From: Passenger <Passenger@tpass.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Electric Fireflies and Lemonade Light (01/04)
Date: Sun, 05 May 96 23:53:04 GMT

Some may find this a little inacesable<sp?>
because when it was written I had just come off
mlod and was suffering from severe molly withdrawl.
So I wrote this mainly for my self,
but its up to you to pass judgement. Please.
If you do, then do it in the arena, not by email
because it encourages other to do the same.
I am particularly interested in how well I created 
Casey as an individual, not just a Molly xerox.  
She is much weaker than Molly, she has more of
an emotional insecurity.
Ah well,
here it is.


No. 42
Authors note:
This, apart from being a brilliant story :) also serves
as a tribute to the inspiring works of William Gibson.
Possibly not a fitting tribute, but a tribute nonetheless. 

THE GIBSON RHETORIC:
WILL ELECTRIC FIREFLIES DANCE IN THE LEMONADE LIGHT?


By The Passenger

"in the beginning there was peace...."
 
----------------------------------- 1.1
The dark ebbs and flows into the streets of the City, it cascades through
every burned out street, filling every abandoned house.  It distorts the
orange streetlight, twisting it into subtle hues of green and pink giving
the few who dare tread the streets at night a distinctly unearthly pallor.
Over the skyline giant monolithic buildings, their surfaces netted with
cables and chrome, loom, imposing, over the city.  They are lit from
underneath by the  gaudy neon light and the jittering light thrown off
by burning car and buildings.  Sirens can be heard non-stop throughout
the City, regulating everything like a death knoll or heart beat. Now the
rain carries the nights distortion farther, bending the light, giving the
monoliths a distant misty aura.  And high atop the great monoliths the
Presidents and CEO's of the corporations sit in cosy chairs while a few
kilometers below we soak in the poison rain, raging desperately, in the 
orange lemonade light.

The Courier coasted his bike along the junction street, ignoring the
hookers on the kerb, he knew their time would come later so now he
just smiled and drove on by heading for the connection road tunnel
at LAX#89.   He was watching the thing in the sky, first he thought
it was a plane, the lights flickering along its undercarriage like
rejected stars, then he watched them split up and decided they were
government choppers, he hadn't seen much of them before, right out
of HonkyTonk city, or at least that's what *they* said.  They'd said 
"Dont mess with no choppers, some real crazy shit been happening over
by Mr. Vance's franchulate".
'Real crazy shit' sounded cool to the courier right now, so he decided he
could just make a little stop to  . . . . . . .
-He squeezed on the break control on the handle bars, feeling the bike
skid to a stop, spraying rain water carelessly to both sides.  He stared
out across the street into the broken window of a 3TV shop, it wasn't the
broken window that was unusual but on all of the TV's were different
news channels.  And each was showing some reporter standing in front
of a building - the building he was meant to make a drop off at - a
building in Mr. Vance's Ext. . They were all saying something about
extremist terrorists or something.
"Shit" the Courier muttered and charged the bike down into the road tunnel.

----------------------------------- 1.2
Casey slammed herself back up against the wall, the flechette gun
snicking like a lighter in her hand.  The bullets burst in from
outside shattering the window, letting in the wind and the rain,
there was no point returning fire, she was doomed.  A little electric
shock blossomed painfully in one of her teeth.  She fell onto one knee
ducking back behind the window, running her tongue across the tooth.
A weak signal reverberated through her skull, using her spinal column
as an amp.  It was what she'd been waiting for, a ticket out.



Later she stood out on the kerb beside an internally lit vendor booth.
The light inside was pale blue neon, provided by an insect-icutor mounted
on the rear wall.  The rain had started and was burning her through her
thin synth-leather jacket. "Noodles, samco, Oronak-san" She said, using
what little Jap-babble she knew, to the little wiry oriental behind the
counter.  Cheap piped music was playing from back there somewhere, some
oldie with the words 'one more kiss dear'.
The weird thing about this was all *normal* music never repeated any words,
that  was if you could make them out. The old man tentatively handed her 
the steaming bowl of what amounted to some nutrasoi and a million and one 
different additives all mixed with four times recycled water.  She ate it 
grudgingly, huddling underneath the overhang of the booth, trying to keep
the rain off.  It had been so long since she had eaten real food she could
barely remember what it tasted of but she always found nutrasoi tasted
better after a few hits of crystal meth . . . . . . .
A long sleek red bike sped past her, showering her with puddle water and
she spun on heel, gun in hand, her steaming soi spinning to the ground.
Courier Bike, so close she could read the logo on the side . . . . . 
 

