From: alaric@smurf.sti.com (Phil Stracchino)
Subject: Symbiosis [intro]
Date: 8 Jun 93 01:45:33 GMT
Business in the Chiba City Chatsubo was a little on the quiet side of
normal when he walked in. That wan't unusual, early in the week. Most
of the customers in the Chat, weekday nights, are there for business
reasons. This one, though, was here only for a drink, and to kill time.
This time.
He stood a meter eighty-five, in nondescript gray flight coveralls that
still managed to half-suggest battledress fatigues. This impression was
reinforced by his crewcut blond hair, and by the heavy Israeli automatic
pistol that sat high on his right hip. He pivoted slightly on the ball
of his right foot as he stepped around the half-open door, taking in the
entire visible area of the bar in a single continuous sweep. Behind him,
he closed the door with his left hand; no wasted motion, and only the
gentle snick of the latch betrayed its closing. His glance scanned the
faces of the customers already present - those that he could see - but
none was familiar to him. He hadn't really expected otherwise. A gleam
of silver in the back corner of the smoky bar caught his attention for an
instant; a heartbeat pulse of filtering, and the silk-bound hilts of
daisho resolved from the haze. He filed the data for future reference
as he finished his sweep, a background thought turning unbidden to the
Yoshitsune tanto riding alongside his left calf.
As he stepped away from the door and came more fully into the light, the
subtle play of shadows revealed a web of untidy scars across his face,
disappearing down below the open collar of his flight suit. The dull
sheen of his eyes failed to catch the gleam of the antique neon over
the bar. He slid smoothly onto a bar stool, his left hand flicking a
quick signal to catch the bartender's attention, then slipping into a
pocket and coming back out with a credstick, like a well-rehearsed
sleight-of-hand trick.
"Sake," he said quietly. "Hot. Not synthetic."
The silver and indigo shadow moved from the back corner toward the bar,
resolving into a slender, tall woman with eyes that gleamed as bright as
his were dull. The black hair was streaked with a color that dreamed of
rainbows. Each of her steps was a motion balanced through her whole
body. The sleeves were ripped off the blue leather jacket. Her left arm
was pure silver. A laser carbine was cradled in its holster on her left
thigh. He unconsciously noted her approach; a single glance took the
slender figure in.
Ratz moved to fill his order, his Russian prosthetic arm whining slightly
as he set the tiny cup and the hot porcelain bottle down on the bartop.
"Business or pleasure?" he asked, gruffly.
"Strictly pleasure," the stranger replied. "For now."
Ice wiped his credstick left-handed through the reader on the bar, as
he picked up the steaming bottle and poured the cup precisely brim-full.
He lifted the cup to eye level, the subdermal sheen of interface pads
briefly visible in the heel of his hand, and bowed his head almost
imperceptibly towards Ratz.
"Kanpai," he murmured softly, before draining the cup and refilling it
from the flask. He moved the now-empty flask aside.
"Ratz, get him another. I'd like a refill, please." The voice was female
and nearly as soft as his. Featureless eyes of silver looked at him as he
glanced reflexively up and down the form that had appeared silently beside
him, noting more detail this time. His glance paused for an instant to
evaluate the wear patterns on the hilts protruding over her shoulders;
they weren't just for show.
"Few come to the Chat for 'strictly pleasure', fewer yet that move as you
do." There was a slight flick of black eye lashes, a conscious clue as to
the glance that took him in from head to toe. The woman that had looked
him over was barely five cents shorter than he. The statements did not
seem to ask for an answer, but she got one anyway, accompanied by a subtle
shrug.
"Are you one of the fewer yet?" he asked, smiling slightly. "Being able
to get a drink without half the eyes in the place boring holes in my
back qualifies as pleasure. It's hard enough to find."
She laughed and nodded, but didn't explain which she agreed with. "I am
known here as Hasaki." Her bow was nearly as precise as his own had been
to Ratz and two cents deeper, and he matched it perfectly in response.
The qualification she placed on the name was not lost on him.
"Ice is as good a name for me as any," he replied. "It's practically the
only one anyone ever uses." A shadow flicked briefly across his face, an
expression that was gone in a subliminal eyeblink.
"That or Lazarus. Your choice."
She blinked, a deliberate movement. "Lazarus has more of a grip to it...
I think I'll call you Ice, if it's to be my choice." She settled on the
barstool next to him, and sipped the tea that Ratz brought her. "And, no,
I'm not one of the fewer yet." She smiled at something else in the bar,
but it was hard to see which way she was looking with those eyes.
"I'm here looking for business, but I won't refuse the pleasure of a
coherent English conversation while I'm at it."
He smiled briefly again, as though at some secret joke.
"Coherent conversation. That word has... interesting connotations, in
certain contexts. These days, most communication is coherent, in a sense,
even when it's devoid of meaning - isn't it?"
She sipped her tea and sighed, "Almost anything has interesting
connotations in certain contexts." She turned to face him, "And, no. I
do not consider communication which is devoid of meaning to be
coherent... Perhaps I have come with the wrong assumptions..."
He shook his head apologetically.
"My fault. I was thinking of the medium, rather than the message."
She nodded her understanding.
