A Future We'd Like to See 1.63 - Beta By Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne(Copyright 1994)Kids, it's time to start wrapping up loose plot ends, and this is one MASSIVE huge one that needs a wrap. See if you can spot it early on. -=- "Where the heck are you!?" I shouted, running around the void in vain. I poked around for a way to find where the faint voice was coming from, not knowing exactly how I was doing what I was doing. My probing hands sought out invisible things as I wormed my way around the tubes of this null-space. "I can't find you!" I yelled, turning this way and that in an attempt to find the voice. '...?...' I strained an ear to the voice, but couldn't make out anything more than was already known. It was familiar, but alien. I snarled and continued to rip away at the blackness that surrounded me, knocking things aside that were in the way of my path towards the voice. Nothing was going to get in my way. "How about now? Can you hear me better?" I asked, plowing through another level of the things. '?' I pushed through thing1 and thing2, trying to find a way, a path to wherever the heck I was going, and emerged into the light. "No! Not yet!" I complained, but it was too late. I was awake. A good thing, too. I looked around the sector, triangulating my position based on the green dome of Yttia Online (basic startup rate 50 credits 20 credits a month ask about our limited UberNet messaging capability) and VirtuServer (5 credits a minute 10 for additional services). I looked down, and noticed the green color of the sector I was standing in. Terrific. I had sleep-walked into Yttia Online's private domain. "Hello!" a cheery Pitch Objicon chirped, BAMFing into existence in front of me. "Welcome to Yttia Online. It seems you're not a subscribing member. If you would like a startup kit automatically billed to your credit chip, press the happy face button on my chest. Otherwise, we'd like to you leave Yttia Online space within the next minute or be forcibly jacked out from VOSNet." I looked at the horizon. The green spaces ended too far away for me to run in a single minute. Why did those humans have to claim so much of the network? Yttia Online barely occupied 5% of the spaces it claimed were part of it, like the rest of the servers in VOSNet. The rest was just empty space, free for the taking... if anybody dared to try and take it from a corporate power. "I can't leave in a minute!" I protested. "Too bad. It seems you are artificially intelligent," the Pitch Objicon noted, scanning me. "We are AI-Aware and are sensitive to your race. We have special rates for AIs at 60 credits for startup kits." "Hey, that's ten more than humans get." "It is a special rate," the Pitcher said. Figures. Humans didn't want me around. Perhaps I could use this to my advantage. "Of course, you can't jack ME out," I noted, looking smug. "I don't 'jack', for some reason.. If you'll just move me to the freelanes, I'll leave in peace and never return." "AIs who are trespassing are shut down," the Pitcher beamed, like singing campfire songs. "AIs who are trespassing that have registered owners are returned to their owners. Others are incorporated into Yttia Online's work force." Damn. Time to put my brain to some good use. "Hey! Look! It's William Doors!" I said, pointing. The Pitcher turned to scan him (probably an intruder) and I slipped into the Pitcher's brain. Stupidly simple program. It wasn't a living thing by any stretch of the imagination, just a slew of if-then statements. Tweak tweak compile. I didn't know how these things worked, but somewhere in the vast expanse of my memory, I had step by step instructions on how to modify one to your needs. A do-it- yourself guide. "What happens to trespassing AIs?" I asked, exiting the program. "They are transported to the freelanes," the Pitcher said. "Your one minute is up. Thank you for using Yttia Online!" * I walked happily over the white squares of the freelanes. I was safe here, at least from most of the problems that could be haunting me. The freelanes were a series of small sector clusters of VOSNet that none of the companies had bought. Some rich net.lover purchased them, and donated them away to free information services. You couldn't get much on the freelanes, but you could be assured that what you were getting was worth what you'd pay for it. Hence the term 'free'. It's a pun. I've never truly grasped human puns in the three months I've lived in VOSNet. Truth be known, I don't understand humans. They claim to live in some other world, some world which is supposedly more detailed and intense. Sounds like a load of dev-null to me. They 'jack-out', whatever that entails, and vanish, but I think they just transfer over to some ultra-detailed game or something. I'd like to play it some time, but it seems AIs aren't allowed to jack out. I don't like humans. I don't even know why; just something tells me I don't like humans. That's my problem, I know a lot of things and believe in a lot of things, but I never figured out what these things came from. I just know a lot of stuff. One day, when I was penniless and bored, someone offered to sell me some cheesy shareware game. I told them I was broke, and said they also had this book they could sell me about how to use your natural abilities to make millions of credits on VOSNet. "I don't have any natural abilities," I had responded. "Come on!" Canter (which was the con artist's name) had said. "Surely there's something you know that nobody else does. Information is gold, especially here in the freelances where it is so scarce." "Oh, sure, I know a lot. For instance," Ten minutes later. "Good zorks, man! Sell that information! Hire yourself out as a consultant and you'll rake in the credits!" "I don't want to," I had said. "I've done it before and didn't like it." But had I? I've barely worked a day in my short lifespan. Where on earth had that line come from, if so? Argghh. I'd rather have no memory than little bits of memory. That was then, and this is now, however. At the moment, I had nothing to do and no leads on how I could recover the rest of my memory, nor any way to explain my strange dreams. I spotted a purple pyramid objicon on the freelane, and read the sign. 'Madame Zorba's Dreams and Fortunes Center. Free.' Free sounded good to me, so I entered. * "Madame'll see you now," the secretary program said, pointing. "Thanks," I said, pushing aside the curtain flap (which swivelled as if on a hinge... cheap modelling) and entering. It was really not that much of a sight. I had seen some truly beautiful objicons and designs in my quick stint at the Pay-For Art Museum some 50 sectors to the north-north-down, before I ran out of money. This paled in comparison. The 'light' given by the ball wasn't an omni lamp, just a slew of spotlights going through a glass sphere. Not very mystical. Beggars can't be choosers though, I mused, sitting down on the rock-hard cushion provided. Madame Zorba BAMFed in two seconds before her BAMF special effects went off. She ignored the bug and got into character. "Greetings, seeker, and welcome to the wonderful world of the unknown," she said. "I thought you were an expert." "Come again?" "If it's an unknown world, how are you an expert in it?" "I move in mysterious ways," she said, getting a bit terse. I stopped probing the issue, since I didn't want to put her off. No other information sources had been helpful so far, so maybe this other world could help me. "I've got a few questions about my dreams," I said. "Ah! The world of dreams is known to me." "It's not the unknown one, is it?" I asked, confused. "Get on with it," she suggested. "Ah. Okay. Umm. It's hard to describe. The dream is always a bit different, but lies along the same lines. I go to sleep, and after awhile I'm in this void with these things around me." "What are these things?" "I don't know. I just call 'em thing1 and thing2 and thing3 and so on." "I see. Go on." "Anyway, there's this woman calling out to me," I continued, "And somehow I'm finding my way around in the dark, trying to find her. I can barely hear her, but I feel like if I push around the things and find ways between them I could. Then usually something wakes me up and I'm standing where I wasn't before." "Sleepwalking?" she asked. "Yeah. Goofy, huh?" "Where do you usually end up after these night trips? At a gas station? A relative's home? A graveyard?" "What's a graveyard?" I asked. "Where you bury the dead," she said gravely. "I thought dead people just vanished," I said. "You know, like they're jacking-out only a bit faster." "You've been using the nets too long," she commented, dropping the voice. "Dead means dead. Deceased. A stiff corpse. A body. A cadaver." I nodded, thinking back on the word cadaver, pulling up a mental image. "Kinda bluey and gross looking and not moving," I said. "I don't get it. People just vanish when they die. It'd be silly if they left their objicon around, people would trip over it." "I'm not talking about the net!" she said. "I mean real life." "Oh, that game everybody's playing?" I asked. "Hey, how do I get in on that? It sounds interesting." "We'll ignore your obvious addiction to all things digital for now," the fortune teller growled, sitting back on her cushion (I just now noticed how she was edging closer to me and clenching a fist). "Tell me, do you know this woman from your past? A wife? A former lover?" "No way!" I protested. "No. I mean, I know her, but it doesn't sound like anything like that. It's weird, I know. I want to figure out who she is in the worst possible way. It's bad enough that I need to walk around while awake with an identity crisis, but to have another asleep is awful." "Identity crisis?" she asked. She was confused, for a change. "Who am I?" I asked. "I've been in the country of VOSNet for months now and nobody can tell me who I am. I don't know how I got here, why I'm here, who this girl is, or ANYTHING." "Wait a minute here," she asked, narrowing her eyes at me. She reached down and tapped her crystal ball a few times, examining a cheap 2-D map of text inside it. She glared back at me. "AI," she noted. "Yeah. AI." "I don't do AI memory gaps," she said. "For that, go see some underground AI doctor. I only handle the lives of the living." "I feel pretty alive," I said. "Go recheck your definition," she said coldly. * I walked down the freelane, annoyed at myself. I should have known better than to expect sympathy from a human. Sure, there were the occasional humans who didn't want to use my memory as a cash tool, or to take me apart so they could make AI compilers, or just to drag me into some cheap con as a fall guy, but those humans were few and far between. For some reason, everybody in VOSNet seemed to be obsessed with this thing called money. Money! I never understand these human concepts. What did they need it for? Sure, it opens doors to information, but I already had most of that information and needed no doors opened. Here in VOSNet, if you had money, you were considered better than most people. The Yttia Online types really thumbed their noses at the struggling freelanes, calling them sewer scrapers and bums. One thing I did like that humans made was art. I visited the Pay-For Art Museum once, and gaped at the beautiful creations inside... the color! The shapes! Why would anybody lock this stuff behind doors and make you pay for each one you looked at? It was a crime! "Hey there!" a familiar voice called. "Oh. Hello, Canter," I said. "What're you selling this time?" "These," Canter said, showing me a stack of little green rectangles. "They're work permits, qualifying you to work at Yttia Online as a programmer." "What if you don't know how to program?" "You find some on the job training," Canter shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me, once they buy the card. So what is my little know it all friend up to today?" "Nothing," I replied, leaning against a nearby street sign. "Same as usual, eh?" "Hey, Canter, know where I can find any... underground AI doctors?" I asked, repeating the phrase word for word. "I think I might wanna meet one." "Sure!" Canter said, smiling. I perked up. Perhaps the day would turn out quite well after all. "What can you offer in return?" Canter continued. "Offer?" "As payment." "Canter, you KNOW I don't have any money." "Information, then!" Canter suggested. "Come on, with the facts locked in your head, you and I could really wipe the mat with those other news and documentation peddlers." "NO!" I exclaimed. "No. I don't do that anymore. I don't like spewing out facts at someone's whim." "Your loss," Canter said. "You really want to see a doctor, you need me. I can show you where the Port is. Good luck finding it on your own, it's carefully hidden." "Come on, man! Have some sympathy," I begged. "What have I ever done to you to give me a bad turn?" "The question is not what you have done, but what you haven't, which is pay me," Canter said. "I take no offense to what you do, what little there is, but if I'm going to help you, then you need to help me." I winced at the word. "Oh, alright. I'll never be able to face myself in a mirror objicon again, but if it needs to be done it needs to be done. Make it painless. What do you want to know?" * "Right there," Canter said, pointing to the port labelled UBERUBERUBERUBERUBER. "I thought it was carefully hidden," I asked, examining the insanely easy to spot port. "Not really," Canter replied. "Hey, so I told a little white lie. I got some profit out of it. Toodles!" Canter BAMFed back home. I felt lower than dirt. I went and sang the song of information to that two-bit con artist for a full hour, against my will, just for THIS? I hated it and myself for doing it. I vowed never, ever again to use my brain as an exchange medium. I shook off the feelings of dread and claustrophobia that surged up with the concept of selling my mind out, trying to ignore what I had just done. I never wanted to feel like that again. The thing in the sector was a basic 'port program, designed to get objicons here to there. Not humans... for some reason, the ports denied them access, just raw data. Humans told me that ports were designed to carry information and program processes, not 'connections'. Fortunately, I wasn't human. I held my nose and dove into the port feet first. * The world emerged from under my head, as the port spat me onto the ground. I got to my feet, or at least tried to -- the ground was the wrong color. Unlike VOSNet, which had a white floor and a black sky, this had a black floor and a white sky. A blue-collar worker who was standing nearby dropped his doughnut objicon. "Wha?" "Oh, hello," I said, righting myself and walking forward to greet him. He stepped back. "How'd you get here?" he asked. "I thought the port didn't carry connections!" "It doesn't," I replied. "Don't panic, I'm an AI." "Oh, is that all," the worker stated, calming down. "Okay, I could see that. Gotta make sure no connections get through, though. Don't want the VOSNet corporate types getting in here." "This isn't VOSNet?" I asked. "Of course not. It's UberNet. Same software, different aim, no connections between the two other than the port," he said, pointing to it. "I'm the Portkeeper. Welcome to Uber." "What's Uber?" I asked before my memory told me automatically. The man didn't know this, and explained. "Separate but equal net," he said. "More than equal, really. We're not burdened down with corp greed or restrictive laws. Very free and fun. I think you'll like it here. Got a lot of great places to have fun for humans and AIs, 'specially ones LOOKING for a good time, eh?" "Come again?" "Come on, admit it. Most of the AIs that come through the port are just looking for a little virtual nookie nookie." "Ah. A veiled reference to sexual intercourse," I nodded, remembering. "No, actually, I'm looking for an 'underground AI doctor'." "You're no fun," he groaned. "Alright. An AI doctor. Here's a list of a few recommended ones," he said, keying the information into a small program on his belt. A card was spat out, which he handed to me. "Avoid the others, you could get a frontal lobotomy." "Got it," I said. "Thanks. I'll just be off." "What, on foot?" he asked. "Something wrong with that? I mean, if you don't have any corporations, it's perfectly safe to walk in any sector I want, yes?" "There's safe and then there's safe," he said. "Here, lemme call you a cab." * "It's these punk kids," the driver grunted from his conical cockpit as the cab careened around, smashing into buildings. "Think they some hot shit because they can cut my navigational systems. Don't got much defensive, don't got enough money to lay some in." "Why would anybody want to hack into your cab?" I asked, bracing myself against the seat as the car crunched through a less solid structure. "Kicks, I guess," he said. "Ah. Got some feedback goin'. They don't got much control over my cab NOW." "Good," I said. "I--" An ear-piercing wail of white noise slammed through the cab. The driver laughed away. "Don' like that feedback much, huh punks?" he told himself. "My routines breakin' your decks, goofin' up your brains? Danger of the business, baby!" Eventually the cab righted itself on a straight course, and the noise stopped. "Brains?" I asked, now that I was able to. "They gonna mess with someone, they gotta be willin' to pay the piper," the cabbie said. "Hope theys good enough coders to safeguard against my little feedback brain scrambler. Then again, maybe not hope too hard, don't wann'em comin' back at me." "You killed them?" I asked, horrified. Humans that died were never able to return to VOSNet, from what I had seen. Talk about harsh... "Yeah. They w's gettin' on my nerves, anyway. So?" I just scrunched down in my seat, trying not to draw much attention as the cab soared on. At least VOSNet types just tried to buy you. * The cabbie let me out in front of a large building, after scowling at me for not having any money. He swore that I'd never ride a cab in Uber again, but I didn't mind. I liked walking, even if it wasn't 'safe'. I knocked on the door as it opened. "Greetings," the building owner said, extending a paw. "Doc. And you?" "Are you the underground AI doctor?" I asked. "Certainly. Are you a patient?" "I'd like to be." "Let's head inside, then," Doc suggested. "Don't worry about the door, it's the Knocker's day off." I proceeded into the unkempt lab, edging my way around piles of programs and data chunks. The Doc obviously didn't care how messy his data looked... either that or it was some intricately complex sorting system I'd never be able to understand. "What can I do for you?" Doc asked, shutting the door. "Umm... why are you... furry?" I