at the Resurrection Center did, but he certainly didn't expect
this. This was awful.
	Sitting in the chair at his desk, watching the travel poster on
his wall change from the tropical Miami-Island of St.Thomas, to a scene
shot across the Gulf of Tennessee he thought: Welcome to the next level.
Go on to level two.
	It had bothered Houston deeply that he had died. What bothered him
most was the fact that he didn't have the mythology or symbols to
interpret what it was that had happened to him. He thought perhaps, that
if he could just understand the mechanics of death, then he could work out
some appropriate mathematics to it all. Geisha was right. I AM a boring
person.
	His philosophy was NOT "Live fast, die young and leave a good
looking corpse." as Geisha had insinuated a few days ago. Life meant more
to Houston than that.
	Sitting at the desk, he paused looking at the microfine cables,
wondering if he should work this out with his selves, or if perhaps he
might do better alone, and finally decided that 'Help' would never hurt
the process. Let's see what the undead have to say for themselves.
Slipping the hair fine fibers into his wrist, he turned the knob on the
cyberdeck and eased himself into the other reality of his old apartment.
	"Hey Girl!" His self said smiling to him as he eased into the
environment.
	"Hola Houston!" Gloria greeted him cheerfully as he sat down in his
favorite chair. "You need to mop in here." She said inspecting the kitchen
floor dispassionately.
	"Wipe that dopey grin off your face." Houston grumbled to himself.
"And get her out of here." He sighed putting his face down in his hands.
"Send her back to the land of Dairy Queen."
	"Well Missy!" His self said opening the door, nodding to Gloria and
letting her leave the apartment. "What's up with You? Can't you ever
relax?" His self teased indignant. "Are you High? Or just having trouble
living up to your china?"
	"I feel like shit." Houston nodded, breathing out slowly and then
lighting a cigarette in the artificial environment. "Uncle Rex is having
some kind of a meeting slash party out there with a bunch of bad-asses he
knows. Old friends. Do we have any gas or anything you can give me for a
couple of minutes that will keep me out for a few days?"
	"Sorry Ducky." His self said shaking his head. "This is your brain
on drugs. Any Questions?"
	"I want to come down." Houston sighed again. "I don't like this
high."
	"So what's up my little square pudding?" His self asked sitting
down on the couch and sitting forward, now intent on Houston and his
feelings. "Chad Slab-body not giving you any?"
	"I don't know what's wrong." Houston sighed. "It's the death thing
I guess. The Coming Back part I mean. I just don't feel very well about
it. Where is the other one of you by the way?"
	"Watch that break from reality." His self arched an eyebrow. "We
are you. Or almost anyway. Enough that no one could tell the difference.
Except us. He's out taking care of corporate stuff."
	"Oh." Houston said simply.
	"So I'm supposed to drag it out of you huh?" His self smiled at
him.
	"I don't know what the problem is. Since I've met these people in
the living room a while ago, I've just got a bad high on is all." Houston
tried explaining. "You're supposed to be the metaphor for our souls. You
tell Me what the problem is."
	"I am not a soul. I am a successor entity to a human template."
His self insisted. "I exist as an intelligent program. A soul may have
been the original reason for my creation in this world." He said waving
his arm around the room indicating the artificial environment they now
occupied within the confines of the combat deck. "But it is no longer My
purpose. I have been given Life."
	"So what is Your purpose?" Houston asked. "If you tell Me then it
would be the same as mine then."
	"Perhaps." His self nodded. "My purpose is to my Self. To improve
myself." He smiled. "To experience life in all it's richness and all that
life has to offer."
	"Then why isn't that My purpose?" Houston asked laying his head
back against the chair and looking up at the ceiling. "I don't
understand."
	"You're high." His self laughed shaking his head. "I'll swear to
God girl. There's nothing at all mystical about life!" He admonished
Houston. "Look. There's a party going on out there. With real people in
it. Do some shooters with your friends out there, and forget about all of
this!"
	"That's no answer!" Houston snapped at his self. "I'm in trouble
here."
	"Well I guess you are!" His self laughed. "Note to myself: Next
time appear as a watery manifestation of a wrathful and vengeful God.
Floods always have more impact than anything else you know." He said
confidentially.
	"Laugh on sister." He warned his self. "You hateful Bitch." He
snarled, making the room grow silent for more than a few heartbeats.
	"Oh lighten up Houston." His self said now serious. "What do you
want me to do? Say the secret word and you win a hundred dollars? Well my
little hard bodied bachelor friend, it just doesn't work that way. You've
got to find it within yourself to pull out of this depression thing."
	"How?"
	"You just Do it." His elf shrugged. "Grow up a little. It doesn't
hurt that much. Don't be such a Wuss."
	"Well how very grand of you." Houston curled a lip in disgust.
"Aren't You so very goddamed advanced from the rest of us."
	"Someone somewhere has to take responsibility for this feeling
you're having." His self explained. "I'm not going to do it. So You are
going to have to."
	"Well, maybe it Is your fault." Houston suggested childishly.  "You
were the one who did the Mindread. Maybe something went wrong. It happens
all the time you know. Maybe you fucked it up." He said defiantly. "Forgot
to instill me with free will or survival instinct or something."
	"Nothing went wrong with the Mindread, Houston." His self sighed.
"I didn't screw anything up and you weren't spawned by some giant mutant
beast." He laughed. "You're just a little down. It's a natural chemical
reaction in your brain. It will pass you know." His self sat snickering
for a moment as Houston stared at him. "It's time to put the lotion on the
skin." He winked teasing.
	"I am going to give you such a pinch!" Houston said angry now.
"Why can't you be serious for me right now?"
	"And get all down and out like you?" His self looked shocked. "I
don't Think so!" He laughed again. "It's hard being God isn't it?"
	"What do you mean?" Houston asked sitting up now that something had
struck a chord in him.
	"Haven't you figured that out yet?" His self asked now serious
again for the moment anyway. "You are your own God. There is nothing else,
except higher spheres of existence. I thought you were
Reorganized-Mormon?"
	"Oh bite me." Houston snapped caustically. "I need help."
	"No you don't." His self sighed getting up and fixing them both
cocktails. "It could lead to dancing." He glanced over to see if he was
getting through. Houston just sat shaking his head woefully. This was
really getting serious. Which called for even more humor. "Fags like us,
Baby we were born to Run!" His self sang, only to be met by a blank stare.
"Oh well. I guess you woulda had to have been there. You do it all
yourself Houston. All of it." He explained quietly. "You always have you
know. You always will."
	"I've always thought there was something bigger than me though.
Something to guide it all." Houston fumbled for words. "You know? A God or
a Higher Being or a Plan or something."
	"Well, you were wrong." His self said simply, shrugging and handing
him a cocktail.
	"That's it?" Houston asked incredulously. "I was wrong?"
	"Yep." His self nodded.
	"Well! Now that That's Crystal I guess I can just go back to life."
He said sarcastically.
	"Yeah. Well, that's a wrap. Enjoy the buffet." He blinked out of
existence.
	Houston sat alone in the artificial world of his apartment for a
few subjective minutes, still only having been in the VR of the cyberdeck
a few realtime seconds. Realizing his self was not coming back to talk
with him, he turned the knob on the cyberdeck and easing himself back into
the real world, pulling the microfine cables from his wrist and sat
staring at the Cray, stunned.
	That certainly was strange. No more dope. He silently swore. But
maybe it was just what he needed to shake loose a few thoughts, that had
been bothering him. He could at least relax now.
	Walking into the living room, Houston flipped the wallscreen in
the living room off just as the Planetary News Network (PNN) was
announcing the recent resurrection clone of Johnny Carson for the third
time this hour. According to the reporter, the latest celebrity
resurrection promised to bring forth "A New Era in Entertainment", now
that the King of Television has returned to his throne on Earth.
	What Houston knew, and most of the Medias didn't think was worth
mentioning, was that this "New" Johnny Carson was not the same as the
first. The real Johnny Carson couldn't have had a Mindread done. They
didn't even have that technology back then.
	This Johnny Carson, though no doubt a clone from a cell, taken
from the mans crypt, was merely a composite person. His soul was made up
of thousands of hours of recordings, responses to actors and actresses
that were written for him by the shows teams of writers, a hundred years
ago, and was in no way spontaneous about anything.
	It was a human, a cloned body, that would be filled with a
machined personality matrix. An AI would have went over, sifting and
sorting through the thousands of recordings and records of the man and his
life, even down to the many divorce settlements he was so notorious for,
and built up a reasonable facsimile to fill the brain with. A program for
a soul. And property of NBC.
	Not unlike thousands of people you meet everyday on the street.
Houston thought to himself. Just surviving by going through the motions.
Nothing more.
	So Johnny lives once again. Proud as a Peacock.
	How long until they decide to revive "The King" Elvis?
	People were downright sick when it came to television, VR and the
celebrities they worshipped daily. He was different though. Wasn't he?
	Pushing the dreary thoughts of life and death from his mind, he
finally got up the will to circulate. Houston sat looking the strangers in
his home, wondering if they were on the level or not. Could they be
trusted?
	First of all, this Bill Potter. Wearing a sports coat over a tank
top, looking fifty plus years younger than he had any right to. Not the
man of legends as Houston first supposed he would be at all. Incredibly
normal. Almost a queer duck as a matter of fact. Bill Potter was a small
man, not even average stature or build, quiet and shy, very reserved, and
yet whose mind operated on a level that theirs couldn't fathom. The man
was constantly on another wavelength. It was very distracting. Houston
somehow expected something... well, more. A friend of his uncles.
	Then this Kid they called Charlie Decker. As asshole for all
intents and purposes, who was fifteen going on 50, playing an intricate
part in this conspiracy, and whom Houston was not sure he liked at all.
Hints were dropped that night, to the effect that perhaps Charlie would
make a great understudy for Houston, even though the kid was a friend of
Bill Potters. So was this the price of his attending school in The Belt?
Bill Potter did him a favor by getting him into The Guild, and now he was
to repay the man by taking this punk under his wing?
	Then the others. The fixer Beau Beauchamp who never seemed to get
off the phone. He would hang up and then someone else would call him on
his minicellular or he would make another call. Another deal was
constantly in the works. His own motto seemed to be "In todays world, if
you're out of touch, you're out of business." Beau was supposedly Bills
brother and looked nothing at all like him. Except the fact that he looked
fifty years younger than he said he was. Eighty Five looking like Thirty
Five. He supposedly knew Carl Rothchild from the circles he traveled in.
Odd. A corporate fixer. The man supposedly owned the bar DownTown called
Chez Boy.
	Death in a business suit. Houston thought oddly.
	Beaus black drag queen wife




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 23b
Date: 1 Aug 1995 21:00:05 -0500

