From: bmromer@cs.millersv.edu (Ben M. Romer)
Subject: NEW STORY:  Scarlet Ribbons
Date: Fri Apr 28 01:36:04 MET DST 1995

         Scarlet Ribbons
          By Glass_Avenger (bmromer@cs.millersv.edu)


          This is my first attempt ever at a story of this type, please
          tell me what you think, I really would appreciate constructive
          criticism.

          - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

          	He ducked instinctively, the chromed lion IC construct
          sailing over his head, claws slashing patterns of viral
          disruption through open cyberspace. Rolling and coming quickly to
          his feet, he shot three attack packets, represented within the
          system as sparkling, spinning shuriken, toward the killer ice,
          brutal recursive programs designed to rip code apart from within.
          The lion dodged the first gleaming blade, but the second and
          third crashed deeply into the construct, tearing thick streams of
          spawned code from its image. The construct fell to the shimmering
          platform, spazming, as page faults ripped through its process,
          finally dissolving into the floor, accompanied by a quiet, female
          voice -- "process terminated, segmentation fault."

          	Permitting himself time for a satisfied smile, the decker
          turned, moving into the datalink between the now-unprotected
          subprocessor node and the corporation's highest-security
          datastore. He'd done this a hundred times before, fought with the
          strongest ice Mitzuhama could buy, copy, or create -- beaten it
          every time.

          	He was known here only as Pascal's Nightmare, a
          disemployed, ex-corporate technomancer.

          	The datalink ended in a square node, empty, except for a
          small, brown box, rendered in a way so that it almost resembled a
          shoebox. This was what he wanted -- paydata -- the corporate's
          latest quarterly directives. The box held all of the next three
          month's goals - immensely valuable data, in the right hands.

          	Nightmare reached into his program launcher, its cyberspace
          image that of a small, brown hip pack; extracting a long,
          cylindrical tool, a probe program, he aimed its scanning end at
          the box and ran the process. Nothing, not even a scramble ice,
          this had been too easy. Not that the sysadmin that had replaced
          him was any good, that guy had something on the people above him,
          something that pushed them into letting him go and putting this
          other guy in his place. He reached down, setting up the file for
          download, but before he could even touch the file, cyberspace
          shook about him, dissolving into blackness, the blackness of
          unconciousness.

          	"Alan, ALAN! Get the fuck up." Alan's vision was foggy, his
          mind still disoriented from unexpected jackout. A womanly form
          loomed in front of him, her steel-blue eyes and smooth, young
          face slowly taking shape. As it slowly dawned on him what she had
          done, Alan's face changed from an expression of confusion to that
          of rage -- he'd told her a million times before, never pull the
          plug to the deck, even in an emergency.

          	"Did you jack me out, dammit?!?! I had it, I had it in my
          fuckin' hands..." Furious, Alan stood, still groggy from sudden
          cyberspace extraction trauma, or SCET. "Why the hell did you jack
          me out?!?"

          	"We got problems, Alan," she said, quietly, reaching up to
          untie the scarlet ribbon wrapped around her long brown ponytail.
          "I heard that somebody's been asking around about you, some Asian
          guy. What're you doing to Mitzuhama, Alan? You're little games
          are going to get us both geeked."

          	"The've got no idea who's doing the stuff, Sara! I know
          that system inside and out, there's no way in hell they know."
          Alan had always been proud of the system at Mitzuhama, always
          known that with the right sysadmin, it was invulnerable. But now,
          the new guy had screwed things up, there were breaks in the ice,
          breaks that somebody with inside know-how could take advantage
          of.

          	Alan resented the new sysadmin more for the damage he was
          doing to his system than for the loss of the job -- but a good
          decker always can find something else.

          	Sara pulled the ribbon from her hair, which fell down her
          back and blossomed outward to cover her shoulders. Alan always
          had loved her hair -- he loved how it seemed to flow outward from
          her beautiful, oval-shaped face, a river of brown locks, softer
          than a bird's down. She pouted. "Alan, hello? Listen, you've
          gotta stop messing with the system, they're getting pissed off."

          	"Let them get pissed off," he shouted, "cause I'm going to
          get my paydata yet, that damn file's mine! And when I get it,
          we'll be on easy street for a good long time!"

          	With that, Alan turned, jacked back in, and began again.
          Sara sat next to him, wondering what she could do, wondering how
          to get them out of the disaster Alan was leading them towards.
          She sat quietly, watching him, drifting off to sleep.

                The cyberdeck's download-in-progress light blinked on,
          its yellow glow illuminating Sara's face.

