From: geirs@ifi.uio.no (Geir Stensrud)
Subject: WCS I - The Keeper of Justice
Date: 7 May 93 16:39:52 GMT


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The World Corporation Stories - Part One -

"The Keeper of Justice"	

English version by Geir Stensrud with Charles F. Fitzgerald
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It was winter.

It was a late night hour in downtown Oslo. It could have been late at night
in Cairo or Bombay for that matter, except for the temperature, 70 NWS in
Cairo, 89 NWS in Bombay, and only verging on Mediterranean in Oslo, Euro
Norway. All temperatures given in New World Standard, of course, making
it more difficult to tell that it had gotten rather warmer.

It was raining.

Every downtown area in the world looked pretty much the same, due to
the era of the World Corporation. Corpus Verden. Large corporation
logos flickered across the smoked night sky, colorful lights
blinked merrily from numerous hamburger bonanzas, reflecting, in the grey
night sky, on hovering Taylor Orbital Flight Cars, the toys of the very
rich clients. Finally, a lot of umbrellas were about. Welcome to Sony London,
Coca Angeles, Corpus Verden.

Down the exhaust ridden streets, young Arild Pending trotted happily onwards.
Inside his head, the images of legends, fair maidens on the front of big shiny
cars, and cute cartoons selling serials passed by. He was on a Holy Mission,
he was on the big adventure. Old Fashem at the Logistique Plant had sent him
forth, to get the guys at Logistique Improved Pizza.

The look on Arild's face was tuned to wide-eyed innocence. This was really
something, already he had cheerfully refused two attempts from agents of
Body Part Inc. to give away his vital internal organs. Strolling along Karl
Johan Street, Oslo's main street, always lead to a lot of interesting offers.

"Come on, Citizen, you don't really need a full set of lungs. They won't
do you much good, if you continue to walk about with no face mask down
here."

"No thank you very much."

"Think about what you could do with the money! High standard pharmas! Your
own Virtual Reality mindset! Think about ..."

"No thanks, I'm rather found of my liver."

Next he received a pamphlet by two emissaries of the True Church of Elvis. It
predicted the Second Coming To Las Vegas to happen any day now - maybe next
week. The Omens were about. The King had been seen again, this time in a
refrigerator in Euro Helsinki, Finland.

Currently he was explaining to a member of the Church of Scientology that he
didn't need a personality test, he already got one, and it told the Oslo
Scientific Management that he was really good at finetuning Explosive Hardware
for Third World Use.

So this is what he did down at Logistique Plant, and was happy about it.
Weapons needed? Got the credits? Logistique has it. We make good things come
to life. Very briefly.

Near Keynes Plaza two nameless derelicts and an unlicenced drunk was swept
away, sucked into a Cybertech Street Cleaning Vehicle. While it's yellow
lights were flashing, it did a quick scan of their Client personality,
consulted World Corp. databanks, and instantly put them into comasleep. It
must have received a negative answer.

Oslo Scientific Management didn't hold with the waisting of good body parts.

Young Pending noticed the familiar sight with a trademark look of blank
incomprehension in his blue eyes. Collegues down at Logistique suggested
Pending was only halfway present in the real corporate world. The rest of his
mind was someplace else.

And they were absolutely right.

Arild turned a corner, on the last innocent day of his life. Soon Blind
Fate, the poorly sighted goddess of Corp. World, will lash out to give him,
well, not the joyous pizza sharing experience wished for him by the Hungry Dog
Pizza House oriental.

+ + +

A few hours earlier Ove Vekk, head of Quality Control at the Civic Guardia
Production Line had recently resigned by the well-tested Wall Street Method -
jumping out the top floor window.

Hans Expressen was in a state of mild tension. His clean-cut close-to
teutonic features looked calm enough. His steel grey eyes looked almost too
calm for a man who just had received an unexpected raise of status. Almost
like he had expected it. It was difficult to tell. Trying to understand
the look in Expressen's dead eyes, was a bit like trying to get in touch
with your dead aunt with a Ouija board. I.e., you never know what to
expect.

A spray of homogeneous murders could have shocked the good Clients of Oslo,
producing anger and anxiety, had they only known. The press was busy covering
the on-going civil war in India, and a royal wedding in Euro Luxemburg.

Hans Expressen had calmed the Board of Guardia. The new vice exec had a week
to put things right. Like clearing up a few things, getting rid of evidence,
reassuring certain leading members of Oslo Scientific Management that only
examples of the outmost bad citizenship would provoke, say, the worst brutal
killings.

It was, nevertheless, a regrettable situation.

It could ruin new orders, for example.