----------------------------------- 1.3
Jitaro sped, out on the open freeway now, towards Mr. Vance's.
Tapping his hands on the wet glowing dashboard in time to the loud
incomprehensible retrothrash pumping out of the bikes internal amp.
He lived in a 20 by 40 box up in the Reolite building and somebody up
there on floor 2235 was handing out free disks of some new/old thrash
band and Jitaro decided he liked it.  He liked cool stuff, there was
no other way to describe his tastes.  People said he was crazy because
he would follow police cars so he could see them get shot to pieces and
maybe if he was lucky get shot at himself. He could see the building in
the distance, a kind of lopsided pyramid, covered in lifts all along the
outside walls.  It narrowed to a flat top for choppers but it was hard
to make out at night if there were any there.  The actual top of the
building was the size of a few football pitches and the bottom was spread
across an entire district.  There were neon lights rippling across its
like a tawdry cancer, few authorized, but the stripping operation would
take years to complete because of the surface area of the building.
This wasn't just a mall or a office, it was an Arcology, it contained
its own water processing , air recyce, a few malls, a skyscraper worth
of residential and the whole thing was extraterential, when you crossed
over the door you were no longer in America, you were in Mr. Vance land.
Jitaro was'nt sure if that was for better or for worse.

When he arrived at the main Mr. Vance's building the reception area was
empty. 
"Pizza!" he called,  but no one answered. He sat there for a few moments
and looked at his watch. He couldn't remember the regulations for Pizza
delivery but he was sure the buyer had to be there to pick it up.  He
looked back at the police cars out front,  both were burned out like
somebody had thrown a molotov cocktail through the windscreen but they
wouldn't have burned long in this rain.
Burned out Police cars, empty receptions,
Cool.

He hit the lift button and had but to wait a few seconds for it come,
'funny' he thought 'damn things usually take all fuckin' night.'
He rode his bike into the lift and took it up to the first floor.  There
were safe places there to leave it and if it got stolen that would
not be cool.  
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-
If my newsreader has mangeled the formatting complain via email pls.
tia.
Sorry if the columns don't wrap properly on your screen.
Sorry if the storys a load of bolox. 
Sorry no .sig, it just got mangeled :(
Also a zipped write beautifully formatted perfectly word wrapped
fancy fonted version of the entire trilligy available on demand. 
--
The Passenga'
This post was made available by the magic of manual word wrapping.



From: Passenger <Passenger@tpass.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Fireflies and Lemonade Light (02/04)
Date: Mon, 06 May 96 00:20:54 GMT

This second part is slightly longer I think and the next is the longest,
but some of the introspectual stuf has been snipped.

"the descent into chaos...." 
----------------------------------- 2.1
Jitaro walked reluctantly away from his bike, leaving it, lonely, in the
first floor parking lot.  He returned to the lift and walked back inside.
He stopped in the door way listening to the helicopters chopping the air
outside somewhere, the noise echoing down the lift shaft.  He stepped behind
the closing doors into the dirty lift, the floor a mosaic of cigarette
stubs.

The only light provided by a flickery neon strip above his head.  The whole
of the building was so shitty that people in Arcologys were forbidden to
leave. 
They had to try and keep it nice,  the Arcologys were supposed to be self 
supporting but if this were so why was Jitaro delivering pizza here.  They
were supposed to be some sort of paradise, where you could go and live out
your life and work to build a better future for your children. 
The Arcologys didn't work though, people inside were always trying to escape
from their self contained paradise, this pissed Jitaro off because he would
kill to live in anice cooshy place like this. A nice lick of blue paint
would get rid of the yellowing damp stains on the walls. 
         
The lift doors opened with a 'ping' and the acrid light from the harsh 
lamp of the elevator spilled out onto a unlit corridor.  Jitaro stepped out,
as the doors shut behind him plunging him into darkness, trying to remember
which floor he had requested. "Pizza?" he ventured into the darkness, the
pizza still warm under his arm. A red hair-line punctured the air projecting
a xenon dot on his forehead.
A helicopter sped past the window at the end of the hall, briefly
illuminating the corridor. The woman was maybe five feet tall  and
was holding a gun pointed at his head.  She was wearing ripped jeans
and a white t-shirt with -PHREAKED- spelled across it in big drastic
lettering.  She had some sort of pair of shades on, only they weren't
shades because they were joined to her face, enclosing both the eye
cavities. They barely protruded from her face and looked like they'd
been shaped in a wind tunnel.  Some sort of 'mill'-wave-enhancer-visor-thing
Jitaro supposed in the most technical fashion he could manage. 

"Just hold still and you wont need to go off back down the corridor to find 
your head" she said, her voice smooth like hot liquid mercury.

