From: jason@vnet.net (Jason Kendelhardt)
Subject: STORY: Tuesday Mourning 1
Date: 25 Jul 1994 04:18:51 GMT
Seems my TIN is goofed. If this posts twice, blame the machine. Its
ALWAYS the machine, never the user.
Tuesday Mourning 1
The glittering cyberspace construct of the Holy Trinity of Love church stood
as a pulsating valentines heart atop an ebon pyramid. The ruby lines of
network extended in all directions, forming the endless field of the net. Only
3 lines ran into the church's computer grid, each entering a gate guarded by
sentry Bloodhounds, iconized as fearsome angels. The Holy Trinity was a well
protected construct, and it held many treasures inside. That made it a target
of Loki.
Hovering along the data stream, Loki watched the church, observing the bright
flashes of code exiting the construct, as the computer handled the affairs of
the church. Loki swept his hand across space, and a SeeYa window appeared.
Peering through the program, any invisible icons, waiting for the unwary
hacker, would be revealed. A faint outline of a hulking Pit Bull, roaming
around the heart on top of the pyramid, appeared. Loki smiled, so little
originality on the part of the churchmen. This would be an easy crack.
Slipping out of the web of communications,Loki drifted along one of the output
lines from the Holy Trinity. As he approached the construct, he engaged his
secret weapon. Activating the program, a flickering layer of nothing draped
itself over Loki,camouflaging his sinister-looking icon. As he melted into the
data flow, becoming indistinguishable from the outgoing bytes of code, Loki
slowly crept up the stream,directly underneath the ignorant gaze of a guardian
angel.
The Cloak program, one of Loki's own design, mimicked any nearby code,
hiding the true nature of the netrunner it shielded. Salmon-like, Loki 'swam' up
the stream, fighting against the outgoing code.The input lines were too secure
for the Cloak program to fool them, but the outgoing lines were loosely
guarded, especially when inside the line.
Another program, a shareware prog that Loki had modified, allowed him to
trace up an output line, insinuating his code with the other codes. The 2
programs took up nearly a third of his MU space, leaving only enough memory
for a defense prog and the software needed to loot the church.
It took nearly 5 seconds to flow into the construct. The shareware prog,
labeled Creep by Loki, only allowed a fraction of the data through the output
line needed to function at full speed. With his code from his deck severely
reduced, Loki was slow and vulnerable inside the construct. He had only a few
small progs available. But he was inside, and as yet undetected.
To free up memory, Loki dropped the Cloak, stopping the code from covering
his icon.Inside the data walls of the Holy Trinity, a black figure, smooth and
featureless, condensed out of the surrounding code. It was humanoid,
androgynous, and a deep ebon color. It was the icon of Loki.
Loki looked around. The entire interior of the pyramid was filled with file
boxes, storing the collected knowledge and information of the Holy Trinity of
Love. Information on members, funding sheets, balance statements, credit
deposit codes, blackmail on the opposition, all of it was cached here. It was
more than Loki could steal in a month,given the critically slow data flow back
to his deck. Even if he had the storage megage available, Loki was after
specifics and didn't have time to steal it all.
Loki walked over to an online data terminal. He punched in the file name he
was after. The terminal, a virtual reality access port to the main computer,
took 2 milliseconds to spit out the ID number of the file. At the same time,
a file box, one of thousands filling the sprawling pyramid, glowed. Loki
smiled again. It was never that easy.He opened the SeeYa window a second time.
The glowing file melded into an Imp, the normally demonic icon replaced by a
saintly alterboy. If anyone attempted to download that file, they would get a
nasty surprise.
Well, now that he had flushed out the church's pathetic defenses, Loki settled
down to the task of finding the real file. Using the Hidden Virtue prog (which
took 3 seconds to upload through the Creep), Loki cast about,searching for the
'real' data terminal, rather than the simplistic trap already triggered.
Peering through the green ring formed by the prog, another terminal appeared,
disguised as an innocent file box.Loki de-rezzed the Hidden Virtue, freeing up
enough memory to move up to the data terminal and punch in the file name
again.
This time the terminal actually scanned the databanks, taking an epic 6
milliseconds to locate the file. When the ID number came up, Loki was already
heading towards the file. Levitating upwards, the black figure soared to the
pinnacle of the pyramid, just underneath the valentine's heart. The ID numbers
of the files were printed on the cover of each data cluster. Loki found the
correct one easily, since they were numerically stored and 257 was near the
top. The icon stopped at the box, hovering in cyberspace.
Sweeping his hand across the face of the file, the filelock appeared. Composed
of an alpha-numeric password, it required an indirect method to crack it.
Traditional word guessers and random combination generators were useless
against a code that was 20 digits long. The lock had to be disassembled at its
source code. That's where the Code Cracker prog came in. It attacked the lock,
dissolving the protective code and releasing the file within.
Loki quickly used his Databaser to begin copying the file to his deck.The data
streamed out through the output line. The code left quickly, since it wasn't
necessary to use the Creep prog to filter it in. As the precious info fled the
construct, Loki used the opportunity to try and swipe some personal gain. He
ducked over to a file whose ID he already knew (by rummaging through trash)
and hacked it with the Code Cracker. Just as he broke through, an alarm
sounded, filling the construct with white noise.The Imp, previously passive in
its alcove, leapt out and started towards the cracked file. Loki immediately
started his second Databaser with the download and fled from the file.He tried
to activate the Cloak, but with the Creep prog slowing his response, he was
wide open to the Imp's attack.
The alterboy icon pointed his finger at Loki and a electric-blue spark of anti-
personnel code wound its way towards the netrunner. The attack prog reached
Loki and wrapped its code around Loki, pinning the 'runner and cutting off his
access to fresh code. Seeing that the intruder was paralysed, the Imp used its
second prog to de-rezz the Databaser downloading the contents of the file. As
the flow of data stopped, critical milliseconds had been gained and megabytes
of info had already been stolen. The Imp fired it's Killer II at the first
Databaser as it systematically cleaned the construct of foreign code. The Imp
was too late however, and the first file had been completely copied.
Loki managed to free himself of the Stun just as the Imp returned attention to
him. The computer controlled Demon sent another Stun swarming towards
Loki, but was foiled as the Shield prog, the final bit of software Loki had
chipped,finally sifted its way through the Creep and tossed up protective lines
of code around the 'runner. The blue fire splattered across the translucent
Shield, but was unable to entrap Loki again.
The decker knew that he had overstayed his welcome and prepared to exit the
construct.He wanted a clean getaway, without the trail of code that jacking
out would leave. Loki sped towards the output line as the Shield absorbed a
second Stun, then de-rezzed as the Killer II deconstructed the prog. Loki
canceled the Creep and used the increased speed to send himself through the
line to the net outside.
Once he re-rezzed his icon outside the pyramid construct, Loki considered
himself safe. His stolen data was copied onto his deck, and he had eluded the
Imp. Taking a quick scan with the SeeYa, Loki was chilled to witness the exit
of a huge Balrog II demon, iconized as a cruel crucified Christ. The figure
snarled at Loki and removed the Invisibility prog, showing itself to the net.
It quickly descended the pyramid. Balrogs were the most powerful of the Demon
programs.It packed several other progs, using them like a solo used guns. Holy
Trinity took no shit from hackers. Loki had gravely underestimated the church.
Loki shrouded himself in Cloak and fled towards his Data Term. The looming
cross tracked him, following the faint code disturbances left by the Cloak.
Loki was limited by the net to a set speed, so he tried to lose the Balrog by
hitching a ride on a 'noisy' line, filled with net commuters traveling between
constructs in their virtual world. The Balrog went invisible as it approached
the crowded line, obviously designed to avoid exposure of the Trinity's
firepower. Loki hit several other junctions, picking the ones with the most
static as possible. His Cloak could shield him easily from simple watchdogs,
but the sophisticated progs could tail him. Loki ducked into a social BBS,
mixing with the thousands of teeny bopper runners using Daddy's net account to
hang with friends. He made a quick check with the SeeYa, but no cross showed.
Maybe he lost it. No way. Loki never relied on optimism. He dashed over to a
side exit and re-entered the net. He was close to his own drop site, and
wanted to leave the same way he had come in.
Loki skipped over past several corp data fortresses, until he hit a small Data
Term site. He entered the terminal and prepared to logout of the net. By
returning to his login site, he left no trail or trace for the church to
follow. Once he exited to reality, he could slip away into anonymous oblivion.
The Balrog hit him like a hammer, freezing him in the net with Glue. The
Balrog attacked the Data Walls protecting his deck. With his consciousness
trapped in the net, he would be a drooling idiot when the church solo's came
to confiscate his body. Unless.
Loki watched helpless as the Balrog battered down the wall of his deck with a
Hammer prog. The walls were fairly weak, and it fell quickly to the code
destroying algorithm.Loki struggled to free himself from the Glue and jack out
with his sanity. The Balrog fired a Poison Flatline at Loki's deck. The anti-
system prog began to fry his deck. Loki was about to become flatlined.
BOOM. Tuesday Mourning snapped awake, his cramped body huddled against
a dirty public Data Term. He looked down at his deck. The brick-sized
computer was sitting dead, all the lights out. Tuesday picked up the deck. It
was now a lump of plastic and fiber-optics. Just before he jacked out, he saw
the Balrog toast his deck.
Wait, how DID he jack out? Tuesday looked at the Data Term screen and saw
a flashing red light. It read ZERO CREDITS. Well, that explained it. The
Mourning luck was running true to form. Just as he was about to be
lobotomized, he ran out of eb. That's public access for you. If Tuesday had
been able to access his corp line for the run,he would have been left stranded
in the net. Good thing payday was tomorrow, or he would have been really
screwed.
Tuesday felt under the deck and pulled out a 1 MU chip. It had the 2 files,
protected from the Flatline by a simple cutoff switch. This was going to bring
in more credit than Tuesday made in a month at his 9-5. But with his iced deck,
he wouldn't be running for awhile.
Tuesday looked around. The small building housing the Data Terms was
almost empty. Only 2 other deckers were here, both slumped over and deep in
the trance-like interface. They would get a surprise when the churchmen
showed. Tuesday gathered his deck and took a sip of distilled water he brought
with him in a thermos. He ducked out of the building. The sooty afternoon air
was a dim switch from the vibrant colors of cyberspace. Realspace was grey
and dull, where as the net was crystal clear and so ALIVE.
Merging with the drab crowd aimlessly trudging down the street, Tuesday
glanced back, watchful of solo's. He saw a dark grey van pull up to the Term
building. The van had a heart atop a pyramid on the side. Tuesday did NOT
want to be inside that building right now. He chuckled to himself and headed
out to his fence to sell the data and get a new deck.
********
Well, this is my first real time dealing with the net, and I'm waiting
for a copy of RB's guide to the net to help standardize my writing, since
this is RTG's world. But until then, expect a little variation as I
experiment with cyberspace. This story is a quasi-continuation of Stag
Jones, which will come apparant in a few posts. And as usual, this story
is copyrighted 1994 by myself, except where RTG got there first.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Kendelhardt Violence is Golden
jason@char.vnet.net and I have the Midas Touch
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jason@vnet.net (Jason Kendelhardt)
Subject: STORY: Tuesday Mourning 2
Date: 3 Aug 1994 05:30:26 GMT
Ok, my Tin is screwed, so here goes another try.
Tuesday Mourning 2
Tuesday has raided the files of a radical church group.
He is trying to pawn them to his fence.
Huddled over the ruins of his deck and the precious data needles,
Tuesday street-shuffled towards a monorail terminal. Since he ran out of
credit during the run, all he had left was the 3 credit chip he had used to
buy kibble for breakfast. It had enough to get him to the south side of the
city.
Still a little fearful of the church solo's he had seen go into the dataterm
building, Tuesday lasped into his old pattern of walking. Head held low,
eyes never meeting anyone else's, body crouched over with the shoulders
slumped. It was how the poor walked, the homeless. Tuesday had been
one of those for a while, and for a single unarmed boy, it was the safest
way to move throughout the city.
Climbing up the pocked concrete steps to the monorail, a late spat of
midday commuters rushed out past him. They didn't even look at
Tuesday, just sort of flowed around him. Even the blue-collar workers,
people handleing the low class jobs that robots couldn't do yet, ignored
what appeared to be just another streetrat.
Tuesday walked into the terminal and glanced around. He instinctively
hugged one of the walls as he slid over to one of the computer ticket
machines. He dropped the credit shard into the awaiting socket and told
the computer to give him a ticket for the south side. A second later and a
coin-shaped object clinked into a tray and he was poorer by 2 credits.
He quickly darted across the large lobby, which was sparsly populated
with genuine homeless, commuters, and an ocasional security guard. A
loitering monorail, 300 meters long and faster than sound, accepted him
inside. Of course the train didn't go Mach 1 while in town, but it had the
potential to.
Tuesday sat down at a slashed cushion seat and warily exchanged looks
with the 4 other passengers. They were middle aged people, looking lost
from culture shock. They still had real cotton clothing and no visible
augmentation. Some people just couldn't adapt.
Tuesday decided to check out his deck. He had to see just how much
damage was done to it. He flipped it over and popped out the memory
board. He squinted at the gray crystal needles, looking for sign of
damage. He found one with small cracks, caused by the ICE overheating
the crystal with the reading lasers. 2 others were drained of data. The
rest looked ok, but the ones destroyed were the CPU chips. His deck was
dead. His other programs were most likely seeded with a virus of some
sort, also useless.
At least the 2 data needles were unharmed. Tuesday had spent an entire
day rigging up a circuit breaker style off switch between the 2 data
shards and the rest of his deck. When the BALROG attacked his data
walls, the feedback tripped the switch and isolated his memory. Tuesday
thought it quite ingenious.
Since his deck was now scrap, Tuesday figured that he could strip it of
the interface sockets and get enough to get back home. If his stolen data
wasn't worth a lot, Loki would be out of business. With a good deck
costing 4000-5000 eb, it would take him half a year of saving from his
9-5 to get a new one. Not an option.
After 5 minutes of travel and 1 stop, Tuesday hit his exit. He shuffled off
the train into another terminal, this one crowded with prostitutes, pushers,
thieves, and fences. Station 7 was run over with the criminal elements so
vital to the functioning of the city. As long as they didn't screw with the
train or its passengers (once you get off, you're on your own), the monorail
owners didn't mess with the bad guys. It was on odd agreement, fueled by
the owners greed for the kickbacks they received and the criminals greed
for easy access to shelter and no rent. Station 7 just sort of slipped over
to the criminals, no one ever remembered when or why. Now it was a
huge auction house where almost anything you wanted was for sale. Here
Tuesday was in his element.
