From: joshua@dmccorp.com (Joshua Lellis)
Subject: REPOST: Dragon's Fire (1-22)
Date: 13 Jan 1996 15:43:02 GMT
it's been a while since I posted the next chapter of this, which is
Chapter 22, so I wanted everyone new to be able to see where 22 came from
and I wanted everyone old to be able to refresh their memories with
this.. anyhow, 22 is in a different post if everyone feels as though they
remember this (last post was sometime in September 1995 I think...)
--
D R A G O N ' S F I R E
a drug
B y J o s h u a L e l l i s
"Man is no machine. Man is no God. Mankind is, and will always be, a
pest." - LeatherStrip
"You've got nothing left to lose, she whispered as she pulled me through
the rooms. Forever she said, waits for no one. Follow me or give it all away.
The door opened to the room of nightmares. There's no turning back now.
Follow me it's got to be this way. I cannot feel it here. I can't
remember why. When it all just slips away, I'm afraid to live and then to
die. It's a long way down. Falling off the edge." - Kill Switch...Klick
All text Copyright 1994-1996 Joshua Lellis.
It may be transferred under two conditions:
1) No text is changed
2) Credit of the writing is given to the author: Joshua Lellis
Dedicated to:
Marshall Motley, the Heretic.
It would make loads of sense to burn you at the stake, Marshall. But
everyone deserves the right to a fair trial. Anyhow, here's my second
novel, and I promised to dedicate it to you. So here it is. We're going
to miss you when you go away in May.
Introduction
Before you enter the magical world I have spun for you, let me take a
brief moment to welcome you. It is a joy for me to write for you.
The world you are about to enter is the United States of America.
Houston, to be exact. My hometown. This is the future of the USA, and a
Royal Order gains increasing power in Congress, stealing its way up level
by level. It takes place over a long period of time. The USA does not
seem to be the USA anymore. The American People still have their rights,
they are just restricted.
The lucky ones have homes. Many are on the street. Children are
abandoned, and a fearsome group of warriors called the Armored
Patrol hunt people as they please.
A man makes his way across the country. He hides in the shadows of the
daily news and is never seen, if you're lucky.
Another is an ex-hacker, waiting patiently for his death.
It is the story of one man's triumph, one man's defeat. It is the story
of investigation, of looking in hidden places for hidden clues to a tale
that seems almost too real in the world we live. This is our world, the
world of tommorrow.
This is a story of thought control, of censorship, of manipulation, of
having politics with the one objective of gain power and screw the
people.
This is a story of our rights, of our freedom. It is a story based on
everything we hold dear.
It is a story of the rights we take for granted, written in stone, and
unchangeable. It is a story of rights that can so easily be depressed,
taken out into the street, dragged, beaten, bruised, and killed. Some
call it mercy. Others....
This is a story of death, hate, depression, murder, and drugs.
The American way!
Maybe....
Maybe there is hope left in this dim world. A light may overcome the darkness.
A heat may drive out the cold.
BOOK ONE
No thanks: you no who you fucking are.
the slave thinks he is released from bondage
only to find a stronger set of chains
-- Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails
Dragon's Fire
1
by Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
The sky was black, cold, and plain looking. He slung the backpack
across his back, adjusted his belt, and continued walking down the dirt
road. The car's engine made a popping sound, and bursted. A flame curled
through the air, twisting itself like a dancer.
He toyed with the handgun that was in its holster.
"Do you still do it?" he asked me, as I sat in the chair. The chair
was uncomfortable, and I wanted to squirm out of it.
"Sometimes." I answered, fumbling for a cigarette in my pocket. "On
weekends."
He smirked. "Still the old hacker inside aren't you?"
"There's a new breed of hackers." I responded after a short pause.
"Whole new breed. All been automated. Nobody has respect for the old way
we used to do it. Bare handed, crawling through the mud. That was the
ancient hacking." I found a cigarette, lit it, and puffed. "I remember
the old days clearly."
He got out a notepad and pen, began to jot some notes. "Tell me about
it. Tell me all about it."
It all began way back when I cracked something special. The latest
warez where having some new shit added to them. I wanted to check it
out. So the latest board in my area popped up the latest file, and I
took it back to my computer, and played with it there.
And there was a drug being pushed through the streets. I forget its
name. It slips me at the moment. Shit, what was it. Mind blower, mind
screwer, some dumb drug. The dopees were out the night it happened. The
night I quit hacking.
I went down to Willowbrook, the old mall that hadn't been rebuilt in
years. There weren't many lights on when I walked towards the Foley's. I
remember almost shitting in my pants when a friend of mine popped out in
front of me, from the darkness.
"Chill out. Chill out!" he whispered to me.
I sighed, fell on a bench and looked at him.
He ran it through his head again, still not sure whether or not to do
this. "What the hell." his friend was saying, playing with the injection
needle. "Why the fuck not?" The friend brushed his arm, looking for a
vein. "You strap them on, real ones if you want, walk in." He pushed the
needle. "Oh..... oh... good......" He gulped. "And burn them all to
hell." The friend put his arm in front of him, wiggled his hand. "Man,
how did they live without this?"
The other sighed. "The Armored Patrol are gonna be out, man. I don't
like this."
"Pussy." the friend said, dropping the needle. "Disgraceful pussy."
"Shut the fuck up, asshole." said the other. "At least I'm not high."
"Don't know what you're missing, do you?" the friend answered. "God, I
got the stuff in the back seat of the car. Go get it, and the duct tape."
The other went to the friend's car, opened the door, and looked
inside. A white material wrapped in plastic was sitting there, and behind
that was duct tape. He looked back at the friend. "Do it."
I heard an explosion behind me, and I looked up from the comic I was
reading. A store was in flames, and the glass had shattered onto the
ground. People were rushing out of there like ants from a smushed hill.
My friend stood up before I did, jumped over the bench, and ran towards
the flaming store. I stood up and ran to the fire extinguishers. I took
one and ran back to the store. There was nothing I could do. This little
extinguisher wouldn't do anything.
Chill out, chill out. he whispered to me.
The demon in the closet is not the one in your head on the mind's eye
you're dead but the lifeless talk to you when you don't realize it. You
know it's true.
Then I turned around and heard a second explosion. Not as much fire as
there was smoke.
My god, the smoke..
Then people running everywhere, and suddenly I was being moved with
the crowd, towards a store. They were robbing everything, panicking,
lotting what they could now before the world "ended". I got pushed into
an electronics store, a Sears.
I tried to push away from the crowd, but only found my way to the part
of the store that didn't have anyone in it, Children's Clothes. A plastic
robot was twattling along on its way. Its circuitry, obviously Japanese,
was muddled, and the thing caught fire and began to burn as it walked
along.
I stood looking at the object, fascinated by it.
Then I heard the sound of metal boots clunking along down the hall
looking for the death of others. The Armored Patrol.
He toyed with the handgun that was in its holster.
Then there were screams below me, on the floor beneath me. "Ohmigod,
help me, help me! They're" rat at tat tat tat.. Rat at tat tat tat...
Then more screams, and then more gunfire.
I stepped on my toes, twirled around, and looked. I heard the sound of
metal boots clunking along down the hall, looking for the death of
others. The Armored Patrol.
"Verboten!" a patrolman yelled towards me.
Another murmered something in French to me, another one in Japanese. A
fourth spoke up, "Forbidden!"
"What?" I said, turning towards him.
"You are not allowed to be in this section. This is a forbidden area."
he said, pointing a machine gun at me. "Get the hell out."
Someone prodded me with a gun from my backside. "Start walking."
"What are you doing?" I asked them. "I'm an American citizen!"
"Silenco." a patrolman said.
"This area is forbidden, start moving." And then he pulled out a piece
of paper that dangled onto the floor. "You want me to read this aloud,
you're gonna have to do it from the dead."
"Read the paper." I told him. "Read it or you're gonna have to get a
zip-up bag."
"Attention: The Royal Order of Alchadia has declared the Mall an off
limits area. 'Due to the numerous attempts of terrorist activity, we have
found it in our best interest to close the Mall area. Any attempts of
resistance is punishable by death' blah blah blah. You wanna start
heading out of here now?"
"No. You're gonna have to tell me what the heck was going on out there!"
A patrolman hit me across the back of my skull. With a slight ugh, I
fell, toppled onto the ground, and watched the light disappear.
Candlelight by the fireplace is ironic in its own right.
"So you were knocked out?" he asked me.
I shrugged. "Yeah."
"You still haven't talked about hacking." he said, jotting some notes.
"Well, then, let me continue."
When I came to, the place was quiet. Locked up for the night I guess.
So I walked to the window, tapped on it. Tap tap. Then I slammed my fist
into the window and yelped in pain. "AGH gah..." It wasn't the same since
they put in the bulletproof glass.
I kicked it anyway, which was a bad idea. My leg scrunched up against
itself and I fell to the ground. "Agh. AGh." I picked up a monitor and
threw it at the glass. It bounced off the glass and flew back towards me.
Then I realized it. Here I was, alone in a store that had electronics.
The thief in the night turns the doors to the houses, and one of them
is unlocked.
Dragon's Fire
2
by Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
I fumbled with a lit cigarette. "So, how do I explain it." I inhaled
the cigarette and puffed. I looked up at the light in the room, the fan
that slowly spinned. "Have you ever been to an ice cream store?" I asked
him. "Of course you have. Well, it's like being in an ice cream store,
and having all the money in the world. You don't feel good doing what
you're doing, but you love doing it, because you can.
"It's like sleeping in Church. You get caught, you've got an excuse,
but if you don't get caught, you don't have to fire off the excuse." He
looked at me strangely. "Bad example?"
He shook his head. "No, just my father was a minister."
I chuckled behind the cigarette. "Just my luck." I tapped the end of
the cigarette into the ashtray and looked back up at him. I dropped the
cigarette in the ashtray, resting it there. "How else would I put it.
You're exercising, but you don't have to, and you don't really need to.
Anorexia." I smirked. "Or you could just put it the way I did. I was in
Heaven." I stood looking at the light. I rolled my head. "Don't know what
you have untill you lose it. I don't like that cliche. I prefer, don't
know what you can get untill you do it. " I dropped my head and stared at
the floor. "Sounds stupider than the other cliche though." I coughed, sat
back down, and picked up the cigarette. "Things will kill me.
"There's a village in the mideval times and there's to be a vampire
dig. They've found all these people dying of the Bubonic Plague, the
Black Death. So they grab everything they can grab, shovels, picks, axes,
torches, whatever, and they march to the graveyard.
"A man died a few months ago and so they stop at his grave first. Here
he lies, resting in peace. But they don't care. So they begin digging.
And digging and digging and digging. They've finally got to the coffin.
"So they drop four of their strongest men into the hole and they pick
the coffin up onto their shoulders. Nothing fancy, just a wooden box.
They climb up out of the hole and drop the box on the side.
"A priest armed with an ax walks up to the box. He opens the coffin,
and stares in amazement. Running down the man's chin is blood, all the
way up from his lips. The priest is amazed. He's seen this before, read
about cases, but never really experienced it first hand.
"So they yell at the priest, 'Hey, is there something wrong with him?'
But the priest can't answer, so they push him out of the way and look
into the box. So a strong man takes the body and lifts it up. He cuts
into it with his ax, breaks the ribcage, and begins searching for the
heart.
"It's the experience of doing something you're not supposed to, but you
can." I smiled.
"So how can I explain this hacking bit in the Sears?" I thought back.
"I think at first I was a little scared. Just a tiny bit scared because
I'd never done this sort of thing before. In a store I mean. And a
Sears... geeze."
Disorientation greeted me first when I entered the matrix. Then I took
a look around the matrix. The matrix. You know what that is don't you?
Word derived from the folds inside the mitochondria of every animals
cells. So the matrix are these little folds there, and
at every fold there is a point. These points are usually leased out to
businesses, corporations, private homes, whatever, at a nice fee. And
they let employees access this place so they can do whatever there. So
the businesses are virtually run on these points. But everyone can't
access the mainframe point, so they create outlets, city to city
throughout the world. This Sears place I was at was the main outlet for
Houston, but there would be six or seven outlets jumping off of this one.
But the outlets were all in one way or another linked to the mainframe
point, so they could do business. But the hackers, people like myself,
began breaking into these outlets. There were no laws against it. There
was no protection against these places. They were telling us, use these
systems. So people began to create defense computers to hookup to the
mainframe, another outlet, but you had to pass through it. The companies
took it a step further, if the defense outlet was hacked and dropped
down, hackers couldn't step into the mainframe. So the hackers were
trying to figure out a way to get into these mainframes without dropping
the defense computer and without getting their point addresses fingered
and caught.
There is a cockroach on my arm and I can crush it with the paper but do
I get hurt when I realize it was not there?
So the people, the hackers, set up illegal outlets on the matrix. These
outlets, called posts, where just hangouts for hackers. Twentieth century
bulletin board systems.
