From: st3uy@jetson.uh.edu
Subject: |down
Date: 24 Feb 1994 17:28 CST

	
	near the grand canyon plex.

	'what"re you doing, take the fuking needles out!  you know the
	local iZ"s been turded!' laty shoves berns medicinal hands away from
	the unconscious man's face.  she yanks the virtual immersion needles
	from the tear duct's of the unconscious man in question, she knows
	bern means well, trying to revive the pilot with a pump of netspace,
	but she thinks, don't do it now of all times.

	she notices the coagulated blood pressing from the pilot's chest.
	she realizes from the lungs. the hole looking like tetnis teeth,
	microthreads of wire webbing pushing from a circular pattern,
	attaching his body to every surface in the cramped pitcapsule.

	bern smiles uncannily, his white teeth a feral gleam in the desert
	darkness, the low buzz of chemical-heat spray under his clothing
	reacting to the low-minus temp.  his hands stuffing the immersion
	needles back into his deckpack.  he smirks, 'i"m not that stupid girl,
	 don"t use some little disturbance on the local info-space as a reason
	to not try and revive this piece of meat.'  laty's eyes squint in
	belated response, telling bern in her own way she thinks that's
	ridiculous.

	she carfully cuts away the gauze of wire emanating from the pilot's
	chest.  a hiker on his way in to the canyon found the sr,71's collage
	of wreckage, its black pitcapsule twenty kilometer's north,
	night-thermals easily scoping it from the overcooled evening.  laty's
	low-band peeled the canyoner's message from the local airwaves, she
	immediately xmitted an all frequencies a first-finder's code.  no one
	else could tag this one she thought.  at the time, bern had been
	scaling the wall, handgloving, trying to wedge his fingers into the
	crevices of unmeched canyon rock.  he'd screamed when her voice pushed
	over his earspeaker.  she watched him from the usual pick up point,
	monoculars in hand; watched bern jump from almost-the-canyon-lip, the
	glyder chute exploding from his backpack.  laty's fingers clenched the
	three-wheel hummer's rubber steering wheel for ten minutes, waiting
	for bern to settle to the canyon floor.  the glyder's thin canopy
	layering on top of him as he safety-fell into a roll.

	bern placed the cracked halves of the pilot's dark immersion helmet
	into a vacuseal pack for later decryption.  he scoped the pitcapsule
	while laty applied derms and quicktreatment gel around the now-exposed
	chest of the pilot.  the blood around raw shrapnel-thread holes
	uncaking and dribbling away.  bern found where the smartshrapnel
	penetrated the capsule from underneath, his night-therms detailing the
	decaying-heat of the entry point.  laty called.

	the pilot lay with bandage pads over his eyes; laty explained he needed
	flash-treatment from retinal burns received when the cockpit ejected.
	she pointed to something in the cramped pitspace.  under the pilot's
	boots, a clear plastic envelope, documentation inside.  laty asked
	bern to help pull the pilot out, wires and immersion plugs detaching
	from the pitcapsule as they yanked the man's deadweight away.  the
	pilot moaned.  the sure sign of life revitalized laty's desire to
	help the pilot, she attended to the pilot's short breaths as bern
	retrieved the envelope.  he opened it, his night-therm goggles
	illuminating it's small printout sheafs.  laty heard an audible click
	from bern's throat, 'what?'  she massages the pilot's chest slightly,
	checking the derms, '"s matter bern?'

	'you don"t want to know.  i mean you"ll want to know.  but... i just
	don"t know.  member all that crap about 23-069 supposedly crashing
	the information zone?' he holds the clear sheafs up in the darkness,
	plastic crinkle sounds.  'it seems the Foundation"s been involved in
	more than everyone thought. this stupid file tells about how HUD was...'

	laty holds her hand up, 'stop!  he"s convulsing!  give me
	your deckneedles!'

	bern rummages through his deckpack and strings the immersion needles
	out.  he watches laty go against everything she was trained not to do
	and insert the microjacks under the pilot's lids.  she spits, 'this
	is shit!  there's no way in hell we know what's going on.  can you
	modulate it?'

	bern kneels, stuffing the sheafs into his pack and fidgeting with
	his monodeck, 'i"ll try.'


	|end o.one	
	|ray Ogar (c)1994


	WARNING:: :'more to come':