He dashed unnoticed across the room, again a small meek nobody. He was
feebly chased by some orphan kids, some of whom actually recalled when
Tuesday used to be one of them. Tuesday kept his arms tight round his
deck. Anything not actually touched was likely to disappear in company
such as this.
Once outside the terminal, which was enlarged and now a sprawling mass
of home archetechture, Tuesday ran down the sidewalk towards the bright
neon signs of the gambling houses. He turned into an alley just before
reaching the Neo-Vegas joint. He deftly dodged past reeking garbage and
worse-smelling bums. He stopped at a rusting iron door set into the brick
of the Neo-Vegas house. He picked up a crowbar, one so old it was made
of metal, and smacked the door 3 times.
A minute later a small camera peeked out of a hole above the door. It
looked at Tuesday, then panned around the alley. A speaker, screeching
from being blown, hoarsly questioned his prescence. Tuesday smiled and
gave the code. The door slowly swung open, moved by the efforts of a
large, slightly overweight man. As soon as the door opened enough to
allow Tuesday to enter, he did. The man pushed the door shut.
"Well, if it isn't the little netrunning streetrat. What kind of crap do you
have for me today? I'm not buying anymore stock estimates from you. Your
last batch ended up costing some investors a lot of credit."
"Thats why I told you to sell them to your ENEMIES, Julian. Those faked
reports were supposed to mislead people. All my info is good, you know
that. Who else gets the dirt like I do? They don't call me Loki for nothing."
Tuesday was used to that kind of insulting greeting. He knew that Julian
had slipped the reports, designed to test the loyalty of intracorp members
of Hatsumi International, to some rival fences.
"Sure kid, one of these day's someone powerful is going to discover who
you really are and and lobotomize you. Loki has caused enough damage to
bankrupt a small corp. So what do you got?" Julian knew Loki's worth, he
just didn't want it to get to Tuesday's head. A cocky runner is a dead
runner.
"Ok, here's the deal. I got a data file on the head Democratic candidate for
the Free States Board. It came from a source that should have access to all
of her personal secrets. I figure that the Repub's or the Independent's will
pay heavy for the goods on their opposition." Chelsa Rodham was a
member of the Holy Trinity of Love. They recorded her confessions (and
acts of love). Loki had stolen that file. The dirt from that should cost her
the election.
Julian's eyes lit up. God, he thought, that kid sure knew how to maximize
his thefts. He only went for the high value stuff that no one ever thought
was valuable. "Ok, hand it over. I'll give a taste of it to a few party
members I know, and we'll work out a deal. Give it a day or 2 and see
what comes up."
"No good Julian. I KNOW this stuff is good. Trust me. I had a run in with
some ICE getting out. I need some credit to get a new board. I gotta have it
now. I'm naked without the deck."
"You have got to be kidding! A deck would cost you 4 grand, and nothing
you ever got for me was worth even half that! Dirt on a candidate is
valuable stuff, but I couldn't get that much without selling this chip to
every political party in the state. You gotta give me more than that." Julian
planned on milking this one for all he could get. He could see Tuesday's
need, like a junkie. He might be able to get some real credit out of this.
Tuesday gave him good stuff, but information was never the high paying
business sim-stim's made it out to be, at least not for the decker.
Damn, Julian was going to screw him on this one. Tuesday knew that he
was though of as a niave boy by these criminals, and maybe he was, but he
had enough streetsense to know a screw when it was jammed up his ass.
He had to make his play. "Shit, man. Ok, here's something else that might
interest you. I swiped the bankrolls for a certain church. Maybe some
people might be interested in how their donations are used to further the
cause of the Lord?" Tuesday was planning on using that data to skim some
cred for himself, but without a deck he couldn't copy the file, or run the
net, so he was forced to sell the info.
"Ah, now that changes things. I think I can use that as well. Tell you what,
I have a deck I got from Cyberman Jack in the back. I'll let you use it for a
few days, for about 300 eb. Then, once I've sold your stuff, you can return
it and buy yourself a real deck." Jack had sold him the deck yesterday, for
2000 eb. Jack had said it was from some euro who had been killed by
Stag Jones. That meant it was untracable and unwanted. Julian didn't know
much about decks, and he had never heard of the infamous Der Raub.
Damn again, Tuesday thought. Now he would not only have no file to
crack, but he would have to use some substandard trashman's deck until he
could get some eb. This was turning out to be a waste. He gave Julian the
second chip. "How about buying some of my deck? It got toasted by the
ICE. I think the interface plugs and some of the memory chips are still
good. I should be able to get something for that." Tuesday needed food
money until payday, which although it was tomorrow, 1 credit when
absolutely nowhere in the city.
"Sure kid, let me see your deck." Tuesday hoisted his Parraline 3225 up
onto the counter. "Hmmm, you got some useful stuf here. If we cut the
plug's, strip the videoboard, take out and wipe these memory units, and
clean the board, I think you got about 200 credits worth of stuff here."
Julian didn't know much about decks, but he knew the prices of their
components by heart. He got deckers in here all the time.
Tuesday could almost feel the butt-fuck here. His memory was worth at
least 1000 eb, especially since he grafted a few units extra onto his deck.
He wasn't about to take that shit from Julian. "Hold it. That memory is
worth a hell of a lot more than 200. Take the rest, but I'm keeping that." He
reached over and grabbed the 14 MU welded to the board. Julian made a
move to stop him, but Tuesday took it and moved back.
"Whatever kid," Damn, he wasn't as stupid as he looked. "But the rest of
that stuff is only worth 15 credits." Take that, punk.
"Deal. I'll be back in 2 days for the rest." Tuesday waited for the cred and
the loaned deck.
Julian fished out a 20 cred chip from his pocket. He dumped 5 eb of it
onto another chip and gave the reduced chip to Tuesday. He also hefted
the shot up duffle bag Jack gave him with the deck. "So, while I dig out
that deck, tell me, what happened with the ICE. Lose your entire deck
huh?" Julian began pulling chips out of the bag. He had no intention of
giving Tuesday a bunch of free programs. He left a few in, and tossed it
over to Tuesday.
"Well, it was a Balrog. It Glued me in, and hit my deck with a Poison
Flatline. I thought I was dead as well, but then my money ran out and the
DataTerm dumped me out." He stopped as Julian chucked a duffle bag at
him. He caught it, but almost dropped it. Jesus, this deck weighed almost 5
kg! It must be some REALLY old deck, maybe back when they had to use
'trodes and keyboards to interface with it. It was big too, as long as a
keyboard and really thick. Great, Tuesday thought, I just rented an Intel
P200.
"You mean to tell me that you went running with only a couple of credits
in your account? Why did you do that? You should have used your access
line in your apartment. No charge for that."
"Wait a minute, man. I had almost 100 credits in my account when I started
the run, but while I was gone, I had 3 bills come due. My rent, the access
line cost, and the repair bill for my skateboard all came within 2 seconds
of each other. That dropped my credit to almost nothing, then the
DataTerm charge finished it off, dumping me out."
"You are the luckiest son-of-a-bitch I've ever known. I have never heard
of a runner being saved from flatline by having his bills come in. You're
gonna run out of that soon."
"No, I've already had my string of bad luck for my lifetime. I've only got
good luck from here on out." Tuesday's face fell a little as he spoke.
Julian knew little about Tuesday's childhood, but he had heard that his
parents were corp types that were killed by nomads, and that Tuesday
ended up on the streets a small child. How he had ever gotten proficient in
decking, or where his infamous Mourning Luck came from, Julian didn't
know.
"Well, I've got to go. Gotta grab some chow and see if this clunker is
worth anything. I'll be back for my cred. Later." Tuesday left, and headed
out into the street. He was barely strong enough to open the door, and
Julian had to close it for him. Shouldering the duffle, which looked like it
had been through a war, Tuesday left the alley, 15 cred and a crap deck
richer.
--
Got RB's guide to the net, so expect some world travel soon. As usual,
copyrighted 1994 by Jason Kendelhardt except where RTG got there first.
Actually,anyone know an online address for R. Talsorian games? I want to
clear this obvious plagarism with them and maybe become an idea
consultant :). Look's like the Chat is waking up and the competition is
getting fierce. Later
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Kendelhardt Violence is Golden
jason@char.vnet.net and I have the Midas Touch
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jason@vnet.net (Jason Kendelhardt)
Subject: STORY: Tuesday Mourning 3
Date: 4 Aug 1994 02:39:28 GMT
Tuesday Mourning 3
Tuesday has scrapped his ruined deck and
gotten Der Raub's old one. He has no idea
what he got.
Hunger began to become Tuesday's driving motivation as he left the
back of the gambling house. With the heavy deck in the duffle and the
15 credits in his pocket, Tuesday set out to score some food.
He chose a kibble stand not far from his pad, mainly because the
vendor had spicy sauce to go with the mushy carbo-protein ooze. Kibble
kept people alive and healthy, but without serious seasoning it was as
tasty as wet plasti-pulp. Forking over 4 cred for a covered styrofoam
(it'll really degrade this time, we PROMISE!!) cup of gray putty,
Tuesday huddled under a sagging canopy to eat. He dumped 2 packets of
NachoChico hot sauce on the kibble and stirred it with a plastic spork
he kept handy.
Sitting on the deck, Tuesday glanced around the neighborhood as he
choked down the food. A cocky pair of razorboys strutted down the
street, a path opening in the seething humanity. No one in this part
of town wanted to mess with guys packing enough firepower to level
everyone on the street. The 'boys were muscle for some pimp who had
set up shop across the road from where Tuesday sat. He had thought
about trying one of the girls, but he never seemed to have the money
after buying software and parts for his deck. Even the data he sold
didn't bring in enough cred to keep him up with the edge. Now that his
deck was shot, he'd be living lean for a few weeks.
Tuesday shifted his seat and pulled out the deck he borrowed from
Julian. He set the near-empty cup of gruel down on the dirty road as
he handled the deck. It was big, definitely larger than any deck on
the shelves now. Modern computers were about the size of a paperback
book (Tuesday used to raid garbage dumps), and this one was easily 3
or 4 times that size. It was heavy, 10 times the normal .5 kg weight.
He could see that it was armored, a plastic/ceramic layer of
shielding, and had been shot a few times. There were 4 plug ports, as
well as several fluid crystal micro-displays. The whole thing was
blue-black with no sharp edges. It was a smooth, flattened oval.
No clue as to what was inside, Tuesday pulled out a set of plug wires.
1 jack he slipped into a port on the side of the "egg" (which was sort
of what it looked like, except that it was rectangular), and the other
end went into his skull plug.
Instantly Tuesday's visual and audio nerves were compromised as the
deck's internal programming began feeding him data. With minimal
shock, Tuesday found himself dropping onto the net. The street
vanished, and was replaced by a glittering array of laser lines and
computer constructs. Even in the southside, the net was everywhere.
Loki looked around. He was hovering over a small construct resembling
a neon woman spreading her legs. All around him were blurred icons as
netrunners and programs dashed through the district, not wanting to
get attacked in a place so far from NetWatch. Down the street was a
large icon of a spinning roulette wheel, recognizable as the gambling
house Loki was just at. Smaller constructs representing the various
local businesses filled the netspace between them. Loki saw a dozen
tiny icons of vehicles moving below him, where the street would be in
Realspace. Tiny smartdrives wired into vehicles, broadcasting out
their identification.
How did I get here? Loki wondered. He didn't log in at a DataTerm and
he surely wasn't using his cred chip because it was dry. He didn't
even plug in the damn deck to a line, he had planned on exploring the
MicroNet of the deck to see what it had, but now he was in the real
net.
Loki dropped down level with the neon girl construct. He could see a
small whirlwind icon just above her left nipple. A cellular line. Oh
Jesus, Loki thought, my deck just jumped onto this cellular
connection. He realized that his deck must have a cellular modem,
capable of transmitting data over the radio band. Wow, he thought,
this might not be such a lemon deck after all.
Before he could pull down the program menu, a translucent smoke figure
billowed out of the whirlwind and faced Loki. The virtual space dimmed
as the cellular modem strained to keep maximum input to 2 separate
runners.
[What the hell are you doing on MY modem?] The figure demanded. Loki
didn't wait around to give an answer. He slapped the LOG OFF command
floating under his left hand (which is the FIRST reflex learned by
hackers) and punched out of the net. He wasn't going to hang around
with pissed off cowboys.
Tuesday jerked awake as the net cleared from his vision. He quickly
unplugged the jack from his neck. Shit, he thought, what kind of deck
IS this? First it looks like some 20's rip, but it has a cellular and
automatically scans for the nearest modem to patch into. Did it so
fast he didn't even realize it.
Tuesday looked across the street. A neon sign, showing a woman
spreading her legs was mounted above the door to the pimps place.
Shit, Tuesday had patched into the modem of a gangster. He immediately
turned and stuffed the deck into his duffle. Maybe no one saw, he
thought, no way to trace a cellular without triangulation equipment.
He was safe. Tuesday picked up his cup and slung the duffle. Time to
get out of here. He would play with the deck in a more secure area.
The roar of a motorcycle penetrated the mid-day clamor of the crowd.
People made room for a large Harley moving up the road. On a street
with little motorized traffic, a vehicle was noticeable. They moved so
not just because they wanted to avoid being hit, but because the man
on the bike had a rep. Big with biosculpt muscle, flattop haircut, and
a scowling face, everyone knew Stag Jones. Everyone also knew why he
was here.
Tuesday pressed himself against the wall of a tanning salon as people
started scattering. The 2 solos Tuesday had seen earlier were already
moving in, pulling bullet hoses out of their armored jackets. Tuesday
knew of Stag by rep, but he had never seen him go into action before.
Now he had a front row view.
A small clearing had formed in front of the pimp's building as
pedestrians fled the scene. The 2 gunmen both had submachine guns, the
latest models. Stag kept coming, until there was only a few people
between him and the punks. Then he slid the big bike around and ducked
behind a parked van. Tuesday could see Stag jump off the Harley and
draw a vicious looking autopistol. the 2 punks split up, each going
around a side of the van.
