>From: jenkins@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Ode to Joy
Date: 12 Feb 91 01:07:13 GMT
J.J. Faust looked in the mirror. For a moment, someone else looked back at her
with ice blue eyes and wavy auburn hair. Her makeup was perfect and her dress
was cut just right. She clipped a pair of mirrorshades to the belt of her
dress and smiled. Tonight she would be popular. Miss Faust from Uptown.
She tugged lightly at the chain around her neck and fondled the locket between
her fingers. The gold felt cold but pleasant, and the locket almost shone
against her skin. "A perfect luster," she whispered to herself.
She grabbed her purse and coat and left her apartment, her life, and her world
behind. Tonight she was someone else.
-
"Chatsubo," her fixer told her. "Not too far off the beaten path. Not too far
for you." He hit her once during that conversation, before he told her how
badly his day was going. The bruise was on her ribs, no one would see it. It
was okay, she was leaving that all behind.
She entered carefully, moving gracefully through to the bar. She let them soak
up that before she removed her coat and took a seat, smiling generously. It
was a busy night, she would have sat at a table if she found one quickly.
"Bourbon," she told the bartender, folding the coat across her lap. She placed
a few bills on the counter.
The old man looked at her curiously. "Haven't seen you 'round here before," he
said while pouring the drink. "I would've notice something pretty as you."
J.J. danced inside. It had begun. This was why she came. "J.J.," she said,
offering her hand.
When the old man took her hand it was then that she noticed the other was
plastic. His entire other arm was, in fact. This only shook her for a moment.
"Ratz," he said.
"I just came in to meet someone. Business." She waved a hand lazily.
Ratz seemed to chuckle. "Everything's business here." He then motioned at her
drink. "Call if you need another." He smirked and walked to take care of
another customer.
J.J. laughed out loud. Some of the other people looked at her quickly, but
this only raised her spirits higher. This was her world, for now, her life...
her home until the end of the night.
She rubbed a nail across her pendant and smiled.
-
Copyright (c) 1991 Kent Jenkins
-
Intended for use by a.c.chatsubo patrons. Well, to a point.
From: jenkins@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Ode to Joy
Date: 19 Feb 91 01:00:57 GMT
Ode to Joy
...
She checked her watch. Five minutes, damnit, and not a single hello. Well,
except from the bartender, but what kind of fresh air did he give? The man
didn't like to talk at all.
"You'll like it," her fixer said. "Your kind of place." Pah, they're moping.
Something's wrong...
J.J. Faust took a pill quickly, effortlessly, and the 'wrong' vanished. A wave
of 'right' passed through her like the creeping warmth of a straight drink,
not the watered-down versions that the bar served.
With a single smooth motion of her hand, she tipped that drink over and the
glass toppled to the floor.
She gasped, acting shocked, and stood quickly, as if the broken glass would
actually hurt her. "Oh, my... I..." She grabbed a few napkins and crouched
low to clean the mess herself.
Action fluttered about her. Mostly people trying to step around the half-drunk
girl and her spill, the people who wanted to ignore her were those she wasn't
interested in. Three men, however, offered their assistance and demanded her
to stand.
The feeling returned. Success, joy, and bliss almost overwhelmed the effects
of the drug she had just taken. Her fixer threw his motto in her face when
they faught: "Chilvalry ain't dead, you just gotta buy it wholesale." Yet the
three men crouched on the floor did the work of a janitor not for money but for
her. It was worth her fixer's angry fits.
She looked the men over, chatting to each other happily as if they had been
friends for a long time. When they stood, she smiled and said "thank you" like
a good little girl and extened her hand, just far enough to express her
intention. She had been watching - most of the people here talked to make an
impression on the surface. The real talk was beneath, subtle yet far more
solid than the artificial words they used.
One of the men took it, a handsomely rugged man. Who knew how old he was? She
guessed he was 30 or so, no face youthing or his stubble would have been more
artificial.
The other two men smiled falsely and wandered off, no doubt watching her for
the first moment she was free. Men's egos were cruel, sometimes, but not half
as subtle, or as deadly, as a woman's.
"Nostalgia rings true here at the Chatsubo," she heard the deejay announce,
"but from low to high, here's a more modern slammer. Chipped from the..." His
voice was almost completely lost in the intro to the song screaching out from
one of the on-stage holos playing a pencil axe.
She smiled, almost ferrally, to the man who had her hand firmly in his. "Let's
dance."
The music moved through her, almost burned her with the sensation she had been
feeling. Her entire body moved to the music, as both it and she were one. The
man on stage was a pro, not just a chip-and-pay deejay, and the man with her
moved as quickly as she did, to the moment. People had backed away from the
two to watch them.
Drugs, music, and freedom gave way to the perfection of the moment, and it was
hers.
...
They past a few tables of people who simply stared as they walked back to nab a
booth before it was taken. J.J. almost glowed with excitement.
"So, what's your name, stranger?" she asked idly as they took their seats
across from each other. His body language said 'muscle.'
He laughed at something, a rumble more than a laugh. "My friends named me
'Skeeter.'" He wouldn't tell her his real name, something she expected.
"I'm J.J. You're one hell of a dancer, Skeeter."
"You are too, J.J. Null static. I didn't tag you for being wired."
Then was her turn to laugh, though inside she wanted to scream with glee. "I'm
not." Not a single wire was inside her body. She held her pendant between two
fingers. The only wire near her was the chain around her neck.
He sat back, staring in either awe or amazement. "No crazies, right? Well
slot me a square of ludes, you are impressive."
She smiled gently, taking it all in.
He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Say, why don't we slit the bar and
--"
"You'll do no such thing."
"Fuck," J.J. said aloud, and threw herself to the corner of the booth, staring
with an angry sneer up at the man who had intruded.
He looked like some sort of street doc throwback. A long scar lead from his
eye to his neck and he stood lop-sided with the support of a cane. Everything
else was pretty well covered by straight-collared trenchcoat, gloves, and what
appeared to be infrared goggles.
The phrase 'You'll do no such thing' marked him her contact.
"Hey, drugbody, the lady and I were --"
"No," J.J. interrupted. She had reservations but didn't really want to see a
fight. "Skeeter, meet Father Jim." She really didn't know the man's name, but
she was thrown from party to think in twenty nanoseconds. "Please have a seat,
Father."
The stranger attempted three times before there was a metallic crack and his
right knee jerked out. "Old thing," he explained as he sat next to J.J.
Skeeter looked accusingly at her. "Father?" His eyes said, 'I want an
explanation for this.'
"Father Jim, from the Southside Mormons," she said with a weak smile. "He
keeps an eye on me, you know?"
"Sometimes," the false Father said in a raspy voice, "she gets kinda crazy."
She what? J.J. stuttered, "D-do you mind if I meet you later, Skeeter? I've
gotta talk to the Father about something, since he's here. Maybe we can pick
up where we left off."
"Yeah," he said disbelievingly, standing up from the booth. "Maybe. Slot ya
later, chick."
When he was out of earshot, J.J. exploded. "What the fuck do you think you're
doing?" she hissed. "You're twenty minutes late, you look like a goddamned
squatter, and you ruin my private party."
"I saved your worthless neck, girl," he said in the raspy, half-wild voice.
"That man was on the over."
"What?"
"Doesn't your fixer teach his go-gets anymore? A trigger-for-higher. He's a
hit-man."
"So?" she sneered.
"You might be killed soon just for being seen with him."
"Oh, big drecking deal. Maybe I want to die, you ever consider that? Who made
you my father, anyway?"
J.J. realized what she had asked and lapsed into silence. Father Jim pulled a
thin envelope from inside his jacket and put it on the table. "For a flash-
getter, you don't wear a lot of jewelry."
"Yeah," she muttered, searching through her purse, "well maybe I don't like
jewelry. Too gaudy. Gimmie something classy any day."
"Like that pendant?" He didn't move to point at it and didn't seem to look at
it. J.J. began to notice that her contact did not move much at all.
"Yeah, 'like that pendant.'" She put a box on the table and swiped the
envelope. "You got something against simplicity?"
He smiled thinly and looked at her from behind the goggles. "No," he carefully
said, "but for a wageslave at a jewel store, you don't wear much of your
wares."
Her contact stood, his right knee clicking into place, and walked away. The
small box was gone.
"Hey!" she shouted. "Who the hell are you?!" How did he know where she
worked? How did he even know who she was? "Oh... shit."
J.J. Faust slumped back, defeated, in the empty booth. It wasn't worth going
after him. She looked desperate and at the disadvantage, which made her
vulnerable. She learned to live with that and the things that people did to
people who were vulnerable.
Well, J.J. thought as she frowned into the dancing crowd, they could think what
they wanted. She knew she wasn't weak, and that was enough. She was never
weak. Never.
"What does it take to get some service around here?" she said loudly to no one.
For the first time in six months, she waited for something to happen.
...
Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins
From: jenkins@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Ode to Joy
Summary: Jump in anytime!
Ode to Joy
...
The bar danced to a modern beat, the sounds of numerous instruments sliding
together as the man on the stage banged out chords and riffs on three keyboards
simultaniously. Rock and roll had a certain beat, but this song had five.
In slang, it was called "Funkpunk".
J.J. Faust was dejected and insulted and just the very slightest bit scared.
Her contact, gone for five minutes at the least, knew who she was. He had
supposedly saved her from a man she was getting to know, like she slotting
asked the bastard to, and then left her alone in the booth.
For the first time in six months, she waited for something to happen...
...and nothing did. In a bar filled with people interested in enjoying
themselves, nothing happened.
"Serves you fucking right, bitch," she muttered to herself as she stood. Her
contact, who she named Father Jim, was probably chipping some idiotic "pretend
you're James Bond" persona chips. She bought his stories and let it unnerve
her.
She checked her chrono, it was almost one in the morning. She would be getting
to sleep early tonight.
J.J. made her way through the surging crowd over to the bar, smiling sweetly at
men who looked her way, and sat. "Whisky," she said to the empty air. "Neat."
"Ain't that a little much for a little sweet?" The bartender, Ratz, appeared
before her. His plastic arm whined quietly behind the multiple beats of the
music.
She smiled. It sounded like he meant what he said. "No, not at all.
Something I just need to calm myself a little."
Ratz poured her the whisky but looked at her, almost studying her, before he
set it down. "No, you don't look well."
She shook her head and held the drink in her hands. "I don't feel bad, I'm
just so frustra --" She cut herself short. In seconds, she felt herself chill
and feel ill.
"Miss?"
That tone. That tone she was using reminded her of something, something she
didn't want to remember. Something about herself and about the past.
It didn't seem to make any sense, to be scared about herself, but she was. And
she was frightened because she could not remember, some fist of mind-numbing
paralysis preventing her from even knowing what it was that scared her.
What is it, part of her mind screamed at the block, tell me! Mentally, she was
trying to beat the answer out of herself, and something in her mind laughed
back. Something in her mind had answered.
"-- probably drugged off her senses. Goddamned pity what some girls will do
nowadays for fun."
J.J., fealing cold and clammy, looked around like a frightened animal,
collecting her senses. The bartender was elsewhere, the music had stopped, and
two men next to her were watching her slack-jawed expression with disinterested
pity. Her chrono read two twenty-five, her mind read confusion.
"I- I have to go," she said quietly to herself, and she headed toward the door,
hoping that no one was watching her go.
At least one person was. He had been watching her since she came into the
Chatsubo all top-of-the-world and looking for trouble. To Father Jim it was
simply clear: The J.J. Faust who entered that evening was not the same J.J.
Faust who left.
He looked across the table and nodded to a young street punk. "Follow, Wasp.
I have things to do."
...
There was no sky that night, no moon or stars or ripples of texture from the
colorful downtown lights. And, in one woman's mind, there was no J.J. Faust.
Lost in her own thoughts, she wandered along the street, the monorail station
her ultimate goal.
She tried not to think, her mind filled with white-noise caused by fear. The
world around her became as nothing as the world within. She almost missed the
monorail stop.
There were people there, several wirepunks and squatters with nothing better to
do, and a pair of rent-a-cops talking to each other over a thermos of coffee.
Many of them turned to look at her. She just wanted them to go away.
A wirepunk boarded the monorail when she did, there was nothing she could do
about it. He glanced in her direction a few times, grinning every time she
noticed him. Someone should do something about punks like that, she thought.
The punk left the same station she did, she had no question as to why. The
security was as lax at this station as the last. Someone had to do something.
Only five blocks to her apartment and she did not know when the wirepunk was
planning on striking.
Footsteps came closer as she walked past the other buildings. Strong hands
grabbed her on the shoulders, jolting her to a stop. Her fear flashed into
anger as she was forced around.
...
Wasp inspected the small river of blood that snaked out of the nearby alleyway.
Light levels reorganized themselves as his eyes adjusted to the little light.
A body sprawled on the pavement, a man with his skull obviously collapsed. A
dim spot on a nearby wall revealed the weapon.
He shuddered, glad he could not make out any color. He had watched from a
distance as the woman was dragged into the alleyway, but his eyes could not
readjust to the near-black alley. He began to move towards it when she left
and continued her way down the street, proud as ever.
Wasp headed toward the nearest phone. Someone had to be told.
...
Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - for intent of readers and other writers,
this may be used with caution. Have fun.
From: jenkins@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Ode to Joy
Date: 25 Mar 91 00:39:15 GMT
Ode to Joy
...
The blood came off easily, just warm water and a little soap. J.J. had easily
told the man at the front desk that she was returning from a costume party,
which he believed and let her return to her apartment.
Someone had to take care of the punk, J.J. told herself as she washed the dies
from her hair. He was gritty and hardly dressed for the part... though he did
notice her. He was not worth being raped over, and that was that.
What J.J. was thinking and imagining became blurred and confused, everything
running together like whitenoise over music. Surely she was imagining that she
had just killed someone. There was no blood, no body, nothing to convince her
otherwise. She might have also imagined the bar, the man she danced with, and
her frightening contact. It made sense to her that it wasn't real, part of
something else, so when she later went to sleep nothing bothered her.
She slept well.
The ringing phone woke her up. It normally beeped gently when she bothered to
activate the programming, but the apartment knew she was asleep. J.J. never
tried to figure out how it knew these things, leaving it up to the proggers and
netrunners.
She reached from beneath linen. When she found the phone she pulled it to her
face. "Allo?" she asked weakly.
"Hello, little girl. I've got a special for you."
At the voice of her fixer, J.J. cringed and sneered. "What's your problem,
Don? It's...." The chrono read 2:14pm and her words died in her throat.
"Look, can't I get some sleep?" She wasn't even tired, but did not want to
deal with her fixer.
"Sleep? It's still the weekend, girl, and business is fine. I thought you
might be interested in this one, though. It's a request for some interesting
stuff to be shipped over to a familiar place: Chatsubo. You remember that,
don't you?"
She remembered the name, but not much about it. "Yeah," she answered. She
tried to remember. Dancing.
"Good. This time around, though, you get to keep some. It's a nice sedative.
Happy-Go-'Round."
Dancing. A man in goggles. "I can't," J.J. insisted. "I have too much to do
today. It should have been done last night."
"Not even for a free piece of the action?" Don's voice was soothing and
corrupt.
Monorail. A forceful man. Death. "I... can't..."
J.J. slammed the phone back down on its cradle, rubbing her neck with a shaking
hand. Her skin was cold and damp, feeling of death. Dead. The realization
had finally come to her: she had killed a man last night.
She wanted to forget again, but couldn't. His face, wide-eyed with terror,
appeared almost lovely to her now, framed by straight pale blonde hair. He was
almost sixteen and really didn't want much, only to be noticed and accepted.
J.J. Faust had her head cradled between her knees. She was crying. She just
wanted to forget.
...
Bleary-eyed and exhausted, J.J. looked up at the chrono in her kitchen.
Midnight, God what an awful time to be awake. Coffee was brewing, though she
didn't have enough will to take any drugs. She didn't want to feel any better
about anything.
'Ten hours,' she told herself. It took ten hours to forget that face, or at
least to blur it. 'Of course, I had forgotten and /I/ wanted to remember. It
was my fault. Everything. I ruined what was so simple.'
The coffee tasted good. It was something to think about instead of herself,
her failure, a dead boy and her ruined safety from it all. Don promised her
some salvation, though. Not very much and not for very long, but it was
something she could hold in her mind and understand.
The phone beeped quietly and J.J.'s heart lept. Was it her fixer, or someone
else? She didn't want to talk to him, but she wanted to know if it was him.
It was important.
She let it ring five times. The answering program connected with the phone and
J.J. heard her own voice from the phone speaker. "Hello, you have reached the
apartment of J.J. Faust..."
...
"...I'm not here right now, but if you would please leave your name and number
with this program, it will try to help you as much as possible."
The voice on the other end of the phone was calm, professional, and completely
sane. Definitely not the same woman that Wasp had seen last night, either in
the bar or afterwards.
He hung up the phone at the beep. He was told to talk to this Miss Faust
personally, not a telephone. He was told to somehow invite her to a wiz-rich
gathering, some sort of frenchy dance party. Wasp didn't know why he was doing
all this footwork for a cybercripple. The old man didn't pay very well, at
least not yet, but had suddenly taken an interest in this Faust.
Wasp supposed that he had, too. It took an odd kind of insanity to kill a man
and leisurely walk away, one that Wasp had seen many times in many people, but
never in a sub-executive drug-carrier.
The old man had told him a lot about the woman, what she did and how much she
was payed, but it was time he did a little research of his own.
...
Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins, use only with forewarning
From: jenkins@magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Ode to Joy
Date: 15 Apr 91 05:57:27 GMT
[Wow! People all seem to post at once around here, like clockwork every other
week there's a two-day spurge. Just an on-handed remark, do ignore me.]
...
Ode to Joy
...
J.J. Faust was bothered by everything through the day. The shower program
wasn't working, work was too tedious, her co-workers were too nosy. At one
point, she found herself shouting at one of the other gemologists.
The vision of the boy was still in her head. She had slept fitfully for the
few hours before she had to get ready for the commute to work. Police were
around the alleyway where she killed him, searching for fingerprints that
weren't on file and traces of drugs that were not there. It was a nice
neighborhood and murder, any murder, was looked after. She managed to pull
together enough effort to walk by as anyone would - suspicious but uninvolved.
Riding the monorail, she thought about the other wirepunks the boy was with,
the way they were laughing and enjoying themselves. She wondered if she killed
a good friend or a leader. Terrified, she realized that she really didn't
care. She didn't care and she hated being weak enough to think, even for a
moment, that she did.
"Good morning, J.J."
She smiled at the man through a mask of courtosy and went into the office
building. She recognized him, but somehow the name slipped her grasp. It
didn't matter much, though.
The building was short and thin, only ten stories. The jewelry store was, of
course, on the first floor. A small but formidable chain, run by the best for
the job. Jeron and White Jewlers. Managed by Lin Yomoto. Local designer,
J.J. Faust. She was not truely a designer, but knew almost as much about
design as she did about the jewelry. By title, she was a Gemologist. There
were others in the store, but J.J. was the best and highest paid.
Most of the day was a blur of layouts and precise construction; her mind was
not on the job, but her hands were.
She sketched up something in the time she had between jewelry. It was a
monstrosity "Curious Jane." A necklace with a single tear-shaped gem, dark
blue amythyst, surrounded by a silver lattice that would, she noted, be chain
linked and flexable and easily large enough to lock someone's heart. Or
overcome it.
It was a beautiful peice, or could have been with some detailed work, but when
she looked at her chrono lunch was over. The paper fell into the trash and she
got back to work.
...
The workday ended at last. There were still a few items left undone, but J.J.
shoved them all into a "To Do" folder and assured herself she would get back to
them.
She found an envelope when she got home, on the floor in the foyer, obviously
slipped under the door. Her name was written in an elaborate, maybe even
hand-written calligraphy. "J.J. A. Faust." The envelope was a stiff paper,
or maybe what inside was.
With a single fingernail she tore it open and pulled out the invitation. It
had to be an invitation, for nothing else she had ever seen before had so much
flowery script.
Missus J.J. A. Faust is cordially invited
to join Mr. and Mrs. Gregory White this
Tuesday next for a formal gathering added
with Olde French venue.
J.J. stared at the card. Mr. and Mrs. White? Mr. White was her boss' boss'
boss (a man she jokingly called her Great Grandboss), the man ultimately the
entire chain of jewelry stores worked for. Who he worked for she could only
guess, but she didn't really care.
Still, a letter. Not a fax, not e-mail, an honest-to-God letter delivered by
human hands.
As a young girl, J.J. received hand-written letters from Grandmother, living in
Germanic state that wasn't quite so war-torn. It was really a Francish state
at the time, but her Grandmother kept to old ways. The letters must have cost
a fortune to send from Cochem to New York through some old postal service, but
Grandmother wouldn't have it any other way. In the last letter J.J. ever
received from her, Grandmother told her why she wrote by hand and delivered.
"In the time when many things happen, in times of war and technology and
strife, we must remember who we are or we will loose ourselves to our own
ambitions."
The chain of J.J.'s pendant chaffed her neck and she felt cold and hot. She
scratched the area and her eyes focused back upon the card she was holding.
The invitation was a complete surprise to her. Still, that was tomorrow night.
She had all of tonight left to her and her alone.
She had a murder to forget.
...
Blue and silver tint added to the natural brown in her hair made her look like
some joygirl, but J.J. fussed and braided and, eventually, came up with a style
she liked. One braid was thick and silver, like some cybernetic attachment.
Streaks of blue lead to the other, much thinner and smaller, which wrapped
around her left ear.
Chrome blue lipstick and a pale base made her look like some dead who refused
to stop striving. J.J. smiled at that girl in the mirror and was returned a
ferral clown's grin.
That wasn't right, she thought. The girl was alien to J.J.'s eyes. Except for
the old pendant she wore, the girl was a stranger in the apartment. This isn't
right, she thought again.
Sure it is. It's right. It's just for fun, just for tonight. And then, in
the morning, I go to work without any consequence... because that, the girl in
the mirror, isn't really me.
The girl smiled again and left the apartment, leaving J.J. Faust somewhere far
behind.
...
Wasp yawned and sat in the pouring rain, huddled in a slick that wouldn't last
a month. He didn't know why he bothered, the slick was just as wet inside as
it was out.
"You've got to get a car, boyo," he muttered to himself.
From the alleyway he could see the front of the apartment building plainly and
had been watching people walk in and out all evening. Plenty of cops, corps,
rezzies, pretend-I'm-sanes, and a few reporters. None of them had been J.J.
Faust.
This was what his boss called "Stage Two" of the plan. The man, who had taken
the name Father Jim, worried Wasp. He was crazed and brilliant both, and the
old coot knew. That he had a plan, and that it involved this woman, didn't
comfort Wasp any. But money was money, and the Father was paying well for
Wasp. Well enough that he could get a car.
"What the --"
Scooping up a pair of electri-binocs, Wasp watched as a woman dressed in
metalics and makeup walked out of the building. At first he thought it was
some joygirl who didn't make it past the front desk, but then he saw the
patterns on her face and hair were careful and stylish. And under them both
was J.J. Faust.
"Shit, that woman's crazy," he said as he stood. She was carrying a heavy-
fabric "metal" umbrella, but wasn't wearing much more than a longcoat and a
pendant. Here, in the middle of winter, that was this side of stupid.
He almost went over and offered her a ride on his cycle.
Don't get involved, he said to himself. Don't get involved. The only thing
stupider than walking through the rain like that is to get involved with a
psychotic woman. Or was she psychopathic? Shit, did it matter?
He quickly remembered the many psychotic women he had been with in the past,
and the many wounds he gathered and sometimes enjoyed from it. But he was told
to simply follow her and keep her alive. That's all.
"Knowing this woman," Wasp said to himself, "that'll be harder than it seems."
He followed and watched J.J. walk toward the monorail station. What a fucking
crazy bitch.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - use with permission, but you knew that.]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Ode to Joy
Date: 2 May 91 18:49:04 GMT
Ode to Joy
...
The tie was too tight, if one could call it a tie. Something kind of like a
silk bandana threatened Wasp with suffocation, and he couldn't figure how to
loosen it with the pin stuck in it. The pants and shoes were equally too
tight. The only thing that he couldn't complain about was the jacket and
overcoat, mostly because the kevlar lining that would doubtlessly protect him
if anything happened.
The plan, what there was of it, was the creation of Father Jim. Each time the
plan took another step, Wasp was more impressed with the man's creativity and
connections. The clothes, the equipment, and even the invitation was all
provided by him. And the money.
Greg White, Wasp discovered to his interest, knew very well that J.J. was on
the list. Whether Father Jim knew the host or his boss, Wasp never got the
chance to find out. There was only so many people he himself knew, and only so
much time between watching over J.J. and researching other items of interest.