He cocked an eyebrow in the general direction of the monitor on the far
wall, where the latest from the 24-hour news channel coming in over the
fiber feed was currently being interrupted by a commercial message in
glaring shades of neon.
"Talking face-to-face is one of the few opportunities for non-coherent
conversation. Not to be confused with incoherent, of course. That
garbage" - his eyes flicked briefly towards the monitor again, now
hawking the latest in designer hallucinogenics - "may come over a
coherent medium, but if it has a coherent message, it's lost on me."
Hasaki smiled, "Perhaps I was not so wrong. I do have a table, over by
the wall, if you'd rather more privacy and fewer eyes at your back. Your
choice."
He considered the invitation for a moment, then nodded in assent.
"I would be honored." He slipped smoothly off the stool, picking up the
fresh sake flask and cup, and followed her back to a booth along the back
wall, from which he had first caught the silver gleam of her arm. He
slid into the booth opposite her, cybereyes of dull gray facing orbs of
gleaming silver.
"So what kind of business are you looking for at the moment? Or is that
a question better left unasked unless there's some to offer?"
She laughed softly, "No. Business usually comes to me by word of mouth.
Without advertising it is... difficult to get work. My offers rarely come
to me through a face I've never seen before. Mostly bodyguarding." She
frowned into her tea cup, "I find it more rewarding than that which gave
me the skills to do it well." She blinked a lazier blink and looked back
up at him with a smile, "Occasionally I do extractions of those who wish
to be free from whatever atmosphere they are currently in and find that
there is no alternative but force. I am presently secure enough to choose
the jobs which have the factors that motivate me."
The glimmer of a smile flashed briefly across Ice's scarred face again.
"That's a luxury we share... most of the time. Few are fortunate enough
to be in that position."
"Is your business such that I should not ask?"
He poured another cup of sake before he answered.
"I do a lot of things. Mostly I'm... hands, you could say. I'm kind
of on vacation right now. My, ah, employer has nothing that requires
my services at present, which leaves me free to take care of some...
personal business."
He smiled again, but this time it was the thin, hard smile of a predator,
with no humor in it. It seemed an expression he was more accustomed to
than humor, one that came more easily. He indicated the monitor once
more.
"Film at eleven, more than likely."
Hasaki's face had stilled at the smile. Then one black eyebrow rose over
an eye turned garish green by a reflection from the monitor, "Oh? Why so?"
He looked back at her, levelly.
"Because as of today, Yamanaka Electric is history. I hope. Certainly
Mitsuhide Yamanaka is ash and gone."
He paused, then sighed, shook his head apologetically, almost self-consciously.
"Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. A company as big as Yamanaka isn't
going to vanish overnight. But take it from me - as a market leader, Yamanaka
is finished. If you own any Yamanaka stock, dump it now, because in twenty-
four hours, it'll be worthless.
"As for film at eleven... well, I suppose I got a little bit carried away.
I had an old score to settle. It's a long story... goes back a long way."
He picked up the sake cup and drank half of its contents, then set it
down again.
"Starts, oh, a little over twenty years ago..."
----------------------
Thanks and appreciation go to Phyllis Rostykus for the appearance in this
intro of Liralen Li / Hasaki. As a matter of fact, it is at Liralen's
urging that I am starting to post this story at this stage, while it is still
in fact unfinished. [The story proper will begin in the next post.] So, if
you don't like it, you know who to blame for dragging me in here. :-)
Seriously though, comments are appreciated, and all feedback will be at least
read (and answered, if possible; and heeded, if appropriate).
--
/ Phil V. Stracchino -- Alaric Tekiahyn -- The Renaissance Man \
/ Email:: <phils@sti.com>, <alaric@sti.com>. PGP 2.2 public key \
/ available on public key servers (finger alaric@sti.com for info) \
/ Key fingerprint = DD 46 2E 4B 27 B9 A6 AC EB 5B 95 AE 57 38 80 D4 \
From: alaric@smurf.sti.com (Phil Stracchino)
Subject: Symbiosis Part 1 : Chapter 2 of 4
Date: 12 Jun 93 02:21:24 GMT
[ADMIN:]
No, in case you're wondering, I'm not writing this a post at a time as I
go along. I just don't get much time to post the sections. I have about
15,000 words of this to date, which is all four chapters of Part 1 and
the first two chapters of Part 2. I intend to continue posting one
chapter at a time, and will continue to do so until I run out of the
chapters I've written. At that point, there will be a hiatus until
I get some more of it written (it's all sketched out, but not fully
written up yet).
As always, comments and feedback are welcome. Even if I do disagree with
them from time to time. :-)
Symbiosis Part 1: The Analog Kid
================================
Chapter 2
---------
Time passes. Two years of time. He survives, somehow.
The boy is ten now; not a lot bigger, but leaner and stronger. Not
strong enough to even think about trying to fight the three teenagers
chasing him, though; the smallest of them outweighs him by fifteen
kilos. He's learned that the hard way. He's also learned to run fast,
and to think faster.
He races around a corner, and reaches the end where the street T's into
a back alley before his pursuers round the corner behind him. Picking a
direction at random, he runs down the alley, hoping to lose them. Luck
is with him today - twenty meters down, a door is slightly ajar.