I hopped onto a post, logged on and waited. I waited for half an hour,
and the discussion got boring and more boring as it droned on and on. So
I jumped off and began to program. If the defense outlet isn't going to
let anyone in without a password, codeword, or whatever, then someone
would have to program a sequencer.
But the point managers had thought about this, so they decided that if
you mistyped three times, they'd trace you and that would be the end of
your attempts to log in.
I programmed it in so that the user using the sequencer would be
temperary, and if they blocked him from coming in, another temp. user
would pop up and he'd continue the sequencer with the rest of the
passwords.
By the time I'd copied this to a portable disk the store was almost
opening. I hid in a restroom and waited. The store opened, and I walked
out. The mall was trashed, glass everywhere, some small fires still
smoldering.
He stared at me. "That was your first hacking experience?" he asked.
I lit another cigarette. "Not my first experience. One of my first good
ones though. I'd played around at points before they'd added the defense
outlets." I sighed. "Damn, the good old days."
"You just walked out of the Sears? No Armored Patrol? Nothing?"
"I thought it was odd, too. Happened like that though."
"So what happened next?"
The mind plants images of deceit and death but do you buy them?
Dragon's Fire
3
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
I stare at my hands and wonder how they kill without thought. The
blood stains them, sure, but they were meant to be stained. And the
people I killed were meant to be killed.
The logic is reasonable.
The Dragon's Fire drug was very popular. Very popular. Two reasons:
first, it was easy to manufacture, and shipped without any trouble.
Second, it was cheap.
Course, that part about it being lethal if taken wrong, that was
hidden from most customers. Not too many repeat customers.
And I'd heard that the trip the junkies got was good, excellent. They
entered the world like the matrix, but so entirely FUCKING different. The
world changed, and the ground beneath them dropped out of existence. So
they'd have a falling moment, but they would realize that they weren't
falling, and they would get hurt if they fell all the way down. So they
enjoyed it.
Listen, o Israel, your God is one, there is no other God but He.
And so I went back to my home and hopped back onto a point. Nothing
new had occured, so I went to bed and woke up to the smell of coffee
brewing in the kitchen.
I walked over to the kitchen and took a look at who was there. I
didn't have to bother looking at her face, I knew at once who she was. I
jumped onto her back and covered her eyes with my hands.
"Guess who." I said. She tried to jerk me off her back, but I held
fast to her eyes.
"I don't know." she giggled, still trying to get me off. Her voice was
like gold, I wanted to keep it there forever, but knew I really couldn't
have it.
"Yes, you do." I said, digging my feet around her and into her
abdomen. "Long time ago. Warm summer night, Paris, nice dinner at a
French restaurant. The reservations took seven months to get, and god,
the cost of the food."
She took my forearm and flung me over her head and onto the ground.
"Jake." she said, smirking.
I stood up and ran to hug her. I put my arms around her and lifted her
off the ground and onto the counter. "Lewis." I said. "It's been too
long. How long has it been?"
"Four years."
"Four fucking years, it's been an eter --"
She interrupted me, putting her hand on my mouth. "Listen, I got a
problem." I raised an eyebrow.
"Problem? Money trouble?" I asked. I'd backed away from her, leaning
against the opposite counter. "I can help you out, I got a deposit back
on the old house."
She shook her head. "No, not money trouble." She hopped off the
counter and poured two cups of coffee. "Hacker trouble." She handed me a
cup.
"Having trouble breaking defense outlets?"
She frowned. "No. I'm working for the mainframes now."
I spat out some coffee. God, I must've looked so stupid, half
drooling, half spitting. Coffee dripping from my mouth just the same.
"I gave up the hacking business two years ago." she said, answering my
blunder. "I've gotten hired by the McKenzie Corporation, McKenzie-Yaruko
Corporation now rather. Anyhow, I need an assistant. We've had some major
problems with our defense outlets, some hackers have been chunking
through the system and crashing the outlet."
"And *my* part in all this?" I asked. "I'm not jumping over to the
anti-hacker side if that's what you're asking me." She looked startled.
"And I sure as hell ain't hacking your fucking computers, so you can wipe
that look off your face."
"Well, fuck you then." she screamed at me. "You wanna flush your life
away, fine by me, but you can just go do it by yourself." She got up in
my face. "Excuse me for trying to get you out of your pit."
"I didn't ask for your help."
"Well, I would think you'd need it!"
"Oh, shut the fuck up, bitch."
She slapped me. "Don't ever call me a bitch when I'm helping you."
I slapped her back. "Don't... don't ever look at me like that."
And there was a brief moment of silence as neither of us said
anything. "We're not gonna -- you know, are we?" I asked.
She stared at me. "Not on the counter." And some time passed, and she
finally pulled at my leg. "Get off the counter."
Dancing by the firelight of the city that burned to the ground before
we danced. Take my hand and we will rebuild that city into a metropolis,
and from there who knows...
I sat down on the sofa and she sat next to me. She leaned over and
began to kiss my neck. "Tell me what you'd want me to do for the
company." I said, kissing her in return.
"We'd need for someone to strengthen the defense outlets. An assistant
for me." she mumbled into my neck.
I pushed her away for a moment.
"Ruined the moment." she said.
I shrugged it off and asked, "How much does it pay?"
She went back to kissing me. "Fourteen thousand a day."
I slipped out of the sofa and onto the floor. "Damn. Fourteen thou."
She dropped on the floor next to me.
"So does this mean you'll take the job?"
I grinned. "Hell yeah."
Not so much as the need for blood, but the need for death.
I gripped my face and moaned. The sun was shining through the curtains
-- the curtains? oh, fuck, forgot to close them -- and my brain was
pounding against my head. As for Lewis, where was she? Note on the table,
maybe that had something to do with her disappearance. Nope, just
directions to the new job.
I whiped some sweat off of my forehead and walked to the kitchen. Then
I saw the clock and looked at the note again. I was late for work.
I looked out the curtains of the room and down into the park. There
were some children playing in sandboxes and mothers chatting about their
lives.
He stared at me. "So you'd quit the hacking profession right then and
there?"
"I'd be lying if I said I did."
He raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"Nobody *quits*." I pushed my palms against the window. I was getting
distracted from my story. And I didn't really want to explain to him
everything. So I guess he'd have to ask nicely, or just let me continue.
"How so?"
"You can't quit. People can try quitting but deep down inside people
realize that they --"
"Why do you say people?" he interrupted. "Why not hackers?"
I didn't know why I'd said people. I'd always said people, not
hackers. Probably just a slander against the real world.
"Because everyone is a hacker." I answered. "Everyone *wants*
information they can't have. Take for instance, sex education. All these
little sixth graders running around talking about the birds and the bees.
Why? Because they can. It's information that really shouldn't be given to
them but it is. It is available to them, it is available to anyone, and
they are going to take it!"
"Why?"
I'd rushed out that answer and he'd responded in a good way. Why did I
feel this way? "Ask yourself that. Why do you have urges as a child to
get into the cookie jar? Because you know deep down inside that you
shouldn't, that it won't help you, but you feel that you need to. It's
your duty, and as all good people, duty is top priority." That sounded
sarcastic. "And if people weren't so god damned lazy these days, hackers
wouldn't have to take the information. It would be available to the
public." I turned towards him. "Tell me, who controls the information?"
"Censors."
"Higher up."
"Their bosses."
"Higher than that even. There is a boss for every boss you can have
and God isn't censoring information. So there's someone out there that
decides what you can see, and what you can't see. For your own good,
they'll say. But do you like being told to get your grubby hand out of
the cookie jar? Of course not, no one does. These top guys are going to
hide from you what you should know! What you want to know. What you can
know if they wouldn't be so fucking biased against the uneducated minds
of the stupid FUCKS like us! Stupid fucks like you, stupid fucks like
me, stupid fucks like all of us. And if you don't like hearing the word
fuck, then you're a fucking bigot! Hide my information, encrypt it, lock
away the key, but somehow it's gonna get out. Someone is going to get
that information and when they do, they'll tell the public and you will
look like an ass. Hackers are the people that find information, they are
not the evil ones that hide it."
Dragon's Fire
4
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
Oh....
no........
i'm dead.
i guess i turned onto the wrong side of the highway on my way to work
today. would that make sense to you?
of course it would.
that's how i died, isn't it?
wrong turn. wrong turn.
turn back.
I sighed and looked back at the other. He was sipping some coffee and
taking notes. "Where was I?" I asked.
"You'd gotten a job with your friend, Lewis." he said after a short
pause. "And explained to me why no one can censor anything."
Yes.
"Because all information is guaranteed to be leaked." I nodded.
I held onto the subway railing, waiting for the train to come to a
stop. It rolled to a stop, and I stepped into a car and sat down next to
a group of cyberpunks.
"Cyberpunks?" he interrupted.
I sighed. "Hackers."
"I've never heard that word before." he said, making a note of it.
"They're usually kids, not professional hackers. Just kids that do it
as a hobby." I took a long breath of the cigarette. "Shit. There are no
hobbies anymore."
oh god now i feel worse then i did before
strangeness lies beneath the surface
no one cares.
no one cares.
no one cares. care. care. care. care. care goddammit!
care care care care care care care care care care care care care
care care care care care
what the FUCK!
"No." I said firmly. "There are no hobbies anymore."
i thought you were dead
oh no not me
there ain't no coming back
i saw you go through the window
there AIN'T no coming back
i saw you go through the window
there ain't no coming back
the devil stood and felt how AWFUL goodness is
does it get you sweaty?
death has no boundaries, just it's limits.
oh my skull hurts so bad I can feel my lip moving under my eyes a small
lake of water forms and dries before it can hit my nose. i stare at the
sky and the clouds look down at me, admonishing me for my sins. oh no am
i going to hell.... another pool drops from my eye and hits my nose, and
i wipe it off from the bottom of my lip with my index finger. i gulp down
something, mucus maybe, and I wipe my eyes. my chest shivers and i try to
remember happy times happy thoughts anything that makes me feel better
but nothing seems to help it so i just sit here and do nothing. i feel...
i fell so..... i feel so.. so... and now my nose is running and i want to
stop it but how do i stop my nose from jogging away from my body when it
just doesn't want to stay there.
i know, i know, i shouldn't get into these moods, that they're no good
for me. they happen though.
shit happens.
who cleans it up?
the world doesn't care for the little people anymore. they've got a three
letter word to solve everything and if you don't like it you can GO TO HELL!
so this is their three letter word:
S E X
it's a wonderful word that third graders don't say in fear of being
punished. the television says the word every five minutes. SEX..... then
lets have a commercial.. ok. done with the commercial. now what?...
SEX.... ok... let's have another commercial.... oh, that was a good
commercial. now what?...... SEX. more SEX... commercial.
makes me wonder why people would wear clothes when their minds are set on
the "game" of taking the clothes off of others.
it reminds me of a joke i heard once from a friend. i could tell the joke
right now, no one would care.
there's this knight in the middle ages, and he has a maiden at home. he's
got to go off to a crusade and so he gives the maiden a chastity belt
that has spikes in it. you see, he has four servants that he doesn't
really trust. so he goes to the crusade and comes back after five years.
his four servants are lined up and so he says, "all right, all of you, I
want to see if you were faithful to my wishes. drop your pants to make
sure that none of you tried anything with my maiden." so the four drop
their pants. the first three don't have their equipment anymore, but the
fourth still does. he walks up to the fourth one and slaps him on the
back. "you, cause you're such a faithful person to me, i'm going to raise
you up to a knight status. do you have anything to say to me?" and he
opens his mouth and tries to speak but his tongue is missing.
i guess i'm better now, and the song on the cd player is a good one.
i could continue babbling, but what would be the point?
Dragon's Fire
5
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
there's a dead cockroach on the floor in my computer room and i feel
as though if i stepped on it it would take me somewhere i don't want to be.
There's a place somewhere where the people dance.
There's a person out there who knows what the mimes are saying.
There's a poet parading around on New Year's Eve.
Everyone is waiting to see the face of God.
I stood over the other now, letting him take in my full appearance. My
long, curly black bangs dangling in front of my eyes. My muscles bulging
from beneath my tee-shirt that I wore, and my calf muscles contracting,
tightening my foot. I would clench my fists, grit my teeth, but that
would be... insulting ?
I breathed into his face. And his eyes blinked partially by reflex,
partially by intimidation.
A few moments passed, as I inhaled and exhaled onto his face. And I
took a step back, calculating it like in the movies, where the
interrogator steps back for a moment in all his glory to show who's in
command here.
"You don't want to hear the rest of my story, for it is a sad one that
you will regret hearing for the rest of your life." I paused, entirely
for the dramatic purposes of stopping. "And then some."
He stood up from his chair and walked over to his desk. He sat down
behind the desk and opened a drawer. He pulled out a cigar and a
matchbook.