Wasp was at the ball with the assumed name of Brent Gianno. An Italian name.
Dirty blonde and oval-faced, Wasp hardly looked Italian. The only thing he
assumed about it was that Father Jim must have been off his neuroware to give
it to him. Then again, the man usually was.
To Wasp, the ball was boring. Some sort of meet-and-be-rich type of party, he
wondered what the real reason was about. Drugs? Mafia? Yakuza? Creative tax
evasion? In fact, there were a lot of other questions that he could neither
find out on his own nor from the multi-knowledgable Father. How was security
arranged? What was the floorplan of the house? Why was J.J. really there?
But security was tight all around and Father Jim wouldn't tell him. Even
though he had a right to know.
The house was beautiful, though. Wasp had an eye for art and culture, even
though he spent most of his time with the dredge and druggies of the street.
It was fashioned to... whatever time period it was supposed to be fashioned to.
It had columns frilled at the top, porches that stretched for meters, spiraling
staircases with rod iron railings, and its share of short balconies. And the
entire place was white, with the exceptions of the modern holisculptures and
laser art that were placed here and there, casting color where it was needed
and leaving the rest a gasping naked white.
Greg White knows his shit, thought Wasp. Harsh high tech paired with flowing
classic art should not have worked together. The Harsh and Soft should have
torn the feel of the house into something haphazard. The mixture was rare and
inspired. Wasp was on the edge with it.
He studied the mixture carefully as he wandered about most the first floor.
Guards, and there were many of them, prevented him from wandering too far. But
of course.
But he watched J.J. like a hawk. He kept a red targeting triangle on his
retinal display hovering wherever she was.
It was about halfway into the night when he looked over to see whom was coming
in so late... and almost called out angrily, "What the hell are you doing
here?" But the answer was obvious; to meet, again, J.J. Faust.
He looked absolutely nothing like himself, but Wasp knew his mannerisms well
enough to recognize the man.
Father Jim.
Perhaps it was his street cyber-throwback which was the disguise, or perhaps it
was what the Father had become that evening. A dapper, glittering gentleman
who was clean, groomed, and everything worked from his vat-grown left hand
(which usually had a tic) to his decrepid cyberleg construct. He did have a
pair of dark Soyari cybersunglasses on, though. Wasp understood that Father
Jim's skull had fractured in several places and his eyes were completely
irreplaceable.
Wasp imagined the Father Jim he knew with combed, clean hair and a working body
and some supposedly 'olde french-style' suit. The man was the same but not as
old as Wasp first thought.
Father Jim walked almost directly up to J.J., who was looking elsewhere,
happily talking with a few other people. "That man is crazier than I thought,"
Wasp muttered in amazement. After all he told the chipped fool he wanted to go
after her. She could have lost herself at any moment and they both knew it.
Wasp honestly didn't think Father Jim would do this.
Wasp heard the introductions in french and had no idea what the Father was
calling himself, but neither did he know what J.J. was calling herself. J.J.
had four classes of college French and Father Jim was probably chipped, leaving
Wasp completely out of the conversation.
"Old fart," he muttered, drinking some wine. "Old clever fart."
Wasp never realized the state he was in. His ears burning, nearly gulping
wine... had he been watching himself from a distance he would have decided that
he was very angry... or insanely jealous.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - use with permission, but you knew that.]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Ode to Joy
Date: 7 May 91 06:58:19 GMT
Ode to Joy
...
Monsieur Chas Douchot, much to J.J.'s pleasant surprise, spoke impeccable
French. She could hardly keep up with him as they talked. He was surprising
in other ways, as well. His dress and mannerism was careful and graceful and
although his voice was dry, it was full of simple honesty. He wasn't very
handsome in the modern sense of the word, but he acted handsome just as J.J.
sometimes acted beautiful.
She introduced herself as Josephine Faust, discarding the rest of her full name
to make herself more eloquent. She responded in French to impress the man. He
complimented her on it.
Her heart began to race, warmth spread out to her shoulders. She recognized
it immediately and, like it was a drug she was addicted to, she fell headlong
into it.
They talked about the party (it was boring, they both agreed), about the
weather and if the rain would let up anytime soon, and then they started
talking about jewelry.
She shouldn't have been surprised, Mr. White did run the stores she worked for,
but it made her a little uncomfortable. She shrugged it off with a sip of a
sparking wine.
After glancing quickly to one side, J.J. saw a man glaring at her for an
instant then he quickly turned away.
"Would you not agree that the jewelry of the French Renaissance inspired more
of the modern-day pieces than any other period?" Chas Douchot asked her in
French.
"What?" She faced him, again. "Oh, yes." She didn't, but something was
bothering her and she needed a little more time to think it over. She smiled
politely and asked in English, "Could we speak normally for a while? I'm
afraid it has been quite a while and my head is buzzing with trying to
translate."
Chas nodded once, very gently. "Of course." He had almost no accent. "But I
am quite interested with French jewelry. Your pendant, for instance. French?"
She looked down at it and held the chain between her fingers, feeling the cool
gold against her skin. It really wasn't anything fancy, just a very simple
pendant. "Yes," she said quietly. "I think it is."
"French Revolution?"
She looked up at Chas sharply, still holding the pendant. She looked at him
with harsh eyes, but she keep her voice calm. "I don't know. But it's old,
yes."
Chas stopped before he spoke again and looked at her. "You look pale,
Josephine. Perhaps we should move to the window?"
J.J. relaxed. "Yes, please." She had overreacted for no reason and now the
conversation would return to normal. "Why are you wearing the sunglasses here
at night?"
He answered as they slowly walked into small alcove a little separate from the
main ball. "A near fatal accident, I'm afraid. It was rather gruesome and I'm
sure you wouldn't want to hear the details of it." His dry voice sounded
filled with emotion and tone for a moment, but it was simply the way he said it
and nothing more.
J.J. smiled and looked up at him with wide eyes. "Please? My life is so dull,
sometimes. Nothing bad ever happens to me." She said it with such ease even
she believed it.
The tall man looked at her a moment from behind black lenses. He opened the
window and stared out. J.J. saw briefly that he carried a wide knife under his
jacket. She regretted asking, having under-estimated the man.
"I belonged to a company, then." He paused, unmoving. "We were re-taking a
plot of land that held some company goods in bunkers, going in to get the
information out. We had panzers and goggle relays and some archaic computer
link equipment and one man who could use it. We rose over a hill and they hit
us with an ultraviolet flood. Burnt my eyes clear out, and most of my face.
Company hardly had enough money so I got goggles instead of eyes. Camera
lenses. The media used to use 'em all the time."
J.J. found herself standing as still as he was, completely absorbed in his tale
and staring up at his face, seamless and strong-jawed.
Chas moved, breaking the spell. J.J. felt very self-conscious and cleared her
throat, looking outside into the overcast night.
"But tell me, Miss Faust," he said, "where did you get that incredible pendant
of yours?"
She blushed. "This? Oh, a friend."
"He must have been quite special."
What was he insinuating? "No. Not really. Just a friend."
There was a pause, most likely filled with deep thought by both of them. He
probably wanted to know more about the pendant. Don't tell, something told
her.
"His wife died," she said. "He gave it to me. It reminded him of her."
Her. Her, the arrogant bitch. The woman had too many gems, too many trinkets.
Never always enough room. She was too rich, thought too much. She deserved to
die.
"Really?" Chas rubbed his chin. "It is a wonder, considering how old it is.
Do you know where she got it?"
>From a drugged-up fence in Chicago. Fool never gave it to his girl, never gave
anything to his girl. He should have died, too, but was too dumb.
J.J. breathed heavily, deeply. Her shoulders and neck burnt hot, the blood
rushing on the way to her face. "No," she snapped. "Why do you keep asking me
these questions?"
Chas smiled. "I'm a collector of sorts. Of fine things. And you, Miss Faust,
are one of the finest women I have ever met."
The collector beamed contentness. He thought he was oh-too-fucking-brilliant.
Lock me up, darkness. Kill to get out, to move on. The torment was too much.
No. No, not again.
"No," she hissed. She looked up at Monsieur Chas Douchot but saw someone else
in his place. He was old and covered in wires. His face was scarred in many
places. Over his eyes were heavy goggles and his hands were metal chassis, the
left hand had a twitch. He wanted something. Her. Her pendant. "No," she
said louder, and reached like lightning under his jacket and pulled out his
long knife.
Chas started to protest. "Jos --"
"Not again!" she shouted, taking both hands on the handle and shoving the blade
into his neck.
Blood splattered onto her as she pulled the knife out the first time. It felt
good, the warmth of life against her skin. She watched as Chas convulsed,
throwing himself against the wall and then falling halfway out the window.
It's so good to do to someone instead of having it done to you.
"I will not let it happen again!"
Filled with joy, J.J. Faust used the knife again and again.
...
Wasp stood, half-drunk, and stared. The action took less than three seconds
and left him completely stunned. She shouldn't have done that. The wirepunk
with intent to rape her, maybe, but J.J. Faust did not kill for a pendant.
"Oh my God," Wasp whispered to himself. "Or did she?"
There had been a flash of blinding light earlier which came from the window.
Many of the guests were still stunned or out from the effects. A microcomputer
in Wasp's cybernetic eyes had compensated immediately, but J.J. was gone.
He ran to the window after his discovery and saw a flexi-ladder dangling there,
a flash-flood attached to it, pointing conveniently at the window. Above, an
aircar hovered, its turbofan whining in protest of the strain.
A man stuck his head out the driver's side and called out. "Hey, you! Where's
the boss?"
"Taking a breather," Wasp called back. "Return to base, I'll talk to you
later!"
He looked out over the grounds and saw nothing, no one. Not even a guard. The
alarms hadn't been sounded yet and Wasp took the advantage to leave before they
were.
He didn't know where he was going, but J.J. was in trouble with herself and
needed help. Wasp knew he wasn't the right kind of help, but maybe he could
find out what was going on.
"Gods," he said to no one while he ran into the night, "what I wouldn't give to
know what's going on."
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - use with permission, but you knew that.]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Ode to Joy
Date: 28 May 91 04:39:54 GMT
[I'm really sorry about what happened with the last Ode to Joy. In my opinion,
it sucked flaky neurons. I am going to be re-writing parts of it so people
whom are actually keeping a nice and neat, ordered archive <cough, cough!> can
come and bug me about it. It should take about a week. On with the show.]
...
Ode to Joy
...
Out. Run. Free.
J.J. Faust felt... nothing. Not the pavement against her feet, not the knife
in her hand, and not the cold, wet air that would bring ice by morning, maybe
rain before. She felt no pain or sorrow for the man she just murdered, she
hardly remembered his face.
What she felt was passion. Be free, she told herself. Run. Out, yes. Out of
the city and away from these people. They want to close her in, stop her from
existing. Never again.
Freedom, she knew, was basic and sacred. She would fight to the death... no,
fight to the end before being forced to give it up. But there were times when
you had to volunteer to give up some of that freedom for survival. For food
you must work, and for work you must be under the command of someone.
No. No, you could be under the command of yourself. Your own protector, your
own survivor. Depend on no one but yourself. The thought came as a leap of
intuition, she found her heart racing at the possibility. It would be the
truest freedom of all, to kneel to no one!
The feeling lasted only a moment. True freedom would go against the only
society she accepted, the one that gave her the ability to have her freedom.
To take advantage of it would be wrong. The country had done so much to assure
that she would be as much of a person as everyone else. It was up to her to
make her own living, she knew this when she aimed at gemology. She knew it
when she wanted to further into jewelry design. It was up to her to make of
life what was given to her.
Exactly.
If they offer, then take. In college, J.J. took everything they offered. The
information, the resources, as many classes as she could. She took and
prospered from it. She had a good job and a good life, she liked both and
always had. She took the invitation offered to her, she took opportunities
given and avoided dieing at some punk's hands, she even took those chances with
Don and his info-and-drug runs. She took what was given.
So the greed was not bad, she decided. Not evil, but natural. It couldn't be
evil. She had used it, she could use it again. She would take her freedom
from the men and women who held the last shards of it. She would be her own
boss, her own worker, her own self. And she would start away from anyone who
would want to stop her. Away.
And she ran.
...
Wasp panted as he leaned against a nearby wall, the ferroconcrete pressed
coarse against his hand leaving chaotic dimples in his palm. He had been
jogging for fifteen minutes and prayed mercifully to no one particular that it
wouldn't start to rain.
The familiar blue-and-red strobe of a police cruiser was up ahead and Wasp took
the opportunity to rest and observe. The strobes caused a visual stutter
across his eyesight, leaving phantoms of the lights anywhere he looked. It
made optic target systems near useless. This was, of course, their intent.
One cop was walking about discretely, obviously trying hard to look in control
of the situation while keeping the growing crowd away. Wasp often wondered if
it was part of their psychological training, police drugs, or just the attitude
of police everywhere.
The other was talking on the radio. Nodding, talking some more, nodding.
After a minute, Wasp knew something was different about this incident. With
the hundreds of code-phrases that they could use this one cop was sure taking
his time.
A whine came out of the background noise of the late-night city and white/red
strobes flashed off chromed windows far down the street.
The truth was too obvious now. Someone was murdered, not simply wounded or the
cops would be in more of a rush. Something was wrong with this one.
Wasp pushed into the crowd that was forming as the ambunaught pulled up and
two parameds jumped out to take a look, gear in hand.
It was hard to hear the conversation with the crowd talking and gossiping among
themselves, but he did catch fragments.
"...too late. God, look at that..."
"...people these days. A knife wound is enough, but..."
Wasp, his face filled with disbelief, backed up out of the crowd. He knew who
the murderer was and couldn't help running. Running fast and hard. Running in
fear.
...
Run. Free. Out.
She wasn't just J.J. Faust, anymore. She knew that. She was something more,
something better, and something completely her own. She was Josephine Julianne
Arman Faust, a woman filled with joy at the bliss she discovered, the power and
freedom she had. All she had to do was take.
The blood didn't bother her. She knew what it was, a symbol of a life that was
hers. She learned from a class in mythologies of a religion that believed in
death was life, and in life was death, that everything was only a circle of
events which was prompted by change. She was that change.
Josepehine Julianne could not stop. She didn't want to.
A small whisper of a thought echoed in her head. "Yes, be free. Be free."
Her body began to protest. Slowly it began to gnaw on the edge of her mind,
but soon it was a sharp presence in her thoughts. It cried out for rest.
She screamed in her mind. Screamed at it to keep going. Screamed louder and
longer as her body protested more and more. It would not, could no go on. She
had to listen to it and knew she was still trapped. She loathed herself for
it. She loathed and screamed at herself all the way into the darkness of
sleep.
...
Wasp found the next body before the police did, allowing him a moment to
examine the area himself, trying to keep his stomach in check.
The woman's head was almost severed from her body at the throat through
repetitive stabs with, Wasp guessed, a Militech military survival knife. On
large animals (and most metals), the knife would have been sufficient, but it
worked too well on the small woman lieing in her own blood with a terrified,
twisted look on her face.
Wasp stumbled and leaned against a Newsnet terminal, trying to catch his
breath. The lamp attached to the terminal shone the area brightly and there
was only so much he could take.
Wasp closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then opened his eyes... there!
Something sparkled out of the corner of his eye, something sitting on the edge
of the blood.
He reached over and picked up a sapphire, about half a centimeter across. He
initiated his optic targeting and found three more in the same area, then two
more still strung together.
It had once been a necklace, expensive but simple. Just a string of sapphires
and perhaps the odd diamond. Simple but expensive. But how old? A week? A
month? Fifty years old? As old as the French Revolution?
The fear gripped Wasp, again, pulling his thoughts together into a single
coherent thought. Fear did that for him. It was his tool, causing him not to
run away but to run closer and work better. He had known fear even before his
new eyes were installed and knew it drove him to the Edge with the money and
the power and the prestige. Fear and hunger drove him to the dead Father Jim,
and now fear drove him on to J.J. Fear and something more.
He found two more women dead by J.J.'s hand, and scattered jewelry around the
bodies. "Why?" he kept asking himself, on the verge of a fantastical answer.
"The women, the jewelry, J.J. Faust, the knife, Father Jim...." How did they
tie together?
...
Josephine opened her eyes carefully. Her head throbbed a night of dangerous
drug and drink mixes as her eyes tried to adapt to the odd lighting that
virtually danced about her. It was bright and dark, her eyes felt blinded by
light but could see no light.
Several seconds revealed a dim and dirty light in the midst of complete dark
and cold. She was in an alleyway somewhere, sitting up against a decrepid
plastic dumpster and staring forward. Forward into the eyes of another woman.
Bright green, almost irradecent with tiny flakes of amber-gold. Wilkmann
Greenie-Genies. Josephine, herself, owned a pair of the expensive color-tacs.
Panic held Josephine locked to those eyes. Not her own panic, but the panic of
the green-eyed woman. It was an overwhelming panic, a terror that tried to rip
deep down into Josephine's soul.
There was a warning in those eyes. A warning of hideous death, cruelty on the
level of mankind, but much more absolute. The woman's face was twisted with
the same root terror and the same warning. Little splatters of blood dotted
her delicate cheekbones and contrasted beautifly her pale skin.
Josephine gasped and pressed herself backwards, scrambling to leave the alley,
but she could no more stand than she could keep herself breathing normally.
The green-eyed woman was dead, covered in so much blood that whatever she may
have been wearing was now in deep red tatters. There was so much blood that
the woman was perfectly white. There was so much blood... so much....
Josephine saw the wound like a gaping chasm. She saw it, every last nuance of
it in a brief second. She saw where the skin and muscle ripped away, where the
windpipe was draining the last dribbling bits of the jugular vein, where the
spine had been cracked or torn. In an instant, she saw it, and even though she
turned her head and squeezed her eyes tightly closed, she could still see it in
her mind.
Free, a voice in her head whispered. You did that, and you can do that when
you are free. Yes, you Josephine Julianne Arman Faust. You did that because
you are free.
"No," she whimpered, tears starting to well to her eyes. "No."
Yes. You are Josephine Julianne --
"No I am NOT!" She stood and shouted upwards, a river of tears blocking her
vision. "I am J.J. Faust! I /am/ J.J. Faust! Who are you?!"
Josephine...
She screeched, "/I/ am J.J. Faust! Only I!"
Julianne...
"Show yourself!"
Arman...
"I demand it! I... I am free! You MUST tell me who you are!"
Silence. Her words echoed and quickly faded from the alley. Then the quiet
voice, again. Thoughts in her own mind.
I am you.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - use with permission, but you knew that.]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Ode to Joy
Date: 2 Jun 91 07:09:45 GMT
[Okay, folks, tell me if this is quite insane enough, yet, or if I should
push the 'Twilight Zone' lever just a little bit further.]
...
Ode To Joy
...
J.J. Faust, or what was left of her, couldn't scream, though she tried. She
sobbed pitifully to herself, about herself, and curled up in the trash next to
the dumpster. It was cold, she noticed as the wind bit her face. Something
wet curled around her ankle and she assumed it was the blood.
I did that, she thought while choking on quiet sobs. The image of the dead
woman was still clear in her mind. Me. Freedom. God, why did I listen to
myself?
She didn't smile, but felt the tears push back. It was a funny question,
though. True, perhaps, but obviusly funny in a twisted way.
Her situation, itself, seemed surreal, like something out of one of those
soap-operas she always got caught up in. A woman, psychotic with drugs and
music, goes out and kills her date and a woman she met only once. Our hero,
wherever the hell he may be, comes along in the nick of time and prevents her
from jumping into the freezing bay.
Wait, she thought. The woman she met once. The woman with the green eyes.
Memories danced and clouded about her when she tried to place the face. She
determined to be rational about this when she was so close to completely
loosing herself, but even the recent memory of the woman's gouged body hid her
face. The eyes shone through, though, clear as a pair of emeralds. Emeralds.
The necklace that lay between J.J. and the other body was broken, but not
badly. Emeralds and small diamonds dotted a broken mesh that held something in
the center, something large and clear that stared into J.J.'s eyes as clearly
as she stared at it.
Designed by Mario Toran of White Jewlers. Cost two million dollars. Seven
were made. Three by his hand, four by jewlers in four other stores. Named
"The Perfect Alien" for reasons J.J. never understood. Nothing was perfect.
She named hers "The Alien's Fault." The center diamond was flawed, but on the
necklace it looked like an alien eye. The designer was paid most of the
commission for that sale, but the true interpretation was hers.
And it was lieing there, broken, not more than a meter away. She had poured
her heart into it, making the stone work just right, though Toran demanded to
buy another. White, she heard, was strapped for money on this design as it
was. She had saved the company money. In her heart, and her mind, the
necklace was her design, as well.
A whisper brushed through her thoughts. No.
J.J. stood, quickly and defensively, forgetting about much the world around
her. There was fear in that thought, and it was not her own. "Yes," she said
tenitively. "That was mine. I would never destroy something of my own."
Free.
"I don't know who you are, but you're not me." She looked about cautiously,
expecting someone to step out of the shadows.
Free, the thought whispered again, a little stronger.
"I am free." Heat rose through her cheeks and shoulders. "You've been using
me." She said it, and she heard herself say it. She had been used, and she
wasn't afraid anymore. Her mind had been violated, her life had been violated,
and now her only creation had been violated.
"How DARE you?" She spat the words in haste to say them. "Who the hell are
you to go screwing about with MY life? And in hiding. Show yourself!" She
screamed again. "Show yourself!"
Nothing. The wind blew hollow whistling through some of the empty shells that
were buildings, somewhere in the distance a siren wailed through the city, and
there was some distant gunfight, barely audible.
Outside the alleyway, no one spoke. No one moved from above, no one showed
themselves. She realized how alone she truely was, in that moment.
But inside herself, in her thoughts, was a single alien thought. It sounded
like a child lost, crying out one word: help.
Help. Over and over again, like a ghost in her mind. Help. A child-ghost,
wanting only survival. Help. It was defenseless, now. J.J. must have known
what it was and it knew how J.J. could help. Help.
"Help?" she asked. The grip of compassion confused her, the sudden hits of
reality about her and the voice in her mind spun her around, looking for a
solution. Help. But there was no other solution. She did not know enough.
The voice had to go.
NO!
"No!" J.J. gasped. She could feel it, cold and hard, biting into her neck like
a garotte or a guilotine... or a knife. Terror, clearly her own, rang through
her mind.
Terror, ancient and alien, building for five hundred years, ripped through her
soul.
She never heard herself scream.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - use with permission, but you knew that.]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Ode to Joy - Author's Note
Date: 12 Jun 91 16:11:13 GMT
When I started wirting Ode to Joy, it was based on an idea I had for a Twilight
Zone set in the modern day. A woman is slowly posessed by a necklace without
even realizing it. Even though her behaviour is a lot off, she is, to herself,
perfectly normal. She gets the hints here and there and slowly, slowly peices
it together.
Every writer, or at least every reasonable writer, knows that what he, she, or
it writes reflects the way they feel. Well, I certainly didn't think I felt
violent or unnatural. But I get mono without realizing it. No illness, no
pain, a little tired but no other signs. I need some 8-12 hours of sleep where
I once needed 6-8. Then it slowly sets in, and I slowly, slowly peice together
the problem from fatigue and occasional fits of voilence, which had never been
there but didn't seem too unusual to me, at the time.
The similarities, J.J.'s necklace to my mono, are close to its own Twilight
Zone irony. I only realized a week ago about this, and had already finished
the outline for the last Ode to Joy. (In fact, the last Ode to Joy was written
first.)
But my mono is receeding, will hopefully be gone by the end of a month, and
life goes on. Both myself and J.J. have to live with what we have unwittingly
done. And we are both changed by the experiences, perhaps for the better.
Me, I'm not going anywhere. I'll still be here, writing away. Whether it will
be with J.J. Faust and Wasp is up in the air. Yay or nay, it's up to you. But
please, PLEASE explain your reason.
Not forcing. It is, after all, /your/ life.
[Don't you hate hidden morals? ;)]
...
[Kent Jenkins is Copyright(c) 1991 by FASA Corp, which explains all the typos.]
From amethyst!noao!asuvax!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!jenkins Thu Jun 20 11:39:08 MST 1991
Article 464 of alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo:
Path: amethyst!noao!asuvax!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!jenkins
>From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Summary: Sheeeeeee's baaaaaaack...
Message-ID: <1991Jun20.042919.20464@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 20 Jun 91 04:29:19 GMT
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Well, I got three (count 'em, THREE) favorable responces. This is good enough
for me. But hey, if you're just reading and there's something that you like or
don't like in ANY of these stories, for God's sake, //LET THEM KNOW!// We now
return you to your regularly scheduled psychopath.
...