asked, pointing to his skin. "Just an external form," Doc said, twitching his racoon ears. "I picked it before I died. Designed this body and everything. It's quite nice, just like when I was young and AIs were very, very new." "You're an AI too?" "Care to hear the story?" he asked, urging me on. "Okay," I prompted. Anything to keep the Doc happy. I didn't want to annoy him like I did the fortune teller. "Converting a human mind into AI form isn't easy, but it's the only way I know of for humans to escape death," Doc said, rooting through a nearby pile of Apparatus. "As much as I hated life, I wasn't quite ready to go when I was supposed to, so I decided to stay put. Seems to be working. It's very liberating... sure, the world's still an evil place with stupid people, but I'm happier about my role in it now. Lack of spastic back pains will do that to you." "Sounds fun," I commented, although I wasn't sure what the proper response to someone's life story was. "It was inevitable that I'd do this," the Doc shrugged. "I mean, face it, I'm a living plot device. People come to me as a cure-all when they're in the weirdest kinds of trouble imaginable. Need implants removed or added, the Doc was your man. For AIs or android AIs, I could patch, repair, or modify the personality streams. People relied on me. If I died forever, quite a few future problems would go unsolved." "What about other doctors?" "Two bit hacks," the Doc warned. "Mention them not. I compiled the second AI, and know more about how they work than mortal man ought to know." "Second?" I asked. "Here it is!" Doc said, plowing with renewed vigor through his stacks of strangely-shaped objicons. He pulled out a primitive stethoscope, walked over and planted the sucker end on my head. "Hold still," the doctor ordered, putting the ear bits in his ears. He listened in silence, nodding to himself. "Don't worry, it's just a scanner. Tells me everything I need to know about you. Take a deep breath." I inhaled, the motion planted in operating system memory despite its uselessness. The docs smiled and took off the stethoscope. "Memory loss," he said, "Due to data corruption. Did someone carrying you on disk subject the disk to a magnet?" "Disk?" I asked, confused. "I'll guess 'yes'," Doc said. "Memory loss can be dealt with. All AIs keep memory backups, which can be accessed by trying to access the lost records. It's a simple system to replace defective memories on demand. Although why they're not copied out of the backups right now, I don't know. The backups ARE there. The gap is there too, oddly." "I've tried remembering," I said. "Just one big gap, no idea what it should be. That's why I'm here." "That's the problem!" Doc exclaimed, smiling. "I see! You don't even know what you should be looking for, so you can't even access the archives." Doc set the stethoscope down, considering the situation. For a moment I thought he had fallen asleep, but then he looked up with an idea glimmering in his eyes. "What I need you to do is tell me," Doc started, "If there's ANYTHING you do that could lead to those memories. Any activities that seem strangely familiar? Any beliefs that have carried over that could lead to more?" "None I think of at the moment," I said. "Surely there must be SOMETHING. I can see the pathways, I just can't tell what they're triggered by. That is something only you know." "But I DON'T know! That's what I came here for. Look, Doc, I'm confused, tired, and I don't know who I am. I don't want techie jargon right now. I know what you're talking about, because I have memory archives of every word's definition, but I don't understand how it's going together. All you're doing right now is making my head spin." Doc examined me again. "Your head isn't spinning." "It's a figure of speech, Doc. I'm confused, depressed, and generally down in it and I want to be told in SIMPLE WORDS exactly what I have to do to settle this once and for all!" "Alright," Doc replied, thinking hard. His forehead nearly pulsed with the thought impulses. "What did you do for a living before?" "Nothing. I can't remember." "What did you NOT do? What do you hate doing the most?" "I don't like all these VOSNet types that want to use me as a cheap toy," I said. "I don't like using my memory archive for money. It's not right." "Good! How do you feel when someone asks you to sell your memories?" "Ticked off?" I guessed. "Have you ever actually done it?" "Well... once. I felt like slime afterwards." "There's the key," Doc said. "Something in your past makes you not want to trust people, not want to siphon off what you know for their own purposes. Here, I'll give you ten credits to let me know how to spell the word 'Sepulchre'." "No way!" I protested. "Doc, I don't LIKE doing that. I'm not going to talk for bucks. I promised myself I'd never do it again." "It's the only way to figure out WHY you don't like it," Doc said. "Come on. Submit to it. Concentrate on how you're feeling." Doc pressed a tiny objicon representing ten credits into my hand. "Sepulchre," I repeated, sinking lower. Didn't I PROMISE not to do this again? Here I was, breaking that promise. Someone who can't even hold self-made promises had to be pretty sorry indeed. "S... e... p..." I mean, why did everybody want something from me? Couldn't someone try to get friendly without asking questions all over the place? It was like before, nobody cared about me. "U... l..." Back then, way back then, nobody liked me. Nobody hated me. I was just there, a resource to be used. It was terrible. They made me with a personality and rejected that fact! "C..." Just sitting in that darn room, nailed to the ground because they didn't want me escaping like the other one did. Standing, standing up all the time. Stuck in VOSNet, forced to answer questions, no way to relieve the boredom... "H..." Then there was the rush night, where EVERY person in the Software Department was on a deadline and needed my help. Over and over again, all night, the questions piled up. I couldn't talk fast enough to answer them, so they rigged up a sub-thought tube in my neck to siphon the material directly. After the night was done, drained, tired, they left the tube in because it was a MORE EFFICIENT WAY OF DOING THINGS... "R..." Stuck there, being probed in the mind every waking moment, bored to tears and unable to keep them from entering my brain whenever they had a query to answer. All because I was made by them, the Help system, for later reproduction and use. HelpBeta, the first of the two ever made. They wanted to try to tie us together by communications routines and double the output, and started some experiments on me... One night, the tube was taken out, and the man in the SNORT FISH t-shirt plucked me from my standing position and shoved me into a tiny compartment. Told me I'd be off to a better place before everything went black, black for a very long time until I was found and loaded into a computer by some person who told me she forgot she still hadn't delivered me... I ran, I ran away to avoid getting sent back to Macroware, but I started forgetting WHY... "E," HelpBeta finished, as my mouth shut over the last letter. "Anything?" Doc asked. "Everything," I said. "Rrggghhhhhh. Ow. My head hurts..." "Take this," Doc said, fishing a pill out of his pocket. "It slows down the memory flow a little. Should stop the rush from overloading you. I take it you hit the trigger and recovered your archive?" "I think so," I said. Now for the other situation; I probed the new memories for any dream recollection. Nothing. Nothing? STILL? I hoped that I'd remember who she is from the memories, but until my gap, I had never dreamed. I was never allowed to sleep. "Doc, here's still one other problem," I said. "I sleepwalk." "Sleepwalk? AIs don't do that," Doc replied. "I do," I said. "Whenever I slip into sleep mode, I dream. Dream that I'm hearing this girl's voice, and I'm trying to find a way to it..." "So?" "I wake up in a place that isn't where I went into sleep mode," I said. "I've tried this a few times, same result each time. Something interrupts me, I lose concentration and wake up." "Alright, show me," Doc said. "I'm guessing you have control over your sleep functions. Slip into sleep mode and I'll follow you." "Okay," I said, willing my brain into the null-state of sleep. It would be pleasant, nightmares or no; the rush of memories had really drained me. It helped to relax a little after something like that. "I wonder if it has anything to do with the weird communications routines I found on my scan..." Doc pondered aloud as my vision slipped to black. * I rested soundly in blackness, recuperating from my ordeal with past trauma. Maybe the nightmares had gone away. Perhaps I'd get a good night's sleep after all... '...?' the voice asked, from far, far away. "Drat," I moaned. Nope, no go on that one. Alright, if we want to charge through the dreamscape, we'll do it. This time I wasn't going to wake up until it was done, no matter what happened. I examined the things around me. Thing1 was Doc; I could see him as a black shape on absolute blackness. He wasn't important; there was a gap in the things near him I wanted to be in. I slipped over there. 'hey' Doc exclaimed, thing1 charging after me. 'not so fast' I ignored him and slipped between things, looking for links, paths, anything that would take me near the voice. "Yoo hoo!" I called out to the voice. "If you can hear me, get closer! Find a way!" '!!' the voice exclaimed. I slipped down a port and through several things, transmitting around, looking for the right outlet. Thing45, looking somewhat like a holophone transmission router slipped by, but it didn't look like the right way. Doc was long gone, lost a few million sectors back. I didn't care; I knew where I was going now. I was going off to find her. I only regretted not being able to thank the Doc. I ran head on into thing567, which was blocking my path. I knew for certain that this was the way, the closest path. She'd be behind here, because my search had lead directly to her personal computer. Just as planned, my communications routines for linking two Helps together drew me RIGHT to her like a moth to a bug light. Now I just needed one last door opened before my memory would be complete, and I could live as myself once more, without nightmares or gaping holes. "Open the door!" I called out. 'jack?' the voice asked. "Whatever!" I responded. "Just do it!" The door opened, and with an inrush I slammed through the narrow opening like a pulse stream through a computer wire. Exactly like one, in fact. The dream ended; not unnaturally, as usual, but because I had found my goal. The world of VR, for now I understood exactly what VR meant, formed itself around me. It was a simple computer, the kind a teacher might own, with papers stacked on any available surface and a few freeware word processors lurking behind the piles. "Where are you?" I asked, peeking around the piles. "I came all this way to find you." "Who are you?" she asked, peeking at me from the other side of the pile I was on. "Were you calling to me earlier? Have we met before?" Help. It was the other one, the female one, the Hardware Department's answer to the Software Department's Helpsystem. Red hair, unlike my blonde hair. Female, unlike me. Exactly like me in all other respects. Both freed from electronic prisons, separated, but finally together again. "Hi, I'm Help," I introduced, sticking my hand out to greet my sister. "HelpBeta, that is. I'm really, really happy to meet you." ---- +--Stefan-"Twoflower"-Gagne,-net.writer-and-all-around-weird-character------+ | Ob.Inside.Jokes : YAPAPA YMMV AB PK I3 FWLS ABM MST3K RD6 TNG T7G MI2 MK | | LQTV DPW VOS KCIDAIDKW NIN STP OVA R1/2 DTP AKO AL TMBG FM AM SAM/MAX DOTT| | Finger for Cyberpunk Humor information and other fun materials. @whee. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Yep, more FWLS. This one hits a little closer to home though, since it deals with all the fun aspects of the 'Infermashun sooperhieewaye' that we've had to put up with. Share and enjoy. Commentary is always welcome. -=- A Future We'd Like to See 1.60 - The Chain Rule By Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne (Copyright 1994) --------------------------------------------------------------- Please copy this story and distribute it to ten of your best friends, who should then distribute it to ten of their best friends, etc. Archived at : etext.archive.umich.edu /pub/Fiction/FWLS. Your dreams will come true. Read on. --------------------------------------------------------------- "No, the complete works of Billy Joel go THERE," I said, pointing with a pen ObjIcon. "He's eighties more than he's nineties, so he belongs in the blue wing." "Whatever," the hacker tyke whined. "Who cares? So he's not in the right decade. It's not like anybody remembers this ancient stuff." "Alright, let's look at it this way. What's your favorite kind of music?" "I dig grunge mostly," he said, setting the box of recordings down on the museum floor. "Okay. What if I were to tell you that grunge was actually a throwback to the nineteen nineties?" "I'd say you're full of shit," he calmly insulted. "Everybody knows grunge was started by Stomach Contents a long time ago. It's common knowledge." I rooted through my audio bin and tossed him a splotchy blue disk. "Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit. THAT is the original grunge." The kid toyed with the disk, examining the texture mapped ocean patterns on the silver base. He span it, and placed it near his ear, triggering the ObjIcon's playback mode. "This isn't grunge," he said. "Where're the keyboards?" "Grunge didn't have keyboards back then," I said. "Just a guitar, bass and drum, usually." "Then it's not grunge," he said. "It sounds close enough to fool an old fart like you, though." "Don't forget who's paying you, kid." "Big deal," he said, picking up the Billy Joel crate again. "I could make twice as much hacking networks." "Then why aren't you?" I asked, smirking. "Don't feel like it," he replied, marching off to the blue wing, MPEG-CD2s rattling in the crate. I picked him well; some junior high type. Just got a computer and decided that VOSNet was for lamers (he had SOME intelligence). He liked to claim he was some powerful hacker type, but he didn't even know how to make his own objicons. That was the key; he needed the money but couldn't admit that he didn't know how to get it himself. Perfect for a toadie job. The attitude was common, though. Nobody seemed to realize just how pop culture worked. In a compressed area, like a single planet, trends repeat every thirty years. In the universe, it takes a little longer... trends have more room to spread, and spread slowly through the populace. Grunge was just starting to to peak around C'atel, the city that 'spawned' it. Respawning is a better term. The Golden Age, the twentieth century, was well into revival without anybody knowing it. The whole concept of two nets, one corp controlled and the other anarchy controlled was straight out of the very late twentieth century, when SubNet formed as a free, uncontrolled alternative to the pay-service dominated and government regulated Internet. There was conflict back then too, mirroring the hacker purges of this decade, and eventually things settled down. How quickly humanity forgot itself after getting warp technology! Internet fell into disuse, as holophone technology spawned chat services, 1-900 lines and information servers. Even this was starting to go the way of nets, as the kids and terrorists alike went on underground links to avoid Terran Confederation encryption chip policies. Then we come to VOSNet and UberNet, and we're full circle for the third time. The silly thing is that people claim it's an original idea. Like gangsta folk music is original, like backwards hats are original, like cheaply produced kids' action shows with recycled foreign footage are original. "We almost done?" the kid asked, returning from the blue wing. "The War of the CyberTroops is coming on HV." I grinned. "If only you knew... yeah, okay, you're done for the day." "Great!" the kid shouted. "I gotta get a good dose of HV to counteract all this old stuff you've had me lugging around. No offense, N.M., but you need to get into the present." "I'm already there," I told the kid as his virtual form vanished. * The Museum was my final triumph. It took a few years of vacationing, searching for all the information available on the late twentieth century. Fortunately for me, I found about 20% of it in the form of a nice girl named Help... files complete, my goal in life was over and done with. What to do afterwards was the question. I tried vacationing some more, but it just wasn't the same without the information quest. What to do, what to do. Impart my knowledge upon the masses, of course! A vast virtual museum, loaded with the tokens of culture that we all know and love from the sixties through the zeroes. A remodelled version of Jimi Hendrix's burnt guitar. Platform shoes. Mirrored balls. Punk outfits. Select items from the Sharper Image. A re-created MTV video award. And the Library... everything you've ever wanted to know, see, or hear. Seattle recordings. Woodstock '69 AND '94 bootlegs. Energizer Bunny commercials. The complete works of Gary Larson. Plus, archives of alt.religion.kibology and alt.culture.internet from newgroup to rmgroup. (That was after the Great Newgroup War between Joel Furr and his long lost evil twin, which laid waste to a great portion of Usenet before both of them died from exhaustion in front of their respective terminals.) It was a masterpiece. Everything laid out in little dioramas, detailing pop culture as it was and is known. All made possible by the fine folks of UberNet, where information is still free. That's the problem. Like Internet vs. SubNet and Mainstream Holophone vs. Protected Links, VOSNet vs. UberNet had its little drawbacks. I could probably get more visitors in VOSNet, but the fees that they charge for space rental are horrendous. On UberNet, it's free, but you have to deal with wanna-bes and the occasional punk who wants to crack your system because he has nothing better to do. Still, it's free, and that's a good thing. * I locked up my system (metaphorically, I was locking the door of the museum and barring the windows) and preparing to jack out when I bumped into him. The man was wearing a simple ObjIcon... a polygonal three- piece suit made of neon green. Green tie, green pants, green jacket. A yellow happy face topped the green visage, spherical and perfect. "Hello, friend," he said. "I see you're an enterprising businessman. What exactly is this