"And I can tell you don't want to hear my story. So tell me a story, bud."
He lit the cigar with a match, slowly, and jerked his hand back and
forth for a moment, putting out the match. He took a first puff of the
cigar and looked at me.
"Don't call me bub."
I thought I'd bow to him, so I did. "Yes, my master."
"Continue with your story."
The train was rolling down the tracks. The group of cyberpunks were
whining about the Dragon's Fire.
"Yeah, James was telling me that he got a good four kilos of the
stuff for a nice price." one said.
"Four kilos." another said astonished.
"How much?" asked yet another.
"Twenty dollars."
Then the four decided to go to James', to take the Dragon's Fire for a
trip. "Faisons un voyage."
"Le grand voyage des amies." then a short pause. "C'est l'amour."
"C'est la vie."
I was quiet, not bothering to interrupt their little party.
sit and drink pennyroyal tea.
steal the life force inside of me
sit and drink pennyroyal tea.
how do we make pennyroyal tea...
And there was a loud pop sound from the front of the car, and a
canister rolled onto the floor and down the car untill it hit the back of
the car.
It was quiet for a brief moment and nobody said a thing.
Then a man wearing a trenchcoat stood up, opened the car door and
jumped off of the car and into the subway. He pressed his body up against
the side of the wall and remained motionless.
And an middle-aged man, who had been sitting his daughter on his knee,
pushed her off now, stood up, and jumped towards the canister. He covered
his body over the canister quickly and someone from the front of the car
yelled, "NO!"
Somebody pulled the man off of the canister, and took the canister to
a window. He tugged at the window, tugged again. Tugged a third time and
then threw the canister at the window. It bounced off of the window and
landed in my lap.
I opened my mouth to scream but nothing came out of it. I kicked off
the canister, crouched on my chair, and decided it wasn't enough, jumping
over the chair and rolling onto the ground.
The canister rolled into the middle of the car and someone was
screaming, and the harshness of the scream was tearing at her larnyx,
burning the inside of her throat and making her scream louder.
And there was a hiss, an ear-piercing hiss from the canister as it
released a green smoke at first, then a black cloud of smog.
"What was that?" someone yelled.
"Damn. Man, I just had the wierdest voyage, was like the room was
spinning with a green cloud of smoke." a punk said, waving his arms in
front of his face, slowly at first, and then more rapidly. "I can fly."
he said. "I can fly." he said as he flapped his arms. "Free as a bird,
high as the sky, high as the sky.. high. high as the sky. I can fly I can
fly and the world is free free as a bird and I can fly as high as the sky
free as a bird fast as a jet eye of the eagle speed of the hawk, agility
of a falcon. High as the sky. High as the sky. High as the sky. High as
the sky. High as the sky. High as the sky. High as the sky. High as the
sky." He was yelling now, throwing his body up against the wall and
screaming. Screaming. Screaming loud in his scratchy voice. I watched him
from the floor, covering my own mouth in my tee-shirt. "I'm a bird. I'm
predator. You're prey. You're all prey. You're all dead. You're all dead.
Dead. Dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead dead
dead dead dead dead." And he paused, briefly. "They're gonna have to mop
you all up and put you in the dust pan and put you in the dust pan cause
you're all in these little -- little --" And he grabbed his head and
dropped to his knees, his shaggy hair dangling in his eyes. "ARGH. Little
brown doggie bags. You're all dead." And his hair seemed to change color.
"Dead. You're all dead." His hair, it seemed to me, was a bright red now,
and his eye color, was that changing, too? "And they're going to sweep
you into a pan. Sweep you into the bin and put you away for good. What
remains of you. What remains of you is nothing cause you're dead!" His
eyes were blood red now, and tears dripped down from them, tear by tear,
tear by tear, drip by drip, drip by drip. Then the water from the tears
changed as well, into blood. He stuck his tongue out and licked up a
tear. "... blood ... it is so refreshing these mornings ..."
Dragon's Fire
6
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
He opened his desk drawer.
There were papers scattered, post-it notes and other unnecessary shit
that just rested there for no reason. Not exactly no reason, more they
had a reason, but it was outdated now. After a short row of pens, there
was an unlabeled jar, about the size of an inch. Next to that sat an
injection needle.
He grinned, rolling up his sleeve quickly. "Oh, oh oh... " he
muttered. "Pretty, pretty, pretty pretty." And he tied a bandana around
his arm and took the needle. He put the needle on his desk and opened the
jar carefully. "Oh oh oh, pretty pretty." he laughed. He loaded the
needle with the jar's liquid and tapped it once, twice, and a third time.
Then he bit down on his lip, moved the needle towards his arm....
His head rolled back involuntarily. "Oh.... oh...." he moaned.
"Good... good stuff..." And he dropped the needle and sat there, slouched
in his chair.
And there came a rapping at his door, and he lokoed up, his eyes red
with fear of being caught.
"Who's there?" he said.
Another knock.
"What the hell? What do you want?"
The knock continued.
"Shit. Come in, like I give a fuck now."
The door opened, and the trenchcoat wavered from the wind of the
street. "Marcus?" the trenchcoat man said. "Playing with toys again,
Marcus?"
"Not you. I paid you off a long time ago. Why are you back? We're
closed. The office has been closed for a long time, and you're intruding
now. So you should get the hell out!"
"No." the other said, firmly. "No," he reinforced. "I don't think so."
Marcus sat up in his chair, and reached in the back of the desk
drawer, for the gun. But by the time he'd reached the gun there was a gun
pressed to his forehead, all ready to fire. And a drop of sweat rolled
down Marcus' head.
The trenchcoat man was sitting on the desk, calmly aiming the gun at
Marcus while pulling at his backpack. "I've dealt with your kind before,
Marcus." he said, his head resting against his left shoulder. "I just
don't think that you'll be able to do this sort of shit with me."
Marcus backed away from the drawer and rested in the chair again.
"Good."
"What do you want?" Marcus shouted.
The trenchcoat man pulled a paper from his backpack and showed it to
Marcus. "Remember this?" he asked, allowing Marcus time to read it. "It
was signed before I'd left you the last time. You realize this I.O.U.
needs to be paid to me now."
"You're D--" Marcus muttered, but was cut off mid sentence when
the trenchcoat man grasped Marcus' neck and began to squeeze. Marcus
threw his hands around his neck and puffed. "Let me go." he wheezed.
The other let Marcus go, and hopped down from the desk. "You will pay
me, and you will do it now. I have a place I have to be."
Marcus nodded, pulling a drawer open and handing the other a bag.
"Stay off the Fire, Marcus." the other said, walking out the door.
And with that, the room seemed empty, like Marcus' life.
"Where was I?" I asked as I closed my eyes, returning to a land that
seemed distant to me now, but so close only moments ago.
"The canister had let out a gas or something."
I nodded.
And he stood now in front of me his arms posistioned behind him, his
red tail circulating behind his spinal cord, wrapping around his abdomen
and uncurling itself. And his muscles bulged and he grew larger, busted
the train. He was standing above me now, and spoke in a loud voice, "Death."
My boredom has outshined the sun.....
it's so down.....
I just want to have some, little fun......
There was a burst of light I remember.
"I am the Alpha, and the Omega. That one who is, who was, and who is
to come."
And the train beneath me split apart and my hands grasped for the sky
and I caught something. I caught something.
My heart leaped out of my chest, finally, I'd done something good in
this conflict.
But the thing I'd caught, mushy in my hand, broke off from whatever it
was attached to, and I began to fall again. I was on the tracks now, my
brain slapping the sides of my skull, telling me something I was ignoring.
Then I saw him again, standing above me. A feeling of deja vu flew
past me, and he spoke again, softer this time, "Death."
To me he seemed a Superman. I needed kryptonite. I needed to reveal
his true identity, Clark Kent.
I struck at his leg, and he fell. He dropped to the ground, his leg
spewing out blood. I must have laughed. I must have done something to
piss him off because his eyes flared up and he took his hand and grasped
me by the neck. I heard clearly the voice of a woman say, "Die, demon."
Me, a demon. What were you looking at?
I coughed, I wheezed, and I vomited on this man's hand, the demon's
hand that grasped my neck and choked the life out of my lungs and out of
my heart that pumped two hundred times a second now.
I was such a heart attack risk. Krist... I could've seriously screwed
over my cardiovascular system. I think I did, in the long run. But who
doesn't? It's only a matter of time untill one dies.
But my time was NOT up. I was NOT going to die with this guy in the
Houston subway.
Let me explain to you a bit about Houston.
It is named after Sam Houston, a leader of the Texas Revolution. It is
located on Buffalo bayou, but has since expanded. There was a town called
Harrisburg that sat at Houston during the Revolution, but it burned
down. Houston is now the largest city in Texas, and it covers the entire
southeast side of the state. There are about twenty-eight million people
in Houston, most of which live in the 'burbs and don't usually come out
to the downtown area, which contains the subway, the malls, and the
businesses. It also contains the crime, which, since 1990, has gone up
four hundred percent. But that is only reasonable, considering the year
of Our Lord we are in and the population growth from about three million
in 1990 to the current population. There wasn't a subway in 1990 either,
but they've finally gotten around to building it. Most of the subway is
finished, and only small parts, the areas around the sewers, aren't
completed.
So I was not going to die with this chump in this subway on this day.
I was on the ground, suddenly, coughing for life, the metal around me
seeming to close in. And I curled into a fetal posistion and shuddered,
repeatedly. Just go away, just go away. Get the fuck away.
I screamed, I screamed and the entire car, the entire train, the world
heard me. I don't remember the word but I think, I think it was "why".
And if anyone had answered me, I might have listened. But I wouldn't have
heard.
I put my arm in front of my face and I saw the small freckles that
seemed to multiply over time. The small black hairs that ruffled up
against others and screamed at the nerve cells to get the hell out. Get
the hell out. Get out. Run.
We'll mutiny.
We'll burn down their houses.
Death to Brutus.
Death to Cassius.
Kill them all. We'll kill them all.
And my arm seemed to warp and I screamed again this time, no words
coming out of my dry mouth. It changed shape, a giant foot, a giant hand
and then a freeform thing. The matrix. The matrix. Goddammit. The matrix
was my arm and I screamed and I screamed and I saw the matrix on my arm
and oh god the pain it hurt so much but I wanted more because the pain
felt good for an instance when I hadn't felt pain before and I dropped
into the seat and I relaxed.
There was a billboard in front of me now and it shouted out at me.
"Dragon's Fire: The Drug Of the Future. Reserve your shipment NOW!
Supplies are limited. Call 1-800-DEE-FIRE. And one of our lovely dealers
will take your call, and your order."
And your money. And my money.
I was shaking when I was on the ground, and an Armored Patrolman
kicked me in the stomach, raising his voice in anger. "Shit head, get up."
He kicked me again, his steel boot putting so much force on me, fear and
pressure, that I urinated on the floor. "Come on, shithead. This is
private property, and your tressapessing. The train stopped an hour
ago." He picked me up, adding, "And you're in possession of an illegal
narcotic. So you just go to your workplace, and we'll forget all about it."
I stood up, trying to hide the urine that stained the inside of my
pants leg. "Yessir." I said, running out of the subway and onto the warm
street of Houston.
Dragon's Fire
7
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994 Joshua Lellis
"Whoa..." I said, leaning back in the chair that was comfortable to me
a moment ago. "That was my first experience with the Dragon's Fire drug.
It's one wierd drug. You ever try it?" I asked him.
He looked up at me, as to say "piss off, I don't do drugs." Visions of
a "Drug Free" America sprung through my head and I might have smirked.
Wasn't there something a long time ago called red ribbon week or
something? I'd heard it was about the death of a cop in the line of duty
during a drug bust. That was before the Armored Patrol and all of this
shit we had these days. "No. I've never tried drugs." Which was, in all
honesty, the same as, "piss off, I don't do drugs." "I don't believe
people who use them are in their right minds, either." he added, as to
reinforce it.
"Hmm." I said. "I used to think that, too." Had an Armored Patrolman
been there with that drug bust what might have happened? "Have you ever
broke into the matrix?"
"No."
"Then you're classified as yuppie." I retorted. "If you don't do drugs
and you've never hacked a system, you're a yuppie." His face seemed
indifferent. "There are three classifications you can be. One, yuppie.
Two, hacker. Three, junkie." This reminded me of the seemingly ancient
commercials of "no one ever says, 'I want to be a junkie when I grow up.'"
The bright neon signs, Tokyo Garden: Japenese Restaurant, flashed down
on me. There were clouds in the sky, and soon there would be the Rain
again. It was overcast, to put it simply. And the acidic rain would be
falling on us soon. In the distance, a siren wailed, and I walked through
the humid street, the first drops of acid rain dropping near my shoes,
staining the asphalt white. This was weak Rain. I'd seen worse in
Galveston, on the Sea Wall. The Rain had come out of no where, the clouds
more thick than these before me. The rain ate at the Wall, taking big
chunks of it out at a time. I'd rain for cover in a nearby World War II
bunker that had been abandoned such a long time ago.