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
Wasp looked at his watch. God, it was hard to imagine that he owned something
so... expensive. He stared at the dull silver luster for a time, imagining
that it was all a dream. He completely forgot to check what time it was.
The car's voice spoke in soothing tones. "We are cleared for liftoff, Mister
Rednix." The turbines hummed steadily under the chassis. Wasp pressed gently
on the throttle... and flew.
The navigation screen advised him of the course to take, the height to fly at,
and even once warned him of possible collision with a small flock of sparrows.
If anything was sucked into the turbine intake, he would fall some five hundred
meters to his death. The watch, he thought with a laugh, would probably be
fine.
He landed, carefully, on the top of a low parking garage. He was seven stories
above the ground and feet from the closest building. The experience of flight
left him giddy, but glad it was over.
His contact was standing there next to a long, sleek sportscar which looked
like a Porshe to Wasp, but so did most sports cars to him. Porsches were
almost everywhere the rich were.
"A fad," he muttered to himself.
Another man was with his contact. Tall and thick, he had to be hired muscle.
Typical, but understandable considering the unusual request for the meeting.
Wasp stepped out of the car and stood straight. Some six meters separated him
and his contact.
"Nice night, isn't it?" Wasp called out.
The man frowned. "Yes," he said. Wasp thought he sounded disappointed. "It
is a shame about Major Rednix." Simply a statement, that.
Wasp nodded, trying to look solemn. "It is. He was... a man of our times." A
line he once heard in a movie.
"And trying times they are, that we have to meet in secret. Rednix did explain
to you our agreement?"
A question. Wasp froze. The meet was called by the contact, Wasp was playing
blind. A dangerous game, like poker with armed players. "An Uzi beats four
aces," he muttered.
"Somewhat," Wasp then said aloud. "There are secrets that even I did not
know." Many, he failed to add. Most. Wasp was bluffing a flush, and didn't
want to boast four aces. He couldn't afford it since he came unarmed.
"What do you know?"
"Enough."
There was a pause. Wasp felt his own fear in that pause.
"Then..." the contact said, painfully drawing out the sentence, "we need...
fresh kill. Tonight."
The words stuck in Wasp's mind. 'Fresh kill.' Flashes of women with bloody
dresses and torn throats edged into his thoughts. Or did the man mean animal?
Wasp had to remind himself to breath as the rest of his mind tried not to go
into shock.
"That..." Wasp stuttered as he thought, "might prove... difficult. The night
is pretty late for something proper." He couldn't believe he was suggesting
what he was.
"We understand your situation, but our own situation draws us to this need. We
will pay full, though you are inexperienced, because of the time limit we have
placed upon you."
Wasp eyed the bodyguard carefully for a moment, guessing his armament. "Bet
he has a submachine or better," he muttered.
"I'm afraid that's out of the question," he called out to them. "I am
inexperienced and it would be rather foolish if I took on such an expedition
without more time."
The contact seemed to clench his teeth. "Then make the time."
"I'd love to, but I can't. Have to run." Wasp slipped into the car at the
same moment his contact raised a hand. He didn't know whether it was to signal
Wasp or the contact's bodyguard. He didn't wait to find out.
The contact didn't drop his hand. There was no gunfire. Wasp left quickly and
quietly with the bad, bad feeling he would be hearing from that man again.
...
"Fresh kill," Wasp muttered as he typed the words into the small computer. The
computer was once Father Jim's, like almost everything Wasp was surrounded with
recently. The car, the computer, the watch, the business. All thanks to a
mysterious woman named J.J. Faust.
J.J. was an enigma to Wasp. A woman who was clearly psychotic and yet
completely content with herself, a trait of sanity. Wasp knew insanity from
his years on the streets and underground, dealing with people who lived the
edge between the two.
J.J. killed Father Jim. She killed one of New York's underground contacts.
She killed Wasp's boss. And she went back to her life like nothing had
happened, working a nine-to-five job at a well-to-do jewelry store. Just like
that. Not even Wasp's old girlfriends were that over the edge.
She killed five other people, besides, but they meant nothing to him. All
horrible throat injuries, all rich women, but he never stopped to think about
them. First she killed Father Jim.
Wasp closed the directory he devoted to her and went back to the main
directory.
Password:_
Father Jim's information, all his tricks and all his blacklisting was under
that password. And all his little secrets.
The words "fresh kill" kept coming to mind.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - You really want to use these people?]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 29 Jun 91 18:32:51 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
J.J. Faust was a woman of little means, of little substance, and of little
effort. She lived in her safe little world of work and home, venturing forth
only to survive. Merely surviving, she was not really alive. She was not
strong enough to do more than survive, the poor weak mind that lived in that
body. She could only follow orders of others, do what she was told.
Once, she had the chance to be free. The pure and total Freedom that some
people seek yet never reach. The total Freedom of action, without guilt or
shame. But she tossed her chance, like a weak and frightened animal. She
tossed it into the waters of the harbor and --
Stop it, J.J. told herself violently. Her wandering thoughts usually kept
themselves in the background of her mind, influencing her emotions through
certain words and pictures. It had been a week since it had gotten so bad that
those thoughts were in the front... her thoughts.
She hoped they would go away when she threw the pendant into the water. The
thing that the jewelry had somehow become was perverse and evil, causing J.J.
to do things she never imagined herself doing. Going out to bars dressed like
a fashionable hooker, stealing her company's jewelry, or...
The inhalent felt like a sudden burst of clean, cool air to her system. Her
thoughts went numb, her emotions went numb. A safe level of apathy set in and
J.J. became mildly complacent. Five deaths from her hands meant little to her.
Liquid Lobotomy, best the streets could offer for a few moments of absolute
normality.
But nothing, she thought with uncaring acceptance, will be normal again, girl.
Nothing. And she continued working.
...
J.J. knew when the drug wore off, as it was a quite sudden shock to her system,
unlike many drugs she had taken before. The warning was a moment of absolute
panic, one that she had learned to control. She felt phobia and fear clench
her body into a psychosomatic trauma for an instant, and then it let go. Each
time was painful, and to most people would have been the most painful moment
of their lives, Hell in Just One Second. But J.J. had already seen Hell... in
herself.
If someone asked her, however, she would only shrug and tell them it's like PMS
crammed into one little second. It was worse, but she didn't want to let
anyone know. Only a few people knew what the drug was, anyway.
Her answering machine beeped when she came home that evening.
"How many?" she said, talking at it as she hung up her coat.
"Four," the program told her in the soft, asexual voice that all her household
programs had. The stock option; it was cheaper.
Four? Who didn't know she was at work? "Play," she said, and walked over to
the open kitchen, thinking more of dinner now than of the phone calls. The
mundane matters that had taken over the last two weeks of her life were like
gifts from God.
The machine beeped. "J.J., you flaming bitch!" The words were harsh and
thrown at her. She stopped and looked for a moment of horror at the machine.
"Changing your phone number ain't gonna do SPIT for you, girl! I know where
you live, and either you call me back or I'm gonna trash everything. Your
apartment, your life, and then you. You hear me, girl? You hear me?!"
J.J. just stood there, startled. Her heart raced and her breathing was shallow
and quick. Fear rose in her, causing her to tremble like some small animal.
It took the space between the messages for her composure to be regained, though
she was still shaken by the threats.
The machine beeped again. "J.J.? Look, hon, I'm sorry about that. I really
am. But I, like, get worried about you, you know? You never call, I don't see
you at the normal hangout spots, and then you go and change your phone number.
If it's about the adrenal-theta shipment you dropped, I said I was sorry. Just
give me a call, okay?"
Don... fixed things up for J.J. He gave her all sorts of drugs and hot bar
info, and in exchange she did things for him. Most of them involved carrying
things to people in exchange for money or some sort of info. But then she
dropped the pendant and then dropped him, destroying thousands of dollars of
goods against her wall. She could still see the stains if she stood in the
right place.
The machine beeped again. There was a pause, a few seconds, and then a dial
tone.
The fourth message was cryptic an scared her even more than the first. The
voice was young and sounded a little nervous, the way people talk when on-edge.
"Look, J.J. I know who you are and I've known for a long time. We're going to
meet someday, but I don't think you're ready for it. I don't know what 'zactly
happened with you, but I was at the White's mansion on the fourteenth. I'm not
going to call the cops" - a short chuckle - "but there might be others who
will. You'll know me when you meet me."
She almost reached for her Liquid Lobotomy but caught herself. She never
considered Don to be a problem, just hot air scared easily by uniform. But she
didn't know the last caller's voice.
"TV," she said in a dazed voice, staring at the nothing in front of her eyes.
"Channel twenty. I need something to deaden these nerves a little."
The neuvo-punk the televid started spewing was oddly comforting to J.J., the
threefold beat wrapped its way into her thoughts. It didn't matter what the
words were, or that the guitars were out of tune. The music was real, it was
now.
...
When, in later days, I stared at walls,
Thinking not of you
But of the things that happened in the halls,
I found your way was true.
If words could bruise a man's own soul,
Let the words fly true.
A man of music can more than sing,
So sing be black and blue.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - Use with permission at own risk.]
[Song? What song? Oh, THAT song. It's something I do in my spare ]
[time. And it's mine, damnit. Mine! Mine! All mine! So there! ]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 8 Jul 91 06:08:45 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
Dark. Empty. No one to call friend, nowhere to call home.
Alone.
Alone.
Alone.
...
J.J. Faust looked at the message and stared. Her heart raced and fear widened
in her, the familiar draw to a relaxant she used to take pushing that fear
further, the confused set of thought and possibilities pushing it further
still.
"Hey, J.J., you okay?"
She looked up from the terminal into the face of McPhee, then tenitively looked
away. She had yelled at him a few weeks ago for no good reason and felt badly
about it still.
"Yeah," she managed to mumble, discovering how dry her mouth had become. "Uh,
yeah. I'm fine. I just need a drink of water." She got up to get one,
forgetting about the monitor.
McPhee looked cautiously at the message displayed on the screen.
[Inter-Company Memo - From Main Office - Jeron & White Jewelers]
Miss Faust -
I have many things I wish to discuss and I would be honored
by your presence at lunch today, 11 o'clock, at the Downtown
Markee'.
- Gregory White
...
J.J. almost left New York right then, on her way to get some water. Mr. White
doubtlessly had enough proof that she had killed one of his guests and might
have enough suspicion to finger her for the missing jewelry. But she stopped
herself. She would never be free if she refused to face up to her own actions.
She would not give up her own honor just to survive another day.
The Markee' was a high-classed French restaurant that was geared for the
working upper class. The food was in small but delicious portions, cooked both
fresh and fast, and very expensive.
J.J. had never formally met Gregory White, though upon seeing him she
remembered him in a haze that was the evening of his french ball. A round,
slightly balding man with a stern look which easily turned into a smile to
the people who spoke with him.
"E-excuse me?" she said upon walking up to his table.
"Ahha! There you are." He smiled grandly and spoke with a light southern
accent. "You're five minutes late, but that never stopped no one's stomach
before. Have a seat."
His friendliness caught J.J. off guard, a little. Certainly this wasn't a man
who was about to blackmail her or turn her in, was it? She relaxed a little,
but kept up her guard. Most of all, though, she sat.
"You look as frightened as a church mouse," Mr. White said in an almost bland
baritone. "Relax. I own a jewelry store, not a guilotine. Now, do you mind
if I call you J.J.?"
She nodded, then shook her head. "Please do," she said at last.
"Good." He leaned forward as if to tell her some terrible secret. "I, myself,
hate formalities. Dreadful things. Kinda like visitin' your aunt for a while
and having to be so nice to the old hag. You can call me Gregory."
Some meaning came through to J.J. through the random sentences. "Uh... thank
you... Gregory." She looked at a seat and sat in it rather mechanically.
"That's a bit better. You really should relax, though. Do you know what ya
want to eat?"
She shook her head, again mechanically as she faught the paralyzing fear. The
fear was not as much Gregory White blackmailing her as it was her acting like a
shy ten year-old in front of her grandboss. Which she was successfully doing,
anyway. Even her thoughts were jumbled.
Gregory ordered for the both of them, including a glass of white wine for J.J.
He had been drinking a scotch or a bourbon or something, she couldn't tell.
Her smell, like most of her other senses, had refused to work for the time.
After he ordered, and the wine came, Gregory waited for J.J. to take a tenitive
sip before he spoke again.
"My, you are a flighty one. But I can't say I blame you, with me calling you
in on spur-of-the-moment to talk to you 'bout who-knows-what. I don't like
putting things off, either, but what I have to say to you...." The pause was
short. "You, Miss Faust, are an enigma."
J.J. felt like running again, but stayed her ground. The reassurance of self-
control calmed her a little.
"For all the world I wouldn't have known you were in my employ unless someone
finally pointed you out to me," Gregory said. He pulled his briefcase onto the
chair next to him and filed through it, eventually retrieving several papers.
He set them in front of her. The sketch on the top page, smeared a little from
the wrinkles in the page, was a jewelry design, a complex net-necklace that
would look like a gentle spiderweb when the silver and diamonds were placed
together. On the page were the words "Curious Jane," the name of the piece.
"Do you recognize them?" Gregory White asked as she stared at the top page.
J.J. looked at the second. "Gore." The third. "Night Beyond Tomorrow."
The last. "Freedom."
She felt like crying in joy. "Freedom" was the sketch she made months ago,
before the pendant came into her possession. Now it somehow came back to her
after.
Nodding, she carefully placed the papers back on the table. "They're mine,"
she said in a dry whisper. In a thought, she looked at Gregory and said, "How
did you find them?"
"That's not exactly all that important, J.J.," he said. "What is important is
I showed 'em to a few of the designers and we all agree that you're good. Not
the best, but a damned sight better than lots out there. Now, if we put you
under the caring wing of a designer who knew the system back and forth, you'll
probably make a damn good addition to the team."
It was all still trying to make sense. Team? Design?
"Don'cha get it, missy? I'm tryin' to say that you're getting a promotion.
Assistant designer. Well, for now at least."
J.J. smiled, lightly at first, almost dreamily.
"Fresh blood," Gregory said, smiling at her. "That's what this company needs.
Fresh blood."
Yes. Fresh blood. J.J. felt almost reborn. She would be that blood, that new
factor. She could finally get away from the things that reminded her of the
pendant, and it started with the necklace she named "Freedom." Finally, she
would be free of the pendant.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - The fun has just begun... again...]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 18 Jul 91 04:42:49 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
It was a Eurosolo, or that's what they were calling them. Americans would just
as likely call them "hit men", but Europe meant Style, and there was always
style in the name. So it was a Eurosolo who did Major Rednix in, or so was the
word on the street. A slick, wired bitch with titanium-edged knife and
top-mark stealth. Who hired her was anyone's guess, but the money was mounting
and the kids were already out sniffing for clues, hunting for the bounty that
didn't exist.
Wasp was still alive because he never believed the word on the street, not
unless he knew the truth. He knew the truth, all right, and it wasn't the
Word. He knew the Major's killer was a low-level jewelry designer named J.J.
Faust. Worker, go-fer, drug addict, murderer. The Major knew what was wrong
with J.J., and he was trying to take her because of it. It must have been
something very special, something the Major couldn't buy or swindle out of one
of his many contacts. And he died with all the secrets.
The damn fool had contacts in the Pentagon and in the upper structure of IBM
and Sony. He had his fingerprints all over the government and army and in dark
corners of the streets that Wasp wasn't stupid enough to tread. But that was
Wasp the gang kid, young, naive. He had to be Wasp the fixer... but he still
felt young and naive. He looked at everything he knew, time and time again,
but couldn't come up with the solution.
What was so special about J.J. Faust?
Wasp picked up the phone, Major Rednix's phone, and dialed. He'd have someone
tell him what the woman was up to, the way he had for the Major.
...
Gregory White looked nervous, his eyes wide and face pale. It was a result of
the gas lingering in the air, he knew, but he didn't like it. Already he was
at high-risk of heart attacks without this idiotic gas playing with his
medications. To have his body and emotions toyed with by someone's sick idea
of a drug made him uneasy.
"He's dead," he said into the haze. The room's light diffused in the mix of
drugs and plain theatre smoke, making the shape at the other end a blurred
silhouette. White, again, knew what he looked like, but the man liked to play
his game of secrecy, of ultimate power.
"Good," came the reassuring reply. It wasn't the voice of a madman, but of an
average man having an average conversation about average things. "Was it
fresh, Greg?"
White nodded. "Yes. It was. Within minutes." The conversation revolted him.
"Great! I was rather put off the last time, but this more than makes up for
it. That's about all I need right now, Greg. I'll join you with the others
when I'm done with this damn paperwork."
White stood there for a moment, thinking. Not about any one thing, but about
many. His wife, his son, the Yankees, wine, his employees...
"Yes? Is there something else?"
His employees. His wife. "We have a new employee. J.J. Faust."
"Okay. Bring her in."
Wines. Fishing. "She's with the jewelry company."
"Ah." He sounded a little disappointed. "Well, maybe I'll get to meet her
some other time."
On his way out, Gregory White could not help wondering if J.J. had any family
of her own.
...
After the first day, Wasp knew something was wrong. His snoop had gone missing
without pay, which was damn near a scream of danger. He wanted to send someone
else out, but knew that people would start staying away if too many snoops up
and died on him.
Wasp made a brave decision and he told Mazda to stuff it. "A failing company,
anyway," he muttered after slamming down the phone. Not only did this
completely free him of three days, but of countless dollars as well. Nice as
Mazda's offer was, getting anything from Transrail Europe was going to be far
more work and money than it deserved.
J.J. Faust was home and alone on this particular Friday night. Wasp arrived
early so to catch her leaving for the bar scene. Wasp had heard from Don
himself that J.J. was no longer working info-go-girl, but he hardly expected to
see party girl J.J. Faust staring at the television wearing a grey sweatshirt
and jeans when she could be out with the crowd.
At a nearby payphone, Wasp dialed a few numbers and waited.
A click. "Hello?" The woman's voice sounded tired, almost flat.
"Yeah, J.J.? It's me, Mike."
"Mike?" Was that fear, too?
"Yeah. Mike Farrell. You know, from the Chat."
"The what?" Confusion? Wasp started doubting he knew J.J. Faust at all.
"Chat. Chatsubo. You know, out on Haven Mill Road?"
There was a pause. Wasp felt like a complete fucking idiot, confused as all
get out and misinformed by his own eyes. This was not the murderer J.J. This
was someone else. His suspicions about her insanity felt more and more
confirmed.
"The dancer?" she said at last.
"Yeah," Wasp lied. When're given a lead, no matter how far from the truth,
Wasp would run with it.
J.J. sighed in relief. "Mike, it's good to actually hear from you." She liked
this man, Wasp noticed.
"Yeah, well, I sort of... missed you down here, you know? I --"
A brief pop of air and the phone shattered. Wasp threw himself away from the
phone, a mental daemon reactively flipped on the optic targeting. Five
possible targets, green circles, appeared before him. Two were moving toward
him, the other probably stationary objects the chipware couldn't cipher out.
"Stay right there, bright boy," one of the men said. They were both huge,
almost carbon copies of each other. Tall, wide, barrel-chested, they had
almost identical guns... long, wide barrels....
"Not moving anywhere. Just using the phone," Wasp said innocently, looking up.
"Yeah," said the first, the other simply stared. "Look, this is a warning,
kay? You leave Faust alone and we leave your head alone, kay?"
"Uh... kay." Wasp nodded frantically.
The two men walked almost directly away from Wasp, streetsmart quiet. "Shit,"
he said. "Bodyguards."
One of them looked over his shoulder and spat. The face of a man who didn't
care. The face of the street.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - They're all my own twisted creations.]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 22 Jul 91 06:51:17 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
Her dream. Her own dream, this was, working as a designer of jewelry. Deep
in the age of information, where paper meant little and privacy smaller still,
J.J. Faust was overwhelmed to be working with the one thing that could never
be spoiled by the times. It wasn't easy by far, the changes she had to make
and the provisions there were to do, but she was ready. As God as her witness,
after her last ordeal this would work.
It was one of those few moments when she found hope in what she had become,
the suicidal social-grabbing bitch. There was light in the strength it gave
her. The determination might not have been hers, but she saw and experienced
it and could act on it.
Nothing could stop her.
She first met the man she had long admired, if not put in suspect from time
to time. Mario Toran had designed many things that J.J. had, herself, put
together, sometimes several of them. Unknowingly, it was by her hand that some
of his designs were altered to meet the personality of each stone, to give each
one a unique existence. It was her job, to do what no CAD/CAM program could.
Not even the SmartCADs could replace intuition and emotion.
Mario was a short Mexican, a centimeter or two shorter than J.J. herself. His
eyes were infused with a dreamy madness, perpetually out of focus and never
centered on any one thing. In the pale florecent light of the hallway, his
olive skin looked almost a sickly green.
He tugged at his wire-bristled hair as he studied J.J., his eyes giving her
the idea that he was staring at her.
"Do you know," he suddenly said, loudly barking each word, "how much older than
you I am?" His accent made the words even harsher.
"Uh..." Other people in the hallway began to stare. "No."
"Mmmm? I'm forty. Forty. You are twenty-six. Youngshit!"
She stared back at him, unsure what to do.
"They are crazed. Crazed. You know so much about design? You call those
tire markings design?"
Yes, she thought. Then she snapped back, "Yes!" It felt good, but she quieted
back down, conscious of the people staring at them. "Look, if I'm no good, then
why am I working under you? You have no choice?"
Mario frowned, pulling at a corner of his moustache. "Maybe I do." He was
quieter, but the punch was still in his voice. "Maybe you actually worth some
shit if I tell you how to do, eh?" He pulled a door open. "Come, we start
now."
No, it wasn't easy. She worked for a week on "Night Beyond Tomorrow." It was
simple, involved a number of sapphires and silver, and looked to J.J. as a
project that would never end.
Sometimes she would wander the hallways, looking into half-open doors and
nodding to people. She was never properly introduced to people, but they knew
who she was.
"New kid," one said. She was probably Mario's age, but she looked almost
sixty. Especially around her eyes, something that was a common mark to these
people. Their eyes, whether wild or calm, always had the same dark hollow to
them. J.J. would have to be careful. "Jay somethin', right?" The woman had a
mixed accent from all over the area. Bronx, Manhattan, and the like. It was
becoming more popular among the whispers of the streets, but up here in the
skyscraper J.J. thought she wouldn't hear it.
"J.J.", she said, somewhat dumbly. She held out her hand as an offer, but it
wasn't taken and shook like it was supposed to be.
"Yer uptight, darlin'. Aren't ya?"
J.J. nodded and looked at the worn carpet. "I'm terribly shy," she said.
The woman laughed. "Look, I'm Suz." The u was long, making it sound like
'Sooz'. "You can call me 'Sue' or 'Susan' if ya want, but I don't much take
for it."
J.J. shrugged. "I'm just J.J." She felt uncomfortable repeating herself.
"Well, J.J., welcome to the folds. Can't say as I've seen one as young as you
come in. Do you take stims?"
J.J. looked up at the old eyes, fighting an urge to say 'yes.'
"Didn't think so. Ya look like a fawn when you do that, though. Nice and
innocent." Suz paused a moment before she took a cigarette out of her pocket
and lit it. It was some sort of inhaled stimulant, expensive but legal, like
caffine in drinks or tobacco in cigarettes. Taxes kept them from everyone's
doorstep, or they tried.
"There's once a story I heard," Suz said amidst J.J.'s silence, "'bout this
creature called a Unicorn. It's like a horse 'cept it's got this twisty horn
coming outta it's skull, 'bout here." She pointed to the center her forehead.
J.J. took a mythology course in college and knew, but she let her elder
continue. "It's a pure thing, but since good an' bad are so hard ta tell
apart, ya don't know what it's doin'. 'Course they tell ya it's good an'
always will be good.
"So anyways, this Unicorn's got an opposite. Vampire, one of the things kids
aspire to down there." She motioned toward a window, the stimerette smoke
weaving a warped pattern through the air. "Drinks blood. Pure evil. Least,
that's what they tell ya, 'gain. Some stories go that vamps, hell, they love
things deeper than us here mortals ever could. Same goes for Unicorns. I
can't tell the damn difference.
"But I'll be tellin' this to ya, J.J." Suz leaned forward an pointed at her
with two fingers clenching the stimerette. "Good or bad, they both go for the
same thing. Innocents."
Suz leaned back again, resting her knees against a paper-cluttered desk. She
looked out of the window at a graying winter sky. "You be careful here, Jay.
We all got a past. You, me, everyone. Don't wanna see yours get the better of
ya." She took a long drag from the stim. "One of us gotta be innocent when
the Unicorn comes."