----------------------------------- 2.2
Casey studied him, her heart beat thudding with fear at well above
the rate recommended as 'relaxation level' by the Government Health
Facility, that was until all the hospitals were bought by some rich
guy in Minnesota.  She was constantly running her eyes back and forth
up the corridor, her mirrored inlays relaying information to her brain,
infra red.  She raised her tongue to the roof of her mouth, feeling a small
metal contact she pressed it, the ghostly IR. images fading now from her
view. She had only come here to piss off the manager a little bit, she was
only going to ruffle up a few tenants, maybe throw some furniture about.
When she'd got there place was on full terrorist alert, people being
evacuated, Napier would not be pleased.
She took her eyes away from the end of the corridor where *they* had been
and looked up and down the guy at the end of her gun. He wasn't tall and
had on what looked to be a bikers uniform but the grainy light amplification
of her inlays made it hard to pick out any colors.  He had the sort of face
that she associated with sad old men who sit in sad old parks until one day
they get shot by another old man for change they don't have. Deep eyes that
were holes in his face, portals to his conscience, it seemed as though every
thing he thought were relayed through the deep pools of green.

>Pop of static as her audio compensators kicked in, reacting to some loud 
>noise< 
>Temporary blindness as some bright light overloaded her visual amp<
--Turn it off . . . . . .
>Burst of electric in her tongue as she pressed the contacts to fast<
>Burning sensation as her wired reflexes booted, boosting target data<
>up her spine and into her central cortex<
>Everything going into slow motion as her nervous system speeds up to<
>three times the norm<
>Sharp impact in the face,----- Gs272 ammunition ----- her WWR informs<
>her< 
--Better not scratch the inlays or there'll be hell to pay.

----------------------------------- 2.3
Jitaro was getting bored. The woman with the gun just stood there in
front of him, motionless. She appeared to be thinking.  He could hear
footsteps behind him.
She didn't see them because she seemed to be looking at him . . . . .
Jitaro grinned at her thinking he might be in with a chance after all.
The footsteps grew ever closer so he guessed it must be some of her friends,
girls maybe even. Then a crack sounded from behind him, like a gunshot merged
with a sonic boom.
Some sort of panther cannon ammo ripped past Jitaro just missing the woman.  
It echoed up the hall accompanied by a flash of light spewing from the
mouth of an unseen gun. Jitaro dived to the floor, the window behind the
woman caving in, the pieces of glass shattering like a deformed fractal
before flying loose from the frame and raining onto the wet street many
floors below.
The flash of light as the shell exploded was beyond
intensity, a one off shot Jitaro guessed, they couldn't carry
around much more of that kind of ammo, and besides it wasn't in
his contract. . . .
The woman seemed to be blinded, but only for an instant, then another
gunshot came from the darkness down the hall, nearer this time, footsteps
running . . .
The second bullet, smaller than the first shell, probably shotgun ammo, 
impacted on the woman's mirrored glasses in a shower of sparks, and for the 
first time Jitaro got a good look at her. The sunglasses were some kind of 
mirrored ceramic inlays, apparently pretty indestructible, that filled the 
depressions in her face for the eye sockets neatly, covering the bridge of
her nose.  Then a suddenly as it came into being the light from the gunshot
died, 
the sparks raining down in slow motion, dancing off her ripped jeans as she 
began to move forward.
The air hummed with static as she began to move, like the air after a
thunder storm, something to do with negative ions.  She wound up slowly,
like a base ball player, little discharges of static arcing off her jeans.
Then she wasright beside him, moving up along the corridor.
She wasn't actually moving at any great speed, it was the way she was moving
,like her reactions and reflexes were running three steps ahead of her body. 
Jitaro had seen them on TV, internals, they had called them.  Stuff that
they put in your body like optic cables 'n' shit.   Speed up you reactions,
make you think quicker.  Generate a hell of a charge though, one of his
friends had been electrocuted just trying to steal a set  . . . . .

She was moving so fast, something was slurring her outlines, making her glow
slightly, some sort of neon strips of under the skin on the back of her legs 
and the inside of her arms. She almost blurred into slow motion, beautiful, 
graceful, and deadly Jitaro noticed as monofilament blades slipped out from 
under her slender black finger nails.  He saw the screaming faces of men at
the other end of the corridor reflected in her inlays as she passed, the
dark, refracted, reflected, twisted, corrupted and some how turned into
light .