The bunker was made of steel, and it was hidden under a small pile of
sand. I'd tripped over part of the bunker, and realized I could hide in
it. When I'd gotten inside it, I found a labirinth of ladders, each
leading to a different part of the bunker. I would be safe here, even if
the rain ate through the steel, which, to my knowledge of acid rain, had
never happened before in Galveston. It did, and I was huddling in a corner,
trying my best not to get hit by the acidic rain.
I ran across the street, some Rain hitting my arm. I came to the
building Lewis had written out for me, and I entered it.
Lewis greeted me with a kiss, patted me on the butt, and took me to a
computer. The frame was connected to their part of the outlet, which was
connected to the main point somewhere through the matrix in Kansas City.
Lewis handed me a piece of paper, and she walked off, winking to me.
On the paper was my username and password, and under that, written
quickly, in a slapdash manner, was the address to a restaurant downtown.
It was the revolving tower on the top floor of the Transco near Bellaire
Blvd. There was a spotlight on top of the Transco, and it watched over
Houston at night, while most people, except for hackers, slept.
I had an office on the bottom floor, and I could see the rain coming
down on the asphalt and bleaching it white. I typed my username in: Jake.
And I typed my password: Lewis. There popped up the matrix in front of me
and I transfered into the world of the matrix, disorientation greeting me
at first, then adjustment.
"You have one message." the screen told me, then it played it.
Lewis' face came on the screen and her voice spoke, "Jake, jump
forward a bit, turn around, and try to entire the point. The defense
outlet will greet you. Break through it and I'll meet you inside the point."
I leaped forward in the matrix, turned around, and took a look at the
defense outlet. From here, all it was was a giant box, and, getting
closer, all it was was a giant box. I entered it, and it greeted me with
a demanding voice. Name.
I typed:
Sysop.
And it answered with:
Password.
I typed:
AUG.
It answered with:
Start.
Then a command line, a normal command line in the matrix. I scanned
for Lewis in the area, and she was idling behind the defense port. I
jumped towards her.
"You've got a leak." I said. "That only took me half a minute."
"Yeah. How'd you get in?"
"Someone cracked your code. You enter 'Sysop' and then 'AUG', and
you've got yourself past the defense. It doesn't scan you when you say
'Sysop', because it believes you, and someone tried the Adenine Uracil
Guanine trick, and it works."
"Shit..." she said, disconnecting from the matrix.
I dropped out, too, no one to talk with.
No one to talk with.
I found myself wearing a tie, a coat, a nice shirt, and my best pair
of pants. In the next room, Lewis was waiting. I adjusted the tie, it was
choking me. Lewis walked into the room as I adjusted it, staring first at
my feet, which had a nice pair of dress shoes on them. She was wearing a
red dress. It hugged her hips and her chest, and I lifted an eyebrow at
seeing this outfit.
"Dammit, Jake, you're taking too long." she put her hand on her hip,
then decided against it, pushing me off balance. I fell on the bed, and
she looked down at me.
"Get up, Jake. I've got reservations..." she said, and then, added
quietly, "Sitting down.. shit.... isn't even getting ready..."
She strutted towards the mirror, putting a hand on her forehead and
looking down, crying. I closed my eyes, remembering back to simpler days,
when I could ignore the crying, ignore the pain and just go to my room,
stuff my face in my pillow and let time take the anger, the hurt away. I
saw under my eyes the face of the demon, the one I'd seen back on the
train, its snarling mouth wide, its teeth lashing at me, lashing, and my
throat, my neck being clenched by its strong hand, its nails piercing my
skin, but it didn't pierce. I just assumed it did, memories returning to me.
"You 'k?" I asked, sitting up in the bed and looking at her.
She shook slightly, trying to hide her sobs. I guess her pain was
unbearable. Maybe it was a memory, just like my memories. Maybe worse. My
memories, I could just go to sleep, let that take it away. Hers. Here.
She couldn't just sob onto the pillows, cry and cry and cry and cry and
just let the world pass her by, pass us by, pass us all by. When she
closed her eyes, her sobs increased, and she raised her hands to the sky
and cried out, the hands immediately dropping to her side, cuddling her
waist, and trying to comfort her as best as they could. I stood up now,
putting my arms around her, holding her. I whispered into her ear, as
comforting as I could be, "You 'k?"
She nodded, whiping her eyes and turning towards me. "I'm.. sorry.. I
just remembered.. remembered something.." She pushed away from me,
leaving this room and heading for the door. I came out of my room in time
to see her putting on her coat, sighing, once again, tears coming out of
her eyes.
"Anything I can do?" I blurted out, waiting, hoping, hoping, waiting.
She shook her head, opening the door, and vanishing into the hall.
From the hall, to the elevator, and from there, down to the ground. From
there, she walked down the street, wandering, I'm sure.
I went to my drawer, taking out a pistol I'd kept there for a long
time. I checked to see if there were still bullets, there were. I could
go after her, make sure she wasn't hurt on her walk. Even if she didn't
come back to me.
At this point, I put the gun down, closed the door, and walked over to
the window. Even if I did get to her in time, which I doubted now, and
even if I did stop anyone from hurting her, she would need time to be
alone, to work this out.
I felt so empty, having, pardon the expression, "not done the duty of
a man."
Like on cue, like it was timed this way, it began to Rain again, and I
wandered towards the liquor cabinet, taking out a cigarette in the
proccess. I didn't light it, merely set it down. I opened a bottle of
something, and poured out a cup of it. I lit my cigarette now, puffed,
took it out of my mouth, and downed the cup.
Do you drink alone?
I looked out the window, staring at the Houston that greeted me. it
was overcast, the rain coming down. Maybe it wasn't rain. I couldn't
tell. I felt sick, depressed, as though I had taken a journey, swimming from
the middle of the Pacific Ocean to the coast of California, only to be
hit by a tidal wave when I reached the shore. Immediatly I felt as though
I'd been washed back into the sea, past where I'd started.
I shook the glass, staring down at the cup as the ice danced, creating
their own melody, not listening to anything else but themselves. I guess
you could call ice selfish bastards. I drank the rest of it, sipping at
first, then saying fuck it, and downing the entire thing.
The bottle I'd opened was empty now, and I went back to the cabinet,
took a different bottle, and opened that. I'd opened the Bible while I
was drinking, reading a passage from Revelation about Satan and the one
thousand year lock up. Maybe he was here right now, here in Houston,
manipulating the actions of others around me.
I guess he was here, just in different forms at times. The cigarette
in my hands now, the drink in my palm, the rain outside. Maybe, the name
suited it, in the Dragon's Fire so many were using out on the street.
Life was a vacation for them. So many things depend on things going
right. Actors in a theatre, for example. Should one of them miss a cue,
skip a line, what should come of it? And when man plans out his life
before himself, and something malfunctions, what is man to do?
I once saw a picture, it is vivid in my mind now, of three livers,
placed side by side. One was a healthy human liver, looking perfectly
normal. Another was that of a drinking human's liver, which was fatty and
yellow. The third was an alcholic's liver, scar tissue around it and as
big as a man's beer belly. I guess things do revolve around the unexpected.
I poured myself a drink, and opened another package of cigarettes. I
heard what this shit does to my lungs, too. There was a warning label on
the side of it, but no one reads anymore. It's all automatic. Nobody
gives a fuck...
Dragon's Fire
8
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1994-1995 Joshua Lellis
I stumbled onto the sofa, clasping the drink in my right hand, and in
my left, a cigarette. I puffed and drank alternately. My head was aching
now, probably an effect of the alchol in my system.
It was late now. I guess it could have been before dawn. I don't
remember, and to put it frankly, I didn't care. I coughed, a smoker's
cough. That happens, you know, and it really sucks. My lungs hack up some
mucus in the morning, and I spit it out into the sink. I was coughing up
mucus now. I'm sure when I'm older they're gonna put me in one of those
lung tubes, and I'm gonna be living like a veggie, but hell, that's
living, right?
Shit.
Back then, I really didn't care what happened to me, and I was
thinking about taking up drug use. I'd only taken a few drugs in my
lifetime. For the hell of it, I took some insulin from my diabetic
friend. It didn't do much for my system, but then again, it ain't
supposed to, is it? I felt tired, so it could be what you'd call a
natural depressant, even though it sure as hell ain't natural to have
that much insulin in your body. The blood sugar level dropped like a
rock, and I guess I passed out, a needle in the vein. Then there was the
Dragon's Fire on the train, but that wasn't much of an experience. Scared
the shit out of me.
The lights were off in the room, and I was staring into the dark,
towards the window, and greeting Houston with a smile. My head rolled
towards one side, and I adjusted it, and took another gulp of alchol.
There must have been four empty bottles on the coffee table, and about
half of that amount was on the carpet, when I'd missed pouring into my
cup. Drunken fucker, can't hold his liquor. I can drink anyone under the
table. Probably just a natural ability, but I had never gotten this drunk
before in my life. I wondered if I'd hallucinate. Then my eyes lit up and
died down immediately. The Dragon's Fire experience was enough to make me
not want to hallucinate.
I had a really bad dream the night before. I'd been walking down
Bellaire Blvd., and if you ask anyone who lives in Houston, it's a pretty
street. Anyhow, I was passing this school, walked up towards a drug
store. The clouds turned purple, the sky pink, and I heard screaming. I
dropped to the ground, curled up into a fetal posistion, and I started to
cry. Grown men don't cry, mother used to say. My arms covered the greater
part of my head. Around me, three devils curled their three fingers,
invitingly, and whispered to me. "Jacob. It's nice in Hell." They were
hooved creatures, wearing white fur around their necks (probably from
a lamb). They had a pig-type nose, with large nostrils. The mouth did not
seem to smile or frown, but seemed to remain in thought. They did have
horns, two to be exact, coming from the top of the forehead out. They
were about six inches long, and not sharp, but not dull at the ends. The
devils were as red as blood, and the white on red contrast seemed to glow
ever so slightly. They repeated. "Jacob. It's nice in Hell." I lifted my
head, wincing. The pain in my side. There was grafitti on a wooden fence
near the place I was. It red, in big, red letters: SKULL. "Nice in Hell.
Nice in Hell. So Nice in Hell." They danced around me now, their tails
swaying behind them, and a rain, non-acidic, came down from the sky. A
cloth on my face now, and I looked towards the sky, the cloth blocking my
view. Blood dripping from my chest, rolling down my leg to the floor. My
arms outstretched, head held high, standing in expectation. Holes in my
feet, my hands, bleeding all the while. Pain in my muscles, a twitch. A
twitch that rolls down with the blood, to the ground, past the devils, to
hell. Biceps flexing once more, one final try, and a final look at the
sky. Words fail me. The dream ends.
I looked into the shadows, now, the streets of Houston, and I see the
three devils, like three wise men coming to give me gifts. I feel shamed.
My speech slurred, I look up to the first of the three devils and attempt
to excuse myself. "I'm sorry."
The devil looks down at me, his small forearm twitching the command to
move his hand, which places itself on my shoulder. It pierces skin, and
my shoulder begins to bleed. The hand moves towards the cigarette, and
pulls it by the butt up to his lips, which, for the first time in my
prescence, move. He puffs on the cigarette, and the rests his hand at his
side, content with what he'd found.
The second devil turns his attention to the first, and takes the
cigarette from the first's hand, and puffs on it himself. The smoke makes
a quick run through its system and comes out of its nostrils, in a gross
display of skill.
The last devil takes the cigarette, and puffs on it, finally handing
it back to the first, who looks down at me.
The first looks towards the last. The last nods towards the second,
who grunts. then, quickly as it had began, they had left.
I woke up with a cut in my shoulder, a broken bottle near my ass, and
a cigarette burn on the carpet. This was when my hangover began.
Lewis was waiting for me when I got to the office. I was wearing a
pair of shades, along with my normal grungy tee-shirt and jeans. I think
it was the jeans that gave me away, either way she looked at me and
walked away.
There was a note on my desk, twelve names and addresses. I guess I was
gonna have to go around to each one, one at a time. The note also
included what they were going to be used for. Test subjects, lab rats.
I had stopped, looking at the other who looked right back at me. He
jotted something down.
It was getting dark now, and I still looked out the window. It was
only six thirty, but it was dark just the same, and the lights were
beginning to light up outside.
"Comparing yourself to Christ had to be quite an experience." he said
with a grin. "Freak you out, did it?"
I shrugged.
"Come on, Jake. It had to be some experience."
There was a siren in the distance, and gun shots. The Armored Patrol.
"Yeah." I began. "You do what you do to survive. I guess dreaming
about being Jesus Christ does that to me. What do you dream of?"
