From: HelpDesk@massey.ac.nz (Help Desk)
Subject: to strive for life?
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1993 23:31:10 GMT

        A faint sevro-hum in the darkness, audible only to he in
which the eyes are implanted, reminds him of the encroaching
dawn.  Eighteen hours he'd been there, crouched amongst the
spilled garbage, cloaked in shadows; watching; waitng.
        Finally movement, in the long watched building, as the
target stirs, commencing his daily routine  6.10 get up, groan,
stretch. 6.15 put coffee on have shower. 6.30 have coffee. 6.31
jack into the net.
         The watcher still watches, waiting.

        At precisely 6.38 the watcher moves, tired flesh
creaking, stretches and walks calmy out of the shadows, down the
alley and accross to the front door of the building.  He reaches
into an inside pocket producing an entry card for the building,
and after a quick glance inside slips the card into the slot,
tries the door, it opens, he silps inside.

        Moving surely and calmly the watcher (who now does more
than watch) makes his way through the maze of dimly lit hallways,
occasionally pauseing slightly, cocking his head marginally to
one side, as if listening, then apparently satisfied with what
he hears, carries on. Reaches a nondescript door and stops.

        looks slowly and carefully up and down the hallway

        and again

        His hand slowly whispers inside his jacket, as if
reasuring himself that something is there, it must be as his face
relaxes.

        He leans down, and studies the locks on the door, nods
as if in satisfaction and straightens,rubs one finger tip and
touches that finger to one lock, then another, then another, then
the last, as he does so,a faint smile slowly appearing on his
grimy, unshaven face. The hand moves away from the locks, and
toward the doors handle, grasps it firmly, and turns it. With a
faint clicck the latch disengages.

        Holding the door still closed with one hand, the watcher
reaches up to his left eye, and pulls from its very center, a
thin flexible cable, which he then slots between the door and the
frame. Without looking he reaches into his jacket and pulls out
a long thin bladed tool, which he slips between the door and
frame next to the cable that protrudes from his eye. His hand
moves. He staightens satisfied and pushes the door open.


**************************************************************
********************************


        "I should have finished my coffee" thinks Joel as the
flits comfortably through the matrix. "I always think that in the
mornings, and the next morning I never do," and with a mental
shrug he turns his mind to the job at hand. "Mornings are the
best time to ride the net.  The corp runners are tired, and the
lines are full, no-one notices one more person in their systems"

        Joels <netform> sits comfortably in mid-cyberspace
watching the ebb and flow of the corps users, the mechanical
druges who sit at their boring desks, thinking that they know
their computers really well, by using a keyboard. "The brainless
drones wouldn't know cyberspace if it jumped up and bit them on
the ass" he thinks, then sniggers,"mind you, if they did try to
come in, it probably would bite them, and somewhere more
seriously than on their lily-white powdered butts"


        Sudenly Joel sees/tastes/smells/feels a blackness
ovewhelming him, blanketing him, as he is ripped through the net,
towards his home node. He slams into the once comfortable feeling
of his modem, right throughit and into the first program slot.
then the power is cut and Joel falls.............

**************************************************************
********************************

        The watcher straightens from the modem and slips the
program cartridge into his jacket pocket, and strolls out of the
building, three blocks down to where his bike is parked.
Disengages the alarm,  then reaches under the rear mudguard and
removes the motion detecting tracer ,turns it off and slips it
ino his pocket. Climbs aboard the bike and rides north. Toward
the Corp Zone. Towards his home. Towards his daughter. Towards
their freedom.



--
        -Wendel De'ath                           That is not Dead,
                -Enigma of the absolute          Which can eternal Lie,
                        -The Lurker in Black     Yet with strange Aeons,
                                                 Even Death may Die.