Stag suddenly moved very fast and darted towards the larger of the 2
punks. He whipped around the corner of the van and lashed out with his
gleaming cyberhand. The punk was fast as well, and started firing as
he attempted to swing the gun over. Slugs tore into the wall Tuesday
had just eaten against and splattered a bystander too slow to avoid
the gunfire. Stag's hand sliced through the arms of the punk. Stag
drew back his arm, now sporting a pair of 20cm wolvers, and drove the
carbonfiber blades into the head of the crippled razorboy. Blood
dusted the street as the body fell.
The second gunman opened up through the van, shattering the plastiglas
windows of the vehicle. Tuesday saw small puffs of vaporized fiber
leap from Stag's jacket back, but the big killer ducked low, unharmed.
The other gunman continued to rake the van as he circled it. Stray
bullets pelted the street and buildings, occasionally a cowering body
was hit, extracting a scream. Stag circled the van way from the
gunner.
Tuesday then saw Stag leap up onto the roof of the riddled van. With
incredible agility and power, Stag flipped over the head of the second
punk, who was just starting to raise his gun. Stag fired a short burst
from his pistol as he began to drop behind the punk. The rounds, fired
at such close range, tore the ganger's head from his shoulders,
covering the side of the van with brain and skull fragments. Stag
landed just beside his bike, facing the van. He then dashed into the
pimps building.
"Shit," someone beside Tuesday said," Poor Skunky. He should know
better than to try and avoid Stag. That dude's just got it in for old
Skunky."
Tuesday crossed over to the van, something compelling him to look at
the dead bodies of the gangers. He saw the discarded submachine gun of
the guy Stag dismembered. He reached down and picked it up. The
severed hand fell from the handle. In a sick state of shock, Tuesday
stuffed the gun, which he had no idea how to use, into the duffle bag.
Other people had the same ideas, and within seconds human buzzards had
stripped the bodies and made off with anything valuable. The bodies
themselves would be removed soon, once someone got the balls to make
off with it in daylight. So many organs and cybernetics were too
valuable to be wasted lying on the street.
Gunfire erupted from the building, one shot penetrating the wall from
the inside and shattering the neon sign. An explosion of plastic
shards and florescent gas lit up the side of the building. Girls and
johns began fleeing the place. Many were in a state of semi-undress,
vulnerable to the street. Some of the tougher punks started snatching
girls as they tried to escape the building, which was now in flames
from an internal explosion.
Tuesday, stirred by some vestige of chivalry buried under years of
neglect, decided to act. He pulled out the submachine gun, which even
as small as it was, threatened to fall out of his trembling grip.
Holding it with 2 hands, like the simstim stars did, Tuesday dashed
across the street. He didn't really know what he planned on doing, but
it all fell away as a huge fireball engulfed the building, throwing
everyone on the street prone. Burning plastic landed on Tuesday's
coat, so he frantically tried to beat it out. Several scorched fingers
later he shed his jacket, letting it be consumed by the flames.
Picking up his duffle and gun, Tuesday ran for the alley he had just
come from. Whatever delusions of saving the girls he had were just
blown way along with the building. He had seen several people too
close to the building get hit by shrapnel. A stench of burning flesh
settled over the block, fueled by the pyre that was a bordello.
A whore ran into Tuesday as he tried to get into the alley. She was
almost as tall as he was, maybe 170cm, with unruly blonde hair and a
sheer robe wrapped around her enhanced body. Tuesday accidently waved
the gun in her face, causing her to scream. She was covered in soot,
as was Tuesday. He grabbed her arm with his left hand and pushed her
towards the alley.
"Run!!" He screamed into her ear. Tuesday was almost deafened by the
blast, so she would be as well. Trauma Team AV's howled overhead,
attracted to the explosion and the multitude of activated cards
carried by the dead and dying.
The gun held in one hand and the girl being pushed by another, Tuesday
dashed through the alley. He guided the girl through several
intersections, heading towards his home. After several minutes of
running, they reached his pad.
"Stop." Tuesday called out. The girl slowed, then collapsed against
one of the walls of the apartment complexes surrounding them. As she
crouched over, gasping for breath, Tuesday moved a rusted garbage can
(dating back to when they still used metal) away from a small
switchbox buried low on the wall. He pried it open, revealing a 3 by 3
code panel. Tuesday quickly punched in a 5 digit code. He closed the
box and moved the can back over it. Grabbing the girl again, he opened
a thick plastic door that was now unlocked for 20 seconds. He pushed
her inside and shut the door, seconds before the lock and the alarm
engaged.
"Welcome to my humble abode," Tuesday made a sweeping gesture. The
girl looked around, taking in the room. Tuesday lived in a renovated
basement. A floor mattress covered one corner, while a hot plate and a
cooler unit took up another. A pieced together entertainment center
dominated one wall. An assorted collection of furniture and
electronics covered the floor. Posters scavenged from fires,
junkyards, and close-out sales coated the walls, hiding the cement
blocks. Glow lamps provided illumination to the windowless room.
The girl turned to Tuesday. In a surprisingly steady voice she said,
"Who the hell are you?"
--
Had to squeeze Stag in there somewhere. Now you know what happens to
Skunky. It almost seems as if I planned it that way. Any luck with RTG's
address? BTW, copyright 1994 by Jason Kendelhardt, except for the RTG stuff.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Kendelhardt Violence is Golden
jason@char.vnet.net and I have the Midas Touch
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jason@vnet.net (Jason Kendelhardt)
Subject: STORY: Tuesday Mourning 4
Date: 8 Aug 1994 03:20:04 GMT
WARNING: This story has some sexual content. A lot more than I've noticed
on this board. It's not all bad and if you read the whole thing, there's
some important background stuff in it as well. It's not like this story
is sick or anything, but it is substantially more "adult" than anything
I've done before so I thought this little warning might forestall some
complaints, if any.
Tuesday Mourning 4
Tuesday has gotten a deck with some rather strange
properties. He has also rescued a whore from Stag
Jones' attack on Skunky the pimp.
"Who the hell are you?" the girl asked. She had calmed down some once they
were inside Tuesday's home, but she was still freaked. So was Tuesday
actually.
"Name's Tuesday. Who are you?" He put down the submachine gun on a table, and
set the duffle beside it.
"Everyone calls me Aphrodite." She had crossed her arms over her breasts,
which were clearly visible through the sheer silk fabric of her robe. It only
increased the erotic waves that flowed off of her like a singing tuning fork.
Just hearing her talk gave Tuesday a boner.
"Let me guess, you were Skunky's goddess of love." Tuesday began to think that
saving a whore from exploding buildings, even if she WAS already running away
on her own, could turn out to be the best thing to ever happen to him. Maybe
she would return the favor.
"No, I was everybody's 'goddess of love'" She turned around, and dropped the
robe past her back. Imbedded in her lower spine was a neural interface chip.
That was the obvious thing. It took Tuesday a second to make out a fine web of
whip marks running across her back and running down to her buttocks, covered
by the robe. They were faint, but Tuesday had seen enough porno simstims to
make the connection between a girl with neural processor and S&M marks.
Playbeing. People with every nerve hardwired to their pleasure center and
programmed to please. Even pain was orgasmic to them.
"Oh shit. You're one of those Biotechnica sextoys!" Tuesday had to state the
obvious.
Aphrodite turned back around, giving Tuesday a mind-boggling view of her
breasts before she sheathed them with the robe. Playbeings always got major
cosmetic surgery to enhance their physical looks (who didn't?), and Aphrodite
was no exception. Her exquisite beauty was marred by the welts running amok
across her front torso as well as her back. "Skunky specializes in violent
sex. His clients are very liberal with the whip. I'm one of the few women he
had that could actually 'enjoy' those sessions without being dulled by drugs."
She did not sound proud. "Men, and women, would come from all over the city to
experience me. I've never been so degraded by something I had no choice but to
enjoy." Anger and disgust began to enter her voice, destroying the erotic
spell her sultry voice could weave.
Tuesday tried to imagine what it would be like to take pleasure from intense
pain, or if his only joy, running the net, was transformed into something
monstrous and evil. He couldn't do it. He sat down as post-action shakes began
to overtake him. Trembling, he stared at a wall covered by maps and posters of
the world while he waited for the adrenaline letdown to pass. Aphrodite almost
flowed as she knelt on the floor. She was incredibly graceful, like a prowling
cat.
"So how did you get the name Tuesday?" she asked, changing the subject. Her
voice was back to being distractingly sexy.
Taking a deep breath to clear his head, Tuesday gave her the short version.
"My parents liked to think of themselves as funny individuals. They both
worked for a comedy televid station. They met on a Tuesday, got married on a
Tuesday, and I was born on a Tuesday, right at midnight. The coincidence was
to great for them to pass up so they named me Tuesday. Ironic thing was that
they died on a Tuesday as well. But then, that's just Mourning luck for you."
He talked in a monotone, as if he was repeating a story told many times in the
past.
"Mourning luck? Like early in the morning?" Aphrodite seemed confused. She
could relate to most of the tragedy however.
"No, m-o-u-r-n-i-n-g. My last name. I have kind of a blessed fortune about me.
I tend to squeak by when I should not have. Kind of like running into you. Of
all the places I could have been and things I could have done, I ended up with
a living sex doll in my room."
"Hey, it's just coincidence. And I'm not entirely centered around sex you
know. I do have a working brain under all the program." She was a little
pissed off. Few people ever imagine that a Playbeing could concentrate on
things non-sex related. But then, when you were a whore, nothing was non-sex
related.
"Sorry. But just you wait. My meeting you is going to turn out to be an
astronomical piece of good fortune. It's always that way." He crouched forward
in the plastic chair.
"If you are so damn lucky, then why do you live here? Shouldn't you be at a
gambling house playing the slot machines or roulette wheel?" She leaned back
from her seat on the floor.
"I did once, but the mobsters beat me up for cheating and took my money. Then
they banned me from every gambling house in the state. I'm on file everywhere.
I'm a netrunner you see, and they thought I had rewritten the control programs
of the games. The luck only works on specific events, it's not omnipotent."
"You make it seem like it's alive." Aphrodite's voice began to lose its erotic
call. Tuesday suspected that she was only 'turned on' when she was exited. If
he could keep her calm, maybe his dick would go back to sleep.
"Like I said, wait. If you hang around long enough, you'll believe it too." He
realized what he had just said. The thought of having a Playbeing living in
his apartment began to generate uncontrollable fantasies in his head.
She let that one pass. Aphrodite wasn't all together trusting of this young
netrunner. He seemed honest, and he was kinda cute, but she had no intention
of becoming another slave. She had to accumulate enough cred to remove the
Playbeing circuitry and set up a new life somewhere far from this damned city
and the Imagery corp.
"Say, you don't happen to have a place where I could get cleaned up do you?
I'm covered in soot." The sex was back in her voice. Tuesday revised his
earlier opinion about how her power worked. Maybe she COULD control it. If the
Playbeing chips worked like normal chips, then she could flip them on and off
at will. Perhaps she had no control if she was excited, but DID have control
to turn them on. His dick never had a chance.
"Sure, there is a tub behind that screen." He pointed out a Japanese paper
screen used as a door between rooms. He had a small lavatory. "There's been a
lot of rain recently so the roof tank should be full. I've got a filter pump
to clean out the bacteria, and a distiller to remove the acid rain. Fill up
the tank and turn on the heating coil. It'll take a few minutes to heat,
then it'll pump the water to the shower head. You got about 5 minutes worth of
water from the 5 gallon tank." It wasn't much of a washing, but it got the
dirt off and made you feel better. Tuesday also had an illegal tap into the
city watermain incase of drought. With the new desalination plant, the city
had the entire ocean as a reservoir.
She smiled at him, and his heart skipped a beat. Damn, she was beautiful. She
had the body of a simstim star and moved like a belly dancer. Aphrodite stood
(more like floated up) and headed over towards the screen. She had a
noticeable swing in her ass. She slipped past the screen. Tuesday heard the
water running. Aphrodite turned on the heat lamp in the bathroom and shedded
the silk robe. Tuesday could see her silhouette through the screen. She was
definitely enhanced. No natural woman could ever look like that. Biosculpt had
made nature obsolete.
Well, time to get back to real business. Tuesday pulled out the deck. He
looked over the scarred armor, hoping to find something telling him what kind
of deck this was. Custom jobs were powerful to use, but without instructions,
they had to be peeled open like triple coded progs.
Tuesday found the memory boards first. Made to be easily accessible to switch
programs, they had a pop open hatch. There were 4 chips already slotted. He
pulled them out. The 2.5cm needles were labeled with colored bands, but no
names. Shit. Whoever owned this deck previously had his (or her, Tuesday had
no way of knowing) own code system. This was going to be VERY tricky. Virus
codes could be all over this deck and he'd never know until he flatlined.
Next he examined the actual memory. The best Tuesday had ever done was a
homemade extension of the standard 10 MU board into 14 MU. He had little
experience in hardware. This board looked to be a custom job as well, and
definitely superior. The MUs were higher quality as well, Zetatech 1000's
rather than the EBM Pros Tuesday used. He quickly checked his most recent
downloaded hardware catalog by using the remote to activate the tv. He then
scrolled through the loaded programs until he hit the Deck Exchange. Once
there he flipped through the options until he reached Memory. Then he punched
in the name of the Zetatech 1000. Damn, 1.5 Mu's per chip. The board had 20
chips grafted on. Tuesday had just doubled his MU to 30.
The rest of the board was protected by military armor. Tuesday didn't have the
tools necessary to cut through the plate to get to the electronics inside. He
would have to do it the hard way. Time to invade the MicroNet.
Remembering the cellular modem trick, Tuesday had to be sure the deck wouldn't
zap him into another guy's modem. That meant he had to give the deck a piece
of the net to drop him into. Against all his instincts about running unknown
hardware on his personal Net Access code, Tuesday had no choice. He had to
plug the deck into his apartment's netline and use his Access code to allow
the deck to enter NetSpace. If the deck had any tracer programs or if he was
attacked while in the net, he could be defenseless.
Tuesday made sure that he had a good connection to the deck and that he had a
good grip on the line incase he had to manually unplug himself in the event
of... Seeing that the deck had several com ports, Tuesday hooked up a camera
to one of the ports. Aiming the camera at the Japanese screen covering
Aphrodite's bathing body, Tuesday gave himself a third eye. He loaded the
controller prog for the camera into the ample chip sockets.
