Could Be You (Cytibele)

     The finished work was immense, encompassing; an arcing
tracery of blackened alloy that turned and twisted, spiralled and
convoluted, wrapping in and around itself to produce a form of
mind-reeling dimensions. Cytibele ran her eyes over the Moebian
curves, the belt-polisher hanging heavily from her right hand,
and started to circle the sculpture on slow, unsteady feet, the
thick black power cord trailing behind her left ankle. The
pattern was grand in scope, deceptively simple in design; as she
moved in her critical orbit about the piece, awed by the very
fact of its existence, the sheer appropriateness of the angles
she had chosen entranced her. The molded metal was in itself a
statement that no concrete form could ever be, an insinuation
that formed about the mind like vapor and condensed into a
coating of renewed perspective.
     It was powerful, no doubt about it.
     Cytibele sighed, walked over to the cluttered table across
from the doorway, placed the polisher on the thick wooden
surface, not even bothering to unplug it. She slipped the thick
plastic shop apron over her head, tossed it listlessly on the
floor. Already she could feel the lethargic post-creative state
creeping upon her, but after forty hours of final touches she was
too tired to care.
     Slowly she walked over to the glass door of her balcony,
bare feet padding softly on the carpet. A month of work and three
revisions sat silently behind her on the beige floor of her
apartment. From behind her, just as silently, it called.
     The pattern was rather unnerving, she realized as it brought
itself to her attention yet again, the way it had ever since the
final revision four days ago. Throughout the construction she had
been hesitant, unsure, straining, until the final concept had
come upon her; from there she had worked like a demon, fervently
channeling her design into form, turning realization into
creation. She had been inspired, dedicated, unstoppable; and she
had been right.
     No title had come to her for the piece, nor would
one.Cytibele stared out at the angular landscape of concrete and
steel unfolding beneath  the ceiling of her post-hundredth floor
apartment, musing silently as tiny pairs of white and red lights
flowed in steady streams like the corpuscles of some sprawling,
teeming social organism. Language was the limitation; there was
no word, no phrase sardonic or cynical enough to convey that
twisting edge of irony implied by her work. Nothing with a
convincing enough ring of truth, nothing so over whelmingly
self-evident.
     She reached out a ghostly limb, slid the broad pane aside as
a mystic draws away the veils of reality. Cool air greeted her,
caressed her heated face, drew long wispy fingers through her
glossy black hair. Cold and rough, the cement shelf that
supported her grounded her sensually to the world in which she
had been immersed unwittingly, unwillingly, like a kitten sacked
with its brethren and left to the unthinking devices of a
bubbling icy current. The scents that reached her were high,
crisp, and lofty, like the apartment she dwelled in, like the
spirit she lived in. About her night spread across the enfolding
dome of the sky, a blue-black hood lowering itself about her,
obscuring the last smears of cream and orange from the
ever-unreachable horizon.
     Cytibele expanded, high-altitude air biting at her throat
and lungs, then released, warm breath teasing her lips before
parting company. The tan and white circles of her unvarnished
craftsman's nails exploded from her clenched palms in an
expansive outbreak, eight resting on the beige stucco wall of the
balcony, two hanging in space before her, pointing towards each
other slightly. These, the tools, had incepted that, her vision,
and brought the whole into the world, a surrogate birth whose
brief gestation had been all labor. The tangled weave of
perceptions and memories that claimed to be her reality existed
beyond the last bony extensions of her self, dropping off the
edge of the stucco barrier in a dizzying drop towards black
solids, backlit windows, midnight streets, prismatic flashing
lights. Reality surrounded her, looming, lurking, hulking,
jealous of the vague structure on her floor that contained the
very same lessons with remarkably less complexity.
     She smiled, bitterly, lonely lips parting to give
well-brushed teeth a rare glimpse of Outside. Yes, she had been
right. Even from here, more than a thousand feet removed, from
where soaring birds were looked down upon, it was obvious.
Self-absorption, so evident, so important, so unseen. The lines
of her sculpture were a path leading inwards, a smooth metal
freeway that moved the soul directly from the world to Reality
with an unbearable velocity. To know what one is capable of, she
whispered in the heavy, moist, shadowy reaches of her mind, and
why. 
     And that it all, fundamentally, made the difference that it
did. All of the intelligence, the power, the beauty, yes, even
the individuality. Progressing doctrines, transfers of rule,
changing fashion, the definition of deviance...they were more
than a cycle, more than an advancement. They were mutually
definitive. We haven't changed, rang an unplacable quote, since
ancient times.
     There was no helping it. Her soles scratched against stucco,
her olive cotton pants flapped loosely against her thin, short
legs. Life is reactionary. Personalities are created by
disturbances within reality; every person is a pulsating pattern
of ripples changed by each successive stone dropped onto the
liquid pool of their psyche. Within came a slight ironic calling,
an urge to raise her arms in mocking salute of every religious
savior to hit the presses so far. Her synapses were firing at a
random, sporadic rate, inspired by the design of her vision,
accelerating her to the fate that loomed before her like the last
stop on a transcontinental railway line. Only one foot scraped
the stucco now.
     Cool, cold, icy air. Wind, numbing her, silencing one of the
five senses, a tactile blindfold. Deep, dark, majestic blue
stained the shadow depths receding above her, painting over the
stars that she had been told hung above like bright pinholes into
the searing face of another, foreign universe. Her eyelids
fluttered, half- covered the hazel rings beneath, and she
breathed in a final view of reality, chasing it with a double
shot of truth before she leaned forward. Inconsequential, all.
     Even the stars that have somehow lost their foothold in the
firmament have not fallen so fast, nor so far.

     Sparks rose pointedly, erratically, swimming upward through
the air like drunken fireflies, tailless fire-seeds worming
inexorably upward, onward, toward the flame-fanning oxygen and
the teasingly solid concrete ceilings that were so bereft of
fuel. Soot and heat filled the air, fused with walls, blurred the
difference between solid and shadow as surely as if a great brush
had smeared wavy ebony wisps across the scene in a frantic effort
to hide the mistaken creation with a quick censure from the
cosmic palette. The wild motions of the swirling smoke and embers
were caught up in the same hot wind that carried thin, soulless
cries through the intricate cables and scaffolds of the Graveyard
to reach passionless ears.
