From: Graham Mann <mann@cs.unsw.oz.au>
Subject: Singapore 2028: Bad Night at Theive's Market
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1993 08:33:29 GMT


 You might like this short thing, one a number of short "teasers"
 I wrote for a role playing game recently. I'll post the others if you
 like.

  Graham Mann


         Singapore 2028: Bad Night at Theive's Market

	Camera zooms in and down on Jimmy Lau, self-styled street
 samuri of the Changi districts, weaving Thieve's Market way.
 Youth and anger struggle against frustration and discipline inside
 him for control of his compact, tight-muscled body. In his liver he
 knows the teachings of his Sifu keep him alive through shit that
 would kill any other 19-year old. It kept him going through his
 brother's death (the only family he knew), through Yumi's death
 (closest thing to a squeeze he had), through his escape from Hong
 Kong. Discipline. It's his Angle, his tool. If he gives in to the hurt,
 even for a second, he knows the Street will eat him alive.

	And maybe even if he doesn't.

	Closer to the market, the footpaths start to clog up with
 pushcarts and blue polyethelne covered bamboo stalls, selling
 stinking fish, pirate software, Thai fighting kites, mangos, cheap
 pink coloured skillchips. Familiar odours from frying rice and human
 sweat are combing with the thousand smells of market. He
 moves through the thickening drops of the coming downpour,
 impervious to the ninety-six percent humidy. Dusk and darker. As the
 overcast begins to turn its nightly pinkinsh-brown, Jimmy finds
 temporary shelter under the soot-blackened awning of an ancient,
 wheel-less passenger bus, faded lettering hinting at the unfulfillable
 promise of of hot dogs made with real meat. A twisted old woman
 grins toothlessly at him, urging something putrid rapped in brown
 bananna leaves on him. The rain isn't going to subside. Hungry, he
 pulls the hood of his torn wind-cheater over his close shaven,
 pigtailed head and plunges out into the crowd.

	As he weaves, he begs Sifu, the Tao, to afford insight to his
 body's street consciousness.

	Something had been coming down all day. He'd smelt it in the
 air when he'd woken that morning, tasted it in his bottled breakfast
 water. It made him superstitious, jittery. He's tried to trust
 these feelings; make the unconscious work for him,. but not today
 Nothing had happened, at his workout, at Chens, on Boogie and
 Bencoolen streets looking for work. And the longer nothing happend,
 the jumpier he got. By now his nerves are twangy as a koto, and he
 wants a shot of Smash to calm him down. But the Life forbids it.

	The rain is heavy enough for him to opt for the covered end
 of Theives'; but so has everybody else. He tramps around in the mud
 under leaking canvas trimmed with neon rope and flouros for ten
 minutes, before tripping on a mud covered power cable and hitting
 the sludge face first. The mud is not smooth. It is grainy and veined
 with countless scraps of vegetable, corrugated cardboard and fibrous
 plastic string.. He comes up furious with his own clumsiness,
 but there's no-one to direct his anger toward. He disciplines himself,
 fighting the urge to yank the cable to pieces. He heads up into
 cubist concrete; an old-style city carpark, covered in years of
 moss, posters, graffiti and chewing gum. There'll be less mud
 inside, at least.

	He's looking amongst the insane complexity of a zillion stalls,
 barrows, trishaws, and tables for that one token, that one clue
 as to what's gone wrong in his life. Perhaps it was here,
 in this side mirror from a rusted petrol motoped, or here, in this
 laser-etched pendant. He could handle murder and mayhem, brutality
 and blackmail, because when those things had happend to him; he'd
 been able to pin it on someone, find a foil for his anger. He'd hit
 hard, his training coming easily and effortlessly into play, slaking his
 frustration in those moments when he'd felt the battle turn in his
favour, smelled the enemy fall, tasted his inert body on the pavement.

	He'd rarely come off second best.

	But nameless fears are something else. Choy La Fut didn't
 perpare you to fight ghosts, dreams, intuitions. He needs an object,
 a man, a talisman to represent the problem, make it concrete.
 Not anything or anyone. The thing, the man.

	His eye hits a bump. He turns back, singles out a carved
 dark pearl-handled razor. It's the kind that never needs sharpening;
 a molecule thick layer of diamond analogue is bonded to the
 blade, giving it a shiny, rainbowed appearence. The edge that can't
 be lost. The ultimate Angle. Snapped open, it suddenly represents
 everything positive about his life: toughness, simple elegance,
 discipline. It will do as his lucky charm, protecting him against
 tonight's nameless evil.

	He gestures to the stallkeeper, a wiry, yellow-toothed over-UVed
 Maylay, bartering for price. He hopes the man doesn't sense his need
 for the cutthroat, his disregard of its price. He goes through the
 motions of bargaining as a courtesy, following the ancient protocol
 of the street market. The negotiation takes place quietly in the noise
of
 the crowded market, a commerical Tai-Chi, a flicker of the fingers
here, a facial grimace or terse shake of the head there. The price
settles at the lowest point, like rain into the centre of sheet of poly.