So THAT'S where Dolph went in the middle of the night. Son of a gun.
	"... told me that your family was Reorganized-Mormon too. I'll have to
drop by sometime, so you and I can go to church together. We'll go get
sacrament together." Chance said walking up to Geisha with Houston.
	"What's wrong Geisha?" Houston asked walking up to his old friend
and new lover, concerned over the strange look he had on his face. "Are
you ok?" He asked worriedly, despite the fact that he currently had the
Netrunner Chance Marchenko in tow. Geisha learned very quickly that all
Deckers were comrades at heart.
	"Yeah." Geisha grinned. "Everything's fine. So what's been up with
you two?"
	"Not much. Talking shop and stuff." Houston shrugged sipping at his
scotch in hand. "I'm sorry I pissed you off dear. Chance said I should
come tell you I'm sorry."
	"Hey, it never hurts a relationship to eat a little crow once in a
while girlfriend." Chance laughed easily, casually swinging a slender
hairy wrist sticking out from his shirt sleeve which he had rolled only
half way up his arms. "It's kept my marriage together for the past twelve
years."
	"It wasn't the first and I'm sure it wont be the last." Geisha
grinned and kissed Houston. "So we run tomorrow huh?" He directed at
Chance.
	"That's the plan. Tomorrow night. Twenty One Hundred Hours."
Chance nodded dressed in a white button down over clean blue jeans, and
neon pink high-tops. "I go with your group and coordinate things with
Houston inside The Matrix. We're hitting the Gladiators."
	"Meanwhile I'll be monitoring the activity and assisting the group
that will hit Carl Rothchild." Houston explained. "Uncle Rex had the
assault all planned out with his man in Narobi. It seems that we were just
the last to know." He shrugged.
	"Hit both sides hard and fast, and then pull the quick fade."
Geisha nodded. "I like it." He said decidedly.
	"Hey! You know, we have a personal friend in common you and I."
Chance said casually to Houston. "Jerry Bones."
	"Jerry Bones?" Geisha asked puzzled
	"Jerry Bones." Houston repeated, mulling the name over as he stood
for a moment trying to figure out who the man was as well, going over a
list of faces and names he knew from the Netrunner bars, trying to place
the name.
	"Oh! Jerry Bones!"  Houston said in recognition. "The fixer on the
sixth floor at Broadway Towers Apartments!"
	"The only." Chance shook his long dark hair that flowed down his
back in waves.
	"No kidding." Houston said impressed. "Well, I used to do a lot of
business with him. I don't suppose I will any more though as I plan on
moving in here. I'll have to get a new man. He was a good fixer though."
	"Good not only with information, but can put you in touch with just
about any hardware you could think of." Chance nodded. "The man is forever
networking. My business partner Arnaud and I use him quite a bit down at
Full Disclosure."
	"So have you figured out who everyone is yet?" Geisha asked.
	"Well, Bill, Roland and Dr.Forrester were all a part of the same
team as Uncle Rex during the wars. Miss Abbey is just here for the drinks
and to keep an eye on Beau." Houston explained rolling his eyes with a
short giggle. "Beau is Bills brother, and Chance is Rolands husband.
Tucker is Rolands partner."
	"They've been partners for the past six years." Chance explained.
"Since they started on the force together. Of course, effective six months
ago, they're in business for themselves as private investigators.  Along
with Tuckers lover Sean."
	"And Charlie Decker?" Geisha asked, eyeing the young boy
suspiciously. "What about him?"
	"He's a friend of Bills. Some street urchin with a high IQ that
Bill's been wanting to help out." Houston explained. "He's here mostly for
muscle. I guess he's supposed to be pretty good with those goose guns he
carries."
	"I noticed those." Geisha said looking across the room
suspiciously. "I'll bet when he fires them they sprain his wrists. Whadda
ya wanna bet?" He grinned viciously.
	"Down girl!" Chance teased. "I need another drink. Anyone else?"
He waved his glass at the other two, walking away when they just shook
their heads.
	"Are you having a good time dear?" Houston asked in a better mood.
	"Oh sure." Geisha smiled. "What about you?"
	"Much better." Houston smiled and kissed Geisha.
	Geisha IS a damn good looking man. Handsome in an unpolished kinda
way. As good as anything here. I don't think I could have done much
better. He thought to himself just as Chance's husband Roland, Rex and
Dr.Forrester's old army buddy came up to the two of them.
	"So Houston. I hear you two are getting married!" Roland said
fearlessly looking Geisha over from head to toe. "Your uncle told me all
about it. Congratulations."
	"Thanks." Houston blushed. "I figure if nothing else, the Bitch can
at least pay half the rent." He teased.
	"So Les, you're a Tech?" Roland stated, getting straight to the
real point why he came over to the two of them. "Have you handled many
firearms?"
	"Not many, no. Just what I have to." Geisha admitted. "I've always
tried to avoid them as much as possible. I have not however been very
successful."
	"I know how that can be. It's a wicked world in which we live.
Everything will go fine tomorrow." Roland assured them both. "If you can
follow orders, I can get you in and out." He said confidently, making
Houston feel better as well.
	Houston was sincerely impressed with this man Roland Caulder. He
was only slightly taller than Geisha, not quite as big as Dolph, but he
had an air about him that made him seem so much bigger than anyone else in
the room. Charisma. Houston thought. Of course, most of the people in the
room seemed to have that same quality about them.
	"Come here a second Tuck." Roland said motioning his partner and
friend over to their small group. "I want you to talk with someone. Tuck
this is Houston Kramer, he's going to be your Net man tomorrow night.
He's Rex's nephew."
	"Kramer." Tucker Stone said solemnly, shaking Houston's hand.
	"Stone." Houston nodded. So last names it's going to be. That's
fine. Sometime last names alone are even more friendly than a first name
basis. It's the person.
	"So you're my console jock huh?" Stone asked pointedly, clearly not
impressed with Houstons size or looks. But what Houston knew that this man
didn't was that size or strength meant nothing once you were jacked in to
the Matrix. Speed was everything.
	Houston knew he could finesse more crunched numbers in just a few
seconds than the hard ass Stone could fathom in a lifetime. He had grown
up with the machines.
	Houston also knew that the best Netrunners and Console Cowboys
that he had ever know had been either blind or paraplegics. Once inside
the circuit, everything was thought. The body was simply meat that kept
hanging on. A real man has the nerve, to take what he deserves. Houston
recalled.
	"Yeah." Houston nodded. "Since I was a kid. I've always had a thing
for computers." He explained. "Later on I made it out to The Belt and went
to school there."
	"The Programmers Guild?" Stone asked as if he were taking some
mental notes. For all Houston knew, he could be doing that very thing.
Biochip implants were marvelous machines, even if they did have a whole
new set of problems that went along with them. "Where did you serve your
apprenticeship?"
	"Uh, with a man named Leonard Three Deer." Houston said taken aback
for a moment.  "He's a Big Rep software designer out of New York City.
Process Animations? They do state-of-the-art cinematic computer animations
for Madison Avenue. I was with him when he used to run with The Beltway
Bandits. That was when they hit Glacier Tech. Last I heard he was up in
New Beverly Hills Orbital-Habitat working for Gemeinschaft Bank." He
explained simply, noticing a stare and a fractional nod that passed from
Stone to Roland quickly and silently.
	"What do you know of the Cyberpunk movement?" Tucker Stoned asked
pointedly in sharp precise words, seemingly already knowing Houstons
response.
	"Well, I can tell you that the cyberpunk movement itself is mostly
political. They believe information is power, so he who holds the
information holds the power." Houston explained what he remembered from
his Guild days. "They also feel that as guardians of information, power
must be decentralized for collective security. Their utopian agenda seems
to revolve around the question 'Who owns and controls the future?'."
	"That's the Cyberpunk movement. These Gladiators are Not cyberpunks
however." Chance interjected. "You're thinking of the Rom Wranglers who
strive to keep the keepers honest, watching the watchers and waging
guerilla warfare against the multinational zaibatsus."
	"Sure." Houston nodded. "I think I even remember the Hackers
Ethic..." He said thinking back to his childhood for a moment before
continuing. "Access to computers or anything which might teach you
something about the way the world works should be unlimited and total.
Always yield to the Hands On Imperative. All information should be free.
Mistrust Authority. Promote Decentralization. Information wants to be
free." He paused. "Or something like that."
	"That ain't these guys. That's us. The Mirrorshades Group. These
fuckers we're facing are Mean Gene Machines. They have no souls and
nothing to lose." Tucker Stone said flatly. "We're gonna be in for one
helluva ride tomorrow night. Are you gonna be up for it?" He asked
directly.
	"Yes." Houston nodded suddenly feeling an odd sense of power, quite
sure of himself. "I can handle it." He said confidently.
	Later, when Houston went into the kitchen to get more ice, his
uncle came up stealthily behind him.
	"So how are you doing Houston?" He asked in his friendly disarming
manner.
	"Fine." Houston smiled. "I like your friends. How come you never
had them out to the house before?"
	"Well, you were only a child back then." Rex explained. "Your Daddy
was busy trying to raise you right and keep you out of as much trouble as
possible. You know." He shrugged. "He and I just decided that as long as
you were impressionable, it would be a better idea to keep my life quiet
and low key. You understand."
	"Yeah. I suppose so." Houston grinned.
	"Well, my friend Bill ran a few makes, on what you had been up to
in the past. He had always been keeping half an eye on you for me, to make
sure you didn't get into any trouble." Rex went on speaking in low tones.
"And then, when you were just recently in the hospital he gave me a call.
He's very interested in your AI's. The ones that were stolen I mean."
	Houston looked surprised for a moment.
	"Really." Rex confirmed. "He's impressed with your work. He wanted
to meet you. To get a feel for how your mind works. I think he may be
going to offer you a contract of some kind. Please consider it seriously."
Houston merely watched Rex, quietly somber.
	"These men are my friends, yes, but they're much more than that."
Rex continued. "They're my companions, backers and associates. Patrons and
supporters. Compatriots whom I would give my life for, just as sure as I
know any of them would lay down his life for mine. Do you understand?"
	"Yes." Houston nodded reflectively. "I think I do."
	"They have watched you grow up, and now they want you to join them
in The Mirrorshades Group. It's something I want you to give some serious
thought to Houston. A fraternity like this can mean the difference between
success in life, and just getting by."
	"I understand." Houston nodded seriously. "When will you need a
decision?"
	"By tomorrow. When we make the run." Rex said leaving the room.




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 24
Date: 1 Aug 1995 21:01:41 -0500