Without hesitation, he crashes pell-mell through the door and slams it
shut behind him. It won't latch properly; the lock has been broken in,
more than once.
He is in a store-room; another time, he might look around to see if it
holds anything he can use. This time, he has other priorities. He
heads for the front of the building as running feet pass by outside the
door, ducks through a doorway -
He is on his back on a hard floor, struggling for breath that won't
come, as a wizened little oriental man in a shopkeeper's apron stands
over him in a karate stance. The shopkeeper is not smiling.
"So," he says, "you decided to try for the register this time, neh?
Little thief."
The boy shakes his head, trying hard to ignore the pain at the bottom of
his sternum, trying to speak. He holds up one hand, a wordless 'Stop'
signal. Finally, he manages to gasp out a few words.
"Needed - escape," he manages. "Shortcut. Door - was ajar..."
The old man relaxes slightly, but doesn't drop his guard. They talk;
and after a time, the boy's frank honesty overcomes the old man's
distrust. He sits the boy down on a chair, sets a cup of steaming green
tea in front of him. The boy drinks gratefully, almost scalding his
tongue on the hot, aromatic brew. Without intending to do so, he finds
himself telling the story of the past two years - what he remembers of
them - to the old man. The old man listens, silently, nodding to
himself at certain points. After the boy finishes his story, the old
man sits silently for a time, thinking.
"My name is Teruo Chinen," he says slowly, after a few minutes. "What
is yours?"
The boy tries to answer, but a puzzled look spreads over his face. He
tries to recall his name - but he has never used it in two years, and
now finds himself unable to answer the simple question. It is on the
tip of his tongue, but... He strains, trying to remember as far back as
he can, back past the scavenging, past avoiding the roverpacks, to...
an alley... the howl of servoguns....
He has his back to a wall, white and trembling, and the old man -
Chinen - is standing a few feet in front of him.
"Do not be afraid," he says, softly, gently. "You are in no danger.
You are safe here. There is no need to be afraid." Gradually, the boy
calms down; the memory retreats again into his subconscious, where he
has hidden it... because he does not want to remember. The old man
thinks, and considers. Finally, he turns to the boy once more.
"You have no home, do you?" The boy, tired, bedraggled and filthy,
shakes his head silently.
"You may stay here," the old man tells him, slowly. "For a time."
After I managed to convince him I wasn't trying to rob him, we got to be
friends. Seems he had trouble with some of the local boosterboys
helping move his stock, and since he couldn't be in two places at once,
we cut a deal. I played night-watchman for him, and he taught me
karate. He called it Goju Ryu; he said he learned it where he grew up,
in Okinawa, and that they'd been teaching it there for a thousand years.
He was only a little guy, but man, he was greased lightning. I mean,
I've always been fast myself, but if I live to be ninety I'll never get
as good as Mr. Chinen, or Teruo-san as I came to know him. He had the
moves, know what I mean? All he had to do was think a movement, a
technique, and it happened. Almost like he was wired - only with him,
it was all natural. If there was a single sliver of Chiba silicon in
Teruo-san, it was the world's best-kept secret. He became my sensei,
and I became his chela, his student. He told me that I had to have a
name, and since I couldn't remember what my real name was, he had
decided to call me 'Grasshopper'. He told me a grasshopper was kind of
like a locust, only smaller. The way he smiled when he said it, I think
it was some kind of private joke; but he never explained it to me.
I stayed there for about three years, all told. I learned a lot - and,
with real meals three times a day and the exercise and training regimen
that Teruo-san set me, I grew fast. I looked nearer fifteen than
thirteen - and at that, I was a lot stronger than I looked. I got
pretty good at his Gojo Ryu, and he taught me to shoot, too. He said it
was certain I'd need to know how some day, so it was just as well that I
should learn now.
I learned more than just how to fight, though. Teruo-san was a very
shrewd old man, and he taught me a lot about the world, and about
people.
Then one day, that changed, too. Nothing lasts forever.
The four in the shop were dressed in loud, garish clothing. Young,
brash posers, up-and-coming junior execs in their twenties, three
company boys and a fashionably half-dressed girl with iridescent hair.
Slumming, looking and laughing at how the other half lives. Their
parents were probably company vice-presidents. The two who looked like
brothers, the two with the razor-sharp-cut casual suits that gave them
the look of upright sharks, were wired. You could see it in their
reflexes when they casually played catch from one side of the store to
the other, with an eggshell porcelain reproduction-Ming vase worth two
hundred New Yen, as I watched from just inside the storeroom door.
Teruo-san watched in stony disapproval from behind the counter, but did
not say a word; he merely watched them, directly, unblinkingly, as they
watched him out of the corner of their eyes to see how he reacted.
Trying to piss him off.
I guess they got bored, after a while, when he didn't visibly get upset.
"You know what I heard?" one said, loudly. "I heard thay aren't even
real people down here. Legally, you know. They just kill each other
for fun, and no-one cares. It's like feral dogs killing one another in
the street."
He turned to Teruo-san.
"That right, old man?"
Teruo-san shook his head.