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - You're quite welcome to comment, though.]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 5 Mar 92 21:46:17 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
[Last we knew, and it was a long, long time since I posted anything,
J.J. Faust had been promoted shortly after killing someone at one of her
boss' party. Sound suspicious? Yeah, that's what I thought. She's a
jewelry designer with little ambition other than to enjoy life. J.J.
has just been told that two men are out to kill her. Wasp, one of the
"men", is only trying to help and Vit, a german hit-man, is trying to
find the elusive woman "Faust" whom killed a very important
black-marketeer. Got it? No? Well, archives are available at a
modestly low price.]
...
Gregory White stood, trying not to cough as the gasses in the room
swirled about his head, making him want to retch or faint, purposefully
distracting him. They were for "him," the "him" who ran Gregory, for
his desires and delusions, to keep him from going through withdrawal.
Maybe to keep him from dieing, Gregory didn't know. He just knew he
hated the man, his charming viper's smile, his obsessions... his
"hobbies."
He stood in silhouette against a backdrop of gas and multi-colored
light, distorted by the haze in Gregory's eyes and mind. He stood, for
a few moments, in one of the long silences that usually hit him.
Sometimes Gregory would catch a moment of rhythmic murmuring, almost
chanting.
"Where is she?" he said in a quiet tone.
Gregory tried to shake cobwebs from his mind. "Where... where is who?"
"The woman. Your new employee."
"She said she was moving into the new apartment today. I gave her the
day off. It's late, though. She could be almost anywhere."
"She isn't there."
Gregory shifted his weight from foot to foot. He seemed to be getting
heavier as the conversation wore on.
"I had her followed," Gregory said, "as you suggested."
The blurred form motioned at the desk. "Call them. Find her."
The phone, the desk, everything was just as blurry. Gregory's large
fingers were uncooperative as he tried to dial the phone. After a brief
conversation, he let it fall gently back into the rocker.
"They lost her."
"How?" snapped the quick reply.
"They... they just did. One moment she was there, the next..."
Gregory's voice trailed off.
A few seconds of silence filled the room. "What of Rednix's lackies?
The child and the German?"
"They were trying to get to Faust's old apartment. They must not
know --"
"Leave," came the command, cold and measured. "I have a few calls to
make."
...
It was all too much. It was all too goddamn much for her. Someone was
trying to kill her. Why? Why?!
The answer was simple, of course. She killed a man, Chas Douchot. He
was just a guest at Mr. White's party and she had killed him with his
own knife. It sat at the bottom of her purse, now, slowly tearing at
the leather when she walked. And she killed him with it because he
wanted a pendant of hers.
How could she have been so stupid? So /stupid/. She yelled out loud,
not caring who heard. She let herself be controlled. "Stupid!" And
now she was paying the price. "Stupid!" At least she had help -- Mr.
White and Patrik Mivlosk. Still, she felt so... so.... "Stupid!"
J.J. Faust screamed in the woods. It was a woodland park, not far from
New York City. She could see the bright lights sprawling across the
horizon where the leafed ceiling broke. It looked vaguely of dawn,
constantly encroaching on the horizon like some man-made hope.
Sometimes a slight wind brought a sound from the city, but she ignored
it. She ignored all of it.
The moon was full and shining boldly though the trees, casting shadows
of uncertainty across the ground and across J.J. Not that she needed
it. Not that she wanted any uncertainty. Or trouble. Or success. She
just wanted to be left alone.
J.J. stood in a single fluid motion. She was free, though. There was
hope enough in that. She shook lightly, Mentally shaking off her
worries for the moment. No one had made her do anything she didn't want
to do since... since she left the pendant on the bottom of the bay.
And she took a smooth step. And another. A breeze tugged playfully at
her jacket, edging her on. She put her jacket and pocketbook by a large
tree, spinning gleefully in the breeze.
J.J. Faust danced. She danced through the trees and through the wind,
not afraid of anything, not even in the dark. She knew where the trees
were, where there were low branches and where there were roots. The
wind echoed in her ears, blowing an eerie music, one she heard before,
once, running through a field in England. She was ten and thought it
was the fairies coming out to play. She danced then, for them, but in
the way children dance, all simple energy, running around the field with
her arms out wide, giggling and trying to catch the musical spirits.
She wasn't going to catch anything, this time. There was nothing to
catch. Only the music welling up in her ears and spreading out through
her soul. She danced, around branches and deeper into the woods,
feeling nothing but elation. Nothing but joy.
A pair of glinting eyes, wide and the darkest brown. J.J. saw them and
faltered, stumbling back like a startled foal. The boy's face watched,
himself frightened, or maybe awed. His pale face appeared to glow in
the moonlight, save the scrapes and bruises.
It was well after midnight. The child could not have been older than
ten. What was he doing here?
Without a word, the boy lifted his arms and held something, offering to
her. There was hope in his eyes that she would take it.
J.J. reached, tentatively. Her pocketbook. It felt heavy and alien in
her hands, dragging her arm listlessly to her side.
Standing in the quiet, the child spoke first. His voice sounded so
young, so fragile. "Are you a ghost?"
She looked down at herself. The dress was beige and simple, her skin
glowed much like the child's. Her face must have looked much paler
framed with dark brown hair. She regarded the boy's questing eyes.
"No," she said in a quiet voice. "I am no ghost."
"A fairy?" The eyes looked so hopeful.
She knelt. He wanted to believe she was something mystical. Maybe he
needed that; she wasn't going to tell him the truth. Children had
visions. It was part of their innocence.
"What is your name?" she asked with a soft voice.
The child relaxed, settling himself on grass starting to collect dew for
the morning hours. "Gary Kinman," he said and added hopefully, "I liked
your dancing. I didn't mean to spy on you."
"That's alright."
A shuffle of feet. The child studied his hands nervously. "Can," he
started, then stopped. "Can you do magic?"
J.J. let the shock show on her face. She didn't want to lie, but the
boy was in need of support. "What..." she faltered unintentionally.
"Why does a strong boy like you need magic?"
"My daddy's gone." The stress in his voice was overwhelming. The boy
was on the verge of tears. "I don't know where. Mommy doesn't know,
too."
Kinman.
He started talking rapidly, keeping his thoughts a step ahead of the
tears. "He didn't come home. He just didn't. Mom cries, ... <& so
on>. Oh, you have to find him!"
J.J. tried keeping her voice. God, the poor child thought she could use
magic. She was nothing of the sort! She was a designer, not a myth
come to life! J.J. felt the helplessness swell up inside her. "What
was... what is your daddy's name?"
Gary choked on his sadness to think. "L-Lloyd?"
Lloyd Kinman. No, she was not a fairy, no creature of magic, but she
was not helpless.
J.J. smiled for the boy and reached out to smooth out his hair. His
entire face was dotted in patchwork moonlight. He looked lost and
fragile. "Gary Kinman, will you be here tomorrow for me?"
His mouth was open slightly, looking at her in awe. J.J. laughed
quietly and stood. "Who are you?" The question was in a hushed voice.
J.J. turned and danced into the woods, behind a tree and around another,
pulling herself over the low branches. "Faust!" she called out, hearing
the word echo slightly in the night.
" faust " the woods answered.
She laughed and galloped away.
...
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 21 Aug 91 05:48:31 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
The dress was red, ripped and stained with blood that was not hers. J.J.
stared at it, entranced by memories she couldn't quite remember. Emerald green
eyes, a scattering of cut gems, a combat knife...
She shook herself away from the thoughts and grabbed something else which hung
white and about the shoulders, a sleeveless mock-turtleneck. It was old and
conservative, but it made her comfortable. A little makeup, a gold chain about
her wrist. She wanted something to make her relaxed, a little dust or a McCoy
of downride, but had none and would not call Don for more.
J.J. felt like a child, going out to prove that she could, scared of everything
that could happen to her, scared of herself. She remembered what Suz told her,
"Don't let your past get the better of you."
She looked at the bloody dress. "Someone's got to be innocent when the
Unicorn comes." Suz expected her to be that innocent. She wanted to know why,
but was never told. There was no way she could have asked anyone else.
...
Cold, but not bitter. It was one of the few nights that was gentle, the wind
light and the air dry. With some luck, thought J.J. as she rode the monorail,
it might even snow on the city. New York was always beautiful in the snow.
The bar, "Chatsubo", was quiet that evening, small packets of people hung
together as if out of desperation, nursing their drinks and conversations
carefully. Music was piped through a mixer on the stage and out a pair of
massive speakers, though someone had turned the music down.
She looked about her, at the faces who glanced up at her and back to their
business. She knew she wasn't welcome, but she was tolerated. As long as she
caused no trouble to their haven from the world, she knew she would be all
right.
The bartender was young but no stranger to the streets. Stubble and scars
decorated his face in an unusual pattern. His arms, too, were lined with
scars that looked old, faded. She wondered about them before he spoke.
"The floor show doesn't start until ten, mademoiselle," he said in a light,
possibly fake french accent. The words were accented against her, a polite
request. The word "leave" unspoken.
"Ki-Rin," she said in reply.
She emptied it and a second before the floor show began, the band some third-
rate Midwest rangers playing two year old Top 40 hits. J.J. knew the words and
the moves and let herself sway slowly to the music.
The feel was still there. The move, the beat, the want to dance and let it all
out. She slipped off the stool and joined the few dancers, mostly girls and
sailors or other men of the same moral question.
Alone. J.J. felt the beat inside her and let it move her, the music telling
her where to place her hand, how to hold her head, to stop and sweep an arm in
an arc before her. The beats, three of them now, each took control, one at a
time, told the music how to act, told her body when to jerk or her feet to
shuffle or move. She wasn't alone; the music danced inside her, with her.
She closed her eyes and continued the dance, feeling no one as it happened,
brushing only air and floor, and even the floor became insubstantial. The air
was just a part of the dance, her movements a part of the song. Pose hand,
brush face, touch shoulder, move and lean to the side. At last, the beat faded
off to nothing.
Then there was applause.
...
Wasp applauded with the rest, simply amazed. He never knew J.J. danced, never
discovered it in his research. She never had danced professionally, that he
knew. Her dancing on the floor wasn't very professional, but held so much
power and certainty that it made the ancient music come alive.
The musicians felt it, too, watching her. The old song was thrown in with bits
that Wasp had never heard before, variations of the scales and chords come to
life until it became more than an old song. The drummer, with a look of stern
determination on his face, worked in yet another beat, modern set against the
old. He was carrying three of the four beats, something Wasp didn't imagine.
To Wasp, a man of the streets, it was music, modern among the best.
J.J. quickly made her way to the bar after she opened her eyes. She looked
embarrassed, maybe insulted. Wasp wasn't any good at guessing that kind of
thing, let alone why. He wanted to know, almost needed to.
Someone walked up to her as he stood, an average, unobtrusive man. Blonde,
young, Wasp figured he was a corporate type. He stood too straight and moved
as if he was always presenting his words. J.J. would shoot him straight down.
She laughed, Wasp smiling as he watched. She nodded and then shrugged and
nodded more. Then Wasp's smile fell as she put on her jacket. They started to
leave.
"J.J. doesn't do things like that!" Wasp hissed to himself. "She's here for
the thrill, that's all!" He started towards them as they headed toward the
door.
The blonde man looked over his shoulder, straight at Wasp, ice blue eyes making
Wasp stop and stare. The man smiled wide, eyes flashing recognition, and
nodded a greeting.
A greeting reserved for enemies.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - You're quite welcome to comment, though.]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Summary: Part 17 - just to let you know
Date: 26 Aug 91 19:51:34 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
Alone. Sadness. Death. Only death would avenge. Vengeance. Anger in the
darkness, in the cold, in the alone.
Power. Yes, there. Growing, slowly, steadily. Power to think. Power to
avenge. Power to kill.
Three words, the very first three without Another. Power to think. 'It shall
die.'
...
The trail was wrong, half hidden and half misleading. Vit followed it to five
major cities and many rumors, most of them came to a dead-end. American
culture infuriated Vit and the size of the country helped little. He couldn't
look for someone who was "out of place" for it was he, himself, who was the
stranger. His english was rusty and he spoke with a distinct german accent.
Many people were uncooperative. Many people were also dead.
Vit stopped liking his search long ago, soon after Dallas. He faught with many
uncooperative people, many small-time gangs, to find the lead was again false.
He didn't understand the insult he gave them, if there was indeed one, but he
would not make the same mistake again. The pain he suffered trying to get out
of the huge state was more than he was willing and when the Arkansas backwater
hack-doctor told him some of the shrapnel was bone it almost made him ill. The
child they sent to him didn't even know he was carrying a bomb.
The country was falling apart, Vit could see. Far more than Japan. America's
ideals were old and the leader militaristic about them, or he wouldn't have
been chased to Texas' boarder, hunted every step of the way, while in New York
he was openly welcomed and California simply accepted. No one nation could
work together when their feelings were so far apart.
The flight landed in New York early in the morning, Vit's chrono still said it
was 1:30 but he had just left Seattle. The sky was a light gray and slowly
becoming lighter, the snow was piled up on the edges of the runway, thin
compared to the snows in Germany. The trans-American flight took less than
five hours, but Vit felt as if he had been on for days. He took all flights
that way, never liking the food or the service or flying at all. He had
already wasted too much time.
He had found the woman's last name, Faust, but that didn't help. A german
name, maybe, but Vit had already had Europe checked for such a woman, and so
would half a dozen others of his kind, all working alone, all working against
each other. The bounty must have risen, though, if no one had caught her yet.
If she wasn't already dead.
But what made him the angriest was the searching. He had been to New York
twice, he had started his search in the city, and had now come back to it to
cover some steps he had missed. Someone in Seattle had told him, "Try the
Chatsubo. If no one there knows, nobody can know." A gloat and probably a
lie, but the man had known Vit's name. There must have been truth in it
somewhere, suspicion wracking at Vit throughout the flight.
The Chatsubo ended up being a hole-in-the-wall bar not unlike many he had been
too in Europe, but the differences were obvious and somewhat unnerving. The
band, and the music they played, was dead and lifeless as were the people
dancing before the stage. Many of the bars he had frequented, even those
elsewhere in the States, were much more juiced than this. The clientele were
not all American, either. There was some French, some Asian, and Vit heard a
few words of german float through the drudging music and background mutter.
The talk dropped suddenly, alerting Vit's attention to the door. When he saw
no one, he looked quickly around him. Everyone was watching the stage and the
woman who danced before it.
She reminded Vit of a French dancer he one knew, he met her in a London slum,
dancing for food and very little money, and took her back to Pont-l'Eveque
where she told him her family lived. He never loved her and wasn't sure why he
helped her back. But the woman near the stage moved much like her, when she
wasn't coming down from wiz. Like the music carried her and nothing else.
"Who is the woman?" he asked the bartender in his rusty english.
"I don't know," the young man replied in a bad french accent. "She just came
in, drank some, and started dancing."
"Then she is not a dancer here?"
"No. I can't say as I've ever seen her before."
Vit nodded and took a seat at a table nearby the bar. If the woman was a
free-lancer, she might know something. If not, then it would be business as
usual.
He found himself applauding quietly with much of the rest of the bar. The
woman looked startled at first and walked cautiously to the bar. No, he
decided, this woman just danced to dance and when she was met by a suit, he
dismissed it as someone unimportant.
He began for the bar when he caught the look in the blonde suit's eye, a look
he recognized as a warning and a threat compacted by the smugness of his smile.
Vit snapped his head to see the target, a dirt-blonde young man, standing in
mid-stride, almost gawking as a reply. He was dressed head-to-toe in frills
and leather that Vit knew as 'gang wear.'
Soon after the suit and the woman were out the door, the other man started
toward it quickly, determined, Vit thought, to get himself killed.
"The suit is armed," he told the punk as he passed.
"So am I," was the flat response.
"Then you will die."
The punk turned on his heels and looked at Vit. Vit was a few centimeters
taller than the man and by far much heavier. "This is a personal matter,
okay chum?"
"I understand. I also can lend help."
The punk looked at him carefully, as a man valued a gun. "You'll help me? For
what?" His voice was suddenly cool. There was something in Vit that he
needed.
"Information," Vit said carefully. It was the english word he was most
familiar with.
The punk scratched his messed hair and squinted, the shadows under his eyes
becoming more obvious. Whether from drugs or deals or sex, this man did not
sleep much. "On what?" he asked.
"A woman, one that I cannot find."
"Okay. Tell ya what, you help me get through to my woman and I'll help you get
information on yours, 'k?"
"No." Vit paused, searching the punk's face as it became twisted in confusion.
"I work alone," he said as the punk began to object. "I will help you get to
this woman who has left and you will tell me all you know about the woman I
seek."
"It's a deal. You wanna write this all legalshit-like?"
Vit leaned carefully forward, looking down on the young punk. "My word is
enough."
"Oh... oh, of course. Yes, your, ah, 'word'. I value the 'word', too." He
combed his hair with his fingers, again. " So, tell me, who is this woman you
need to find?"
Vit lowered his voice now, it almost echoed in his own ears. "She has many
aliases, but seems to favor one. Faust."
The punk suddenly looked at Vit with a mix of horror and disbelief, yet not
uttering a sound. This one knows of her, he thought without any relief. So
many of his previous leads went nowhere. Yes, this one knows her and looks
ready to break his word.
The safety on his gun was already off. It was likely that no one would hear
the hissing noise of the gun's silencer.
...
J.J. Faust (from the very beginning), Don the Fixer (from part 1), Skeeter (in
part 2), Father Jim (also from part 2) aka Chas Douchot (part 7) aka Major
Rednix (part 11 - deceased), Wasp (from part 3), rape-minded wirepunk aka
J.J.'s first kill (part 3 - brutally deceased), Gregory White (part 5), Rob
McPhee (part 13), That Really Strange Guy from part 14, the two bodyguards who
threatened Wasp (part 14), Suz (part 15), Vit (part 17 - this one) AND the
flight attendant (who had a non-speaking roll up above a bit) are ALL...
[ Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - So, how 'bout them Celtics, eh? ]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 2 Sep 91 02:47:57 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
He was a very nice man, this Patrick Mivlosk. Not unrealistic, simply kind
and helpful. J.J. Faust was also surprised to find that he worked in the same
building she did. "Administrative paperpushing," he said in a flat
businessman's accent. "I keep the building from falling apart, mostly."
J.J. thanked him with a laugh. "It'd be hard to work there without it, then."
It was relaxing to meet someone familiar, though the familiarity was only as
far as place of work. She let her guard down a little to talk to this not-so-
stranger when he complimented her about her dancing. She told him, while they
walked through the cold night air, that she had taken ballet lessons as a child
at the insistence of her mother. She was six, then, and never liked it. She
liked to move, but never liked the strictness of the form.
Patrick, who insisted she call him Pat, invited her to a small party he was
giving that evening. "It's more a way to relax, actually," he admitted as he
started the car. Electric, thought J.J. Fairly expensive. "A few of the
people you work with'll be there, too." He seemed pretty happy about this, so
she smiled politely and looked on forward.
They had become quiet, after talking about living and moving. Pat lived
overseas for a few years, it sounded like Russia or one of the old East Bloc
countries, but had moved back for the familiarity. J.J. herself had never
lived anywhere but New York, all across the state, and knew what he meant.
Then the pause. The car's motor humming, the wheels pressing away half-melted
slush.
"J.J.," Pat asked without looking towards her, "do you do drugs?"
She was about to protest the question but stopped. "Why?"
"Your kind, the designers downstairs, you all seem to have something. Some
kind of release." He laughed nervously. "You're all just a little weird."
J.J. was quiet, not knowing what to say.
"You're new, though," he quickly picked up, as if trying to apologize. "I
mean, you don't really seem to be weird, like the rest of them. You're
normal." He paused and quickly added, "Unless you don't want to be."
She wondered how old he was. Twenty-five? Twenty-seven? He talked like an
excited schoolboy, though. His pale blond hair and wide, interested eyes made
him look completely honest.
"No," J.J. said shyly, looking out the side window. "I used to do a lot. Wiz,
'drenlin, broadbase stim.... Gave it up, though."
"Right before you were hired."
She snapped her gaze on him. How did he know? Her look must have been enough
to ask. "It's in your eyes," he said. "A little. It's in all of their eyes.
It'll go away in a few months."
"You?"
He shook his head. "Can't stand any of it. Makes me do funny things. Here we
are."
J.J. watched as he pulled into an apartment bloc parking lot.
"I wasn't on anything, tonight," she said.
"I know."
...
The place was an entire flat on the third floor. This place, it appeared, was
full of them, four on each huge floor. Security was tight enough that they had
to walk through metal detectors under the scrutiny of an ominous black ball
that hung from the ceiling.
The flat, 3C, was large enough to fit nearly fifty people if you worked around
the open kitchen and artwork. It was much like J.J.'s apartment only larger
and much better decorated. Sculptures and paintings scattered the large room,
plastic and chrome were the main medium, each twisted and melted into a dance
of man-made materials, each one dark and foreboding. Sort of a neo-gothic,
thought J.J.
The paintings were similar but mostly depicted man-into-machine melds, where a
man's arms and legs faded into the supports of a motorcycle's wheels, or where
many people had been placed together in a twisting array to make a huge mural
of Dante's Hell. When she looked at it from a distance, J.J. could see it was
an electronic schematic.
Mario, her very teacher, was the owner of this flat. He began yelling at Pat
when J.J. first arrived but Pat raised a hand and said a few calm words and it
was suddenly okay. She had never seen Mario so calm, but she chalked it up to
nerves from the tedious job of explaining every little detail to her. He was
not a good teacher.
Two of the other designers were there, as well. J.J. was somewhat disappointed
when she didn't find Suz among them. Pat introduced her to three of the people
he worked with and two managers of Mr. White's stores.
The party, though being small, was fairly open. The designers talked with
Pat's friends about designs or they'd talk back about their business (keeping
the building in order, they said). Mario was very quiet, however. J.J. never
got around to asking him what was wrong, always afraid to make the initial
contact.
It was almost midnight when Pat interrupted into her conversation. She was
talking to one of Pat's friends about her family, never considering how odd the
question was.
"J.J., I've got to get going, here," he said in his quick, boyish way, somewhat
urgent.
She nodded. "How will..."
"Talahain, here, can give you a ride whenever you want." He motioned to the
man J.J. was talking to. "Right, Tal?"
Talahain nodded. "No problem."
Pat was out the door before J.J. could say another word, the door closing
behind him with a soft "click."
"Very nice man, isn't he?" J.J. asked of Talahain.
He hesitated a moment and said, "Yes. I don't know what we'd ever do without
him."
Somewhere in the flat was a clock, one that J.J. couldn't find. It chimed
midnight, twelve times ringing in J.J.'s ears. The conversation had stopped,
the movement, everything. The last chime echoed in the flat when J.J. first
heard the hissing. It was quiet, she wasn't even sure what it was. Then the
smell hit her.
Sweet. Oversweet, almost putrid, like the condensed smell of flowers. Her
thoughts concentrated on this single thought, how it all reminded her of
flowers, old, rotting on her grandmother's grave in Germany, yellow geraniums,
wilted brown, covering the week-old grave. Her mind remaining on the thought,
the flowers she placed on the newly covered grave, and sat... trapped...
...
Everyone turns to face the back of the loft, the door at the back opens and a
man steps out. The man is dressed in a robe, huge and heavy, draping from his
arms and shoulders, colored a red so dark it looks black, but it is not velvet.
The lighting is changed, the man becomes the center of attention. His face is
shadowed by the hood and the shadows, but he cannot be mistaken. He walks
forward, speaking. Sometimes you can understand him, sometimes you can't.
They circle him, everyone in the room, and watch. His speech becomes rhythmic,
hypnotic, and they begin to sway.
The man comes towards me, holding a red-gloved hand towards me, beckoning me to
take it, to join him in the circle. I do.
He speaks to me, I almost cannot understand him. "What name is yours?"
"Julianne Faust."
"Who is your maker?"
Confusion. I cannot answer a question I do not know.
"Who gave you life?"
"The ones who birthed me." Your parents are always the ones who give you life.
He speaks and you cannot understand, but he speaks again so that you may. "We
will teach you, Julianne Faust. The time is drawing near. You shall be with
us when it comes."
He holds my hands tightly to a cup, warm and filled, and begins speaking again.
When he stops, he pulls the cup, and my hands, to my lips. The drink is warm,
but not so warm, and salty. He doesn't let me drink it all.
"She is here," he says to all. "Dance for us, Julianne Faust. Dance for us."
...
Her grandmother was there, sitting in an old floral-print chair. Her face
looked strong and sure, as though the signs of her age were strength and not
weakness. She was relaxed, a pose reflecting acceptance. She was bold and
wise, except her eyes. Her eyes were grey and remorseful, reflecting her
wisdom and pity.
She said nothing but spoke anyway. J.J. knew then it was a dream but let the
dream continue; the sight of her long-dead grandmother was comforting to her.