Chapter Twenty Four
	Then the day finally came. When it was time to hit back. Hard.
	Carl Rothchild, though he had been struck a few times, by Rex and
his modest crew, had not yet sustained enough damage to be put out of
commission for good. Even after Houston had wiped the man clean of his
primary assets, Carl had still somehow managed to maintain his power and
control. As long as he was alive, Houston would never be safe.
	The Gladiators would be hit as well. They were the ones who were
behind this continued aggression against Houston. They were the ones who
had convinced Carl it was such a great idea to steal Houstons AI's, to
lobotomize them, and that it was within the corporations best interest to
simply eliminate Houston.  Now they were going to die. The little fucks.
	Houston had gone over the tactical that "Nairobi" (As Houston had
come to refer to him as) had furnished him with (The man had thought of
absolutely everything.) for the third time today, and was by now, getting
tired. It was almost time for him to lay down and take a nap, so he could
get rested up, before they made their move on Carl and the Gladiators.
Even their naps were a scheduled part of the plan.
	Disconnecting himself from the combat unit and slipping the
microfines from his wrist, Houston found the house eerily quiet. Geisha
lay on his bed sleeping heavily, the sound of his breathing deep and
regular. The house hadn't been this quiet since they had first came here,
seeking sanctuary, almost a month ago.
	The past few hours had been hectic. Well, that wasn't right, Busy
would be the more appropriate term. There had been people in and out of
the house almost nonstop. Mostly hardware of various caliber being
delivered. The garage now looked like a munitions dump.
	Houston was beginning to feel the difference in himself, now that
his life had taken on new meaning. He was no longer alone in the world.
Sure, he had Geisha to share his life with him, but at the same time he
now belonged to a brotherhood. The Cyberpunk movement. The Mirrorshades
Group.
	Climbing into bed and laying down next to Geisha, he shifted back
against the bigger man, sliding his fingers between the bigger fingers,
pulling the big bear arms close around him, and in response, even in his
oblivious state, Geisha shifted his huge muscular body yet again,
unconsciously molding himself around Houston as if the two of them were a
set of perfectly matched spoons. Even in his drooling slumber, Geisha
pulled Houston tight against him and snuggled his face down in the hair
behind Houstons head, near the universal port at the base of his skull.
As he continued to sleep, Geisha let his breath out in a long drawn out,
deep guttural sigh, that almost sounded like a purr, which made Houston
smile.
	He had made the right decision. Houston felt sure of that. In both
instances.
	He and Geisha would have a wonderful life together, and through
the ministrations of The Mirrorshades Group, the two of them would always
have work, in fighting for the cause. It was the right move. Wasn't it?
Providing they both lived. Houston again returned to the worried thoughts
that had plagued him so much last night. He didn't want anything bad to
happen to Geisha. Not before they could get started with their lives.
It's not fair!
	Even as he lay still on the bed, Houston could feel the hot dry
ominous winds just outside, blowing the latest dust storm in through the
city. Deep in his chest he could feel the vibration as the winds licked
and tugged at the bulwark bastion of their earth sheltered home. The
foreboding gale was calling to him. It's hypnotic voice whispering to him,
telling him that he, and everything he had known, would soon be taken away
from him, as he pulled Geisha's arms around him tighter, bringing his
lovers huge wide calloused hand up close to his face, in order to lay his
head down, in the big mans palm.
	Why? Houston asked the wind, only to suffer the hot dry raspy
laughter in reply, telling him that no appropriate ethical answer would be
permitted.
	The future was not at all what he had hoped it would be, when he
was younger. He had expected so much more from mankind. No one had said it
would be like this. How did man continue to survive, against odds like
these?
	The future he had so many dreams for, plans that would remake his
life into something more, something enhanced, had dwindled away in what
seemed like overnight. Pleasant, pleasurable dreams, hope for the future,
had become nothing more than a bad acid trip, from which it was impossible
to wake from. Today, it seemed to Houston, as if the world had become a
non-stop boot to the face. Never letting up for even a minute.  Choking
dread mixed with giggle dust.
	Houston could feel his sense of self, fragmenting away like a
silent shattered glass rose, that had been dipped in liquid nitrogen.
Smashed against a brick wall of reality, with the anger driven intensity
of a furious mad man. The tinkling shards, slivers of forgotten hope,
unheard behind the heavy velvet curtains, of overwhelming sadness and
loneliness.
	He had one day hoped to leave the confines of EarthSystem. To
travel the stars, by way of the jump ship technology, that was now
shunting people by the millions out to the hundreds of fresh, new, and
enticing offworld star systems. After all, EarthSystem was feeding over a
trillion people today! An impressive number even by todays standards of
HyperCulture.
	So why couldn't people just get along with each other? Why did the
world have to be so complicated? Because NOW you're all growed up.
Remember? The wind whispered to him in it's low crude articulation,
mocking his inner feelings that all, was not what it should be, with the
world. Or himself.
	Why was he allowing himself to be drawn in to this web of
intrigue, this self-arbitrated Mirrorshades Group that presides over the
local world using their techno-shamanistic skills, just to keep the
keepers, and insuring the watchers are watched? Domestic tranquility?
Hardly.
	Did he really want to become a component of this stock, and be
responsible to fight against the hungrily popular, pretend world of
propaganda, and escapism, greased ever so elegantly with paranoia, made
possible though the lies of Media? After all, wasn't ignorance bliss? At
the moment, without the answers to his questions, Houston felt his
innocence lost in a maze of confusion, searching for a safe exit from this
investigation into terror. He felt strangled by the very real threat of
technology and coercion, threatening to overwhelm and undermined the last
remnants of his own individuality.
	His last holdout of individualism for years had been Cyberspace,
but even that, now, he had to share with his two other selves. And now he
was entertaining thoughts of becoming a member, of yet another closed
system, where no mercy is meted out to those who don't get with the
program. Yet more cruelty, as a way of life.
	Perhaps however, he was not seeing things in their correct light.
The threat was outside, not within himself. He would be fighting Against
the intimidation of the immense multinational zaibatsus, which threatened
to defeat and conquer the individual. Perhaps in the end, this would be,
even... therapeutic for him. Yes.
	The zaibatsus, by dissolving the individual, through sexy
technology, drugs, suffering and anguish, rupturing family ties, religious
and political brainwashing, and corporate educations, the bureaucratic
bullies could structure a complete society of obedient blanks with
silicon-printed faces willing to do anything, so long as it was the will
of the upper echelon. The Executive Class.
	The mind warping wizards of Madison avenue, hidden behind their
high sewage strewn sea-walls have been doing their job of twisting and
warping reality, for well over a century or more. Quite successfully. It
was time for someone to stop them.
	Hell, the Spin Doctors of today were so good, they even have the
public rushing home from work, salivating like Pavlov's dogs, waiting for
the next vitally important enticing new composition of mind fluff, to
tumble out of the high definition screens, in their miniscule one room
corporate squats, where they were packed so tight in the high corporate
arcologies, (corporate cities within themselves) that the people couldn't
even cough, without their neighbors in the next room, on the other side of
a quarter inch of sheet rock, calling their mothers back in the old
country, and telling her about it. Of course, the politically correct take
their digital soundtracks, to their wall sized visions, through discreet
tiny 8 times over sampled and digitally filtered earphones, sunk deep into
the ear canal, to prevent interfering with the neighbors own fantasies or
fights.
	Global village Hell! It was more like a planetary apartment, where
you can't stand your roommate, and you can't move back home, because your
mother isn't much better.
	The world is no longer big enough for us all. That's why the
technology wizards of neon traced Kyoto, continue to increase their
mega-profits quarterly, (and their demand) by improving the attractiveness
of machine space. Inside the cybernetic coldframes and superframes, neural
network systems that contain entire universes can be contrived, through
sharp programming and a little imagination, with very little effort.
	So, the Indonesian assembly lines behind their own versions of
high ceramic sea walls (purchased from the Dutch) churn out smaller and
more powerful information buckets, that threaten to overwhelm a single
individual with enough data, that a person could theoretically store the
entirety of their lives now, in an area no bigger than a pack of
cigarettes, so that, hopefully, no one will wake up from the toxic fatigue
of information sickness, and notice what has happened to their lives.
	The unfortunate ones do wake up one day in their late seventies,
with the bodies of twenty five year olds, realizing that the lives they
once had as carefree children, with the whole future ahead of them, are
now lost behind thousands of hours of television programming, and virtual
reality playgrounds of the mind. In mindless politically correct response,
they merely take another Dr.Feelgood, washed down with Korean beer, and go
back to whichever high resolution network, is offering their particular
brand of sadomasochism, hoping that someday soon their ballistic cloth
suits might fail, allowing them to take that bullet in the heart, and be
allowed to die.
	The corporations have done well in training their minions, as even
the millions of independent salesmen choking the air space of EarthSystem,
know the game well, practicing a kinkier form of personal destabilization,
traveling from city to city distributing their wares, so of course, all
along, everyone involved is making a nice fat profit, not forgetting
giving the brother in-law a commission, for networking the salesman into a
new circle, where his silver tongued talents could be put to better use,
all the while he feels like he's drowning in sand, one day taking his Colt
Manhunter and blowing his wife's brains all over the wall of their
tastefully decorated urban apartment, explaining to the investigating
detectives (and believing it) that he flatlined the bitch only because she
wouldn't shut up about his picking up his socks. After all, a man can only
take so much. Right?
	In the meantime, afflicted unhealthy millions go without
sustenance, health care, food or a place to sleep, or have access to
education, which might help them out of their dire straits, or possibly
teach them how to play the game to win.
	The entire world is paced like an anxiety attack, and even sleep
doesn't offer solace, as the wetware kings of New Haven, and the corporate
think tanks of the Shenandoha Valley, have delivered pills of
preprogrammed viruses to guarantee specific dream themes, pillaging even
the inner recesses of mind, the subconscious. And the bed becomes yet
another sweatshop.
	Welcome to North America.
	It wasn't right. Houston could see that now as he drifted off to a
peaceful sleep.





From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 25a
Date: 1 Aug 1995 21:03:21 -0500

Chapter Twenty Five
	The look that Geisha gave Houston when he kissed him goodbye, just
as he left the house, was a strange one to say the least. It was a strange
look of dark foreboding terror; something Houston couldn't recall ever
having seen in the big mans eyes before. It un-nerved him unlike anything
else Geisha had done to date. And it brought on thoughts of possible
death.
	They all knew they were facing Mr. Death. Hell, in these days, who
hadn't yet faced their own mortality? It was simply a fact of life.  Mr. D
was a mean motherfucker, and he got around to everyone sooner or later.
	Heading to the bedroom, Houston smiled stiffly, trying to be as
"up" as possible for Dr.Forrester, sprawled out on the bed, and without
speaking, began his ritual of inserting the microfines into his wrist,
wondering absently to himself if he couldn't feel the impossibly tiny
superconductive wires unraveling inside him like a hemp rope, the
individual superfine cables opening like a chrysalis, branching and
rebranching, machine seeking to become man, each individual strand,
intelligently searching out its proper contact, within the Nanotechnology
biocircuitry inside his wrist, finally shrugging it all off as being
overly sensitive to the night at hand. Or perhaps the itch in the wrist
interface was caused from the real nerves of his arm, being stimulated by
the nanotech biocircuitry.
	He was simply spooked, he decided, as Dr.Forrester got up quietly
and left the room. The big cat too had a part in tonights proceedings, and
it was time for him to leave for his rendezvous point. The huge Siberian
Tiger left the room wordlessly, padding off down the hall, heading for the
DownTown Executive Center.
	Hitting the power stud on the combat deck, he listened patiently
to it's high pitched whine as it powered up all of it's systems. Jack In.
It's calling you. a voice from his past reminded him. And he knew, each
time he jacked in, it was getting harder each time to return to the world
of Flesh. The Meat.
	So, it was time for Houston to grow up, and join The Mirrorshades
Group. Then that is what he would do. Even if he did feel as if he were
being pressured into it, by the group of his Uncles friends that were
there the other night. Once there was direction in life. Now there was
only surviving the moment.
	Picking up a couple of pills that Chance had given him earlier in
the day, Houston washed them down with some semi-warm coffee, and got down
to business. The pills were supposed to be some kind of neurotransmitters
in the brain. Or was it an enzyme, that stimulated neurotransmitter
production?
	Houston could only remember that Chance had called them "Steroids
for Stockbrokers" saying that he often used them at work, that they
weren't actually 'DRUGS' in the strictest sense, swore by them, stating
that he never went on a run without them, and absolutely insisted that
Houston take them tonight, regardless of his newly sworn oath of laying
off the dope.
	After Chance had insisted, and then assured Houston, that he
couldn't possibly cop a buzz off the chemicals, and then after seeing the
sharp look of warning Tucker Stone had given him from across the room,
Houston had to agree. It was easier to take the fucking pills, than to
argue with a team of professional killers over it. This business of taking
orders from other people, was going to be very different for Houston.
	Adjusting the mastoid to a position just below his lower lip, to
where his voice would flow smoothly over it's ultra-tiny microphone,
Houston adjusted the volume control behind his ear and tapped in commands
on his desk keyboard allowing the mastoid to interface properly with the
house's telephone system.
	"Control on-line." Houston monotoned softly, just as he went blind
to the realworld, and began calling up the tactical screens in his mind.
The Combat cyberdeck was now an extension of the desk he sat in front of.
The two were one. Synergistic computing. Thanks to Geisha and his
cleverness at hardware wizardry, the old Cray Seven Hundred now had all
the combat strength of the combat unit, and then some. Geisha had diddled
with the wiring, until the two computers now working in concert with each
other.
	"Confirmed Control." Came the voice of Tucker Stone into his ear.
"Stand-by. Are you there, Central?"
	"A-ffir-ma-tive." echoed the teasing voice of Chance Marchenko,
imitating some little girls voice and sounding ridiculous, coming to
Houston through his mind. "This is your friendly neighborhood Net Watch
Commander, tonight coming to you live and in living color as your Central
Coordinator. But you can call me CC. Hey Houston! Did you take those pills
I gave you?" Chance's voice asked him almost casually, his face then
appearing in an oval-shaped screen, dropping down in front of Houston face
of it's own volition, through Chance using his own version of the
Phone-Home program in the Cray.
	"Yes." Houston said grudgingly. He quickly came to the conclusion
that linked via ComWeb, the link draws the humanity out of us, once again,
making us more human than human.
	"Don't worry, you won't get off. They simply speed your reaction
time, and make you really sharp is all. They're natural brain chemicals.
They're not even controlled substances." Chance assured him. "Hell you can
buy them at any Good Nature Pharmacy in the city."
	Houston had to wonder though, if they were natural brain
chemicals, where did they get the stuff to package it into capsules...
and then he DIDN'T want to know.
	Typing quickly across the glassy surface of his Cray, Houston
called up several screens showing the current bio-conditions of the two
teams. It would at least give him something to look at while he was
waiting. Everyone looked to be in excellent health. Geisha's heart was
beating a little fast, and Dolphs looked abnormally slow, for someone
going into a combat situation, but the two anomalies were certainly
nothing to be concerned about just yet.
	"Have you figured out yet why the Gladiators were wanting to kill
you?" Chance asked seriously.
 	"Hell no." Houston shook his head at the face, tapping into the Phone
Home program, to display his own features on Chance's system. It was
certainly better than speaking to the vast inky blackness that surrounded
him. "I gave up on that a long time ago."
	"They've been trying to prevent you from becoming a part of The
Mirrorshades Group." Chance said as-a-matter-of-factly. "They fear us and
what we can do to them. We're a threat to them. You make us all that much
more of a threat to them. You'll see tonight." He said confidently.
	"But I didn't know I was even joining, until last night." Houston
insisted.
	"But WE knew it a long time ago." Chance grinned. "We've had our
eye on you for quite some time Houston." He explained. "A few weeks ago,
when we made the decision to invite you to join, one of our operatives
sold out to the Gladiators. That's how they knew for sure, you'd be
joining up."
	"Who did it?" Houston demanded. He would personally kill the
fuckard.
	"Don't worry about it." Chance shrugged. "He's dead now anyway."
He remarked casually from behind his very expensive hand made dark walnut
monitor and brass keyboard.
	"Cut the chatter." Tucker Stone barked, irritated at the two of
them, flipping on the camera in the personnel transport, which then let
Chance and Houston see down the length of the interior of the van.
	Beau was driving, and Tucker Stone sat beside him in the front.
Running down the sides of the transport were two benches where the other
four were seated. Roland behind Beau, Geisha behind Stone. Dolph sat
beside Roland, staring sadly across the van at Uncle Rex, who sat beside
Geisha. They all looked mean and ominous.
	In order, Houston saw in their faces; Brawny, Powerful, Mighty,
Hearty, Herculean, and Strong. There was a lot of muscle in that transport
at the moment; and probably more testosterone than the past three Super
Bowls combined.
	All were decked out in full body armor and heavy black leathers,
which only helped the armor that much more when it came to stopping
projectiles. Perhaps it wouldn't help against anything really big, but it
would sure help against small arms fire, of which there was usually, far
too much of.
	Professional in their bearing, they all sat in gloomy silence,
none saying a thing, with the exception of Tucker Stone, who also seemed
to be speaking with "Nairobi" as well, through the subvocal communication
circuits in his head.
	It was almost eerie watching the man through the camera, suddenly
stop talking for a moment and move his lips only very slightly as he
changed channels to answer some question or confirm some suspicion,
talking to Nairobi on a subvocal channel that only existed as a partition
in Stones mind.
	Their plan was, after dropping off Team One, the group that would
hit the Gladiators, the other half would leave, to hit Carl Rothchild.
	Tonight, all the Gladiators would die. For once and for all.
Well, hopefully for good. You never knew these days, as Houston himself
was testimony that "Mr. D" did not always claim his victims permanently.
Money could buy a lot these days.
	"We have the Technology." Houston joked quietly to himself.
However, deep inside, he knew he was only trying to relieve some of the
pressure, that had been steadily building over the past day and a half.
It was very possible even a few of the Mirrorshades Group might lose their
lives as well tonight. And that bothered Houston.
	Nothing was certain anymore. The world was merely a set of
variables, to be manipulated at will, by those who knew the secrets of
power. Not at all like when Houston was in his twenties, and he was so
sure of the world, and his place in it. He eventually shrugged it all off
as simply drug flashover, the enzyme mixing strangely with the caffeine of
the coffee.
	"All right. We're coming up on The Core." Tucker Stone announced.
"Team one is almost in position. There's Bill and Charlie." He said
pointing.
	"Check." Chance said professionally. "Talk to you later Houston."
He whispered and winked conspiratorially, like a school kid who didn't
want the teacher to overhear their conversation, and then his image
suddenly winked out.
	Houstons vision was filled with the Kansas City Matrix, a
gargantuan ultra high definition universe, surrounding him and bending
itself around his mind to encompass his essence with it's greater reality.
High above, the screens shifted one by one as Chance took over control of
the bio-monitor displays of Team One, each of them winking out, leaving
four for Houston to watch the multicolored lines and blips, which were the
life-signs of Beau, Uncle Rex, Tucker Stone, and Little Sean. He still had
his screen showing the vans interior as well.
	As Beau settled the personnel transport down in front of two vast
concrete towers, only then did Houston realize where the Gladiators had
been hiding out all this time. The Trans Missouri River Tunnel. TMRT.
They were underneath The North Wall, beneath the river itself.
	There was no telling what all the Gladiators had hidden down
there. No one had used those tunnels for a hundred years or more. The
tunnels that were dug under the river, over a century ago, were supposed
to have been sealed when The Wall was built around the city, to protect
the fields.
	The city fathers and the Breadbasket Corporation couldn't have the
population getting out of the city and trampling down the only food
source, within several light years. With good guys like that the black
hats started looking pretty good. Of course, there still had to be some
way of getting the huge farm equipment in and out of the city, to the vast
fields surrounding Kansas City. Or did they simply build the huge
monstrosities out there, in the field?
	The North Wall served it's dual purpose of not only keeping the
population in, but acting as conduit for the great Missouri River which
flowed through it's concretized channels, being filtered, and cleaned for
city use, as well as being siphoned off and piped out into the vast fields
for irrigation. By the time Kansas City got done with The River, it wasn't
much more than raw sewage running out in a ditch. And THAT was what
St.Louis pulled their water supply from.
	Houston watched absently as the back doors of the Van flew open
and three of the men departed in a professional rush. Then, the doors
slammed shut, and Roland, Geisha and Dolph were gone. Immediately, he
began to miss Geisha.
	Houston had wanted Geisha on his team, so he could keep and eye on
him, but he was no longer calling the shots. "Nairobi" had set up the
tactical plans with Tucker Stone, and Houston did NOT have a say in the
matter. He could only hope Chance Marchenko was as good as he claimed to
be.
	Uncle Rex, Tucker Stone, and Beau Beauchamp were the only ones
left in the van as they took off again, speeding through the busy skies
of Kansas City