     Coen treaded silently along the wavering greyed planks, eyes
slitted against the ash and heat, pupils dilated against the
dark, one arm curled about his load, the other lightly balancing
on half-clenched fingers the thin wooden pole that pressed
against his arm and elbow like a third bone. The Graveyard had
been his home longer than he cared to think about, a mile-long
concrete mall that was now a bunker for the regressive and the
inhumanly violent, an enclosed free-for-all depicting man in his
natural state. No laws, no rulers, no intrigue; it was the safest
place Coen had ever found. Dog eat dog was the rule in every
sense, but after the conspiring alliances of the outer world such
uncompromising brutality was almost relaxing.  There is a sense
of security in knowing that everyone you encounter will want to
kill you, regardless; even more security in knowing they cannot
call up reinforcements.
     Coarse mindless sounds rose from the gloom before him,
snapping his mind to the Now in trigger-finger reflex, and his
toes slipped into an even more silent whispering gait that might
have left him walking on air for all of the warning it would
give. The scene that unfolded in flame-eclipsing rounded forms
was one of particular distaste; otherwise he simply would have
avoided the trio by slipping up a level on the swaying
forty-level catwalk. Instead he shifted his canvassed load to a
more secure grip, mentally boosted the adrenalin that would
signal the actuator relays in his flashing right arm to kick in
the heat sinks and move into mechanical overdrive, draining his
power reserves for the added strength and speed.
     The staff whirled on bright fingers, danced amidst jumping
banded steel that caught distant torches and cast them away like
sparks from a grindstone, then swung in a shallow arc diagonally
down to his left, cutting through the cold air like a straw in a
hurricane and snapping the eighth vertebrae of the one directly
in before him, the half-turned silhouette dropping to lie gasping
and jerking on the thin boards at his feet, too wounded to
resist, too stupid to roll out of the way. The downed man's
partner had to throw the girl they were accosting to the side, a
slender carbon-steel blade glinting dull in the enslaved light, a
grim tight expression on his face demonstrating the concentration
he was summoning to not end up like his companion.
     Coen looked at the knife critically; exactly the wrong
weapon to be carrying on a narrow platform such as this, where
speed and leverage far outweighed poise and bloodshed. Knives
were to be kept for surprise and intimidation tactics, neither of
which could apply now; to drive the point, so to speak, home, he
cracked the guy on the nose with the nonreflective, invisible
staff before ducking slightly to the left and driving the long
rounded edge into the back of his opponent's knees. The knife
dropped, forgotten, and clattered over the edge of the plywood
while its owner tilted backwards crazily, a tree toppling amidst
the pipe and plank maze of the Graveyard. Coen gripped a cold
rough bar as the scaffolding sagged sideways, leaning under the
weight of the body that even as he watched bent, slid, then
disappeared into the darkness with stricken eyes.
     The girl was watching him, trying to make him out in the
darkness, and he moved forward slowly, warily into the light,
trusting in his skill rather than her intent for his safety. She
had dark blonde hair that was brownish either through birth or
dirt, a slender body that was wrapped in a grey curtain of
blanket through which poked a leather vest and bra, hip-slit
black miniskirt over black jeans. Boots. Hesitant expression. He
stopped, waiting for her move, left forearm shifting slightly to
accommodate his parcel.
     She moved back slightly, then stopped, latching on to his
eyes, her shoulders pale, trembling, and bare above the drooping
vest and blanket. The minutes passed, marked by the shallow
breaths that slowed her anxiety, witnessed by the torches and
bonfires that poked out of the darkness like bright nervous
tendrils, measured by the closing relays of his right arm-socket.
Finally she spoke, shifting uncomfortably.
     "You're not going to rape me?" The question was sad and
funny both, at once, left him slightly off-balance. He shook his
head. "Everybody else does," she began, causing him concern for
her sanity, leaving him with the impression that she was trying
to sell the idea. Hell, in the Graveyard rape was the only
existing form of procreation; most of the time opposing sexes
just killed each other.
     "I don't," he replied simply. " 'ts not my way." And his way
was what made him live here in the anarchic tomb in the first
place.
     She moved forward, drawing closer as if his eyes were
reeling her in on taut charcoal cables. "You're from outside,
aren't you?" Her speech clear and high, her language unheard of
in the surrounding barbarism, her manner more inquisitive than
careful. " 'Cause of the arm."
     Ah yes, his Arm. His possession. His token of a lifetime of
anger and ability, that investment from the take of a hundred
jobs, that magnificently functional repair of a childhood
catastrophe. His Arm was an inhuman fusion of metal and motion, a
durable industrial shell crammed with control wires, tension
cables, invisible titanium gears and cold-burning nickel cadium,
electrical stuffing in a cast- aluminum autumn dish. His Arm was
of a mirrored hide, cut and grooved during construction into
lineal-circular patterns that seemed to belong in an England corn
field rather than a surrogate limb, divided up the forearm by a
matte black plastic boulevard that ended at the deeply greased
cut of the elbow. His Arm was durable, versatile, powerful; the
potency of a single hydraulic piston lay harnessed in the
thick-walled piping below the sculpted alloy bicep, giving him a
range of achievement far greater than that to which his natural
limb would have grown. And she was right; his Arm unmistakeably
marked him as an outsider. No Graveyard dweller could afford such
an enhancement, let alone be able to leave the security of the
savage encampment for installation.
     "What does it feel like?"
     "What do you mean?"
     She hesitated, as if realizing that her question was more
offensive than naive. "Moving. Grabbing. Having no skin." She
moved closer, her nose inches away from the bevelled screws
anchoring the bicep cables, her shallow breath fogging the
shark-belly sheen of the metal. "Being cold," she continued, her
reflection swimming across the pale grey metal like swirling
rainbows across an oil slick. She raised her eyes to him, the
porcelain-white stones contrasting sharply with the dime-sized
black pools in their center and the rough shading he took to be
makeup that stained her sockets a dark, burnt brown. Muddy-wine
lips parted slightly in inquiry, framing her unbrushed teeth in
brown scarlet, and it came to him that she had applied cosmetics
to a face that never saw sunlight, let alone a candle-lit dinner.