He took a deep breath, made himself comfortable on the chair, and plugged
himself to the deck.
A microsecond flash of disorientation, then Loki was suspended before a
glittering matrix of information. He was above the humble generic gray box
representing his own deck. Obviously the previous owner believed in obscurity
as much as Loki did, because the deck's icon was preset. Loki's icon however,
was much flashier. Looking at a mirror image generated by a nearby code
wall, Loki saw that he was a grinning, drooling Jack the Ripper. He didn't
know of anyone outside of historical simstim stars that looked that way, but
it did not suit Loki. He would recreate the black figure he had had previously
on his old deck.
Loki realized that he had not had to log in. That was bad, because it meant
that the old Access # from the previous user was still loaded into the deck's
autoexec file, and it still worked. Quickly Loki pulled up the autoexec menu.
He traced his virtual hand down until he had ahold of the old Access #. He
deleted it and replaced it with his own. There was a brief moment of vertigo,
then stability returned. Loki was logged on with his own code. Hopefully no
one would ever notice a millisecond charge on the other code. Or maybe they
would attribute it to a glitch or some wannabe hacker. Fat chance.
Well, no point moaning about what had just been corrected. Loki quickly
triggered the camera prog. A 30cm square window appeared of to his right,
displaying a real-time image of his apartment and the Japanese screen.
Aphrodite was still in there.
Quickly Loki dropped down to his own system. He met the code gate, but it had
an auto-detect recognition feature (which he had always wanted) and it let him
in without requiring the code. Once inside, he was faced with a wall of
microCPU's. micronets had none of the elaborate visual-spacial algorithms of
the real net. They were just lists of microCPUs and functions.
Time to scan. With a quick look at the camera window, he started in. He found
the cellular modem microCPU first, so he stopped it. Now he wouldn't be zapped
to the nearest radio phone when he logged on without a physical line. He would
wait until he could handle the deck before playing with that feature.
Second came the memory mCPUs. It took 4 of the mothers to run the 20 Zetatech
chips. That was 2 more than he was running with before. BIG increase in speed.
After that came numerous mCPUs that controlled the com ports and the 'face
ports. Not much exciting there. Loki discovered that he had level 8 code walls
around the deck, making it twice as resistant to those Jackhammer progs.
Woulda made a difference in the fight against the Balrog. He also found out
that the deck had hardened circuitry (he found the EMP dump) and was equipped
with a Flip-Switch (SOOOO cool. That camera prog was now obsolete). He also
found some hardwired progs controlled by 2 mCPUs. Those must be the progs
responsible for the cellular leap. Loki couldn't wait to load the deck with
his own progs and go for a joy-ride. This deck absolutely TOASTED his old one.
He would have to talk Julian into letting him buy it off of him.
Loki was so enraptured in examining his new deck that he forgot to check the
camera window. His eye caught some motion from the window. Aphrodite was
shaking him. He could see her legs and lower body kneeling in front of him
from the camera's perspective. She was wrapped in one of his towels, and from
the low position of the camera, he had a nice view of upper thigh.
Loki didn't spend time ogling however. He instantly logged out, and returned
to reality.
"Oh God, wake up!! What the hell is wrong with you! Wake up Tuesday!"
Aphrodite's voice was filled with concern, but it was still dominated by the
erotic subtones.
Tuesday rose to wakefulness. He fended off Aphrodite's shakes with an arm
while he unplugged himself from the deck with the other.
"Chill out woman!" Tuesday snapped. It annoyed him to no end when compu-phobes
thought that a "spaced-out" netrunner was dead or unconscious. You'd think
that in 2035 everyone would be able to recognize someone in the net. "I'm OK,
I was just doing a little netrunning. What's your problem?!"
Aphrodite got a real hurt look on her face. The problem was it made her look
cute as hell, definitely not the effect she intended. Tuesday began to feel
bad. It was hard to take a girl seriously when everything she did was a turn-
on. "Damnit, I thought you went into shock or something. All I could see was
that egg thing plugged into your head and you sitting there like a vegetable.
You should put a sign on; "Out to Lunch" or something. You scared me to
death!"
Tuesday smiled. "Really scared you huh? Sorry, but I got a little carried away
and didn't notice you getting out of the shower. Feel better?" She nodded.
"Good, then I'm going to get a shower myself. Did you leave any water?"
Tuesday began to realize that he had a semi-nude female, trained in all the
arts of pleasing a human could ever know, sitting at his feet. Lounging at his
feet would be a better description, because Aphrodite had not stopped exuding
that undeniable aura of sex. There was an uncomfortable moment of silence as
Aphrodite realized the same thing. Then she flowed to her feet and walked a
little ways off, making room for Tuesday to stand. He did so. They were both
very aware that Aphrodite had only a towel to wear, the robe being even more
revealing, and dirty as well.
"Uh, there's my dresser in the corner. You should be able to fit in anything
of mine. Find something you like. I'll be done soon." He retreated behind the
screen. Jesus, he thought, what do you do with a woman who is literally -
wired- for sex. Take a cold shower, he responded.
Not even bothering to warm the filtered rain water, Tuesday removed his
clothes and scrubbed down with antiseptic foam. "Do you have a real name,
Aphrodite? It's gonna be real awkward to keep calling you that. It brings to
mind a rather demeaning image, so to speak." Tuesday let loose a small gasp as
the cold water did its trick.
"Sure, you can call me Venus." Tuesday gave a sarcastic laugh. "No, for real,
call me Liz. That was my name before..." She let the sentence trail off.
"Before what?" Tuesday asked, stupidly.
"Before the thing happened, and I became this way."
"Oh." He let that one slide. No need to push it on the first night. He
finished washing off the foam, which cleaned him better than any soap, and
stopped the water. He stepped out from under the hanging tank and towelled dry
with his last cloth. He slipped on a pair of boxers lying behind the toilet.
They weren't too dirty. Toilets were disconnected 15 years ago. Everyone used
organic solvents, Porta-John style, nowadays. "You can get the bed. I'll hit
the couch. I gotta get up a 4 tomorrow morning and do some errands. You're
welcome to sleep in late if you want." Oh please, oh please, he thought to
himself.
He stepped out from behind the screen. Aphrodite, or Liz, was standing near
the bed. She had not availed herself of Tuesday's clothes. She had also lost
the towel. Tuesday's jaw threatened to scrape concrete.
"Come on hero," she purred, taking him by the wrists, "I've seen what you can
do, so let me show you what I can do." She pulled him to the bed.
Tuesday's last coherent thought was of extreme joy.
--
Ok, so it's not Penthouse Letters or anything, and I'm sure the warning
made a lot more people read this than normal, but I don't care. I DO wan
tto say however that this storyline will NOT degenerate into a playbeing
cyberporn story. It's just that I got a little carried away with
experimenting with writing style and all, you understand. So if I pissed
anybody off or whatever, the rest will be more convential sf stuff. BTW,
I'm hot on the trail of the RTG people, so thanks for the info. Also, so
I don't forget, Tuesday Mourning is copyrighted 1994 by Jason
Kendelhardt, except where RTG got there first. Later
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Kendelhardt Violence is Golden
jason@char.vnet.net and I have the Midas Touch
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jason@vnet.net (Jason Kendelhardt)
Subject: STORY: Tuesday Mourning 5
Date: 13 Aug 1994 03:30:53 GMT
Tuesday Mourning 5
Tuesday has discovered the pleasures of having a playbeing
as well as the custom options in his new deck.
Tuesday woke as his small clock began beeping. With the usual clumsiness of
the freshly aroused, Tuesday hit the clock, stopping it for 10 minutes. He
climbed out of bed, then turned off the clock permantely. After stretching,
Tuesday padded over to his crude kitchenette and poured a cup of 3 day old
coffee. It wasn't real coffee, he knew, but it was spiked with caffine and did
the job. 0400 was not a time for man nor beast, he thought gloomily.
Then he heard the soft sounds of breathing coming from his bed. He glanced
over and saw, in the faint light cast by the phosphorescent nite-lite, a
goddess sleeping in his bed. Damn, it wasn't a dream! It all came back to him,
how he had, at least in his mind, rescued the girl and brought her back to his
apartment. Then he sniffed the air and remembered the rest. He smiled, life
was pretty good to him at this moment.
He finished the rest of the coffee and returned the mug to the cabinet, after
cleaning it with an absorbo-towel. Tuesday couldn't afford to wash his dishes,
so he made do with gel sanitizer and towels. He stretched again. Normally it
would be time for morning calistenics, but there was too much to do today.
Tuesday slipped into a full body jumpsuit, one with lots of pockets and a
little baggy. Over that he put on his ratty jacket. He would have ditched it
long ago, but it still had armor weave in the back, so he kept it. He pulled
on his rubber-sole boots and tightened the velro straps.
He quickly checked the weather report by hitting the mute button on the
remote. The TV instantly came on, and Tuesday switched to the weather station.
Cloudy, 45.34% chance of rain. Funny how they could get so accurate with the %
chance of rain but still couldn't give you a simple YES or NO. But it wa
cloudy, so no need for the headgear. Tuesday ascribed to the UV phobia
sweeping the city, and never went out into the daylight without headgear or
sunblock 60. Of course he had no problem going out into the acid rain likely
to fall today, but that is the nature of paranoia.
He filled his pockets with all his program chips, as well as the 2 from the
mystery deck. Then he slipped the magazine from the submachine gun into a
thigh pocket. It took him a second to find the magazine release, because thats
one part of the gun they never show on the simstims. He figured that he had to
get ammo so he could learn to shoot the thing.
The last part of his equipment for venturing into the city was the deck
itself. Tuesday draped the egg-shaped deck in a towel, then put it back into
the dufflebag. The bag had big holes and looked likely to fall apart. He would
have to get a new one if he planned on lugging around such a large deck.
Realizing that he would have to tell Liz where he was, Tuesday decided to
leave a note. He looked around for something to write on, but couldn't find
anything resembling paper or denim-sheet. Oh well, he thought, and grabbed a
grease pencil and wrote a short explanitory note on the table itself. His
writing was slow, and barely legible, but then, who needed to write when they
could netrun?
A set of shades completed the wardrobe, and Tuesday was off. He checked the
security cam covering the allyway outside his door. No one. He cracked the
door open, and did a visual recon. Still no one. Good. Tuesday came out and
shut the door behind him. Now no one could get to Liz unless they had the code
to open the door. Tuesday would die before giving that up.
As it was still pitch black, the shades were unnecessary as yet. The main
streets a block away were almost empty, even bums and criminals had to sleep
sometime. Tuesday padded out to the street. He wanted to get a look at
Skunky's place, or what was left of it. He jogged over to the whorehouse.
It was totally destroyed. Whatever Stag had done while inside was
catastrophic. The explosion had gutted the place. The front wall was lying in
the street with a single lane plowed through it for traffic. It would take a
month for all the rubble to be carried off by vagrants for their homes.
The rest of the building wasn't much better. The buildings at this end of town
were only 4 or 5 stories tall, so the amount of wreckage was not that bad. The
storefronts across the street were ruined however, because scrapnel and
debries had riddled the buildings with holes. It was amazing that a fire
didn't break out. After surveying the destruction, Tuesday was awed to think
that he had BEEN there, right in front, when the building blew up. He was
lucky that he wasn't dead, but then, Tuesday was always lucky.
After checking the scene for a few minutes. Tuesday resumed his course. He
jogged over to the monorail terminal. He had to head downtown for his 9-5.
Bummer his job had to start so damn early in the morning. But it paid most of
the bills.
With his dwindeling supply of cred, Tuesday paid for his ticket. The terminal
was still active, a new set of pimps, whores, and fences having replaced the
previous set. Tuesday thought about solving his ammo problem here, but didn't
think he had the cred available. Today was payday though, so he could hit them
on the way back.
Once on the train, the aura of crime and decadence from his neighborhood began
to fade. Working class people; laborers, early dataterm punchers like himself,
and machinists filled the trains. Tuesday almost longed to be one of these
people, simple and without worry of being killed on the net. But then he
realized that these people had problems of their own; family, health, and
putting kibble on the table. They didn't have a way out, they couldn't score a
big one and get out of the slums. Tuesday's life was dangerous, and one day it
would catch up with him, but at least it gave him hope for something better.
The arrival at his stop shook him out of his inner musings. Grabbing the
duffle, he walked out. He was near the repair shop that fixed his board (and
saved his life with their conveinient billing) so he decided to get that
first. He jogged over to the shop. Naturally it was closed, but since his
board was fixed, it would be available. He closed on the door to the shop,
until the security system realized he was there.
"Halt. This is a building protected by Arasaka Viper 12. Do not approach.
There are several options for you to choose should you wish to do business
with Thompson Schwinn Repair. They are...." The machine spoke out of a speaker
set above the door. It had the generic voice modulator that made it sound
cold, alien, and mean. Arasaka liked to give that impression with their
security systems. Mainly becuase they could back it up. The voice rattled off
several options, from leaving a vioce mail message to calling the police,
provided you had paid for a police protection code.
Tuesday called out "5", which was the option to make a pickup.
"Place your identification card and repair recipt on the scanner. Then step
back." Tuesday held his cred card and the recipt chip (just a wafer of plastic
with a laser code on it) against the flat black scanner screen. After a second
he stepped back. He glanced up and down the street, making sure no one had any
ideas about stealing his board when it was delivered.
The store thought for a second, matching his recipt and id card with his
board. Then it retrieved the skateboard from a holding bin inside the store
and pushed it out of a swing door next to the real door. Tuesday picked it up.
Looked ok. "Thanks John," he called out. Maybe the store would relay the
compliment to the repairman who fixed his board, but Tuesday doubted it.
Arasaka wasn't that nice.
Tuesday dropped the skateboard onto the sidewalk. It looked much like
skateboards have for the past 50 years, but it handled very differently.
Tuesday got on. He rocked back and forth, testing the suspension. He had taken
a bad fall a week ago, and it had twisted one of the wheel trains off balance.
Tuesday started tacking the board to build up momentum. Now that he had wheels
again, he could stop all that jogging. As the board gained speed, the wheels
began acting like small tubines, powering the board. Speed increased as the
board added its own power to Tuesday's efforts. It would take an hour of
riding like this to power the batteries to full, allowing total motorization
of the board for 15 minutes. Otherwise he could cruise on semi-power
indefinetely.