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 25b
Date: 1 Aug 1995 21:04:41 -0500

"Control are you there?" A voice came to his ear.
	"Affirmative Team Two." Houston answered. "Control is on-line."
	"Miss Kitty has just arrived at the rendezvous point." The voice of
Little Sean told him in code, knowing that the phone lines could be
tapped, with a smart-program to listen in for specific words or phrases.
Basically all he said was Dr.Forrester had arrived at top of the Executive
Suites Tower, DownTown.
	"Confirmed Tiny Tim." Houston said smiling to himself at the silly
names Nairobi felt were necessary. "I'll let Mother Hubbard know."
	"Affirmative." The voice said. "Out."
	"Mother Hubbard, Tiny Tim confirms Miss Kitty has reached the
rendezvous site." Houston said with a half smile on his face. "Thought you
should be informed."
	"Copy that, Control." Tucker Stone said unsmiling as he stared out
the front of the van. "Everything is on schedule."
	Houston looked carefully at the face of his Uncle Rex behind his
black plastic lenses, one with a red X-Y grid across it's shiny black
face, the other eye containing bright red targeting cross-hairs which were
linked into his brain, along with the smartgun in his hand. The system was
designed so that he merely had to 'think' a target, and the bioelectronics
did the rest. Looks could kill after all.
	Uncle Rex had been sincere in his wish for Les and Houston's
happiness. Les, (Geisha) and Houston would be happy together, of that much
he was sure. But as for a life of Dolph and himself? Now what about that?
	After questioning his uncle about the matter, Houston knew only
that Rex had resolved himself to deal with issue, after tonights battle.
Houston wished them both the very best, even if it was silently, and to
himself.
	"Coming into position Control." Tucker Stone told him.
	"Confirmed." Houston said simply.
	That was his cue to start doing his thing. He was Net over-watch
for Team Two, and it was his job to take care of the electronics
surveillance, and security for them. They all wanted this job to run
smooth and without incident, though Houston doubted seriously that
anything was quite that easy.
	His fingers flying over the glass keyboard, Houston tapped into
the superframe system at Executive Suites Tower, and suddenly could feel
his mind stretching to a new awareness of yet another, real world around
him. He had become the very essence of the tower itself. It's speakers
were his ears, it's video cameras his eyes, it's CPU his ticking heart.
The world isn't big enough anymore. He thought to himself. If it was, we
wouldn't be creating worlds like This.
	Fuck the sound barrier. Bring on the noise. He thought to himself
as his fingers flew expertly over the keys, shutting down his voice
communication over the mastoid, long enough to scream; "I SING THE BODY
ELECTRIC!" at the top of his lungs, shouting in his full exhilaration at
this experience which he was master of. Suddenly, just as he was bringing
his phone back on-line, after indulging himself for that one moment, he
heard a cross between a chuckle and a giggle coming from behind him.
Whirling around in cyberspace, he could find no one else there, except the
AM-FM-UHF and VHF datastreams.
	"We sure do girl." Chuckled the voice of Chance. "Don't worry. I
won't say anything." He snickered. "I know the feeling."
	"Sorry. I thought you were busy." Houston said his face flushed
beet red.
	"I am, but part of my job is looking over your shoulder." Chance
explained. "Sorry about interrupting your moment. But you better get back
to work."
	"Yeah." Houston said, going back to what he was doing.
	 In the distance was the DataLine. Houston recalled a time in his
life when he had sent encrypted MUZAK and oldie Rock tunes through the
DataLine in an attempt to hide the one shot Mimic Program he was
broadcasting to his friends at The Deep End, a Netrunner club. Was this
the life he was returning to now? Where he had once relied on his own
reflexes, fast enough to frustrate even the fastest trace and freeze
programs. Where Knowledge is power, and Power corrupts. The Fast
Information Age was extremely corrupt. It's a place where Truth is cheap,
but real Information costs.
	Seeing that security had been alerted to Little Sean and
Dr.Forresters position on the roof, Houston immediately took control of
security systems, cancelling the order to dispatch a security contingent,
making sure they turned away from their current course, and going back
over the trideo, changing the graphic images of Little Sean and
Dr.Forrester, to something more like a blur on the screens, which blended
in smoothly with the roof top.
	Opening the records of the reported strangers, Houston changed the
records, showing that the situation turned out to be birds, and security
had taken care of the matter earlier. There would be no discrepancies
later on. There couldn't be any.
	Whomever had noticed the two of them on the roof, double checked
his trideo screens, feeling like a fool for dispatching a team to the
roof, and called them back. Acting as the security team leader, Houston
intercepted that communication as well.
	Breathing a sigh of relief, Houston carefully fed the trideo a new
image loop, making sure it held in place, just as the van started settling
down on the roof. Their entrance would go undetected.
	Briefly, Houston allowed his mind to wander to Geisha, where he
might be underneath the massive Wall which routed the river through its
many pumps and filters, and wonder if he was safe, or if he was in capable
hands or not. If anything happened to him, and it was the fault of their
teams Netrunner, Houston would see to it that Chance Marchenko paid for it
with his very life.
	The more Houston thought about marrying Geisha, the more it seemed
to make sense to him. And the more he wanted it. When all was said and
done, he really did, after all, love Geisha and had for a long time.  It
was now time to start owning up to that, and do something about it.  His
fear was, that tonight might take away that one opportunity he might ever
have for happiness.
	He also had never realized just how much Geisha did feel for him
as well. At what point in their friendship had everything switched from
being 'Just Friends' to falling head-over-heels, Ga-Ga, in love?
	As he snapped back the magnetic bolts that held the roof door in
place, Houston quickly shunted the trideo image that focused on the door
away for a few seconds, to watch some other part of the elegant apartment
tower, just long enough for the group to get inside, and down behind the
cover of the stairwell.
	Everything was going fine. So far.
	The computer industry, of which Houston was so much a part, for a
while there, got ahead of itself. The chip companies hadn't even got out
the already outdated Pentium series chips onto the market, before they
were flooding it with the 8 gigabyte chips. and by then it was pretty
obviously the Brave New World all over again.
	CD-ROM, Flashchips, and then there was a world-wide hardware crash
that they're still trying to recover from, by filling flashchips with
anything and everything, just to sell more, more, more. Storage inflation
happened. Then the focus went back to flashchip CPU's for a while until
now, everything is electronic, and everything that has chips is smarter
than the average adult on the streets. So now what?
	Flashchips had given us much faster and much smarter prosthetics
for the (previously) handicapped, only for it to become within the same
year, a trillion dollar a year industry (not counting CyberForms) and out
of work doctors found employment in mini-malls around the world installing
hardware in the place of the limb or organ they just removed for you, and
bartered out on the open market, taking a percentage for themselves. It
made sense to sell a kidney for 25,000 NuYen, when you could buy a
cybernetic version of the same thing for only and five grand.
	The average child by the age of 12 (the age where they often try
to test out of their families via emancipation tests) has visited more VR
Worlds of cyberspace than there are inhabitable star systems in the Real
World (586), spending an average of 6.8 hours in each. And That's not even
trying. Just dropping in logged on as "New User" to see if they like the
place or not.
	VR Today polls show that 86% of VR participants have little or now
desire to go out into, or physically See the world, or even change
planets. Why leave where you are, when it can all be brought in on-line
via superconductive FTL communication between star systems? Travel has
dropped to an all time low between star systems as a result.
	We're raising a generation of Grid-Friends, or Grid-Buddies, who
never come in contact with each other for years at a time. If at all. The
average Gridship is formed in puberty and lasts into one's 30's, and only
then is broken over a misunderstanding or accident.
	You may never shake the hand of your life long best friend, but
you can bet you're drawn together by mutual likes and dislikes, and not by
anything as silly as geographical location.
	It's a strange world in which we live.