"The unicorns and the vampires," her grandmother told her, "are very much the
same. They love what is innocent and unspoiled."
J.J. could see Suz in her grandmother's face, vaguely, as though the two were
one for the moment. But then her grandmother began to fade, slowly, with a
whisper in the background. "Dance... dance..." Her grandmother's eyes
darkened as the whisper grew louder, the wisdom fading.
"But in his love, young Joy, the vampire takes the innocence away. The unicorn
returns it anew."
The whisper came roaring into the dream, J.J.'s grandmother shattering in its
force, the sound roaring in her mind.
Then darkness.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - Enforced by Liralen Li Securities.]
Wasp cringed. "Yes. I will. I don't think she's going anywhere any time
soon."
"You can promise this?"
A glance at the complex, again. Suite 349 was hers. "Yes," Wasp said at last.
"Yes, I think I can."
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - Void where prohibited by law.]
...
[Like I said, it isn't very good. That's because with school and everything, I
have very little time to actually think about what's going on and what's going
to happen. Is this an open invitation? Not for complete control, no, but I am
taking comments, notes, suggestions, encouragement, discouragement, and
MAYBE... just maybe I'll even take in a character or two. But until then, keep
reading, keep writing, and by Ghost keep replying. - Kent Jenkins]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motercycle Maintenance
Date: 3 Oct 91 18:22:56 GMT
[Because it's been a month, this is the last posted J.J. Faust section followed
quickly by the next section which, admitedly, isn't very good. - Kaj]
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
He was a very nice man, this Patrick Mivlosk. Not unrealistic, simply kind
and helpful. J.J. Faust was also surprised to find that he worked in the same
building she did. "Administrative paperpushing," he said in a flat
businessman's accent. "I keep the building from falling apart, mostly."
J.J. thanked him with a laugh. "It'd be hard to work there without it, then."
It was relaxing to meet someone familiar, though the familiarity was only as
far as place of work. She let her guard down a little to talk to this not-so-
stranger when he complimented her about her dancing. She told him, while they
walked through the cold night air, that she had taken ballet lessons as a child
at the insistence of her mother. She was six, then, and never liked it. She
liked to move, but never liked the strictness of the form.
Patrick, who insisted she call him Pat, invited her to a small party he was
giving that evening. "It's more a way to relax, actually," he admitted as he
started the car. Electric, thought J.J. Fairly expensive. "A few of the
people you work with'll be there, too." He seemed pretty happy about this, so
she smiled politely and looked on forward.
They had become quiet, after talking about living and moving. Pat lived
overseas for a few years, it sounded like Russia or one of the old East Bloc
countries, but had moved back for the familiarity. J.J. herself had never
lived anywhere but New York, all across the state, and knew what he meant.
Then the pause. The car's motor humming, the wheels pressing away half-melted
slush.
"J.J.," Pat asked without looking towards her, "do you do drugs?"
She was about to protest the question but stopped. "Why?"
"Your kind, the designers downstairs, you all seem to have something. Some
kind of release." He laughed nervously. "You're all just a little weird."
J.J. was quiet, not knowing what to say.
"You're new, though," he quickly picked up, as if trying to apologize. "I
mean, you don't really seem to be weird, like the rest of them. You're
normal." He paused and quickly added, "Unless you don't want to be."
She wondered how old he was. Twenty-five? Twenty-seven? He talked like an
excited schoolboy, though. His pale blond hair and wide, interested eyes made
him look completely honest.
"No," J.J. said shyly, looking out the side window. "I used to do a lot. Wiz,
'drenlin, broadbase stim.... Gave it up, though."
"Right before you were hired."
She snapped her gaze on him. How did he know? Her look must have been enough
to ask. "It's in your eyes," he said. "A little. It's in all of their eyes.
It'll go away in a few months."
"You?"
He shook his head. "Can't stand any of it. Makes me do funny things. Here we
are."
J.J. watched as he pulled into an apartment bloc parking lot.
"I wasn't on anything, tonight," she said.
"I know."
...
The place was an entire flat on the third floor. This place, it appeared, was
full of them, four on each huge floor. Security was tight enough that they had
to walk through metal detectors under the scrutiny of an ominous black ball
that hung from the ceiling.
The flat, 3C, was large enough to fit nearly fifty people if you worked around
the open kitchen and artwork. It was much like J.J.'s apartment only larger
and much better decorated. Sculptures and paintings scattered the large room,
plastic and chrome were the main medium, each twisted and melted into a dance
of man-made materials, each one dark and foreboding. Sort of a neo-gothic,
thought J.J.
The paintings were similar but mostly depicted man-into-machine melds, where a
man's arms and legs faded into the supports of a motorcycle's wheels, or where
many people had been placed together in a twisting array to make a huge mural
of Dante's Hell. When she looked at it from a distance, J.J. could see it was
an electronic schematic.
Mario, her very teacher, was the owner of this flat. He began yelling at Pat
when J.J. first arrived but Pat raised a hand and said a few calm words and it
was suddenly okay. She had never seen Mario so calm, but she chalked it up to
nerves from the tedious job of explaining every little detail to her. He was
not a good teacher.
Two of the other designers were there, as well. J.J. was somewhat disappointed
when she didn't find Suz among them. Pat introduced her to three of the people
he worked with and two managers of Mr. White's stores.
The party, though being small, was fairly open. The designers talked with
Pat's friends about designs or they'd talk back about their business (keeping
the building in order, they said). Mario was very quiet, however. J.J. never
got around to asking him what was wrong, always afraid to make the initial
contact.
It was almost midnight when Pat interrupted into her conversation. She was
talking to one of Pat's friends about her family, never considering how odd the
question was.
"J.J., I've got to get going, here," he said in his quick, boyish way, somewhat
urgent.
She nodded. "How will..."
"Talahain, here, can give you a ride whenever you want." He motioned to the
man J.J. was talking to. "Right, Tal?"
Talahain nodded. "No problem."
Pat was out the door before J.J. could say another word, the door closing
behind him with a soft "click."
"Very nice man, isn't he?" J.J. asked of Talahain.
He hesitated a moment and said, "Yes. I don't know what we'd ever do without
him."
Somewhere in the flat was a clock, one that J.J. couldn't find. It chimed
midnight, twelve times ringing in J.J.'s ears. The conversation had stopped,
the movement, everything. The last chime echoed in the flat when J.J. first
heard the hissing. It was quiet, she wasn't even sure what it was. Then the
smell hit her.
Sweet. Oversweet, almost putrid, like the condensed smell of flowers. Her
thoughts concentrated on this single thought, how it all reminded her of
flowers, old, rotting on her grandmother's grave in Germany, yellow geraniums,
wilted brown, covering the week-old grave. Her mind remaining on the thought,
the flowers she placed on the newly covered grave, and sat... trapped...
...
Everyone turns to face the back of the loft, the door at the back opens and a
man steps out. The man is dressed in a robe, huge and heavy, draping from his
arms and shoulders, colored a red so dark it looks black, but it is not velvet.
The lighting is changed, the man becomes the center of attention. His face is
shadowed by the hood and the shadows, but he cannot be mistaken. He walks
forward, speaking. Sometimes you can understand him, sometimes you can't.
They circle him, everyone in the room, and watch. His speech becomes rhythmic,
hypnotic, and they begin to sway.
The man comes towards me, holding a red-gloved hand towards me, beckoning me to
take it, to join him in the circle. I do.
He speaks to me, I almost cannot understand him. "What name is yours?"
"Julianne Faust."
"Who is your maker?"
Confusion. I cannot answer a question I do not know.
"Who gave you life?"
"The ones who birthed me." Your parents are always the ones who give you life.
He speaks and you cannot understand, but he speaks again so that you may. "We
will teach you, Julianne Faust. The time is drawing near. You shall be with
us when it comes."
He holds my hands tightly to a cup, warm and filled, and begins speaking again.
When he stops, he pulls the cup, and my hands, to my lips. The drink is warm,
but not so warm, and salty. He doesn't let me drink it all.
"She is here," he says to all. "Dance for us, Julianne Faust. Dance for us."
...
Her grandmother was there, sitting in an old floral-print chair. Her face
looked strong and sure, as though the signs of her age were strength and not
weakness. She was relaxed, a pose reflecting acceptance. She was bold and
wise, except her eyes. Her eyes were grey and remorseful, reflecting her
wisdom and pity.
She said nothing but spoke anyway. J.J. knew then it was a dream but let the
dream continue; the sight of her long-dead grandmother was comforting to her.
"The unicorns and the vampires," her grandmother told her, "are very much the
same. They love what is innocent and unspoiled."
J.J. could see Suz in her grandmother's face, vaguely, as though the two were
one for the moment. But then her grandmother began to fade, slowly, with a
whisper in the background. "Dance... dance..." Her grandmother's eyes
darkened as the whisper grew louder, the wisdom fading.
"But in his love, young Joy, the vampire takes the innocence away. The unicorn
returns it anew."
The whisper came roaring into the dream, J.J.'s grandmother shattering in its
force, the sound roaring in her mind.
Then darkness.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - Enforced by Liralen Li Securities.]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motercycle Maintenance
Date: 3 Oct 91 18:26:27 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
Steamy flame [The music started low, filled with
Is left to blame bass, the lead singer growling, nearly
For passions of an ancient kiss. hissing the words. They felt oddly
Imagine this. passionate on the listener's ear, a
quiet moan of music that bordered
Quiet madness, erotic. The words were simply a
Sane as time, part, a way of conveying the feel.
Takes a trip along the mind. Then, in a crashing moment of extacy,
A different kind. the band collided for the chorus...]
Love and hate, they are an art of balance. [You could hear the straining
Innovate what could be there to harness. noises of the instruments,
A speeding motor ride, the amps and synth maxed to
A crash and burn or live and learn. give the effect of someone
Never balanced, forever on the edge. doing everything they said.]
... [And some would.]
It took J.J. Faust a few moments to realize what was happening. In the hazy
state of half-consciousness, she saw images of men and women, of dancing, her
grandmother, smoke, stairs, blur... and black. The more she joined the waking
world, the faster the images passed and the less she knew what they are.
She awoke, dazed, to the blaring noise of the radio, pseudo-quad filling the
bedroom with a rich and genuine sound. The song was recorded 18-Dolby at a
concert causing her to think, for a moment, she was actually there.
This was her morning program's way of waking her up when she slept through both
the gentle awakening and the louder, grating beeping.
"Okay, I'm awake," she groaned, sitting up. Her back ached.
The music stopped abrubtly. "Begining shower program," said the asexual voice.
J.J. walked, undressed, to the bathroom, the base of her feet and her jaw and
her stomach all aching along with her back. She felt thirty years older as her
bones and muscles complained as she compelled herself to the sound of running
water.
Steam from the shower had fogged up most of the mirror in the bathroom, so the
visage that had greeted her was a shrouded, ghostly figure, naked and pale,
brown hair lieing flat against thin face and shoulders. It reached out to her,
a hand not pale but bruised. The figure had bruises all about it, and its
face, features barely discernable beneith a layer of condensation, turned to
pain. She moved to it before realizing she stared at a reflection of herself.
Stairs, she remembered in frustration and confusion, her mind as hazed as the
mirror before her. Pangs returned along her ribs and the back of her neck,
snaking across her quickly and quietly. Stairs and... gas? No, smoke. There
was a fire, everyone rushed to the stairs, she lost her footing and....
...
He was shouting, cursing up a storm in what sounded German, though Wasp
couldn't tell much. He recognized the basics from some movies he saw a long
time ago, just enough to tell Vit was angry.
As if the hitman's stomping and pacing around the alleyway wasn't enough to let
him know.
Wasp tried to keep his cool, though, and was secretly proud with the job he was
doing. He might have been young, but he was also the only heir to one Major
Rednix's underground network. He had to keep his cool.
"What were we supposed to know?" he said in an even tone. A peice of gangboy
inside himself wanted to throw the German against the wall just to get him to
shut up.
Vit finally calmed a little, evened out his composure to snap a few words in
English. "This is your J.J.? I stop my search for... this?!" He motioned
across the street at the apartment complex. Wasp, himself, spent weeks
watching it through rain and snow just to find some information.
Was thought quickly, studying the building across the way, pulling his jacket
around him for some warmth. If Vit knew that the woman he was searching for
was J.J. he would have done his deed already and left. But he didn't.
Instead, he simply knew the name "Faust." It kept J.J. alive one day longer
and Wasp planned to keep it that way.
"Well?" Vit stood uncomfortably near.
"Well... yes. Like I told you, she has... ahh... special interest to me."
"You have strange interests," Vit grumbled. "This woman, this J.J., is what
you call 'wasted'."
"But you saw the blood," Wasp offered in J.J.'s defense. "You could see what
they did to her."
"She walked with little support as among allies. She is drugged or she is
mad."
Wasp didn't want to believe it. He did NOT want to believe it. Something
else, maybe. He hadn't seen her do as much as go to a bar for the past two
months, and now this?
"Maybe you want to find the man, now." It did not sound like a question.
"Yes... but not just the man. All of them. There were, what, five people in
that apartment?"
"<Nine,>" Vit corrected. "None left until the lights were again turned on."
Nine left at once. J.J. bleeding, walking as though she didn't even notice.
Wasp glanced at the complex again and scowled. "Let's find out who lives in
that apartment, then."
"And then you will tell me more about this Faust."
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 4 Nov 91 22:32:42 GMT
THE STORIES: "Ode to Joy" and "Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
QUICK PRECIS:
J.J. Faust is a quiet, intelligent woman who can't seem to keep control of her
life. First (in "Ode to Joy"), she is changed by a pendant into a bar-hopping
woman who will do anything for attention, from drugs to dealing and dancing
with any man bold enough to ask. She even kills a man simply from the threat
of rape. This lasts until she finds herself having killed a women (many, in
fact) just because of her necklace. When she realizes the necklace is one she
worked on, she confronts her own mind and discovers something alien about it.
Learning of the presence's fear of loosing its attention, she finds it is the
pendant she wears and, with great trouble, she throws it into the bay.
She spends several months cleaning up her life and fighting a paranoid
depression left over from the pendant, taking a street drug which induces
apathy to combat it. She is surprised when she is promoted to a junior jewelry
designer's position in the main company where the other designers are, if
nothing, very strange. After a few weeks, she decides, on a whim, to return to
one of the places she used to go to "enjoy life." There, she looses herself
in a dance that everyone applauds, even the musicians. She meets a man who
works in the same building she does and invites her to a party.
...
But J.J. is not the only person involved. There is also Wasp, an ex-gang
member who was at first hired to learn more about J.J. but has become more
involved than watching her for his boss. His boss, also, is killed by J.J. in
a fit of posession about the pendant and he learns that the man was the
coordinator of a large underground information system, one that spans
governments and corperations. Wasp takes control a small portion and uses it
to position himself into the roll of his old boss.
Vit, a German hit-man, has been searching America from end to end trying to
find the woman who killed the great Major Rednix, Wasp's dead boss. The bounty
on J.J.'s head is large and spans overseas.
...
We pick up (a little redundantly) at Joy.18, right after J.J. dances at the
Chatsubo and is asked to go to the private party. Wasp and Vit meet up, Wasp
wanting to find a woman named "J.J." and Vit, being none the wiser, only
wanting one named "Faust."
I realize Joy.18 has been shown once... maybe twice before, but I like the
writing and it explains a lot that Joy.19 (the more recent version) doesn't.
...
[Kent Jenkins is Copyright (c) 1991 by R. Talsorian Games - Go figure.]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Mainenance
Date: 4 Nov 91 22:34:26 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
He was a very nice man, this Patrick Mivlosk. Not unrealistic, simply kind
and helpful. J.J. Faust was also surprised to find that he worked in the same
building she did. "Administrative paperpushing," he said in a flat
businessman's accent. "I keep the building from falling apart, mostly."
J.J. thanked him with a laugh. "It'd be hard to work there without it, then."
It was relaxing to meet someone familiar, though the familiarity was only as
far as place of work. She let her guard down a little to talk to this not-so-
stranger when he complimented her about her dancing. She told him, while they
walked through the cold night air, that she had taken ballet lessons as a child
at the insistence of her mother. She was six, then, and never liked it. She
liked to move, but never liked the strictness of the form.
Patrick, who insisted she call him Pat, invited her to a small party he was
giving that evening. "It's more a way to relax, actually," he admitted as he
started the car. Electric, thought J.J. Fairly expensive. "A few of the
people you work with'll be there, too." He seemed pretty happy about this, so
she smiled politely and looked on forward.
They had become quiet, after talking about living and moving. Pat lived
overseas for a few years, it sounded like Russia or one of the old East Bloc
countries, but had moved back for the familiarity. J.J. herself had never
lived anywhere but New York, all across the state, and knew what he meant.
Then the pause. The car's motor humming, the wheels pressing away half-melted
slush.
"J.J.," Pat asked without looking towards her, "do you do drugs?"
She was about to protest the question but stopped. "Why?"
"Your kind, the designers downstairs, you all seem to have something. Some
kind of release." He laughed nervously. "You're all just a little weird."
J.J. was quiet, not knowing what to say.
"You're new, though," he quickly picked up, as if trying to apologize. "I
mean, you don't really seem to be weird, like the rest of them. You're
normal." He paused and quickly added, "Unless you don't want to be."
She wondered how old he was. Twenty-five? Twenty-seven? He talked like an
excited schoolboy, though. His pale blond hair and wide, interested eyes made
him look completely honest.
"No," J.J. said shyly, looking out the side window. "I used to do a lot. Wiz,
'drenlin, broadbase stim.... Gave it up, though."
"Right before you were hired."
She snapped her gaze on him. How did he know? Her look must have been enough
to ask. "It's in your eyes," he said. "A little. It's in all of their eyes.
It'll go away in a few months."
"You?"
He shook his head. "Can't stand any of it. Makes me do funny things. Here we
are."
J.J. watched as he pulled into an apartment bloc parking lot.
"I wasn't on anything, tonight," she said.
"I know."
...
The place was an entire flat on the third floor. This place, it appeared, was
full of them, four on each huge floor. Security was tight enough that they had
to walk through metal detectors under the scrutiny of an ominous black ball
that hung from the ceiling.
The flat, 3C, was large enough to fit nearly fifty people if you worked around
the open kitchen and artwork. It was much like J.J.'s apartment only larger
and much better decorated. Sculptures and paintings scattered the large room,
plastic and chrome were the main medium, each twisted and melted into a dance
of man-made materials, each one dark and foreboding. Sort of a neo-gothic,
thought J.J.
The paintings were similar but mostly depicted man-into-machine melds, where a
man's arms and legs faded into the supports of a motorcycle's wheels, or where
many people had been placed together in a twisting array to make a huge mural
of Dante's Hell. When she looked at it from a distance, J.J. could see it was
an electronic schematic.
Mario, her very teacher, was the owner of this flat. He began yelling at Pat
when J.J. first arrived but Pat raised a hand and said a few calm words and it
was suddenly okay. She had never seen Mario so calm, but she chalked it up to
nerves from the tedious job of explaining every little detail to her. He was
not a good teacher.
Two of the other designers were there, as well. J.J. was somewhat disappointed
when she didn't find Suz among them. Pat introduced her to three of the people
he worked with and two managers of Mr. White's stores.
The party, though being small, was fairly open. The designers talked with
Pat's friends about designs or they'd talk back about their business (keeping
the building in order, they said). Mario was very quiet, however. J.J. never
got around to asking him what was wrong, always afraid to make the initial
contact.
It was almost midnight when Pat interrupted into her conversation. She was
talking to one of Pat's friends about her family, never considering how odd the
question was.
"J.J., I've got to get going, here," he said in his quick, boyish way, somewhat
urgent.
She nodded. "How will..."
"Talahain, here, can give you a ride whenever you want." He motioned to the
man J.J. was talking to. "Right, Tal?"
Talahain nodded. "No problem."
Pat was out the door before J.J. could say another word, the door closing
behind him with a soft "click."
"Very nice man, isn't he?" J.J. asked of Talahain.
He hesitated a moment and said, "Yes. I don't know what we'd ever do without
him."
Somewhere in the flat was a clock, one that J.J. couldn't find. It chimed
midnight, twelve times ringing in J.J.'s ears. The conversation had stopped,
the movement, everything. The last chime echoed in the flat when J.J. first
heard the hissing. It was quiet, she wasn't even sure what it was. Then the
smell hit her.
Sweet. Oversweet, almost putrid, like the condensed smell of flowers. Her
thoughts concentrated on this single thought, how it all reminded her of
flowers, old, rotting on her grandmother's grave in Germany, yellow geraniums,
wilted brown, covering the week-old grave. Her mind remaining on the thought,
the flowers she placed on the newly covered grave, and sat... trapped...
...
Everyone turns to face the back of the loft, the door at the back opens and a
man steps out. The man is dressed in a robe, huge and heavy, draping from his
arms and shoulders, colored a red so dark it looks black, but it is not velvet.
The lighting is changed, the man becomes the center of attention. His face is
shadowed by the hood and the shadows, but he cannot be mistaken. He walks
forward, speaking. Sometimes you can understand him, sometimes you can't.
They circle him, everyone in the room, and watch. His speech becomes rhythmic,
hypnotic, and they begin to sway.
The man comes towards me, holding a red-gloved hand towards me, beckoning me to
take it, to join him in the circle. I do.
He speaks to me, I almost cannot understand him. "What name is yours?"
"Julianne Faust."
"Who is your maker?"
Confusion. I cannot answer a question I do not know.
"Who gave you life?"
"The ones who birthed me." Your parents are always the ones who give you life.
He speaks and you cannot understand, but he speaks again so that you may. "We
will teach you, Julianne Faust. The time is drawing near. You shall be with
us when it comes."
He holds my hands tightly to a cup, warm and filled, and begins speaking again.
When he stops, he pulls the cup, and my hands, to my lips. The drink is warm,
but not so warm, and salty. He doesn't let me drink it all.
"She is here," he says to all. "Dance for us, Julianne Faust. Dance for us."
...
Her grandmother was there, sitting in an old floral-print chair. Her face
looked strong and sure, as though the signs of her age were strength and not
weakness. She was relaxed, a pose reflecting acceptance. She was bold and
wise, except her eyes. Her eyes were grey and remorseful, reflecting her
wisdom and pity.
She said nothing but spoke anyway. J.J. knew then it was a dream but let the
dream continue; the sight of her long-dead grandmother was comforting to her.
"The unicorns and the vampires," her grandmother told her, "are very much the
same. They love what is innocent and unspoiled."
J.J. could see Suz in her grandmother's face, vaguely, as though the two were
one for the moment. But then her grandmother began to fade, slowly, with a
whisper in the background. "Dance... dance..." Her grandmother's eyes
darkened as the whisper grew louder, the wisdom fading.
"But in his love, young Joy, the vampire takes the innocence away. The unicorn
returns it anew."
The whisper came roaring into the dream, J.J.'s grandmother shattering in its
force, the sound roaring in her mind.
Then darkness.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - Enforced by Liralen Li Securities.]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 4 Nov 91 22:36:32 GMT
Summery: Joy.19
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
Steamy flame [The music started low, filled with
Is left to blame bass, the lead singer growling, nearly
For passions of an ancient kiss. hissing the words. They felt oddly
Imagine this. passionate on the listener's ear, a
quiet moan of music that bordered
Quiet madness, erotic. The words were simply a
Sane as time, part, a way of conveying the feel.
Takes a trip along the mind. Then, in a crashing moment of extacy,
A different kind. the band collided for the chorus...]
Love and hate, they are an art of balance. [You could hear the straining
Innovate what could be there to harness. noises of the instruments,
A speeding motor ride, the amps and synth maxed to
A crash and burn or live and learn. give the effect of someone
Never balanced on the edge... of the night. doing everything they said.]
... [And some would.]
It took J.J. Faust a few moments to realize what was happening. In the hazy
state of half-consciousness, she saw images of men and women, of dancing, her
grandmother, smoke, stairs, blur... and black. The more she joined the waking
world, the faster the images passed and the less she knew what they are.
She awoke, dazed, to the blaring noise of the radio, pseudo-quad filling the
bedroom with a rich and genuine sound. The song was recorded 18-Dolby at a
concert causing her to think, for a moment in her waking confusion, that she
was actually there.
This was her morning program's way of waking her up when she slept through both
the gentle awakening and the louder, grating beeping.
"Okay, I'm awake," she groaned, sitting up. Her back ached.
The music stopped abrubtly. "Begining shower program," said an asexual voice.
J.J. walked, undressed, to the bathroom, the base of her feet and her jaw and
her stomach all aching as well. She felt thirty years older as her bones and
muscles complained as she compelled herself to the sound of running water.