"The people in the towers, the corporate enclaves - they do not care
about us," he answered softly. "But we who live here - we care."
The sharkboy shrugged. Half-turned to his brother, grinning.
"You hear that? They care about each other, down here."
In a blur of motion, his hand flashed inside his jacket, re-appeared
almost in the same instant. He shot Teruo-san full in the face before I
even registered that the hand had come back out holding a gun, and the
gun was gone again before Teruo-san began to fall. He stood frozen for
a moment, head snapped back, a red spray on the wall behind him; then he
just folded bonelessly to the floor.
The killer laughed.
"Tough. Who's gonna care about you now, old man?" They turned and
walked away, all four of them laughing and joking about the casual
murder.
Before they got to the door, I took four quiet steps out of the
storeroom, and answered their question with the stubby German machine
pistol that Teruo-san kept under the counter. I targeted the killer
first; but I cut all four of them down in one long burst, sweeping its
automatic fire smoothly across them just like Teruo-san had taught me.
The girl opened her mouth to scream before red splashes blossomed across
her back, but any sound she made was lost in the stuttering snarl from
the chunky little H&K. The other brother even turned far enough to look
at me, confusion on his face, before the stream of expanding slugs
smashed into his chest. His jacked-up reflexes gave him time to see who
killed him, but didn't save him - because he died still not quite
believing that it could happen to him, to any of them. They were
corporate, after all. They were supposed to be immortal. But even
speed-of-light reflexes isn't enough to keep you alive, if your brain
runs like molasses.
"I care," I told them. "But not about you."
I couldn't stay there, obviously. The Corp police would come looking,
before too long. You can do anything with immunity, down here, except
kill corporate citizens or steal corporate property. Those are the only
crimes the corpcops will come down here from the enclaves for. So long
as you avoid those, you can do anything else; all you have to do is get
away with it.
I took a few things with me, things I figured I'd need but which Teruo-
san wouldn't have any further use for; and I took the cash out of the
register. If I didn't, someone else would. I made sure to get the
extra ammunition for the H&K, too; and I took the killer's pistol, a
sleek black 10mm Glock polymer automatic, while the girl, still barely
alive, moaned a few feet away. It took the same caseless ammo as the
H&K; real convenient. I lifted their wallets, too; the thinnest of them
held more cash than the store's register. I took the credsticks too,
but not to use them - too traceable. They might make a good decoy
sometime.
Before I left, acting on some impulse I didn't really understand, I put
one more bullet into each of them, even the girl, from the killer's
pistol. Right between the eyes. There were shards of silicon among the
blood and brain tissue that sprayed out of the back of the killer's
head, and the tiny gold script in the girl's cerulean-blue irises read
Zeiss-Ikon.
--
/ Phil V. Stracchino -- Alaric Tekiahyn -- The Renaissance Man \
/ Email:: <phils@sti.com>, <alaric@sti.com>. PGP 2.2 public key \
/ available on public key servers (finger alaric@sti.com for info) \
/ Key fingerprint = DD 46 2E 4B 27 B9 A6 AC EB 5B 95 AE 57 38 80 D4 \
From: alaric@smurf.sti.com (Phil Stracchino)
Subject: Symbiosis Part 1 : Chapter 3 of 4
Date: 15 Jun 93 02:13:14 GMT
[In Chapter 2, Ice/Daniel tells of meeting Teruo Chinen; of becoming
his student in the martial arts and working for him in his store; and
of exacting summary vengeance, when the old man is casually murdered
one day by slumming corp kids looking for cheap entertainment....]
Symbiosis Part 1: The Analog Kid
================================
Chapter 3
---------
I made two decisions, then. One was that I was never going to let anyone
take me by surprise that way. I was never going to die for no better reason
than because I didn't believe it could happen to me. I was all too well
aware that it could happen at any time.
The other was that if I was going to have to go up against jacked-up
reflexes, I was going to have to get my own boosted as well. There was
no other way I could match that blinding speed. It wouldn't matter how
good I was; when someone who's just naturally good comes up against
someone who's just as good, and wired for speed - the one who's wired
wins. All other things being equal, that is.
Of course, the eight hundred or so New Yen that came out of the slummers'
wallets, with or without the seventy from the register, wasn't going to get
me any kind of chibaware at all, let alone a reflex job. Even then, I knew
that even a partial rewire - motor nerves only - cost thousands; and a
high-grade full rewire like those corp-boys were carrying started around
twenty grand, and went on up from there. So in the meantime, I was going
to have to see to it that all other things weren't equal, whenever I had
any choice in the matter.
Well, about eighteen months later, I struck it lucky. I happened to run
across another corporate type, on New Year's, who'd wandered into the
wrong area and run foul of a boostergang. He slipped them somehow -
shot his way out of the pack, I suppose, since the gun he was carrying
was hot and empty - but they cut him up pretty bad first with knives and
Rippers. He died practically at my feet... tragic, absolutely tragic.
