>From: fjohnson@remus.rutgers.edu (Floyd Johnson)
Subject: STORY-no title-no middle, either-HELP!
Date: 23 Jan 92 18:51:38 GMT


Hi there,

About a month ago, I submitted a piece introducing a black cyborg,
along with a political manifesto. Over the last month, I worked out
the guts of the "saga": upon his premature deployment, he is given his
identity (Darrin Allen, a college student), and meets and
falls in love with Kate Jensen. (I oughtta bug Larry Mann about
BioSculpt; those mechanisms are the means to make the love story
plausible) This isn't so bad, except in the eyes of the Order, an
"antimatter" KKK, whose cybernetic troops, though far less advanced
than Darrin, are quite powerful. In fact, it was this organization
which was responsible for the death of Darrin's inventor, Richard G.
Allen, Ph. D.
	 I haven't figured out how, but Darrin gets captured
intact, and the Order's leader, "M", personally oversees the
installation of a remote control unit on the lines of a cybertroop
brain. (M, it turns out, was a rival for the "highly mobile AI
construct" contract that led to Darrin's development.) This means, of
course, that Darrin goes out of control, for a time like a Street
Sweeper with legs, until he finds himself facing Kate. Her karate
holds him off for some time, until M issues the "deploy pistol"
command.
	Something inherently human about Darrin intervenes with the
implant's functioning, and a small explosion takes place in his
midbrain, bringing him, unconscious, to the pavement. He comes to
facing Kate's almost tearful eyes, and, realizing he nearly lost the
woman he loved, vows he has a favor to return. She joins him on this
mission.
	The following picks the story up from that point and ends it.
As you can see, I've got an opening and a closing, but I have no idea
how to express what happens in the middle. Give me ideas, especially
with the relationship the cyborg's capture.
						Floyd Johnson
						Rutgers University
						New Brunswick, NJ