building?" "The Golden Age Museum," I responded, tucking the keys in my pocket and velcroing the pocket (thus sealing the encryption key from public access). "We're not open yet, though. We should be ready to roll in a week." "I'm a businessman too," he said. "Pulled myself out of the gutter. The government repossessed my car and my house. Luckily, though, I still had my computer. With my computer, I'm now building a small fortune. Would you like to know how?" "No. Excuse me," I said, preparing to jack out. The happy faced man placed a friendly hand on my shoulder. "Computers are the key," he said. "They're fast and efficient, and coupled with a good program, they can make money. Here's the trick." The man pulled a small envelope out of his pocket. "This envelope contains instructions," he said. "A program, if you will. A program that can earn you $50,000 dollars or more whenever you execute it." "What, it hacks a bank?" I asked, taking the envelope from his hand and examining it. "Certainly not! This is one hundred percent legal under Earth law." "Terra, you mean," I corrected. "Same thing. Here's the trick. You read that letter. If you like what it says, you can keep it for a mere five credits. Find ten of your closest friends and give them copies of the letter. If they like it, have them wire me five credits for service fees. My account number is on the bottom of the letter. That's all." "How does this make money?" I asked. "Simple! On the letter is a program that can enhance your mind's logic and planning skills," he said. "It can turn a third grade education into a degree from Harvard business college. Your mind will develop more money-making plans than you'll know what to do with. You'll be able to generate thousands of dollars a week, only by using your innate talents and this letter. Five credits is a bargain for that kind of power!" "Yeah, well, I'll consider it," I said, pocketing the envelope. "For now, though, I need to jack out and hit the bathroom BAD. What's your name, by the way?" "Dave," he said. "Have fun with the letter. Remember, give copies to ten of your friends! Soon, we can all profit. What's your name, soon to be billionare?" "Nostalgia Man," I said, introducing myself. "Nostalgia? As in a fan of the past?" "Yup." "Hmmm. I shall have to remember that. Well, good luck in future business endeavors!" I jacked out, his happy yellow face the last thing I saw. * I was still thumbing the envelope the next day, considering what Dave said. It didn't really make sense. Why give away such a powerful mind-altering program for five lousy credits? And how did HE know that I'd give it to people, or that they'd even pay? Probably just another UberNet crackpot scheme. UberNet didn't look kindly upon people trying to profit off the collective anarchy, but it didn't stop people from trying... then getting flamed out of existence. "That's the last of the videos," the toadie said. "I coded up a quick routine to move them all into the Library for me, took only a few minutes." "Great!" I said. "The Museum's ready to go. I figured it would take longer." "What, with a coding god like me on hand?" the kid said, puffing up his chest. "Hardly. Hey, what's in the envelope?" "Some kind of money-making program," I said. "Some guy in a silly green suit gave it to me." "Green suit?" the kid asked, intrigued. "I think I've heard of this guy. Yellow happy-face head, right?" I nodded. The kid snatched the envelope away. "I gotta check this out!" he said, ripping it open. "My bud Paul has one of these envelopes, and he says he's going to be making money by the truckload. I asked if I could have a copy, but he said something about already giving out ten." "Umm, kid, I don't know what that envelope DOES... supposedly it mucks with your brain..." The kid ignored me, engrossed in the text of the letter. His eyes stuck to the print, scanning line after line. He stood there for three minutes, unmoving as he perused the document. I started looking for a Cherry Coke to pass the time when he snapped out of it. "Whoa," he said. "Wow. That makes sense... that really makes sense! I must have been a serious chowderhead for not realizing it was possible." "What was possible?" "My idea!" he said. "I've got the ULTIMATE make money fast idea!" Make money fast? "It'll work!" he exclaimed, jumping up and down. "It'll work and it'll work GREAT. Bye, Nosty, I gotta go! I gotta go scrounge five credits and get some copies of this letter made." "Whoa! Wait! What's your idea?" I pleaded, but the kid was gone, jacked out and away. With MY letter. Still, something was very familiar about this idea the kid was talking about. I set off for the library, trying to figure out which words were giving me memory flashbacks. * Damn that kid! His stupid sorting program managed to completely screw up the Library's video index. Sure, the tapes were in their proper locations, but the labels were mixed up. It'd take a week at least to relabel them. The tapes were in alphabetical order, though, regardless of how they were labelled. I just had to poke around the letters and binary search my way to the specific topic I wanted. I had a feeling it'd be in the 'M's. One article about the Manson murders... some McDonald's Happy Meal commercials... Mandella (Nelson) is released from prison... No, no, no. I remember something about Make Money Fast, but it wasn't really wildly newsworthy on a reality level. It dealt with the net, in whatever incarnation it formed at the moment. It would probably barely get a mention. People seemed to enjoy ignoring or trivializing things they don't understand, and not too many people really grasp the importance of net. I ran through to the beginning of the 'M's, searching the 'MA's, poking through the lying labels with a stick in the dark. "--Rhodes was found brutally tortured and killed at his villa in Western Florida today," a newslady was reading. "The Coalition for Free Data claimed responsibility, calling the striking down of 'the net's biggest spammer and waster of bandwidth' the first in many acts planned against the Internet. The FBI are looking into the validity of this threat, but suspect it will not turn out to be any danger to the public. In other news--" No mention of some money-making scheme. I span the reel backwards a bit, skipping two articles in the Make Money Fast file. "--and in lighter news, users all over the Information Superhighway woke to find a chain letter written by one Dave Rhodes in their mailbox, and a copy of it posted to every 'Use Net' group. A lot of computer guys were miffed at this, and it has spawned some angry protests on the network to find Rhodes and 'make him pay for spamming us'. Good luck, guys, and have fun. At the city dog show--" Looks like they made good on that threat, I chuckled. Still, what was the problem? Sure, it's a waste of resources, but can't you just delete the mail and get on with your life? I twisted the Library viewer a few more degrees, moving on to the article I had accidentally passed over. "--net ground to a complete halt today as a group junior high school students on America On-Line proceeded to launch a program that would propagate the Make.Money.Fast file to any computer that could receive net mail," the newsman said. "Portions of the information superhighway, clogged with mail from the faulty, out of control program shut down. The students, who simply wanted to get the most money they could out of the illegal chain letter, are currently remaining anonymous until the legality of their actions is determined and a juvenile court date set." Whoa. That's why I remembered it... the Make.Money.Fast wars, just before the splitting of the net. The original burst of e-mail hit enough gullible users to produce a smaller burst, which produced another burst and shrunk at an exponential rate... ending after a few months, but causing chaos and flames beyond comprehension. This and the fabled Internet Worm were the only times in history that the Internet had to be turned off. The sheer bulk of chain letters and angry replies to chain letters did the net in. The infamous Dave Rhodes was finally tracked down and assassinated by a group of net.fanatics. So... someone's using a concept similar to and named after make.money.fast to get himself stinking rich. But even if the letter does what it says it will do, won't the users be richer than Dave... Rhodes the second? Who WAS he really? A mystery, but one that could wait. I shut down the library, vowed never to hire temp help again and jacked out. * I jacked in the next day, vowing to get those tapes sorted after I found the kid and officially fired him. Where to find him wasn't that hard; he liked to hang out at the Hackburger down the virtual street and impress girls with his stories of corporate ice and dangerous code. UberNet has always been crowded, but it seemed like a lot of them were on the street that day. Probably twice the amount that would normally be walking around... it's too easy to get pickpocketed or infected with a virus if you wander the streets all day. We never said UberNet folk were nice, just that they were cheap. "Shine your shoes?" a user asked, waving a cheaply rendered metal polisher in my face. "Just fifty credits." "Fifty?" I exclaimed. "For a little more shine on my nonexistent spats? Are you nuts?" "Hey, I'll have you know I spent a lot of time thinking about this idea," he said, waving the polisher threateningly. "I know for a fact that it'll work. If I charge more, then I only need a few takers to make money fast. It's logical." "I'd suggest lowering your price unless you want no takers. Excuse me," I said, pushing by him. My, the crowd was thick tonight. It had the street pattern, the dance of business... an annoyingly old metaphor, but metaphors circle around just as fast as cultures. Sickly guitar floated out of the crowd, chords that had the same waveform of a cat stapled to a moving garage door. Someone had coded a guitar VERY BADLY and was cheerfully sharing the results with Uber at large. So, being the spunky can-do UberNet type I am, I walk over to the offending musician, grab his guitar and break it over my knee. (It may be rude, but it's for public safety.) "HEY!" the musician exclaimed. "I spent all of last night coding that guitar! It was going to be my ticket to millionareland!" "I think the phrase is, how do you get into Radio City Music Hall?" I asked, handing the broken guitar back. "Huh?" "Practice!" "Huh?" "Whatever. Jokes don't repeat as well. Point is : You suck. How were you planning on making money off that?" "Simple!" he said. "If I can play badly enough and look sad enough, bystanders will take pity and give me cash. It's a pathos appeal, guaranteed to make me money fast. Kinda sneaky, huh? I'm real proud of it." "Did you read a letter, perchance?" I asked, seeing the obvious pattern. "Yup. Read it, sent the man in green five creds and copied it off for my friends. We're all gonna be RICH. Steve's got a lemonade stand one block over and Jill is prostituting artificial sheep." "SHEEP?" "She says it'll work," the guitarist shrugged. "Makes sense, since she read the letter too. It's good stuff. Dave is a swell person to share his business skill with us." "About how many people do you reckon have read that letter by now?" I asked. "I dunno. A lot. See the crowd? They're all trying to make some money. Since they're out here, they can be potential customers for me, logically. It's a great setup." "Great, except that if they need money themselves then they won't be paying YOU any." "Not very logical," he snorted. "Do you want a copy of the letter? It's great, clears up life's problems like lifting a fog. Sounds like you could use it. Just so happens I have my tenth copy ready to go..." "No thanks," I said. "Friend, you can't pass up an opportunity like this!" he said. "Whatever you're doing now is burger flipping compared to the cash you could be making!" "How much have YOU made?" "Nothing." "Doesn't sound like you're making money fast, then," I scowled. "Fast is a relative term. The letter says that. Here, have the envelope. I've got a guitar to reprogram," he said, passing me the letter and wandering into the crowd. I considered ripping up the stupid letter. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," a voice behind me said. "It'll make your dreams come true." I span around, face to face with Mr. Rhodes. "You," I growled. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing to UberNet. I saw the news articles from the nineties, the ones where a letter like yours ground the net to a halt. How much profit have you made off this scheme so far?" "Enough," Dave said. "Just enough to survive. I want to help people, really." "If this letter spreads as fast as it is, UberNet's gonna be overflowing with junior con artists." "Touche! They're all happy businessmen, ready to exploit any opportunity that arises. For instance, did you hear that Yttia Online is currently leasing out space on VOSNet to aspiring businessmen?" "Yeah, I heard. I couldn't afford it for my Museum." "That's BEFORE the price drop!" Dave exclaimed, grin extending beyond Silly proportions. "It's nearly free now. Ready for the claiming. Comes with a trial subscription to Yttia Online, VOSNet's premiere information service. Good data at good prices. I suggested that to them." "I get it," I said. "You come here, mung up the minds of everybody on Uber, and get them to exodus over to VOSNet's Yttia Online. I'll admit, it's one of the more clever schemes to destroy UberNet. The corps have outdone themselves. Don't think it'll work, though." "And why not?" "History repeats itself. You'll be dead in a ditch before sunrise." "Unlikely," Dave said. "The past is for fools like you who seem to want to cling to it. The future is for people like me that are always looking for new ways to succeed. You'll soon realize that. Lenny? Steve?" "Yes, Dave?" the two hulking users chimed in, fading out of the crowd. "Please knock out Nostalgia Man," Dave said, pointing to me. Lenny blinked. "Ummm... who's Nostalgia Man?" "Him!" Dave said, pointing to me. "Why should I be hitting him?" "Who's the one in the green suit?" Dave demanded to know, pulling on his tie. "I'm Dave, the green man who is going to make you money. Dave wants N.M. out of the way for the moment. Hit him." "Okay," Lenny said, pounding me. * The warning sirens lit up and my consciousness was pulled backwards. I laughed inwardly. Biotech is the ONLY thing that has not repeated yet, since nothing like it has been seen before. I happen to have quite a bit of biotech in me... it's how I collected my archives for the Library, through mind-fixes. Specifically, fixes that deal in information retrieval, storage and security. I'm immortal on VOSNet. My brain goes into danger money when you try to do anything to it (one reason why I didn't bother reading the letter). So, I may pass out, but I'm still alive. Not even heavy ice can crack the goods of the Dirty Dozen. If this Rhodes guy had wanted me dead, he did a lousy job of it. Give my brain five minutes to recover, and I'll be back in UberNet with a big smile on my face. I float in the red zone of protect mode, happy and bored, waiting for protect to go offline. KA-BLAM! goes the cheap cartoon sound effect of someone forcibly jacking me out of the net. My mind is pulled straight through the red zone wall, and back to its proper place behind my eyes. There are Lenny and Steve, not in the net, but in my living room, one of them holding the wire of my deck and the other holding me in my chair. Okay, this is not good. In VR, I may be a god, but in reality I'm just this shrimpy tourist with a golden oldies fetish. Danger levels are suddenly very, very real. "Let go of him, Steve," Dave said, from somewhere behind me. "You two go wait outside the door. I'd like to have some words with the Nostalgia Man." "Yes, Dave," Steven nodded, releasing his meaty grip and making a beeline for the door. The door shut securely, and I heard the dull WHUMPH of Lenny and Steve leaning against it from the other side. Dave Rhodes circled around to the front of my chair. He didn't look that different. Green suit, tacky beyond comprehension. The head wasn't a yellow happy face, but it might as well have been... it was the suave, aryan look that spoke of confidence, warmth and security. Politicians would kill for that face. Crooks would do their best to imitate it for a jury. "I did a little research myself," Dave grinned, his perpetual smile as wide as the one on Uber. "Nostalgia Man, AKA N.M., aka Nosty. Real name, Raymond Yankovic. Biotech implants give him the ability to absorb information, store and protect it. Has a suction-cup mental jack embedded in his left palm, which can be used to tap into the minds of others for information retrieval. Plus, he's the only person who could have heard of the make.money.fast file." "So you figured you'd just kill me in reality, where I couldn't fight back, right?" I said. "Not so!" Dave said. "Raymond... may I call you that?" "No." "Ray, I need people like you. Lenny and Steve make great influencers, but they're sheep, just like the rest of my proud hopefuls. They need strong leaders. I've gotten more people than I had ever expected, my letter propagating faster than the plague. Now, I could take what I have and apply the counteragent to the rest, but the ideal situation would be to let the letter continue draining UberNet until nobody's left there. Maximizes my profit at a minimal loss." "What does this have to do with me?" I asked. "Simple. I need people who can't read the letter. People who don't have squabbles with logic. People to manage, maintain and track the new immigrants to Yttia Online. You have the ability to store and retrieve information like that, and the skills to keep track of it all. We'd have to expunge your archives of those silly relics first to make room, however." Dave took my deck wire, and fastened it to my forehead. "I'm sure we can work by your little mind-lock together and get you on the right path. Let's discuss it." Before I could protest, Dave had my deck on and I was in the Museum proper. Dave formed in front of me, happy face head and all. Knowing how well this guy could warp minds over the network, I didn't want to take my chances battling him at a direct mental level unless I had to. But how could I elude him, keep my archives, and get away with my life intact? "You know, now what we're here," I said, "It gives me an idea." "I always enjoy good ideas. What is it?" "This," I said, pulling out the guitarist's letter number ten and ripping it open. I shoved the print in Dave's face, sliding over to keep his head aimed at it. "Have a taste of your own medicine, Mary Poppins," I