I shook him down, of course; the gang got his jacket and everything in
it, but they didn't have a chance to find the moneybelt he was wearing,
because I split with it before they showed. It had over six thousand
New Yen in it. I figured he wouldn't miss it, and if I left it on him
the gang would get it when they caught up with him, so I relieved him of
it and tucked it away in my stash for safe keeping. I had plans for
that six thousand. Of course, I'd need a fair bit more to go with it,
on top of the two thousand or so I already had, for what I wanted.
I snapped his corp ID card before I left him; I knew it would transmit a
nice emergency scream that the corpcops and the Trauma Teams could home in
on. Kind of a parting gift to the gang, just to keep them on their toes.
Everyone needs a few moments of stark terror now and then; it keeps you
mindful of your mortality.
It turned out I didn't need as much more as I thought, because about six
months after that, an interesting little piece of street gossip came my
way. According to the rumor, there was a secret black lab down on the
south side someplace that was selling rewires, well below market price.
It was the usual thing - no-one actually knew where the lab was, and no-
one actually knew someone who was walking around with one of these low-
budget reflex-boost jobs. But anyone who had the story had always heard
it from someone who'd heard it from someone who'd actually been to the
lab, and could vouch for the place...
All the same, there was enough of a consistent pattern in the rumors to
make me suspect that this one actually had a grain of truth in it. By
this time, I'd managed to build my stash up to almost eighty-six
hundred; if the rumor was true, then the rewire I wanted was within
reach.
The lab was for real, although it took me another three months to find
it. I had a fairly good idea that a lot of people were out searching
for it street by street; I couldn't compete on that basis. Instead, I
listened to the rumors and picked out the common factors, making
correlations, finding details that rang true. When I was fairly sure I
had it pinned down to one specific abandoned office park - on the
northside, not the south - I went to look for myself.
I didn't have much in the way of resources, but I had a lot of street
smarts working for me. I found the place by going in the back way.
They knew I was there before I got all the way in, of course; I expected
them to - I'd have been disappointed if they hadn't. That's why I went
in real slow, with my hands in plain sight, not making any particular
attempt to be quiet - in fact, I deliberately shuffled my feet. I
didn't want to surprise anyone. It's also why I wasn't in the least
surprised when the first person I met there was on the other end of a
Sony flechette gun pointed straight at me. I was expecting him.
"It's OK," I said. "You can point that someplace else. I'm here to buy."
The guy in the grey coveralls looked suspiciously at me.
"Buy what?" he asked. "We're not selling anything."
I smiled.
"That's not what the word says on the street," I told him. "Word is you
people are selling reflex boosters below market. You're selling what I
need. And by the look of this place, I have what you need - hard cash -
otherwise, you'd be working out of Chiba."
He hesitated for a moment, then pointed to the door I'd come in through.
"Turn around," he said. "Walk out and go home. Don't turn around.
Don't come back. We don't have anything to sell you."
"I think you do," I replied. "I don't think you want to be found. I'll
keep your secret - but I need what you have."
He thought about this for a while, then he sighed, shrugged, and
gestured with his flechette pistol.
"Well, shit," he swore, "You're here now. Come on in; you might as well
talk to the Doc and see what he says."
'The Doc' turned out to be an intense, pinched little man with steel-
rimmed glasses. Yes, you heard me right - he wore actual eyeglasses,
not permalens implants or cyberoptics or retina grafts. We found him in
a lab full of humming equipment, most of which had a definite medical
look to it, but which was otherwise a complete mystery to me. I
recognized a cyberdeck - a pretty sophisticated one, too - but that was
all. Near the back of the lab, a long row of cages lined one wall.
Some held monkeys; the monkeys watched us, silently, unblinkingly.
In the midst of all this equipment, I told him what I'd figured out, and
he sat and listened without a word, nodding from time to time. After I
finished, he sat and watched me silently for about a minute before he
answered.
"You are partly right," he said at last. He had a faint European
accent. "We have performed experimental implantations upon several
subjects, with varying degrees of success. However, we are not exactly
doing what you think. You believe we are implanting reflex-booster
circuitry, this is correct?"
I nodded. He shook his head.
"You are mistaken," he said. "What we are doing here is something
altogether different. It is potentially superior. It is also
technically illegal. Does that bother you?" I shook my head, and he
smiled. "Good. Sometimes, the law is a handicap to progress. What do
you know about booster implants?"
I answered his question. You could probably summarize my answer as 'Not
very much'. So he told me.
"A booster implant places a microcircuit wafer chip in the back of your
skull, connected by fine electrodes to specific sites in the motor
regions of your brain," he explained. "It pickes up motor impulses from
these sites and transmits the signals electrically, via implanted
microwiring, directly to your major skeletal muscles. It bypasses your
own nerves, and enables relatively gross motor actions to be carried out
far faster than the propagation rate of electrochemical signals in your
own nerves will permit. However, there are limits upon the technique."
I listened attentively, hanging on every word.
"Because no two human nervous systems react exactly alike," he
continued, "the wiring must be microsurgically implanted by hand; the
process cannot be readily automated. Because the wires must be placed
by hand, there are limits on the degree of precision that is practically
attainable, and there is a limit on how fine a level of control it is
possible to attain with boosters. You understand this?" I nodded in
assent.