	Jimmy hands over his matt black and red Bank of Sarawak chit.
. The Malay grins; swipes it through a scanner in single, fluid
motion. Waiting, Jimmy glances around, wondering when
 his nervousness will subside, then running, blinded, no time to
 scoop up the chip, leaving the failed good luck charm far behind.
 Hands clutch at him as he ducks and weaves away from the shouting
 Maylay, clawing and grabbing his way through the crowd. No good
 starting a fight here, vendors will ovberwhelm him in solidarity for
 their common good. Too many shoppers for a fight, no room. No
 sympathy for a credit fraud from them either.

	His tactical senses spot the group of radio-controlled security
 boys, on to him, splitting up to cut off his exits, the stairs, the ramp.
 A man grabs him hard, instantly suffers the consequences. One chance
 to get away, to avoid entrapment and all the horrors that entanglement
 with credit authorities, the police, and the vendors. He tears at the
 crowd, forcing and shoving to the soaking grey concrete and grey
 steel pipe at the rear of the park. He looks over the side into steam,
 mud, and a flashing sodium light on a yellow and black striped traffic
 barrier. Only two floors, no problem.  But he hesitates. His unlucky
 night, and no telling what what's down there His training, practice
 rolls, yeah. But if he injures his legs, even slightly, the security will
 be all over him.

	If they don't, the Street will.

	Two bean-tall Maylays close in, grinning horribly. Maybe they're
 one of the razor-vendor's sons. No choice, no time. He goes over the
side in a fluid, graceful motion: dragon surmounts hillock. Choy Li
Fut's gibbon-like action and freefall grants him his moment of inner
 peace, and the insight he's asked for. Thank Zen.

	They'll never believe a thing, never trust the word,
 signature or bond of a streetboy. The fucking credchit had been okay
 at lunchtime, but now it is a liability. No time, as the flashing light
 steam rushes up, to wonder what has happened...

	He hits shockingly hard and there's an explosion of pain in
 his left leg. Sickened, he collaspses onto the cracked soaking
 ashphalt. The sharp edge of a green scrap of plastic binding tape
 digs into his stomach. He groans and clutches his leg, feels for
 blood. The pain is excruciating. He cannot rise to his feet. He
 rolls into an agonised crouch, listens to the security closing in.
 His flight will legitimize their anger, brighten up their dull night.
 They'll all come down, all find themselves alone with him in this
 anonymous alley. And there are other figures, further back behind
 the waste bins, stirring, sensing his weakness...

	His hands move to his shirikens, his Sykes-Fairbairn knife.

	His first target runs into view, a plump securi-cop. The
 shiriken slashes into his chest, but the cop keeps coming under his
 own momentum. A blue flash lights up his startled face as the
 half-farad capacitor embedded in the shiriken discharges across his
 heart. The cop collaspses and rolls past him. Another figure ducks
 sideways, and something pings off the road near his head. There was
 no report and Jimmy, tactical mind racing, figures it's some kind of
 coil gun. Typical gun happy securi-scum don't want noisy cordite
 advertising their illegal weapons. The next shot finds his leg, the one
 he injured. He gasps with pain, rolls onto his side. Amazingly, the
 motion galvanises into a counterattack; balanced, he flicks out into a
 third lizard  But his second shiriken spends its charge uselessly in the
 night. Target three seeks cover, shouts a warning to four and five.

	"Only you and me, now" Jimmy whispers to the Sykes-Fairbain.

	Too many of them. Jimmy's battle sense is too acute for him
 to be under any illusions about fighting it out. He can't use his
 hand to hand skills at range, he has only the one knife. So retreat,
 find cover and escape. He starts to crawl painfully toward the
 movement behind the waste container. Knows it's futile as tiny green
 fireflies of laser light, grainy as the they flash by, swarm around,
 trying to pick him up. Only seconds left, surely.

	Explosion of purple-tinged white light, roar of turboprops, and
 an upward glimpse of twelve tonnes of aerospace metal floating over
 the edge of the carpark's roof, twenty meters above. Papers and rain
 swirl crazily, caught in a massive downwash. The fireflies are lost in
 the glare. Confused shouts from his attackers. Fading as they run back
 toward the carpark entrance.

	Looking up, blinded. Not the police, too big. Maybe military, say
 a V-22F. And maybe they don't care if he dies. He can hear, not see,
 an excited crowd gathering at the railings of each level of the carpark,
 even above the noise. He waves weakly, makes a show of collapsing,
 hand clawing away a paper that has glued itself to his neck. Maybe
 somebody'll call a trauma unit before he bleeds to death.

	But his grimace becomes a tight-lipped smile as he looses
 consciousness. His intuition was right on the money...