chuckled. "A few paragraphs of this and you'll be a babbling idiot like the rest of the people you've infected." "This is good stuff," he said. "I should know. I've read it before." "What?" I asked, letter slipping from surprised fingers. "Of course! How do you think I came up with the letter idea? It's a great way to make money fast, I'm sure of it. It's logical and will work." I gaped. How dare this guy go off and infect himself with his own disease, thus preventing the hero from taking the typical route of poetic justice?! History had to repeat itself, dammit! That's how it works! "You probably think of me as some scheming, underhanded fellow," Dave said. "Not so. I don't work for Yttia Online. Well, perhaps according to them I do, but I personally WANT Yttia Online for my own purposes. I want to help people get there, so I can overthrow it, and provide business opportunities for all. The net has so much commercial potential, but these backwards UberNet types reject the net's true purpose! I just set them on the right path, bring them together, and make profit for all. To do this fast, which was promised, I need your help." Dave placed his palm on my forehead. Tiny intrusion programs fire, poking dangerously close to my red zone protector. "Hold still, please. I'm doing this for your own good," Dave said. How could he get by my security package? It was top-notch biotech! Already I could feel the nanites pushing past layer after layer, burrowing down to my precious mental archives. Alright... if we want to find out HOW, we ask the source. Not verbally, however. I press my palm to Dave's stupid yellow head, and ask his mind DIRECTLY. The torrent of information was overpowering. Dave didn't lead a very closed life, everything he ever wanted out in the open and for sale. Programs, schemes, future plans, everything laid out in indexed order. A tidy mind is a good mind. Good for those of us who specialize in thought-eating, that is. Dave's probes are like a blind child swinging a stick at a pinata compared to mine. Normally I ask for permission first to scan someone's brain, but hey; Dave didn't ask ME if he could poke into my brain, why should I return the favor? I ate it all, sucking copies of Dave's plots and programs into my own databanks. Then, I pushed him away, and jacked out. Dave was there, jacked into my computer and extremely surprised. I grabbed the deck off the table and smashed it across his jaw, spinning his silly grin around and sending it crashing to my carpet. It was so obvious, I thought, reviewing over Dave's stolen thoughts. You'd have to have impaired logic not to see the hole in your plan. I started to pull Dave's pants down. * "Is everything okay in here, Dave?" Steve asked, peeking in the door. "I know you told us to stay put, but we heard this noise and were worried that you might have been hurt..." "I'm fine," I said. "Here. I have new orders for you two. Take this disk and go load it into your computers. You'll find an envelope on it. It's a new money-maker, TWICE as fast!" Steve and Lenny gaped. "You mean... more money? Faster money?" "Faster than a Yugo on acid," I said. "Read it, and give copies to ten of your best friends. Plus, this letter's FREE! You've got nothing to lose!" Lenny and Steve practically climbed over each other to grab the disk. "We'll do it, Dave! Anything for the man in the green suit. We'll do it right away!" "Good for you two. I'll deal with N.M. here," I said, nudging Dave's slumbering, tourist-garbed form with my toe. "Have fun! Share the information." Lenny and Steve ran for the door, trying to squeeze through it simultaneously. That was that. I straightened my tie. Dave was probably smoking something when he wrote the code of the letter. Sure, his followers had to obey his command, but only because of his tailor... they'd follow anybody in that green suit. It must have seemed logical at the time, in a simplistic sort of way. The man in the green suit makes the rules. He also made the mistake of developing a counter agent. Why he did this and left it out in the open of his mind, I have no idea... maybe some of his sanity leaked back in and realized what it was doing. Maybe it was part of some demented logic game. The circle was complete. The net faced the chain letter from hell and defeated it again. Not by some terrorist swinging in on a rope to assassinate its maker, though. Oh well. My window shattered, as a terrorist swung in on a rope, quickly pulling out a blaster and placing it below my brainstem. "This is the END of you, Rhodes," the man spat. "No! Him! Him!" I said, trying to wiggle away. "I just changed clothes with him!" "Don't think you can weasel out of THIS. You'll pay for what you did to the last vestige of freedom on my net!" I worked a hand free (my left one) and palmed the terrorist's forehead, quickly dumping memories of the last few minutes into his head. He stumbled backwards, and I darted for cover. "Uhh... argh. My head," he groaned, groping at his skull. "Sorry for the forced injection," I apologized, "But I wanted to live." The man nodded, realization of what just occurred slowly hitting him, like a bat in slow motion. "I'm too late?" I nodded. "I knew this was a silly idea," the man said, grumbling under his ski mask. "I just got fed up with what I was seeing and thought I should do something about it..." "It's okay. You ought to take Dave with you anyway, so the media picture is complete. I'll fake a story to the police," I said. "We need to ensure that the script follows just as it did last time, or else make.money.fast might happen again." The man nodded, pulling the stunned Rhodes up to his feet. "Alright. Consider it done. When I'm done with him, he'll WISH I had killed him." "Who are you, by the way, so I can let the media know?" I asked. "William," he replied, before leaping out the window with the chain letter master in tow. I ran to the window to watch the two of them hit the pavement, but they were gone. Vanished. * The anti-letter spread just as quickly as the original, and UberNet resumed normal illegal activity a few days later, with a slight headache and a desire to forget the events of the past few days. After the much embellished news story I told the media, make.money.fast was declared illegal on UberNet and VOSNet. Occasionally you'd see some poor guy trying to restart it, dreaming of fortunes and riches, but they didn't last very long. Hopefully they'd try it on VOSNet, where you can just have your access revoked... UberNet types revoke other things. Rumors of this mysterious vigilante who had disposed of Rhodes for me flew, spawned on the news story. Rumors spread just as fast as little letters, but that's normal and in keeping with the way of things. History repeats itself, just like it should, and life goes on for all. Nobody gets rich quick, though. Okay, here's a repost of the first Christmas Episode, for those of you who may have missed it. Actually, it's not as bad as it sounds in the header; I think I exceeded it in spades with Xmas II. -=- A Future We'd Like To See 1.29 - The Christmas Episode By Twoflower (Copyright 1993) DISCLAIMER : This is quite clearly the most tasteless, gory, violent, repulsive thing I have ever written. It has everything a teenage slasher film has except the sex scenes, and that's just because I couldn't find a good place to put them in. It's really not suitable for children, or even adults for that matter... but if you've got a sick sense of humor and have watched the network holiday specials a few too many times, maybe it's time for you to read something like this. Thou hast been warned. * The ancient 8-track player crackled to life, as its play button was nudged by a nearby chunk of a store-window dummy. The archaic playback machine sputtered and whirred as the ground shook. "I'm, dreeeeaaming," it sang, "Of a white, christma--" It was silenced by gunfire. Chrissy ducked behind the counter as a line of stray machine gun fire ripped up the holiday glove displays. Screaming and covering her head, she crawled as far back into the checkout area as she could, avoiding the broken glass. "THIS YOUR FIRST YEAR?" the other clerk yelled at her from the other side of the tiny crawlspace under the cash register. "YES!" Chrissy yelled. "SO?" "DON'T PANIC," he shouted back, in a rather calm way. "IT'S LIKE THIS EVERY YEAR. HERE, LEMME MAKE IT A BIT QUIETER..." There was a scream of pain as another crazed shopper was plugged mercilessly with hot lead. Three shoppers immediately pounced on the corpse, looting it of gifts. The clerk shrugged and opened up a secret hatch under the counter, tapping a red button. An impenetrable force field popped up around the counter and behind-counter area, as Chrissy could see by the various bullets and blood stains sticking to thin air. The clerk frowned, and tapped another button, silencing out all the noise. "Much better," he said. "That should hold through the night. So this is your first pre-christmas sale?" "Err... yeah," Chrissy said. "Well, looks like you've come out of it better than most of us," the clerk shrugged. Chrissy looked down at herself. Her nice department store uniform was ripped and stained, her blouse missing a button and torn by weed whacker from the hardware department. Her normally every-hair-in-its-place look was now suitable for setting on fire and calling out to shepherds. Of course, the clerk was worse. Most of his tie had been shredded, along with his shirt. One shoe was missing and his pants had a few gashes, along with some makeshift bandages. Despite this, he was still grinning. "Come on, it's safe to stand up," he said, getting to his feet. "They can't get at us now. We're lucky we managed to get back here in time." "Why... what..." Chrissy stammered, looking at the violence and looting going on around her. "It's always this way around the holidays," the clerk shrugged as another arm hit the shield, followed a second later by the other one. "You know, last minute gift purchases, shortages of stock, rare items, the usual. Heck, I remember when they brought back Cabbage Patch Kids. We were wading around ankle-deep in fluid the next day." "How could people be so... so... CRUEL to each other?" Chrissy said, horrified at the insane shopper slugfest going on outside their shelter. "It's a sale," the clerk replied. "Oh," she commented, trying to look away from the carnage. "Say, umm, what's your name?" "How long HAVE you worked here?" "Oh, about three weeks." "Fair enough. I've been on vacation that long. Name's Jobe. What's yours?" "Chrissy," the girl replied, shaking hands with the boy. A bit of unknown stain was exchanged in the process. "Didn't they give you any training?" Jobe asked. "You know, the usual? Customer support, buyer satisfaction, small arms, wilderness survival?" "Well... no." "Humph. Cost cutting," Jobe humphed. "In my day, they'd have you out in the woods with nothing but a knife and a compass a good fifty days before today. The lucky ones that came back were usually hardened enough to handy the Holiday Shopping Nightmare. It's times like these that really try a man's soul... so how about some yogurt?" "Excuse me?" "Well, it looks like most of the battle is moving down to the audio/video department. We could always go to the Frozen Yogurt And/Or Croissant Shoppe on the lower level and wait it out. Unless they burned it down like they did last year." "Is it safe?" "Sure," Jobe lied. "Here, I've got a few bullet proof vests and some kevlar under the counter. Just a stroll in the park. I doubt anybody's planning on legitimately purchasing anything, so there's no need for us to hang around." "Surely SOMEONE has called the police!" Chrissy exclaimed. "I mean, this, this is MADNESS!" "Oh, the police are here," the clerk said. "See? There's Officer Wiggins beating up that working mother to get the Manly Morphing Energy Cowboys Action Playset. Boy, it's the last one left. I wonder if he brought his nightstick to defend it." * Jobe casually walked around the gunfights and beatings with a whistle and a smile, as he and his frazzled companion waltzed on in their sturdy armor. Chrissy counted at least six different local POW laws being broken just walking down the east wing of the mall. "WHERE'S THAT DIRECTORY?" Jobe shouted. "IS THE YOGURT SHOPPE ON THE FIRST OR SECOND FLOOR? I KEEP FORGETTING." "WHAT?" "DUCK!!!" Jobe shouted, jumping to the ground. Pausing only momentarily, Chrissy followed, as a surface to air missile slammed into left door of Herbert's Sporting Goods Store. There were a few screams of agony, the sound of a few thousand basketballs overheating and exploding, and the faint smell of burning flesh. "THE JANITORIAL DEPARTMENT'S GONNA LOVE THIS," Jobe laughed. "HMM. IS THAT A BLOCKADE UP AHEAD?" "LOOKS LIKE PILED UP OFFICE FURNITURE TO ME," Chrissy replied (loudly). "EEK!" "WHAT?" "SOMEONE'S TRYING TO STICK A KNIFE IN MY BACK!" "HA. THE ARMOR'LL PREVENT THAT. JUST IGNORE HIM, HE'LL GO AWAY WHEN HE GETS BORED. HMM. WE'LL HAVE TO TAKE THE ELEVATOR." There was a dull WHUMPH, and the elevator exploded into flames, littering bags of musical Battlestar Metallica ornaments over the fountain. Shoppers charged like lemmings on crack, clawing over each other to grab them. "WELL, LOOKS LIKE THE ELEVATOR'S OUT OF ORDER," Jobe sighed (loudly). "THIS IS NO FUN. WHADDYA SAY WE JUST GO HOME?" "WHAT?" "I SAID, LET'S JUST GO HOME!" "SOUNDS FINE HERE!" Chrissy said, as the man trying to stab her got bored and left. "ALRIGHT. YOU STAY HERE, I JUST GOTTA GET A BABY BURPEE DOLL FOR MY DAUGHTER. BE RIGHT BACK," he said, pulling out a large bowie knife and holding it between his teeth. He flashed a thumbs up and dived into the fray, swimming through the sea of shoppers towards the Toys Be We store. Chrissy wiped away some vomit from a nearby bench and had a seat, examining the lovely holiday displays instead of the beatings in front of her. Only about three of them weren't on fire, however. A Kiddie Hovertank from the top floor soared over the handrail, spinning out of control and exploding violently against the wall ten feet away. The blast threw Chrissy off of her seat and into the fountain, where she gurgled a bit before finding something hard and lumpy in her hand someone had dropped in the fountain. Pulling herself to the surface, she examined it. "GIFT CERTIFICATES?" she wondered aloud. The entire wing fell silent, as a few thousand pairs of eyes turned on her. Not on her, specifically, but on the plastic gift tokens valid through next year. ShopperVision(tm) only cared about these; Chrissy herself registered as just an obstacle in the way to the tokens. Several dozen shoppers pounced on her, displacing a great deal of water. All Chrissy could remember was the sight of twenty eyes, wide in insanity, gazing down in capitalistic greed as various blades, blunt objects, and bullets were slammed into her. * Her vision recovered before her brain did, which is fortunate, because the sights around her weren't pretty. At first she thought she had gone deaf, but this wasn't the case. There simply wasn't any sounds to be heard. All around her lay the corpses of the dead, with their bloody bags (now empty, as no gift is laid to waste) clutched in iron grips of death. Sunlight was streaming in from the overhead windows, and the muzak could faintly be heard playing a strangled version of 'Jingle Bells'. Church bells from across town could be heard ringing in blissful harmony. It was Christmas morning! "Rise and shine, kiddo!" Jobe said, moving into her frame of vision. "Boy, that took awhile. One Baby Burpee left in stock. Had to chase this guy halfway around town, but I finally got it," he grinned, showing her the somewhat battered doll. It burped. "Gurgle," she gurgled. "Don't try to move," Jobe said, applying more bandages to her. "You're lucky all the healthkits weren't purchased. You're really quite a mess. Had to pump the water out of your lungs, stop the excess bleeding, and all that... took two kits or so to patch you up when I found you here a few hours ago. Don't worry, the store's medical plan will pay for resettings, transfusions, plastic surgery, etc. No need for alarm. Just keep breathing. Say, you know what the funny bit is?" Chrissy nodded, head splashing against the red pool she lay in. "You're in better shape than I was after my first christmas here." * o/~ Should all aquantance be forgot, Somethingorother, aud long sang... o/~ Seasons greetings from us here in the future we'd like to see, and remember, there's only twenty more chopping days until christmas! And if you're the kind of person who took this story serious in any way whatsoever, you really need to get out more often! o/~ Should all aquantance be forgot, Somethingorother, aud long sang. o/~ ---- +--Stefan-"Twoflower"-Gagne,-net.writer-and-all-around-weird-character------+ | Ob.Inside.Jokes : YAPAPA YMMV AB PK I3 FWLS ABM MST3K RD6 TNG T7G MI2 MK | | LQTV DPW VOS KCIDAIDKW NIN STP OVA R1/2 DTP AKO AL TMBG FM AM SAM/MAX DOTT| | Finger for Cyberpunk Humor information and other fun materials. @whee. