From: tagg@hg.uleth.ca (Nathaniel Tagg)
Subject: The Golden Spike -- Introduction
Date: 3 Jun 93 17:31:46 GMT

{Ladies, Gentlemen, and Those 'borged beyond easy Gender Classification, I am
proud to re-present the introduction to a storyline that will hopefully make it
past the introductory stages this time 'round.  Stay tuned.}

The Golden Spike --- Introduction, Part 1


"Tales from the OSD"
---------------------------------------------------

    Drax was glad to be home.  He walked in the doors of the Other Service
Department, unconsciously taking a deep breath of air smelling of smoke,
coffee, alcohol, and lubricant.  He walked through the bar, making small nods,
waving to aquaintances. No one he knew to talk to here, just the familiar faces
that lends one security.  A tech has to keep himself visible, he was fond
of telling people.  They don't survive on guile, or muscle, or even talent,
but experience and reputation.  A secretive tech gets no work.

    He shook the perpetual October rain out of his spiked orange hair,
and hung his trechcoat on a convinient hatstand next to a table, careful
not to cover the price tag.  Eugene hated it when people did that, and
Eugene was not a person one wished to piss off.  Everything in the OSD
had a price.  Tables, cutlary, dishes, jukebox, light bulbs, hatracks.
Everything.  Including, it was common to say, the inhabitants.  The OSD was
unique, consisting of one part bar, one part cafe, two parts black market,
ten parts warehouse and surplus goods store.

    Just what Drax needed right now.  He had just gotten back from Chiba,
spending way too much time lounging around in some godforsaken place called the
Chatsubo, ordering poorly made drinks, listening to god-awful punk music,
shooing whores.  And looking for buisness.  He had gotten lucky in his
second week, landing himself a deal with an insurance company agent, testing
some arcology's security.  The agent took most of the cash, and Drax did most
of the crawling around in service ducts.  It was enough to get him home to
Toronto, though, and that was what mattered.

   But he was here now.  He sat down at a glass table for two near the
almost-translucent window.  The OSD was currently decked out in some ancient
early 80's resturant decor.  Drax didn't care for it too much;  not enough
metal, not enough scorch marks for his taste, reflective, cold, without
style.  The great thing about the OSD was, though, that inventory tended to
turn over quickly, always leaving the place looking brand-old every couple
of weeks.

    Drax waved over a waitress.  She was one he hadn't seen before.  She was
short, just far enough on the heavy side to give her interesting curves, and
tastefully dressed in black with black hair.  The latter was unusual; Symphony
turf was a ways east of here, the OSD residing in a gang no-man's land, partly
due to Eugene.  She came over and stared at him. He realized with a start of
embarassment that she was waiting for him to order.  "Green" he mumbled.  She
rolled her eyes slightly and left.  A better reaction that most, he thought
hopefully, watching her leave.  Maybe he would try to get her to say a word
to him later on.

    In the meantime, the local talent was just warming up.  Drax had been
looking forward to this for some time.  He had seen these five before a few
months ago.  The accordian player was a wirehead, playing by jack instead of
hands.  The rest were old-fashioned types, relying on little augmentation.
The singer/harmonica player gave a quiet count, and they all kicked in together
on the off beat.  Drax felt the tension in his shoulders relax for the first
time in weeks.  A good dose of cyberpolka.   They were playing an old
classic Drax remembered from somewhere.

"	I can think of forty reasons
	Why I am where I am today
	All the things I didn't do
	And all the things I did.
	I don't have a lot of regrets
	Because I'm still to young to say I'll never get to do this or that.

	But I'll never be an American.
	And I'll never be a mother.
	I'll never take my vacations in Hawii
	I am too smart to do that."

    The band was just starting to get it together. Punks were starting to mill
around, moving to the strange ohm-pa beat with the enthusiam of those who
know they are rebelling against their own culture. God, he had missed this.
He raised his good hand to summon another drink, but suddenly felt a hand
on his shoulder.

