From: jerryn@glnserv.UUCP (Jerry Norris)
Subject: The Dragon
Date: 6 Feb 92 23:09:33 GMT

Chiba City.  To most people it's the place they threaten to take their
children if they continue to misbehave.  Flimsies float in warm updrafts
from deep cellar powerplant exhausts, rainbow-colored waters drift through
gutters ragged from acids and gunfire and drain into an underground
network which is it's own world.  Here you can find everything and
anything, for the right price.  Even God.

The city boundaries are hard to define on anything but official papers.
Like a desert, or an ocean, the city's ebb and flow reach out, touch a
neighborhood, keep it for a while; loses another.  It doesn't take long to
figure out once one is _in_ Chiba.  There are some people who say that it
takes forever to figure a way out.

In the midst of this sits a small bar.  The fact that it's a bar is not
spectacular; the entire city runs on hyper-amphetamines, go-juice, and
biz.  In fact, there's not much that sets this bar apart from others, on
the surface.  But inside the steel-plated slidedoors can be heard the
constant sussurus of the desperate, a shifting paradigm which consists of
ten billion different ways to find a way out.  Sometimes the whispers and
soft murmurs are accented occasionaly yelps of dismay or surprise.  In one
corner a few tourists, having heard of this place, have an animated
discussion on fiction; one of the loudest in the place.  But the others
don't seem to mind too much.  It would take much more than that to break
up the stream of biz-verse and contract recordings.

A look around would show people from every walk of life; the poor
stumbling from table to table offering rumors to sell, the less-poor
sitting at the bar, the poor-rich sitting at tables, conducting what
passes for business in Chiba.  In the Chatsubo.  Clothing is sometimes of
second importance to the customers; chromed leather jackets over torn
shirts, Seiko implants on dirty wrists, and even a greysuit daimatsu.

Through the open slidedoors a man staggers.  For a moment, he leans on a
table, oblivious to the joyboy sitting there trying to convince the man
sitting opposite him to be his patron.  He wears a black jumpsuit with red
piping along the rims of the short sleeves and high collar.  Thick wavy
hair, steel grey, covers his head, cut short at the sides and hanging
heavy down his back.  For a moment he seems lost, looking at the hand on
the table.  Shaking.  With another effort, he finds his way to the bar.

He spots an empty seat and lurches to it.  Climbs on.  Sits.  Ratz fills a
tall glass with a dark brown Bock and sets it in front of the shaking
hands, "Well, Herr Dragon.  Have you been leading someone a merry chase in
the electron void?"  With an effort the black-suited man stills the shake
in his hands and grabs the glass, draining it.  The light at the bar,
slightly stronger than the difuse gloom at the tables, does not hide the
glowing red dragon etched into smooth skin along the jawline.  He slams
the glass down and looks at the bartender, who nods, pouring another beer,
After draining the second he motions for a third.  Ratz pours, the servos
in his old Russian prosthetic whine above the quiet din.

The Dragon pulls a sip from the third, "Too much," he says, shaking his
head, "I tell you, Ratz, I think I've finally seen too much."





later,
jerry.

email addres: xcluud!glnserv!jerryn| aka  Jerry Norris or (Vermithrax)
As usual, all flames will be judged on originality and color offset, with
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