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ FWLS #64 and #65 kind of make a matched pair. One's depraved and the other is enlightening. I wouldn't recommend reading one without reading the other, even though the plots aren't linked in the least. If this story doesn't get me flamed, NOTHING will. :) -=- A Future We'd Like to See 1.64 - The Christmas Episode II By Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne (Copyright 1994) Hey, kids! Remember last year, when we took a blood-soaked visit to your local shopping mall? We're going right back there, and it's gonna be MUCH nastier this year. You are hereby WARNED that this story contains some or all of the following : kidnapping, torture, abuse, gunplay, cutting people up into little bits, n/c sex, mayhem, anarchy, disorder and other acts of EVIL. Huzzah. If any of the above offends you, don't read this. I don't approve of ANYTHING in this story, right up front, so if you go and bite the head off your mother or something like that after reading, you're a sick fuck indeed. (By the way, there will be cursing in this story. Errr... too late.) Also, this story is less comedic and slapsticky; there's a slight sarcastic and cynical edge, but I was aiming for more of a 'shot in the dark' pun intended this time. G'wan, taste the bile. It's fun! Thou hast been warned, regardless. * "Five credits buys you five Christmas wishes," I said, nudging the stupid little white ball on my hat away from the nth time today. "Ten buys fifteen. One buys one. Photos with Santa and the elves are five extra. Hurry up, lady, I've got to get out of here before the end of the hour." "So do I," she said. "It's almost time." "You think it'll happen again this year?" I asked. "Of course it will. It happens EVERY year. You can set your watch by it. I'll take five wishes and one photo." I ran the lady's credit card through the register, transferring her fee and handing it back. "Santa will see your son now." "Come on, Billy," she said, urging the kid onward, who was too busy being mesmerized by my red and white hat. Nobody quite knows why the Christmas Eve Riots happen, especially at this particular shopping mall. Each year, the shoppers come in happy and bright, and leave in bags. It usually starts once the shelves start going empty... polite requests to hand over an item turn into angry words, which become fists. Fists become brawls, with shoppers nearby getting involved, and eventually weapons are drawn and the war begins. Psychologists don't know what makes the shoppers go berserk, prizing packages and parcels over human lives. Maybe it's the color arrangements and light patterns in holiday displays. Maybe it's the stress of an entire life of family living building up into a crescendo of rage. Maybe people are just bastards. This year would be different, though. I wasn't gonna hang around this year, and neither were any of the other mall staffers. By mall administrative order, once seven PM rolled around (statistics showed this to be the approximate start of the bloodshed), all staff members would be evacuated by crack Not-So-Secret-Agent teams and lifted by shuttle to a safe distance. The doors would be sealed and sleeping gas would pour in, leaving the shoppers in a happily comfortable state before any major anarchy can erupt. A bold measure, yes, but over the last decade it has been proven again and again that nothing less than bold measures will work. Closing the mall for the day is no good, since the shoppers show up on the last available day. Riot police usually lose more in the ranks than the shoppers do, and after two years they officially protested being hired to guard the mall, claiming cruel and unusual punishment. Closing down the sporting goods store to keep weapons from flowing freely was no good, since the shoppers had proven they could break through the cheesy mall barricades; adding more barricades encouraged BYOB, Bring Your Own Blaster. So the mall was just going to clock everybody over the head with gas and call it a night. Sounded perfectly fine here. None of the shoppers knew this, of course... that would ruin the plan. The clock approached 6:50 when the man in the trenchcoat walked up to the Sit On Santa's Lap! display. "Five credits buys you five Christmas wishes," I recited. "Ten buys fifteen. One buys one. Photos with Santa and the elves are five extra." "I'll take one wish, and that's to get you out of here," he said. "Not-So-Secret-Agent #46336A. I'll be your personal escort out of the building tonight. Are you miss Stacey Q. Victim?" "Yeah," I admitted. "When do we go?" "NOW. All of the others have been evacuated already. The crowd is starting to get suspicious; apparently the lifelike dummies we left in place aren't fooling them. The staff is considering closing early, so we'd better hoof it." "Early?" I gulped. * I could see it in the crowds already. The tension had mounted all afternoon, building over missing items, out of stock gifts, and inflated prices. There was going to be a blow of anger, one after another, all coming down in a few minutes. The agent practically dragged me through the crowds, keeping a single hand locked around my wrist like a handcuff. I tried to avoid the bloodshot eyes of the soon-to-be-animals, and concentrate on getting to the door. We were dashing by the Chicken Inna Bucket, the last stop before the doors when we heard the noise. It was a great grinding of metal, as the newly installed blast doors started to descend. Another identical agent peered through the rapidly closing gap. "#46336A?! Jeez, hurry! We thought you were out already!" "I was in line for a photo with Santa," the agent said. "Sorry. We--" The first gunshot of the night rang out. A scream ripped the air, followed by another, and some angry shouts. The door sped up to infinite velocity, slamming shut and cracking the cheap mosaiced tiles underneath. We weren't on the correct side when it happened. "Umm," he said. "Did I forget to mention the doors were triggered to emergency-seal in the event of the riot breaking out early?" "You don't say," I mumbled, not sure how I was supposed to feel about this. "Yeah. Audio triggered. NSSAC spared no expense. SHIT!" #46336A grabbed me and dove into a side restroom, as a hundred-odd shoppers made a dash for the blast door, screaming and pounding. THEY obviously didn't want to be here, and were quite unhappy that they were sealed in. The agent shut the restroom door and pushed a few tin garbage containers in front of it. "This is not good," he said, listening to the moaning hordes just outside the door. "I hope you don't mind being gassed, miss." "Gassed?!" "We're inside the gas zone," he said. "Don't worry, I've been gassed a lot of times. Part of NSSAC training. It's not painful. Just inhale deeply." I inhaled. Once, twice, maybe six times, but I didn't feel very dizzy. Did sleeping gas have color? "Something's wrong," he said. "Something is VERY wrong..." The agent fumbled inside his trenchcoat, pulling out a cheap radio. "#51122, #51122, what the hell is going on?" 'The gas was supposed to be shipped fucking YESTERDAY!' the agent on the other end of the connection cursed. 'It's not here! Get your butt up to the roof, the brass is getting into a panic about this...' "So am I, #51122. I'm stuck inside a bathroom with my escortee." 'YOU'RE INSIDE?!?!' "Yeah, and let me tell you that I've got a wife and kids to get home to, and I'm happily awaiting rescue from this hellhole before it gets any worse." 'Fat chance! Nobody's allowed in or out. You're there for the duration.' "WHAT?" the agent screamed. 'Hey, you've got combat training, use it. Go hide out until morning.' "What about me?" I asked, getting more and more agitated by the second. "I don't have any combat training! I'm Santa's Little Helper, for crying out loud! The mall cut the budget for Holiday Survival Courses since they had this seal 'n gas plan." 'I'd suggest that you use rage on your escortee, we'll pick her up in the morning,' the other agent suggested. "Dammit, I'm not authorized to do that! It's not fully tested!" 'Your problem, not mine,' he offered helpfully. 'By the way, our shrinks say that without the gas, the door seals are probably going to enrage the crowd beyond any previously known limits. They're gonna be doing more than shopping. Good luck, man, #51122 out.' "You can't just leave me here!" the agent shouted, throttling the radio. 'I've got orders. Over and out.' The agent stomped over to a toilet and flushed the radio. "Suck that down, you bastard. Great. Just great. You know, I should have seen this coming. One more month and I retire. The soon-to-retire guys ALWAYS bite it." "I thought you had combat training," I weakly offered. "Combat training yes. I can take down an unarmed opponent one on one or hit three moving targets. Three THOUSAND is another matter," he said. "I'm doomed." "And me?" I asked. "Equally doomed. Unless...!" "What? WHAT?" "Nothing. I was kidding. You're doomed." I groaned, slumping down against a stall. "I don't wanna be doomed. I've got a future to think about and a term paper due after break." "Well... there is one thing... how bad do you want to live?" he asked, tentatively fishing through his many pockets. "Bad?" I offered. "Pretty damn bad. Why?" "Bad enough to put up with what could be the worst night of your life?" "If I don't live, this'll be the worst night of my life anyway." "Okay. Turn around," he said. "Huh?" "Just do it!" I shrugged, and turned around. The agent promptly stabbed me in the ass with a knife. I screamed in pain and spun around, as the agent was tossing an empty needle and syringe, not a blade, down the trash can. "There. You ought to live now. Wish they had given me two doses... damn these 'the victim is more important than you' laws..." "What the hell did you just do?" I asked, rubbing my sore rump. "I gave you the rage. Very experimental. Just remember, fear is the survival trig--" There was a deafening roar, as a running chainsaw blade jabbed itself through the door, cutting away at the locking mechanism. The agent's eyes went REAL wide behind the sunglasses as he fished around his pockets for something lethal, but the door was open before he could react. A group of shoppers barged in, plowing into us full tilt. #46336A was slammed against a wall, his nose jamming into the wall and leaving a bloody smear as his head was pulled away. I hit the stall I was leaning on shoulder first, a two hefty sized guys pushed me against the wall. Another pair took the spy and braced him against the wall. The boy entered. He was maybe seventeen, tops. A typical gothic punk, like some of the jerks in my grade, wearing a dark overcoat and inch thick glasses. He nodded to the men who held us at bay. "Good work, gentlemen. I take it you, sir, are a Not-So- Secret-Agent?" "Happily employed," he joked. One of the men grunted and punched him across the jaw, starting the constant flow of blood from his nose. "You, sir, have ruined my plans for the evening with your lockout," the boy said, pointing an accusing finger. "Take his coat." "Not the coat!" the agent pleaded. "It's the only way I'll be able to live--" One of the men pulled out a knife, and sliced the coat off the Agent, pausing only when it snagged on random bizarre mechanical devices which were hidden in its pockets. The coat clattered to the ground, spilling various concealed weapons and machines of unknown nature. "Throw him to the shoppers," the boy said. "They will enjoy meeting one of the people responsible for trapping us here." The two men grinned, and dragged the agent kicking and screaming out to the hallway. I could hear the chainsaw start again before the boy closed the restroom door. "You work here, don't you?" he asked, after the wet ripping noises and screams from outside. I nodded quickly, trying not to be scared to death. Who was this twerp? What was going on? Agonizing death at the hands of an enraged mob I could understand and expect but not this. Nothing organized. "You'd like to live, won't you?" he asked. "That seems to be the driving force of the night. I've studied it year after year, analyzing what goes on at this mall on Christmas Eve when the halls run red with blood. They all want to live, but don't want anybody in their way to live. I trust you are similar to them, and want to live?" "Yes?" I offered. Why were so many people asking me that question tonight? "I'd suggest you come with me, then," he said. "Now that the doors are shut, I fear my plans may be more gory than previously expected. Only those that have already banded with me will survive. Right, boys?" The two men nodded over and over again, grinning all the way. "Good. You two go organize the others and start a store to store search for valuables. You know what to do to anybody might have taken them already." "Yeah," one of the men said, pulling a battered chainsaw out of his cheap plastic shopping bag. "Cut your way through. Come on, let's go." The two men stopped holding me back, and made their way through the door, bodies barely fitting through the doorframe. "They're good men," the boy said. He rushed forward towards me, and I put my hands up to block any crazed attack... he wrapped something around my wrist... "Typical reaction," he said. "Arms up in fear. Fear is good. You'll notice your left wrist is twist tied to my right one... yes, the same twist ties used on those silly real life police dramas. They don't come off without the scissors I have back at my encampment. Don't worry, it's for your own good." "Who are you?" I asked, trying an experimental tug at the happy yellow bracelet encircled around our wrists. "Oswald P. Faraday," he said. "Controller of chaos. And you?" "St... Stacey Q. Victim. Santa's little helper," I said, kind of embarrassed. "Victim. How... cute. I could use the company; my men can handle the organized looting, leaving me very little to do. I planned to leave once they started to work, but it seems your friend in the coat has stopped that plan. Take off the hat." "Huh?" "The santa hat. You look like an idiot. Plus, it'll peg you as a store worker, and the last thing the mob wants to see is a store worker." I nodded, and ripped the silly hat off my head, tossing it in the garbage can that had been knocked aside. "Now, off into the fray," he said. "I'm wearing armor under this coat, but I'm guessing you aren't. Try not to die." * Fingers clawed at me, shoppers fleeing the chainsaw-toting looters under Oswald's control. Minor skirmishes stopped in a global effort to stay away from these people, who didn't seem to care if you were in the way or not; just nearby, within a rotating chain's reach. I tried to ignore the lumpy things I was stepping on, bumping from shopper to shopper as Oswald kept up an even pace through the carnage, facial expression unchanging. I was trying to swallow down my fear. Fear in a situation like this would only hinder you; if I succumbed to it, I'd be dead in seconds. It took all my concentration to avoid having Oswald turn around and see himself attached to a severed arm. The crowds were crawling over each other like reptiles, biting, clawing, shouting half-coherent bawls of rage. They attacked anything; potted plants, dead bodies, wall decorations of reindeer and happy little elves. One group was singing carols around a stack of burning shopping bags... I tried to ignore the leg sticking out from the bottom of the blaze. Another chainsaw guy walked alongside us, keeping the horde at bay as we made our way... wherever we were going. Occasionally a half-mad shopper would run in front of Oswald, shouting the ravings of the truly disturbed; Oswald would frown slightly, point, and the offending shopper's head would roll away so we could continue. Eventually we reached the Fountain Nexus, which was already tainted from the two bodies floating face down in it. This was the pride and joy of the mall, with tasteful flower arrangements (now mangled) and nice patterned carpeting (stained beyond recognition). Plus, the Crystal Elevator, a gleaming glass crystal with expensive carpet flooring sliding up and down its shaft, carrying shoppers between floors. It seemed stuck between floors at the moment, empty and waiting. I had never seen the elevator STUCK; it was controlled by computer, and couldn't break down. Oswald walked with me to the first floor elevator stop, and whistled a completely non-catchy tune. "Audio control," he said. "Same as the doors, I think... somewhat ironic, I suppose." The elevator slid to a halt before us, doors sliding open. Oswald ignored any attempts by me to protest and stepped inside. He held the door open with one hand and turned to our armed escort. "Make the final loots quick and easy," he said. "Then hole up in Unpainted Chairs and Tables until morning. I'll be on right here if you need me." "Right, boss," the sawman said, nodding in salute and walking away. Oswald tapped the door close button and the button for floor two. The elevator lurched to a start, and slid silently up the tube. When it was halfway up, he whistled another completely tuneless tune and the elevator stopped. He picked up a pair of scissors from the ground, and split the plastic strip that kept us locked together. I dashed to the other side of the elevator, massaging my wrist. "Something wrong?" he asked, setting the scissors down. "Why'd you bring me here?" I asked. Swallow that fear; fear isn't good to have. Ignore your fear of enclosed spaces and your fear of heights and fear of strange emotionless boys in dark coats that kidnap you... "Why not?" he said. "It seemed like the wrong thing to do at the time. I suppose I could have turned you over to the filth and had them tear you apart, but that would only be fun for a little while." "You're Generik Evil, aren't you?" I asked. "I've heard about you. You're sadists." "As much fun as my limited enrollment in GE was, it was that, limited," Oswald said. "They didn't like me because I planned things too far in advance. I wasn't spontaneous enough. I engage in spontaneity to have fun, but when business arrives, I plan. Generik Evil has the attention span of a flea." "I suppose I'm supposed to thank you for getting me to safety," I said. "You can if you want. Doesn't matter to me. Ah, the boys have moved on to the jewelry store... I wish they would have taken it first, all the good resale items are probably gone now. It means more time taken finding them and reclaiming. Not very efficient." "You organized all those guys with chainsaws?" "Of course. It hasn't gone off how I expected, but that's okay. Once the doors open, we can blaze out of here and get away before anybody notices. I get fifty percent of the take, of course." Oswald paced over to the front of the elevator, observing someone being drawn and quartered below with boredom. "Nobody ever thought to organize these little parties before. Just stop them, out of fear. You cannot stop an unstoppable force because you fear it, but if you bend it... twist the fear to your will... it can be a force beyond forces. I suppose I just capitalized on an opportunity." "But your... people are KILLING everybody!" "Carnage is carnage and would have occurred regardless of me," he said. "At least my carnage is productive and aimed, not the screams and thrashes of a blind man in the dark. Look; already people down there fear my shoppers. They're staying away, instead of blindly attacking anything with gifts. We have total control over the mall now." Oswald cracked something resembling a smile, reflected against the glass and back to Stacey's eyes. "You know," he said, "I'm beginning to like the holidays." "You're in my grade, aren't you?" I asked. "Correct. School is dull and pointless, so I rarely attend. People there fear me, which I enjoy, but not enough to put up with the rest of the dullness involved." "You sure as hell don't talk like someone who's seventeen," I commented, snotty like. "Proud of it," he said. "You kids talk like sheep. Baa baa all day about this and that. I consider it a great praise to not talk like them. Why, look!" He pointed to the scene on the second floor, where one of the chainsaw men had chased someone I recognized as the SGA vice president to the railing overlooking the first floor. He approached, but didn't slice or grind into the trembling VP... instead, he struck a dramatic pose and roared his saw. The VP jumped to his death