          	Fifteen minutes later, the door exploded inwards, sending
          them across the room, pulling the wire from Alan's datajack and
          slamming him into a table. Smoke filtered into the room from
          the hallway, and a tall oriental man stepped in, wearing a long,
          black leather duster, supporting a nine-millimeter Uzi III SMG
          with his right hand, his left hand gripped underneath the gun.
           He spoke. "Good evening, Mr. Taggant, it is unfortunate that we
          meet again." Alan rose, slowly, and stood before the hunter,
          his pale oriental features standing out against the black of
          his coat, the contrast almost a comedic distraction from
          the machine gun he held.

          	Alan glanced coolly at the weapon, then returned his gaze
          to the face of the bounty-hunter. "Still workin' the corporate
          runs, eh, Shiva? Never took you for the killer type. What the
          hell do you want?"

          	"You have made quite a few enemies at Mitzuhama
          Corporation, Mr. Taggant, people willing to pay a great deal of
          money to have you eliminated. I intend to collect, both on your
          dead body, and the data you've stolen recently." Shiva smiled,
          politely, before turning the gun towards Sara. "You, too, must
          die, unfortunately. A waste, but that is business."

           	"Can't we do some biz, Shiva?" Alan said, obviously afraid
          for Sara, "From what I'd get for that file, I could pay double
          what he's paying..."

          	"Sorry, Mr. Taggant, although your offer sounds promising,
          I have a future to prepare for. Biz is biz..." he fired, tearing
          a plane of death across Sara's stomach and chest, blood splashing
          across the wall. Alan screamed, falling to the floor next to his
          dying lady, "Sara, Sara! That's fuckin' it, Shiva."

          	Alan leapt at the gun, grasping the still-hot barrel and
          trying to pull it from Shiva's grasp, but Shiva spun, tossing
          Alan into the corner. The SMG skittered across the floor,
          stopping in front of Sara's ravaged body. Shiva dove, his right
          arm back in a ferocious punching posture, silvery-black battle
          spurs sliding into place above his wrist. Alan barely avoided
          instant death, rolling sideways as the blades buried themselves
          in the fiberboard wall behind him, but the blade edges caught him
          across the back, blood quickly flowing from the wound. Injured,
          but not helpless, Alan brought his arms down across the back of
          Shiva's elbow, snapping the joint backwards, then brought his
          forearm across Shiva's nose, knocking him free of the wall.

          	Shiva spun, his good arm burying the six-inch spurs deep
          into Alan's stomach. Alan dropped free, coughing blood, kicking
          Shiva's legs out from below. He reached for the gun, his blood
          running from his abdomen, and fired a burst at Shiva's face as he
          rose from the floor. Shiva's skull exploded, sending fragments of
          bone and brains across the room. His body fell lifeless to the
          floor.

          	Alan thought only of revenge, crawling over to his
          cyberdeck as his life oozed from his punctured stomach. He
          connected the dataline with shaking hands, pushing the connection
          active.

          	Then he was ALIVE. His mind flying from his dying body,
          into his persona. They had killed Alan, but before he would go,
          he swore, they would suffer to Pascal's Nightmare. Keying the
          address, he leaped dead into Mitzuhama's system access node. Ice
          shifted to intercept him, but it was torn to shreds, code spewing
          as his shuriken constructs ripped the bits from them. He burst
          through the first gate, into the I/O port, flinging attack
          programs at the unsuspecting corporate deckers' entrance gates,
          knowing full well that as each blade struck, sparks would fly
          from the datajack of his victim, ruining it, his deck, and
          perhaps even destroying his mind. He was blinded by his rage,
          though, and finished off every last I/O port.

          	Suddenly he was confronted by a decker, someone not
          connected through the company access port, a persona the color of
          blue steel -- the sysadmin.

          	He turned in rage, lashing out with his hands as the
          sysadmin slashed forward, attacking with a sword construct,
          disrupting the memory refresh cycles in Nightmare's deck. He
          stumbled, aiming his shuriken at the sysadmin's throat as the
          blade descended towards his face.

          	The sysadmin fell, two shuriken buried in his persona's
          head, his brain spawning millions of processes, overloading his
          nervous system, burning it out, sparks cascading over his face as
          he died.

          	Nightmare was motionless on the floor. Alan was dead, the
          scarlet ribbon of his life slowly inching its way down the length
          of the cyberdeck.

          - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Thanks for taking the time to read this & send me your comments!


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GLASS_AVENGER                           <bmromer@cs.millersv.edu>
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"Old computers never die, they just byte it"