"Very good. Now what we have been doing is slightly different. Do you
know what a NeuroNet supercomputer is? How it works?" I gave him a
blank look, but he didn't wait for an answer. "The Neuronet 9000 series
differ from other computers, computers built from silicon
microcircuitry, in that the NeuroNet 9000's are built using a semi-
organic analog to human nerves - artificial neurons built from
silicarbon. They were developed by NAMSR in an artificial-intelligence
project funded by your government, nearly twenty years ago. That is
what gives them their tremendous capacity and speed; it is what enables
them to process enough data, fast enough, to maintain the Matrix." He
proceeded to explain the mechanics of silicarbon circuitry and NeuroNet
supercomputers in considerable detail, then paused, waiting expectantly
for me to fill in the next step; but quite frankly, he'd lost me about a
quarter of the way through his exposition. I didn't even know who or
what NAMSR was, for that matter.
When it became plain that I wasn't going to be able to complete his
explanation for him, he continued.
"What we are doing," he said quietly, "is using a genetically engineered
virus to deposit silicarbon nerve channels, in parallel alongside your
existing motor nerves. We will feed silicone fluids into your bloodstream
to provide the virus with a source of silicon. The silicone is almost
completely inert with respect to normal biological processes - your body
will scarcely even know it is there. The virus is able to process the
silicone polymers for its own uses, though. It obtains the additional
carbon it needs from your normal respiration products, the carbon dioxide
dissolved in your bloodstream.
"Because the virus is tailored to follow existing neural paths, it is
capable of exactly replicating your motor neurons and their connections
in the finest detail. When the silicarbon motor net is connected up to
a booster chip implemented using silicarbon circuitry, it offers the
potential of at least as great an acceleration of nerve function as any
conventional reflex booster - but with unprecedented fineness of
control. Do you understand what that would mean?"
I hadn't really followed his exposition on NeuroNet 9000 architecture,
but that got through to me right away. I nodded, slowly.
"How much does it cost?" I asked. He looked at me, then at the
technician type who was standing behind me. I caught one side of an
exchange of glances, saw the 'Doc' shake his head minutely. Then the
technician left, and he looked back at me.
"You must understand, before we do anything, that there are... certain
risks," he said. "There is a possibility of some neural damage. You
would have to sign a release."
I didn't really catch the implications of his statement. Hell, I was
only fifteen. Precocious, maybe - out of necessity - but still only
fifteen. I just repeated my question.
"How much does it cost?"
He sighed; looked away; stood up, walked around the room for a few
minutes; then finally looked back at me.
"How much do you have?" he replied.
I thought for a moment before I answered.
"About eight thousand." I was keeping a little in reserve, just in
case.
"You have it with you?" I nodded.
"I stashed it near here, just to be safe." He nodded.
"Understandable. Wait here. Don't touch anything." He disappeared
into the next room; I heard his voice and the technician's in low-
pitched discussion, but couldn't make out their words. When he came
back out, he held a datapad and a stylus.
"Now that you're here," he said, "we can't let you leave right away.
Not until you've had the treatment. We can't take the chance... you
understand." I nodded, and he shoved the datapad into my hands.
"Sign there," he said, "and there. Where did you hide your money?"
I scrawled something where he had indicated, and told him where my
hiding place was. He took the datapad back before I had a chance to
read more than the first line or two, something about a waiver of
liability. He sent the technician off to retrieve my stash, then turned
back to me.
"We may as well start right away," he said. "Take off your clothes,
slip on this robe," tossing me a thin gown, "and climb onto that couch
over there. We'll start with some preliminary tests."
To be continued...
------------------
This seems like a good point at which to repeat the COPYRIGHT NOTICE:
NeuroNet series computers, silicarbon artificial-neuron technology, NAMSR,
and Dr. Kate Elliott are all copyright 1991-1993 by Melanie Miller, and are
used here with her express permission.
The major characters in this story, including the artificial intelligence
known as Tessier, are copyright 1991-1993 by Phil V. Stracchino, and may be
used only with my express permission.
The character of Teruo Chinen is based heavily upon a real individual, a
sensei under whom I once had the honor to study the art of Okinawan Gojo
Ryu Karate-do. I intended his appearance here as an acknowledgement and
tribute to him. It is not my place to either authorize or prohibit his
usage as a character by other writers; however, I respectfully ask that
you do not use him in your stories unless you know him yourself and are
able to portray him in an accurate and respectful manner.
All other agencies, corporate entities and minor characters that appear in
this story and are original to it may be held to be in the public domain,
and may be freely used as such.
As usual, feedback - both pro and con - is appreciated, though I reserve the
right to disagree.
--
/ Phil V. Stracchino -- Alaric Tekiahyn -- The Renaissance Man \
/ Email:: <phils@sti.com>, <alaric@sti.com>. PGP 2.2 public key \
/ available on public key servers (finger alaric@sti.com for info) \
/ Key fingerprint = DD 46 2E 4B 27 B9 A6 AC EB 5B 95 AE 57 38 80 D4 \
From: alaric@smurf.sti.com (Phil Stracchino)
Subject: Symbiosis Part 1 : Chapter 4
Date: 18 Jun 93 00:38:32 GMT
[In Chapter 3, Daniel has located a black lab in an abandoned office
park. Supposedly doing low-budget reflex wire jobs, according to the
rumors on the street, the lab is actually doing underground research
on a new booster technology. Too naive still to understand the risks,
Daniel has become a guinea-pig....]