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 26
Date: 1 Aug 1995 21:06:10 -0500

Chapter Twenty Six
	The area they had landed in, had a name on the street. That name
was The Core. And sometimes 'The Woods'. It was an area that few in the
city could claim to have actually been to, or visited, and even fewer
survived. Certainly not a place Les had ever expected to visit in his
lifetime.
	The Core was a No-Mans-Land of 5 by 8 city blocks, that butted up
against the North Wall, being surrounded by the DownTown Executive
Center's financial district. Here, all the towering structures faced away
from The Core, ignoring it's presence, though possibly not it's influence.
Where a person was more likely to strike oil in the streets, than find a
working pay phone.
	It was hard not to notice the fact that even the CyberForm
Enforcers avoided the area they had just entered, choosing to shoot
stragglers from across the street with a long range laser retinal scanner,
instead of asking for ID. The CyberForms were not stupid, possibly
avoiding the area out of self preservation, since the precious metals
contained in their frames would bring an even higher price than the organs
of Les's group. Here, the radio phrase "Officer Down" went ignored. There
were no more laws, Les decided. Or Crime. Only secretaries called 'Cops'
to document 'incidents'.
	What began as a Squatter Zone, and later became a Youth
Reclamation Kamp, The Core had transformed itself over the decades,
evolving slowly into a deliberately unsupervised area of commerce,
technology, and human interaction that made even The Combat Zone look like
a kids playground. A place where humanity was at it's lowest point,
anywhere on the planet. Here, Les knew, life was played out at higher
levels of intensity.
	As the personnel transport took off again, Les watched kids
dressed in ragged and torn, patched and repatched clothing, as they sat on
their assumed offices of rusted and burned out Mazdas, exchanging money
for packets, their motto Better Business through Chemistry. Fat wads of
NuYen exchanged small greasy hands that revealed unhealed wounds in the
weakening light, trading dope that had been stepped on so many times, the
final buyer, unless a virgin to the drug, would not be able to get off on
it, the haphazard streets now dark, lit only by the occasional torch
burning at the entrance to a dark and sleazy nightclub. The Nightfall
Club, AfterDark Club, After Midnight Club, their names reflected the
growing atmosphere of the surrounding area.
	Tents contained people who lay on broken cots, staring at Les and
the group with dull starvation filled eyes, an incredibly normal looking
old man, but who was more likely an escaped military project, or had
stolen some soldiers dog-tags in order to get into the country, dressed in
dirty ragged red nylon jogging shorts, his chest revealing large streaks
of fever rash, as he drank from a ball jar of raisin jack. In some cases,
the tents were makeshift, walls were sacrifice in lieu of roofs, against
the intense summer sun. Other tents, surplus from a long forgotten war,
made for protection against the sun, or even the rain, when it did rain,
but allowed for very little privacy.
	Looking around at the trash blowing in the street, and half naked
children ran up to them to beg listlessly and half heartedly, watching
families in tight knots around smoking fires roasting City-coons, or Dogs,
or City-'possums, it was hard to believe that only three or four blocks
away, began the superstructures of some of the richest people to have ever
lived, on the face of the Earth.
	An old woman sat on the greasy dirty sidewalk, her legs folded
beneath her, hands clasp in her lap, staring with a look of astonishment
on her face, her mouth slightly parted, eyes wide with amazement, not
moving as she looked up at the North Wall. It was as if she were seeing
the wall for the first time, and simply couldn't believe it. As if it had
suddenly popped into existence before her, and she had to sit down to
catch her breath.
	The dichotomy of going from the wealthiest to the poorest was a
sharp demarcation that existed both physically and in the minds of the
paternalistic capitalists, living in the imminent Mitsubishi towers rising
over The Core, sandwiching the area against the North Wall, as if to
squeeze it out of existence if at all possible.
	Here, in The Core, where one could even find prosthetic limbs on
animals, race riots were merely a fact of life. It was survival of the
fittest here. Truforms versus the Cybernetix was a given. Personal
relationships in Biz were a way of conducting Life, and a way of getting
things done.
	The Core was a place where the night was punctuated by the sounds
of explosions, building fires, vehicular accidents, and Drug Wars of
tainted pharmaceuticals, permeated the slower moving landscape,
orchestrated by barons and cartels who rarely ever ventured out into their
world. Genius trapped in a world of poverty was common. Men who were
natural born leaders, scratching out an existence where they could,
Motzarts in their own right, who had never been given access to the pianos
they deserved, their shadowy empires controlled through 'Slugs',
paraplegics kept on reason enhancers, sometimes consisting of nothing more
than a brain and spinal cord encased in cybertek support systems
controlled through BIOS (Bioware Integrated Operating System), plugged
into massive blocks of biocircuitry, which self-modified with time,
existing as the computers of the street. People used for their brain power
only. In this world, nothing was thrown away. Everything had value.
Except maybe life.
	A group of about five or six whores, a few with silvery sores at
the corners of their mouths, a couple of them dressed in bulletproof
windbreakers with glass knives made of plate glass, stuck in their
garters, their handles wrapped in thick tape, eyeing their group
suspiciously from the safety of their armored balcony, about twelve or
fifteen feet above the oily slick street as Japanese pop music blared from
inside. The males looked to be steroid addicts built up with muscle
grafts; One wore an Armor-Gel outfit, while the other langourously sucked
at a bottle of lime flavored glacier water. Yet further souls lost in the
planets crushing biomass of humanity.
	The Core was not prejudiced though, as the whorehouse above the
Sanyo Labor Exchange, was flanked by an East Indian flea-market and a
North American version of a Shinjuku beer hall. The Sanyo Labor Exchange
existed mainly of a large day room, a few tables with broken chairs, a
sand filled ashtray spilled across the floor, the room lined with bunks
designed for anywhere from 12 to 16 sleepers each. People sat on the
tables smoking Chinese filter-tips and watching the group silently behind
gritty, wide, grime covered, inch thick glass windows, the windows
themselves older than any of the quiet people behind them.
	It was another of the businesses which existed back around the
fall of "America", (Turning loose uncountable loose nuclear warheads on
the Arms-markets of the world) just before the CIA corporation assumed
possession of the Library of Congress, when the feds would seize
businesses who threatened to file bankruptcy, turning the situation
around, then selling the business to the employees, and backing the loans
when possible through the national treasury. It was one way to keep people
alive a little bit loger, and working for a living, in an outmoded and
corrupt capitalistic system that was quickly crumbling around their ears.
The Bankruptcy of United States in 1995 was the beginning of the end for a
lot of people at that time.
 	Waiting for Roland to direct them, Les turned to his friend and Ex-Lover
Dolph, wanting to hear a friendly voice, before The Core closed in on his
mind.
	"How's the leg?" Les whispered quietly, conversationally, shocked
at the volume of his own voice, echoing across this slow-moving
garbage-strewn den of iniquity, as they passed a billboard advertising
Organ Runners services. Transplant crews represented in holograms, the
caption "Let Us take care of it For you!" emblazoned in at one time bright
green, neon lettering smudged and covered by the grit and soot which
permeated the air.
	"Same. Better than the real thing." Dolph shrugged. "Let's move.
My shit tolerance level is low today." He commented casually as they began
moving towards the towering composite wall of bleached ferroplast and
concrete, looming ominously before them.
	Dolphs face was an unemotional stone solid, behind the now black
lenses, on his black polycarbon steel framed glasses, which Les recalled
he had purchased in a truck stop on the 2000 mile long Al-Can Alaskan
Highway, back in their second year together. What had happened to those
simpler times in his life? Revenge was over-rated, Les decided quickly.
Justice was complicated and something not easily attained in todays world.
	The jagged avenue they wound through was a composite of Insty
Friends shops, a donut shop, Kutt Upps DownStairs, a tattoo parlor and an
opium den, the other side a blur of transformer shops, Morgans More Guns,
dream joints, and liquor stores, the vidiots wandering aimlessly, still
flying high from whatever electronic dream that had recently purchased
within.
	Once Roland pulled the large heavy door closed, the tunnel
entrance became eerily quiet, after the sharp explosion Roland had set
off, to blow the lock on the tunnel entrance. Cool moist air washed over
them, a welcome feeling, from the dry hot air outside the tunnel.
	Les stood in the blackness and silence, feeling the walls move in
on him, threatening to crush the air out of him. Tight spots never did do
him any favors. This one was no exception. It made him wonder, if the
Gladiators didn't come in this way, why They were.
	His thoughts soon turned to Houston, where he was sitting at home
plugged into his cyberdeck, doing his electronic thing, facing his world
of informational warfare, and how, with the exception of the Rotweiler, he
was unprotected at the moment. That of course didn't make him feel any
better either. Holding the assault rifle tightly, in both hands, made him
feel only moderately better. There was a growing sense of anticipation
within him, as he moved quietly around Dolph. When they got out of this
mess, he decided that he and Houston would spend some time down in Tierra
Del Fuego, to get away from it all, at least for a little while.
	As Bill Potter cracked a CaLume tube and shook it hard, mixing the
chemicals it contained, yellowish-green light began to fill the tunnel,
their faces looking sadly lifeless from the dull glow, as they cast long
black shadows on the smooth white concrete walls, covered in RainKote, a
semi-permeable membrane to keep water out but actively breaths. The place
was so BIG!
	Watching Rolands hand signals, Les determined that sensors would
be picking up their presence, now that they had entered the tunnel, and
they were all to remain silent. No talking, move towards the door at the
end of the lock.
	The stale smell of aged air, was permeated by the sharp distinct
scent of mildew in the tunnel, an unused smell, that would have been
air-conditioned, circulated and filtered out if the tunnel was still in
use, as they all moved in total silence towards the end of the large
square room. This was as close to The Wall as Les had ever been. It felt
so much bigger when you had that towering height over your head, than it
appeared from several miles away, sitting on his balcony.
	It was an engineering marvel though. Well made as well. Even as
old as this sloping tunnel was, the concrete almost fifty years old, it
was still smooth, clean, uncracked and unbroken, even after all these
years.
	As the small band made it's way silently through the gloomy
darkness, and came up to the door, Roland made some sort of soft clicking
sound with his tongue, and a light on a panel next to the door switched
from red to green. Bill reached for the knob and turned it slowly,
cracking it open just a hair, the weather strip around the big heavy steel
door sticking slightly after years of disuse, checking to make sure no one
was on the other side. Using his hand, he signaled Roland. They still had
the element of surprise.
	Swinging the door wide, Bill tossed the CaLume tube away into the
darkness, it's chemical light to die it's slow death alone, glowing for
itself only, in the dark, under the crushing weight of the wall.
	Once inside, the inner large empty room, they began to spread out,
watching Rolands hand give his silent wordless orders, directing them to
their various defensive positions, where they were each covering the
others. The wall to their right was filled with glass fronted offices, now
empty but for the fluorescent lights, bright white and glaring over
strands of fiber optics, and coaxial cable hanging from the suspended
ceiling, coiled in random knots on the same short gray carpet superimposed
over all of them.