Jitaro opened his eyes tentatively, the roof spinning, the light lancing
between his slightly open lids, spearing  into his brain.
"Sorry" the female voice said and the light dimmed to nothingness, the world 
twirled momentarily and Jitaro remembered once seeing someone in a mall 
screaming about 'the machine' and why we should all fight it or something.
He was halfway up a moving escalator and looking like Jesus preaching and
rising to heaven when someone blew his brains out with a H&K. 
That was how Jitaro felt, like someone had made a hole in his head with a
shot gun.  He could feel his mind slipping into a giddy fever, his mother,
his house, small and dark always smelling of cigarette smoke, his dad only
giving it up after he died . . . . . They would follow him home from the
small seedy supermarkets, jump him in the alley ways, it was impossible to
make any friends because he was not from round here, as if that was
something to be proud about, cars burning  their faces leering in
the firelight  . . . . . . his bike, the only thing he had ever owned,
exept for his courier uniform and as he twisted naked in the bed,he knew
he had lost both.

Casey stepped back trembling, this guy was sick, she had caught him the
discharge field as her wired reflexes had powered down, lit up like a
Christmas tree.  She wasn't used to this sort of thing, and those guys she
had killed, torn them to pieces with her monofilaments, weren't cop, they
were scared . . . 
The people she normally killed were police or rentacop and they at least 
fought back but these guys were just like members of the public dressed up, 
their confidences bolstered by a few rounds of shotgun ammo, hadn't expected 
her to come for them.
She scrubbed desperately at her hands, trying to remove the blood, one of
them had been a girl, about Casey's age, maybe younger.
"Christ." she said throwing the towel down and sliding gently to the floor
as the guy writhed in the bed.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Technical corrections via email pls.
Tia.
Time to go massacre some more beautiful formating, <available in write/w6
/mswks 3/etc etc zipped, full set of three storys, blah blah blah, jus'
drop me a line> 
The sig survived this time :)
--
The Passenger<==========\ "With the lights out its less dangerous........." 
<:">{}:>>{>:"<{}<<:">:":{:\-----------Kurt Cobain---------------------------
\...\..*I'm an exotic.*/]./]\ Do not go gentle into that good night, 
/[.[./;/;[.[,\/[;/;[\/[./;[/;[\Rage,rage,rage against the dying of the light 
_________________________Molly__\---------Dylan-Thomas----------------------





From: Passenger <Passenger@tpass.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Electric Fireflies and Lemonade Light (03/04)
Date: Mon, 06 May 96 11:09:23 GMT

The formatting came through easy in this part . . . .


"rapture, raptures coming ....." 
----------------------------------- 3.1
Jitaro sat up in the bed, his skin sticky, his head clear.  The
woman was lying down beside the bed.  He couldn't tell if she was
asleep because of her inlays but she wasn't moving.  He looked at
his watch, but the pizza was two hours
late. Damn, no tip for that one. He shook his hair out of his
eyes, the greasy clumps, matted with sweat.  He stumbled up in
the near darkness, standing in front of the girl hoping she'd
notice but she didn't move, 'must be asleep then.'  He edged his
way into the shower and turned the luke warm water on, good
recyce quality maybe only passed through a few bladders,
Cool. 

Casey's eyes opened behind her inlays, she woke up almost
immediately, chemical implants stimulating her neurons.  She
stood up stretching to get rid of what drowsiness her implants
couldn't.  She moved slowly toward the balcony, desperately in
need of fresh O2 to refuel her H cell converters.  A display in
the left hand corner of each inlay told her the time was 02:12
almost two hours since she'd dragged the guy into the empty hotel
style room, leaving the people with the H&K's to bleed in the
hallway.  She wondered how much longer it would be until more
came, the building was far from empty, only an area about the
size of a mid sized hotel was evacuated. They probably still
thought that a full terrorist complement had taken over. She
wasn't sure how she would cope if they got attacked again, her
wired reflexes were really powered down and there was no way to
re-charge them with out one of those portable nuclear power
sources . . . . .

The last group of people had probably just been cannon fodder,
sent in to judge the enemy and had proved to be no real threat.
Next time she would probably not be so lucky. So she opened the
balcony doors and waited for a signal from Napier.

The dark black shoes walked rhythmically into the elevator
followed by countless others.  They moved into formation almost
automatically as the lift doors slid shut and they preceded to
the target area.  

Casey studied the view from the balcony and she heard the guy
step out of the shower, probably naked, but she wasn't going to
give him any sort of perverted satisfaction by turning
round. The view from balcony was spectacular, there was a lake
and trees and green fields all masked in four thousand dpi rez
darkness. There was something wrong with the way the hologram
unit played back, it seemed to be stuck in some sort of loop, the
leaves on the tree's jerking pathetically.  She reached out and
gently touched the screen.  It was soft like silk but was
actually some sort of liquid, slightly rigid on its surface to
keep it suspended within the window frame.  It was made up of
some substance called smart molecules, designed by even smarter
people so that if it became ripped the hole could seal it self.
Each molecule gave of coordinated bursts of light creating
the hologram effect.