A disorienting spark of culture, here in the Graveyard...
     " 's not so cold," he replied, looking away briefly, keeping
her pale form in his peripherals. "Once you get used to it, it's
just like having an arm." Except you can't feel, he added
silently. Not really. Sensations are like the background studio
noises that turn up on CDs: distant unclear occurrences that you
are never really sure if you were supposed to have heard. And
waking up attached to it...
     She stood slowly, eyes mesmerized by the mercurial bent
streaks of firelight that leapt along the metal in frantic
firefly haste, and reached the full height that left hr slightly
taller than his shoulder. "Kara," she said simply, running a
self-conscious hand through her tawny hair.
     "Coen." He made no nervous social gesture, truly more
apathetic than confidant.
     "What's in the bag?" Kara gestured to the canvas sack
secured in his left arm.
     "Stuff." He hefted it started to walk past her. The idea of
a conversation in the Graveyard startled him, like finding a
paved sidewalk in the middle of the Sahara, and in the same way
brought about feelings of wonder and foreboding that he was not
keen on sharing.
     "You like Stoli?" she asked, desperately it seemed, as he
was two steps past and gaining. He halted, turned, knowing he had
heard her wrong.
     "What?" Simple. Direct. Interrogative.
     She smiled a coy, sure smile. The offer was a cast, properly
weighted, tantalizingly lured, that was even now thrusting a
social hook through his cheek. "Stoli. Stolichnaya." Then, in
case it still wasn't clear, "Vodka. Good vodka."
     That was an understatement. The vodka of the gods, drunk
only in a former lifetime. "I didn't think any of that stuff
still existed," he murmured as they walked side by side down the
catwalk in her direction, the offer silently accepted.
     "There's some good stuff, here in the 'Yard," she smiled
downwardly, eyes on her toes, tracing a path over familiar
stains, bolts, knots in the wood. I bet there is, he thought to
himself. And I bet you know where all of it is, every cache of
inventory left inside when the concrete seal was constructed
decades ago, every pile of loot gathered and hidden by
short-lived cannibal tribes, every abandoned crate of attempted
government intervention that had disappeared from the futile
disbursement sites so many years ago.
     Coen was silent as they walked along, close from the narrow
passage, mind grasping vainly at reality. It had been so long
since he'd had a friend that he'd forgotten what they were for.

     Sprawling, hidden, pulsating with the generations, older
than the most aged creature, the teeming growth lurked in the
basement of society. To call it an order would be to assign some
pattern to its members; to deem it a cult were to accuse it of
doctrine. The gathering was a tribute to Jung, a movement grown
out of the collective unconsciousness of a species that still
could not stand to be around itself, that invented alcohol and
art and narcotics to bypass its self-alienation, that fabricated
romantic customs to con itself into producing another generation.
The sole evolutionary trait of the human race is its ability to
lie to itself, and the unseen thinking current senses this,
examines it, tames it until it matches their view of what the
race should turn into. It is these goals that bring the group
together, tiny sentient flakes of iron sliding inexorably towards
a vast intellectual electromagnet. Individuals have no real
choice of being inducted, nor do they want one; the movement
simply accumulates its dark silent members, a vast amoeba
absorbing more and more of the race on which it hovers and feeds,
a parasite whose temperament has yet to be determined. And it
works, silently, smoothly, probing here, slicing there, tailoring
the race around it in a fashion that, true to the racial heritage
of its members, is slightly artistic.

     Lines, angles, muted tones. That's all his office was: black
rectangle of desk, squares of uncolored ceiling tile, tall grey
block of door, pencils of eye-throbbing white light, a mosaic of
glass squares behind him that let in the greyed, fading outside
light in amorphous, muted globs of pale glow. Even his suit was
somber and angular, tailored to all edge, black tie a thin line,
a seam from his throat disappearing into the V-folds of his
jacket. Don Holland fingered the thin manuscript before him, the
corpse-blue cover glaring from his charcoal desktop, his eyes
straying to the far off-white wall like twin concrete disks.
     His thoughts were far away, sliding easily down the twisting
chromatic rails of time, plunging through swirling memory,
immersing in discarded idea and spent experience. The stiff bound
pages beneath his fingers broke, shattered into gleaming
droplets, reformed into the same cover, a different title, a
wooden table, younger fingers. The initial study, back in his
first days with Kendachi, in his unnoticed youth.
     Holland raised the tin cup to his lips, took a long draw of
scotch, set the cup down with trembling fingers. The guard
lieutenant he had just dismissed had displayed the same eager
energy, the same malignant thirst as the lowmen troops who worked
his orders like fingers responding to a long bureaucratic nervous
system. The thirst in them was growing, was becoming inspiration,
was harboring an enthusiasm which he could not yet stomach. When
this is all over, he asked himself, looking vaguely at the
hardened resin walls of his field office, where will this thirst
go? It was expected to disappear, to atrophy like some outmoded
organ, but Holland's deep-rooted pessimism bubbled up a future of
unforeseen ramifications, distilled from present circumstances
with a basic understanding of human nature. Random violence.
Gratification kills. Aggressive policy. Anything to keep the
lowmen from rising up on their leaders, their trainers, their
benefactors.
     KENDACHI, the cover said in a fine-lined black font, then
Directive 11682.0: Counter-Insurgency Tactical Manual. Holland
wondered what tight-tie paperhead at Central had thought that
title up. The directive contained tactics that were more genocide
than security, though in retrospect they were remarkably
effective in preventing resistance. After a week of application,
the program had devoured any spark of defense through a
disturbingly effective combination of terror tactics, lighting
response, and over- compensatory justice. If a global authority
were to uncover these secret actions of which not even rumors
were spread, Kendachi was through.
     Holland took another sip of the amber liquor, leafed through
the booklet carelessly. They would never be caught, of course.