No going much faste than he could ever run, Tuesday reached his work 5 minutes
later. He skidded to a stop on the newly replaced skidpad in front of a
looming skyscraper. Unlike where he lived, downtown was all modern. Nothing
grew here under 50 storys. Traffic was thicker here, all heavy trucks racing
to beat the daylight ban on trucking. More peopl littered the streets, night
shift personel getting off work. Tuesday kicked up the board into his hand and
walked into his 9-5 jailcell.
Tuesday worked for DCInfo, an information shelter. It was by working for the
largest data haven in the city that Tuesday got his nose for info-theft. He
stole from almost every business in city (with the exception of the BIG
corps), but he had 1 rule, NEVER steal from DCInfo. After watching what the
corp netrunners did to the few people caught trying to infiltrate the
construct, Tuesday got a healthy respect for black ICE. He also knew thatit
was pointless to try stealing from DCInfo. Whenever someone wanted to download
data to them, it was stored on an individual MU chip, then removed from the
system. That way only people with the proper codes could retrive the data,
because it had to be manually loaded into the machines. That gave any
potential hackers another obstacle to cross. Tuesday was one of those data
handlers, so he knew how hard it was to fool one into loading data without the
proper code. DCInfo stored info until people came to remove it. Rarely did
anyone personally log in to peruse files, it was all done with secure satelite
transmissions and hardwire. Very secure, and for the data handlers, very
boring.
Tuesday was an amature 'runner when he got emploued here, and it was by
talking with the other data handlers, almost exclusively other 'runners, that
he got access to illegal programs and info on potential targets. In a few
weeks he would contribute his knowlege of the Holy Trinity of Love to the pool
of construct maps and defenses, once the immediate heat died down. Construct
maps changed about as often as building layouts, almost never. And defenses
always slacked off after a few weeks.
He walked into the lobby, where he was greeted with no cheer by the cold
security team. Those guys (and 3 gals) never smiled and never took off their
guns. They swept him with a hand sensor. It targeted his clip of ammunition
immediately.
Tuesday picked himself up off the floor a minute later, once the overzealous
security guards realized that he had a magazine of bullets, not a gun. They
had foot swept him and pinned him to the ground as soon as the sensor went
off. "You know that ammunition is not permitted here. We have to confiscate
this until you leave. You may now enter the building." Tuesday had forgotten
that a clip of ammo was as bad as a gun here. It had never occured to him that
the ammo would be considered dangerous.
"Gee, thanks guys. Mighta killed off the whole floor if you hadn't taken that.
You did a good thing." Tuesday was a little pissed. He never engjoyed getting
pushed around. That's what the gun is for, he thought, to stop shit like that.
He went on into the elevator.
30 floors up housed the data transferance offices. 100 people spent 8 hour
shifts moving data crystals back and forth between the storage computer and
the mainframe. Since it was only 0500, Tuesday got to handle most of the
European transactions, with the time shifts, they were the only ones awake
enmasse. He got off the elevator into another security lobby. This time he had
to remove all his clothing, as well as his possesions. He was thouroly scanned
by the security personel. Everyone tried to time this part of the inprocessing
to coincide with the usual arrival times of the female data handlers, but
DCInfo got a lot of complaints so they set up a female inprocessing room and
hired some additional female guards to oversee it. One of the astronomically
few cases of corp responsibility and care ever seen today.
Tuesday locked his stuff into a storage bin, adn donned the paper clothes set
out for employees. It was all designed so no one could ever sneak anything in
or out. A couple guys with bodycomps tried to smuggle data out once, using
storage memory built into their heads, but the guards found them and tossed
the offenders out the 30th floor. Very effective deterence.
Now that he was done with the security sweeps, he could get to work. Beyond
the security lobby were the storage computers. Mixed between them were the
mainframe computers used to transmit data. Everything was in long rows of
alternating computers, so the humans sat between both computers and moved data
when the machines said so. Tuesday always though robots could do it better,
especially if they were not conected to any central processor, but the corp
feared tampering attempts to the machines. So he was stuck spending a third of
his day shuffling data needles back and forth.
3 other workers were in the row with him. They started discussing the merits
of a totally computer run world, where the humans were put in stasis and ran
everything over the net. the coversation got quite interesting, and before
Tuesday knew it, it was 1300 and quittin time. Tuesday had learned of a new
prog dealer, heard the lastest raves of the EBM CyberCrush porn prog, and
picked up hints of a merger between Militech and Crossman securities. The
latter could provide rich data plundering if he could dig up memos stating the
merger and sell them to the competition. A fruitful day.
Tuesday changed back into his normal dreds and grabbed his stuff. He made a
stop on the 5th floor to check his e-mail. He had only one message, but it was
his paycheck stub. He typed into the antiquated keyboard interface of the corp
computers to pull up his mail. According to the computer, he had earned 200 eb
in the past 2 weeks. NorCal taxes ate 20%, so that left him with 160. Not too
bad, Tuesday had watched a documentary about how the early 2000's taxes were
almost 40%. Tuesday now had a meager 160 eb in his account. He had to swipe
some more info fast if he wanted to get some more progs. He made a point to
get his ammo clip on the way out.
After leaving the biulding (it was sunny, so the shades went on), Tuesday
headed over to a DataTerm building. He was one of the only netrunners who
prefered to use public lines for running, mainly because you had to pay, and
that meant that you could be traced. But Tuesday didn't have much choice and
wasn't good at splicing into another's line and he didn't want to play with
the cellular modem yet.
He stuck his freshly revitalized cred chip into the plug of the closest
DataTerm. The building had 10 of them, and 6 were already being used by
various people. Then he pluged in the deck. He pulled out some of his progs he
brought from home. He put in 9 of his chips and the 2 progs he found in the
deck. Taking a comfortable seat on the floor, he plugged in his head.
Zap. Loki made the switch effortlessly. With the increased hardware of the new
deck, Logging In was much easier. Loki was at the DataTerm nexus. 10
constructs, each looking like a ATM machine, represented the machines. Glowing
red lines of information stretched out into space, where looming corp
constructs dominated the field. A piercing blue line shot up into the black
sky, bypassing the virtual moons. A satelite uplink was close. Loki was
tempted to go and check out some other city, just joyride a while, but he had
business to attend to.
He floated off the DataTerm construct and took a line down to the flat surface
of the city. He swung by a map icon floating off the line. Without a map prog,
Loki didn't know the city well enough to be able to pick out every construct.
He looked up where he wanted to go on the map. The police database was a black
square on the map. This was not going to be an easy crack.
loki looked down, checking out his icon. Still the Jack-the-ripper. Loki spent
several seconds editing the icon back to the night black figure he had before.
Then he decided to see just what those mysterious programs were. he called out
the first one. A slutty woman, dressed like a Victorian England whore, except
for her chrome wings, appeared before him. [Yessss, Masterrr?] she hissed.
Loki just stared. A Succubus. Almost as powerful as the Balrog that fried his
old deck, the Succubus handled other programs, freeing the 'runner to do other
things.
[What programs do you have?] Loki asked. Hopefully that second prog was one of
her slave progs.
The whore leaned forward, and whispered into his ear, [I've got a Killer VI,
Master]. Shit, that was the most powerful anti-IC prog on the market. With
this Demon at his hands, he could take on almost any other prog and win. Very
Cool.
Loki began to think that the previous owner had a serious England fetish. No
time to correct the icons to a more modern look. He de-rezzd the Demon, and
headed towards the police database. Loki wanted to get the scoop on his
resident playbeing. Local pimps didn't have control of sex slaves. Liz had to
have been made by someone, and Loki intended to find out who.
--
Ok, next part will be netrunning galore. I promise. Later
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Kendelhardt Violence is Golden
jason@char.vnet.net and I have the Midas Touch
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: kendejd9@wfu.edu (kendelhardt jason david)
Subject: STORY: Tuesday Mourning 7
Date: 5 Sep 1994 20:42:31 GMT
Hah, I'm back!! Here's part 7. Note the new address at the bottom. Fell
free to buzz about past episodes or whatever.
Copyright 1994 by Jason Kendelhardt, except where RTG got there first.
Tuesday Mourning 7
Tuesday has decided to infiltrate the Imagery corp
to discover the origins of the Playbeing Aphrodite.
Loki left the BBS. Sure that he had finally given any pursuing NetWatch cops
the slip, he didn't bother putting up the Cloak. Imagery corp offices were all
on the West Coast, so it wouldn't be necessary to dash all over the planet
looking for one. He merged with the commercial datastream flowing around the
BBS and headed out towards the nearest LDL.
Tagging along was the Bloodhound. It easily tracked the now visible netrunner,
sending location reports to its controller.
Imagery's main office was in San Francisco, to the north of here. Loki would
have to take a Long Distance Link to get there. LDL's were pay stations,
similar to a conventional long-distance telecom call. With the right progs
however, an enterprising 'runner could bypass the toll and use the line for
free. NetWatch waited for just that sort of thing. With the recent raid on the
police database, they were on full alert in case the thief tried to smuggle
the data out of the city. All the LDLs were heavily monitered.
Loki watched as several would-be freeloaders were snagged by NW. The security
in the city jumped up from its normally low level to rival Cairo. Loki wasn't
going to get by that LDL without paying. He needed an unobstrusive way to get
to San Fran.
The satellite connection linking VideoTeleVision to its orbital relay provided
the pathway he needed. Loki easily cut through VTV's low security and rode the
satellite link up into space. He was travelling with a continuous flow of HD
TV information, there was enough extra bandwidth to accomodate him. Once at
the orbital satellite, Loki jumped on a downlink to San Francisco. He ended up
in a local bar's TV. He slipped out of the data flow and bounced out to a
nearby local cable line also connected to the TV. From there he switched over
to a dedicated Net line at a cable junction box. His connection to the
DataTerm back home was -very- tenuous, since most of it was over sidelines,
but it would be a bitch to trace from SF.
The Bloodhound followed the satellite jump, but got distracted by all the
vivid TV streams and ended up tracing a Bugs Bunny interactive prog down to
Paris. Loki was free for now.
San Francisco. The Net depicted it as it might have been back in the 1800's.
The local branch of Ihara-Grubb had a big antiquity fetish, so the city was
paved with cobblestones and had gas lamps. Loki's ebony figure icon, so cool
and unobtrusive amidst the flashy icons back home, stood out like mini-nuke.
All the local icons were flavored according to the city's surroundings.
Visting icons were easily distinguishable.
[Oh well], Loki thought,[No point in trying to fit in here. I'll just get what
I want and get out.] He had Imagery's local address, so he scanned around for
a map to tell him where the place was. After several seconds of looking, Loki
was frustrated and lost. With the 1800's look here, no buildings were more
than a few storys tall, so there were no huge identifying constructs like in
Loki's city. The streets all looked the same.
[Hey, you.] Loki asked a passing icon. [Where is Hill Street?] The icon, made
to resemble a daffy young man sporting a pipe and spectacles, looked at him.
[Hmm. Not from around here are you? Some advice. Change your icon and you'll
get a lot more respect from the people here. NetWatch and USPG tend to pick on
the outsiders. As for Hill Street, hang a right at the big clock tower, then a
left at the trolley station.] The icon blew some virtual smoke in Loki's face,
then moved on.
Loki looked around and spotted the clock tower down the street. He moved
towards it. A pair of beat cops, packing billy clubs, gave him the hard once
over when he passed. The scrutiny convinced Loki that perhaps he -should-
alter his icon. A quick editing of his icon file and he looked much like the
icon programmed into the deck when he first got it. The grinning Ripper Jack
morphed from the black icon. When in Rome...
He followed the directions and reached Hill Street. He reminded himself to get
a map prog and hardwire it into the deck. It was getting annoying to have to
ask for directions or look at maps whenever he had to go somewhere.
Once on Hill Street, he scanned the quaint hand-painted (well, virtual hand
painting anyway) signs until he found the Imagery store. Loki searched for a
modem icon or any other recognizable indicators of what might be inside. Since
he had no idea what the antiquated icons for high-tech items would be, Loki
had to use the Hidden Virtue window to translate the custom icons into
something he could recognize as a useful prog. Looking into the sectioned
glass window of the place, the HV window revealed an old telegraph machine to
be a modem, various brickabrack to be advanced computers, and a registering
machine to be the AI minding the construct. Hard to believe that in the real
world San Francisco was a 2035 city, not a Disney World Showcase reproduction
of colonial American life.
Several square-jawed toughs approached Loki. [Back off, the place is closed.]
The corp netrunners seemed to enjoy being the baddest boys on the block. Loki
had to resist the temptation to whip out the Succubus and fry the 'runners,
but it would be uncool to tip off the corp before Loki could ransack it.
[Sure pal, just looking.] Loki raised his hands and backed away. The toughs
seemed satisfied. Good thing not every corp shoots first-interrogates later
like the megacorps. Crossing the street, Loki headed back towards the trolley
station.
The trolley was a unique fixture of San Fran. It served no real purpose, since
moving in the Net wasn't tiring, but it was an interesting way to move around
cyberspace. A track ran right down the road, past the Imagery construct.
At the station, Loki had a brief attack of nausea. His connection back to the
DataTerm flickered for a microsecond. Somewhere along the link was some
instability. It passed, leaving Loki unaffected.
The trolleys ran all over the city, carrying 'runners. It moved about the same
speed you could run in the net. Loki waited several seconds until one went by
heading down the street towards Imagery. He hopped on. About a dozen other
icons were onboard, including several Demon progs, obviously quite advanced to
be able to choose a method of transportation. Loki pushed through until he was
deep into the masses, not visible from the outside.
He was waiting for the trolley to pull up alongside the Imagrey store when a
fellow netrunner tugged at his elbow. [Hey,Der Raub, what you doing here? I
heard you got smoked running some contraband. You coming from Europe?] Loki's
Jack the Ripper icon looked over, a sneer on his face. A small rat-faced man
was looking at him, dressed in shody clothes and toting a wooden cane.
[What the hell are you talking about?] Loki asked, confused about what the
'runner wanted.
[Shit, you don't recognize me? I sure do remember you, Jacky boy. We made
those runs on Worchester Polytechnic and Sony together. It was last year.] The
small man was persistent.
[Oh yeah, now I remember. What was your handle back then?] Loki stalled for
time. Der Raub. Was that -his- handle, or at least the nickname for whoever
had this deck previously?