"Me? I dream of many things. But you get to my age, my occupation, and
you don't really dream of much anymore. I'd say I dream of death, but
that would, I suppose, make me seem suicidal, or at least depressed. Both
of which I'm not."
"Sounds like you're implying I am." I retorted.
"I will tell you this straight. I believe that you are depressed. I
don't think you're suicidal, however, because.. well. we'll save that for
later."
Save that for later.
Dragon's Fire
9
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995 Joshua Lellis
It was a pretty house, considering. This wasn't the best of
neighborhoods. The Armored Patrol, always looking for a good, fun kill,
for the most part stayed out of this neighborhood, save when they enjoyed
the usual freshman hazing.
It was kept in good condition just the same, and I, walking through
this neighborhood after getting off the bus a few blocks back, was
marveled at how it stood out against this backdrop of decay and doom. I
opened the small wooden gate, and walked up towards the front door. There
were no bars on the windows, so I guess they had a security alarm
installed.
I rang the doorbell, and a middle aged woman opened the door. She had an
apron on. She'd been cooking, telling by the scent that
passed through the kitchen and into my nostrils.
"How ya doing there, sonny?" she asked in a pure Southern voice. "You
gonna be needing ta come inside fa somet'ing, you go right on ahead.
I'll's follows you dere."
I whiped my feet (she grinned), and took a step inside. She closed the
door and pushed me towards an open room.
"Ya looking fa Bobby, he's upstahrs, wor'ing on tha damnable
macheene." she said, taking a seat on a sofa. I stood next to the
staircase. I looked upstairs for a moment, a familiar green glow shining
in the upstairs hallway. Then I looked back at her. "Ya de fou'th one,
sugah..." The room was clean, an exact opposite of the neighborhood. A
black cat purred up against my legs, and I jerked, slightly, my leg, in
an attempt to get it away from me. It didn't seem to notice. "Ya de
fou'th one to come looking for Bobby. Tha' boy jus' ge'ting in da trouble
all de time." Her white face grinned, and she called the cat towards her.
"That l'il cutie is Pearl. You ain't gonna see a black one like her
dat often. She so friendly, we gotta keep her inside da home, ya know,
cause she be out there playing with de other ca--"
I interrupted, something that was never done in the South. "How did
you know I was here for Bobby?" I asked.
"Come now, chil', don' you know I know about y'all folk? De police
came de first two time, then there was dis busynessman. Ah'm assuming ya
another policeman. What he do this time, sugah, I go punish 'im."
I smiled. "I'll go talk to him. He'll be alright, don't worry."
She stood up. "You be careful, Ah dunno wha he gotta up dere."
Walking into his lair, I saw many things. The first things to catch my
eyes where the nigh-ancient posters he had on his wall, Jesus and Mary
Chain, Nine Inch Nails, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult to name a few.
Then I saw Bobby. Not much of an average teenager, if you ask me. New
music was blasting from his stereo (opposed to the bands that were on the
posters). It wasn't a top forty song playing. But I didn't expect it to
be. He wore sunglasses, a flannel over a tee-shirt, and a pair of jeans.
His right arm was robotic, and twitched slightly with the movement of air
from my entrance.
He looked up, startled. He turned down the radio, not turning his
attention away from me.
"Bobby Laine?" I asked.
An older poster near his computer. Led Zeppelin.
"Yeah. You a cop?"
"No. I'm your boss."
He made a rude noise with his lips, sat back in his chair and turned
his attention back to the music, and the computer.
"You'll get four fifty a week. That's the most honest money you'll
make in your life."
He chugged down the last of a caffeine-filled soda. Then he belch, the
stench rising into my nose.
This was the last hacker on my list. It was either this chump or I'm
gonna be surfing the matrix tonite looking for hackers who want honest
money. That was the problem. You can't find any hacker these days that
wants to work for some honest cash. The idea of honest, legal work, in
someone with that mindframe, seemed to set off an alarm of power hungry
CEOs, ready to jack up his phone bill and then cut his phone line.
His body, save his robotic arm, twitched with this new burst of
caffeine, and his head slouched into a relaxation, taking away the
anxiety that stood above it like a storm cloud over a bad hacker.
"You a gimmicker like the last few punks I've seen? You sure seem like
it. What you want me to do, deal or something?"
"No. I want you to hack a computer."
He smiled.
I got back to the office around seven, with another list stuck to my
computer. This was a list of the stuff I was going to need for work. I
don't know how long I had. Frankly, I didn't care.
News Flash on the tube. They'd been playing my favorite movie, my
favorite part, and now..
"Armored Patrolmen in New York run rampant. In a shooting 'provoked'
by four 'crazed' citizens that supposedly had made death threats to the
officers. Quote -- I'm going to kill you all you little buggers, took my
job, took my kids, took my wife, took everything I had -- end quote. The
Armored Patrolmen killed the four citizens in a shopping mall, after the
four citizens approached them with 'guns blazing'. More as it is available."
Back to the movie. After my favorite part.
I arrived at Matrix World around eight in the morning. This wasn't the
important part of my job.
I arrived at the grocery store around nine. This was the important
part. I walked past a dealer, who was pushing his stuff at the younger
crowd. Nine or ten year olds. Young kids. They run around in the streets,
collecting empty soda cans. They don't have a future. They don't have
parents. They have whatever money the cans bring in, which is next to
nothing. Most of them become dealers like the guy I just passed, and make
a decent living off of that. Other than that they either grow up without
any skills, any future, and just cans, or they die. The latter is
preferred amongst them, as they realize at that age that this may not
keep them around that much longer. A few become thieves.
I picked up a bag of potato chips, looked at the dealer through the
window. He looked frightened, suddenly, and began to take a few steps
away from the alley that kept this store and the building next to it away
from each other. I thought I heard shouting.
I moved on to get some of the caffeine-filled soda that Bobby liked,
and I might try myself. Lewis, if she was around, could have a can, too.
Now, we were stocked. Coffee, chips, soda. Everything that good hackers
need when they pull an all-nighter like we're going to do tonite.
Gun shots.
Reflexively, I dropped to a crouch, hiding behind a row of food. But
it was outside, and sure as hell not aimed at the grocery store.
I saw the dealer on the ground, running off down the street. Bills
fell from his pocket, littered the streets. Children came running out of
everywhere into the street, diving for the money. Some were scraped, some
got cut, others pushed others, and eventually a small riot broke out
between the children as two Armored Patrolmen came running after the
dealer, their guns blazing.
This was odd. You never saw the AP chasing dealers. It was usually a
"give me a fifty and I won't bother you". Maybe it was some new crackdown
program. I'd heard of them before. Not with AP though. Usually it was a
government agency, DEA, most likely.
Maybe it was fun and enjoyment for the AP. They'd installed the sense
of fear in the country when they'd first began their program, six years
ago. Now they could do what they want. They could, before, do what they
wanted. Royal Order and all that. They'd done away with that shitty U.S.
of A., and crushed the greater half of our rights... in real life. In the
Matrix, you had all the rights you had before the RO. Except you were
restricted in some areas. Like in Lewis' machine, the place I was working
at now. Me, an ex-hacker, working to get the defense machine foolproof.
There were more screams, more bullets, more death. Maybe they'd caught
the dealer, maybe they hadn't. Maybe they'd killed people in the process.
Maybe. Maybe.. Maybe....
Dragon's Fire
10
by Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995 Joshua Lellis
He closed the book.
Then he felt the cold metal against the back of his head, but he
didn't jump. His first words, "What now?"
The man with the gun wore a trenchcoat, carried a backpack. "Howdy."
"Listen." the other said. "I'm paid up. I sent the check eight days
ago, direct mail."
The library, for the most part, was empty. It was slightly run down
over the years, with not as much money to keep the librarians paid.
People were fired. They were going to close up soon, but no one cared
about that that much. This man, with the gun to the back of his head, was
a librarian. The book was about the Constitution of the United States.
The Bill of Rights. He was a librarian. He was going to have to close up
soon. His library, and his illegal mob jobs. He supposed the latter was
what this incident was all about.
Americans, it said in the book, had rights once. Freedom of press,
freedom of speech, right to bear arms. All of that good stuff. The Royal
Order began restricting rights as it made its way up through Congress.
Technically speaking, all Americans still had rights. Technically.
"Yeah. Well. I'm not worried about you being paid up." the trenchcoat
man said, removing the gun from the back of the other's head and hopping
up onto the library table. He pointed the gun back at the other, and
waited for a response.
"Then what's the matter. We're closed."
"We're dealing with a small crime ring. Did you hear Marcus was
killed?" The trenchcoat man grinned. "My work. Anyhow. You're next on the
list, so --"
"The list? What's this about?" Then his mouth dropped, and he saw a
glint in the trenchcoat man's eyes and knew. "You are the assassin? D--"
Then he was shot.
The blood splurted out of his head and covered the book cover. So much
for rights.
We crowded around the computer. Bobby was in front of it, typing away.
I sat behind him, munching on chips and drinking coffee. Behind me was
Lewis, still keeping her distance from me, and drinking the sodas. She
must've liked them more than the coffee, because they were disappearing
rapidly, and I began to fear I might have to go pick another couple up.
We'd begun this session with a quick introduction of who everyone was.
Then we began the crack.
Bobby hadn't entered the matrix yet. He'd been programming a
sequencer. As far as I could tell, it was working fine. We'd provided a
computer dictionary (which was about eight megs in size, and contained
five different languages), and he'd made the program systematically try
each one of these words for a password. The login name he was using was
root. It was standard that all computers had a root account.
But it would take quite some time (even at the speed of these
computers now) for one login box to scan through eight megs of passwords.
So he'd written in for eight to login at once. One meg of password in
eight sets would cut down the time for it to scan. We considered this
acceptable, considering the size of this corporation and the amount of
people that would log in at once.
Then he hit a snag. The login would dump you after three tries. So he'd
have to find another way in.
He entered the matrix and came up right in front of the defense point.
He entered it, and it asked him. Name.
He responded with:
Root
It asked him:
Password.
He answered:
Tree
It denied him, and asked again.
Fruit
It denied him, and asked again.
Flower
It let him in.
There. It had taken him four tries, but he'd guessed the root
password. I typed into another computer, logged in, and took a look at
the password file. Root's password wasn't Flower. It was Gnuhacker.
I guessed we'd gotten a bum copy of matrixware, considering that it
let him in. I entered the matrix, and entered the denfense point.
Name?
Root
Password.
Flower
Password.
Tree
Password.
Fruit
And access.
I logged out of the matrix and sat back in my chair.
"We've gotta take a look at the source code. Something's seriously
wrong with our ware."
I flipped through the source code print-out that I'd placed in a
source-binder (a valuable tool I bought at Matrix World). It was seven
hundred pages long, with notations on what everything did. The source
code worked simple enough, even though it had so many pages. The root
would have to add users to the user file and the first time the user
logged in, she'd have to add a password. The user name and the password
sat next to each other in the pword file, which was encrypted with a
homemade encryption file. Then it had instructions on how to reach the
rest of the points.
It also had the TraceUserRoute (TUR) program written in. It was
optional. It wasn't automatically used. That was odd. Whoever programmed
this kept many loopholes in it, for one reason or another.
I'd entered AUG from the user name Sysop, the first time I took a look
at the system. So there was something seriously wrong with this program.
So I wondered if passwords worked at all.
From the normal prompt I ran the root's new user program, which
automatically edited the user file to add a new user and/or password. I
entered the user name Jake, with the password hope.
To the Matrix.
Name?
Jake
Password.
Hope
And access. So it worked once.
Name?
Jake
Password.
NoWorkingPassword
Password.
Hope
Password.
Hope
And access.
Something wrong with that. It should've taken me in when I typed Hope
the first time. Did the programmers program it to only read the first
entrance, then if it didn't work, let them in after the third?
Which meant there could very well be hackers in the system, right now,
without our knowing it.
So I listed the users logging in. Normal users, paid employees, all of
them. None of them where out of the ordinary.
The day was coming to an end and we were going to go out for dinner,
so I set up a recording of all the users that logged in.
Dragon's Fire
11
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995 Joshua Lellis
We ate at this small Italian hole in the wall. The food tasted funny,
but most food did these days considering the crops weren't ripening as
well as they'd been before.
The dinner topic was nonexistant through the most part of the meal,
Lewis and myself not having made eye contact the better part of the day.
Bobby was taking down the food quickly, not realizing it was real. His
salary could only get him so far. My salary was paying for the majority
of the meal (Lewis was going to get a seperate check, I was sure).
The conversation began when Bobby stopped scarfing down his meal, and
looked up at me. "How long's the system been up?" he said, almost out of
nowhere.
I didn't know.
"Our system's the first one that was on this new version of the
matrix. So it's pretty old." Lewis responded, without looking up.
"Oh."
Conversation, to say the least, was not one of the high points of our
meal. It dwindled, died, and was buried.