Everything was too perfect; the extrapolative analysts had
thought of everything, every contingency, every potential problem
that could arise in the operation to seize the plains rich in the
lethal ultraconductor whose discovery Kendachi had kept so
secret. The operation was a response to a failed sales attempt,
was the result of a small South American nation rich in tradition
and obstinance, was the wrathful response of a ruthless, lawless
foe against those who threatened its further prosperity. And the
operation was a success.
     He had done everything according to the manual, from the
seizing of the lands to the silencing of its inhabitants, the
systematic elimination first of everyone with knowledge of the
mining operation, then everyone involved in the government,
finally everyone above a certain age or income level. The world
governments were scrambling for funding and legislature to
prevent what they saw as the bloodiest South American revolution
ever, and in a couple of weeks Kendachi would appear as the
cold-blooded corporate leech that had signed a deal with the new
regime, affirming their power in exchange for a mineral license.
But never, never would the company be implicated in the actual
hostilities, and to ensure that a great purging was taking place.
A purging of threats, of power, of knowledge. And the land was
almost pure, stained a sterile, inoffensive brick red that
promised above all to keep silent.
     The men were the only problem, the lowmen who would boast of
their parts or, worse yet, seek to continue them. For not the
first time Holland wished they had stayed with shadow teams;
mercenaries could be bought, but they knew how to keep silent.
And when to quit.
     The thick manual before him was a masterful examination of
the human psyche, a social vivisection that detailed how people
could be dealt with properly and effectively. The devious,
heartless thinkers at Central had produced a thorough work which
had made this bold operation not only possible but actually
successful. How to spread fear and terror through the use of
shock and ferocity. How to identify targets and dispose of them
in a vague yet significant fashion with which to discourage
further resistance. How to form an intelligence network to
present an omniscient, omnipotent front; how almost anyone could
be bought, and how those who couldn't could be turned in.
     Even how to control the morality of your own troops, how to
enable them to adopt a mindset with which to perform their
duties. That was, in fact, the crucial part of the operation.
Spreading fear and terror was simple; keeping the lowmen not only
cooperative but sane was a far greater challenge. More than half
of the directive devoted itself to explaining the requisite
changes, and how to inspire them.
     Holland has done everything right. Dehumanization of the
Enemy. He had provided the video games, the magazines, the pornos
in which natives were subtly but steadily portrayed in an
inferior light, had spread the oddly conducive slang amongst the
officers, and from there to the lowmen, had phrased each briefing
in terms of objectives and obstacles, goals and barriers.
Unification of the Troops. He had mandated social time, had
distributed entertainments with which to build cultural
connections among the lowmen, had developed an image of corporate
pride complete with emotional driving anthems, resplendent formal
dress, enlightening lectures on the developments with which
Kendachi improved the world, and from which the world should not
be kept by an undereducated elite. Gradual Initiation. The first
mass executions had been performed by mercenary groups, with the
corporate lowmen performing first basic security duties, next
target roundup, then escort detail to the execution sites, and
finally actual executions; the series of increasingly responsible
stages had made learning to massacre as simple as stepping into a
swimming pool. Frustration Transference. The lowmen were made
increasingly uncomfortable in the early stages of field work,
with shortages in food, water, ammunition, and clothes that
disappeared abruptly upon return to the base camp; the mounting
anger at such conditions was routed towards the targets, the very
reason for being away from the base camp, and brutality became
that much easier. Chemical Absolution. Lowmen troops were
supplied with ample portions of alcohol the night after a field
op, purging their memories of the horrors they had seen and done,
releasing their pent-up tensions and emotions, developing the
operations into festive memories, creating a drunken sense of
pride through the boasting of cruel accomplishments, and leaving
enough residue in the bloodstream to immerse the lowmen in a
dull, unthinking, anticipatory state during the daytime
operations.
     Holland smiled grimly, light flashing off the laughing
hyena-like ring one of his men had stripped from a kill.
Everything had been done as ordered, everything had gone as
planned. But the directive did not detail the debriefing of the
troops, and the destructive self-assurance of the Central Office
had a sobering effect that lingered even after he had drained the
rest of the piercing liquid in his light shiny cup.
     His vision shifted from inner memory to outer reality with a
record-needle skip, jerking him into the present with a brief
exhilarating shock vestigial from falling asleep in class back in
his ancient school days. The black and silver of the wolfen ring
gleamed at him from the finger where it rested rather loosely
these days, and the grinning barbed teeth declared a satisfaction
with the times that he was reluctant to admit. Still, having
looked back, he realized that he had been wrong; the lowmen had
had no natural, ingrained sadism, and once the unworthy,
alienated targets had been dispatched of, the carefully nurtured
callousness and ferocity had flickered out and allowed the lowmen
to return easily to their standard, relatively peaceful duties.
He had to give the psychologists that much; they knew their
stuff, knew that removing the inspiration would prevent the
action, knew that erasing the itch would stop the scratch.
     And now this. Not necessarily a directive this time, but an
analysis, a proposition. KENDACHI, it read in the same fine black
type, and The Manifestation of Authority. Below, in less artistic
dark block letters, RESEARCH SUPPLEMENT. The operation that had
hurtled Kendachi into global economic dominance was referred to
liberally in this work; that operation that had cost him so much
sleep, that had cost his men so much humanity, that had
demonstrated to victim and victor alike just how malleable they
were. Like clay, not slaves, not heroes, not firm leaders; mere
wound-up automatons, goaded by time, directed by experiences and
influences like those toys that careen off obstacles to move in a
new direction. The right obstacle, placed correctly, is all it
takes to send the toy in a certain direction, and with enough
carefully-positioned barriers the direction of the toy could be
fully reversed. It could happen to him. It had happened to him.
     Looking at the pale blue-grey cover before him, Holland
suddenly wished he was able to drink in the office as liberally
as he had in the field. A full, warming tumbler of bourbon would
make this a lot easier to grasp.