Symbiosis Part 1: The Analog Kid
================================
Chapter 4
---------
Seventy two hours later, the boy - young man, now, really, at fifteen
years old, almost sixteen - is hooked up to a bank of monitoring
instruments. He is unconscious, and his brow is beaded with sweat. His
pulse is thready and rapid on the cardiac monitor, and the EKG screen is
full of spikes.
"It doesn't look good," the doctor observes. "I doubt that this
implantation will succeed."
The technician snorts in disgust.
"You mean he's gonna croak just like the others. How many kids you
gonna kill before you get it right? If you EVER get it right?"
The doctor shrugs.
"I told him there were risks. He signed the release."
"'You told him there were risks'... yeah, right. You didn't go out of
your way to explain, did you? Did you tell him that every time you've
tried this so far, if your virus has done anything at all, it's run
bugfuck wild? Did you tell him that on the record so far, he has a one
hundred percent chance of getting his entire central nervous system
totally fucking scrambled? Did you tell him about that girl, the time
we got an error in the DNA sequencer and the virus built the filaments
with the silicon inside and the carbon outside?"
The tech is shouting, by now.
"It wasn't very pretty, watching her die from allergic reaction to her
own nervous system. Do you really give a shit about that, Weiss?"
The doctor looks sharply at him.
"You should have thought of that before you brought him in here. If it
bothers you that badly, you can always ask around the corporate sector
to see if anyone else will offer you a job."
The technician opens his mouth to answer, then stops. He knows that he
can't do that. With his record, if he sets foot in corporate territory,
the corpcops won't bother asking questions; they'll just waste him as
soon as they ID him.
"There are always costs to progress," the doctor continues more softly.
His eyes are shadowed, distant.
"Sometimes they are monetary. Sometimes they are otherwise. It is
necessary to learn to keep the costs at a distance... it is necessary
to learn to keep them in perspective."
Another day. The boy's fever is higher, a hundred and four degrees, and
his pulse is racing at over ninety. He is constantly twitching,
although his brainwaves show deep coma. The fluid analyzer he is
connected to shows large amounts of myelin debris in his bloodstream and
spinal fluid. The gene-engineered virus is dismantling his nervous
system, and his body's reaction to it is not helping. Doctor Weiss is
studying the readouts intently.
"The auto-immune response," he whispers to himself, "the damned auto-immune
response... if we could only learn to suppress it without destroying the
immune system...."
He turns away, in a sudden rage, shouting in frustration to the technician
in the next room. The tech takes little notice; he's heard this outburst,
or a dozen others like it, before.
"If I could do this work at a real facility, I could isolate the problem
and eliminate it! But the damned fools won't authorize the research
because they're scared of something getting loose. Ignorant neo-Luddite
idiots...! If it was up to them, we'd still be living in caves, waiting
for approval to perform feasibility studies on fire."
He scowls blackly at the wall, for a long moment; then he is calm again.
He feels certain it is only a matter of time. Time, and patience...
and costs.
He doesn't know that he is mistaken; that auto-immune response is not
the culprit. He does not know that it is his virus which is causing the
nerve damage; that the virus is dismantling the myelin sheaths that
protect and insulate the nerve axons, because the small amounts of
carbon dioxide in the boy's bloodstream are not adequate for its needs,
and because its genetic code makes the myelin sheaths its next
preferential source. He didn't intend it that way - it was an accident
of design, an oversight due to inadequate resources, inadequate
facilities... and inadequate patience. The parameters for the computer
program that ran the DNA sequencer did not explicitly include the
preservation of the myelin sheaths as a priority. The possibility
simply never occurred to him that the virus might seek an secondary
source of carbon if its primary source was inadequate; and if he did not
know it would seek a alternate source, how could he know what that
alternate source would be?
It isn't entirely his fault. He's not omniscient; no human ever can be.
Everyone makes mistakes, all the time. Some mistakes are simply more
dangerous than others.
"Get him out of here."
It is the sixth day, and the boy is dying. That's not the reason,
though.
"They'll be here in twenty minutes. If there's any sign of him - any
sign we have been using human subjects - we're sunk. If they find only
the experimental animals, we might bluff our way through." The doctor
is busily sorting through records, erasing those that he considers
potentially incriminating. The really vital information is in his head,
anyway.
"So we just dump him, right?" The technician's voice is bitter, but
resigned. "What the hell. He's almost dead anyway. Another triumph for
science."
The technician unplugs all of the instruments, unhooks the IV glucose
drip from its stand, flips the trailing flaps of the gurney sheets over
the boy, and lifts him off of the gurney. He is burning hot with fever,
gaunt and hollow-cheeked. The technician carries him outside and puts
him into the back seat of the groundcar behind the building.
He intended at first to dump the body in the river, like the others.