Steam from the shower had fogged up most of the mirror in the bathroom, so the
visage that had greeted her was a shrouded, ghostly figure, naked and pale,
brown hair lieing flat against thin face and shoulders. It reached out to her,
a hand not pale but bruised. The figure had bruises all about it, and its
face, features barely discernable beneith a layer of condensation, turned to
pain. She moved to it before realizing she stared at a reflection of herself.
Stairs, she remembered in frustration and confusion, her mind as hazed as the
mirror before her. Pangs returned along her ribs and the back of her neck,
snaking across her quickly and quietly. Stairs and... gas? No, smoke. There
was a fire, everyone rushed to the stairs. She was pushed, running into things
and people as they rushed for the stairs. She lost her footing and....
...
He was shouting, cursing up a storm in what sounded German, though Wasp
couldn't tell much. He recognized the basics from some movies he saw a long
time ago, just enough to tell Vit was angry, as if the hitman's stomping and
pacing around the alleyway wasn't enough to let him know.
Wasp tried to keep his cool, though, and was secretly proud with the job he was
doing. He might have been young, but he was also the only heir to Major
Rednix's underground network. He had to keep his cool.
"What were we supposed to know?" he said in an even tone. A peice of gangboy
inside himself wanted to throw the German against the wall just to get him to
shut up, but instead stared intensely at J.J.'s apartment. All the lights
were off and everything was quiet. His eyes and the chips in his head saw
nothing in the darkness.
Vit finally calmed a little, evened out his composure to snap a few words in
English. "This is your J.J.? I stop my search for... this?!" He motioned
across the street at the apartment complex. Wasp, himself, spent weeks
watching it through rain and snow just to find some information.
Was thought quickly, studying the building across the way, pulling his jacket
around him for some warmth. If Vit knew that the woman he was searching for
was J.J. he would have done his deed already and left. But he didn't.
Instead, he simply knew the name "Faust." It kept J.J. alive one day longer
and Wasp planned to keep it that way.
"Well?" Vit stood uncomfortably near.
"Well... yes. Like I told you, she has... ahh... special interest to me."
"You have strange interests," Vit grumbled. "This woman, this J.J., is what
you call 'wasted'."
"But you saw the blood," Wasp snapped. "You could see what they did to her."
"She walked with little support as among allies. She is drugged or she is
mad."
Wasp didn't want to believe it. He did NOT want to believe it. Something
else, maybe. He hadn't seen her do as much as go to a bar for the past two
months, and now this?
"Maybe you want to find the man, now." It did not sound like a question.
"Yes... but not just the man. All of them. There were, what, five people in
that apartment?"
"Nine," Vit corrected. "None left until the lights were again turned on."
Nine left at once. J.J. bleeding, walking as though she didn't even notice.
Wasp glanced at the complex and scowled. "Let's find out who lives in that
apartment, then."
"And then you will tell me more about this Faust."
Wasp cringed. "Yes. I will. I don't think she's going anywhere any time
soon."
The German grunted, probably in doubt. Wasp knew a few American hit-men and
they trusted no one, by nature. "You can promise this?"
A glance at the complex, again. Suite 349 was hers; Wasp stared at it many
times before, in rain and wet snow. "Yes," Wasp said at last. "Yes, I think I
can."
...
The shower was relaxing but did little for the aching pain that covered her
body. Her phone program had one message on it from work. It was Mario's
voice, though it wasn't filled with the contempt and impatience that it usually
conveyed. This time it was calm, rational, and tinged with nervousness. J.J.
almost didn't recognize it. He told her she didn't have to come into work
today, after the event with the stairs ('So it did happen,' she thought) and to
come in whenever she felt better.
His kindness confused J.J., but she didn't feel much in the mood to think about
it. Maybe there was something more human under his shell, after all. She
wanted to remember not to be so hard on him when talking with others about him.
Glad with her light attitude in spite of her pained body, J.J. started a simple
coffee program and changed it, halfway, to tea. She didn't know what kind the
apartment had in the program, but it seemed like a better idea.
As the VideoCenter sat there, CNN spewing out new technological advances, the
rising problems with the native americans, the planned European-Soviet Mars
colony, things that she had heard about many times in the past, J.J. began to
think.
Steam rose from her tea and brushed by her sensitive bruises. They didn't
really hurt, just throbbed with pain. The pain was familiar and reminded her
of... dancing...?
Stairs! She fell down the stairs! The thought was so sudden in her mind that
she almost dropped her cup. Something was certainly panicking her. She
remembered someone telling her what happened, she was lieing on her bed and
they explained. No, they stood, one man explained, short and blond. He must
have been the doctor. Yes, that was it. The doctor.
She felt calmer, some weight taken off her mind, as she looked back to the
national news and let her mind dwell in it for a while.
There was a man on the screen, screaming, wearing a robe covered in splattered
blood (J.J. had no doubt it wasn't his). He, and three others dressed the
same, were handcuffed and being lead, forcefully, to waiting police cruisers.
The man's voiceover droned about a rally, but J.J. heard the man's voice on the
recording.
"It's coming," the man was screaming. "The time is drawing near! It's coming
back!"
The time is drawing near. J.J. mouthed it but didn't speak. It's coming back.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - Void where prohibited by law.]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 10 Nov 91 03:01:32 GMT
>>>>>[Okay. A friend of mine remided me that the last two were, again,
repeats. The last was mostly re-written. He asked me, "So, Kent, when are we
going to see something new?" So here it is. Be sure to reply to this if you
like it, don't like it, or just think it's far too strange for human
consumption. Hell, do that with the other stories you read. You're wasting
company time, anyway. They've had a tracer on your account for months. So why
not? Reply, reply, reply.]<<<<<
-Thenomain (10:02:15-11/9/91)
...
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
J.J. Faust received many welcome backs when she went into work the next day.
Bruises shone brightly on her face, ones that she couldn't cover. They had
puffed slightly and felt numb, so when she smiled it was somewhat awkward.
Even Mario, her most immediate boss, wasn't as harsh to her as usual, though he
did avoid her as much as he could, muttering answers to the questions she had,
nodding, shrugging. J.J. watched him carefully from her desk, but didn't press
him.
Everyone else was sympathetic towards her and she finally felt she was
beginning to fit in. If it wasn't the strange attitude of her mentor and the
one other person who hadn't welcomed her back, she would have been dancing on
air.
J.J. knocked on the door frame, peering into the office. "Suz?"
Susan looked up from her work, twenty or more sketches littered her desk, the
computer not even on. She looked at J.J. with her dark-rimmed eyes and old,
weathered face, a stimerette resting between her lips. She took it out and
ground it into a small ashtray.
Suz looked over J.J. as if appraising some finished peice of jewelry then spoke
in her mixed New York accent. "Hey, hon, ya look like shit."
Shocked, J.J. nodded dumbly. "Um," she said quietly, "yeah. I fell down some
stairs."
Suz snorted as she turned back to her sketches. "Yeah. Right."
"I did," replied J.J. What was going on here? No one was acting the way they
usually did. "I remember."
"Any broken bones?"
"Well... no."
"Any cuts or lacerations?"
"No, but --"
Suz cut her off, looking up at her again. Her gaze was stern. "Ya look like
the walkin' dead, Jay. Bruises or not. Dead." She made a noise of disbelief.
"An' I had such hope for ya."
Confused, J.J. just stood there. What was going on? Why was she saying that?
She stared at Suz as she got back to her sketching, looking up briefly and
saying, "Don'cha got nothin' better to do, hon? Ya certainly have been doin'
somethin' else. Doubt you've even seen a doctor."
A doctor? For what? She was fine. A little bruised, a little sore, but fine.
/What was Suz saying?/
J.J. wandered back to her desk and got back to work.
...
The next day there were two memos on her computer that startled her. The first
was simply a message without a header. All company memos had headers, which
was the first indication that made her think it was a prank. But the note
itself wasn't the least bit funny.
J.J. - You're in trouble. Big trouble. I don't know how
or why. Please meet me at the Aladdin's Lamp at 9:30
tonight and make sure you're not followed. Two goons have
been doing a good job. Looking forward to meeting you. - Wasp
The second was from Mr. White, header and all.
J.J., please see me in my office at your earliest convenience.
Nothing urgent. You might enjoy it.
J.J. was reminded again of the southern hospitality that was Gregory White's
code of honor. He was a kind man that reminded her of a grandfather, though
meeting the president of the jewelry chain didn't keep her at ease.
She was let into his office as he was getting off a phone. He told her with a
large grin to have a seat and make herself comfortable. He didn't mention the
bruises.
"You know, there, J.J.," he said, leaning back in his chair, "you've been here
for just a few weeks but you've been exemplary and a great asset to us. You're
a hard worker and good." He paused as if to let her get in a word, but she sat
with her hands in her lap, trying not too look like a startled fawn. "So when
I heard about this, I couldn't just let it pass up." He took a fax from his
desk and leaned over to hand it to her. His fingers, like himself, were quite
large. Not fat, but large.
The fax was about an apartment flat, probably as large as Mario's and nearly
twice as expensive as hers. Space was money and luxury even more nowadays.
She remembered an accountant at where she once worked saying "If they thought
we just came out of a recession, they haven't seen nothing yet."
"Well, J.J.? What do you think?"
"I..." she started. "I mean, it's... it's nice, but I can't afford it."
Mr. White looked surprised. "Really? Tell me, did you get a raise coming
here?"
J.J. had not. They were both suitably surprised.
Mr. White quickly fixed that with a few quick taps at a keyboard. She would be
getting back pay, as well, more than enough for a deposit on the apartment.
"I... thank you, Mr. White."
"Gregory, please," he replied. He never liked being called Mr. White, but J.J.
rarely felt that comfortable.
"I'll call them tomorrow."
"No need. No need at all. I already reserved it in the company's name. It's
all ready for you to move in. Tonight, if you want."
The first memo came to mind, then. "You're in trouble," Wasp wrote her. Who
was this Wasp? Certainly no one's real name. How did this Wasp know she was
in trouble? She hadn't been in trouble for months. Not since.... She shook
her head. She couldn't deny it. Not since she had killed all those people.
"I," said J.J. hesitantly, "I have a date tonight. Tomorrow. And thank you
Gregory."
She stood and left the office, not hearing his farewell. Thoughts baraged her
from all sides, memories that she kept in the back of her head. She walked
down the hall, her eyes unfocused, rubbing her hands nervously together. In
her purse she knew she still had the knife.
She went back to her desk and took an inhalent in her shaking hands and wrapped
her lips around it. She pressed the activator and inhaled the Liquid Apathy.
And then she didn't care.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - Would you want to use these characters?]
From: JENKINS@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 15 Jul 92 01:11:39 GMT
Sender: news@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
As you all very well know, a swift kick in the butt by a few helpful people
have seen the group moving, again. I'm no exception, willing to help the place
move along.
As Friedman mailed me, "Time to stop making ripples and start making some
WAVES!"
This segment is intended to catch people up on the J.J. Faust storyline. So
far I've had no offer to help since I started, and very few replies on how they
liked it. Maybe it's that good, maybe it's that bad. This and the next two
posts are bringing J.J. back up to speed. The last one is the new installment.
...
cmd> precis:{j.j. faust},{2},{fiction}/extended
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
(The Second story of J.J. Faust)
Extended Precis
...
Time: Winter, 2010
Place: New York City, New York, United States of America
Characters: Julianne Josephine Arman Faust, Wasp, Vitroff ("Vit"), Gregory
White, Patrick Mivlosk, Susan
Precis, First Story: (Ode to Joy)
J.J. Faust was an employee for Jeron and White Jewelers. She killed a
man at a party given by Mr. White, a man named Chas Douchot, who wanted her
pendant. She found that she was, somehow, inexplicably posessed by the
pendant, or the idea of the pendant giving her power and strength.
Chas Douchot was also known as Major Rednix, an international black marketeer.
Wasp, a new employee, was bribed with rare and military issue cybernetic visual
enhancements (prototype cyberware) to be Rednix's go-fer. Wasp was following
J.J., gathering information on her for the Major, unaware why. He became
consumed with curiosity on J.J.'s unusual, psychotic behavior.
J.J. snapped out of her posession when she saw a peice of jewelry she helped to
design. The pendant was tossed into the bay, J.J. went on with her life.
...
Precis, Second Story: (Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
J.J. Faust's life settles back to somewhat normal before her posession by the
pendant, though she takes an illegal drug, "liquid apathy", to curb her hatred
towards her weaknesses that the pendant imprinted. She is called to business
headquarters to talk to Mr. White (of Jeron and White Jewlers). He, to her
surprise, promotes her to assistant designer, not blackmailing or arresting her
for Chas Douchot's death.
She discovers the designers are erratic, unusual people whom appear to have
been taking some heavy drugs sometime in their life. One less-unusual woman
speaks kindly, but crypticly to J.J. about Vampires and Unicorns and Innocence.
J.J. is then intited to a party by Patrick Mivlosk where a fire breaks out and
she falls down a flight of stairs, knocking her unconcious and quite a bit
bruised and beaten. None of the employees say anything, except the cryptic
Susan who tells J.J. that the Vampires are winning and turns J.J. away.
She is sent an unusual letter from a man calling himself "Wasp" and, when goes
to meet him, finds Patrick there with information of crucial value. Filmed at
the scene of the earliers fire, a young blond man and a german conspire to
kill her.
J.J., flustered and confused, is offered a new, larger apartment by Mr. White
and moves out immediately.
She takes the night to leave the city and relax in a woodland park where she
dances for a young boy, finding that she can dance better than she believed.
The boy mistakes her for a ghost or a fairy and asks her to find his father,
missing for several weeks.
...
Mr. White is acting on higher orders through much of this. A man in a
drug-hazed room, who has taken an interest in J.J. Faust. The poor girl just
can't be left alone.
...
Wasp has taken over a large amount of Major Rednix's underground operations,
acting in his stead to all the contacts, corperations and governments, but he
still has a burning curiosity about J.J. Faust and has her followed. The man
hired doesn't come back and Wasp goes to investigate, finding two large,
well-armed men warning him to stay away from J.J.
Of course, he doesn't, but instead takes an Underground Vacation and tails her
more subtlely. He allies himself with Vit, a german bounty hunter looking for
a woman sniper named 'Faust.' Rumors spread fast and furious, these days.
Wasp hides J.J.'s identity and only claims to be looking for a woman named
"J.J."
Wasp and Vit follow J.J. from the bar to the party, where there is no fire and
no ambulance, only J.J. walking awkwardly and with support into a car and
driven away.
Wasp leaves J.J. an electronic memo to meet her at a bar, but, instead, finds
her with another man. The two bodyguards Wasp met before suggest Wasp and Vit
leave the bar. Coincidence? I think not.
...
The Author, meanwhile, doesn't have much more of an idea of what's going on
than the rest of you. This J.J. story is not really open for fellow writers,
unless they ask, and certainly isn't open for spur-of-the-moment inclusion.
All the Author knows is that J.J. Faust has a lot of problems and a lot of
people wanting to get at her. He also has a good idea why.
...
End Extended Precis
From: JENKINS@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 15 Jul 92 01:15:52 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
Gregory White stood, trying not to cough as the gasses in the room
swirled about his head, making him want to retch or faint, purposefully
distracting him. They were for "him," the "him" who ran Gregory, for
his desires and delusions, to keep him from going through withdrawal.
Maybe to keep him from dieing, Gregory didn't know. He just knew he
hated the man, his charming viper's smile, his obsessions... his
"hobbies."
He stood in silhouette against a backdrop of gas and multi-colored
light, distorted by the haze in Gregory's eyes and mind. He stood, for
a few moments, in one of the long silences that usually hit him.
Sometimes Gregory would catch a moment of rhythmic murmuring, almost
chanting.
"Where is she?" he said in a quiet tone.
Gregory tried to shake cobwebs from his mind. "Where... where is who?"
"The woman. Your new employee."
"She said she was moving into the new apartment today. I gave her the
day off. It's late, though. She could be almost anywhere."
"She isn't there."
Gregory shifted his weight from foot to foot. He seemed to be getting
heavier as the conversation wore on.
"I had her followed," Gregory said, "as you suggested."
The blurred form motioned at the desk. "Call them. Find her."
The phone, the desk, everything was just as blurry. Gregory's large
fingers were uncooperative as he tried to dial the phone. After a brief
conversation, he let it fall gently back into the rocker.
"They lost her."
"How?" snapped the quick reply.
"They... they just did. One moment she was there, the next..."
Gregory's voice trailed off.
A few seconds of silence filled the room. "What of Rednix's lackies?
The child and the German?"
"They were trying to get to Faust's old apartment. They must not
know --"
"Leave," came the command, cold and measured. "I have a few calls to
make."
...
It was all too much. It was all too goddamn much for her. Someone was
trying to kill her. Why? Why?!
The answer was simple, of course. She killed a man, Chas Douchot. He
was just a guest at Mr. White's party and she had killed him with his
own knife. It sat at the bottom of her purse, now, slowly tearing at
the leather when she walked. And she killed him with it because he
wanted a pendant of hers.
How could she have been so stupid? So /stupid/. She yelled out loud,
not caring who heard. She let herself be controlled. "Stupid!" And
now she was paying the price. "Stupid!" At least she had help -- Mr.
White and Patrik Mivlosk. Still, she felt so... so.... "Stupid!"
J.J. Faust screamed in the woods. It was a woodland park, not far from
New York City. She could see the bright lights sprawling across the
horizon where the leafed ceiling broke. It looked vaguely of dawn,
constantly encroaching on the horizon like some man-made hope.
Sometimes a slight wind brought a sound from the city, but she ignored
it. She ignored all of it.
The moon was full and shining boldly though the trees, casting shadows
of uncertainty across the ground and across J.J. Not that she needed
it. Not that she wanted any uncertainty. Or trouble. Or success. She
just wanted to be left alone.
J.J. stood in a single fluid motion. She was free, though. There was
hope enough in that. She shook lightly, Mentally shaking off her
worries for the moment. No one had made her do anything she didn't want
to do since... since she left the pendant on the bottom of the bay.
And she took a smooth step. And another. A breeze tugged playfully at
her jacket, edging her on. She put her jacket and pocketbook by a large
tree, spinning gleefully in the breeze.
J.J. Faust danced. She danced through the trees and through the wind,
not afraid of anything, not even in the dark. She knew where the trees
were, where there were low branches and where there were roots. The
wind echoed in her ears, blowing an eerie music, one she heard before,
once, running through a field in England. She was ten and thought it
was the fairies coming out to play. She danced then, for them, but in
the way children dance, all simple energy, running around the field with
her arms out wide, giggling and trying to catch the musical spirits.
She wasn't going to catch anything, this time. There was nothing to
catch. Only the music welling up in her ears and spreading out through
her soul. She danced, around branches and deeper into the woods,
feeling nothing but elation. Nothing but joy.
A pair of glinting eyes, wide and the darkest brown. J.J. saw them and
faltered, stumbling back like a startled foal. The boy's face watched,
himself frightened, or maybe awed. His pale face appeared to glow in
the moonlight, save the scrapes and bruises.
It was well after midnight. The child could not have been older than
ten. What was he doing here?
Without a word, the boy lifted his arms and held something, offering to
her. There was hope in his eyes that she would take it.
J.J. reached, tentatively. Her pocketbook. It felt heavy and alien in
her hands, dragging her arm listlessly to her side.
Standing in the quiet, the child spoke first. His voice sounded so
young, so fragile. "Are you a ghost?"
She looked down at herself. The dress was beige and simple, her skin
glowed much like the child's. Her face must have looked much paler
framed with dark brown hair. She regarded the boy's questing eyes.
"No," she said in a quiet voice. "I am no ghost."
"A fairy?" The eyes looked so hopeful.
She knelt. He wanted to believe she was something mystical. Maybe he
needed that; she wasn't going to tell him the truth. Children had
visions. It was part of their innocence.
"What is your name?" she asked with a soft voice.
The child relaxed, settling himself on grass starting to collect dew for
the morning hours. "Gary Kinman," he said and added hopefully, "I liked
your dancing. I didn't mean to spy on you."
"That's alright."
A shuffle of feet. The child studied his hands nervously. "Can," he
started, then stopped. "Can you do magic?"
J.J. let the shock show on her face. She didn't want to lie, but the
boy was in need of support. "What..." she faltered unintentionally.
"Why does a strong boy like you need magic?"
"My daddy's gone." The stress in his voice was overwhelming. The boy
was on the verge of tears. "I don't know where. Mommy doesn't know,
too."
Kinman.
He started talking rapidly, keeping his thoughts a step ahead of the
tears. "He didn't come home. He just didn't. Mom cries.... Oh, you
have to find him!"
J.J. tried keeping her voice. God, the poor child thought she could use
magic. She was nothing of the sort! She was a designer, not a myth
come to life! J.J. felt the helplessness swell up inside her. "What
was... what is your daddy's name?"
Gary choked on his sadness to think. "L-Lloyd?"
Lloyd Kinman. No, she was not a fairy, no creature of magic, but she
was not helpless.
J.J. smiled for the boy and reached out to smooth out his hair. His
entire face was dotted in patchwork moonlight. He looked lost and
fragile. "Gary Kinman, will you be here tomorrow for me?"
His mouth was open slightly, looking at her in awe. J.J. laughed
quietly and stood. "Who are you?" The question was in a hushed voice.
J.J. turned and danced into the woods, behind a tree and around another,
pulling herself over the low branches. "Faust!" she called out, hearing
the word echo slightly in the night.
" faust " the woods answered.
She laughed and galloped away.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - Use by permission or general insanity.]
From: JENKINS@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 15 Jul 92 01:20:07 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
Wasp looked around the dark apartment and swore, kicking at a metal
canister full of trash, a clattering joining his loud exclamations.
"Fuckit! Of all the shit-drek stellar-screwed.... Shit! The Projects
were never this empty! When the --"
He stopped as a heavy hand gripped hard on his shoulder. Wasp was not
stupid; the gang training fell into place and he quieted, forcing his
jaw close with a slight pain of restraint. He was fuming, inside. He
would have trashed the apartment if it was not for his partner.
His temporary partner.
Skirting the truth with the German was beginning to become a problem.
He wanted to "kill Faust." Wasp needed to find her, the woman named
J.J. Faust, and show this brick wall of a bounty hunter that J.J. wasn't
a hit-woman. Hardly. She was working for Jeron and White Jewlers as a
designer. There was no way she was a hired killer. No way. Was there?
Suspicion flashed out of Wasp's mind as Vit's thick accent growled
behind him. "She has moved. Suddenly, it seems. We must find traces
and things left. Maybe this tells us where she went."
Wasp had to hand it to the large German. He was smart and definately
deadly -- Wasp watched as the man nearly choked to death some alleyrats
who came looking for a quick yen. Thank God he didn't enjoy it, Wasp
thought. But he did it, simple as that.
Wasp nodded and blinked. Already his eyes were scanning everything with
light-intensification, the fuzzed lines of cybernetic/optic crossover
starting to work on his headache. Now, a few floating targeting
recognition circles floated across his vision. Wasp would have gloated
if he would even dare let the secret out, he was Major Rednix's slave
because of it. The Government never let out rights to produce
cybernetics to the public, but Wasp knew thousands of soldiers had them.
He was, he knew, one of these experiments.
As Wasp's thoughts moved haltingly though memories of surgery and
training, while his eyes focused from area to area across the cupboards.
When he heard the quiet click of a pistol, he froze.
"You lie to me," the german growled.
Oh, God. Wasp felt like he was going to vomit. Get a hold of yourself,
kid. C'mon. You're not dead yet.
An envelope landed on the counter in front of him, a single "friendly"
green target circle trained on it as it slid to a stop. He blinked,
dismissing the program, and read the address. "Ms. Julie Faust." Oh,
God.
The muzzle of the German's silencer pressed up against his temple. "You
knew. I do not need you now."
Wasp almost laughed aloud at his last selfish thought. He hoped his
eyes would survive.
...
Anger. Anger against the darkness. Anger for the Denier. Attention
shunned, the Denier. Suffer made, the Denier. Anger is warmpth in
coldness. Anger is life. Anger for the Denier.
...
When J.J. entered work the next day, she just wanted to get it all over
with. The last few days for her were chaotic, confusing, diverting...
she felt less and less herself and felt a shadow of the creature that
once held her mind. Her escape, she finally knew, was the dancing. The
child, Gary, had helped her know. J.J. laughed giddily at that thought.
A child.
She promised to find Gary's father, or to try. In a burst of intuition
last night, she knew how. Mr. White had access to the corperate
transaction databases, the ones that made the new credit sticks
possible. She just needed a social security number, even which company
he worked for. Something of a start.