     The thinkers downstairs in the basement mindlabs had outdone
themselves. He leafed through the pages slowly, despondently, his
ring laughing at him, his ceiling looming over him, his nose
picking up the stubborn scent of a drink decades old. Authority
is power over a person, it began simply, a power that dictates
what the person will or will not do. No person has free will, it
continued, but obeys a real or imagined authority of whose
competence or potency they have complete faith. Authorities may
be Idolatry, in which the individual seeks to emulate an ideal;
they may be Emotional, when the individual follows the wishes of
another out of fear or a desire to please; and they may be
Rational, when the individual defers to the intelligence and
experience of another, assuming that this other has practical
knowledge on which actions or decisions can be based. Thus are
authorities constituted of rulers, lovers, books, teachers,
friends, families, characters, myths, doctrines, any influence
which for one reason or another provides a reason for doing
something. The individual will do anything given sufficient
reason.
     There are three types of power which affect the individual,
of which any combination may be found within a given person. The
precedence or emphasis that a person places on these authorities
determines how they may be "reasoned with" or coerced into some
action.
     Internal Authority is the leadership of the self; the
individual feels that they know what is best for their welfare,
and will make personal decisions without any external influence
save for environmental stimuli. Individuals guided by an internal
authority do not seek to validate themselves according to
conformity with the ideas of others, but rather validate the
existence of others according to their similarity to the
individual. Peer Authority is the social pressure upon the
individual, the desire to conform. Peers have an enormous
influence on everything from the fashion and self-image of the
individual to doctrinal and methodological choices; many
individuals operate on the assumption that a)the greater the
support for an idea or action, the greater its validity, or
b)success in the social environment is determined by acceptance,
and acceptance is facilitated by emulation. Figure Authority is
the traditional, figurehead idea of authority: the embodiment of
knowledge or power in a single external source. In general,
figureheads impress the individual with either their powers of
retribution (i.e., law enforcement), or their expertise, and as
such they have an appeal which is often either entirely emotional
or rational.
     It all seemed to make sense; it fell into place with his
experience. The subsequent discussion of the analysis was what
concerned him now. Development or encouragement of the
recognition of the latter two types of authority were foremost in
social control, and could be achieved through reward-punishment
techniques on an overt (legal) or covert (social) level, so that
unquestioning obedience and conformity would pervade society. The
prevalence of such attitudes and the obedience of such authority
would feed back on itself with peer pressure, so that anyone who
did not recognize such power on at least a surface level would be
slowly and surely reduced to social and economic ruin.
     The first type, self-authority, was the biggest problem; the
human will is strong, and in some it simply cannot be overcome
short of killing the individual. In people who rely on their own
perceptions of what is right and wrong, it is necessary to change
these perceptions in order to change their actions. Thus, the
will is not confronted, but rather redirected, and the individual
will as fervently accept the new belief as they did the former.
Perceptions upon which judgements are based can be altered
through the use of the mass media, by limiting or expand the
amount of information available on certain topics; broad coverage
on one topic will make it more acceptable than an uncovered one,
and continued exposure to foreign atrocities will breed
resentment against the foreigners if home or domestic atrocities
are dealt with briefly, succinctly, and sympathetically. Thus, it
is possible to subtly influence the perception of events by
individuals without resorting to misinfor- mation or
propagandized accounts.
     He read on, reviewing slowly, seriously.
     In addition, the social development of individuals greatly
affects how exterior perceptions are filtered into the brain.
Aside from complex and potentially disruptive adaptations such as
customized language for limited or directed thought patterns,
environmental factors such as social hierarchy, material and
informational access, and legality may be manipulated to leave a
lasting impression on the developing mind of the individual
     They were doing it, he realized. Now. Dehumanization of the
subject, humanity, making it easier to accept the idea of future
manipulation. Flipping back through the manuscript, not once did
he notice it say "our" or "your" or "children" in referring to
the subjects of the proposed program. He shook his head sadly,
almost caught unaware, then continued.
     When exposed to an environment with a definite hierarchy,
with definite right and wrong actions or thoughts, with clear
demarcations in terms of material goods, ideologies, or education
between distinct social classes, the developing mind of the
individual will become accustomed to the idea of such absolute
distinctions. The person may disagree at some point or another
with what is right and what is wrong, or for which type of people
should be classified as which group, but they will always insist
that such distinctions between right and wrong, between levels of
power, or between groups of people (whether based on race,
wealth, age, sex, or religion is unimportant) should exist. Thus,
the person will never truly agree with abolition of classes, with
the lack of a "right to property", with actions that are neither
right nor wrong but merely consequential, or with a
leaderless/structureless existence. Thus, by carefully
structuring the environment of the developing individual, certain
concepts can be made inherent in their reality to such an extent
that opposing concepts are, rather than simply disagreeable,
utterly alien.
     Holland broke from his reading to glance at his dark steel
watch. The thin silver needles poked at the 10 and the 9,
indicating ten minutes before the night's meeting. He tried to
order his thoughts, shutting the manual and reviewing silently,
internally. The planners were suggesting a move like the Suntare
Arcologies: vast, protective environments, only these would
ensure the survival of the corporate organism through careful
indoctrination into its ideology.
     This was Beckman's move. He could tell. The agent authorized
to act in behalf of the company, the one who actually ran the
show, the man with the 51%. He had an agenda, independent of the
CEO or the VP, independent even of the Kendachi operations
objectives drafted so many years ago. For some reason he wanted
strict control over the formative years of future Kendachi
generations, generations which he would not live to see, or
oversee. The move puzzled Holland, made him take a few stabbing
guesses at probability. There was that street guy, the rip-off
artist that called himself Dr. Immortality. Maybe he was leading
Beckman on, promising eternal influence, an undying career
supported by the Kendachi drones.
     Time to tail Beckman, he decided. See if he was under any
undue influence. See if he was consulting this alleged doctor.
And see if, by some quirky twist of the jagged knife of fate,
this doctor had some secrets he wasn't sharing with the rest of
us. 
     Preservation secrets, for instance.

     The night was cold, time was a lethargic cripple, the
blacktop streets were softer than any attitude to be found this
late. Ironfist Eddie squeezed the wheel of his ancient Ford
Crapola and snarled at the car in front of him, regressing three
thousand years and still operating what could for the sake of
metaphor be called state-of-the-art machinery. That greenbean
little Alfa Romeo in front of him, that slow little cheery
pimple-on-wheels sprouting chrome mirrors and luggage racks and
antennae and toothbrush fucking holders, those little silver
pieces that always broke off the models you made as a kid, that
irritating conservative goddamn Democrat was making his life a
great deal more of a hassle than it was ever worth. Tonight, all
night, looking for a parking space. Today you can go out and find
out the outcome of a sports game before it even happens, the age
of instant christlovin' information, and it still takes you all
goddamn night to find a parking space.