This one isn't dead yet, though... not quite. He drops the boy off in
an alley instead, thirty blocks away on the other side of the river. By
the time he gets back to the area of the lab, there are flashing strobes
all around the building. That doesn't look good. He doesn't take the
offramp, after all; he goes on by, heading for night town. It's a good
place to lie low.
The doctor heads for the door when he first hears the pounding on it, but
he is only half-way down the hallway before the door is broken in. A riot
cop in a full biohazard armor suit, faceless behind his helmet's mirrored
visor, shoves the muzzle of a swatgun in his face, backing him up into the
lab. Behind the first wave of uniformed cops, three plainclothes agents in
unmarked biosuits file in. One heads directly for the computer; another
starts dumping logs from the genetic sequencer unit in the corner of the
lab. The remaining agent approaches the doctor.
"Doctor Mendel Weiss?" The voice is slightly muffled, coming through
the voder in the biosuit's mask. The doctor nods silently, fear plain
in his face. "MacIlroy, Metropolitan Authority. You're under arrest
for illegal genetic experimentation." The doctor says nothing; at this
point, there is nothing he can say that won't merely make matters worse.
The first agent, meanwhile, is tapping into the computer through a flat
black case which he has attached to the input ports. In moments, charts
and numbers start scrolling up the screen. He hits a key, and the crawl
of data across the screen becomes a blur as files spool into his
datatap.
"It's all here," he says. "Looks like we've got everything." MacIlroy
nods.
"Harris?"
The agent over by the sequencer turns.
"Jackpot, Fred. Just like you said. The DNA sequences aren't even
encrypted." MacIlroy nods, then turns to the sergeant commanding the
swatcops.
"Any sign of the lab assistant?" The sergeant shakes his head.
"Well, no hurry. We can pick him up later. He's not a problem." He
gestures with one hand, an expansive sweep that takes in the whole lab,
as the first agent disconnects his black box from the computer.
"Burn it. All of it."
Several of the swatcops are carrying heavy cylinders, bright red, like
fat fire extinguishers. They squeeze the trigger valves now, sending
sprays of thick fluid over the equipment, the computer, the caged
monkeys. It clings in viscid droplets where it touches; a fine mist
hangs in the air where the sprays have passed. The monkeys in the cages
shriek in panic.
"What about the monkeys?" Weiss breaks free and runs for the cages.
"You can't burn the monkeys!" He tackles the swatcop nearest the cages,
pulling the cylinder around to point away from the monkeys. The cop
pulls the cylinder out of his grasp, then backhands him with the butt,
knocking him sprawling. He struggles to his feet and takes one step
toward the cop, stops, turns back toward MacIlroy. "At least shoot them
cleanly!" he shouts. "You can't just burn them alive!" He reaches for
the latch on the nearest cage.
MacIlroy gestures, and a cop shoots Weiss in the lower back. At this
short range, the salvo of razor-edged flechettes from the riot gun's
three-centimeter muzzle has no time to spread out. It rips a fist-sized
hole through him like a buzz-saw turned sideways, slamming him up
against the cage. He falls slowly, his fingers clutching futilely at
the wire-mesh, his lacerated intestines spilling out onto the floor.
The agents turn and walk out, the swatcops backing out behind them, the
spray team tossing their dispensers back into the lab with the valves
locked open. The last one out stops in the hallway door, twists his
nozzle from spray down to stream, and backs down the hallway spraying
fluid into the offices to either side as he goes. At the front door, he
twists the nozzle back to spray, scoots the can underhand down the hall,
then takes a small flare from his belt. Giving the top a half twist, he
throws it down the hallway into the lab, then turns and runs for the
waiting hovervan. The other two vans and the aircar are already a
hundred meters away, and backing off fast.
Thirty seconds later, the flare bursts into a pyrotechnic flower that
throws blazing white tendrils across the lab. Before the first ember
reaches the wall, the interior of the lab turns into a raging fireball
as the fuel-air aerosol ignites. It blows the shuttered-over windows
out, and flame vomits from both front and rear doors. The screams of
the monkeys end in a heartbeat, long before the first of the cylinders
explodes from the intense heat. The simultaneous explosion of the
second and third cylinders lifts and cracks the flat roof of the
building; the fourth caves it in between walls already slumping into
slag. The building burns with the white-hot intensity of thermite, and
the actinic glare reflects off the low clouds, throwing an eerie,
directionless light across the scene. The cold rain that is beginning
to fall evaporates before it gets within a hundred feet of the inferno.
On the other side of the river, that same rain is falling on a figure
dumped in an alley. He's burning up; but the rain is bone-chillingly.
cold. His body temperature drops a vital few degrees.
-------------------------
This chapter concludes Symbiosis Part 1, 'The Analog Kid'.
Symbiosis Part 2, 'Hybrid Dreams', will follow shortly.
As usual, feedback is appreciated.
(Also as usual, I reserve the right to disagree.)
--
/ Phil V. Stracchino -- Alaric Tekiahyn -- The Renaissance Man \
/ Email:: <phils@sti.com>, <alaric@sti.com>. PGP 2.2 public key \
/ available on public key servers (finger alaric@sti.com for info) \
/ Key fingerprint = DD 46 2E 4B 27 B9 A6 AC EB 5B 95 AE 57 38 80 D4 \
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