In the lift the feet stood absolutely still, they knew what
was to come. They knew about the terrorists on the forty second
floor. They had watched on the camera's as one ripped apart
their family and friends with her bare hands . .
. .

Their was something pathetic about the whole Arcology, an
aesthetic illusion of peace, and she knew beyond the spectacular
3d view spread out in front of her lay the truth.
'But what lies beyond the illusionary window?'
She let out a little laugh at her profundity and turned around,
she could feel something inside her gut  tighten as the tension
mounted, this was normally an instinctual sign that she was in
danger, but the guy was already naked, and obviously willing so
she was gong to ignore it
just this
once.

The lift doors opened, all the men were tense, the black shoes
identical and silent as they stepped out of the lift.  A dozen
red dots hit the ground as laser targeters extended from their
guns finding their range and stabilizing as they reached the
door.

----------------------------------- 3.2
Jitaro could hardly believe it, he had used the oldest trick in
the book, the towel drop never worked but now she was walking
toward him, silent, like she really wanted it.  Then she stopped,
so he stepped forward to remind her where she was going.  When
he reached her he raised his hand to brush it across he t-
shirt, the way they do in the movies before ripping it off, and
she tilted her head up, as if trying to hear some far
away noise,
*what the fuck was wrong with this bitch?*

Then the door caved in.  
Lots of guys with guns.
Jitaro kicking over the light.
The darkness engulfing them,
_he knew she could see in the dark._
He looked over her shoulder and saw the open balcony, there was a
lake down there, with real trees, and he wanted to see how that
white t-shirt looked wet.  He threw his arm around her waist,
trying to lift her up and almost collapsing to the ground as the
laser targeters stabbed into the air around them, searching for a
target.  He gave one last heave, propelling them both toward the
balcony, over the ledge. Gunfire sounded around them as the view 
tore when they hit it, the holographic trees breaking up as the
polycarbon projection mesh ripped.  It was stretchy like lycra,
but more refined and wet on the inside.  Then they were through
it, the holes sealed as the smart- molecules knitted up the
holes, the liquid surface rippling silver,  re-joining at the
tears but they were on the other side now, the other side of the 
balcony, beyond the two dimensional trees and the lake . . . . . .

-- 
The Passenger<=========\ "With the lights out its less dangerous.........."
<:"?>{}:>>{>:"<{}<>>:":{:\-----------Kurt Cobain---------------------------
 \.\..*I'm an exotic.*/]./]\ Do not go gentle into that good night,
/[[./;/;[.[,\/[;/;[\/[./;[/;[\Rage,rage,rage against the dying of the light
________________________Molly__\---------Dylan-Thomas----------------------





From: Passenger <Passenger@tpass.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Fireflies and Lemonade Light (04/04)
Date: Mon, 06 May 96 11:24:03 GMT

"electric fireflies....." 
----------------------------------- 4.1
They plummeted through the darkness in each others arms, not
even knowing who either of them were, but now they fall together,
engulfed by the snowcrash, falling with the infocalypse.

The water exploded as they hit it, ice cold and dirty, a
collection of rain water run off all the building drains and it
was gushing from them as she surfaced, seeing she was in a sort
of tower, an open cavity, probably a lift shaft, about as wide as
a maybe five cars, in the center of the building where all the
illusionory windows looked into.  She dived under the murky
water, clawing through the junk that people dumped here and
surfaced with the guy, he was naked and the shock of the cold
must have put him out, she had implants to deal with it.  Pity
she had nothing to deal with all the shit in her life, something
to sort out her priorities and stop her getting into messes like 
this.
She decided her internal radio must be out because she would
have heard word from Napier by now, unless he had abandoned her 
. . . .

She started to climb out of the water, up on of the walls, her
implants pumping stimulants into her aching muscles.  The cold
water chilling her, the flesh of her pale subtly sculpted arms
rippling with goose bumps. Her inlays were compensating for the
low light levels but it still made her dizzy to try and look up
all the way to the top of the shaft.  She threw his limp body into 
the nearest opening in the wall, a place where a million pipes and
cables culminated into a ball of steel and rubber.  She looked up
the shaft, searching for people but she knew nobody would follow
her into The Shaft, its own inhabitants would deal with that. 
She shivered trying to make them out and then climbed into the
gap in the wall to see how 'Guy' was getting on.  