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Darrin has overcome the remote's effects, but M thinks only the
countertransmitter is broken. He and Kate are proceeding to destroy M.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	They mounted the bike, Darrin passing her his helmet. He
checked the bike's Logbook, finding the route he had taken from the
Legion's base to campus. The engine kicked on at once, and they were
in motion.
	"Damn good thing they couldn't mess with the bike's storage;
otherwise, there'd be no way to find 'em", he muttered. "Anyhow, Step Zero is getting in there and trashing M's operation."
	"You know where the brains of it are at ?" Kate asked over his
shoulder.
	He consulted the Logbook again. "Not quite; apparently, I only
got to see his robotics labs and the main conference room."
	Her soft brown eyes became wider than usual. "You mean the bike
knows where you go and what you do?"
	"Uh-huh."
	"Damn, just like a Gallifreyan Time Lord."
	The pair arrived at a large warehouse. Darrin summoned the
Superuser from his Tools pop-up and entered "newuser" at the prompt
that appeared in his mind's eye. "Okay, Kate, think of the phrase
'Let's roll!'"
	She did, and Superuser replied "Access added". Darrin
explained, "I've just set the bike to allow you to drive and use its
functions."
	"By thought?"
	"No; you'll have to use the manual control panel for the
scanners and weapons. The helmet transceiver, however, will allow us
to keep in touch aurally." He dismounted, then continued as she slid
forward. "The left trigger is used for jumping from a level roadway;
the right fires the laser." The Control Panel emerged from just below
the fairing. "These keys are for rockets, IR, NMR, telephoto, and the
saddlebags. Scan results will show up on the visor."
	With that, he tried his own IR on the six-story warehouse. "I
can see the head honchos in conference, but-wait a minute-it looks
like their AI gear's on the top floor."
	She tried the motorbike's AI scanner to see for herself. "It
doesn't look like the kind of thing to run androids off of."
	"It ain't; the hard drives must contain the software that goes into
their heads. In order to shut down this creature shop, we'll have to
heist the drives." He examined the top floor windows again, and, finding
that they were wired, deployed his zipline and fired it at the roof.
After slow-retracting the rope, he produced a mirror from his coat pocket, at
the same time entering "vox" into Superuser.
	<Kate>, he thought, <fire a continuous beam up here.>
	Using the telephoto mode, she got a fix on his mirror, hitting
the right trigger. Darrin directed the beam into one of the roof
vents, cutting a circular hole about his size. He slipped through,
finding himself on a desk in a dark room.
	 Now that he could see the window alarm grids from the other
side, he knew he could safely bend them up, and after doing so, asked
for another hole, then fired his zipline to a point near Kate and the bike. As
the latch alarms remained quiet as well, Darrin wasted no time in
folding each drive into a small sling and sending them down. He had
just finished with the last of the ten when he heard approaching
footsteps. Instinctively, he dove under a desk as a gruff voice
demanded, "Who's there?"
	A khaki-uniformed guard entered the room, aiming his
flashlight at Darrin's hiding place. "I said, who's there !" he
snarled.
	A large foot shot up into the guard's face, knocking him clean
across the room. In short order, Darrin removed the now-unconscious
man's pistol, destroyed his walkie-talkie, and rode his zipline to the
ground. He walked nonchalantly to the front door of the building,
meeting no resistance from the guards. They thought he was still
theirs.
	He strode into the conference room, looking M dead in the eye.
In his best mechanical voice, he announced, "It's over."
	"Huh?" The behemoth seemed to doubt Darrin's functionality.
"There's still a healthy number of Them out there."
	"It's over", he countered in the same mechanical tone.
	"No it ain't; They have yet to submit to the Brothers, as the
natural order dictates. Your mission is to uphold the natural order,
remember?"
	"It's over".
	For a moment, M appeared to have forgotten that he was
talking to an AI, as he hissed, "Have you forgotten what time it is?"
	"NO!" Darrin's voice filled the room as he drew up for a high
roundhouse kick. "It's payback time!"
	His kick sent M reeling. At this, the men at the table drew
their weapons, simultaneously summoning their cyberdivision. Darrin
quite handily rolled away from the human's Street Sweepers, but he
could see the android troops approaching from the corner of his eye.
<There's too damn many of 'em>, he thought, summoning his antipersonnel
grenade launcher.
	A woman's voice pealed in his head, telling him, <HIT THE DIRT!>
	An explosion tore a Mack-truck-sized hole in the wall behind
him, reducing most of the machines to scrap. Kate came buzzing in as
Darrin finished off the remainder. M, having recovered from the kick,
crouched under a table and drew a bead on her.
	"Oh no you don't!"
	Darrin saw him and jumped into his line of fire, taking
several hits to his chest. Checking to make sure she wasn't hurt,
Darrin was now free to concentrate on his immediate adversary, who,
pissed off by his heroics, growled, "Fuck you, CyberTom", as he
reloaded his Uzi.
	Darrin, equally pissed off, replied, "Fuck you, M", firing his
APG launcher into the ceiling twenty feet away from him. Like a good
actor, he was determined to bring down the house, though admittedly on
his audience. <Move it>, he thought, hammering away at the floor sections
directly above M.
	Another massive explosion rocked the building, followed by the
buzz of Darrin's bike as Kate fled the impending collapse.
	<Well, what are you wating for, homeboy? The whole thing's
gonna cave in.>
	No sooner had this reached his mind than did the hole in the
ceiling over M's now lifeless bulk begin to grow. Trunks of the
plumbing were giving way, and it looked like a rainstorm had broken
out. Somehow satisfied that he had exacted his vengeance on this crew,
he stumbled out onto the lawn, brushing pieces of tile off of his
coat.
	Kate marveled at the bullet-riddled, damp, debris-covered, and
slightly pissed-looking gent. "You look like hell, guy; we oughtta get
your ass to an E/R."
	"Yeah, maybe", he muttered weakly; being a quick healer, what
did it matter? "At least the stuff on those drives will account for
the mess. Oh yeah-" He fiddled with a panel on the side of the bike,
producing a 2.8M floppy from it. "-so will this."
	"Are you sure it won't be saying-too much?"
	"No". He reached for her shoulder, "It won't. Anyone who looks
at this will get the idea that one of their own experiments turned on
them."
	She gazed into his eyes. "You know, that's not too far from
the truth."
	As sirens rose and fell half a mile away, Darrin mounted the
bike, his arms tightly encircling Kate's waist. He casually tossed the
disk onto the lawn as the two of them disappeared into the night.
	
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please send comments, suggestions, etc. to fjohnson@remus.rutgers.edu.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------