J.J. approahced Mr. White's office near the end of the hall, an uneasy
determination dwelling inside. Her hand grasped an inhalent in her
purse and she brought the dispenser to her lips and depressed the
applicator button. Liquid Apathy flooded her lungs; she almost
coughed in protest. Her senses started to dull, a rather tasteful
reproduction of neo-cubist artwork became a series of boxes on a flat
surface.
An arm stopped her abruptly, swinging her to face an old, stern woman.
"What happened to ya, girl!" Suz hissed. J.J. was beginning to respond
when she was pulled into the cluttered office and the door was slammed
shut.
"I --" J.J. tried to say. The drug was still settling into her system,
her world reeled as she was thrown into a lightly cushioned chair. Her
thoughts fell out of place and she sat there, helpless.
Suz hit her desk hard, some trid-photo on it fell over and gave J.J. a
top view of a rainbowy shimmer forming a young man and woman standing
with each other, some sort of logo in the background. Suz didn't seem
to care and stared hard at J.J., studying her.
J.J. remained silent for a time, letting her eyes focus on nothing.
"Lookit me, girl!" Susan snapped, bringing J.J.'s attention to a pair
of dark-ringed cloudy blue eyes, the fringe of grey curls at the edges
of Suz's face. "Damnit, I can get in trouble just for talkin' with ya."
She sighed, as if a burden weighed down her concience. "I don't
understand ya, girl." Suz's streets accent made her motherly tone
disconcerting. "One day, yer a walkin' zombie, eyes, bruises... an'
today..."
The next moment was uncertain. J.J. felt there was something wrong
about how Suz's voice trailed into silence, how she was studying her,
all the things J.J. took her medication not to feel.
Suz coughed, speaking quietly, now. "You're fine, girl. Yer bruises
are gone. I dunno what kind of drugs you've been takin', but by God
ya look heathy as the day you was born."
J.J. was hardly warned of what was to come and she fell against the desktop,
her arms folded undernieth her, hiding her face and stray locks of hair.
And she cried.
...
[Copyright (c) 1992 by Kent Jenkins - The spell-check is broken. Sew mee.]
From: jenkins@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 1 Dec 91 10:20:10 GMT
[Yes, it's that time of year, again. The Holidays are down upon us and Finals
rear their ugly heads for us fun-time college students. This, of course, means
people either aren't here, too busy spending money they don't have, or
complaining about the ("alleged") recession on alt.stupidity. (That's a joke,
see -> ;) Actually, I'm surprised how busy we are around here. As for the lack
of replies... well, I'm guilty of spending time elsewhere, myself. Still, send
and receive as it suits. And have a nice holiday season. Well, TRY. ;)]
...
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
J.J. Faust was dressed in what she deemed conservative but not too far. A
classic blouse and loose slacks that seemed more appropriate for skydivers.
They bagged at the top of her boots, low and laced. They were made of a new
substance Dow called SynthLeather, but she couldn't tell the difference. They
would hold up in the miserable New York weather and that was the most
important.
The Aladin's Lamp was a young kid's bar, filled with bright lights, plenty of
neon and last month's dance music. J.J. guessed, though. It had been almost
ten years since she'd even been in a teener bar.
Of course, the clientele was of mixed ages, most of the kids were dancing and
most of the adults were sitting in the scattered tables, talking in groups of
twos and threes. J.J. was one of the few people sitting alone. She felt more
conscious from the puffed bruises on her face that makeup could not cover.
Still, she wasn't here for leisure. Her hand was in her purse, wrapped around
the hilt of an army issue combat knife. Where she held it, her hand was numb
and her forearm had the sensation of tiny pinpricks all through it.
The first familiar face she saw was a complete shock to her, but he sat down
all smiles and restrained energy.
"Hi, Jay," said Patrick Mivlosk. "Glad you could stop by."
"Pat? You...?"
"Yeah, my note. Sorry to scare you, but had to let you know." He spoke as
cheerily as ever.
They ordered two beers. Pat didn't mention her bruises, which was made J.J. a
little more uneasy. Mr. White hadn't said anything either. Maybe they were
trying to be considerate.
"Well," he said, more subdued, as he tasted his beer, "I don't mean to rush
this, but it's kinda important. There's a couple people trying to kill you."
It didn't bother J.J. It was too sublime. Kill her? Not likely. "Oh?" she
asked nonchalantly. "Who?"
"Couple of goons. A punk and a foreigner. They've been following you around."
J.J. nodded. "Oh. Of course." She made it obvious that she didn't believe
him.
He leaned forward, his blond-topped face tense with excitement, making him look
like some melodramatic soap opera star. "I'm serious, Jay. I saw them outside
the apartment when it... uh, kinda caught fire. Security said they'd been
hanging around all night. Have them on video, whispering about you."
Pat pulled out a Video Walkman VCR and handed it to her. This is starting to
get stupid, thought J.J., but I'll see what kind of prank this is turning out
to be.
J.J. put the earspeaker on and hit 'play'. The picture was mostly dark, but
was clear enough. It showed, from a distance, two men crouching in the bushes.
One was tall with dark hair, his face stern and hard where the light showed it.
The other shorter and blond and looked very much like an older punk. The
camera's directional microphone picked up, very faintly, their voices.
"I hate waiting," said the blond. He almost sounded like a kid, maybe someone
in his early twenties.
"I have waited much longer," said the other. J.J. immediately recognized the
man's accent as German, rough and broken.
"I'll take you to Faust soon enough."
"And then I will kill her."
"Well..." the blond said, his voice reserved. He was cut off by static and
snow. The tape went blank.
Pat took the Watchman out of her hands. "That's when the fire started. They
want you dead, Jay."
...
"Who the hell's the guy?" Wasp hissed, watching from the bar.
Vit snorted. The American forgot, or he wasn't watching enough. He was
watching /her/. There was something about her that he wanted and it blinded
him. It was a danger that Vit was not happy to be associated with.
"He was with her," Vit told him. "He helped her walk, sometimes. He drove her
home."
"Him?" Wasp said in disbelief. "HIM?" he said again, louder. He stood with
conviction. "Hell, let's go get this shitfaced mother-fu --"
Vit put a strong hand on Wasp's shoulder. "No." His voice was commanding. "He
is a friend. We wait until he leaves."
Vit was becoming more and more frustrated with waiting. He waited far too long
for this American to tell him where the solo Faust was and was beginning to
wonder if he knew at all. Every day he waited was another day other solos
would have to search. Even if they had not gotten to the woman, if it took too
long the bounty would be lowered, even dropped. Vit had too much invested in
the search. He already suspected the young American of misleading him.
"Hey, you," something large and burly said, its deep voice resounding in Vit's
ear. "You're in my seat."
It was almost twice as wide as Vit was and at least half a foot taller. It
looked Scandinavian to him, but the face looked all wrong. Though Vit was not
about to sit there thinking paleontology.
"You!" Wasp exclaimed suddenly.
Both Vit and the thug looked over at Wasp, who was wide-eyed and standing. Vit
thought there was something of fear in that look and he expected the American
to do something stupid.
"I recognize you," he said again, then placed a hand on Vit's arm. "Come on,
Hanz, we're sitting in his place."
Vit nodded and stood, following Wasp towards the far wall, hissing a demand for
an explanation.
"He was one of the men who warned me to stay away from J.J." Wasp motioned
franticly at her table then the thug. "I'm sure he recognized me, but I've
got to talk to her. Tonight."
It was, of course, impossible. Vit found at least two others like the thug,
all watching them closely. Wasp hated the idea of leaving so soon and nearly
broke off their deal. This man was dangerously obsessed with the woman,
whether for love or something more complex, Vit started thinking against his
highest moral code. He wanted to know WHY.
And he wanted Faust.
...
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Kent Jenkins - Use by permission or general insanity.]
From: JENKINS@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Summary: Part 24: Too Much Trouble
Date: 6 Aug 92 07:33:32 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
[For those people coming in late, I do have back issues availiable.
This chronicle takes place 'fifty years before everyone else.' In
mid winter. I consider this to be January, 2011. Whichever you
preffer, it works out to be the same.]
...
There was a pounding at the door and all action stopped. Vit stood
perfectly still, one steady hand around the liar's throat, the other
griping the heavy pistol. For a moment he was afraid Wasp would cry
out until he remembered that this young rat-American thought them as
on the same team. He had to know that someone was breaking in
didn't he?
"Not this time, Ratteschaum," he hissed in warning, pulling his gun
from this child's temple. "You help now, maybe I not kill you later."
The metal door began to buckle under the stress, its lock no longer
under the proper pressure to hold it closed. Vit glanced at Wasp, the
American trembling in fear, reflections of green and red bounced
through his eyes. Green? thought Vit. There were no green lights in
this apartment. The German froze, baffled by the discovery. Was the
light coming from inside the blonde American's --
The door burst open, a loud clang as it swung into the wall, two large
men with some kind of large automatic weapons threatening the
entranceway. Vit did not watch, but ducked behind the counter, pulling
the trigger again and again toward the door. Only after the shooting
began did he notice Wasp next to him, standing still.
Stupid kid. Vit gave him no more thought.
Bullets littered the air with teflon-coated lead and sounds of
shattering glass, everything was as slow-motion to Vit, whose training
and intuition were faster than his thoughts. He fired five shots
before the barels of the men at the door swung toward the open area
that was the kitchen. He watched and reacted, aiming each next shot
with the last, biting his shots into and up one of the indruder's
thick legs.
There was a loud explosion and the blond American fell backwards to
the floor. In a cold thought, Vit swore at the loss of help.
Splinters of wood started to fly around Vit, holes through the cheap
plywood cabinets marked the oncoming bullets. Vit didn't have
enough room to dive over the shots but he had to flee, and flee now.
Another explosion from behind nudged him forward, the pressure of air
deafening him. Everything was quiet.
He looked to the men, his reactions expecting enemy fire, but the
intruders had both fallen to the ground, blood and shards of bone and
bullet scattered against the wall behind them.
Vit's hearing began to return, the misleading ringing forming itself
into a heavy panting. From behind.
The American still lived, his face warped in pain, teeth clenched and
his chest heaving. One arm of his leather jacket was torn and blood
trickled from it, but he was clenching his other shoulder.
Wasp squinted at the eurosolo and grinned for a heavy breath.
"Fourty-nine cal ... explosive shells ...." Resting in his hand was
a large pistol, the barrel still smoking. "Think I broke my arm."
Vit stood and moved away from him, toward the limp flesh that were
once threatening oponents. One he recognized, the other no longer had
a face to recognize.
"Hey," Wasp called after him, obviously thinking the German was going
to leave him there. "Hey, we talk now, no? I saved your butt. I
still need your help."
I should still kill him, Vit thought as he bent to search the remains.
He lied, he mislead, he took me away from my bounty. Now someone else
may have collected the fee.
"She's not a killer," Wasp said in a desperate voice, as though he was
reading Vit's thoughts. "She's in tro --"
"Stop your whining," Vit grumbled. He found what he was looking for,
a lisence. He noticed the name of the agency as he wiped the bood away
with his thumb. It was local. Good.
He cocked his pistol again and walked to where Wasp still lay on the
floor, cradling himself like a baby. Vit pointed the pistol and aimed
it at the American's head.
I should kill him.
"If you are going to die," Vit said slowly, "at least die like a man."
He held his own, finger on the trigger just so taught, body turned to
the side, face expressionless.
Wasp started to lift the large pistol, his arm shaking, his face grim
with determination. Good.
Vit slowly lowered his gun and moved the hammer into place, then putting
the gun away. "They might have more gunmen outside," he told Wasp.
"We will use the window."
Wasp had steadied his bruised, probably dislocated shoulder and was
pointing the brute pistol straight at the German.
"Put that away," Vit said with a sneer, turning towards the window.
"You have proved enough. Now we can talk."
...
A maddened roar of anger shook the office, the influence of drugs fading
as the office became just an office with a few colored lights and a
man-made mist. All mysticism of the room was shattered. Gregory White
felt like a man instead of an insect.
Gregory White felt like a very frightened man.
"I want them dead!" the flailing silhouette shrieked. "I want J.J.
mine and these buffoons dead!" An accusing finger broke the distance
and felt nearer to Gregory than before in this warped reality. "I
want fresh kill! See it arranged."
Gregory fidgeted. "Our ... um, our normal supplier has not been very
reliable lately."
"Pressure him! If Rednix does not want our business, there are others
we can call to."
"But ...." Gregory hesitated. "That will take time."
The silhouette's voice dropped low, grinding through the thick air.
"I do not keep you around simply to amuse me, White. You have two days.
Cooperate with Faust completely." He paused. "I will take care of her."
...
[Copyright (c) 1992 by Kent Jenkins - The special effects were done by ILM.]
---
Kent Jenkins | He who fights with monsters might take care,
("Thenomain") | lest he thereby become a monster.
| And if you gaze for long into an abyss,
| the abyss gazes also into you. -- Nietzsche
From: JENKINS@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 23 Dec 92 01:06:07 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
[Part 25]
...
"I want them dead!" the flailing silhouette shrieked. "I want J.J.
mine and these buffoons dead!" An accusing finger broke the distance
and felt nearer to Gregory than before in this warped reality. "I
want fresh kill! See it arranged."
Gregory fidgeted. "Our ... um, our normal supplier has not been very
reliable lately."
"Pressure him! If Rednix does not want our business, there are others
we can call to."
"But ...." Gregory hesitated. "That will take time."
The silhouette's voice dropped low, grinding through the thick air.
"I do not keep you around simply to amuse me, White. You have two days.
Cooperate with Faust completely." He paused. "I will take care of her."
:::
It took J.J. Faust two days to realize that her Liquid Apathy was no
longer working for her. She had nearly overdosed one night in trying,
but all she felt was gut-wrenching pain. The unnatural mood swings
continued and she found herself crying over a vase of daisies. They
reminded her clearly of a Georgia O'Keefe painting and soon she found
tears running down her face, as if their beauty was too much to bear.
Or, she thought as her fist grasped the Apathy inhalant, too beautiful
to forget.
So maybe the sudden drug tolerance was a hidden boon. She kept her
last container in her purse. Just in case she was bitten with the
feelings again.
She hadn't had the courage of facing Mr. White about Gary's father
since her startling confrontation with Suz, but as she lay on her
couch, pulled against herself as the ebbs of pain finally drifted
away, she remembered. And tomorrow, she promised herself, tomorrow
I will see to it.
J.J. was surprizingly delighted to hear from Patrick Mivlosk, again.
The young executive simply called and asked her out to dinner, if
she was feeling better after her fall. She told him she was feeling
much better, thank you, and that she would be delighted. Shall I
come by at six? Certainly.
Pat was wonderfully mundane to J.J. He was considerate, thoughtful,
and obviously had a brain in his skull. He wasn't bad-looking
either. He had both feet on the ground and reminded J.J. where and
when she was.
She chose a simple blue dress and braved to wear some earrings,
ignoring the slight knot of regret about a pendant that once
haunted her. She still couldn't bear thinking about wearing
another necklace, though almost half a dozen sat on her dresser.
Patrick, dressed in a well-tailored dress jacket and tie, arrived
as on time as any man could, only ten minutes late, and offered
her a small bouquet of daisies.
It took J.J. a few moments to shake off a feeling of dread and
fear, a flashback of the painting, though she smiled politely
through the sudden change of emotion as she placed them in an
appropriate vase.
She tried calming herself down, breathing and thinking of the
beauty of the daisies, but the daisies looked wrong, their touch
sending signals to her brain. She knew daisies were only flowers,
but these terrified her. Instead of crying, this time she wanted
to scream.
J.J. forced a grin. "Shall we go?"
...
Wasp pretty much had it for this so-called high life he bought into.
For the price of his soul he was the only civilian with cybernetic
optical implants, and now he had the Major's black market network.
But instead of cutting deals and making money, he was tormented with
Vit's brutal behavior and the shoulder wound and the near constant
barrage of snipers. This was no different than being in his old
gang.
Vit was entirely no help for those next two days, leading Wasp
around by the balls like Rednix used to. Do this, do that, go over
there, tell me everything you know.
At least I'm not dead, Wasp reminded himself. Not yet, at least.
Vit had believed Wasp's story, finally understanding that J.J. Faust
wasn't an American gun for hire but a psychotic gemologist messed up
entirely with the wrong people.
"How do you know they are the wrong people?" Vit asked. "Maybe they
are just smart and know we are the wrong people."
Wasp knew more, in this case. "My boss wanted her. I still don't
know why, but he's never wanted anything straight before. I knew
him pretty well. He was a major looney."
They agreed that Jerond and White Jewelers were going out of their
way to protect J.J. Faust from any outside influence. If she was
simply an assistant designer, as the city-wide records proved, then
how could she afford a huge flat? Were the bodyguards her idea?
(Wasp was convinced they weren't.) And this blonde executive,
Mivlosk, had to factor into it some way.
Even with Wasp's far-reaching network of contacts, they weren't
really sure. Mivlosk worked in the same building and this company
owned most of the stock in Jerond and White Jewelers, but there the
similarities ended. Guesses could be made, but nothing was
concrete.
The shooting began a few hours after Wasp and Vit escaped J.J.'s
old apartment, the tell-tale mark of a professional. The sound of
a bullet hitting pavement from high above, then no more.
A sniper hit Wasp in the arm, now sporting a pair of bullets. Vit
proved his worth by shooting, at least scaring off the sniper and
bandaging Wasp up until he could be taken to a very discrete medic.
"What do you mean someone's put a hit out on us!" Wasp yelled into
a cellular phone that used to be Rednix's. "What, I pay you guys
for sitting around on your collective asses to just watch the bullets
fly? Find out who! I ...."
Pause. Amazement. "Really?"
Another pause. "Really? Yes, I knew that, I just didn't think ...
Nononono ... No, no, look, keep your eyes open, okay? And if you
can get me a list of people he's hired, I'll throw in a bonus ...
yeah, you too, chum."
He turned off the phone and sneered at the far wall.
"What was said?" Vit asked.
"Guy named 'Ghost'. Shit, I should have known. See, Ghost's this
eccentric shit who owns all of the town that Rednix doesn't, which
ends up to be a hell of a lot. Mafia even look up to this guy.
Ghost and Rednix have had this war going on for as long as I can
remember, 'cept the times where they trade with each other. I've
got some receipts for some pretty sick shit from one to another.
"So I figure Ghost caught wind that Rednix is dead and wants me
snuffed, and you for being with me."
Vit shook his head. "What does this have to do with Faust?"
"Huh? I don't know. Nothing, I suppose."
"The killing men were at her apartment. And at the bar."
Wasp leapt up and began pacing. "Shit! And outside her apartment
almost a week before that! And the huge apartment and the
snipers...." Wasp let his mind process the enormity of the
situation before he stopped pacing. "What does he want from her?"
"What did your Rednix want from her?"
The answer remained unanswered. Wasp could only think along one
line. "Curse this gangreen crap and to hell with Rednix and Ghost
both. We've got to rescue her."
...
[Copyright (c) 1992 by Kent Jenkins - Special effects done by ILM.]
---
Kent Jenkins | I don't want the world,
("Thenomain") | I just want your half.
From: JENKINS@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Summary: Part 25
Date: 24 Aug 92 22:01:10 GMT
>> Hello, folks. Because I've been doing this for such a long time and I've <<
>> become confused with the /other/ long-running series in here (there are <<
>> what, four others?), I've been playing around with format of presentation.<<
>> That is to say, I've made it easier to follow. Not only do they have all <<
>> the same names (thank Ghost for small favors!), but I've included the Part<<
>> Number (in text and in the Summary line), who's in it (in the Keywords), <<
>> and have started the section with a little bit from last section. <<
>> Of course, as with all new things, I don't know how well it's going to <<
>> work, so I would gladly appreciate mail on what you think of it. This is,<<
>> of course, in addition to the standard 'Mail Even If You DON'T Like It' <<
>> idea. This goes for everyone in the newsgroup. <<
>> Cor, this is a long Introduction. So read up. It's a bumpy ride ahead. <<
...
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
[Part 25]
...
"I want them dead!" the flailing silhouette shrieked. "I want J.J.
mine and these buffoons dead!" An accusing finger broke the distance
and felt nearer to Gregory than before in this warped reality. "I
want fresh kill! See it arranged."
Gregory fidgeted. "Our ... um, our normal supplier has not been very
reliable lately."
"Pressure him! If Rednix does not want our business, there are others
we can call to."
"But ...." Gregory hesitated. "That will take time."
The silhouette's voice dropped low, grinding through the thick air.
"I do not keep you around simply to amuse me, White. You have two days.
Cooperate with Faust completely." He paused. "I will take care of her."
:::
It took J.J. Faust two days to realize that her Liquid Apathy was no
longer working for her. She had nearly overdosed one night in trying,
but all she felt was gut-wrenching pain. The unnatural mood swings
continued and she found herself crying over a vase of daisies. They
reminded her clearly of a Georgia O'Keefe painting and soon she found
tears running down her face, as if their beauty was too much to bear.
Or, she thought as her fist grasped the Apathy inhalant, too beautiful
to forget.
So maybe the sudden drug tolerance was a hidden boon. She kept her
last container in her purse. Just in case she was bitten with the
feelings again.
She hadn't had the courage of facing Mr. White about Gary's father
since her startling confrontation with Suz, but as she lay on her
couch, pulled against herself as the ebbs of pain finally drifted
away, she remembered. And tomorrow, she promised herself, tomorrow
I will see to it.
J.J. was surprizingly delighted to hear from Patrick Mivlosk, again.
The young executive simply called and asked her out to dinner, if
she was feeling better after her fall. She told him she was feeling
much better, thank you, and that she would be delighted. Shall I
come by at six? Certainly.
Pat was wonderfully mundane to J.J. He was considerate, thoughtful,
and obviously had a brain in his skull. He wasn't bad-looking
either. He had both feet on the ground and reminded J.J. where and
when she was.
She chose a simple blue dress and braved to wear some earrings,
ignoring the slight knot of regret about a pendant that once
haunted her. She still couldn't bear thinking about wearing
another necklace, though almost half a dozen sat on her dresser.
Patrick, dressed in a well-tailored dress jacket and tie, arrived
as on time as any man could, only ten minutes late, and offered
her a small bouquet of daisies.
It took J.J. a few moments to shake off a feeling of dread and
fear, a flashback of the painting, though she smiled politely
through the sudden change of emotion as she placed them in an
appropriate vase.
She tried calming herself down, breathing and thinking of the
beauty of the daisies, but the daisies looked wrong, their touch
sending signals to her brain. She knew daisies were only flowers,
but these terrified her. Instead of crying, this time she wanted
to scream.
J.J. forced a grin. "Shall we go?"
...
Wasp pretty much had it for this so-called high life he bought into.
For the price of his soul he was the only civilian with cybernetic
optical implants, and now he had the Major's black market network.
But instead of cutting deals and making money, he was tormented with
Vit's brutal behavior and the shoulder wound and the near constant
barrage of snipers. This was no different than being in his old
gang.
Vit was entirely no help for those next two days, leading Wasp
around by the balls like Rednix used to. Do this, do that, go over
there, tell me everything you know.
At least I'm not dead, Wasp reminded himself. Not yet, at least.
Vit had believed Wasp's story, finally understanding that J.J. Faust
wasn't an American gun for hire but a psychotic gemologist messed up
entirely with the wrong people.
"How do you know they are the wrong people?" Vit asked. "Maybe they
are just smart and know we are the wrong people."
Wasp knew more, in this case. "My boss wanted her. I still don't
know why, but he's never wanted anything straight before. I knew
him pretty well. He was a major looney."
They agreed that Jerond and White Jewelers were going out of their
way to protect J.J. Faust from any outside influence. If she was
simply an assistant designer, as the city-wide records proved, then
how could she afford a huge flat? Were the bodyguards her idea?
(Wasp was convinced they weren't.) And this blonde executive,
Mivlosk, had to factor into it some way.
Even with Wasp's far-reaching network of contacts, they weren't
really sure. Mivlosk worked in the same building and this company
owned most of the stock in Jerond and White Jewelers, but there the
similarities ended. Guesses could be made, but nothing was
concrete.
The shooting began a few hours after Wasp and Vit escaped J.J.'s
old apartment, the tell-tale mark of a professional. The sound of
a bullet hitting pavement from high above, then no more.
A sniper hit Wasp in the arm, now sporting a pair of bullets. Vit
proved his worth by shooting, at least scaring off the sniper and
bandaging Wasp up until he could be taken to a very discrete medic.
"What do you mean someone's put a hit out on us!" Wasp yelled into
a cellular phone that used to be Rednix's. Of course, to much of the
world, he /was/ Major Rednix. "What, I pay you guys for sittin
around on your collective asses to just watch the bullets fly? Find
out who! I ...."
Pause. Amazement. "Really?"
Another pause. "Really? Yes, I knew that, I just didn't think ...