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 27/30
Date: 1 Aug 1995 21:07:43 -0500

Chapter Twenty Seven
	Little Sean crept up from behind and slit the throat of a guard
quietly, the proximity sensors on the surveillance cameras tracking their
movement for Houston, watching the murderous scene of the guard
surprisingly not making a sound, as his body slumped to the floor, in it's
final throes of death. It happened so fast, Houston knew Little Sean must
have some type of fast acting poison on the blade. Hopefully, that was the
only innocent that would have to die before all of this was over, but
Houston seriously doubted it. Nothing was ever quite that easy.
	Houston's mind absorbed the coldframe systems with an expertise he
hadn't felt in a long while. The sense of power flooded through him
lending a degree of eagerness to the run. Too much of his life had been
wasted away in servicing the needs of dreary little corporations, working
contract labor for them, pissing away his talents, creating database
management software, or re-writing inventory control programs. This was
where he should have been all that time. Why did he leave?
	To run the straight and narrow. He reminded himself. At one time,
it was what he wanted. Anything to get away from the sweaty white-knuckle
Survival atmosphere of the street. To live out his moderate lifestyle
simply, quietly, having his financial needs met and not wanting for
anything. Except perhaps Life. It really was a shame he had wasted so much
time.
	Watching through his minds eyes of the security trideo
surveillance cameras lining the hallways, Houston managed to keep the
security teams elsewhere, by sending their belt beepers messages to check
out false reported disturbances, as he watched his Uncle Rex and the rest
of the team moving stealthily down the ugly gold carpeted hallway towards
their destination of Carl Rothchilds apartment.
	"Control, what is the situation?" Tucker Stone whispered in his ear
as they all paused at an intersection in the long barren hallways of the
Executive Suites Tower.
	"Situation is Green, Team Two." Houston said quietly, answering
smoothly and calmly as his hands flew in precision movements over the
keyboard, back in his room. "There is a single security team of two, three
floors below you, but their pattern suggests they are moving downward,
away from you, at this time."
	"Confirmed control." Tucker Stone said quietly, almost whispering
in his quiet tone.
	As his hands flew over the keyboard, Houston tried accessing the
cameras inside Carl Rothchilds apartment, but couldn't for some reason.
Trying different codes at random, it felt as if Carl Rothchilds apartment
simply didn't exist in the system. It came to him as the feeling you get
when you're trying to think of a specific word, and it's just below the
surface of consciousness, yet it doesn't quite come to you. He could feel
his mind stretching, feeling around for any links into the apartment,
which would provide him with a glimpse of what might be waiting for the
team once they broke down the mans doors. After trying for several
moments, he felt it was probably a good idea to mention it.
	"Uh, hold." Houston said in a low calm voice, watching the team
freeze in place where they were, moving in a flash towards the walls,
searching around for any cover in the area. "Team Two, we have a situation
evolving here." He swallowed.
	"What is the problem control?" Tucker Stone asked calmly as he held
up a single hand, peeking down the hall, bending his head around a potted
plant which stood next to him, against the wall. His quiet, unemotional
easiness through all of this, made Houston feel ill at ease.  He would
feel a lot better if the man at least Panic a little.
	"I can't seem to access any of the systems inside Carl Rothchilds
apartment." Houston explained. "I don't understand." He added, and didn't.
There were at least fifteen lines into almost any given home in North
America. It was, after all, the age of fast information. Audio-only
Telephones, VR Phones, Fax & E-Mail, Newspapers, Computer lines, Cable
Television, Library Reference, Video Library for movies, Government Lines
to the Federal Library, and to Representatives, 911 Emergency Line, Music
Library line, VR Entertainment lines, Computer VR lines, and of course the
billing lines for Electric, Gas, Trash, Patrol, Fire, etc. Carl
Rothchild's apartment Should be glaring before him. Evidently, someone had
been helping him hide in cyberspace.
	They had got the entrance codes for the Executive Suites security
coldframe, from a guard who worked here as late as three days ago, who was
given to greed, and who also had a bad drug habit. It was simply a matter
of popping in through the customer service line. The Ex-security guard had
insisted he didn't know Carl Rothchilds apartment number, though Nairobi
had it in the briefing. Chance and Nairobi had supposedly already run the
codes through, and everything checked out as fine.  According to Tucker
Stone, that was why they were trusting him with this particular job at
this time, because it was such a breeze, he couldn't possibly screw it up.
Houston was quickly learning to hate Tucker Stone.
	"Shit." Tuck cursed softly as he remained motionless, unwilling to
move. "Ok, Ok." He said reaching his decision for the group. "We go in
anyway." He announced, looking to Rex who only nodded his own
confirmation. "But keep trying." He added quickly.
	As Houston watched the scene that was displayed on the screen in
his mind, he had to wonder why it was that Stone was looking to Rex for
approval, if he was the one in charge of this operation. Was this his
first time at command? Did he have some hidden respect for Rex that he
didn't normally show in casual situations? Houston wondered, but then
dismissed it, since Tucker Stone had all the appearance of being a man who
was used to being in charge of situations. It had to be his imagination.
	"Affirmative Team Two." Houston agreed.
	"Notify Central when appropriate." Tucker Stone added. "Nairobi
will need to be informed of the situation." He explained quietly as they
all began moving again down the hallway.
	"Ok, Girls." Beau interrupted them, impatiently. "We have 22
minutes left in safe window of operations." He reminded them all from
behind, his light tan cammies and ALICE webbing clashing wildly with the
sleek interior of the apartment building, as he held his Beretta M3P
bullpup autoshotgun before him, like an offering to the Gods. He looked as
if he were wired for sound, and could jump on someone at any second, but
glancing up at his bio-readouts, Houston could see that his ambient
temperature variations showed he was cool calm and collected. The man
wasn't even sweating. He had no fear.
	He was used to these corporate fuckards and their way of life.
Hell, the man had probably attended dinner parties here, always
networking. It mildly surprised Houston that the man didn't bring along
his minicellular. Perhaps he was taking calls on another line of his
mastoid. After all, these were his people. Or, more accurately, they were
his 'Circle'.
	Here, in this modern concrete tower owned by the Executive Suites
corporation, the word 'Sprawl' was more often than not used as a verb,
instead of a geographic location. Here, the odor of crowded humanity never
penetrated. Where decisions were made over cocktails that affected
millions of lives everyday.
	What kind of life did Carl Rothchild lead day after day? What kind
of life would that be like? To be one of the Power mongers who controlled
the masses through fear? Where the oil fields found in Alabama held more
importance, than the lives of the children playing in and roaming the
streets, night after night, beneath Molybdenum-iodine vapor lights?
	It was a world far away from stealing food for survival, taking
over the youth of the country was a job left to underlings, and
underground resistance was a problem instead of a possible career choice.
	Houston knew that at least HE could make a difference in things
from now on. Carl Rothchild had it good. Too Good. He was probably born
into the scene. But the CyberPunks had an edge Carl didn't have.
Cybertech systems.
	True, even through chipped intelligence, you can't be an instant
Doctor because people learn by doing. You CAN however have instant access
to data and a means of understanding it on a basic level, and THAT gave
him an edge.
 	Crime is a national characteristic and there is no one to turn to. Why
should Houston expect the upper echelon to act any different than the
street? After all, it was probably the street who was mimicking the
corporate heads of state, and Houston had dodged a couple of warrants
himself in the past.
	Somehow he just expected the corporate leaders to be more
responsible than that. Even as wrong as he knew he was to think so.
Corporation and CEO are as different as System and Hardware, which are as
different as Mind and Brain. A person had to Take the wire, and get into
their own context.
	This was his.
	There is no such thing as a sealed system. Where there is a
switching system, there is multiple access. One only had to find it.
Houston then started sending out subroutines via the central processing
program, to intercept, decode, and re-encode any information that would
lead him to analog interfaces capable of trideo encounter.
	His mind reached out with tiny long fingers, feeling his way
around the system, searching for Carl Rothchild. In the basement garage,
he found drivers leaned up against bright red, green and blue Limousines,
smoking cigarettes and joking with each other as they waxed their
bullet-proof possessions. The one thing a Limo driver could be trusted to
do was remain carefully neutral. Their prevailing motto seemed to be
"Don't get involved, it could mean YOUR job."
	Owning a car is a bureaucratic nightmare, what with all the
licenses, taxes, stickers, and permits that were required to be purchased
and updated every three months, to where the average management Joe in
your typical corporation couldn't possibly afford the requisite financial
obligations. But that was NOT the case of the people who lived here.
	The chauffeurs DID look handsome in their sharp black uniforms,
some with the jackets and shirts off as they worked, to prevent them from
being soiled, strands of long dark hair blowing across tanned muscular
shoulders in the breeze of the underground air-conditioner vent.  One
sending the other a universal gesture of contempt. Another wiping down a
silenced autopistol as he chuckled. Houston watched quietly for a moment
before moving on, which took only the briefest microinstant back in the
real world.
	Where the fuck ARE you Carl Rothchild?
	The old people don't care about the young, because they think
their kids hate them, and they're right. The older people begin to despise
their children, for having it so easy compared to their own pasts, and
finally turn them loose to fend for themselves. On the next level up, the
ground level, Houston found kids hanging out in the garage, booting dope,
with broken bones in their faces that had never been set right. Houston
knew this group. Thirteen year old Urban Guerillas.  Hackers that could be
hired through E-Mail. They were corporate thiefs on the lowest level, but
who could be trusted to pull off a simple terrorist job.
	This was where he would have eventually ended up himself, he knew,
if he hadn't left for The Belt when he did. These were his cousins.
Language of every subculture of society will get as specialized as the
data it uses. That was one of the first things he learned in school. The
world was built of experts and specialization. Culture happens when lines
cross. Though he could pick up an occasionally phrase here and there,
these kids talked a slang/lingo that Houston couldn't quite follow just
from listening to the speakers. He had been away from it all far too long.
	That would be remedied however.
	Carl? I'm coming for you motherfucker. Just hang tight.
	Watching the security teams on the various monitors around the
building, Houston seemed to notice something growing in the back of his
mind, an itch, that something wasn't quite right about them. The security
guards were too young. FAR too young.
	So he began checking on a few of them.
	"I'm sorry, I need the officers shield number before I can find him
in the system." The city computer told him, when he tried to run their
pictures through the system to come up with ID's for the kids. Ok.  That's
fine. There were other ways to find out about a person.
	You don't hack Meds though, not after the age of the Retrovirus.
Medical files were a no-no in most circles anymore. After the retrovirus
situation became Watergated and Rodney Kinged all over the media, the
punishment for hacking medical files, made anything you might find,
utterly futile. The nets however, are vast multiprocessing computer
systems that make it the most reliable, biggest, and most expensive
computer system in the works




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 28/30
Date: 1 Aug 1995 21:09:10 -0500

