From: riffer@freenet2.freenet.ufl.edu (Jeff Mercer)
Subject: Re-Awake
Date: 16 Jan 1996 08:16:24 GMT

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*Copyright 1996 by Jeff Mercer.*
*All rights reserved.          *
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It had started with a simple need... He had needed to eat, and so that meant
getting money. Easiest way to get money was to steal data and re-sell it.
It was the only serious skill he had, despite the illegality.

Unfortunately, it killed him.

                        -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

A whiplash of electrons regulated by silicon coiled into a mechanism for
removing intruders. In cyberspace, its icon was that of a black-tinged
wolf's head with red eyes. It was illegal, of course. A roving form of black
ICE. It cost some coporations a lot of money to keep active.
For the National bank of Japan, it wasn't even a question of whether they
money should be spent. It was simply vital.

His tools were codebreakers and trapdoor sniffers, chunks of code he wrote
himself. Modified ICE breakers lathed from the core of older, non-effective
programs. A motley assembly of surprisingly workable routines.

None of it was any good against the black wolf. The banks systems whistled and
it arrived. Before he knew it, his nervous system was under attack by
modulated electrical signals dumped through his jack. He would be dead in
a few dozen seconds, or at least formatted so completely it'd hardly matter
if his body survived.

                        -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Sun-Tzu called Captain Nistolski.

"Captain. Please have the technicians prepare Bunker 9 for me."
"Why? What's up?"
"I have a potential subject."
"Ok. I'll have the techs open it up. Do you need any assistants?"
"No. Why do you I had a complete robotics system brought in? It is not because
I own stock in Nagasaki Automota. Cease asking questions."
"Erm.. yes. I'll get right--"
*click*

Captain Nistolski sighed and slammed the dead phone down. "Fuckin' AI."

                        -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Seconds after the attack began on his nervous system, it ended. In his
distorted view of Cyberspace, it seemed like the black wolf simply... 
shredded. Twisted coils of black glittering pixels...

A glowing orange-yellow ball swallowed up the remains. And then it moved
towards him.

                        -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"Alpha team, cover the ground floor. Don't let anyone in or out. Beta, you
know your target. Bring it back in one piece. Gamma team, when you clean up
be sure get the slugs that O'Reily keeps leaving behind, the dumb fuck."

The commander tapped his console. Numbers ran past his mono flat display. He
grunted and then glanced at the upper right corner of the screen, waiting for
the signal.
A yellow sunburst appeared.

"Go!" the commander snapped into his throat mike. Scores of silent, armor-
clad men poured out of unmarked vans parked around the crumbling ruin of an
unregulated Zone. With nary a sound, they surrounded one building, scattering
rats and zonies alike. The most heavily weaponed stayed outside while a
smaller group darted quickly into the building.
Guided by some invisible, unerring sense of direction they flowed into the
building like dark mercury, searching...

                        -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

*blam!*
"O'Reily you stupid son of a bitch!"

                        -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Bursting into the room (O'Reily's arm bleeding from the pusher who'd thought
they were raiding his production hole), covering all the exits. A dark-
skinned arabic woman yanked the leads out of his skull, fingers rested on
the still artery in his neck.

"I think he's flatlined," she said, calmly. "I can probably resucitate--"

"No," snapped their commander. "As is. Bag him."

The woman shrugged. She pulled the figure up, and another of the silent men
helped pull a gunny sack over the body. In moments they were gone, leaving
Gamma team to slide into place and erradicate all evidence of the existance
of the deceased.

                        -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Bunker 9 was on a military research base that had been set-up in Florida.
After the flooding, the state had lost most of its residents and ceased to
be much of a tourist attraction. The terrorist attack on Walt Disney World
cut the remaining feed to the economy.
A sprawling facility was built by the military, extending from north-central
Florida to the coastline. Vast planes of seemingly empty fields for testing
of all sorts, scattered buildings and structures forming semi-random borders.
Interconnected by silent flat roads that terminated in heavily-defended
gates.

Most of the natives showed little interest in the complex, being cockroaches.
But whenever a hovercraft roared quietly onto the roads, there was a
scattering of wildlife, chittering in annoyance...

The body was detanked and dropped off outside Bunker 9. The commander
congratulated his crew (except O'Reily) and then took them all to Bunker 1
to have their memories erased.

As the body cooled, the wildlife slowly returned. The darkness grew with the
silence.

                        -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"He's yours," Captain Nistolski said into the phone.
"Good. I am going into seclusion. I am not to be disturbed."

Silence.

"Yes. Of course... Sir."

                        -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

A door on Bunker 9 slid open. From the dark interior a four-legged 'bot
emerged. It whirred and clicked its way to the body laying on the ground
outside.
Another 'bot came out, speedily zipping along on its treads. It resembled a
small crane. Using its grapplers it lifted the body onto the back of the
quad-bot and then zipped back inside. The quad-bot lumbered after it. The
door closed behind them.

In the interior of the bunker, lights snapped on. Mercury vapor lamps along-
side ultraviolet, infrared spotlights along the edges of the upper ceiling. A
series of camera systems suspended from the ceiling came to life, lenses
focusing and turning as if testing their new found life.

The quad-bot stopped by a large, clear cylinder. It waited expectantly. The
lift-bot zipped past, and reversed into its charge plug, then grew silent.

On one table rested six long, thick black rods, measuring 4 meters in length.
First one, then a second, and then a third vibrated. With a sudden clattering
like hollow bones, the rods lept into the air, seeming to explode into frag-
ments.
Three black bushes landed on the hard concrete floor. Resembling large sea
urchins, they rolled quickly over to the quad-bot. With the whispery noise of
monocarbon plastic rubbing against itself, the squat forms folded and re-
folded their hundreds of limbs, until they looked like stick-figure humans
without heads. The three strange mechs bent together and lifted up the large
sack off the back of the quad-bot, holding it loosely but firmly in their
giant, three-fingered grasp.

The cylinder walls slid silently downwards into the ground, until they stuck
out only part ways. The black stick figures pulled and lifted the body out of
the gunny sack, and placed it gently (slowly) into the cylinder, so that it
was propped up by the wall. The figures walked clumsily back, then with a
series of tiny popping noises, exploded into dark, spiny blossoms that rolled
away and back to their table.

A much larger cylindrical wall, opaque and metallic colored, rose upwards from
the floor, until it snapped into place in a giant circular grove in the
ceiling of the bunker. A hissing started as air was pumped out of the internal
chamber. Sensors all along the inside of the wall began relaying signals of
tempature, radiation, sound, and checmical analysis. After the air had been
sucked out, a different set of pumps sounded, and the chamber began to fill
with a hyper-oxygenated flourocarbon fluid.

                        -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"So what the hell does he do in there?" the commander asked Nistolski, as
they idled over two tumblers and a bottle of Southern Comfort.
"I don't know. He's got robots out the ass, enough biomass to feed a platoon
for six months, all sorts of weird bullshit... And the fucking Hexagon even
gave him a rank."
"Your shitting me."
"Fucking General Sun-Tzu, in charge of Special Research Operations." The
Captain burped slightly, then downed the rest of his glass. The commander
shook his head slowly. "Jesus..."

[...more...later...]



 riffer@afn.org   : "I'll just set the ol' phaser on `Emasculate'."             
 Jeff The Riffer  :                                                   --Opus    
    Drifter...    :                                                             
Homo Postmortemus :