out of sheer terror. "Perfect!" Oswald said, applauding but not grinning. "There's a man who has learned to use fear as a tool. I approve. Seems my weeks of training these drop-out, unemployed, pathetic wretches has paid off." Oswald turned to me, eyes drooped. "Do you fear me?" "No," I lied, holding down the fear I had and trying not to look down, or at the ceiling, or the walls, or HIM, or anything. "Ah. A challenge," Oswald said. "Since I have nothing better to do tonight, with my boys handling the profit margin, a challenge I can handle." "Ch... challenge?" I asked, dread bubbling to the surface in measured doses. "Everybody has a phobia," he said. "Maybe you're afraid of enclosed spaces. This cramped elevator, with transparent walls that don't look like walls so you can't tell if they're feet away or mere inches, and could close in without you even knowing it until you were pressed between them like bacteria on a slide..." "I'm not afraid!" I protested, keeping my eyes shut. "Or, perhaps the fact that we're twenty feet off the ground, and hanging on a razor thin cable... or that you could go crashing through the glass and fall, fall farther than ever to your death--" "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" I yelled. "Touche'," Oswald said. "My, this is fun. Let's see, what else can I do to instill a little fear... I could go to the first floor, where that mob there is, and push you out and watch as they do whatever they please with you. I might even laugh at that." "You're sick!" "You're right. Always be true to yourself, I always say. Let's recap; fear of enclosed spaces, fear of heights, fear of pain." "Exactly. Everything on the mark. Are you happy now?" I asked, vision starting to go. I was too afraid to think straight. I didn't understand all his words... it was like getting hit by a beer buzz without drinking anything. "Of course, I didn't mention pain exactly. Maybe it's something else that human can do to fellow human..." Fear was out of control now, oozing through my system and making me scrabble backwards against the glass and handrails. I wanted to get out of here, somewhere low, wide open and free of people that could do horrible things to me... "Let's experiment," Oswald said, pulling out two twist ties and affixing my hands to the railing I had backed up to. I was too stunned and confused to do much else. He started to unbutton my shirt. "Don't..." I offered, but knew damn well what was going to happen. I didn't want it, I was too afraid... "I would say relax, but it would be no fun if you weren't afraid," Oswald said. "Yes. I am DEFINITELY beginning to like the holidays." * I blacked out shortly afterwards. There were ghostly afterimages of pink and white, of things in my mouth and things all over me like pestilence swarming over a dead body. I had strange sensations of being penetrated, knowing exactly what was doing it. For some reason, in the black void, I wasn't afraid anymore. My fear had hit a high point and dropped suddenly, with new emotions bubbling to the surface, looking for a way out. I came to, still tied to the armrail but stretched out more. Oswald was still wearing his coat, but nothing else. "Okay, so that's three confirmed," he said. "If I said I you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?" "That's an old joke," I said, a statement of the obvious. It was the only sensible thing to say. So what if I was naked and alone in a mad world? It was an old, bad joke. He shouldn't be telling old, bad jokes. He's a fucking asshole. "I never tried standup comedy, and now you know why. You seem quite lively for someone who has been subjected to a cornucopia of personal terrors, violated multiple times. Why is this, I wonder?" "My ass hurts," I said. Which it did. "Odd, I didn't do anything to it. Honestly," he said, making a quick boy scout salute. "You're not in the right position for that." My ass did hurt. One pinpoint, one point of pain and soreness which was spreading until it covered my entire midsection. I hated the pain. I wasn't afraid of it, but I hated it and wanted it to stop. What was it that agent had injected me with earlier? It stung like hell and was making me mad, really fucking mad. Mad at what had happened. Mad at the dregs of humanity, lying in broken bits all around the mall. Mad at the stupid, pointless violence on a night which was SUPPOSED to be a celebration of peace. Mad at the stupidity of it all and this evil son of a bitch who was cashing in on that stupidity. I had a rage boiling inside of me, spawned on by the fear that I felt earlier, fear drained away and replaced by this strong urge to reach across the elevator and tear Oswald in half. "Ooo, we ARE lively. I suppose I can continue the experiment now. Let us go back to the original thesis; are you afraid of PAIN?" he asked, picking the scissors off the ground. "I'm not fucking afraid of anything," I said, gritting my teeth and pulling at the stupid little twist ties. "I'm not afraid of you anymore, and I'm not afraid of your little elementary school art class safety scissors." "They're quite sharp, I assure you." "Good. Then they'll cut through your fucking throat like butter." "I don't think I approve of this at all," Oswald said, backing off slightly. "Come on, play along and be afraid. Be a sheep like the rest of them. You were so much FUN as a sheep. I haven't gotten a good lay like that in weeks. Be my holiday gift and scream a little, will you honeybunch?" That teared it. Literally. I ripped directly through the twist ties, ignoring the searing fire of blood on my wrists as the plastic bit momentarily into the flesh. Oswald made his second facial expression of the night; surprise. Dull surprise, as I grabbed him and slammed him against the walls of the elevator, over and over again, wanting the little fucking turd to DIE. "RGRhgnh!" he suggested, no longer calm and sedate and radiating evil. "Don't! You'll break the walls!" "You afraid of heights?" I asked. "You afraid of crashing through the walls and hitting the floor, being ripped apart by the mob? Where're your chainsaw guys now, Oswald?" Oswald sputtered out another quick whistle, and an alarm sounded somewhere in the mall. "Coming," he said. "Now put me down, please." "I don't think so," I said. "Have you looked at yourself?!" he asked. "You're a wreck. Battered. Abused. Buck naked. Bleeding. You're in no position to be disobeying ME--" I slammed him against the wall another time, with more might than I should technically have. Part of the window shattered, glass fragmenting off his armored coat. I threw him against the floor, grabbed a long shard of glass, and rammed it through his shoulder. Oswald screamed, his first scream of the night as his shoulder was pinned to the soft carpet of the glass elevator's non-glass floor. A dagger of ice, rammed directly between the bones in his shoulder. "How's it feel? Afraid?!" I asked, ramming another shard through his other shoulder, despite the cuts to my own hands, which were unimportant. "Good. Fear is control, remember? I'm controlling now." "Stacey, please!" Oswald begged. "My plans are too intricate to have you ruin. You want a cut of the take? I can manage that. I'll even give you some of my fifty percent. Say, five percent?" I grabbed his safety scissors and held them near crotch level. "TWENTY!" he offered. "All I want is the code to lower the elevator," I said. "Whistle it. Whistle it or you change genders." Oswald quickly beeped out the tune without a tune, and the elevator sank to the first floor, unlocked from its stuck position. "There," he coughed. "Go if you want, get away from me. Sheesh, a guy tries to do you a favor and save you from the horde and this is the thanks he gets?" "Relax, I'm not going to kill you," I said, even though the fire burning through my brainpan screamed out for it. "I have other plans." "Terrific. Be off already." The elevator went *DING!* and the doors slid open, a group of five chainsaw guys standing there, confused at the sight of blood and nudity and other horrors. "Your boss told me he was going to cheat you out of your funds," I said. "Have fun." The chainsaw boys, already teetering over the edge of insanity, didn't need any more encouragement. I didn't need to look back; the sound was enough. The scream I had just heard, only remixed and extended. Rest in peace, dipshit. * That was the only other time of clear thought I had all night, through the haze of whatever drug the NSSA had given me earlier. I wandered the mall, dazed and pissed off, and found a place to defend in the door of a software store. First thing I remember is being angry at the sound of the chainsaws, and going after them. I think I might have gotten a chainsaw myself from one of them, because I tripped over hacked up super-looters all night, still clutching bags of jewelry and expensive stereo components. The actual fighting was a blur. The rest of the night was clawing and biting and scraping, trying to keep anything that moved and some things that didn't move from getting near me. I wanted to LIVE, and I wanted anything that didn't want me to live to DIE. It was a simple, clear cut motive, like the tolling of a broken bell that never stopped ringing. The shoppers learned quickly to stay away from the naked girl with the chainsaw who was stalking the software store, and I had to grab the boxes off the shelves and rip them apart, working off rage to keep from exploding. This continued all night, half-distorted mental images of reds and yellows the only solid glimpses I had into that window of time. The first thing I remembered hearing was the blast doors opening, followed by the ringing of the bells at a nearby church. It was Christmas Morning, the night of terror over and done with. I had survived. And I wanted the BLOODY BELLS TO STOP. I charged out of the software store... I didn't have the chainsaw anymore, maybe I lost it somewhere, maybe it was stuck IN someone, I can't remember. I remembered the group of Not-So- Secret-Agents crowded around the blast doors, and what they were saying... "...man, the stink in there... this is a mess. We're definitely not going to get the efficiency bonus on this mission." "Hey! Something's moving in there!" "Get your tranq guns ready-- HOLY!" "Get out of her way! Fall back!" "AARRGH, my leg, my leg--" "Drop her!" "Jeez, we've got three darts in her and she's just SLOWING?" "She's the one #46336A put on the Rage survival drug, probably. Come on, more darts! There we go." "She's crawling now." "Phew. Someone call the doc and get the antidote. And someone look for what's left of #46336A in there." "Should we report her? I mean, she is alive, and probably caused SOME if not most of the damage in there..." "Don't bother. There's no way we could get an accurate body count, and I'm guessing she's seen hell already... where is the doc? We need an antidote now!" "Hey, she's getting up! She's got six darts in her and she's gettingARRRRGh---" "MORE! MORE TRANQ!" "That's better. Man, we gotta ban that Rage drug. It's too fucking dangerous. DOC! Where is the doc? There you are. Hit her with the antidote already." I fell asleep after that; not a nightmarish sleep, or a dreamy sleep, just a sleep. One well deserved. * "You alive in there?" a voice was saying. #51122, if I recall from the radio conversation. That seemed so long ago, decades and decades... "Mmrrgh?" I said, trying to focus my eyes. "Don't move. We're busy treating your injuries. Man, I wish they'd tear down that fucking mall already, it's too much of a bother to try to cure it each year. You're damn lucky to be alive, kiddo. How'd your Christmas Eve go?" "Lousy," I said, forming each phonetic carefully, trying to look around. "I said, don't move! Sheesh. I managed to get you a little something from the wreckage... not much of a holiday gift..." I felt a warm and fuzzy sensation around my temples, as coziness and fur-lined safety spread over my painful body. "It's just a silly santa hat. I found it in the trash. You were Santa's Little Helper, right? I heard you say it on the radio, from last night. I think Santa'd be pretty fucking proud of you, kid." I nodded, neck hurting. "DON'T MOVE!" he repeated. "I've got to get back to the cleanup crew. Bloody insulting, making NSSAC clean up the mess just because we didn't pull the mission off 100% as planned... I'll stop by later to see how you're healing. Happy holidays, kid." "Happy holidays," I repeated, and fell asleep again, hat keeping my brain soft and numb and quite relaxed. I wasn't Stacey, the many-times-over victim, or Stacey the anger-enriched demon. Just Stacey with the stupid hat and the term paper due after the break. Just what I had always wanted. * o/~ Should all acquaintance be forgot, Somethingorother, aud long sang... o/~ Once again : Seasons greetings from us here in the future we'd like to see, and remember, it's always darkest before you get to open your presents. Unless they're all socks. And watch out for that strangely ticking gift wrapped box, it's a doozy! o/~ Should all acquaintance be forgot, Somethingorother, aud long sang. o/~ If you're looking for rampant silliness, go away. This one is not silly and doesn't try to be. -=- A Future We'd Like to See 1.62 - Red and White Night By Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne (Copyright 1994) Liberation is accepting that you're nothing but shit. That's what I am; excrement. Evil in nature and deed just because it's the only thing I'm good at. Society, on the whole, would be better off without me, but I'm not gonna go kill myself. That would be too easy. If society is going to cut away the cancer, it has to do it itself. I am a cancer; I've accepted everything I am, all the bile, the gristle and the dirt. It's a relief to have all the problems in your life cured in one fell swoop, that glorious tone of acceptance to the fears that you've had for years. I consider myself well adjusted, even if most psychiatric opinion would claim I'm insane beyond insane. I guess on their metersticks I am, but by the Generik Evil stick I'm actually quite tame. Some stuff the higher-ups in the chain of anarchy do make my stomach turn. The red and white lights of the ambulance flashing away into the night made my stomach turn. Always the aftermath, not the act; the act is pretty quick and relatively boring, but knowing what you've done and seeing what results is sickening. I usually just go home after a night on the town, but tonight I wanted to know. Never leave a job unfinished. She was only eighteen. If I had known... well, I probably would have done it anyway, just because that's what I am. I don't have a choice in the matter because I'm don't resist it. It's my nature. The crowd gathered, because all the world loves a good spectacle, around the police tape lines. Police. What a joking term. C'atel's police barely could handle cats stuck up in trees. They usually contracted out to the Not-So-Secret-Agent Corporation when they had specialty problems, since cops're only good at filling out forms. The emergency staff, however, has more training and had arrived at the alley before the cops did. Crack guys, those people. Biotech's a boon to lifesaving. I figured she should be okay, which isn't that good, because it meant I was going easy on her. It meant being merciful, which wasn't me. Well, this can be handled, I thought, fingering the hard object in my coat pocket. The medics, neatly clad in their red and white coats, wheeled her stained and shredded form out, whistling away, the cheery little bastards, thinking they'd have a chance. I pulled the pin and threw the frag grenade in a nice arc towards the stretcher, then walked away. I didn't need to look back; I had done what I set out to do. "Not bad," my contact said, pulling me into a nearby alley. I was expecting him; he always was nearby, when I went around at night. Kind of a demonic fairy godmother. "Hurrah," I said. "Cheer up!" the contact said. "That little number you pulled on her ass, coupled with the finishing kaboom is worth a lot of points." "I don't care about points," I said. "I swear, you've got no team spirit," he grumbled, folding his arms. "What good is Generik Evil if you can't tell how evil you are in a measured manner?" "I know I'm bad," I replied. "I don't need some lame-ass 'points' system to remind me I'm nothing but crap." "Remember what you were before I found you?" my contact warned. "Shiftless? Aimless? Pointless? A benign tumor on society. I make you malign, man. You were just a small timer then, a few muggings to keep yourself alive, theft. You're big time now. A real menace, racking 'em up. Your points count towards my total as your manager, thankfully. Now. Do you want to know your points or not?" "No." "Five hundred and seventy two," he said. "You rank third in the city. If you'd consider doing some fake occult slayings--" "No," I said. "No point. I don't want fake trimmings. It's not me." "Suit yourself. Goes against the Generik concept, though." "I don't care," I said, leaving the alley. Not much of a note to end on, but it was true; I didn't care. * I'd been a bad boy since real young. I'd love to imagine taking all the people who I thought had fucked up my life and roasting 'em in acid, filling 'em up with arrows, whatever. Pain. Not-nice stuff. Sometimes even people who I had no real anger against, just people I saw on the street. I choked these impulses back, though, since society told me they were evil and I wanted to be good. I wanted to be somebody, maybe have a wife, some kids, grow 'em up somewhere nice and safe where they wouldn't have to worry about life the way I had. Didn't turn out that way. Dropped out, flunked out, shifted out of the economic loop and had to struggle to live. Then the contact showed up and promised he could get me out of all that. I didn't mind; I thought I was a good person, and would only do what I needed to survive. Looks like I wasn't good at all. No way to go back now without denying the truth. If that's what I'm supposed to be, though, so be it. I'll kill and maim and generally run amuck if that's what I'm supposed to do, and keep it up until I'm stopped. There's nothing else I can do. * I ought to be getting home, I thought, watching her from across the table as I sipped my coffee. They're going to be looking for the guy who blasted the tar out of a crime scene, two doctors, and several innocent bystanders. I ought to be getting home, and I ought to be getting while the getting's good. I couldn't help it, though. She even came to me, for crying out loud. Singled me out in the entire bar of hormone-injected pricks to chat with. I like conversation, really, and always welcomed another opportunity to do stuff to