Jitaro woke up for the second time that night, his head swimming
with nausea, wrapped in some sort of reflective metallic foil, 
the type astronauts take into space, 'probably the chicks' he
thought. Tinny music was playing from somewhere and he could see
the woman tending a small fire at the opening of some sort of
boxed cave.  His head was resting on a bunch of humming electrical 
cables and he was getting an even worse headache than he had
before.  She hadn't seen he was awake. He felt somehow 
intimidated by her, he felt very small and just wanted to go out 
and ride his bike across the interstate and forget about girls 
with sunglasses and men with shotguns . . . . . .
after all he'd never asked for any of this shit . . . . .
Then he threw up, over the side out of the box-cave and down into
what seemed like a bottomless pit until he heard it hit water.

He just sat in silence, wrapped up in his silver sleeping bag,
watching her tend the thin carbon rods, the type that burn even
when wet.  A few sparks drifted up into the shaft, he watched
them dance on the convection currents glowing like electric
fireflies, rising up, past a lift that was slowly moving up the
inside  wall.  He saw  now there were a good two dozen lifts,
all at slightly different heights and running parallel to each
other, few were moving though.  He saw a dark figure leaping
across the shaft from lift to lift and up into a makeshift hut
mounted on one of the walls.  His eyes drifted continuously
upward, and as they adjusted to the light he could see there were 
many others, people moving about, riding the lifts, patchworks
of assorted materials mapped across the walls and into cavities
like the one he and the girl were sharing, some bigger though. 
He watched as a few dim lights came on in the cavities and he
could see a whole city of people stretching up into the uppermost
depths of the dark shaft . . . . . .

----------------------------------- 4.2
Casey watched them move as they cautiously turned their
lights back on, painfully conscious of the two unwanted visitors.
They moved gracefully between lifts and on the wire meshes that
covered the walls, the weak yellow lemonade light giving them an
unearthly, inhuman aura. The rain dripped down between the
artificial levels spanning the Shaft imitating the the outside
world. "Who are they?" the guy asked apparently totaly to grips
with the situation. "People, escapee's from the Arcologys" her
voice trailed off at the end as if she was shocked at the ease at
which they spoke. "Why bother, they got a nice apartment in the
Arc, cheap malls, sounds like fuckin' paradise to me"  he noted,
not taking his eyes of the people hunched on the elevator nearest
to them. "Its about control, they like to have freedom" -like its
done me any good- she thought bitterly.
"I used to think about stuff like that once, " he said, his voice
distant, his eyes closed slightly as if trying to visualize
something
" I used to talk to all these people on the Net, we were all
waiting for the world to change -"
"I heard the stories, the people back ten saw it coming, called
it cyberpunk, we call it life, " she interrupted.
"-And we all waited, and didn't realize it was already happening-"
"The Infocalypse, the Snowcrash, the Fall From Grace, End Of The
Age Of Innocence"
"-We didn't realize it started long before we were born, peoples
moral shit wearing out, we were all so tired, tired of conforming
and if morality crashed we wouldn't have to. So we were all going
to ride out into the Nevada desert one evening, just when the sun
was going down, making the shit in the air go red,  babe on the
back of our harleys and then we'd watch the sun sink then we'd
all raise a 'bud to our lips take a drink and throw the bottle to
the ground, and sombody'd say 'so it happened then' and we drive
off on our bikes a ride the interstate all the way the to
Phoenix"
A long silence punctuated the end of awkwardly told his story.
Casey seemed hypnotized, watching the people in the shaft, they
seemed to have no interest what so ever in the outside world and
were contented with the life they had. They probably could not
imagine how lucky they were.
Most were long haired and wearing old jeans and T-shirts, what
ever they were wearing when the escaped. It was kind of symbolic
the way the existed behind the artificial mask of the holographic
windows. It was a bit like life in general, people, and things
make it out to be something its not, something special but now
its just a struggle to survive, maybe she'd be better off dead,
throw her self from here into the chasm, her boosted muscles
would carry her all the way to opposite wall, and if she hit it
with sufficient force . . . . . .
"What's your name?" he asked oblivious to her last thoughts.
"Casey"
"Jitaro"
"You dont look Japanese" she said disinterestedly, still watching
the people as they receded up the lift shaft their interest in
the new arrivals ended and the lights slowly blinking out until
the only light in the shaft came from small fires like theirs,
plunging them into solid darkness again.
"Im not, my parents thought I should have been or somthing like
that . . . ." 