"	What does it mean when you gotta go to work
	And what does it mean when you gotta work hard
	What does it mean when it doesn't mean a thing
				  doesn't mean a thing
				  doesn't mean a thing
	Go go go go!"

    "Excuse me," said the owner of the hand, "but my associate here and I would
like to talk to you."  Drax spun his head around, half expecting to see some
dumb joeboys, or even cops. But the person at the other end of the arm was
neither.  In fact, he was strikingly plain....

--------------------------------------------------
(Okay, okay, cut me some slack, I'm new to this.  _Constructive_ critisism
always appreciated.  Regular critisism expected)

Drax is mine, and he even has a future.  Borrow this stuff at your own risk of
sanity.  Copyright blah blah blah blah blah.  Disclaimer blah blah blah.

Lyrics to "Forty Reasons" by The Polka Dogs, a self-proclaimed Canadian
cyberpolka group.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
          Nathaniel Tagg               The U of Hell,  Lethbridge, AB
    "It's just a matter of putting one point seven nine five three seven two
and two point two oh four six two eight together."     --The Doctor
___The opinions expressed by the author of the preceding message are not
nessesarily representative of the opinions of the author of the
preceding message.____
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



In article <1993Jun3.173146.26295@honte.uleth.ca> tagg@hg.uleth.ca writes:
>{Ladies, Gentlemen, and Those 'borged beyond easy Gender Classification, I am
>proud to re-present the introduction to a storyline that will hopefully make it
>past the introductory stages this time 'round.  Stay tuned.}
>

He isn't kidding!  - Dan McD.

=====

	Bobbi Stone was cold.  She reached over to the other side of the bed,
and grabbed for the sheets.  She almost fell out of bed upon discovering the
hard way that her husband was already up.  She sat up, covering her bare chest
with the sheets, and looked around the Toronto hotel room.

	The only light came from the alarm clock, which read 7:04, and the
video phone, where she saw the robed silhouette of her husband, Ian, talking
to an unknown face.  She listened in on the conversation, focussing on her
husband's voice first.

	"Then we've got a deal."

	She strained to hear the voice from the phone, but to no avail.

	"We won't be wasting any time.  We're already in position to pick up
our first team member tonight.  What's our budget for our team members,
anyway?"

	Another pause; the only words Bobbi could pick up were, "Swiss
Account."

	"You realize we're going to have to cut corners with only that much.
I hope your intelligence on the place is right, or else a lot of people are
bloody well going to get fried.  I don't want blood on our hands.  We *both*
have reputations to uphold."

	The next pause was only a second.

	"Talented rookies.  I hope you're right."

	The screen on the video phone dimmed as the figure quickly sprang into
bed.  Bobbi felt a wet kiss on her lips, along with a passionate embrace.

	"He gave us a tight budget, but we'll get all the money we asked for
if we pull it off.  We get 25% now, plus budget, and the rest on delivery.
Then it's Chiba..."

	"And baby makes three.  Now what's this about 'cutting corners' and
no budget for hiring.  Didn't our little job for IBM impress him?"  Bobbi
snuggled up to him while saying IBM.  They were now both under the sheets in
bed.

	"Yeah, but we're not dealing with IBM.  Our client, or clients, I'm
still not quite sure if we're working for only Blitzkrieg, are not as into the
game as the high-tech companies are."

	"Quantum physicists, *NOT* high-tech?  I don't care if they're working
for DeliveryNet, that sounds plenty high-tech to me."  She backed off him a
bit now.  Bobbi realized that business had started, despite still being in
bed.

	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*

	Ian and Bobbi Stone were married for 6 years.  They had always been
independent espionage agents, even before they met in Arizona on a mission for
then fledgling Maas Biolabs.  When they got married a year and a half after
Arizona, they went into business together as data thieves and research
stoppers.  Corporations who wanted to level out the playing field, and
couldn't do it themselves, hired Ian and Bobbi to either bring back data from
the competition, dull the competition's edge, or do both.