     Ironfist. He hated that name, never answered to it. For some
reason the working-class types he hung out with loved nicknames,
names for their cars, names for their buddies, names for sports
heroes, names for their dicks for chrissake. Pathetic names, too,
I mean like Gator and Russell The Love Muscle and Ironfist, for
christ- fuckin-cryin-out-fuckin-loud. Still, he could play it
off. Ironfist for his attitude. Ironfist for his anger. Ironfist
for his hands.
     Or lack thereof, anyways. Years ago he'd made a sweet deal,
landed him a good eight figures, topped any deal he'd ever
had--even the one he'd been under. Call it greed, call it
ambition, but also call it slow-to-draw. He'd been nailed first,
before his employer, had gotten a dull--not even razor-edge but a
christlickin' dull-- machete making a move like a vengeful
wristwatch. Both hands, hairy, pale, twitching and bleeding,
lying there on the floor in all their bloody boned tendoned
glory, feeling the floor nervously as if aware of the change
before finally lying still in futile unfinished fists. 
     That had, if anything, been a turning point in his career.
Yelling, wrists jabbed into his hips to slow the blood flow as he
ran through the streets like a paraplegic of all things, unable
to dial a phone, unable to open a door except at a supermarket,
unable to do anything but run up the nearest cop and shove
spurting wrists at his window and yell for him to get his
uniformed ass out of that bucket seat and bring some morphine now
and I mean NOW. Yeah, that had been quite a night. But he'd
lived. His employer--ex-employer, anyway-- would have lived too,
if he hadn't pulled that guillotine-over-the- poker-hand trick.
But he had, and he didn't, and in the end he would have been glad
to have ended up as sharkbait.
     Eddie carried on, with two intricate matte plastic frames
that kept the steel levers and cables of his high-tensile hands
from shooting out like the springs in a over-exercised couch. The
eight figures were mostly gone, cost of living plus the operation
and all, but hell, he could crush more than a walnut in his fist.
Give him a buck, he'll crush a pocketknife without breaking a
sweat, turn it into a ball of curled metal layers and splintered
red plastic.
     A gap between two cars caught his eye, grasped his
attention, lured him towards the unpainted curb. There wasn't
much room, little more than his car, but he made it work. Back
and forth, feeling like he was on one of those quarter rides
outside of the supermarket, till he fit in snugly between the
black rubber bumpers like a tape planted firmly in a stereo. City
driving.
     Eddie locked his car, punched the alarm, keyed the
touch-sensitive ignition cutoff switch. The party he was late to
was still a few blocks away; by the time he got there it should
be just about in full swing. Social appearances are a practiced
art. He ducked off the sidewalk, cinched in black leather and
denim, and without thinking sought out the shadow paths, the
hidden ways known only to tweaks and deevs, unwittingly
practicing how to get unseen from one place to another. Straights
think in terms of streets, sidewalks, boulevards; deevs think of
alleys, lots, rooms with two exits. Eddie's path took him through
two malls, over a rooftop, through a cafe, under one overpass and
down three different flights of stairs. When he got there, the
Knock If You're A Cop sign marked the correct grey door out of
thirty in the dismal underground corridor.
     The place was known to him, though he'd never been there.
Tweak pads are like that, when you get used to them. Rooms
belonging to people desperate to affirm their own individuality,
validating their existence by proclaiming in decor how different
they are from mainstream society. Just like everybody else.
     The walls were tacked garbage bags, shiny black vinyl
spotted periodically with pale-shouldered portraits,
spiny-lettered band names, morbid catchy phrases. A couple of
people were seated, talking in sporadic excited bursts, but the
bulk of the population was clustered around the keg like a social
fungus, grinning and sipping and tossing off sly witticisms that
distracted the listeners long enough for one to go to the
bathroom. Eddie sipped his amber-orange beer, the thickness of
the brew a testimony to the quality of the party. 
     A copy of the DMG, piled amidst Drow of the Underdark and a
boxed set of the Arch-Mage Elysium Spell Cards (these were recent
gamers) told him all he needed to know; the 22oz. glass conquests
spanning three inches from the ceiling only added to his insight,
and the ten-siders lying casually on a desk backstage confirmed
his suspicions. They were gamers and tweaks, and proud of the
fact. As if one or the other weren't good enough...
     He gulped his beer, hurriedly now, promising himself he'd
leave after it was finished. Guitar three feet away, grey RCA
plugs laying helplessly on the black floor, and twenty minutes
later some black-haired Arabian girl wondering why she couldn't
get the strings to hum. He free-associated off not being a real
person--he'd said rural--with some blonde in a Gore-Tex (it was
what she wanted to hear), then refilled his cup and moved into a
complex conversation half an hour later concerning inspiration
and art and where in particular his motives came from, most of
which he made up. Acting tweak was easy, especially when you
played the guru tweak. It didn't get you laid, but the people
gasped in awe, overcome by your pretended wisdom. He smirked
inwardly, the whole way through. These people were easy. Later
he'd head to the Hilton lounge to get some real meat.
     The party, or so it was called, broke up around three. Eddie
kicked off out the door before the end, knowing when to leave,
the free beer floating in his stomach like a frothy social
castaway. Eventually, he'd be back; gamers were the most
decadent, twisted people he'd been around, and they threw the
best parties. 
     Society was beginning to wear on him; he needed a place away
from the biker jackets tattooed with white paint, the gimmicky
art and music, the purple-black haired girls with the placid
features who thought he was full of shit and then grew angry when
they found out that he was. How many of us are there, he wondered
silently, who scorn straight society but can't handle the
self-absorption of the deev scene?