[Bullshit, man. You ain't Der Raub. When he finds you lookin like him, man, he
gonna fuck you up!] The character began pushing his way towards the door.
[Wait!] Loki called out. He ignored the wondering looks of the neighboring
icons and tried to follow the 'runner. He had no such luck, since the icon de-
rezzed as soon as it cleared the trolley. [Shit!] Then he noticed the Imagery
corp coming up. No time to waste. As the trolley passed the corp (and the
small cluster of bullys hanging out in front), Loki dropped into his Micronet
and reactivated the modem jump prog. As the mCPU powered up, Loki prayed that
the Imagery modem was the closest one.
Zap. He was inside the construct. His connection left the trolley and
stretched to the modem link, bypassing the codegates and the guardian
'runners. Hot Damn, this Der Raub guy had an awesome deck! Loki looked around.
No attacking progs yet. He called up the Succubus. The chrome winged whore
rezzed on the table top. She smiled lewdly at him. Loki considered questioning
the prog, but didn't think it would pan out. [Stand watch.] he commanded. The
prog nodded and started gliding around the room, using his Seeya prog to
search for hidden icons. Good thing the modem was high speed, otherwise the
use of all the programs would strain the connections and slow him down. So far
however, the satellite link and the modem were able to handle the extra code.
Loki headed over towards the computer AI posing as a cash register. He doubted
this would be as easy as hacking into the police database, but it was worth a
shot. The register had a primitive sort of adding machine apparatus attached
to a daisy wheel style printer. Loki tenatively touched a key. He discovered
that he had to really mash the key for it to punch. A far cry from modern
touchpad keyboards.
As soon as he hit the key, the antique guise vanished, revealing an ultra-
modern construct more in line with the I-G alogorithms Loki was used to. A
plastiglass screen formed infront of him with the prompt:
codekey:>
Loki looked around. No Demons or ICE yet. He decided to try the direct
approach. The Codecracker pounded away for several seconds before Loki gave up
in disgust. This was a newer codegate, one able to foil conventional code
busters. He doubted that there were any commercially available progs that
could cut through this lock, and any advanced Codecrackers were going to be
-way- out of his price range.
Leaving the screen with its unanswered question, Loki looked around for
another way to access the files. He saw many fileboxes, but they were all
behind a protective screen of dense code. No way to get in there without
dropping the screen. Maybe he could go -around- the screen.
Beneath him was the nebulous netspace floor. No one knew what it was made of
or how to dig into it. The same material formed the roof of the construct. The
I-G algorithms prevented any real vertical movement, so floors and ceilings
were usually considered impregnable. No way to dig under or above the screen.
He could always leave the construct and try to cut in behind it, but the
watchdog 'runners were outside to prevent just that sort of thing. He doubted
he could replicate the diversion that sucked all the Netwatch icons away from
the police database.
Hmmm, how to break the codekey. Usually this is where a little physical
investigation comes in, trying to find out the code by going through trash,
raiding personal files, or sleeping with secretaries (ok, so the last was
wishful fantasy). Loki would have to find the code by a different means.
He was getting ready to leave when the Succubus suddenly sprang to life. She
had been drifting lazily by the window when she dashed for the door to the
construct. She pulled out her Killer VI dagger. The code gate opened and one
of the toughs strolled in. He had enought time to realize that the inside of
the construct was no longer old American before the Succubus was on him. She
drew up Loki's Stun prog and smashed it into the startled 'runner. He froze,
trapped in space. The codegate remained open behind the 'runner. Loki dashed
out.
2 more guards were outside, chatting with several young-looking female icons.
[Setting up dates for when they go offline,] Loki thought. One of the go-girls
saw Loki leave, then she screamed as the demonic Succubus filled the doorway.
The 2 guards spun around. Loki struck one with his personal Killer II prog and
stripped him of his hastily summoned Firestarter. The Succubus swarmed the
other, pummeling him with another Stun. This 'runner was faster however, and
he had his Force Shield up and ready.
The 3 girls ran away, screaming for NetWatch. Other icons started scattering
as well, no one wanted to be caught by an errant Brainwipe or Hellbolt. The
first thug was rezzing in his Demon, an Afreet II. The other was still fending
off the Succubus. Loki tossed up a Flack wall to cover his escape. He dropped
the modem connection right after sending out a Replicator prog to prevent
tracking. The Succubus de-rezzed once she got through the Force Shield and got
the 'runner fighting a Stun. With him occupied and the Afreet II using its
Killer IV to hack through the Flack, Loki had a good chance to escape. As
millions of Loki look-a-likes spun off in every direction, Loki headed back
towards the bar he had come in on.
The 2 toughs, joined by their third companion, freed from the Stun,
immediaetly collapsed in on the construct and aggresively searched it for
virus' or other progs. It came up clean. The group ran an image of the
attacker through their security database. It came up as an obscure (at least
in North America) eurorunner named DER RAUB. A memorandum about the failed
penetration went up the chain of command, until it came up on a certain
vidscreen of a certain executive. "So Der Raub, you are back from the dead.
How interesting." Orders were sent out.
Elsewhere, Loki reached the cable junction box where he had originionally came
in on. With NetWatch still patrolling the LDLs at his city, going back the
same way he came in seemed to be a good idea.
Seconds later he was back home. After dropping from the satellite, Loki had no
more need to hide his tracks. He punched out, returning to realspace.
The Bloodhound, after realizing its mistake, had waited around the satellite
downlink. It had unwaveringly reported all that had happened to its master,
who was undoubtedly displeased. When Loki appeared out of the stream,
different icon and all, the Bloodhound was ready. When Loki logged out the
Bloodhound began to trace the fleeing code back to its source. It could follow
the disintegrating link only so far, and it failed to reach Loki's position.
It had his ID code however, and it would wait for him to return.
********
Well, got set up at school and managed to squeeze this out this
afternoon. Due to my classes, expect to see alot of physics,
biochemistry, organic chem, and maybe some brit lit or military
operations stuff in the future. Hope to keep up about a once a week
pace. Can't wait to see what has been brewing over the summer with the
regular authors. Can't get chat.d here either, too bad. Later
******************************************************************************
Jason Kendelhardt Violence is Golden
kendejd9@wfu.edu and I have the Midas Touch
******************************************************************************
From: kendejd9@wfu.edu (kendelhardt jason david)
Subject: STORY: Tuesday Mourning 8
Date: 11 Sep 1994 22:56:20 GMT
As you have probably heard, there are 8 parts to TM, I didn't miscount
(but by the response for TM 6, it must have gone right by a.c.c.), at any
rate, here is TM 8. Enjoy.
Copyright 1994 by Jason Kendelhardt, except where RTG got there first.
Tuesday Mourning 8
Tuesday has failed to penetrate Imagery's computers.
He is heading back home to talk with Aphrodite.
Tuesday came out of the net. He opened his eyes, then sqeezed them shut to
close out the dim DataTerm lights. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the glow. He
stood up and stretched his tight muscles. Even a 10 minute run could put a lot
of limbs to sleep and cramp several muscles. Tuesday unhooked the wire from
his head, then the cord connecting the deck to the DataTerm. He coiled the
cables and slipped them into a pocket of his jumpsuit. His credcard was down
11 eb.
The room was over half-full with 'runners, sprawled out on the floor. The
place used to have seats, put they kept getting stolen. Fortunately Tuesday
was next to the door, so he didn't have to worry about stepping on any fingers
or toes. It suddenly occured to him just how vulnerable a 'runner was when
they were tranced. Anyone could come in here and waste us all, he realized. He
made a mental note to find a safer place to hack from, or secure his home line
(at the same time, his last mental note was swept from his mind). After
stopping off at the omni-sex restroom ( a tub of organic solvent and pungent
deoderant), Tuesday was off.
Outside the sun was shining brightly. Cursing himself for not bringing a hat,
Tuesday slipped on his shades. The nearly unfiltered sunlight turned the West
Coast city into a sweltering steambath. The reek of unwashed human flesh and
street waste was strong enough to kill small animals, if any still existed in
the city. Roaches must not be able to smell, cause the stench hadn't killed
them yet. Tuesday was sorta used to it, but after a blissful run in the purity
of the net, the reality of the city was always depressing.
It was just after one o'clock, time for lunch. He knew of an ammo store
nearby, so he hopped on his board and took off down the street. On the way he
bought a kibble burger (artificial nutrient filled foam bread and a protein-
carbohydrate mush burger) and drowned it down with an electrolyte drink. He
ate on the fly, so he had just finished the drink when he reached the gun
shop. Tossing the can into a recycling bin, he went in.
Inside the place was a cool 85 degrees. Weapons lined the walls and filled
standing racks. The store had an everpresent smell of gun oil and Brake-free.
Today it had a rather strong, bitter odor to it that burned in his nostrils.
The worker behind the counter on the side wall was nervously fingering an
autopistol.
"Hey," Tuesday said. "No need for that. I'm here to buy some ammo." He held
out the clip from the submachine gun. Since he had no idea what type of gun he
had, and didn't want to carry around the entire weapon, he had taken the
magazine so he could get the right bullets. When he pulled the thick clip out
of his pocket, the clerk almost shot him right there.
"Hold it, pal!" The clerk held up the pistol, a small green slug thrower. "Who
the hell are you?"
Tuesday had just heard that line the night before. "Shit, man. I don't want
any trouble. You are obviously -way- too uptight today, so I'm gonna just turn
around and leave, ok?" He dropped the skateboard to the floor and put the clip
back into his pocket.
"Damnit, Raze! Shoot his silly ass!" Someone screamed out from the back of the
store. Raze,the clerk, jolted violently. He triggered off a half dozen rounds
at Tuesday. They all missed and tore chunks out of the far wall. Tuesday
ducked, and tried to cover himself with his board. Raze let out a short scream
and continued to fire. 2 shots hit the board, but the metal/ceramic top layer
deflected the small rounds. Tuesday pulled himself behind a heavy rack of
shotguns, covering himself from the counter.
Whoever was in the back started yelling at Raze, calling him a useless fuckup
who couldn't shoot his ass by sitting on a gun. It was then that Tuesday
noticed another smell in the room. The reek of blood. Through the bars of
shotguns, he could see a bloody body lying at the back of the room. Someone
else was crouched over the corpse, packing a mean revolver. Tuesday could see
a wiry man over the body, definitely a razorboy. Tiny cuts, easily visible
under the harsh flourescent lights, covered the punk's cheeks. Probably some
sort of gang initiation. He wore the colors of the Juciers, notorious drug
maniacs. If this guy wanted to kill him, there was nothing he could do to stop
him.
Tuesday looked up at the shotguns. Maybe he could use one of them. They were
locked into the rack. Damn. He heard the slap of feet. Raze had leaped the
counter and was coming after him. The Jucier from the back moved crab-wise
along the rear wall, flanking him. Tuesday picked up his skakeboard, preparing
to bash Raze and make a run for it. Raze slowly circled the gunrack, his
pistol held in trembling hands.
Just as Tuesday was about to make the attack, there was a world shaking BOOM
from outside the store. The entire door blew in, showering the frail netrunner
in twisted plastic fragments. Raze had enough time to look at the door before
a string of shotgun blasts, too fast to have been fired indvidually, tore him
to Silly String ribbons. As gore coated the weapons, Tuesday threw himself
flat and tried to shield his head with the dented board.
2 helmented figures, dressed in blackened full-body rigid armor, dashed into
the room. They ignored the cowering 'runner and went straight for the punk in
the back. The Jucier tried to put up a fight, but his slugs couldn't
penetrate, while theirs could. The punk managed to empty his revolver before
he lost cellular cohesion and collasped into a pile of blasted bones and
seared flesh.
The thundering reports from the gunfire left Tuesday deaf. He couldn't hear
anything. In near-shock from his unexpected rescue, the boy had crawled into a
corner, hoping the 2 gunmen wouldn't see him. They did however.
One of the 2 men walked over to the 'runner. He knelt down and examined the
boy for wounds. Seeing none, he quickly ran an ID machine over the boy's
finger. Then he stood and checked the remains of the first ganger. No need for
an ambulance, he decided. He slung the autoshotgun, its 20 round magazine
empty and the barrel scorching hot. Just another day for the police.
After a few minutes Tuesday's hearing returned to a normal level. He shakily
stood up, clutching his deck and the skateboard to his chest. The 2 cops were
argueing.
"Damnit Jay, why did you have to blow the door? You could have just slipped in
and taken these 2 punks with just 2 shots! There was -NO- fucking need to blow
this place to hell and vaporize the 2 criminals! Jesus H. Christ, you had the
entire store under camera surveilance and you knew -exactly- where the 2 perps
were. -Explain- to me the reason you and Dumbo here decided to expel 35 rounds
of ammunition and one grenade just to grease 2 slime-sucking gangers!?" One of
the cops was just standing still, his helment faceplate closed and his stance
impassive. The other had taken off his helment, revealing a young bald black
man.
"Excuse me sir, but both Ty and myself believed the hostage's life to be in
danger. We were only making sure that nothing would go wrong." The black man
had a look of pure innocence on his face.
"I don't give a flying fuck what your damn excuses are! You blew the damn door
in on your "hostage" and nearly smoked him with your all guns blazing entry!
You don't even know if he has protection! I want to see both of your asses
down here -NOW- once you clean up that damned mess!" There was a soft -click-.
Then the other cop pulled off his helment. This one was an average looking
white guy, but he looked a little familiar.
"Boss is kinda pissed huh, Sarge?" the young guy said. "I hate being the radio
relay for that stuff. His voice is so much louder inside the helment."
"Well, would you rather be on the receiving end? I can handle the boss, don't
worry. We stopped the robbery, and only the clerk got wasted. That should
satisfy the owner of the store. Let him clean up the mess." The black man
pointed around the room, now covered in a light mist of blood. "And don't call
me Sarge. A sarge is a fish. Check out the kid over there." He montioned
towards Tuesday. Then he opened a wrist comp and started typing.
The other cop walked over to Tuesday. "What the hell were you doing in here
kid? Don't you know a robbery when you see one? We were about to storm in here
when you came in."
"I, uh, I just wanted to buy some ammo." Tuesday held out the magazine clip.
After what he just saw, he had no interest in ever learning how to shoot a
gun. But then he envisioned Aphrodite (or Liz, whatever her real name was)
being threatened by Imagery corps and Tuesday gunning them all down, just like
the 2 punks had been killed. He -had- to be able to protect her.