	Ian and Bobbi had just signed on to do both for what Ian figured to
be a loose cartel of delivery services scattered throughout the world.  The
only name he heard dropped was Blitzkrieg, the GLACIER's premiere small
package courier.  Traces of phone calls with his employers had revealed some
interesting other sources.  Two phone calls from Atlanta pegged Zip-E-Xpress,
DeliveryNet's main North American rival for food delivery.  They once received
a "wrong number" from an exchange in Berkeley, which proved to be inside
the North American branch of SEPAC Courier, the Australian parcel firm that
proved to be one of only three Gaijin-run companies to rustle any sort of
market share in the Pacific Rim.  The initial call was from Paris, which could
have been any number of European companies, probably a EEC-style consortium.
There were few other players in the business.   Of the ones that did not
communicate with Ian and Bobbi, the largest was the target, DeliveryNet.

	Founded in Milwaukee several decades ago, DeliveryNet first realized
the importance of a global computer matrix in the running of a company.  This
technological savvy placed this food-delivery business into the global arena,
making its size and net worth comparable to a number of medium-sized
multinationals like Ono-Sendai, CIBA-Geigy, and AT&T.  DeliveryNet took a
historically localized business like general contracted food delivery, and
made it global.  Many small businessman could open up shops with nothing more
than a kitchen, knowing full well that a contract with DeliveryNet would give
it a large customer base.  As DeliveryNet began to blossom, many follow-up
companies tried to vie for DeliveryNet's customers.  Some survived as the
companies that were hiring Ian and Bobbi, but none of them approached the
stature of DeliveryNet.

	DeliveryNet had always been the first to try new technologies for
streamlining the business.  Their DeliveryNet On-time Computer, or DOC, was
the very first sentient computer used outside computer companies and research
institutes.  Now the competition was afraid, deathly afraid, about a new
project DeliveryNet had in the works called "Golden Spike."  The only thing
the companies, and the street, knew about it was that DeliveryNet was pumping
money into quantum physics research at a higher rate than some computer
hardware manufacturers.  That fact scared enough competition to hire Ian and
Bobbi.

	A GLACIER-based company was always a hard target.  The GLACIER, or
Great Lakes Area Commercial and Industrial Enterprise Region, had tough
restrictions on corporate manuevering, and generally enforced their laws more
strictly than other portions of North America.  This probably came from the
strong "small-town" feel of the GLACIER, which encompassed the former states
of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.  It also included
portions of Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and western New York State.  Much to the
dismay of the still functioning Canadian government, much of Ontario was
considered to be part of the GLACIER.  This was because of the maglev line
that stretched from Toronto to Chicago, and various free trade accords signed
well before the war that splintered the U.S.  Unlike the BAMA, nicknamed
the Sprawl because of the non-stop megalopolis that stretched from Boston to
Atlanta, the GLACIER was still somewhat rural, with highly urbanized "peaks"
that protruded from the smoothness of fields, forest, and farms.  These peaks
were the mini-axes of Chicago-Milwaukee, Toronto-Hamilton, Cleveland-Columbus-
Cincinnati, and the cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Indianapolis, Detroit, and
Pittsburgh.

	Ian and Bobbi thrived on the extra need for secrecy and covertness
while operating in the GLACIER.  It made their jobs more challenging, and it
gave them satisfaction to be wreaking havoc in the area that spawned both of
them.  Bobbi had grown up in one of Chicago's countless suburbs, and knew what
kind of life she would have led if she did not leave for a little while,
anyway.  She became a competant cyberspace jockey, despite her GLACIER
upbringing, and lived for a while in Sprawl, where she learned the lessons of
the Gentleman Loser.  Ian had moved from Scotland to Ann Arbor at age five,
the son of a Edinburgh student who decided to take a teaching position at the
University of Michigan.  His mother, the professor, was hardly home, which
left Ian alone to explore Detroit's suburbs. Leaving home at 18, Ian learned
to hustle and scam for a living on the brutal streets of downtown Detroit.