     He ended up at an all-night cafe, which was in a way an
answer to his question. Cal was there, a bud of his from way
back, someone he was used to being around. Someone he could stand
being around. "I'm sick of this," he began wearily. "My buzz is
wearing off, I'm getting a headache, and I'm tired of being
around enlightened drunks who think they have the wisdom of the
ages. Why can't people just admit that they have no idea what the
fuck is going on?" He signaled for coffee, waited for it arrive
so he could kick his mind into third gear and immerse himself in
the meaningless sporadic, philosophical conversation that made
his days go by so quickly and unnoticed.
     "Maybe they do know what's going on. Hell, if I knew all the
answers I'm sure one of them would include escapism." Cal
fingered a Cajun fry, looked at his cooling coffee morosely.
"Losing oneself in a drunken oblivion may be the best way to cope
with a reality such as ours." The fry made its way to his teeth
slowly, fearfully, like it had reached its final day on Death
Row. The coffee came in time for Cal to have something to scald
the grease from his tongue with.
     "Wish I could think so," Eddie murmured over steaming teeth.
He set his cup down carefully, the brown stimulant lapping at his
thumb playfully; felt heat spread through his neck and, by
association, his skull. The caffeine no longer affected him, but
after two or three cups he'd have lost enough withdrawal symptoms
to convince himself that he was slidin'. "I wasn't able to cope
with reality when I lived like that."
     "You weren't able to cope with your reality," Cal pointed
out. "To some people, lyin' around dead all day and withdrawing
into themselves at night, that's their reality. They band
together, drink their way out of the material world, entertain
each other with their brutal honesty." Eddie had to smile; Cal
always had a good phrase or two to pick up on. Brutal honesty.
"It's all a matter of what you convince yourself is the best way
to live."
     Fingering his fork, Eddie remarked, "Doesn't bother you when 
people get all self-important, then?" For some reason, it had
always bothered him. Maybe 'cause he'd been the same way once,
having his share of gimmicks, doing the sly no-one's-watching
artistry that was guaranteed to grab attention, decorating
himself with the socially- defined signs of his psyche. Funny how
the change that seemed like evolution to him had appeared
apathetic and terminal to others.
     Cal smiled. "I've never seen how it merits my attention."
Except, Eddie continued silently, when it helps demonstrate human
nature. No need to say it, Cal would only smile. Eddie sipped his
coffee slowly. What was it like to have everyone's answers, he
wondered, except your own?
     "So what are you up to, out so early this evening?" I guess
that it's like that, Eddie smiled to himself before answering.
You just keep asking questions until you come across the answer
for you. Find yourself through others, or something like that.
     "Got a line on a job openin' early," he replied. "Figure
I'll show up when the doors open, take their performance test,
snap the position up before it gets taken."
     Cal nodded, long black hair shifting imperceptibly against
the blued ebony backdrop of the cafe window. "So what's the job
market like now, since the latest equality bill? You know, the
one that said you can't discriminate based on training or
qualification," he clarified. He turned to scope the ethereal
images scuttling about the glass pane, reflections emulating
three dimensions like desperate movie-screen figures. "I don't
think there's been another, yet?"
     "Discrimination based on competence?" Eddie smiled, carrying
it further. "Hasn't passed yet, but I'm sure they're working on
it." He swallowed some more tooth-stain, set the cup down
carelessly, the coffee level too low to splash. "It's getting
harder to get a job," he explained. "All hirings are first come
first serve-"
     "The case for the chronologically stunned," Cal smirked. 
     "That's the one," Eddie agreed. "You gotta get there early.
They take the first twenty or so applicants."
     "What if you can't fill out an application?" Cal challenged.
     "They got it covered. Flash your ID, they'll do it for you.
All the applicants have to complete a working simulation to
demonstrate that they'll last long enough to make it worth hiring
them. Whoever gets the best score lands the job."
     Cal laughed. "Employment via video game," he smiled, gulping
some coffee. "Never thought I'd see the day. So where do they get
these simulations? Seems it'd be easy to pick up a copy and beat
it before you apply."
     Eddie shook his head, the glinting zippers on his jacket
chinging together. "They update 'em every three months. Some
company, D.E.S. I think, cornered the market on the programs, and
you'd have to steal one to get it. They take this pretty
seriously."
     "I miss the days of background checks," Cal murmured
wistfully.
     "Me too." They drank a silent brown toast to the screening
that had been outmoded by privacy laws.
     "So what kind of job you applying for?" 
     "Cabling tech. You know, fiberoptics. Think they called it
Digital Transference Engineer or something." Eddie drained his
coffee, extended a black-coated arm to signal the waitress with
upturned cup. Caffeine reacts negatively with virtues such as
patience.
     Cal lost himself in thought for a sec, came back. "You've
done that before, right? So the test won't be a problem."
     Eddie grinned. "I hope not."
     "Seems to me," Cal continued, "That you could bribe a temp
agency to place you. They're illegal, right? So you can probably
work something out."
     "Depends on whether or not the company is willing to deal
with black-market info. It'd have to be a real sensitive position
to make it worth paying that much for full-quals."
     "Of course," Cal agreed. "But I was thinking of a place
where all positions are sensitive. A job you could assume under a
false name, maybe get a hacker to give you a background. A job
you can decline after you've been trained."
     "Why the hell would I do that?"
     "Well, you wouldn't be qualified for the job, of course; you
just want access to the facilities. I was thinking of a placement
at D.E.S.." Eddie had to smile at his steamingly-refilled coffee.

     Coen lay awake in that drunken agonized state, when the word
'why' comes so frequently that it loses as much meaning as
the world which inspired it. The fire cracked and sputtered
beside him, flickering light reflected off the glass bottle long
since emptied and left to lie on its side like a comrade left
behind; the sounds of rustling nylon reached him from where Kara
shifted in her sleeping bag, passed out a few feet away from him.
Alcohol surged through his system, thinning his blood, firing his
emotions, dredging memories from his sodden pool of
consciousness.
     It was never easy after the others had gone to sleep. Alone
in company, no longer at the reins of his sanity, feeling with no
outlet, he had learned to hate the rush of the past that came
with the end of an evening. The release was enjoyable, in
company; alone, he had no-one to guide his reflection, no one to
absorb his tension, no one to focus his attention on. And thus
the past came.