+ + +

Psionic alarms going off all around him, John Rapparee, once a native of
Euro Amsterdam dropped the remaining files, drew back from the United CBank
of Africa, and ran like hell.

Or whatever the equivalent of running may be if you are in cyberspace.

It was only his carefully planned entry, years of routine, the painstakingly
learned shortcuts and the high-speed passing of gates --- a bit like turning
the corner on two wheels -- that saved the CyberJocks brains from being
spring-fountained all over his greying VR Deck.

It dawned on him, when logging out, that if so, he'd been a goner without
even having a 3Minut Breakfast.

He was very annoyed by this.

Wait a minute . . .

Hidden Psionic alarms behind low-class third world Cbanks?

They usually were sitting turkey for a guy like him. Or was it ducks?

Ultra speed Foucault feelers reaching out for him to literally blow his
brains out his ears? What the hell was going on?

Something big, that's for sure. Maybe too big for an independent software
hustler to manage. But he had to try.

After he had stopped perspiring.

+ + +

Down the street, on the more posh side of the official city, a hooded figure,
a champion lurker, stalked a loving couple who were kissing passionately.

It detested such sights.

Why were they not at home eating approved Pharmas?

It felt a slow intense rage build up inside.

Why were they not at home watching hypertelevision?
							
Hidden, inside the shadows, it thought, such public display of affection is not
good corp practise. Far from it. Not good Company Order. An action needs to be
taken.
	
Why are they not being good, honest, high-consuming clients?

They are so close together that one would have to separate them with a crowbar.
Now, that's a thought.

The hooded figure reached out and, with impossibly strong fingers like steel,
bent a steelbar on a streetlight. It had no ability to feel any of the
resulting pain.

The couple were naturally not watching out for anything. But young Arild
Pending was watching, startled by the strange scene. At the same time the wise
old knight spoke to him inside his split mind.

Arild cursed his bad luck. Eighty percent of the good authorized clients of
Oslo was at home safe asleep, in dreamless dreams on pharmas. He wished
he was too, seeing the Guardia poised with steel bar raised.

Arild sputtered, "What is this?"

Aroused by the unusual sound of concern in a human voice, the young couple -
two teenage girls - let each others go, the striking force of good old
company steel whirred past them, along with the Guardia. The steelbar made
a metallic rhythm pattern on the asphalt. The head of the guardian struck
a protruding commercial poster for Hyper Reality Lucky Land. Rather hard. It
saw the cybernetic equality of singing birds and shiny stars.

The young girls ran away, while the hooded guardian was busy getting up.
Where was the source of the disturbance? Who had obstructed it's work so
that justice could not be done? It tried to scan it's surroundings but the
Guardia's Scan Sight was partially malfunctioning, due to the fall.

This was a good thing for Arild. Somewhere deep inside, his genes were looking
desperately for a sword. Or any big heavy object would do. This was needed to
perform a noble act. Now any performance of chivalry was ruined. It would
never come to be.

He could have sliced the raging Guardia in half, twisting madly on the dirty
street, with his mighty two-handed sword, while humming a magical Elfish battle
hymn. Trouble was, he didn't have a sword. He was still to obtain it. It was in
a very different part of the city, the Smith Stad, but Arild Pending,
a good client of the official City, knew very little about such dark matters.

So he ran away too. When he turned the corner on Klingenberg Street, and
started to walk towards the National Theatre a Friendly Neighborhood
Surveillance Unit got a good making of him. This is where he discovered that he
had lost his pizza. Old Fashem would be extremely aggrieved by this. And thus
the pizza from the Hungry Dog vanish from this story.

We will get back to the mighty sword bit, though.

+ + +

The employee of the Verfremdung Department gave his report to Hans Expressen.

He took the notice, read it, and scanned the list of names. Clients who had
seen the Guardians going a bit past the usual public service limit. It was a
rather short list of names. Naturally, most who had seen anything were already
dead. And the dead were not complaining.

The trouble with such matters was that they always expanded to say, families
and friends. Regrettable. Peace Keepers are very expensive to hire.

But these days people, good clients, went over the Dam ever so often.

Regrettable.

+ + + End Part One + + +

Credits:
I'm in debt to Charles F. Fitzgerald for reading several draft of this story
and giving valuable criticism, also thanks to Bruce Maynard, Karl
Ivar Dahl and other people of the net community who say they are willing to
help new stories appear. (Corp. knows when.)
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Copyright May 1993 by Geir Stensrud. All rights reserved. If you want to
use characters, the World Corporation Story settings etc etc , kindly ask for
permission first, or you might wake up, one final terminal night, in the
close - to human face of a WCS Peacekeeping Unit . . .
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