Nononono ... No, no, look, keep your eyes open, okay? And if you
can get me a list of people he's hired, I'll throw in a bonus ...
yeah, you too, chum."
He turned off the phone and sneered at the far wall.
"What was said?" Vit asked.
"Guy named 'Ghost'. Shit, I should have known. See, Ghost's this
eccentric shit who owns all of the town that Rednix doesn't, which
ends up to be a hell of a lot. Mafia even look up to this guy.
Ghost and Rednix have had this war going on for as long as I can
remember, 'cept the times where they trade with each other. I've
got some receipts for some pretty sick shit from one to another.
"So I figure Ghost caught wind that Rednix is dead and wants me
snuffed, and you for being with me."
Vit shook his head. "What does this have to do with Faust?"
"Huh? I don't know. Nothing, I suppose."
"The killing men were at her apartment. And at the bar."
Wasp leapt up and began pacing. "Shit! And outside her apartment
almost a week before that! And the huge apartment and the
snipers...." Wasp let his mind process the enormity of the
situation before he stopped pacing. "What does he want from her?"
"What did your Rednix want from her?"
The answer remained unanswered. Wasp could only think along one
line. "Curse this gangreen crap and to hell with Rednix and Ghost
both. We've got to rescue her."
...
[Copyright (c) 1992 by Kent Jenkins - Special effects done by ILM.]
---
Kent Jenkins | He who fights with monsters might take care,
("Thenomain") | lest he thereby become a monster.
| And if you gaze for long into an abyss,
| the abyss gazes also into you. -- Nietzsche
From: JENKINS@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (more)
Sender: news@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
[Part 26]
...
Wasp turned off the phone and sneered at the far wall.
"What was said?" Vit asked.
"Guy named 'Ghost'. Shit, I should have known. See, Ghost's this
eccentric shit who owns all of the town that Rednix doesn't, which
ends up to be a hell of a lot. Mafia even look up to this guy.
Ghost and Rednix have had this war going on for as long as I can
remember, 'cept the times where they trade with each other. I've
got some receipts for some pretty sick shit from one to another.
"So I figure Ghost caught wind that Rednix is dead and wants me
snuffed, and you for being with me."
Vit shook his head. "What does this have to do with Faust?"
"Huh? I don't know. Nothing, I suppose."
"The killing men were at her apartment. And at the bar."
Wasp leapt up and began pacing. "Shit! And outside her apartment
almost a week before that! And the huge apartment and the
snipers...." Wasp let his mind process the enormity of the
situation before he stopped pacing. "What does he want from her?"
"What did your Rednix want from her?"
The answer remained unanswered. Wasp could only think along one
line. "Curse this gangreen crap and to hell with Rednix and Ghost
both. We've got to rescue her."
:::
J.J. Faust was concerned. Her date with Patrick went well for the
most part. He was kind, intelligent, gentlemanly ... yet she felt ill
for the entire evening. A pencil-thin line of tension clenched about
her throat and it wasn't until later that she remembered that a
pendant once hung there, a pendant that drove her crazy. When she did
remember, waves of guilt and doubt grabbed her. Guilt for throwing
away the one thing that had made her a free woman, she had tossed it
into the bay as though it had done nothing for her --
/Stop it/, she told herself. She couldn't think and craved for the
Liquid Apathy she left at her flat, even though it had stopped working
for her days ago. The evening ended at ten when she simply could not
stand any more of the pain or self-abuse. She smiled to Patrick who
was a gentleman and took her home without question.
Sitting huddled on her couch, praying the Liquid Apathy would work as
she inhaled the drug, she couldn't help but be concerned. Her body
was confused, trying to remind her of a pain that ended almost a year
ago. She rubbed her neck as the drug failed to work yet again. Her
skin was warm, but hot where she once wore the pendant. She applied
a coolpack and the heat became bearable at last.
Then the lights went out, emergency floodlights kicking on and casting
a surrealistic mood over the room, shadows stretching over everything.
"I don't need this!" yelled J.J. to any higher power who cared to
listen. Her complaint was answered by a hurried knock at the door
and, as she got up to answer it, the return of the lights and all her
electronics. Everything made quiet noises as it reset itself.
As J.J. turned on the door's small viewscreen her heart sped. The man
was very young and blond, watching around nervously with his hands in
the pockets of a baggy coat. Paranoia gripped her; who knew what was
under that coat.
"Wh-who are you?" she spoke to the viewscreen.
"John," was the reply. "John Viresse from upstairs in 3C." The young
man did not look rich but J.J. never met any of her upstairs
neighbors.
"What do you want?"
"My foodsynth is out. I was wondering if I could borrow some ketsup."
The reply was glib, and appeared true. Maybe he was a sports star,
J.J. rationalized. The face looked familiar, but she did not trust
the familiarity.
Still, she opened the door and greeted the man with a crooked smile.
"Hi," she said.
He looked at her with glassy eyes, transfixed for a moment with a look
of awe. Then he shook his head. "Sorry. Ketsup, right?"
She laughed nervously and nodded as he passed her and walked inside.
"I have to admit," he said as he surveyed the room, regret in his
voice, "I don't live upstairs. My name is Wasp. I have to talk to
you, J.J."
Fright overtook her fraying nerves and she turned around to run, but a
large and dark man stood in her doorway, letting himself in and
closing the door. He looked very German, and her mind finally came up
with a connection. The German and the young blond man. Then men who
wanted to kill her.
"J.J.," said John Viresse, or Wasp, or whatever, grabbing J.J.'s doe-
frightened gaze. There seemed to be red and green shapes in his eyes,
but she was too scared to care. "Please sit down. We're not here to
hurt you, but we need to have a talk."
...
This J.J. Faust woman was no killer. The entire European underground
would be in great turmoil if this was discovered, months of deep
reasearch and rumors mocked by this pitiful revelation. Vit discovered
it and knew that everything the boy American said was right, that
someone wanted her and had her. Her apartment was a cage set up by those
who wished much from her. Vit could not fathom what this frightened
woman could hold for anyone but it was obvious that there was something.
"What ... what do you want to talk about?" asked Faust. She had her
arms wrapped around herself protectively as she kept looking from one
of the intruders to the other.
The blonde American sat. "You're in trouble. You have been since Major
Rednix set eyes on you."
"Who?" This Faust knew manners and sat with her guest. Odd in an
American.
"Rednix. I think you called him Father Jim. You met him at ... at a
very fancy party last June."
Something hidden passed in that sentance and J.J. turned an ashen
white, turning her gaze away from Wasp. Vit thought quickly and
suspected that the party was set up by Rednix to gain what Faust had
and the woman refused, killing the Major. Vit found himself
surprised, deep in his own thoughts. If she did kill Rednix then she
was the one he wanted, no hired killer but a jewelry designer.
J.J.'s safety became suddenly important to Vit. What she had was
enough that someone had lied, hiring killers to hunt a fellow hired
killer. Wasp, now working in place of Rednix, wanted her alive. A
great power of this large City wanted her not only alive, but in its
control.
Faust appeared completely unaware any of this was happening, again
transfixed on Wasp, still ashen-faced with her jaw slightly hung down.
"Your boss," Wasp explained, "works for a man named Ghost, a perverse
man who has been known to pay for freshly-dead bodies and large
amounts of drugs. He controls more underground in New York than the
mob. He wants you J.J. I've been trying to get ahold of you for
weeks to warn you."
As the blonde boy went silent, the air hissed with anticipation.
"Me?" Faust finally replied. Wasp nodded. Faust asked, "Wh-why?"
"I don't know. It's something you have, maybe something you are.
Ghost is into the strange. Rednix never knew how his mind worked and
Rednix was just too quick for Ghost. They hated each other."
Faust's voice was airy and weak. "And ... and now Rednix is dead,
isn't he?"
Wasp nodded gravely. "You need to get out of here, J.J. Get away
from New York, away from Ghost. This apartment is a trap and you've
been played a pawn. Rednix was after your pendant, J.J., but he was
also after /you/."
"And Ghost ...."
There was a scruffing noise in the hallway, a quiet muttering of
voices echoing off the concrete to the door. Vit heard maybe three of
them.
"Yes!" Wasp said urgently, still watching J.J. with dire intent. It
then became far too clear to Vit that Wasp, too, wanted something from
J.J.
"I ... I promised to look for a boy's father. He's missing."
Wasp grinned, sitting back. "What's the man's name? I can find him
in a week."
"We have company," Vit interrupted, pulling out his gun. "Outside.
Three. It's an ambush." He stepped to one side of the doorway and
looked at Wasp who was holding his shoulder and shaking his head.
"Give me the large gun, then."
Wasp tossed the heavy gun, it must have been at least fourty-nine
caliber, and settled back to again hold his shoulder. J.J. was
handing him a scrap of paper with the door fell inward.
Gunfire scattered through the apartment, above everyone's heads. The
last Vit saw of J.J. and Wasp was the young American pulling her
behind the couch.
He faced the doorway with the gun outstretched and saw not three but
four men there. Three were carrying machineguns, the fourth in a suit
and tie. He fired at the first one he could see, the spattering of
blood blurred by the jarring kick of the weapon.
The other two gunmen advanced, swiping at him with the weapon butts
and scoring hits to drive him back. He shot one in the leg and was
hit soundly on the side of the head. His world blurred and he fell.
In the confused, fuzzed pattern of sight and sound, automatic gunfire
was accompanied by the sound of breaking glass, almost pleasant to
Vit. Voices called out all around him and eventually, the German
passed out.
...
[Copyright (c) 1992 by Kent Jenkins - Special effects done by ILM.]
---
Kent Jenkins | I don't want the world,
("Thenomain") | I just want your half.
|
From: JENKINS@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Mainteance
Date: 12 Jan 93 04:17:20 GMT
Well, folks, this is the second to the last "Joy and the Art ...". I almost
loathe to end this Joy story, but no story can go on forever. Not life, not
Earth, and definately not a troubled woman named J.J. Faust.
I'd especially like comentary from this one, though, as there are some things
in here which, while not exactly true-to-form for a Cyberpunk-style story, are
different and thoughtful. What else is Cyberpunk but viewing human nature in
the face of inhumanity? We come closer to know and understand what it means to
be Alien, so we are that much closer to understanding ourselves.
Replies are wanted. And on with the show.
===
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
[Part 27]
...
Wasp nodded gravely. "You need to get out of here, J.J. Get away
from New York, away from Ghost. This apartment is a trap and you've
been played a pawn. Rednix was after your pendant, J.J., but he was
also after /you/."
"And Ghost ...."
There was a scruffing noise in the hallway, a quiet muttering of
voices echoing off the concrete to the door. Vit heard maybe three of
them.
"Yes!" Wasp said urgently, still watching J.J. with dire intent. It
then became far too clear to Vit that Wasp, too, wanted something from
J.J.
"I ... I promised to look for a boy's father. He's missing."
Wasp grinned, sitting back. "What's the man's name? I can find him
in a week."
"We have company," Vit interrupted, pulling out his gun. "Outside.
Three. It's an ambush." He stepped to one side of the doorway and
looked at Wasp who was holding his shoulder and shaking his head.
"Give me the large gun, then."
Wasp tossed the heavy gun, it must have been at least fourty-nine
caliber, and settled back to again hold his shoulder. J.J. was
handing him a scrap of paper with the door fell inward.
Gunfire scattered through the apartment, above everyone's heads. The
last Vit saw of J.J. and Wasp was the young American pulling her
behind the couch.
He faced the doorway with the gun outstretched and saw not three but
four men there. Three were carrying machineguns, the fourth in a suit
and tie. He fired at the first one he could see, the spattering of
blood blurred by the jarring kick of the weapon.
The other two gunmen advanced, swiping at him with the weapon butts
and scoring hits to drive him back. He shot one in the leg and was
hit soundly on the side of the head. His world blurred and he fell.
In the confused, fuzzed pattern of sight and sound, automatic gunfire
was accompanied by the sound of breaking glass, almost pleasant to
Vit. Voices called out all around him and eventually, the German
passed out.
:::
The apartment was silent and Ellis MacGannan watched a blond executive
escort Faust from the room. Vitrov had dropped from sight and not
returned. She was pretty sure he wasn't dead but the thought was
always there. Theirs was a dangerous profession.
"Of all the completely wretched things to do." Ellis pulled out the
pins and twisted sections of her Ares MT-20. "No-good German bastard.
You better be alive when I get there, blinkin' kraut." Her rifle
folded easily into a carryable case. "You owe me twenty rounds."
There was a young man in the apartment with Vit, though Ellis doubted
he lived. The exec shot him close in the chest after dealing an
efficient blow to Faust from behind. It wasn't quite game, but the
exec carried an unconscious Faust, his loot, easily from the room.
Ellis thought it odd that Vit was working with someone, let alone
someone so young. "Maybe you've gone soft on us after all," she
murmured to herself. "O'course, letting bounty live isn't much your
game either. What are you up to, Vitrov?" Assuming, of course, he
was still alive.
She adjusted her goggles, increasing the magnification slightly. The
young man was still bleeding. No telling where the exec took Faust.
She didn't like waiting like this and knew that, before long, the
police would be along to have a look-see.
Ellis growled at herself. "You owe me, Vit. No chance in lettin' it
go unpaied, this time." She knew she was going to regret saving him
and his friend. "But hell," she told herself, "dues are dues."
...
It was color then dark, a vague kind of dark that misted around the
fringes with uncertainty or life. A grandmotherly-type in a rocking
chair was surrounded by the mist, leaning forward with strong-willed
intent. "Remember, Joy, you ..."
The vision changed into a little boy, wide-eyed with terror and awe,
in a forest park long after closing. He asked, "Are you a ghost?"
A pale-blond executive, in a hazy bar, the mirror behind him showing
secrets older than memory. "You dance very nicely." A song. "Sing
me black and blue, my love." A demon. "Beautiful." A circle of
robed men, the sweet smell of blood. "Dance for us." The song,
again. Still, the smell of blood. "Oh, sing me black and blue."
A crazed man, escorted by the police. "It's coming back! It's almost
here!"
The boy, again. A simple question. "Are you an angel?"
The darkness spoke. "You're in serious trouble."
It was all so familiar, so close to being known and understood. These
people, these memories were so clear yet just beyond a shroud of
comrehension with no instruction how to join them.
"Julianne Josephine Armand Faust."
Faust! Yes, Faust. That was her name. She grabbed hold of the
reality through the flood of phrases, faces and smells, the disjointed
memories that were all her own. But something about it wasn't
complete. It wasn't her /name/, but something that she had always
been called.
There was a nameless old woman sitting back in a chair, smoking
something unsavory in front of a huge glass picture window. Through
the window there was only a chaos of gray turmoil. It was ugly, but
the woman had a hint of beauty about her, as if she had once been
strong and wise which had faded away.
"The unicorns and the vampires, are very much the same. They love
what is innocent and unspoiled. But in his love, young Joy, the
vampire takes the innocence away. The unicorn returns it anew."
Once she was Joy, once long ago for her Grandmother, when she was
alive and Germany was becoming whole again. She was so innocent then,
rejoycing for the world as it made efforts to become whole.
Grandmother called her Joy.
But like the nameless woman in her memories, she had changed. She was
no longer the cheerful child who dreamed of unicorns and gemstones.
She had killed many, all for the sake of a pendant she had. She
killed to end her own jelousy, hating the necklaces they wore and
fearing they were more beautiful and wanted than her own.
"Don't let your past get the better of you."
Suz. Susan from ... where was she from? She was like Grandmother,
though Joy hardly knew Suz. Suz tried to warn her, to protect her.
"One of us gotta be innocent when the unicorn comes."
She had tried to refresh her lost strength with Joy, to warn her. Suz
had tried to warn Joy! Joy didn't understand then.
A dam broke and the flood of thoughts returned.
Once again Joy saw the madman, being carried forcefully into an
awaiting police van. He was screaming, coated in the blood of
something or someone else, "It's coming! It's almost here!" His
voice drowned out into steamy music, guitar and drums, a voice even
louder calling out, "Quiet madness, sane as time." It was all dark,
all chaos, like the gray outside Suz's office window. But in a
moment, Joy could see the sparks of light. There was light, there was
more than just gray. A young child, lost in the maelstrom, asking for
her help. "Will you save my father?"
The Unicorn and the Vampire. They were all around her, they had been
calling to her in need. Her innocence had cost her much, the lives of
many and her own freedom. The Vampire was not a creature, but an
attitude that destroyed her, a man named Ghost, a pendant that
controlled her personality, a drug, a knife ...
The Unicorn was in those things she loved and made her stronger. A
child named Gary Kinman, Suz, Grandmother, her dancing ...
But the woman who was once Joy and once J.J. Faust knew that dancing
was a thing of her own, her testament to herself. She had changed and
became a dancer, not dancing to feed her innocence to a soul-sucking
Vampire or a Unicorn, but to something much more basic.
Joy danced for herself. Joy danced for the world. Joy danced for God.
...
[Copyright (c) 1992-3 by Kent Jenkins - The Beginning of the End is Nigh.]
---
Kent Jenkins | I don't want the world,
("Thenomain") | I just want your half.
From: JENKINS@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Date: 29 Jan 93 09:56:01 GMT
Okay, so I've been procrastinating.
Still, it's like I got a fanfare of previous replies. Still, you want to read
this. (I know you do.) Just read it through. Just once. And then we'll see
how it's going.
Maybe.
...
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
[Part 28]
...
Vit's head pounded and his sides ached, the feeling of heat running
down his legs as he ran across the grass, trying to topple him down to
rest. Just a moment, his body coaxed him with pain. Just for a few
moments. His breath was very loud in his ears as he moved repeating
an address in his head.
310 B. Was it fortunate or luck that MacGannan had enough tracking
gear in her van to quickly find J.J.? It was obvious that MacGannan
was there to collect on the Faust bounty. The bounty that Ghost put
out, Vit was sure. It was a dangerous mind-game to make a woman think
she's hunted, but Faust never knew. She never even knew.
310 B. The myriad series of apartment blocks, was a monotonous
addition to this monotonous city in this insane country. Seven sets
of four-level flats and Vit was running blind, an angel in his ear
with a British accent force-feeding him information.
"There's about nine of them in there now, Vitrov," came MacGannan's
voice. "And climbing. The one lieing down is, I bet, Faust. They've
got her on the floor about five meters straight through the door. I
think she's still alive, just bloody out."
MacGannan's machinegun felt good in his hands, the stock resting
against his hip as he ran. He hurt all over. Nothing he hadn't
survived before in Germany. He was a professional.
"What the ... Vitrov, we've got something fuzzing pickup. Bloody
strong fuzz, nothing like cheap ale. More like gas. Thick gas.
There's about ... ten to thirteen people in there, in a circle. I
think Faust's still on the floor but it ... give me a few secs, chum.
I've almost got audio."
Vit liesurely smashed the cardlock system and walked into the block of
flats. No security, silent alarms, cameras, his mind making a
specific assesment of the situation. He found the stairs and began
the jog up them, his head swimming with protest, blood drumming in his
ears in an odd rhythm.
He stopped. His hearts weren't supposed to pound like that.
"There's audio," Vit's angel said over the drumming. "Coo, what'r
they doing in there?" There was static as the drumming of his heart
stopped with it then clearer when it resumed. It wasn't his heart, it
was MacGannan and some parabolic mic. The drumming he thought was his
heart also had a quiet, rhythmic chanting.
"That's Latin. Curiouser. Like one of them color supplement wierdo
rituals. Druids and all that."
Vit didn't wait much longer to start bolting up the stairs, again.
A voice, a male's voice of high timbre trying to be low, spoke in the
room and into Vit's ear. "Who are you?"
"Josepehine Julianne Armand Faust." It was her. Vit crashed out onto
the third floor.
"And who made you what you are?" asked the man's voice.
"I am myself. I made myself." Vit looked desperately at the address
plate on the door before him. 210 A. How had he gotten here? He
cursed and turned back to the stairs.
"And who may give you?"
"No one may give me. I give myself." Vit's arms and legs burned fire
as he scrambled up the stairs with the machinegun in hand, but a
pressing panic sent him haltingly up the stairs.
"Do you give yourself, Jospehine Julinanne Armand Faust?"
"I do."
"Holy bloody shit," Vit vaguely heard MacGannan swear.
The chanting increased, the drumming stiffened and roared into Vit's
ear. "Then dance for us! Give us what you have, what you are!" The
man began to laugh, louder and louder still. Vit was sure he was
hearing his heart beating in his ear now, the aching too strong as he
almost could not step further up the stairs.
"Vitrov!" MacGannan screamed. "Vitrov, what's going on! The system
just went blank, it's going haywire! It's ... God, it's /spelling/
things! Vitrov, get out of there! You bloody moronic German! Abort!
Abort!"
...
J.J. Faust danced. She didn't know why, only that she could not
control her own body or her own voice. Her tortured soul, knowing her
name only as 'Joy', watched out of someone else's eyes. Someone who
was drenched in a drug gas.
She was being beaten by men in robes, dancing to the drum, it was all
so clear. She was bleeding and broken and it felt so good. The
dancing felt so good.
There was a man with a deep red robe, almost black like a rose at
night. Her body danced for him, at his command. And when he pulled a
knife she danced onto it, screaming with extacy. She wanted more,
dancing still closer.
Then she fell from it to the floor, limp and spent. Her body gave all
that it could. The spirit inside, the one called 'Joy' watched on in
horror.
The heavily robed figure reached out and toppled a ceramic lamp,
dabbling some of J.J.'s blood near and around it. He motioned two of
the acolytes to place J.J.'s limp form nearby and he reached for the
phone.
Tap-tap-tap. The dual tones were barely audible.
The voice was hectic, panic-stricken entirely. "H-hello? 911? I've
... there's been an accident." The voice was entirely too familiar.
"Um, Pat ... Patrick Mi-Mivlosk."
/No!/ Joy screamed in defiance, though her spirit remained unheard.
/No, not you!/
Patrick pulled back the thick cloth hood, letting it rest against his
wine-colored robe. "Y ... um, y-yes," he said into the receiver. He
actually looked concerned. "There's ... what? I ... I think she's
dead."
/Not you! What are you doing here?/
"I found ... oh, God, I don't know what it is. A canister ... n-no,
it's ... it's not marked. And she's bleeding ... all over the place."
It was true, Joy found. Her blood had spilled around the lamp, a
hissing sound eminating from the red life where it touched.
The others were running into things, breaking her furnature, her
art, her home. But Patrick, unhooded and acting into the phone,
remained still, explaining how he had walked in on this, that he was
very upset. Upset!
/What do you want with me?!/ Joy wailed, but she was not honored with
a reply, though she waited. And as she waited she began to
understand, about the Vampires and the Unicorns. She was their
Innocent, her blood sweet as her honesty. They had manipulated her,
brought her into their circle, and now she was dead. Juliane
Josephine Armand Faust was dead. Her spirit screamed into the oncoming
darkness.
...
[Copyright (c) 1992 by Kent Jenkins - Special effects done by ILM.]
---
Kent Jenkins | I don't want the world,
("Thenomain") | I just want your half.
|
From: JENKINS@agvax2.ag.ohio-state.edu (Kent Jenkins)
Subject: Joy and the Art of Morotcycle Maintenance
Summary: Afterword
Date: 29 Jan 93 09:57:57 GMT
Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
[Part 29: Prologue]
...
Vit stood in the emergency room of some American hospital as Ellis
MacGannan talked with a nurse about something technical he knew he
couldn't understand.
Faust and Wasp were both whisked away as soon as they got into the
hospital, a thought that made Vit laugh inside. Here they were, Ellis
and himself, two bounty hunters in a hospital trying to save lives.
All his explaining to Ellis would be in vain if Faust was actually
dead. Faust both felt and looked it, her face a contorted, silent
scream.
Should Wasp die as well, Vit would certainly have to find his vengance
for them.
Vit's anger and fear continued to mount. He had never killed for no
purpose, and the twelve men dead was a high price in his mind. And he
feared that, unless one of them was Ghost, he would be in more trouble
before long.
Ellis returned to Vit and looked him sternly in the eye. "You look
worried," she said in German. "Still concerned Faust is dead? That
bounty is still out on her and we can split the reward."
Something unfamiliar snapped in Vit as he looked back at the English
bounty hunter. "I wish she lives," he replied. "She never knew what
was happening to her."
Ellis nodded and motioned at a short corridor. "Come. We'll get you
patched up and then you can worry about it."
Vit hardly heard her words as he stared at the walls of the hospital.
You never knew, he thought. You never had a chance. So we bring you
to a place that promises life so that you may have another chance.
So, Faust, have life anew.
...
END FILE: Joy and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
...
[Copyright (c) 1992 by Kent Jenkins]
---
Kent Jenkins | I don't want the world,
("Thenomain") | I just want your half.
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