	With his ability to sneak in the real world, and her equivalent skills
in cyberspace, they combined to offer infiltration services to the highest
bidder.  Now, at ages 35 and 34, Ian and Bobbi were well known and well paid
enough where they would hire additional team members to assist in their runs.
They were in Toronto to hire the first member of their team.  A friend of
theirs who was scoping out an arcology in Tokyo told them about a kid who
played one-man tiger team.  Their friend was pissed, because he was going to
break into the place for real next week.  He managed to have him tracked to
Toronto.  He told them, "Hire that son of a bitch before I kill him."

	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*

	They both were finishing up dressing for the evening.  Ian looked at
Bobbi.  Her necklength light brown hair was hanging down straight.  It fit the
business suit she chose to wear.  Her suit was tightfitting, reminiscent of
the masculine-like businesswear of the 1980's.  Her skirt went down barely
past her knees.  Ian's dark gray saraiman suit was identical color to Bobbi's.
The only difference between their two looks was Ian's jet black hair, not yet
overtaken with specks of gray.  Ian stood at 6'0", and could pass for hired
muscle, if not for the suit.  He finally spoke.

	"What's the plan?"

	"We see if we can find this Drax.  There's a rather anarchic hangout
here called the Other Service Department.  Real dive, sounds like some of the
places I used to go in the Sprawl.  Hopefully he'll cooperate, he's new, and
is trying to make himself known.  My biggest concern is his price."

	"Hideo told me that he was probably an insurance company's hire.
Insurance people are always cheap bastards."

	"Good.  Then I head off to the Sprawl, find a cowboy, and maybe some
muscle.  Meanwhile, you look around the GLACIER for muscle too, and start
scoping out our target."

	Ian finished, "And then we finish the break-in plans.  You're a
genius."

	He then kissed her.  Ian was a tactician, if someone would ask him to
weasel in past the three security guards and two surveillance cameras, he
would do it.  He was also negotiator and speaker, he expressed points that
Bobbi wanted to make, and made sure that people did what they were supposed
to.  But he had not patience or long-term foresight for big plans.  That was
one thing Bobbi picked up on after punching deck for others.  He felt slightly
inferior to Bobbi because of her planning and strategy, but Bobbi never let it
go to her head, and that's why they worked so well together.

	Bobbi kissed Ian back.  "Charm their socks off.  Works for me."

	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*

	The Other Service Department was more intense than any of the places
that Bobbi or Ian had been before.  The most striking feature of the OSD, as
people called it, was that everything, literally *everything* was for sale.
It was an example of free enterprise in an out-of-control world.  Bobbi showed
Ian a picture of Drax.  He had spiked orange hair, and a face that indicated
an age not much older than 25, if even over 20.  The orange made him easier to
pick out of the crowd, most of whom redefined the word drab.  He was
meticulously hanging a trenchcoat on a hatstand.  He sat down at the closest
table and started flirting with the waitress.

	Both of them stayed back while the evening's band was thrashing into
something that sounded vaguely like polka.  Ian looked at Bobbi with a mock
look of longing.

	"Want to dance?"  he said, trying to sound like a nervous teenager.

	"Let's go get this guy, before the crowd gets nasty," she replied.

	They wandered through the crowd, caustically staring down anyone who
looked at them for being out of place.  They walked up to the table, where
Drax still sat alone.  There was an empty glass of something that was green.
He was about to flag down the waitress when Ian grabbed his shoulder.

	"Excuse me, but my associate here and I would like to talk to you."
====

Drax is property of one Nathaniel Tagg.
Bobbi and Ian are property of one Daniel L. McDonald
Resistance is futile.  (oops, that's wrong line!)
--
Dan McDonald    |Internet: danmcd@cs.arizona.edu, UUCP: ..!uunet!arizona!danmcd
U. of Arizona   |BITNET: danmcd%cs.arizona.edu@arizona.BITNET
Computer Science| "Everyone knows everything
Graduate Student|  and no one's ever wrong... until later" - Rush