The cop took the clip. "Hmmm, this is a MPK-9 clip. You really got one of
these?" Tuesday nodded yes. "Well, since you helped us surprise the bad guys,
I don't see the owner objecting to a little reward. Do you, Jay?" The black
man grunted something. "Sure kid, come over here." The cop walked over to the
counter. He pulled out a couple of boxes and handed them to Tuesday. They were
small, but real heavy. "That's about 400 rounds. That should get you going.
Here's some clips." He handed over 3 banana shaped clips. "Those hold more
rounds than the one you got. That's only a 20 round magazine."
Tuesday looked down at the assesories under the plastiglass counter. He
noticed a wetware chip advertizing neural gunslinging skills. It was an APTR
chip selling for almost 1000 eb, the most expensive chip in the set. "How
about one of those?" He pointed to the chip.
The cop looked closely at the chip. "For a 1000 eb? You have got to be
kidding. Here, take this one and scram. Don't forget who did this for you!" He
gave Tuesday a 500 eb model. Tuesday took the chip and hauled ass out on his
skateboard. "I got an ID on the kid. We can find him again if we need him."
"See the interface plugs on him?" asked the black cop.
"Yeah, Otagi Cyberfaces. He's obviously a 'runner. We'll look him up if we
ever need a little "job" done. He owes us for saving his butt." The cop
started typing out the report on a wrist comp.
Outside, Tuesday almost ran into the cop's car as he sped out of the store.
The vehicle was a ground hugger, unlike the flashy AV-3s so popular in the
simstims. It was shaped like a station wagon, but it was made of dark gray
armor plate. The wheels were ceramic disks, not inflatable intertubes. The
whole vehicle looked extremely mean and old. The barrel of a huge machine gun
projecting from the front windshield only enhanced the image. A scarred 45 was
etched into the side of the beast. A blood red grafitti 13 was painted over
it. Tuesday would most certainly -not- forget.
People were returning to the streets after the barrage of gunfire. Tuesday
raced away, never looking back. He had the ammo and a chip that would allow
him to learn to shoot in a matter of days. He stank of blood and cordite.
After getting off the monorail at Station 7, Tuesday headed straight home. He
sucessfully resisted the temptation to drop by Julian's and see if his money
was there yet. As he was gliding down the road to home, he began to fantasize
about his homecoming to Liz. She would be cooking, cleaning, sleeping,
reading, anything; but when he came through the door, she would look up with
joy, then run into his arms. They would have passionate sex, then sit down to
a good meal. Tuesday had some SCOP meals hidden somewhere in his freezer, they
would eat those. After that they would go out to some clubs, then back to the
apartment for more sex. It would be great. Then Tuesday could learn to use the
submachine gun (an MBK-5, or something like that), so they could be secure in
the knowledge that Tuesday could protect them from any bad guys. If the info
from the Church raid panned out, and the police file he swiped was juicy, then
he might have enough eb to move out of the slums and get a real job somewhere.
He approached the building he lived under. The alley was an even bigger mess
than usual, the garbage cans were busted up and trash was everywhere.
Tuesday's fantasies kept him from realizing the significance of that. He
opened the switchbox and entered the door code. He opened the armored door to
his apartment.
"I'm home!" he called out, something they always did in the family PC shows.
His apartment was dark. The lack of windows eliminated any light. His glow
lights were out for some reason. He fumbled around for a light switch. He
found it, and the room was immediately illuminated in a soft yellow light from
the 3 glow lamps.
His room was empty. It was exactly the same as when he left it, but there was
no one else here. No Liz. Tuesday checked behind the Japenese screen, but she
wasn't in the bathroom. She was not here. Tuesday's message was still scrawled
on the table, with no additional message. Tuesday began to panic. Maybe she
was caught/she's out for groceries/she got caught/she went clothes
shopping/she has no money/she got caught/she found some here/she left him/she
got caught/she has her own place somewhere/it got blown up/-she got caught-.
It was the only explaination that fit.
Tuesday remembered the security camera he had in the alley. He plugged his
deck into the outlet, then plugged in his head. He reviewed the 24 hr CD
recording. It was erased and rerecorded every day, but today was still there.
He hit fast forward, watching imself leave in the morning and seeing sunlight
invade the alley in a matter of milliseconds. Then, at 11:24.34, 3 men entered
the alley, a woman between them. They all wore overcoats and shades. They
looked up at the sec cam, but ignored it. The woman checked something on a
datapad, then nodded to the 3 men. They scattered out of view of the camera.
The camera could pan up and down the alley, but it was focused on the woman at
the door. She knocked, banging her fist against the unyielding plastic door.
Then a small icon flashed in the lower portion of the screen, meaning someone,
Liz, was checking the camera. She didn't pan the camera around, so she had no
idea that there were other people in the alley. The icon vanished. She was
satisfied in what she saw. On the camera, the door opened, and Liz poked her
beautiful blonde head out. She smiled at the woman, whose face Tuesday
couldn't see, and spoke briefly. Liz began to open the door when the woman
sprayed something in Liz's face. Then the 3 men ran back into the camera's
view, knocking over the garbage cans in their haste to grab Liz and prevent
her from closing the door. They made it. Dragging a stumbling Liz away, the
men and the woman closed the door and left. Liz never even put up a fight. She
hadn't even had the chance. The rest of the tape was 2 hours of nothing, until
Tuesday came home.
He unplugged the deck. His woman was -stolen- from him. Sure Liz wasn't his
property, but he had promised her that she would be safe, and she had been
taken from his -house-! Tuesday began to see red. He was going to find the
people who did this, and they were going to DIE!!
His house was unsafe. They might come back, to catch him. Tuesday looked
around, in case there was anything of value here. He took the submachine gun,
and after a little experimentation, got the magazine loaded. He socketed the
gunchip. A few clothes went into the duffle (very beat up now). The rest of
his program chips, and a few experimental progs he had written himself, also
went into the bag. An old lockback knife went into a pocket, as well as some
food bars and a water tube. He grabbed his favorite hat, a military bush hat.
He left, cutting out the lights.
Back in the alley, Tuesday looked up and down. No one yet. He jumped on the
board and pedaled away. The streets were packed, even under the boiling sun.
He began to wish that he had a solar-powered skateboard, with this sun, he
would never have to use his feet again.
How did they know where we were, he wondered. The woman was obviously someone
she knew, even liked. It seemed as if the woman was invited over, she had
checked the address at his door. What if she -was- invited. What if Liz had
somehow told the woman where to go. She would have had to do it after he had
left for work, she couldn't have done it before. She didn't leave the his
apartment, else it would have been on the camera. That left the net or the
telcom. Liz had interface plugs, so she could have technically used a
cyberdeck to reach the outside world. But Tuesday's old deck was scrapped, and
Liz obviously didn't bring one with her. So unless she had one stashed
-inside- her body, she was cut off from the net. The telcom was a different
matter. If she called someone, the line could have been traced. Wait, he
thought, what if the person she called -was- the woman! That would explain
Liz's reaction to her and why the woman had the address. But why would Liz
call someone who was going to capture her? Maybe the woman was doing it
against her will. A more likely explanation was that the woman worked for
Imagery, and Liz didn't think the woman would snitch on her. So, Tuesday had
to check his phone bill. That was easy enough.
He slowed the board, now almost fully charged and moving mostly by itself. No
time to find a DataTerm. Tuesday wanted to see what the cellular modem
capabilities of his deck were. He stopped outside an office building occupied
by an advertizing agency. They were bound to have cellular phones. He got
under a window. He jacked into the deck and activatd it.
Zap. Loki was inside the ad agency. Using the cellular modem cost him nothing,
he was pirating someone elses internet bill. The entire construct was glass,
with large ad logos representing various computers and project groups. Loki
couldn't care less about the company, so he immediately jumped to an outside
line. He cruised over to a nearby Telecommunications center. There he purused
the directories until he found his.
Loki entered his access PIN number. He quickly scrolled throught the past
month's phone calls. He was about to be billed in a few days, then the logs
would be added up and wiped. He quickly found today's log. There was only one.
He checked the number. It was local (which still cost money). He recorded the
number.
The Phone Directory was his next stop. He entered the #. It came up as an
unlisted number, address restricted. Loki quickly hacked the locking code
until he was into the main system itself. These substations were limited in
total phone access, but were a piece of cake to invade. Inside the computer
itself, Loki spent a few milliseconds running down the endpoint address of the
number Liz had called. It was tricky, since it had gone through several relay
points, but compared to the past few runs he had made, it was a joke.
The address was across the city, in the upper class area. It belonged to a
certain Carrie Sylva. Loki recorded the address. He would pay her a visit
later tonight. By now NetWatch icons had caught on to the fact that there was
an illegal in the phone system. Loki punched out.
Zap. Tuesday stood up. He had just made an untraceable, unrecorded, unpaid for
call. He began to -really- love his deck. He figured NetWatch might be able to
follow the trace back to this advertizing group, so he rolled away. Carrie
Sylva. He would meet her tonight.
--
******************************************************************************
Jason Kendelhardt Violence is Golden
kendejd9@wfu.edu and I have the Midas Touch
******************************************************************************
From: kendejd9@wfu.edu (kendelhardt jason david)
Subject: STORY: Tuesday Mourning 9
Date: 18 Sep 1994 23:09:35 GMT
Copyright 1994 by Jason Kendelhardt, except where RTG got there first.
Tuesday Mourning 9
Tuesday has discovered that one of Liz's friends has betrayed her
to Imagery. He plans revenge.
On the run. Tuesday left the advertizing building in a hurry, in case any
NetWatch cops decided to drop in and nap him. He rode his board out onto the
cracked sidewalk, dodging around ignorant pedestrians and slow witted winos.
With all of his deck's gear, not to mention the deck itself, and the
submachine gun, Tuesday was pretty heavily loaded. He had to find some place
to hole up until nightfall, since he was a prime target for muggers with all
of the bulging pockets and swollen dufflebag. Nearby was the warehouse
district, with its deserted, ruined storage buildings. Only the desperate ever
went there, it had a subculture of its own.
Tuesday rode for about 2 kilometers. He was continuously passed by the blazing
skategangs, with their suped-up powerboards and kinetic-gel body-armor. They
ignored an obvious poser such as himself. Clouds rolled in again, threatening
to cover the city in rain yet another night. The entire trip lasted only 10
minutes, but whole time Tuesday was looking around and checking his 6.
Paranoia clutched his spine like a steel jawed leech.
He reached the warehouses without any problems. The traffic thinned to almost
nill, with no business out here no one was going to risk their wheels to
visit. He skidded around the occasional groping drunkard and avoided the
wandering drug packs all together. He spied a loading ramp off the street and
rode up it. It led into a burnt out loading dock. The placed looked like
target practice for a small army. The back wall of the dock was chipped out
and scorched, and the floor was streaked with carbon burns from muzzle flashes
(all this courtesy of the gunchip he had socketed). There was an open door
leading into one of the warehouses. Tuesday rolled right in.
Inside the place was even worse. The roof was destroyed in some places, an
entire loft was collapsed on the floor, and shadows of fire were everywhere.
But it was uninhabited, desolate, and secure. Just what Tuesday was looking
for.
He stashed the board and the deck in a corner. He removed the gun from the
duffle. He had the clips in his thigh pouches, and the extra boxes of ammo in
a fanny pak. The gunchip gave him directions on how to load the magazines
(although he quickly got the hang of it). He spent 5 minutes loading the
caseless rounds. Then he looked around for something to shoot.
The next 2 hours went by quickly. Following the instructions in the gunchip,
he zeroed the submachine gun, using an old beer can nailed to the wall. Then
he fired off several hundred rounds to adjust himself to the unnatural feel of
the weapon. The gunchip had neurological programs that guided his arms,
synchronizing his eyes and hands. He learned the combat stances, the quick
draw, and rapid reloading. His agile brain, already in tune with the pathways
necessary for neurological programming, absorbed the information like a
thermal dump in the Sahara sucking up heat.
When he was finished, Tuesday could handle the weapon better than half the
gangers in the city (but that's not saying much). He was far from being a
solo, but if he had to, he could use it properly. Ammo was a problem though.
The intensive training used up all but 45 rounds. Tuesday had one full 35
round magazine, and a half empty 20 round clip. If Carrie Sylva put up a fight
tonight, he was going to need more firepower. He had no desire to go up
against Imagery Solos with only one clip of ammo.
Tuesday was tired however, and needed to get sleep. With all the shooting that
had been going on, he wasn't real worried about being bothered by the locals,
they probably didn't even have knives. Cops never came down here, so he was
relatively safe. After munching on a food bar, he drifted off...
It was dark when he awoke. The clouds had already released their liquid
burden, judging from the puddles of water collected under the holes in the
roof. Tuesday checked his watch; 2014. Shit, he thought, 8:14! He had been
asleep for hours! He had to move, because every second Aphrodite was in enemy
hands was another second that she could be hurt or dying.
Grabbing his stuff, he headed down the ramp and back onto the street. There
were still clouds in the sky, so here in the deserted wasteland it was pitch
black. Only the ambient glow of the city allowed him to see. He made a beeline
back to civilization. The submachine gun hung under his right armpit now, in a
crude sling made from some rope he found in the warehouse. He could reach
under his jacket and pull it out in a split second if he had to.
Carrie Sylva lived in the fashionable North side, up past the businesses and
the commercial zones. He wasn't sure about her exact location, but with the
address in hand, 1435AG Zion St., he could find it. Getting there was the
problem. It was way across the entire city. It would take him hours to get
there on foot (or board). The monorails were one solution, but if Imagery had
Aphrodite, then they might be looking for him as well. the monorails were easy
to check. A taxi was out of the question, since they were expensive as hell
and were even easier to check. Hitchhiking was an option, but usually a lethal
one. It wasn't until he saw a family minivan go by, blissful and secure behind
their plastiglas shielding and polymer armor that he had an idea.
***
"Hand's up!!" he screamed, holding the gun in an agressive 2-handed grip.
"Everybody get into the car, NOW!" The utterly surprised family of 3, stunned
that McDonalds had crime in their very parking lot, just stood there. Tuesday
had to prod the woman, a mother of a young child, with the gun barrel just to
get her moving. She grabbed her kid and sat motionless in the passenger seat.