Chapter Twenty Eight
	Geisha stood staring for what seemed an eternity, at the figure
before him, before he realized he was looking at a black tactical face
mask, made of tissue thin ultra hard synthetic polycarbon material,
covering the head of a teenager, his night vision goggles lending him an
alien appearance behind the extended bulbous lenses. Then, with that
realization, the kids skull burst in a bright red shower of blood.
	Bill Potter grinned in the dim light as he held the compact, sound
suppressor equipped, Spectre SMG up and nodded at Les. "You can thank me
later, Sport." Bill chuckled as he kept up semi-automatic fire, blowing
the Sony Intellibot into shattered ceramic fragments. The staggered box
magazine slung beneath the Spectre SMG held 50 hollow-nosed 9mm rounds,
that would chew up anything it came in contact with, at a cycling rate of
over 800 RPM.
	Noticing the emergency MedKit and microsurgery attached to the
back of Bill Potters ALICE webbing, Les noted that they had been very
lucky so far. No one had been hurt yet. That however, could change at any
moment.
	Les ducked for cover beneath the lower shelf of the metal rack
next to him when he both heard and spotted the flash-fire coming from the
perforated black barrel of a pintle mounted .50 caliber gun out in front
of them, high above, laying down suppressive fire. A Browning machine gun
bolted to the floor. He decided, as he opened fire in it's direction.
Thought had given way to action. And Les moved into Combat Mode.
	Nine millimeter pb rounds struck the metal rack just above his
head, making him duck as the bullets ricocheted off the sturdy metal and
whizzed past his ear. He spotted a girl with a Glock automatic. She may
have had the drop on him, but not for long. The room was sparsely lighted,
making it as dark as a city lawmans soul. That gave Les an advantage as
well.
	Rolling along the floor, he rolled under the rack and came up on
the other side, firing in her direction. Watching her, he thought
sincerely, to himself, You're a beautiful Bitch. Mildly surprised at the
thought, as a feeling of satisfaction washed over him as he marched his
fire towards her, eventually making contact, watching as she dropped the
Glock automatic in a spray of blood and flesh. C'est la vie, my little
underworld princess.
	The sounds of fire died out, and Rolands voice cut through the
darkness.
	"Ok men. We've lost our element of surprise." Roland said
irritably. "Intelligence shows they have a railgun down here somewhere as
well. So keep an eye out."
	It was not just any railgun though. Les recalled from the report,
as he began moving quickly towards the end of the room. They were firing
depleted uranium, which meant hyperkinetic rounds, of the most deadly
type. Super-velocity solid-shots fired at a speed of one hundred thousand
kilometers per second, and at a rate of 60 rounds per second.
	Electromagnetic railguns were barely off the secrets list, when
they first made it to the street. Anymore, they were merely a curiosity.
Firing depleted uranium meant that the rounds were no longer radioactive
and had extreme weight. A single shot would impact it's target with the
force of an explosion. They were primarily used as anti-armor rounds,
since the depleted uranium, when it hits something solid, the kinetic
energy pushes the uranium over the activation threshold causing it to
catch fire and burn through at a temperature of over 2000 degrees Celsius.
	R&D labs often release the next level weapons to the street for
pretesting. It was a way for them to test out the new hardware, without
endangering the cops or soldiers who were their customers. The same thing
happened in the drug industry, new equipment, hell, even food stuffs.
	But possible problems were not his concern at the moment. A laser
target designator flashed over his head, making him duck down in the
surrounding gloom. Following it's sharp, straight, bright red line
backwards, Les spotted the teenage girl with the flechette in her hand,
searching the darkness for possible targets.
	Flechettes meant needles. Whether metal, or glass or hollow, or
plastic, Les was sure he didn't like needles. When fired on automatic,
they had a tendency to chew up their target, shredding a man into a bloody
cloud of flesh and fluids.
	Hollow eyed, gaunt cheeks, and the look of tremendous strain met
his eyes just before he opened fire. The kid didn't even get a chance at
pulling off a shot before Les stopped her for good. These kids may be some
sort of mutant geniuses, designed and bred for their intelligence, but the
didn't know shit about combat. So much for the corporate dreadnought.
	And Charlie Decker used to be one of them. The thought cut sharply
through his mind just then. What is his connection in this?  Suppose
Houston is Charlies hero, and he set up his position with Bill Potter
ahead of time? Nah, the kid said he had a dog named Combat, for Christ's
sake. His heroes would have very little to do with a keyboard.  Great
minds think alike and fools seldom differ. Roland would be more his type
to worship from afar.
	There must be something about Carl Rothchild that attracted
Charlie Decker to work for him and the Gladiators, in the first place.
NFL-Gladiators-GAMZ was a MegaCorp which today was run by genetically
designed children.
	San Diego and Austin are the Biotech capitals. Not Kansas City.
This was a food capital. Hell, it was the capital of Breadbasket North
America. Why would NFL-Gladiator-GAMZ be based here? Or were they? Maybe
this was just an offshoot or something. Like a franchise. San Diego had
been pretty hard hit during the Water Wars. Maybe they had to relocate...
	No, Houston said that the CEO of the Gladiators had recently died
in a firefight, and the board of directors, nothing more than a gang
really, were involved with the murder of Miss Delta.
	Miss Delta. Poor old skinny Queen. He may have been a sickly old
queer, but he was one helluva nice guy. Les recalled as he made his way
through the darkness, trying to remain alert to any potential trouble.
Miss Delta's lover, Justin Smith was ok too, for an Enforcer. Not at all
what you'd expect in a CyberForm.
	There had been several times, when Les had gone into the bar at
nights, when Justin was there, and talk (or rather, argue) with the
cybernetic man, who was also a representative of the law. Les was always
of the opinion that most laws are like cobwebs, which catch dust and dirt
and small flies, but let the wasps and hornets break through. Only the
harshest of laws would ever protect us from ourselves. He argued many a
night with Justin, who would only chuckle and shake his head, calling Les
a fascist for even thinking that way.
	Justin Smith was the only CyberForm he had ever known to carry a
weapon as well. The strange thing was, he didn't carry it at work, when he
was on duty as an Enforcer. He only carried it while in the bar. Then, he
kept it strapped to his leg at all times. It was a Colt Peacemaker .45
caliber. Not many of those around anymore.
	There had been several times when the queens would get drunk, and
want him to show off for them, demonstrating how quick of a draw he was,
but Justin would just laugh and beg out politely. It made Les wonder just
how fast the man really was. It takes a real man to be a Fag today.
	Thinking of guns, Les couldn't help but notice that almost a good
tenth of the corporate arms merchants were represented here, in their
small group alone. Charlie had his dual Goose Guns, which actually
resembled sawed off shotguns with pistol grips, Roland meanwhile carried a
Heckler & Koch G-40. Also known as an 'H&K', Roland called it his
'Kockler'. The MP-40 fired 9mm rounds at a rate of 500 rounds per minute.
Definitely not anything a man wants to tangle with.
	Les himself was still carrying his Remington in it's holster, and
never went anywhere without it, if he could avoid it. There had been times
though, when entering a corporate tower DownTown, he had to leave old
'Steely Dan' at the security booth. THAT made him uncomfortable. At least
when he had to turn it over at the bar, he could keep an eye on it.
	Both Rex and Dolph carried matching Webley Autoshots, which Les
had the feeling that was Dolphs idea more than Rex's. Rex kept his shiny
chrome personal Smith & Wesson on his hip as well. The only gun company
not represented, that came to mind, was Holland & Holland, and he wasn't
sure he hadn't spotted something from them earlier.
	Good Lord. Les thought to himself. What kind of world are we
running these days? Wasn't the era of the New World Order supposed to
usher in a new age? One where everyone on the planet got along better with
each other? It was true that North America had become a melting pot of
ethnic cultures and multiple races, but it was not better off for this
change. In fact, tensions between the races and the various subcultures
had only grown worse, as the population continued to rise exponentially.
People had become MORE prejudiced, turning inward, towards their own
ethnic cultural heritage for guidance, than by learning to get along with
others.
	The TV and VR stations had known this for some time now. Which was
why they tried to make sure that every nationality was represented in
their electronic forums. Every news cast had the exact same format in it's
talking heads. One African female, one Japanese female, one white male
(most likely Russian), one Mexican female and one East Indian male.
Occasionally, a station might have the random Saudi male or Chinese
female, but they were more than likely a specialized market, in which case
they might even have a European white male represented. They wanted to
appear friendly and equal to all.
	The fact of the matter was, Kimono robes, Sumo Wrestlers, and
Kabuki, held an interest only to those who were from the Japanese culture.
Europeans and Africans couldn't stand that crap. The Japanese still smugly
treated gajin like trash, and any Japanese born outside of Japan were
treated like gaijin.
	In return, the Americans of the past century were racist against
Japan for no reason. They were not the enemy. We were. They did NOT steal
our country from us. They merely bought on the open market, what was
readily available for sale. The United States blamed Japan for it's
financial woes, when the fact of the matter was, we would have done the
same thing to them, if we hadn't been so busy trying to fuck over each
other for a percentage.
	The Japanese people always thought strategically. To them,
Business was war. They told us that at the end of World War II. And they
meant it. We thought they were just joking.
	Before Les was born, the Japanese bought up most of the companies
and land in this country, because those were two things they were starved
for back home in the Nipponese Empire. The even paid double for an
industry standard technology company, because they knew they'd own all the
other companies dependent on that technology. They weren't stupid.  Just
serious about survival in a free market economy.
	America, or the old United States rather, only played at making
money. Like a hobby. Then, one day everyone woke up, we were facing
payments due to a lot of foreign investors, and there wasn't a congressman
in sight. We had sold our corporations to them, and no longer owned
anything. The Japanese had control of our land, our corporations, and our
lives. They had finally won World War II.
	To them, it was nothing to pay a couple of hundred million for a
75 million dollar company, that was deep in financial trouble. In fact,
they even budgeted for it, since they new how greedy and lazy Americans
were, and would jump at the deal if the pie was sweeter. An American
businessman making the same deal would look like an idiot to his
investors.
	A hundred and fifty million for a 75 million dollar company and
it's assets, (which included it's land and machines), 20 million in
corporate officer incentives, 10 million in legal fees, 10 million in
consultant fees, 10 million to spread around Washington D.C. and 10
million in miscellaneous gifts. It was a bargain compared to what the same
thing would cost them back home, that is, IF the same thing was even
available for sale. Americans were always for sale. Even their NEW
technology was for sale.
	Japanese would only buy beef from Japanese owned farms in the
United States. If we even asked who owned a given meat company, the
butcher would look at us like an idiot. Yet there, everyone always asks.
It's not only a matter of knowing with certainty how the food is prepared,
but a matter of National Pride.
	We also found out (Too late, and the hard way) that if you take a
product to Japan to market, you have to first sell it to a Japanese
Company that is interested in buying, in order to market that product.
The Japanese people refused to buy American Cars, because if they did,
not only would they have to face the scowls




From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 29/30
Date: 1 Aug 1995 21:10:29 -0500