The meal soon ended.
Bobby asked us if we'd like to go down to a place he knew. We could
go 'blading, maybe play some hockey. Sure, I thought, no harm in that.
The blue, red, and green streaks followed the pair of blades wherever
they went. Longer when going faster, shorter when going slower. It was a
way to judge speed. The streaks that flew by me were long, and they
stayed there for a moment, like a giant middle finger, flipping me off
and saying fuck you.
My streaks, barely off of the blades, dwindled behind me. Lewis and
Bobby had already done two laps of the rink. Hockey players were
beginning to roll in, usually in pairs of two or three. They began to do
laps, and eventually I was standing with Lewis and Bobby, waiting for the
team picking to begin. I was put on Bobby's team, with Lewis on the
opposite team. There would be line changes of two.
Then we set up for the face off, Bobby deciding to play center, and
myself taking the right wing posistion. Then a spectator came running
across the rink, puck in hand, and stood above the faceoff. Bobby had a
big man facing off against him, and it didn't look as though he'd be able
to get the puck.
Angst
The puck dropped in slow motion, but when it finally hit the ground,
Bobby jumped off his blades and checked the other center, throwing him
off balance. While he was off balance, Bobby took the puck, passed it to
me. He was then checked from behind, and went tumbling forward onto the
ground, his knee pads scraping the cement. This didn't bother him, as he
just stood up and went blading down towards me. I had crossed the blue
line and prepared to take a slapshot. I swung, fell off balance, and
landed on my ass. The puck hopped up off the ground, in the general
direction of the goal, and at the last possible second before a goal, the
goalie picked it off with his glove, dropped it to the ground, and passed
it off to the other team.
Their right wing cut across the court, passed it to their center who
reared back and took a shot. It blew by our goalie. One point for them.
Bobby and I switched out, and sat on the bench. I looked at him, he
was toying with his knee pads. He looked up, asked, "Something wrong?"
"No." I answered.
He went back to toying with his pads, and the clock had stopped due to
offsides. So Bobby and I jumped back onto the court. Lewis was playing
opposite me. She smiled as we set up for the face off.
"I've been wanting to do this for a long time." she said.
Got a problem
Fuck you
fuck you fuck you fuck you
fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you
fuck you fuck fuck you
fuck you fuck you fuck you
FUCK YOU
i felt no better than an empty christmas tree
I emptied the ashtray, lit another cigarette, and then looked into the
box. "Shit." I said. "Out of cigs."
He looked up from his chicken scratch and glanced at me. "We could
send someone to get you a box, if you want." he told me.
"Ok." I answered.
He stood up and walked towards the door, left the room for a moment.
The notepad was sitting there. I picked it up and tried to decipher his
sloppy handwriting that came with his job.
From what I read, it looked as though he was scared of me. Not scared
like scared I'd do something, but fearful of what I might tell him. Sure,
that doesn't sound like much, but things I'd seen in this life of mine,
experiences that anyone else would've looked at and sighed. I...? I
grimace at it, cringe, wonder what else I could've been if I'd done this
or that different. If I hadn't taken up this SHITTY habit that was
costing me in more ways than money. They'd scanned my lungs, and gave me
two choices. First choice was to clean the tar out. That would involve
surgery. Many hours of surgery. Second choice was to get another pair of
lungs, preferrably artificial. It was going to be cheaper, but it would
still involve surgery. Not that I'm scared of going under the knife, mind
you, I couldn't care less about getting cut. Hell, I'd done this sort of
thing day to day from point to point from woman to woman. They'd cut me
worse than anyone else ever had.. ever could. Not with knives. With
their own special form of mind games that they played from man to man.
Most of them carried an STD, most of them DO now. I'm not talking about
whores. I'm talking about everyday women. Well, the everyday women I used
to hang out with down at the bar did.
better off dead
It was a game and their playground was their bedrooms. They all
looked the same. Their eyes. All of them had seen the same god damn hate
that I'd seen before in myself.
Myself. Shit. Shit shit shit shit.
I'd look in the mirror sometimes and just cry, seeing the shell of
myself that I hated. I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate myself and want
to die.
Life in this world is not life at all. It's a joke. It's all one big
fucking joke. One big fucking joke. Some put little plots into the game,
twist them, whatever the fuck they want to do. Whoever the fuck they want
to do.
My days at the bar. Shit. Shit. Shit. I'd done so many stupid things.
Slept with so many different women. They all had impossible dreams.
Dreams I once had. They'd ask me if I knew any movie directors. I didn't.
But they didn't want to hear that. It being a fucking game, after all.
They didn't want to hear that. Neither did I. No one did.
better off dead
Dragon's Fire
12
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995 Joshua Lellis
my favorite inside source
i'll kiss your open sores
appreciate your concern
you'll always stink and burn
I tried my hardest to think straight, my eyes bulging in my eye
sockets, like those fake glasses in which the eyes pop out.
most of the FUCKERS hang around in crowds
with shitty and cheap PARTY hats hanging around their necks
like medallions around a prince's NECK
and a fucking revolver in their pockets... it ain't a joke.
As if to say, "Boo!"
He adjusted the gun in its holster.
"Boo!"
i ain't no fucking hero
And the greater number of us would laugh, poke the person with the
glasses, and ask to see them. See the springs.
ain't no fucking hero no fucking hero fucking hero fucking fucking hero
There never was much of a fight for the springs. It was a joke, a gag.
Everyone knew they'd get their turn. Get their turn.
fetal posistion
arms flailing
screaming
whining
BITCHING
...
if i blame it on anyone, i'm a racist.
...
complaining
pleading
begging
asking
demanding
...
DEMANDING
pain...
pain?
pain.....
pain............
GODDAMMIT SHUT UP!
I? I got my turn. I got my turn and asked for the glasses and when I
got them. I was less than fascinated, to say the least.
the bitch in the corner won't shut the fuck up
I coughed, something caught in my throat. Something that wasn't
supposed to be there. I coughed a second time, threw my body forward and
onto the ground. I dropped the notepad where he was sitting, still gone
after those cigs. I rushed to the nearest thing I thought could be used
as a container. I found a trashcan, hacked up the rest of it, and spat it
out into the can. There must've been two good handfuls of mucus there,
all of it that had lined up along my lungs. I spat again, trying to get
that stuff out of my mouth and rid myself of the horrid taste.
what would you respond to "I hate myself and want to die"?
probably fuck you.
Dragon's Fire
13
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995 Joshua Lellis
I'll go for miles untill i find you
here we go again, infatuation touches me just when i thought it would end.
He reentered the room, handed me the box of cigs, and told me to continue.
We stood across from each other, Lewis and I. The entire team was
ready for the faceoff. She'd said she'd waited a long time for this, and
I watched as her hockey stick bounced ever so slightly as the puck was
about to be dropped.
My stick wasn't moving, and I just looked at my blades, then back at
Lewis, and then back at the puck.
"Waiting a long time for what?" I asked.
She smirked, rolled her eyes, and said, "This."
The puck dropped and her stick swiftly rose up and hit at my knee. In
response, I skated up to her and checked her. She hit the ground with a
hmph, and I skated off after the puck.
She gets this way sometimes and she doesn't seem to be able to control
it.
Like it's my fault?
Yes, it's your fault. She's your goddamn friend.
Oh. I care.
You should.
Bite me.
The puck was behind the goal, and I was skating out with it towards
the other goal. Bobby was in front of the half court, so I passed to him,
who dashed off towards the goal. Last I saw was that, when I was hit into
the side of the wall by Lewis. My eyes bulged and I fell. My pride hurt
more than anything else. It wasn't the physical pain, more the mental abuse.
Mental abuse. Mind games.
All fun shit to occupy my time with. I do it a lot. Occupy my time.
Mental fucking game.
I put the blades down on the ground and started up the hill in my
regular shoes. The game was still going strong. We were winning. But I
didn't want to stay there much longer, in case Lewis decided she might
want to do something worse to me.
Tired, I made it all the way up the hill before I sat down on a park
bench and looked at the sky. There were a few bright stars out that
night, but the majority of them were lost in the lights of the city, and
the blasts of the Armored Patrolmen.
The Armored Patrolmen were patroling right now. The curfew would be
coming into effect soon and they'd either send me home, which would be
the way the old American government would do it, or send me to the
gallows, which would be the way the new Royal Order would do it. Either
way, I watched them beat up a couple of children and spread their cans
onto the empty street. One child tried standing up and running towards
her cans, but a Patrolman merely took the blunt side of his gun and
rammed it up against her head. She hit the ground hard, rather hard,
actually. I was surprised. The Armored Patrolmen were ruthless, true, but
they didn't need to hurt these children. They had more weapons, more
armor, more everything than these children, yet they were hurting them.
Maybe it was just how I looked on at it. Maybe they weren't hurting these
children. They were posing a threat to the national security, weren't
they? Collecting cans to survive on these cruel streets that didn't want
them. Most of the children were bastards anyways, their mother probably a
two-bit whore that needed money herself. Now, they were just barely
surviving. They didn't drink much. They probably ate less.
I stood up, took a look at the Armored Patrolmen and wondered why I
bothered to work in this world. I wasn't anything like these children
that they were mauling in the streets, but I couldn't help but think I
might have turned out like them. What might have happened with them? They
could've ended up in some pimp's pornography house somewhere, taking
turns filming scenes that parents, normal parents that lived in suburbs
and didn't want to look at the real world, would die over.
i'm losing ground
you know how this world can beat you down
and i'm made of clay
i feel i'm the only one who thinks this way
Dragon's Fire
14
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995 Joshua Lellis
"You seem tired." he told me.
I looked up at him, tapped my cigarette in the ashtray, and coughed.
"How long have we been talking?" I asked him.
"Longer than the previous sessions." he answered.
That wasn't saying much. In the previous sessions, we'd talked about my
early life. My early life wasn't that exciting. It mostly consisted of
the normal early life of children in this century. I was born to two
loving parents that gave me my name. I went to school until the end of
high school. The price of college was too high, so I needed to make
money. The only way to do that back then was to hack. Right now I was
telling this man how I quit hacking, and everything around what had
happened with it. We'd been talking for some time. There had been many
interuptions, however, and I believed that we couldn't have been speaking
for more than five hours.
I yawned.
"Maybe we can continue this sometime tomorrow? You can rest here
tonite, if you want. We'll get you a cozy room, not like the one you're
used to." he smiled.
"Sure." I said, and standed.
"And tomorrow morning, we'll have some breakfast somewhere--" I
coughed. "--and we can discuss this then."
I nodded, and walked to the door.
Escorted by a couple of uniformed men, nothing like the Armored
Patrolmen, I was led down a corridor and led into my room. It was a
simple room, but these people weren't going to give me anything fancy,
they'd already told me that. I sat down on the bed, stared at the
replica painting on the wall. It was a Monet painting. I didn't know the
title, but I'd seen it somewhere. I couldn't describe it to you, even
with the picture hanging there, I couldn't describe it. Not that I didn't
see it, I'd stared at it before. It was just the sort of thing that I got
lost in. The picture changed to something else, this time a Van Gogh. I
think the name was a Starry Night, but I didn't remember. The picture
changed every couple of minutes, the digitized image looking like a real
painting.
I sighed, looked into the mirror on the other wall, and thought about
the uniformed men that had closed the door and left me here. Then the
thoughts changed to the Armored Patrolmen, what they were doing to that
kid.
I laid back on the bed and rest my head against the pillow. I pulled
out a cigarette, lit it, and began to smoke it. I was tired, and I stared
at the ceiling.
It had been, to me, a long day. It would be even longer tomorrow.
[end book one]
BOOK TWO
A killer is a killer, a grunt just a grunt. No matter which side that
they're on, it changes nothing, a pawn is still a pawn.
-- Kill Switch...Klick
Dragon's Fire
15
by Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995 Joshua Lellis
slave screams
he thinks he knows what he wants
slave screams
thinks he has something to say
slave screams
he hears but doesn't want to listen
slave screams
he's being beat into submission
i
write
what
is
true
and
that
is
what
scares
you.
i said i'm going to do what i can
do what i can
gonna turn
gonna turn rat fink?
The corridor seemed to stretch forever, with doors on each side. I'd
seen it before in a twentieth century movie. A spy film, if memory serves
me correctly. The spy was led down this hallway by two armed guards. The
hallway wasn't as long as this, but a mirror image that was elongated.
The number of doors weren't the same.
Either way, the sewer water that was between my feet seemed very real.
It felt very real, too. An odd experience that I'd much rather not
remember. I'd been in sewers before, earlier in my life when I'd hacked.
I haven't been in a sewer for years, and the realism of this dream was
incredible.
The stench rolled up from my feet and entered my nostrils forcefully. I
didn't want them there, but they entered anyways. I felt as though I was
going to lose whatever was in my stomach, which, at the time, wasn't all
too much.