*You can hear the rain, even allthough it doesn't fall on you.  When its not 
burning you,* he thought, *it sounds kind of nice.*
----------------------------------- 4.3
"How do we get out of here?" he asked as she turned away from the
darkened shaft even all though with her inlays turned on she
could see up it.
"Maybe we dont" she said, her voice vague and dreamy. He was
about to complain about that when he saw she was restlessly
flexing her monofilaments, shredding the remnants of the glowing
carbon sticks.
Quick conversation change - "I expect you got teased a lot in 
school about your glasses", it just came out . . . and he
winced, realizing the stupidity of what he just said. She laughed
and replied,
"I got them put in about a year ago,  . . . . for a career
change"
"What exactly do you do?, I deliver pizza" he said proudly. She
considered saying "extremist terrorist" but thought again.
"This and that, enough to get by"
"Strange how things change, like I was a pizza boy a few hours
ago, but now here I am, probably fired . . . . ."
He watched her face, his face reflected by the fire light,
mirrored twice, once in each eye socket, as he studied her for a
reaction. She said nothing but just nodded, still staring at him.
Jitaro thought about being a Pizza boy and decided it wasn't such
a good career move after all, maybe this Casey could give him
some work gunrunning or what ever it was that she did. He was
beginning to feel a lot better, and he didn't miss his bike so
much. Gunrunning.
Cool.

Casey was waiting for her H cell converters to recharge,
the air in the shaft was stale and the recharge was taking ages. 
Without the cell converters none of her implants could function
and she was going to need them all on-line if she was going to
climb out of this damn shit hole. At first she had liked the idea
of staying here with these people but now she saw they were no
more than pathetic xenophobes.  They cowered away from the 
outside world, and it wasn't about control, it was about
spirit and these people were as good as
dead. This guy, Jitaro, or what ever his name was, the
not-Japanese, person who she couldn't quite figure out didn't
deserve it. She liked him, she owed him something, she had nearly
got him killed, a few times and he had saved her life once so she
really couldn't hold his typically male sense against him.  

"Casey -" Jitaro started but as he did, she kicked out the fire.
The air began to hum as it did the first time and the grace that
her wired reflexes brought her descended on her in the darkness
like a gift from the gods.  He watched her silhouette as she
slowly, smoothly slipped her t-shirt off over her head,  her
movements fluid, almost liquid as she came toward him, wriggling
smoothly out of her jeans, moving like sensual mercury, flowing 
toward him in the darkness. "I dont know how to take this bag
thing off" he stammered. "Its okay, I can see in the dark." she
said, her voice tainted by her grin.

Behind them the last of the electric fireflies drifted up
into the shaft, paying no heed to the paranoid xenophobes
shuddering against the cold in their makeshift suspended
homes.

----------------------------------- 4.3
He woke up shivering against the cold, it was still dark and
he could feel the building shake, a rumble echoing through the
walls.  A red light above his head was flashing EMERGE and he
could hear gunfire somewhere in the building.  There was just
enough room in the box/cave for him to sit up, still naked, lying on 
the silver bag she had shredded with her monofilaments. She
was gone. Her gun was there, the one with the flechette ammo,
sitting on top of a workers uniform. He shrugged and dragged the
uniform toward him, he was not going to let this one get
away.

Casey stood before the lift, watching the numbers light up,
working their way up  toward her. She felt almost naked without
her gun, but her monofilaments could take care of most things.
She had to use the last remaining hours of darkness to escape to
the roof where Napier had arranged to pick her up if something
went wrong.  She had used up the last of the charge in her wired 
reflexes on Jitaro. Bastard better remember that one, its not like
he's going to get it a second time. He should get out in the 
uniform, she just hoped she would be so lucky as the lift door 
opened. She stepped into the dark lift, unable to see anything, 
visual amp not engaged, could not see that there was no lift 
there at all . .


Jitaro hitched himself up over the last pipe, not even glancing
at the shaft dwellers as he passed out of their world into
reality. He took the lift to the second to top floor and started
to search for stairs leading up to the roof, last night between
her sharp breaths he had heard the fuzzy radio message.  He 
didn't know who Napier was, but if he was messing with Casey,
he had lived long enough.

The lift was on its way up when Casey hit it and she felt ankle shatter.
The pain wracked her body her pain suppressers not responding as she
writhed on the lift roof.  The lift stopped after what seemed to
be an age and Casey struggled out onto the floor above it.  The
corridor was white and now the floor smeared with her blood.  The
upper levels of the building were undeveloped and she hoped to
make it unnoticed to the roof.  She fumbled in her jeans pocket
to take out a small blue derm.  It was a circle of plastic, one 
side smooth with a small handle the other ridged with thousands of
monofilament needles, each primed with an amount of designer
endorphin analogue.  She applied it to her arm and felt the
warmth spreading through arm up over her shoulder and then it hit
her spinal column and went straight to her brain.  Her back
arched and she let out an almost orgasmic cry of relief as the
endorphins bombarded the pain receptors in her brain.  Her leg,
melted into a stick of heat, no pain what so ever, even at the
bits where the bone was sticking through the skin . . . .
. She stood up dizzily, and made her way toward the stair well at
the end of the corridor, leaning on the unmarked doors,  not
because of the pain, but because she was so unbelievably
high.