Chapter Twenty Nine
	"Jesus that sucked." Houston muttered to himself as he shook his
head again, trying to shake out the dull ache which had formed there.
	"What's the situation look like Control?" Tucker Stone asked in a
smooth powerful voice, as his image leaned towards Houston, where he was
looking directly into the camera, just outside the stairwell.
	"Green." Houston said simply, as he watched Tuck and the others hit
the door one at a time, now that their task was complete, heading back up
to the van on the roof.
	The information on Carl and his collection of "Children of the
Disappeared", might prove useful to Houston. Broadbanding a short datapack
of the story, to the right people, might just level the playing field and
get them all off his back. Because if Carl was involved, others would be
too.
	The Core Wars had taught him that digital bloodletting was always
the easiest way to go, even though it hadn't worked in this particular
situation, there was no reason why it wouldn't work for him in the near
future. Knowing he had the drop on them, they might come after his
databanks with viral reprisals, but it was doubtful. It wasn't exactly
blackmail. Just a simple note. Call off the dogs, or I broadband this to
the media.
	The thought was becoming more enticing as he watched the group
move quickly and smoothly up the stairs. Sense 8 Corporation had learned
how vulnerable they were, the hard way. When The Circuits Edge, a
Netrunner bar, turned them over to VPL Research, after they had put the
squeeze on the little bar. Secrets were always such dirty little things to
keep around. They caused so much trouble for you later on.
	VR Dynamic Communications, the people whose advertising went:
'Move your minds to work, not your ass.', was more than willing to keep
the Sense 8 Corporations new product line on file for Circuits Edge, for a
small fee of course, with the instructions that should anything further
happen to Circuits Edge, or they be forced out of business by the Big Boys
who were wanting the space to build a tower, then VR Dyna-Comm was to send
the entire Sense 8 product line to their competitors, VPL Research. It was
as simple as that.
	High New York Habitat went ape-shit when they learned of the
blackmail, wanting Circuits Edge to be put out of business, calling it
unfair business practices, and an infringement of privacy laws, on
copyrights, etc. Blah Blah Blah. It still didn't change anything.
Besides, it worked didn't it?
	High New York went into the data haven business the next week.
	There is no Lower New York anymore, though Houston knew there had
been one at one time. Manhattan was the Venice of North America now, a
landmark representing a past era, now underwater after the Rock Wars
destroyed the dikes which held the Atlantic at bay. Today, it was a land
of myth. Kinda like East Virginia.
	Only the harshest of laws will protect us from ourselves. Just as,
only humans capable of intuitive leaps, will be able to deal with the
Knowledge Crash. Here he was, a man with a mind, and the will to survive.
Was he going to move with the changing times, or give in to a past that
never worked at all?
	Houston recalled the soldiers who refused to give up their cause
at the end of civil war, and knew now how they felt. Everything he had
always known as his world, was being taken away from him, and replaced
with a world that was more deadly than he had ever before imagined.
	Houston watched Little Sean pull a boomerang looking device from
inside his jacket, curios, as the man waited until everyone was outside on
the roof, and the door closed again. He watched idly as Little Sean then
threw the boomerang at the door, seeing that it stuck satisfactorily in
both the steel door and the plasticrete frame around it, effectively
locking it behind them. Good idea. Houston thought. Anything to slow them
down was always a help.
	He too needed some help. Combat Software was required. Something
to give him an edge.
	Seeing that Team Two had made it safely to the roof, he watched
the massive doors on the back of the van whisper open with a sigh, and the
group climbed inside, now leaving the building. Their pheromone signature
would still be hot for a while, but then, that was why they opted for air
transport. To hopefully, not leave much of a trail.
	It would be a little while before Tuck and the group made it to
the house, when Houston would then report to Nairobi that the objective
had been achieved. Until then, he had to take a little time to think.
	System Access Nodes flew through his mind at a terrific speed.
THIS was what he had worked for, for so long. DataNodes, bright and crisp
neon novas filled his mind with all the information of a world. Numbers.
>From day one our lives are filled with numbers. Damn, but this was a
smooth machine.
	Oh Geisha, my darling little Technogoof. You've done such a good
job on this system. A labor of love no doubt. And now, I'm giving it up
for the Custom System. Houston thought sadly. You're what I want to be
when I grow up.
	Techs who modify decks, charge a lot of money because they're
working with highly illegal equipment. Stuff the Keiretsus want to keep to
themselves, to maintain their own edge over the competition. Maybe the
Techs use something stolen from a research lab, or maybe that they're
being hunted by some tech hungry Zaibatsu. There were a lot of reasons to
maintain a low profile today.
	Too bad it was only now, as they finally came to the end of the
Carl Rothchild problem, that Houston realized what he had in Geisha.
Houston would never let him go now though. From now on, they would be a
team.
	Geisha had argued against joining up with The Mirrorshades Group
at first, when the two of them talked about it that night up on the roof
together, but Houston was finally able to make Geisha see that it was the
right thing for them to do. They were both technicals. That meant they
would need protection sooner or later. Too many companies in the world
wanted the edge that a couple of young technicals could provide them.
	It was a dangerous place to live in, this world of New World
Order. No more Cops and Robbers playing at their fun and games of Dunkin
Donuts, holding the city hostage by demanding more money, while lazily
sitting in squad cars getting fat. The world was a mean place these days.
Cops were facing terror gangs, who used terror tactics, like the Wild
Rebels, and resisting arrest was common place. The multiple monitors
around the squad room still didn't prevent the random Wacko from Waco,
strapping a bomb to himself and walking inside, and all the infrared
tracking, detailing all the weapons and armor in the world, couldn't stop
that final bullet.
	Cops didn't have any special sort of privileges, just because they
considered themselves the Knights of The Age. There was only a certain
Type person who ever wanted to BE a cop in the first place. And that type
did NOT have any business with a gun of all things. Whether their
speciality was surveillance, or luck, every cop had a little bit of
larceny in their hearts.
	Sure it's a rough world. But everyone knows that. A lot of
corporates even kept a change of clothes in their office, just in case
they got covered with blood on the way to work. THAT was what kind of
world we live in. Some of the more sophisticated corporates had to face
life every morning with the knowledge their bodies contained explosives.
Cortex bombs were particularly popular today. They were told of course,
that it was only in case of their capture.
	Corporate secrets were vital information which couldn't be
released to the competition. However, more than once, an occasional
corporate defector had been found, the victim of an untimely 'accident'
with the self destruct mechanism. The Japanese, the Saudis, the Germans,
all were the new owners of, and had a rather large financial interest in
North America, and they were not going to give that up, not as easily as
the Americans had done, by simply selling it all away.
	Rockafeller Center, Burger King, Brooks Brothers, Holiday Inn,
Columbia Pictures, all were owned and operated by foreign investors, who
kept a proud eye on their conquests.
	Knowing how these MegaCorps and multinational Zaibatsus worked,
Carl may have been running with a crowd that had enough clout to keep the
law out of it, should there be a scandal. Could they fight public opinion?
Probably. The Spin Doctors could make the public believe anything. They
had been doing that very thing in the North American Nations for over a
hundred years now.
	Damn. Houston thought. Still, it was worth a try. A man had to do
his best, even if sometimes the best you can do isn't good enough.
	Maybe he could try and enlist the assistance of his GridFriends.
The hundreds of thousands of Electronic Tribes and Virtual Nations of
cyberspace carried an entire will of their own. After all, they had
changed that whole rule about having to physically go into an employers
building to work for them.
	Knowledge workers no longer have to be in commuting distance or
even on the same continent as their employers. With this, other facets of
society changed as well (according to pundits). Virtual Clubs sprang up
everywhere. And with them, and entire subculture which carried it's own
political weight.
	There were always options.
	Houston knew he was entering a realm where military hard cases,
experts at black-ops had more voice in how corporate politics were
conducted than an entire gang of Senators or representatives ever had. A
unit of heavily cybered warriors with a platoon of commandoes seemed to
have more influence today than Capitol Hill ever dreamed.
	The world was a dark and dangerous place, and you have to learn to
deal with it on it's own terms if you want to survive. It would be easier
though, having someone beside you. Someone There for you. Of that much
Houston was sure.





From: cybcq@clubmet.metrobbs.com (Bob Wilson)
Subject: Dogdays 30/30
Date: 1 Aug 1995 21:16:30 -0500

	Houston grinned, watching from the other side of the dark, smoke
filled bar, as Geisha sat drunkenly trying to teach a group of smashed
German strangers at the bar, the tunes to different American commercials.
Commercials from an era past. The Mirrorshades Group were singing right
aalong with him.
	Houston giggled a bit at the scene, slightly embarrased for his
lover, as the entire bar swayed back and forth, singing at the top of
their lungs, the words to some long forgotten product or service, which
Houston was no longer familiar with, but trusted that Geisha knew what he
was talking about. He seemed to know a million of them.
	"Aye, Aye, Aye, Aye, I am the Frito Bandito!" They sang sincerely
in their deep, masculine voices. It was loud enough, (or ridiculous
enough) that Houston had to wonder when the cops would arrive and haul
them all away. If Justin Smith himself hadn't been a part of the crowd,
they probably would have by now. He half expected the mob to erupt in riot
at any moment.
	Then, the way his mind worked, he quickly ran through the short
version of barroom brawl rules. Rules he had learned for himself over the
years, the hard way. Get a shot-glass in your hand as quickly as possible.
Break all glasses and bottles within reach as quickly as possible by
knocking them to the floor, so they'll be useless as weapons.  Stay away
from tubular steel chairs. Avoid smashing the mirror behind the bar, since
it can give you an edge. Don't allow yourself to be pushed into a booth,
where 5 or 6 people can dog-pile on top of you. Watch out for unbroken,
half filled glasses, since the contents can wind up in your eyes.
	He sipped at his own vodka martini (with a slice of time), and
leaned back, relaxed in the air of celebration. Their newly found friends
were men with numbers for names and ice-water in their veins. They worked
hard and now it was obvious they played hard as well.
	"So what are your immediate plans?" Tucker Stone asked as he came
over grinning, and sat down beside Houston, who had been avoiding the
musical celebration. It had surprised him that the man could be so very
friendly, after what seemed like genuine hatred coming from him before.
However, Stone simply took it all in stride, as if it were merely detached
professionalism, and nothing of any significance had happened at all.
Houston thought it was best to pretend the same.
	"We're gonna get away for a while." Houston answered. "Out of this
city long enough to at least catch our breath. We'll be getting married
next week, and then we're going on a well deserved vacation."
	"Is Les the only lover you've ever had?" Tuck asked friendly,
waving over the couple Roland and Chance, to sit and have a drink with
them.
	"Yeah." Houston nodded. "One and only."
	"You're lucky." Tuck said sincerely. "I hope it works out for you
both. "
	"Any kids in your future?" Roland asked grinning.
	"I hope." Houston nodded. "We want children, we just don't want
women raising them. So we're opting for gene-splices, and we'll carry them
ourselves. I'll carry the first, and Geisha will carry the next."
	"Both boys of course?" Chance asked politely.
	"Of course."
	"Well, just so long as you know that Dating is NOT real life."
Roland said in his casual relaxed way. "A relationship is one place, where
the truth will find it's way out, one way or another."
	"After the first five weeks, realization sets in, you being to
doubt yourself, and find yourself wondering, What the hell have I Done?!"
Chance explained. "Then, if you've got married for the wrong reasons,
after 18 months, the first kid, the relationship is OVER."
	"But you two never had any children." Houston insisted politely.
	"No, but we've seen enough straight marriages fall apart, that we
know what traps to avoid." Roland explained. "We've been happily married
for twelve years now, simply because we've done everything the straights
haven't or wouldn't." He grimaced.
	"I'm of the opinion that Straight people should never get married,
because the sexes do not like each other." Chance said conspiratorially,
despite the fact that they were in Yukon Jacks, a Gay bar. "They should go
ahead and screw, even date, but not get married. Let them come together to
procreate, but go home to separate apartments.  Straight Men will always
hate women, because of the demands and responsibilities they place on them
before they are really ready to grow up. Women want children and the house
in suburbia, while still in their twenties, but we don't look for that
kind of stability until much later in life."
	"You would think that since relationships are two-way streets, the
blame would be spread equally as well." Houston suggested.
	"Ah! You would think! But that's the way we Men think." Roland
winked. "Women do NOT think logically. They think Emotionally. That's why
women end up getting the shit knocked out of them when they don't shut up
and keep pushing their men. All the women see, when they're looking at
their bruises in the mirror, is that the men have failed them, and their
children face poverty the rest of their lives because of it. Shit. Kids
can handle poverty. We've done ok haven't we?"
	"As twenty or thrity year old men, facing divorce, we find out that
we are trapped, financially, and being held ransom for life." Chance
added. "We end up paying child support on kids, we never really wanted in
the first place. We just let the Bitches have their way, and have the
kids, thinking it was the easiest way out. More men should stand up for
their rights and demand abortions."
	"Men and Women are from completely different hormonallly controlled
worlds. So, within a year, their relationships are already in trouble,
simply because they didn't communicate with each other effectively."
Roland went on. "I hope that doesn't happen with you and Les. We like you
both. It would be good to see your relationship work out."
	"I think everything will." Rex said coming up to the table with his
tall muscular friend Dolph in tow. "They're both good boys, and besides,
I'll be standing behind them to kick them in the ass if they need it." He
grinned.
	"Either yourself or Clayton." Dolph agreed.
	"Dr.Forrester would never raise a hand to me!" Houston insisted
jokingly.
	"Try me." The big cat yawned, and they all laughed. "It's time you
give us all an answer Houston." The cat said directly, no longer avoiding
the issue which had been keeping them all curios and puzzled the past few
days.
	"So what have you decided?" Roland asked, professionally, now
serious. "Have you talked with Les about the two of you joining us?"
	"Yes, we've talked about it." Houston nodded. "We're with you."
	"Great." Roland smiled, and they all began congratulating him.
	It felt good to finally be surrounded by friends and family again,
to be a part of something for a change, and not to be hunted, to know that
if he walked outside the double swinging doors of the bar, there would not
be some one waiting to geek him for some reason that was far beyond him.
	He had a new life ahead of him. One that he would share with
Leslie Dow, and hopefully their two beautiful children. And they would be
protected. By people who were close to them. Friends and family.
	"You've got a wonderful life ahead of you Houston." Rex smiled.
	And it was true.
	Maybe he didn't have all the answers to all the question about his
life today, and his life in the uncertain future, but at least he had the
knowledge that he would be sharing it all with someone he loved, and who
loved him.
	Houston knew in his heart that he had to be able to go on with
life, without the permission of those who sought to do him harm. The fear
could be turned into something MORE. He had finally reached the point
where he could ask himself "What am I afraid of?" and then he was finally
able to own himself. All of him.
	His past, his fears, the feelings that someone was always watching
him, waiting to do him wrong; in searching out those dark corners of his
heart, he had found the place inside of him that was somehow stronger than
everything else, and he had given himself the permission to finally go on.
	In the passing moments when he was desperately considering looking
for yet more help from his gridfriends out in ComWeb, he realized what it
was he was running from. And suddenly everything went still, and
everything was ok again.
	In that spark of recognition that he was running from monsters he
had created for himself, he had taken a vow of nonharming to himself in
order to find out what's true. And he remembered who he was.
	No longer was he a broken child, who had lived a suffering
childhood, and was facing yet more violence to his soul as an adult, but
he was a whole individual, who had the ability to make a decision as to
how he chose to react to those things around him. He now had control over
his life.
	Bob Wilson
	Kansas City Missouri
	August 1993
	151,331 Words

FAX: 816-231-7834

cybcq@Clubmet.metrobbs.com
fagcq@Big12.metrobbs.com
cyqueer@Midwest.mwol.com
neurobob@qmondo.com