I dropped to my knees and the water covered my body up to my waist. My
hands hit the floor, the slimy floor, and burned slightly when they
touched the water.
And then there was only the corridor, and the many choices. I brushed
some hair out of my eyes, tucked it behind my ear, and stood up.
The doors had no labels on them, and I didn't know which one to choose.
So I opened one, stepped in.
smashed up integrity
i tried
i gave up
i tried
i gave up
He fed off of the land for twelve years until finally the land rejected
him, and he died a bloody death in a shallow hole next to the only
friends he had, bugs.
It's an odd feeling--feeling as though you're not worth a thing.
Dragon's Fire
16
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995 Joshua Lellis
He remembered, before all this began, a happier time that he spent in
his home town. He had spent the days working as a waiter, and the nights
he spent in a bar, drinking until he passed out. Happier times compared
to this.
there are so many stories worth telling
yet there is so little time in which to tell them
the calm man
with a cool
head is the
one that will
kill you.
He had been in this cell for the past couple of weeks. After the first
few days, the guard had thrown in a teddy bear as a gag. He had used it
as a pillow, since then.
The cell was slightly larger than he was, which wasn't saying much. He
could barely lie down, and he could barely take a step in one direction
without hitting a wall. He could touch the ceiling by raising his hand
just above his head.
There were three of them in this cell, and after he'd gotten the
pillow, they'd had a fight over it. There were two casualties. The teddy
bear didn't make it through, and one of the cellmates was strangled to
death.
There were two in there now. The other had biten his tongue in the
fight (or someone had biten it), and it was removed, to keep out
infection. It wasn't that bad, actually, but it sure made for a good
laugh among the jailers.
So they kept to the sides of the cell, and took turns sleeping, in
periods of two hours. Neither trusted the other, so they didn't sleep all
too soundly.
The Russian air entered the cell as the door was opened, and there
stood the Russian guard, and next to him, a prisoner. They stood in the
snow. The Russian, of course, had his uniform and then a couple of
jackets on. The prisoner was wearing what they were, old jeans and a
flannel shirt. It usually was this cold here.
The Russian laughed at us for a moment, then threw the prisoner in. As
was customary, the prisoners spat at the Russian, who slammed the door
shut, and locked it. At least it was warmer, now.
at least it was warmer than this
he thought
the tears slowly dripping down his face
he'd thought while he was lying down
whether or not the only comfort he ever had
was while he was asleep
and whether or not
this place
this world
cared
he didn't think so
he couldn't think so
he didn't want to think so
he hated life
he hated everyone
he hated you
he hated me
he hated himself
he wondered why
no one loved him
and he wondered why
no one would miss him
and he wondered why
no one called him
and he stared into nothing
and wondered
and wondered
and hated
Dragon's Fire
17
by Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995 Joshua Lellis
They stared at each other for quite some time before one prisoner
spoke up. He wanted to know what the sleeping arrangements would be.
Eventually each knew the others' names. All of them were prisoners
from the States or England. Nick was the tallest and the thinnest. He
didn't have much fat on his body, and the muscle he did had hadn't been
in use for that long. Mitch was your stereotypical lumberjack type. He
was big, hairy, and smelled. The last one was a simple built American.
He wasn't too tall, he wasn't too short. He wasn't too fat, he wasn't
very skinny. He had forgotten his name on his long story into this camp.
Someone had written it down on a piece of paper and told him to keep it,
but along the journey, he'd forgotten how to read. They would call him
Birdie, from now on, suggested Nick. The name stayed, and Birdie, Nick,
and Mitch got to know each other better than brothers.
by by
f P g
i u
r A n
e
R
S L A V E S
by D by
k r
n I o
i p
f S e
e
E
He was taking a shower, and he had come about thinking about the days
activities. The morning was simple, and they'd started talking around
five or so, and finished around ten or eleven. He hadn't taken a look at
a clock, and so he didn't know.
It was, how to put it, an interesting experience. He thought about
everything Jake had told him. About the censors and freedom of
information. He found it hard to believe that high tech hackers like
these would be doing this work for the freedom of information, and not
just for the hell of getting paid. And who hired hackers? Jake was hired
to break into the system and help fix the outlet that kept other hackers
out. Why were other hackers not allowed in there? Why would someone hire
Jake to help fix this defense point? Why would you hire a hacker to keep
out other hackers? Why would there be other hackers?
Hackers, not amateur hackers that do this on weekends, but real
hackers, professionals paid very well for their jobs, are hired when the
employer of the hacker has some information in a rival corporation's
computer system, a vast computer system that has so many databases and
loops and twists that they seem uncountable, and the employer wants to
see it. The employer could do it by himself, if he wanted, right? Why
hire someone else to do the work you could do cheaper inside your own
corporation? The only answer he could come up with was that the employer
didn't want to be caught. Even with the lack of real law enforcement and
a judicial system, the employer didn't want to risk getting the Armored
Patrol on their asses. The Armored Patrol was as close to law enforcement
as the Royal Order let there be now. And the Armored Patrol would
probably show up if there was a crime committed that could be traced back
to the employer. If the hacker had gotten caught, the risk would only be
that he could scream out the employer's name before he was killed. The
Armored Patrol couldn't care less what the crime was. They didn't care if
there was a crime.
That scared him, and he took a look out from behind his shower curtain
around at the door. He had locked it, right?
He jumped out of the shower. He walked towards the door, and took a
look at the lock. It was a computer-controlled lock. You pressed the red
button to lock the door, and a red light would turn on. You pressed the
green light, and the door would be open, and a green light would be on.
The door only locked from the inside.
It was red now, and he rest his head against the wall and sighed.
He eventually put his hand up against his forehead and wiped a mixture
of sweat and water off of his forehead. He wasn't old, yet, but he wasn't
fresh out of college and ready to learn.
He had no wife, and he didn't have many girlfriends. He didn't have
many friends, actually, and in this place, he wasn't exactly happy with
everything here, to say the least. He'd always felt as though he was
being watched here. Not here as in this shower room, but here as in this
place. This building. Who knows? Maybe there is a camera watching you
everywhere. I bet you they're not censored.
He smiled at the thought. Censored shitting.
The smile broke into a laugh, and then it died quickly. He listened to
the water as it hit the shower floor, and he sighed again.
Why didn't he have a wife? Why didn't he at least have a girlfriend?
He was a good looking guy, after all. He wasn't anything special when it
came to looks, but he wasn't ugly. He had experienced one too many a time
becoming just friends with women, and so soon they had stopped calling.
No one called anymore. The phone was quiet. The kitchen was empty, full
of empty Chinese take-out boxes.
This was a nice place, and he couldn't believe he had made it far
enough in the world to make it here. Now, he was interviewing Jake during
the day, and at night, he could come back to this apartment, and just
fall asleep on the sofa. He didn't use the bed.
He'd had a girlfriend a few months ago. He had bought her a couple of
drinks, and he brought her back to this apartment. He brought her up to
this room, and, almost magically, she sobered up, and demanded to be
taken back to her home.
He was disappointed, fell asleep drunk on the sofa.
Now, it looked like he was stuck in a dead-end job interviewing a
dead-beat hacker that couldn't pull his own life together. Jake was
washed up. He never got much attention, but nobody really did in this
world. People were too busy filing shit to pay attention to anything.
When was the last time he'd caught the evening news? One year, two
years ago, maybe?
There wasn't much time to read anymore, and so he really never did
that, either. He couldn't read the news, he told himself, because he had
no time.
He had time now, he thought.
He was listening to the water hit the shower floor, and he closed his
eyes, imagined he was someplace else.
Dragon's Fire
18
By Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995 Joshua Lellis
It was cramped in there, and they began to complain to one another
about the living conditions.
They were brought out one morning, it must have been sometime before
dawn, and beaten.
Harsh Russian was screamed at the prisoners. Papers were flipped
through, and eventually the only thing the Russians said were: Keep your
heads up. And then: You're going to die.
There was a wall in the camp, which seperated the camp from the rest
of the prison. The prison was a paradise compared to this. In the
prisons, the guards didn't come and take a leak on you. In the prison,
they gave you something to warm yourself with.
On the wall were many sets of chains. The prisoners were to be chained
to the wall, and after that, who knows. They'd die of something, sooner
or later, and if the guards were bored, hell.
"SHii---SHi---Shi--sh--sh--..." he huffed, breathing faster as he
wrapped the makeshift bandage around his leg, and pulling it together
in a knot. It was a plain white t-shirt when he'd wrapped it around,
by now it was becoming red quickly. The cuss word he was trying to get
out didn't come all too easy to him, even though he knew what it was.
The injury hadn't effected his vocal chords, had it? No, they were
still working, weren't they? Maybe it was his lungs.
Maybe it was something in the back of his mind that kept him from
saying it, because if he did he'd know what a terrible situation he
was in.
"Shit."
It wasn't worth the trouble keeping it back, and he slumped against
the side of the trench and held the gun in his right hand, keeping his
left by his side and keeping him up... up.. up..
Pain was flooding his body, and ... was it blood in his eyes? ...
he was tired of standing, so he dropped to the ground, rested the gun
on his non-injured thigh, and said it again.
"Shit."
It was warm here, and you could hardly tell that it was a field
before this began. The grass would sway in the wind on a warm evening,
and you could watch the sunset with your woman around your arm,
clutching to your shirt and kissing you softly in the grass on top of
a picnic blanket. There were clouds earlier in the day, but they had
cleared by now, and the scene seemed perfect. It was so perfect, it
seemed fake, like something dreamt up during a day dream. You could
remember how her hair blew into her face and she moved a hand up and
got it out of the way. She was so beautiful... she was so beautiful.
But now the sunset had ended, and the scene had turned into a
nightmare, the field a battle, and with him on the ground now, the gun
slowly rolling across his leg, back and forth, to make sure that he
didn't pass out because of the wound. If he did, he'd be left here,
eventually trampled by a tank, or shot by an angry enemy, whatever. He
passed out now, and he's not going to wake up.
Shouts now, clunking of boots, gun shots. There were some moans
coming from nearby, people with worse wounds. And now the shouts got
closer, and the soldiers began jumping over the trenches, not
bothering to stop and check to see if anyone was down there. They were
friendlies.
They were retreating.
And they were running like hell.
He lifted up the gun and pointed it at the sky. He fired it, and
then his hand went limp, and it dropped to his side again. He
regretted doing this, now. He'd done it so that one of the retreating
soldiers might try and win himself a medal of honor, and pick him up.
Now he realized that all it was going to do was draw attention to the
people in this trench.
And he realized that there weren't that many friendlies running
across this trench. Maybe they were slowed down, he did hear alot of
gunfire again. Maybe there weren't that many of them. Most of them had
been killed during the initial battle. Then the lines scrambled, and
the fighting became one on one, uniform against uniform. You saw
someone who was from the other side, you gave him a nice big gunshot.
His army had been given many supplies coming into this battle, and
they'd used a lot of it. Ammo clips were disappearing quickly, and
many soldiers ran out of ammo. They'd had been given extra cartridges,
about 25 clips per person. Now all he had was the pistol, and the
rifle. He'd lost the knife somewhere in the battlefield, and, not
really looking forward to getting his head shot off, didn't go back to
look for it. That was smart, right? He was still alive, so he must
have done something right. And people died out there, taking the time
in their minds to recognize the other person's uniform, they were
shot. You take too long out there, you don't watch your ass, you're going
to get shot. It's the way it works, it's the way it's always worked.
And then they were so scattered that it wasn't funny. His side was
retreating, so maybe the enemy had them on the run. But then, maybe, the
friendlies were regrouping a couple miles back, so that they could bring
it back to the field after a bit of rest and replanning. Definately they
would have to ask for supplies and have them brought in. Maybe they could
get some extra troops, too.
He'd taken too long daydreaming, and he woke from the daydream by a
land mine explosion a couple hundred yards behind him. So far away, but
the explosion rang in his ears and he closed his eyes, wincing from the
new pain. The mines were bitches. They were small fucks that were hard to
find in the field. You just hoped that you wouldn't get caught with your
pants down, and that was about all you could do. You could watch your
step and dust everything that you come around, but then your ass is shot,
and you're on the ground and bleeding.
How had he gotten here?
He closed his eyes as he imagined what had happened to the latest mine
victims. He couldn't describe it. The blood loss, the shock. If you
didn't die from the mine explosion and scrap metal, you died from an
enemy passing by and shooting you.
Did the enemy even care anymore? He hadn't seen any searching the
trenches for friendlies.
He decided he wasn't going to be found, and he winced as he stood up
on his injured leg.