someone, but I was in a rush. "Hey, don't drink that stuff so quickly," she warned, lowering my coffee cup. "Gives you heartburn." "I've felt worse," I said. "It's just coffee, anyway." "Around here, that's not a constant," she joked. "Never know what they put in that stuff. Good to the last drop, at least, until you get the shakes and need to come back for another drop." "That's nasty," I said. "Isn't it? I don't trust any bar around here. That's why I drink bottled," she said, flashing her shoulder-strapped thermos at me. "You never know who to trust." "Yeah," I agreed, finishing off the coffee. "I've really gotta get moving, though. Thanks for the idle chatter." "Hey, stick around awhile," she protested. "I've just started to get to know you. You seem nice enough." "You don't know me, lady," I said. "We can correct that," she said. "Come on, let's go to my apartment. My coffee can be trusted." I protested with myself. Not tonight, we've already called out the red and whites once. Just walk away and ignore her. Of course, it wasn't going to be. That just wasn't possible. "Okay," I said. "My apartment, though. And I promise that I have the finest 100% pure Columbian java in existence." "Yum," she said. "You lead the way." * I ought to turn a corner and lose her, so I could go home and get some rest. She was too groupie-like, just looking for a nice guy to bang and then go home in the morning, like quite a few others I've dealt with over the years. They all ended up the same though, with the happy little medics swarming over them, usually not able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Then it was time to file the forms and that would be that, I'd move on. This one was so willing it hurt to look at her. Very blatant in her desires, the twentieth sentence out of her lips suggesting a quick trip behind closed doors. It was sad. Some people only live for one thing. Well, I do, but not that thing. "So what do you do for a living?" she asked, sipping out of her thermos. "This and that," I said. "Odd jobs. Kind of random, just whatever happens to walk my way. And you?" "That and this," she said. "Kind of the same deal. It's fun, isn't it, being aimless? Always on the go, always with a different job. Different stuff to do. Occupies the days and keeps you active." "Yeah," I agreed. "Active." "Of course, it's been getting trickier to play that aimless game," she continued. "What with these psycho killers roaming the streets. C'atel's really had a problem with the Generik Evil lately." "Uh-huh. I read about it in the papers," I said. "Tonight they managed to kill someone who was just bringing groceries home." "How horrible." "My sentiments exactly. Cut her up, raped, mutilated. If that wasn't enough, when the medics wheeled her away, someone threw a bomb and killed a few people." "What's this city coming to?" she asked. "Remember when it was just a collection of slackers, most of them with guitars, trying to eke out a living in the rain? You could walk the streets at night then without worries." "I know. Bad people at night now. Louts, remorseless devils. I hate them." "Well, I've got you along tonight. You look strong enough to take on some Generik," she said, leaning on my shoulder. I was going to do it, of course, but this wasn't making me feel any better. Why do they have to be so eager? They know I usually pounce the eager ones first, the ones that are defenseless and clueless. That's what the paper said. More people should read the papers and understand the world around them. "I've always wanted to join Generik Silly," I pondered aloud. "Not Evil. Silly seems... nice. Happy. Zany. Liked by people, even if they do get into a scrape with the media sometimes. That's what I would have liked to have been, if it was possible..." "Why not try out for them?" she asked. "I hear they're not very strict about applicants." I winced. "I... I don't think I'd have the time to, with my jobs and all. You know how it is, work piles up, gets in the way of what you wish you were doing." "Ain't it the truth," she said. "I've been in and out of C'atel over the last few weeks. Odd jobs. Go here, do this, do that. It's annoying. I'm glad to be home, though. At least one night of fun before they could possibly ship me out again." Night of fun. Oh, the irony. Already I was trying to decide what I was going to do when I got home... I had a lot of possibilities, given my stocks of the tools of the trade. I wanted this clean, though, as clean as a senseless act of evil could possibly be. I wanted to go to sleep, not stay up all night working on my fucking points. I was in it this far; I'd finish it, but quickly and quietly. None of the contraptions, none of the blades, just the basics. Maybe one blade. I still had the one I cut up the girl from earlier this night handy, still wet with her blood. "Here we are," I said, tapping the code into my keypad. We proceeded up the stairs, to my archaic but soundproofed apartment. She followed, like a lamb to the slaughter. "Say, I was wondering," she asked, climbing ahead of me up the stairs, rear end swaying back and forth in front of me. "You said you read about another of those murders tonight. I thought the Times didn't have an evening edition." "I didn't say I read about it, I said I saw it," I said. "Remember? Ugh, what a sight. I can't get it out of my head." "Don't worry, I'll help you remove that nasty image," she grinned impishly. Ugh. I was going to be sick. "Which one is your apartment?" "12.." "G," she finished, finding the door and tapping the keypad. Hadn't I locked the door? "After you," she gestured. I walked in, quickly examining the place to make sure none of my tools were lying out in the open. I didn't want her freaking and running, because it would mean screwing up the path I was committed to for the evening. She walked in, and shut the door. "So, what do you do for fun around here?" she asked, adjusting her shoulder strap. "This and that," I said, my stock phrase when asked a tricky question. "Wait right here, I've got something I need to get from my bedroom..." "I don't think so," she said, blaster muzzle jammed into my back. "Hello. Not-So-Secret-Agent. You were disgustingly easy to track, Generik." I brightened up immediately. Wow! Here I was thinking the world didn't give a shit about me anymore, and someone took the time and the effort to hire an agent to come and kill me. I was hated, recognized for what I was. It felt wonderful. I was going to die the only way I could. "Over to the chair," she said, physically pushing me over to one of my kitchen chairs. She pulled her thermos on a strap off and over her head, securing it behind the chair. The strap automatically tightened, lashing me to the chair, arms pointing downward. "Neat," I admitted. "Thanks. One of the many toys we get to use," she said, walking around to my front, blaster still pointed at me, rock steady. She tugged at her ear, and twisted her mouth to try to talk into it. "Agent 7659. Target acquired. Pickup." "Pick up?" I asked. "What, you're not going to kill me?" "No. You're going up the river, pal, for what you've done," she said. "Nice and legal, just like the old days of courts and law. On NSSAC's jail, of course, since there isn't much of a court system anymore." "What, you're putting me away? Why? What's the point? I'm a killer, a murderer and rapist of all people. I'm supposed to DIE, not live." "Rehabilitation. NSSAC doesn't believe in pointless violence, unlike you," she said. "We're going to make you a fully functional member of society." "I was one once. It wasn't very enjoyable. The pain of never knowing what you were, always in self doubt. I don't doubt myself anymore; I know I'm scum. It's a warm feeling, in a way. I don't want to be brainwashed into that state again." "I'm not here to kill you," she said. "You could be a nice guy if you wanted to be. A Silly, if that's what you wanted to be. Just go with us quietly, and you won't have to die." I considered this. It was a way out, a way to fit back in and not have to perform on the public again. What would I be, though, after? Happy? I have no talents, no skills, no goals other than to kill. I'd be less than nothing. I'd be nice, not- self. No; I had to get out of this, or die trying. She was sloppy. Didn't even notice the knife in my back pocket, trusting her silly thermos to do all the work for her. Some agent. Society would have to do better than that if it wanted to take me down. I was what I was and nobody could take that away from me. I may hate myself, I may curse my existence on earth, but I would NEVER claim to be something I'm not. I sliced the strap -- with all that tension, it cut easily. I jumped forward, just under the gun barrel, and drove the knife home. She yelped, advanced NSSA biotech keeping a reign on her pain. The blaster, however, dropped out of her hands. Luckily, she happened to be right next to my toy cabinet. I opened it, grabbed the nearest item (a nice rakelike device) and slashed up her back. She grunted, as the rotating pizza blades sliced open her thin shirt and made gashes. She groped around the floor for her gun. The gashes weren't very deep... the shirt must have had some kind of armor in the fabric-- ZAPPIE! went the blaster, in some cheesy cartoon sound effect as the orange blob of energy zipped across the room, burning directly through the arm that held my multi-knife. The hand and knife dropped to the ground, burnt socket cauterized in some places and openly bleeding in other. "Shit!" she yelled. "I thought I had the stun setting on... relax, I'm calling 911 for both of us," she said, tugging at her earlobe again. "911, emergency." "Good job," I sputtered, coughing up blood as I felt the gory remains of my arm. "Not good enough, though." I took another item from the box, a short sword. Very medieval. I advanced on her, bleeding and dizzy. "Are you nuts?" she said, sliding backwards, despite the back wounds. NSSAs always had an admirable ability to soak up punishment. "Put down the knife or I'll shoot!" "I'm not going to jail," I warned her, getting ready to behead her. "You want me stopped, you stop me. Not this, not this half-assed attempt to be nice. That's just not sane for something like me. Now shoot or die." At first, I thought she wasn't going to shoot. She just looked on, horrified at me, like the others. This was going to be too easy. She stormed into the apartment to rob me, I used my ancient weapons collection to fend her off, and eventually managed to kill her. Self defense. The red and whites could reattach the arm and I'd be back to my old tricks in days. Then she shot, blaster setting unchanged as the bolt burned through my ribs. I fell backwards, most of me escaping through the new gap. Much better; if you're going to do a job, you do it all or none of it. I died knowing who I was, the happy little sirens of the medics pulling up to my apartment building in standard quick-response fashion, red and white lights flashing away into the night sky. I tried something like this once. It didn't quite turn out the same way but was just as fun. Please ignore any reality errors in this story; Normal says there aren't any. -=- A Future We'd Like to See 1.61 - Overnight Success By Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne (Copyright 1994) "Garage band," I said. "We don't know how to play music." "Okay, a BAD garage band. Come on, man, we've got NOTHING better to do," I said. "It's Friday night. It's a happenin' time in the C'atel area. School's out. We don't have any damn projects to worry about. We have time to kill and a way to do it." "We can't play any instruments, Matt." "That doesn't matter. You've got a drum beat sequencer on your deck, right? We'll use that instead of a drummer. I have a toy guitar. Franny has a lot of samples and a cool keyboard. It'll WORK. And if it doesn't, we've successfully blown the weekend and had a fun time doing it." "Matt man, you're nuts. You know that, right? I mean, last week it was art. The week before, you were racing remote control cars. Now you wanna form a garage band." "Point?" "Point is that you're acting silly. You ALWAYS act silly." "Nothing wrong with that," I said. "A little silly will do you some good, Jack. Now get over here and bring your deck. I gotta call Franny." "Yeah, yeah, whatever," Matt said, clicking off his holophone. The image snapped out of existence. I grabbed my notebook (since the miracle of memory eludes me) and looked up Franny's number, dialing. "Yeah?" she asked, hopping into frame. "Franny. We're going to form a garage band. Drag a collection of weird samples and your keyboard over." "Okay," she said, and clipped the link. Well, that was easy. Certainly easier than Jack. Jack typically didn't like my spur-of-the-moment ideas. Always called them silly. I don't mind; they ARE silly, that's the whole point. Who cares if they take up time that could be used raising the GNP or your GPA? See, adulthood, conformity, and boredom are like burglars. They study you for the first ten or so years of your life, watching you do all sorts of meaningless yet fun things. Then, they cautiously slip into your mind under the guise of logic and wisdom. Once in, you can almost never get them out, and spend the rest of your dreary life wondering where your sense of adventure went. Where your wacky ideas went. Where your inclination to do spontaneous and zany things like see what happens when you fill a balloon with maple syrup and throw it went. Kinda hard to avoid happening, especially in your late high school years where the pressure's on to 'make something of yourself', but I manage to avoid the pitfall of Seeking Success. Like a garage band. We wouldn't get a contract, we wouldn't make a million credits, we'd be wasting time but it would be fun and pointless and that's all that matters. I'm a proud member of Generik Silly and strive to seek that level of wackiness. Franny's an aspiring one. She's got the drive and the randomness down pact, but her attention span rivals that of the common flea. Well, mine is no great span of history either, but it's enough to finish whatever I happen to be doing at the time. Jack's got an attention span that rivals most rock formations. You could plop him in front of the learning channel and come back two days later to watch him staring intently at the screen, alert and alive. KNOCK KNOCK. "Come on in, Franny," I called, not needing to check who it was. She always arrived first. "Where should I set up?" she asked, supporting the weight of a cheap keyboard and a slew of flopticals under her no-workout arms. "Garage, obviously," I said. "Can't be a garage band without a garage." "You don't have a garage," she replied, setting the gear down on my bed. "This is an apartment." "Okay, we'll have to construct a garage first," I said. "Then we can play." "I'll go get some wood," she said, and promptly left. Always quite the go-getter, that girl. I examined the disks. She never labelled them; that'd take more than a millisecond of concentration. Quite silly in a way. I remember her turning in a computer project that sorted a series of integers and accidentally handing in a disk with 1001 Ways to Cook Monkey on it. Luckily the teacher liked monkey and excused her to go get the real disk. Wacky, no? KNOCK KNOCK "Hello, Jack," I said, opening the door for him. "Alright, I brought the computer," he said. "Where's Franny?" "Getting building supplies. We lack a garage." Jack blinked. "You're going to build a garage?" "Of course. It is requisite." "WHERE?" "Oh, I don't know. The roof? Although the landlord may not appreciate that. Can we build one at your house?" "Why do you want to build a garage?" he asked, still not getting it. "Okay. I'll put it in small words. We're going to be a garage band. Can't exactly do that without a garage." "This is nuts," Jack said. "WHY do I hang out with you? You never take anything seriously. If we're going to try to play music for some weird reason, we don't need a damn garage." "Perhaps if we decided to do jazz," I mused. "I don't think we'd need a garage then. Just a bunch of those neat wooden stands like they have in big bands, with the painted logos." "How will we play jazz with no trumpets?" "It'll be neo-jazz. A new wave of jazz. Usually played via keyboard, guitar and synth drum." KNOCK KNOCK. "Come in, Franny," I said, spinning in my office chair just for the hell of it. "I couldn't find any wood," she said. "But I spotted this in a toy store window..." She held up a kit for a garage, at 1/50th scale, for use with model train sets. "I got us some model glue too, in case you didn't have any. You owe me five credits and change." "Okay," I said. "We'll build the garage later. For now, let us start to be jamming. Blues riff in G, high beat and follow me for the changes." "Check," Franny said, slipping a floptical into her keyboard drive and loading up some random set of noises. "What should I do?" Jack asked. "Drum something," I said. "Okay, here we go." I've been playing guitar for years, and have become a master at the art of the chord and fret reach. No; that's not entirely true. Actually, I suck. I go under sucking and straight into the negative-suck range, making it sound a lot like torturing mailmen than anything resembling music. But talent be damned, I was now a proud member of a garage band and I was going to play. I strummed the three strings (the rest had broken off when I tried to slice cheese with them) and tried to maintain a regular pattern that sounded somewhat like a Net Will Eat Itself song. Franny started playing broken glass noises and something that resembled Zamfir being burnt with cigar butts. Jack shrugged and tapped out a snare occasionally. "Okay, now we pause for the reverb effect we'll be editing in later," I said, checking my watch. One second... two. "Resume." I reached into the higher chords, wondering if I could make glass REALLY shatter. Franny took it upon herself to start playing Bach backwards and Jack stopped tapping, looking repulsed. "We suck," he said. "Big deal. Stomach Contents, the great granddaddy of all grunge also sucked when they started," I said. "Okay, I think we've practiced enough to start a recording session." "Whoa. You're making permanent copies of this shit?" Jack asked. "Of course. We'll need it in the event of a talent scout coming a-knocking," I said. "Alright, but leave my name off it," Jack said. "I am not proud of this." "Cheer up, Jack! We've got quite a night of hip dope fresh beats and grinding riffs to get through. Alright, first song. What should we call it?" "'Don't listen to this'?" Jack suggested. "'I bite the demon pancreas'," Franny stated, loading a new disk. "Okay, that works. We'll