She stepped out of the stairwell onto the massive roof, she
could barely make out the opposite side from where she stood but
the view was magnificent.  She shuddered her internals filtering
out the last of the dope emulator from her blood stream, and her
leg began to throb dully.  The wind whipped around her, driving
stinging rain into her face as she gazed at the twisting patterns of 
neon that were the city. Her gut tightened and she heard someone
behind her, she spun round, monofilaments extended, slicing the
air around her finger tips to see Jitaro, with her gun pointed at
her, the red dot wavering on her face.

Jitaro stepped out of the stairwell, to see someone else coming
one across the by the helipad numbered thirty
six. He couldn't see much as the rain, stung his eyes.
Then he saw her, turning round, extending her claws, she was
going to attack him and he drew her gun. They stood, facing each
other, mutual mischomprehension spinning out of control as words
were left unsaid, and their mutual suspicions mounted,
generating endless conspiracy theories, those same theories which
had driven the shaft dwellers away from the world. Jitaro stepped
forward holding the gun at arms length until he was a few feet
away from her.  He didn't want to believe it but here she was
waiting for some helicopter, with her *lover*, Napier on board. 
Jitaro sneered subconsciously at her supposed betrayal.

Casey watched him cautiously, he held the gun well, like a
trained security guard would, but he was shaking, like he was
scared, just like the people in the hallway, maybe he was one of
_them_ . . . . .

"Bitch, " Jitaro shouted, feeling like the character in his
favorite movie "You betrayed me."

"Get a grip asshole, give me the gun." she retorted sounding
suddenly professional and not at all like his lift shaft lover.
"How could I betray you, I dont even know you."

They never said that in the movies, but he gave her a moment to
fall into his arms anyway.

Her hand moved swiftly and he felt the monofilament slide
through his fingers, severing them, and he pulled the trigger,
just as the air around them lit up and began to churn and chop
wildly.

She saw the helicopter descending, and thought he did too.
She raised her hand to take the gun from him, forgetting about
her monofilaments being extended, funny, . . . . she never
forgot, must be the dramatic view she mused as her blades
effortlessly glided through his fingers.

The spray of bullets slipped into her chest as the helicopter
hovered above them, the wind threatening to hurl them both off
the side, blinding Casey with its spotlight.  The bullets left
practically no mark and no blood flowed.
 
The churning of the air, the bright lights and the speed at
which the whole situation developed made Jitaro panic, he was a
simple person, he was not built for such stress.

Casey's inlays reported multiple foreign bodies and massive
system damage but her consciousness was failing.

*If I can get her to a hospital . . . .*, Jitaro thought
desperately *it'l be okay, if it was bad there'd be lots of
blood.* - She seemed to believe this for a moment too then her
t-shirt was punctured by hundreds of plumes of blood as each
exploding flechet round detonated a multiple charge sending her
spinning off the side of the building . . . . . .

The helicopter pulled away from the pad, some maniac was
letting off flechette rounds and had hosed Casey, but they'd be
back, the Yakuza didn't take lightly to their brothers and
sisters being killed by maniacs, with brotherhood issue weapons.

Jitaro fell to his knees in the dark, Casey's blood running
down his body, mixing with that gushing from his finger
stumps.
The thing about Jitaro was that he *could* cope with these kind
of shocks, he was a product of a dysfunctional society and Casey
had been a bit of a babe but he had to admit this stuff was all
pretty cool.
Cool, . . . the magic word.


As Casey's body hit the dumpster her inlays shattered,
exposing her pale albino eyes to the air for the first time in
over a year. Her implants had finally kicked in, keeping her
alive a little longer than usual, their final duty to make her
death a painless one. Not a single tear ran down her cheek,
they'd had to seal her ducts up to fit her inlays.
A shower of sparks sprayed up from her dying wired reflexes, the
final dance of the electric fireflies . .
. . . .
. . .
. .
. .
. .
. Cool.
+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+

I know some of its a little rough but I feel that if
the collective minds of all the writers on this group
work together we could develop somthing cool here.
Feel free to submit replacement passages, and any additions
but please all corrospondence to the group because it encourages
others to do the same.
Tia
-- 
The Passenger<=========\ "With the lights out its less dangerous........."
<:"?>{}:>>{>:"<><:">:":{:\-----------Kurt Cobain---------------------------
 \..\.*I'm an exotic.*/]./]\ Do not go gentle into that good night,
/[.//;/;[.[,\/[;/;[\/[./;[/;[\Rage,rage,rage against the dying of the light
________________________Molly__\---------Dylan-Thomas----------------------