From: chandler@alaska.net (Chandler)
Subject: Goin'shopping
Date: Thu Feb 16 08:05:09 MET 1995

!inoji!

"you fucking lowlife bastard whore..." slipped off Jonee's lips. The beige
interior of the bus, now devoid of all furnishings save a small cardboard
box, was filled with the soft waterfall of rushing air peeling by at 140
kph. Jonee used to live in the first of the four buses. His roommate was a
blonde designer out of the labs in london. On a hiatus from the rigors of
corporate life. Jonee coughed, correcting himself. Out to make some dough
toting her talents as one of the premiere drug designers on the east
coast. A red compact squealed and beeped getting a little too close to the
tank sized bumpers on the bus. Things ran on cold fusion, never stopped,
just stayed on the highways in a big never ending loop. Jonee would be mad
later. Being mad in texas was something people equated with their 2nd
amendment rights. Girlfriend dump ya? Clean ya out? Empty your bank
accounts? Sell your name to a narcomafia death squad? Jonee's mind flitted
into the future, wondering if she'd feel any remorse when they pulled his
amino acids off the pavement in some lowrent tenement which wasn't much
good for anything other than a public dump. They didn't bury ya. Couple
decades back they buried people, now they just injected ya with a
longchain prophase biogenetic nanocule and let your cellular structures
break down into a runny egg of a mess.

Jonee had been planning on retiring in a few years. He'd been putting all
that drug money from synthetic cocaine, androamphetamines and various
hallucinogenic into high yield CD's and gold bonds. Taking into account
that his insurance company was listing his projected lifespan at about 3
days, he felt like buying himself a birthday present. A chance at living
to see 24. Stepping out of the BOA marble anus onto the latticed brick of
the sidewalk he felt a rush that 13 years of chemical injections, smoking
blunts, running lines and dodging cops hadn't been able to satisfy.

The clerks jaw dropped. Apparently he was new to the job and hadn't dealt
with the high calibre clientele that Jonee so recently affiliated himself
with. A manager stepped over, gave a polite smile and wisked him through
closed doors to a private tea garden deep inside downtown Houston. People
don't walk around with a half million dollars and put up with bullshit. So
after being given an agreement of confidentiality about the purchase,
checking his identification to ensure he was an Economic American Citizen,
they gave him the pink questionnaire. It was one of those colors concocted
to make the person reading it think of anything but violence. Like
puppies, spring flowers, a warm loving hug. Anything but the subject at
hand. Anything but the subject at hand.

"The weapons you plan on purchasing would be used for...

a. self defense
b. paramilitary covert operations
c. felonies
d. a small revolution
e. a large revolution
f. none of your fucking business"

Jonee chose c since a didn't quite convey what he had do to, and b would
get him tagged by the feds. He walked out of the corporate tower carrying
a pair of large plastic shopping bags brimming with toys wrapped in
colorful designer papers by the manufacturer. His life expectancy had
risen a few points by the time he stepped into the helicab and swung out
over the city towards the Mariott.