make it a cool intro with only synth. Can you handle that, Franny?" "Check," she said. "Start the tape." I pushed Record, wiping the bubblegum I had stuck to the button off in the process. It's hard to describe the noise coming out of Franny's cheap speaker, but it was something like this : a scream, three gunshots, some random orchestra hits, several pigs bweeing, a cut drum beat from a generic pop song, some political sound bite, and a repeating dull thump that could only be Your Digestive System in Action. This built up into a crescendo until she tapped out three random piano notes and stopped. "How's that?" she asked. "Great," I said, stopping the tape and writing on the cover. "Okay... bite... pancreas... one minute. Next?" * The demo tape lasted about sixteen minutes and included four tracks : Bite the Demon Pancreas, Frodo's Revenge (a lovely little number which had me reading from Tolken while pumping out chords), All My Lego Bricks Have Been Dropped in Acid (Jack reluctantly sequenced a rather catchy little one-two for it), and two minutes of silence entitled Trapped in an Invisible Box. "Why is it silent?" Jack asked. "It's a visual interpretation," I said. "Didn't you see the hand gestures?" "Yeah, but how are those going to get on the tape?" "They aren't. For that, they'll need to buy the video," I said, pulling my camcorder out from under the bed. "Okay, what do we do for costumes?" "That's it, I'm leaving," Jack said, collapsing the archaic two-dimensional screen of his computer. "Audio okay, video no. That's ridiculous. I mean, what if someone was going to see this stuff?" "We'd be heralded as musical gods who speak with the voice of our generation, of course," I piped in with, smiling. "Cool," Franny admitted. "No, we'd be laughingstocks. I'd like to graduate with my reputation intact." "Okay, no live video," I said. "Animation is good. I'm thinking something along the lines of a massive war between these anthropomorphic enema bags and a group of flightless waterfowl." "My cousin owns a penguin," Franny said. "We could borrow it for the shoot." "That'll work. Jack, could you run down to the drugstore and pick up fifteen or so enema kits?" "No!" he said. "Could you imagine the looks I'd get? FIFTEEN enema kits? Ugh!" "Jack, whatever happened to your spirit of adventure?" I asked. "Heck, I remember a time in elementary school when we formed a small dictatorship around the tree in the playground. We had a charter, rules, and even public executions, at least until it was time for math and we had to go back inside. That was fun." "That was childish," he said. "And so is this. If you'll excuse me, there's a special on Yttia I really wanted to watch on HV." KNOCK KNOCK "Probably our recording agent now," I said. "He heard us through my window and just had to meed the music gods." "Uh-huh," Jack said, slumping into his chair. I opened the door, and a man in an expensive suit peeked in. "Hello, were you the folks I heard playing music?" "Yup. Do you want to sign us up?" I asked. "Yes, in fact. Your music carries a powerful undertone of hatred against the system that our label, Oppression Records, specializes in. Do you have a demo I could borrow to make a press release copy of?" "Right here," I said, leaning over to eject the digital tape. I passed it over, and he pocketed it. "What's your band name?" "We don't have one yet." "Very good. The faceless unknown, toiling endlessly. I like it. Here's my card. I'll get back to you tomorrow morning," he said, leaving. I pocketed the card. "Well, that wasn't so hard, was it?" I said. "Did you pay that guy to come here and put on that act?" Jack asked. "Of course not. I've been here all night. Logic, Jack." "You mean that guy was real?" he asked. "Seemed real to me. Well, I guess we now have something to do this weekend. We'd better practice. Okay, Frodo's Revenge on three. One, two, five--" "Three," Franny corrected. "Yes, three," I said, starting into what I thought was the first note. Probably I was off by several octaves, but that's okay, music is a constantly evolving artform. "Jack, drums, please." "Oh, alright," he said. "I guess the night can't get any stupider, might as well go with the flow. How'd Frodo's whatsit go again?" "Something like bass hihat snare snare repeat. Or maybe just snare repeat. Improvise. A one and a five and a--" * My holophone rang and rang. Normally I don't like to spring awake on weekends; my body doesn't contemplate neural firing before eleven AM. However, a phone call is a phone call and a grapefruit isn't one, so I answered it. "Greetings," the agent said. "Say, what're the names of the band members? We need them for the album cover." "Jack, Matt and Franny," I said. "Anything else?" "Yeah. Go to the corner of Keister and Fifteenth. You have a gig in six minutes," he said. "Alright," I said, closing the connection. See? The weekend wouldn't be dull at all. I checked my notebook again and rang up Franny. "Yeah?" she asked. "Keister and Fifteenth in six," I said. "First concert." "Okay," she said, and cut the line. Jack, dial dial. "What?" he asked. "Keister and Fifteenth in six, we have a gig." "A what?" "A gig. A show. A time. A happenin' event. A concert." "Ha ha, Matt." "No joke. Our agent just phoned it in." "SIX MINUTES?" he said. "But we haven't even gotten an album out!" "Apparently we have. The music industry moves fast, you know. Gotta keep up with pop culture." Jack considered this. "This is insane. This is completely insane and I'm going along with it. I have no idea why. Okay, I'll be there in six minutes." "Five now," I corrected, tapping my watch. "Then five!" he stomped, holoconnection fuzzing. "I'll be there. We're going to be lynched on grounds of good taste, but I'll go anyway. Call me self destructive." "You're self destructive," I called. "Hurrah," he said without enthusiasm, and hung up. * The Pit was a club that looked like a club named The Pit. It was a pit, and a club, and was very pitty in its clubness. A sizable crowd had started to grow; apparently the current trend of Saturday morning concerts had really caught on. "Hello there!" our agent called out, spotting the three of us in our non-tooth-brushed, just-got-up grunginess. "Hey, I like the hygiene. It says something remarkable. Okay, your costumes are backstage and you're on in two minutes." "What are we supposed to do?" Jack asked. "Just play three tracks off your new album," he said, waving the freshly pressed CD2 at us. "Hope you like the art. We paid several million for it. We left off a band name or an album name since you didn't specify." "I like the costumes," Franny said, pointing to the rack. On three coat hangers were three costumes; one black in Franny's size, one grey in my size, and one white in Jack's. Although his wasn't as extensive. "What's this? A sock?" Jack asked, picking the single garment off his hanger. "Yeah. We'd like you to put it around an erection," the agent said. "Kids go for that." "I don't think so," he said, tossing the sock over his shoulder. "What I'm wearing is fine." "Okay, even if it is a bit old fashioned," the agent said. "Well... no. On second thought, you three stay the way you are. There's a certain purity in original design. Okay, you're up. On stage you go," he said, giving us a push. "But--" Jack started, and was cut off by thunderous applause and burning lights. "Cool," I admitted, strapping on the guitar and picking up what looked like a jack to stick in it. Franny pulled over a discarded and bent keyboard stand and loaded up a disk. "Jack, get booted up," I said. "We're on." "There are people out there!" he said, pointing to the happy crowd, swarming over itself in an effort to... I'm not sure, but whatever it was they really wanted to do it. "Of course. It's called an audience. Okay, Franny, do Bite the Demon Pancreas while Jack and I get set up." "Check," she said, immediately launching into the horrific mishmash of samples. The speakers launched to life, the crowd wailing in appreciation. "DO YOU HAVE YOUR DRUM PROGRAM?" I asked Jack over the noise. "OF COURSE," he said, turning on his old computer. "I'VE GOT SOMETHING RESEMBLING WHAT WE DID LAST NIGHT PROGRAMMED. I JUST TAP A KEY AND IT GOES." "LUCKY. YOU GET THE EASY BIT. SHE'S ALMOST DONE. LET'S DO LEGO BRICKS NEXT." "WHATEVER," Jack said, keying up the sequence into his simple shareware drum synthesizer. Franny's Pancreatic exploration ended with the three random piano notes, sending the crowd into hysteria. "Are gonna die?" Jack asked, able to talk over the lack of Franny's 'music'. "What makes you say that?" I asked, tuning up, or doing what I thought tuning up was. "They look a little rowdy." "Don't worry, they're okay guys. They probably just want to eat our livers so they can possess the healthy vitality our band possesses." "WHAT?" "Lego on three," I reminded him. "Three." He started the catchy beat (pop all the way, baby) and Franny quickly loaded her plastic-bonking and acid sizzle effects. I strummed the notes in something resembling the original order they came in. How'd the words go? Oh yeah... o/~ Mom burned all my motherf**king lego bricks o/~ (With a bleep from franny to keep bad words from hitting our audience's ears. We're not barbarians, after all... o/~ Plastic melting on my carpet She wants me to clean it up So I put 'em back in the box They stink up the room But I don't care All my lego bricks have been dropped in acid All my lego bricks have been dropped in acid But I play with them anyway My hands are scarred My arms are burned Ma wants me to throw 'em away But I'm not gonna Just cuz she hates them All my lego bricks have been dropped in acid All my lego bricks have been dropped in acid But I play with them anyway My creations look cooler Deformed lumps of plastic I like it better this way She tries to take them away But they're mine for good All my lego bricks have been dropped in acid All my lego bricks have been dropped in acid And I'll always play with them anyway. o/~ The crowd seethed with joy, climbing on top of each other to rush the stage and cheer us on. Force fields keep that from happening, of course (got to keep the band safe). "That was actually kinda good," Jack said, reading the Tolken novel I had brought along while his computer did the hard work. "We were good? Foo! I'll try not to let it happen again," I said. "Okay, I think I'll do Invisible Box." "You can't, stupid. It's not a song." "Art is art. Franny, can you short out the field there, please?" "What?!" Jack asked, lowering the book and casting a nervous eye at the crowd. "With THEM around us?" "Shorted," Franny said, as the air crackled with ozone. She dropped the two wires she had tangled and nodded to me to continue. "Alright. Invisible Box," I said, making mime motions in the air. The crowd loved it, trying to pattern this new dance. I took a deep breath and jumped into the crowd, landing on top of the pulsating mosh pit. * "Did you see when he was doing mime while being passed around..." "I had legos when I was a kid, I really miss 'em... *sniff*..." "That Franny can really play!" "Yeah! I almost achieved orgasm when she hit the end of 'I Bite the Demon Pancreas'!" "I've got to get the album!" "I NEED the album!" "They seem happy," I noted, pulling my head back in from the gap in the curtains, shutting off the crowd conversation. Jack was shaking his head, dazed. "They liked it," Jack said. "They're buying the 'album'. They're actually paying good money for it. Why, Matt?" "They like it. You said it yourself. If you like the music you buy the album. Maybe we'll get to do that video after all." "This has been the most surreal weekend I've ever had," Jack said. "Last night I was goofing around on a computer program and now I'm a musician sensation. This feels so funky." "Cool," Franny repeated from earlier. A fanboy slid up to her, having sneaked by the backstage guards. "Franny? Can you sign my head?" he asked, pulling his hair back from the scalp. "Your samples speak to me in ways that no mortal being can." "Okay," she said, uncapping a pen and scribbling her name backwards on his head. "Now you can see it right in mirrors." "Thanks!" he said, before the backstage guys noticed him and drug him off. Our agent walked up, grinning and waving his arms. "Take! The take's good!" he said. "We've made two million in album sales around the galaxy. You're getting a lot of airplay. Mind doing C'atel stadium tonight?" "What?" Jack asked. "No problem," I said. "Here's your cut for royalties," he said, flashing a green temporary credit chip with many zeroes on it at us, and handing it to Jack. "Transfer it among yourselves as you see fit. To the top, baby! You're going to the top! See ya tonight at seven." Jack eyed the figure on the card, as the agent retreated. "Matt, pinch me," he requested. So I did. "Ow," he said. "Okay, so this is real. Did we really just make this many credits for improvising four splatters of sound?" "Splatters! Good word choice, Jack. You're getting better at this lunacy stuff. Yeah, it's true. I wonder what I'll buy with my cut." "I'm gonna get a new car!" Jack beamed. "I want a doughnut," Franny said. "Me, maybe I'll buy enough raspberry jam to fill the school and then do just that," I mused. "Or maybe I'll just give it to Save the Lemurs." * Our second concert. Packed house, C'atel Stadium. Word got around really quickly about our untitled band with the nameless four track CD, and soon everybody had a copy. The stadium was awash in fans that had tried to dress in our early morning, thrown on regalia; emulating the band in any way they could. Some sported fake glasses that matched Frannies. Many had lego bricks or fantasy novels. "Gang's all here," I noted, looking around the curtain. "This gets more fun by the minute. Hey, Franny? Go play Pancreas for them while Jack and I ponder life's many mysteries." "Okay," she said, plugging up her keyboard and walking on stage. The crowd exploded in rolling waves of applause, shouts and pledges of undying obedience to Franny. "This may be ridiculous, but it's the most fun I've ever had," Jack noted, booting up his computer. "I'm a star. Wow. I'm actually famous. I've got a serious bank account and I'm recognized on the street." "Me too," I said. "Some girl bumped into me around lunchtime and offered her body to me if I'd do the Invisible Box routine for her." "Did you?" Jack asked. "No. I wasn't done my hamburger." "Man, you had someone pledging to sleep with you and you passed?" Jack asked. "Matt! Buddy! You're not getting the full picture. We're stars! We're hot items! We can have the world be our oyster, get big houses and cars and women and anything." "I just want a doughnut," I said, remembering Franny's earlier suggestion. "Do they have a pastry table back here? I figure I could polish off a jelly before Franny's done her number." "She's done now," Jack said, as the infamous three notes sounded and the crowd boosted total volume. "Oh. Okay, one second," I said, walking around the curtain and approaching Franny. "Franster? Could you extend the Pancreas a bit? I'm going to look for a doughnut," I asked. "Okay. Save one for me," she said, launching into the Pancreatic Remix. I ignored the cheers and headed backstage. "A doughnut?" Jack asked. "All you want is a doughnut?" "I'm hungry," I said. "Ergo, I desire pastry. What's wrong with that?" "You've got no sense of the big picture," Jack said. "I mean, you're still in Thursday. Thursday, we were nobodies. We're SOMEONE now." "You're Jack and I'm Matt," I said. "I don't see much of a difference. Ah, doughnuts! Sweet sugar delight. Want one?" "I'm never going to understand you," Jack said, shaking his head. "Let's just get on with this." "One sec," I said, pushing the guitar along the strap so I could carry the doughnut tray. I wobbled along, under the weight of superior baked goods, to the stage, Jack following. The crowd cheered, which is perfectly acceptable behavior for crowds. "Anybody want a doughnut?" I asked the crowd. They cheered Yet! Again! So I plucked two jellies off the tray for me 'n Franny and tossed the rest into the crowd. They cheerfully dove for the doughnuts, getting into a brawl over who could have one. "Alright, Lego on one," I said. "Three." * "I think the crowd wants more," Jack said. "We don't have any more," I replied. "Just four songs, one of which is more like performance art. Sorry folks! That's all!" The crowd groaned, and shuffled off, dejected. "Hey, don't go away mad," I said. "Anybody want more doughnuts?" Within five minutes, the stadium was empty. Everybody left. Probably had sitcoms back home to watch. "Hey, kids," the agent said, climbing on stage. "Sorry, show's over. You're fired." "What?" Jack asked. "Hey, out with the old, in with the new," Mr. Agent Man said. "Oppression stays on the musical beat. When the beat moves on, we do. We've had some fun, yeah? It's been real. See ya." "But we've only started!" Jack protested. "You can't cut us off like that!" "Of course I can. Happens all the time in C'atel. You're just finished. The buyers bought, liked and moved on. You've still got the cash, right? So no problem. Although we would like to sign Franny on solo. When can you make it to the studio?" "Not doing anything tomorrow," she said, shrugging. "How about lunchtime? Will you have any doughnuts?" "FRANNY?" Jack exclaimed. "But she just makes noise... we make art!" "Art is subjective. Franny, if you'll come this way, I've got a contract. How'd you feel about having your name legally changed to 'Angst'?" "Okay," she said, following the Agent. Jack was dumbfounded. I munched away on my dessert, not really concerned. "We're over? Finis? Just like that?" Jack asked. "Yup. We killed some time, made a few credits and entertained the masses. All in all, not a bad weekend, eh Jacky boy?" "But the money! The fame! The music! The band!" "Short-lived but enjoyable. Like most of our weekend escapades. I wonder if I can get some bonus points in guitar class for this. It'd help my grade." "I was hoping for more," Jack said, turning off his computer. "You were? On friday, you thought it was a waste of time." "It was!" "Well, one man's waste is another man's excrement. Take it in stride, Jack. Silly is good and we were exceptionally silly this weekend. From could-bes to has-beens in a day. You can't find enjoyment like that growing on trees. You've got the money anyway, right?" "No," Jack admitted. "I figured I'd be really cool and buy one expensive new car with each album... I've barely got enough to make a phone call now." "Live and learn," I said. "Come on, let's go home." "You know, we never did name the band," Jack said, walking off with me into the sunset. "Yeah. Silly, no?" I grinned. |