Dragon's Fire
19
by Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995 Joshua Lellis
But if you disobey the lord your god and do not faithfully keep all
his commandments and laws that i am giving you today, all these evil
things will happen to you:
the lord will curse your towns and your fields
the lord will curse your grain crops and the food you prepare from them
the lord will curse you by giving you only a few children, poor crops,
and few cattle and sheep
the lord will curse everything you do.
if you do evil and reject the lord, he will bring on you disaster,
confusion, and trouble in everything you do, until you are quickly and
completely destroyed.
and i saw the dead, great and small alike, standing before the
throne. books were opened, and then another book was opened, the book of
the living. the dead were judged according to what they had done, as
recorded in the books. death and the world of the dead also gave up the
dead they held. and all were judged according to what they had done. then
death and the world of the dead were thrown into the lake of fire.
whoever did not have his name in the book of the living was thrown into
the lake of fire.
He was convinced, when he'd first gotten into the camp, that he was
going to die. He clutched the Bible to his body, held it so close that
the words were practically imprinted into his chest. He'd lost the Bible
somewhere along the road to the battlefield, probably after a hit-and-run
ambush, or a mine explosion. Either way, the Bible was gone, and he was
still convinced he was going to die.
Did he remember some pages floating in the wind, torn out of the
Bible? Maybe it was part of Matthew. He liked Matthew. It was logical,
showed Jesus in relation to the Old Testament, as fulfilling all the
Hebrew Scriptures.
He remembered cold nights along the road to the battlefield, spent
around the campfire, reading Bible verses. They'd read Matthew on the
first night, Mark on the second, and Luke the third. They didn't have a
fourth night around the campfire. Not everyone was still alive, even if
they had a chance to, now.
Is it human to suffer?
Is everyone born to suffer?
Why is there so much pain in the world? Why does everyone have to go
through --this--why does everyone have to go through this?
I wanted more
then life could ever grant me.
Calm? cool? collected?
remembering the plans, the details, and running them through again
through his mind and remembering the plans the details and running
them through again through his mind the details and plans and
remembering and running.
Now he was in the trench, standing, blinking to get the dust out.
i used to be so big and strong
i used to know my right from wrong
i used to be somebody
And now he was running away from the field. A couple of hundred yards
away he could see a building. Friendlies were running inside of it, so it
was probably where they were going to regroup.
Behind him? Bursts of gunfire. Screams.
Closer, now, he might be safe soon. If they regrouped there they could
get a radio up, radio back for help.
There *was* help, right? Right?
Shit.
Who really knew they were there, right? They'd marched so far and so
long, made it to the battlefield, and that was that. No one knew where
this battle was taking place, no one knew where to radio to.
What if the message was intercepted?
Shit.
If the message was intercepted, they'd scramble that area, right?
They'd twist that area's messages so that nothing could get through. If
nothing got through, they'd be stuck in that building up ahead with
whatever was in there.
And that building did not look like there was a lot of food and water.
Shit.
And even then, if there was food and water, would they ever get the
chance to use it? The enemies were going to be on them soon, and then it
would be every man for himself.
No teamwork, no group first, soldier second. This was going to be
anarchy, if it wasn't already.
but anarchy works, right?
Anarchy works in the idea that everyone could work without a leader
and without laws if no one tried to become the leader. Once there was a
leader, the anarchy would break, and it would become a system of
government. Then what?
It's nearly impossible to achieve anarchy, also. To achieve anarchy,
anarchists need a system.
But that's forced anarchy. Anarchists could live by themselves in
their own anarchies, and not worry about the outside world.
But someone would step in, eventually, right?
Someone would step in.
Dragon's Fire
20
by Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995 Joshua Lellis
Is it human nature to suffer ?
If it is, who's in charge here? I know, some people are going to tell
me that I need to see a shrink. I've seen a shrink. He didn't like me
all too much, but that wasn't really my fault. I mean, think about it,
how am I supposed to control what other people think of me? Plan and
simple, I can't.
Oh, back to the question. Who's in charge? Well, it seems to me like
there should be some sort of thing out there that controls everything.
Not so much as a puppet master, but just a guiding force to help everyone
along, keep the world moving.
And if that's not the case.
There would be a puppet master, too. Sort of the view that most
Christians hold as God, even though it's kept back in their heads and
they don't want to admit it. Think about it, ever since the dawn of time,
Man's looked for something that would control them.
I guess it's human nature to want to be controled.
So explain to me anarchy.
[end book two]
BOOK THREE
I was prophesised by shangra la
I am the leader of the pack
I am the pedophile's dream
the messianic peter pan
just a boy
just a boy
just a little fucking boy
I could never be a man.
-- Marilyn Manson
Dragon's Fire
21
by Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995 Joshua Lellis
I looked at the clock on the wall, and it looked like it was a quarter
past nine. I never really have liked these ancient types of clocks. They
worked better as art than they did as time pieces. The hands and the
numbers seem to blend together for me, so I can never really tell the
time unless I'm close to it and remembering everything. Complicated to
explain, I was wandering through my mind for the answer of the time
question, while he was looking at me, waiting patiently for an answer.
I'll never be who you want me to be
"You know they're totally re-designing the biology program for North
American students?" I said. "They're throwing out most of the old
civilization ideas that they used to teach during the twentieth century
and they're invoking more modern approaches to everything."
Going along with me, he answered, "Really? What type of changes are
they making?"
"Well, they've decided that teaching about plants and such is
outdated, so they've stopped and thrown that out of the textbooks. There
aren't that many plants left, and engineers might as well cut down the
remaining ones and put CO2 converters everywhere. I mean, think about it,
the only plants left are grasses and algae and such. The only reason
they're around are to feed the lower animal organisms which in turn get
eaten all the way up the line to human organisms. None of them really
matter."
"If you say so, but I remember reading somewhere, I think it was in a
British magazine, about some scientists involvement in trying to recreate
plant life in Oceania. It seemed sad."
"You wanna know sad?" I asked. "They've also thrown out fetal pig
dissections and decided that soon-to-be aborted babies could be used for
more scientific purposes. Students, therefore, are going to be cutting
into human fetuses by the end of next semester."
I found it sickening, at least.
"Where were we?"
"Where were we?" he asked, and slammed the gun down on the table. No
one was in the room, though, which made the situation seem odd. He was so
fucked, though, that it didn't matter that he was going to kill himself
right now and finish the asshole's trail back to Houston, Texas, to find
the man that he needed to find. And the gun to the side of his head and a
flash and that was that.
The other, in the trench coat and the bag, sighed and sat on the
floor. He adjusted his gun in its holster and began to look through the
desk drawer.
Here he was in New Orleans, practically *in* Houston, yet he still
didn't know where to look for the man.
He'd find him, right?
"Ok. I remember now, where we were."
So the next day I entered work, and Bobby was sitting behind a
computer, not yet in the matrix, which he should've been. After all, it
was late in the morning, and he should've been working.. I should've been
here earlier, but.. well. I had no excuse.
"Where's Lewis?" I asked, having not seen her. It seemed like ages.
"Haven't seen her all morning."
"Fuck." I sighed and turned away from Bobby. "Hey, why aren't you
hacking the matrix?"
"It's down." he answered, opening up the source code printout and
reading.
"Down? What do you mean down?"
"Someone hacked the system last night. We've managed to get up part of
the system but all outside matrix contacts have been shut down because we
don't want it dying on us again. We're going to have to protect our area
of the matrix, Jake, or we ain't going to be out of work."
I sighed, putting my head in my hands. "I'm going to go find Lewis."
But then I remembered I didn't know where her address was by memory, yet
I had written her place down back at my place somewhere. "I'm going to go
find her." I said again, and headed back to my place.
"Now you'll recall that I kept a gun in my drawer. It was really a
nice antique. I hadn't fired it for years, though, and I didn't know if
it still worked.
"Well, I went back to my place and I opened the lock, then the door
and when I entered the main room, Lewis was sitting with the pistol in
her mouth, strung out over the floor."
And at this point I stopped, and took a sip of my drink.
"What went through your mind?" he asked.
"At first it was, 'no, she can't be dead.' And then it was 'check for
a pulse.'"
please don't take it away from me, i need someone to hold on to
i need you to hold on to.
"So I checked for a pulse, which she had, and so I took the pistol out
of her mouth, then out of her hand. She was still breathing, and I
remember thinking, 'oh, god, what would have happened if she'd clenched
her fist, or if she'd flinched. the gun would've gone off in her mouth.'
I lifted her up and took her into the bedroom, where I placed her on
the bed, and sat next to her with the gun in my hand, resting on my right
knee, just thinking about everything. And then, looking at her, admiring
her beuty and wondering why she would want to destroy that beauty.
I waited for her to wake up. And when she did, she practically burst up
out of the bed and on the floor in front of the door to the main room.
But I was up next to her momentarily, stopping her exit.
no exit.
Dragon's Fire
22
by Joshua Lellis
Copyright 1995-1996 Joshua Lellis
And we sat there, crying, until I lifted up my head and looked at her
and without saying much, I conveyed to her that she needed to talk to
someone, get some help. Charter Hospitol of Sugarland, sort of thing. "If
you don't get help at Charter, get help somewhere!"
I felt like I was in a fucking commercial. Refer someone you love to
diagnostic clinics of Houston.
(Refer your world.)
i've got the power
to set you free
give all your money
and your soul to me
"Have you ever kept a journal?" he asked me.
"A journal?"
"Yes."
"You mean like a diary?"
"Something one writes in at intervals so one gets one's feelings off
one's chest. Keeping things inside can trouble some people. Other people
like to be isolated and enjoy their loneliness. It's all a matter of
preference."
"No, I prefer not to keep a journal." I'd kept one, though. I was
fibbing. The journal said some personal things and when I got scared that
someone would know how I felt... I destroyed half of it by burning it,
and the other half was still blank. I guess you could compare me to
Gogol, getting scared by a fanatic priest and burning up my life's work
in a fire, and then starving myself to death. I guess a journal is like a
lifeline. But then again, people don't go insane just because they can't
get feelings off their chest, they go insane because when they get their
feelings off their chest, nobody was listening. I left it in an alley
somewhere.
I guess sometimes a human has weaknesses and whenever these weaknesses
are exposed to the world, the human feels less human. Or, rather, more
human, because humans are, after all, imperfect.
My weaknesses were normal, you know. Sometimes I couldn't go to sleep
so I'd bury my face in my pillow and swear that I won't move until the
morning when I wake. I'd itch, though, and have to move. And the night
would move on, later and later. I kept a clock on top of the nightstand,
next to a lamp, and I could see it's digital red numbers staring at me,
sort of telling me that if I was man enough to go to sleep, I could leave
this world of binary and computer screens. But that was a lie. One always
have to wake up, after all.
I can't think about sleeping before I do, too. I can't fall asleep if
I know it'll seem like I was only out for five when i was really out for
eight. And God help me if I woke up in the middle of the night. I could
hear the sirens out my window and I would curl up in my blankets, trying
to escape the cold.
These are just things you don't want the general public to know. It's
not as serious as some fucked up weirdo in the house next door that's a
child molester or something, but it's just embarassing. It's embarassing
to have your feelings open to the world. It's not like you're running
down the street stark naked in front of every person you ever liked. But
it's embarassing.
I don't really know how to explain it.
"Do you?" I asked him.
"Sure, I write about the world around me, what's happened to you and
some other people I know. It's an autobiography of sorts." He sniffed and
wiped his nose. "I write in it every night to keep up to date. Every man
needs a memory, right? I figure my memory would be better if it was kept
in a book in my room."
"You're not scared of someone reading it, are you?"
"Hmm?"
"The stereotype of the brother going into the sister's room to read
her diary to find out who she likes, etc."
"Never thought of it that way."
"I mean, those are your innermost thoughts that you're keeping there.
That's practically your entire life there. Everything you've ever thought
of doing, everything you've ever planned or dreamed of doing. That is you
on paper.
"And how hard would it be to walk into yourlife and disrupt that? How
hard would it be to sneak into your room at, say, anytime, and take an
entire look at your life, past, present, and future. Not entirely too
hard. After all, how long are you in your room? Eight, nine hours, and
even then, you're sleeping."
"And I suppose you'd prefer me to keep it on a computer, eh?" he asked
me, smiling.
"Are you kidding? It'd be even easier to hack into your life."
And I suppose it would be. I wonder whether or not he did keep a
backup on the computer. With my luck, his password would be a common
word, something in the dictionary. Something that could be cracked
easily.
But who was I kidding? I didn't have access to a computer. He wouldn't
let me have access.
"Exactly. At least on paper it's a little bit harder to get access to.
You actually have to be there in person. Not like the matrix. The matrix
is just, jack in, file transfer, and you can be anywhere in the world in
a matter of seconds. That's why I feel safer with having it on paper."
"Safer? Isn't that a joke of a word? You're never *actually* safe."
"True enough." he said, then pausing for a moment... "True enough."
--
man is no machine, man is no god, mankind is, and will always be, a pest.
joshua@client.dmccorp.com
joshua lellis -- jacob latter -- stauf
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