The little girl, about 3, looked at Tuesday with amazement, probably the most
exciting thing she has ever witnessed. The father, a little older than his
wife, maybe 30, was a weak looking sloth of a man. Tuesday had carefully
picked his victims from the miryad of potentials in the McDonalds. They were
suburbies, soft and slow, easy prey to the amaturish intimidation Tuesday was
using. His gun wasn't even loaded. He didn't need to take unnecessary risks.
He jabbed the man into action, driving him into the drivers seat. Tuesday
climbed into the back seat. He had to hurry. The parking lot security was
occupied with a vehicle fire on the other side of the resturant. Tuesday felt
a little guilty about the damage he was causing, but he had to get to the
North side. He told the man to get going, and head North. The man drove like
an old woman, slow and weaving in the lane. No one had said word. Tuesday
reassured them that he was only borrowing their car for a little trip, and if
they didn't do anything stupid (like hit the red -alarm- button on the
dashboard) they would be ok. He gave the man directions, but he already seemed
familiar with the route. He shakenly replied that he lived near there when
Tuesday asked why. Traffic was heavy, and it took them almost a half hour to
get where he wanted to go. Fortunately the family was cooperative and meek,
else Tuesday would have been lost as to what to do. He had totally relied on
the hope that any suburbie family would fold over like denim-paper when
confronted with -real- danger. No folks, this is not an illusion, your HDTV
set is -not- on.
Once back on the road and having said good-bye to the family (the daughter the
only one returning the farewell), Tuesday headed over to the "planned
community" where Carrie Sylva lived. The area up here was much more modern and
spacious than the slums down South. Nearly every building dated less than a
decade ago, while Tuesday's apartment was built last century. Patrols swept
the streets, but he knew how to avoid them. His youth spent as a junkrat had
equiped him with the skills necessary to penetrate the compound.
An armed guard sat in a booth next to the main gate. A 3 meter fence ran
around the 100 odd acres of the Hopeful Homes Living Complex. Almost an
arcology, the spread had malls and hydroponics, offices and recreation gyms.
All it was lacking was a giant dome to enclose it completely. The fence was
undoubtedly monitered, if not electrified. He had to get in past the guard.
There was a fair amount of coming and going from the place, so it apparently
wasn't as self-sufficent as it seemed.
Tuesday plugged himself into his deck. He carefully directed the modem-jump
into Hopeful Homes cellular net. Loki appeared in a transmission building. He
immediately Cloaked, to avoid the equally common Net patrols. The cellular net
looked like a dozen domes covering the constructs, all overlapping. All the
little suburbie houses and their tinker toy computers were covered in at least
one cellular bubble, 2 in some cases. The cellular transmissions eliminated
the need for unsightly cables or bothersome rewiring. It also made every
single construct and icon instantly accessable from anywhere in the net. Since
there were no hard data lines, the constructs seemed to float in the bubbles,
unconnected to anything. It was an odd feeling to be able to move in almost
any direction without having to follow data lines. The Cloak was rather
ineffective, due to the lack of code to mimic. Any security progs would be
able to find him easily. He had to get camoflauged.
Loki dove into a nearby construct. He sliced through the pathetic Data Walls
and ran in. The terminal was in use, playing a new porno-prog. One of the
Playbeing interactives no doubt. He controlled his temptation to screw with
the user and concentrated on hacking into the autoexec.bat file. Every user in
Hopeful Homes had to have an ID code somewhere to keep the security off of
them. Loki needed one of those codes so he could deal with any suspicious
Watchdogs. There was a weak Code Lock on the file. Codecracker went through it
in microseconds. Loki called up the file and scanned the lines. There it was:
C:\HHLCfiles\code1.JansenKm3.exe
rem The above file is your security code. Do not
rem give a copy of it to anyone else. Thank you.
Loki copied the code1.JansenKm.exe file to his autoexec.bat file. Now if any
prog scanned him, it would read the .exe file on his icon and believe he lived
here.
Loki left the house and headed over to the gate. The glowing icons of cars
moving down the streets led him to the gate, which was a surprisingly small
construct. It had only a few camera progs and the gate opening codes. Loki
patched the camera views into his vision. 4 small windows appeared in front of
him. There were 2 views of the gate, a left and right view, a view of the
street (Loki couldn't spot himself in it, he was hidden behind some trees),
and a underbelly shot of entering cars. That was the real danger. He couldn't
slip in with another car if there were security cameras monitering every
angle. Loki followed the camera data lines back to their source. There was a
filter prog that looked for anything suspicious in the camera shots. The
living guard was for the residents, the computers where the ones that handled
security. Loki wrote in a small bit of code into the filter prog, turning it
off at his command.
Loki was about to leave when he saw an approaching Watchdog. Loki stood to the
side as the Dog sniffed his icon. It detected the password file and kept
going. Then it sniffed the security progs. Comparing the lines of code in the
program to it's personal copy revealed some changes. The Dog was about to send
up an alarm when Loki struck it with the Killer VI. The code-eater prog de-
rezzed the Dog instantly. Now Loki was on a time budget. The Dog had to
recompile itself, then it would raise the alarm again. He had to hurry.
Using the Flip-switch, something he had yet to experiment with, Loki was
tossed out of the net. Tuesday looked at the gate. The guard was still sitting
there, playing with her pistol. He had to wait for an incoming car and run
inside with it. The cameras he could deal with, but the guard was something
else. He had to distract her, or she would catch him. Time for another bit of
coding. He hit the Flip-switch.
Loki was back, still in the guard shack. He checked the cameras. A car was
approaching. As lasers scanned it, it showed positive on Hopeful Homes ID
checker. It belonged here. As it slowed down and entered the gate, Loki
attacked the prog monitering the fence. He got it believing that there was an
object trying to climb it. Then he deactiviated the camera filters. He flipped
out.
Tuesday was already running. The guard turned her head from the awaiting car
as the fence began screaming at her. She blindly hit the -open gate- button,
granting entry for the car. As the guard fumbled with the fence controls,
trying to isolate the location of the disturbance, Tuesday did a flying leap
onto his board. He landed on the ground and zipped through the gate. He was
prone on the ground, riding the board in, so neither the car's occupants nor
the guard saw him (not that she was looking). A russle of bushes on the far
side of the gate was the only indicator of Tuesday's penetration. He was in.
Loki re-rezzed quickly and reactivated the cameras, he then erased the code he
had inserted. He let the fence continue to blare its alarm. Tie up more
security. Then he punched out for good.
It took all of a second, so Tuesday was back before he stopped rolling. The
'runner jumped up and started running. He was looking for a way to get onto
the street so he would know where he was going. The houses here were 3 story
towers, with tiny patios and smaller front porches. But they were single
units, giving an air of privacy. The houses were stacked so close together
that Tuesday had to run almost 100 meters before he found an alley wide enough
to get him to the street. He left the narrow strip of synth-grass that
constitiuted a backyard and hit the street. Once on asphalt he rode the board.
There were a few people on the street, neighbors talking, kids playing, so he
didn't stand out too bad. He asked a group of street hockey players how to
find Zion street. They pointed him off on a convoluted road. He had to ask for
directions twice more before he found it. Then it was simply a matter of
following the numbers. It took him almost 30 minutes to find the address. He
hoped he remembered the way out.
1435AG Zion Street was one of many identical houses. Some of the upstairs
lights were on, so Carrie Sylva was home. Tuesday hid in the doorway of the
house next door. He entered the net again. Carrie's house had a security
system, including interior camera surveillance. It took Loki 2 seconds to
break into one of the junction boxes and get access to the security feeds. He
wasn't tapped into the security net yet (that was a little more difficult) but
he could view the camera outputs. The first couple were of the downstairs
rooms, dark and empty. Just standard furniture here. The next camera was of
the bedroom. Someone was in the shower. Loki waited expectantly. Several
minutes later he was rewarded with the sight of a nude woman coming out of the
bathroom. She was young, and in good shape. Since Tuesday had no idea what
Carrie looked like, he assumed it was her. He kept watching until she had
dried and dressed in a black body hugging jumpsuit. She was going out. She
quickly tied her brown hair into a ponytail, grabbed a shoulder bag, and
headed downstairs. Loki followed her on the cameras. He saw her look through a
coffin-sized closet, and put a handgun into her bag. Good thing she had
security cams, Loki thought, else she might have been able to hide the gun
from him. As she left the house, Loki logged out.
Tuesday watched her leave. She moved towards one of the cars parked along the
road. Probably the same one she used when she kidnapped Liz. It's gonna be the
one she dies in. The woman didn't look around at all, so Tuesday just walked
right up behind her and grabbed her purse off her arm. She spun around, a
totally surprised look on her face. Tuesday smiled, then drove the gun barrel
right into her stomach. He was getting real good at that.
"Into the car." He spoke in a tight growl, covering up his trembling insides.
Now that he was actually doing it, getting back at those who took Liz, he was
real nervous. His hands shook, so he kept the gun in contact with Carrie, to
hide the shaking. It was loaded this time.
The woman got into the car without a word. Tuesday quickly ran around to the
other side. Her car was a 2-seater, so he had to sit in the passenger side.
The woman didn't try to escape, lock the doors, nothing. She just sat there,
like she was expecting it.
When Tuesday was inside and sitting down, he tossed her purse into the cubby
hole that passed as a rear seat. He left the duffle bag with all of his stuff
rest between his legs. He kept the gun in his right hand, letting it lay
across his lap, pointed in her direction.
"What now? Are you going to kill me, or force me to take you to Aphrodite?"
She said it in a casual way, as if she was bored of the whole thing already.
"How the hell do you know about that!" he said, his turn to be surprised.
"Don't be stupid! Gee, I kidnap someone this morning, then I get a visit from
a gun toting thug. Connection? You don't think we know all about you? We've
known ever since she called. The corporation has all of your files, it knows
everything there is to know about you. It was only a matter of time before you
came after me, I'm your only link to her. I'm supposed to be the ba..." she
trailed off.
Tuesday leaned close, and raised up the gun. He transferred it to his left
hand. "Where is she! I'll kill you if you don't tell. I swear to hell that I
will. I don't need you that much. You don't think that I can't find her on my
own? Give me a few days and I can raid Imagery's deepest fucking computer,
make them fucking -bleed- for what they did! You're no link, you're just the
warm-up for whats gonna happen to the rest of them!" He was getting worked up,
his face red. He guestured with the submachine gun, jabbibg it into her arm as
he spoke.
"You are nothing but a damn BOY!" she screamed back, "The corp could wade
through a million of you! You have no fucking idea about what's going on here
do you? The stakes involved? Imagery is just the middle-man for this
operation, they mean nothing!" She slapped the gun away, her hand came up in a
blur, something small and tubular hidden inside it.
Tuesday fired, jerking the trigger with his entire finger, just like his
gunchip said not to. Something wet and smelly hit his face. As his eyes
swelled and a thick fog closed in on his brain, the 'runner fired 4 more
times, the retorts loud but muffled inside the tiny car, the bullets traveling
less than a meter before hitting the plush interior siding. Some didn't have
to fly that far. And the sound they made was much different than the others.
When Tuesday recovered from the knockout spray, the drivers side door was
open. Blood coated the seats, not yet clotted, and dotted his clothing. The
pungent smell of cordite and body fluids gassed the car. Gagging, Tuesday
stumbled out of the car, puking on the street. He retched several times, the
last being dry heaves.
Staggering to his feet, he moved around the car, to the side of the road. On
the front lawn was Carrie. Fingers of blood traced their way from the car to
her still body. She had been hit in the legs, one of the slugs tearing open
the artery. Tuesday looked at her body. He couldn't tell if she was dead yet,
but it didn't look like she was alive, at least not for much longer.
Damn, why did she have to fight? She should have been afraid, she should have
just done what he said. Then she would have had a chance. Despite his initial
rage, he didn't really think that he could have killed her, maybe not even the
people who were more directly responsible for Liz's capture and slavery.
Tuesday didn't have what it takes to be a killer. At least not up till now.
He looked around, fearful. People were looking at him, but they were too far
away to see what had happened. Maybe the gunshots were suffuciently dampened
by the car. Maybe they would think that she was drunk, or sick. Then he
realized that he still had the gun. What he had done was obvious. He had
killed someone, no one could ever mistake that.
Security would be coming soon. Maybe even Imagery solos, since Carrie (if that
really was Carrie) seemed to be expecting him, they would be too. He had to
scram. Holding his breath, he reached inside the car, trying to avoid the
blood, and retrieved his duffle. He also grabbed the purse. He couldn't force
himself to search Carrie, but she couldn't hide much in her skintight
jumpsuit. She could hide Mace though.
Leaving the body where it lay, he ran back to the doorway where his board was
stashed. He ran along the houses until he found a side alley leading away from
the street. The inquisitive neighbors had fled inside once they realized that
he had a gun. Security was on its way.
It took Tuesday over 2 hours to escape Hopeful Homes. He spent most of the
time hiding from security choppers, or avoiding street patrols. He had to
invade the net 4 times to redirect searches or knock out cameras. 4 Demon
progs were de-rezzed by the Succubus, covering his back during the runs. He
finally made it out by riding a drainage pipe from the plantation lake to the
city canal system. He had to hack that one as well, to raise up a grill. He
got bit by rats 3 times.
When he was finally free, he took the interstate back to the city. He tagged a
ride with the bumper of a transport hovercraft. The thing went 200 kph, but
since it couldn't make any sharp turns or rapid acceleration, it was easy to
hang on to. Getting off involved a rather precarious detachment and coast
period, where Tuesday had to let go of the bumper and kneel down on the board
to keep the wind from blowing him off. He had to coast over a kilometer to
return to safe speeds. That was fun. His skateboard's batteries were so
charged that he didn't have to pedal once all the way to a coffin hotel. There
he changed clothes and finished the last of his food and water. He got a
restless 2 hour nap as well, using up the last of his eb. He would have to
risk a withdrawal tomorrow. Had to come up with a plan as well.
P.S. Any way to get "Mr. Tap's Problem" and "Puma" in a consolidated
form? Did that with "The Alaskan" and it allowed me to DL it to my
machine and read it at will (ended up reading the entire thing at once).
Makes it easier to follow and frees up my phone lines. Maybe an author or
fan has a big .txt file for me? Thanx. and Later
******************************************************************************
Jason Kendelhardt Violence is Golden
kendejd9@wfu.edu and I have the Midas Touch
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