     It was never a pleasant sight. The friends, the women, the
parties did not come to him at times like this. Reflection did
not define the state, nor did nostalgia. Perhaps 'haunted'
was the word to use, haunted by his formative past, the dark
twisted events that showed Fate was not only sarcastic but bitter
to boot. Ghosts they were, those immaterial visions of the past
that burnt out his vision, consumed him, twisted his soul into
soiled knots of rage and futility. Just ghosts.
     But once, they were men. Men that appeared in crushing force
as part of some inscrutable global plan. Men that wore black, men
that murdered silently, men that rode in ominous grey trucks and
drove away the night with their painful magnesium spotlights. Men
that killed his father.
     He had not seen his father die, that night almost lost in
the
fire and confusion of long ago. The night in which his mother
waited up in vain for her husband to come home. They had come for
him, that night, for him and his sisters and his mother. The
rumbling of the great armored trucks, the crackling gunfire
throughout the streets, the thundering noise of the door caving
in had all driven the news home with an impact that words could
never have. He had realized then, still only six years old, that
his father had died. And that his father had not died well.
     By that night, enough of his neighbors had been killed for
him to know what death was, and why. The killings had been blunt,
shocking, symbolic; commands almost artistic in their methodic
presentation, the flesh slapping concrete after the chainsaw roar
of gunfire, the excited whine of bullets ricochetting off
concrete, the muddy red river that flowed to the gutters,
swirling with oily rainbows like the runoff of the year's first
rain. The killings had angered his father and others, had sent
them out late one night in black-faced secrecy. The shaking
faroff explosion, punctuated by the repeated crack of
bolt-action hunting rifles, had made him believe his father was
winning, conquering the savage murderers while he lay safe and
warm in bed at home. But he'd been wrong.
     He'd been asleep when they came, but the pre-dawn gunfire
had
dragged him at first dreamily, then shockingly awake, and he was
throwing on his torn brown jeans over his pajamas, worming into a
t-shirt and opening the door to see his mother grabbing the
shotgun that had brought home so many feathered dinners...
     The barrel had fired explosively when the door burst in,
then twice more, spraying the front wall with a mist of blood.
The barrel wavered, hovering in the air, questing for a target.
Then a hollow 'whump' from outside, the thunk of a dark
steel object bouncing on the thin carpet, then white, fire,
noise, a static ringing in his ears and brain that would match
his screaming when he tried to find his right arm. It saved his
life, the shock and the fainting that made his scream sound like
a death wail; the soldiers abandoned the burning house, his
family shattered and trapped inside, mortal shells scheduled for
cremation before their time.
     He'd come to at the sound of careful, shuffling footsteps;
then his white living eyes had been noticed, and a grey-cloaked
arm swept him from the rubble, managed a tourniquet for his
ruined shoulder, pulled him from the house with an urgency that
scraped scabbed blood from his young skin. In the flight that
followed from the burning, dying town, he caught little more than
the solemn eyes and charcoal cloak of his rescuer, an expression
cast in stone, as human as the lifeless effort of a sculptor.
He'd eventually passed out from blood loss, on the run in the
back of a crated truck that jolted and rumbled along the
mountains his father has once hunted.
     The next time he'd been awake he was in the Graveyard, young
and scared and learning survival with each breath. And he'd been
here ever since. Coen closed his eyes wearily, remembering the
harsh utilitarianism which he'd adopted, the amoral toughness
with which he had endured, the cold methodic lifestyle that had
won him a rep, then a fortune, then the Arm. But never peace.
     The days of his youth never left him, never gave him the
rest
he needed to pursue life, to enjoy his wealth, to revel in his
prowess. Every so often, with each drunk, with each depression,
with each immeasurable term of solitude, came the bitter memory
of the acts he'd witnessed, the fear and rage he'd felt, the
oaths of vengeance he'd mouthed silently while huddled about some
stranger's campfire. Those who had injured him were long gone,
images of the past that haunted and terrorized him, that mocked
him, that drove him like a mad demon mercilessly working the
reins.
     Once, they had been men. And perhaps some still were.

     Dark, silent, dedicated, the gathering focussed, planned,
executed; like a dark tentacle snaking forth did its response
take form. Twisting, curling, a nether coil worming the unseen
ways of society, its operative went forth, personifaction of the
whole, avatar of the goal. Furled in an ashen cloak and hidden by
black curtains of night, a figure made through the sleeping city,
passing a condemned tower here, a night-chilled veteran there.
Solid concrete betrayed not the soft-soled feet as they urged the
body on, past the white flourescent diners, the sulkily leaking
garbage trolleys, the precision-lined squares of green grass that
decorated the sidewalk in front of looming mirrored skyscrapers.
     At Kendachi Towers the night was still and quiet, empty
streets remnant of daytime panic, security guards calm and alert,
eyes on six o'clock. Inside a stairwell door pistoned open, hung
ominously ajar before slowly returning to the frame with a dull
click. A mass of grey cloth slid down the corridor on padded
feet, stealthily treading, back flat against the wall with the
tension of late-night action. To be caught here, in the center of
the building, twenty stories from any real exit, was all but
improbable; the consequences, however, made a dire threat out of
any possibility of discovery. 
     The figure avoided the offices and employee pools, the most
likely place for alarms; conference rooms, utilized at odd and
often spontaneous hours, would not be so secure. A long arm
reached out to ease open a tan panel door, gravel-colored gloves
leaving no prints to marr the silver handle, and a grey cloak
slipped inside deftly, the door shutting with all but no noise. A
quick search produced a grim smile over the plastic-lined pail:
there, in the garbage, discarded after the meeting six hours ago
by some tired exec whose thoughts were more on his mistress than
on security.
     'The Manifestation of Authority'.
     The manuscript was snatched from the can with quick,
trembling fingers, slipped into the enfolding cloak, secured in a
wide flat pouch. A gaunt, tanned face darted glances left and
right at the door, then strode noiselessly down the hallway,
towards the stairwell and its subsequent access tunnel and their
promises of innumerbale crawlspaces from which to reach the roof
and, thereby, a cable to the block-distant neighboring building.
Strenuous the journey was, and tedious as well, yet in a strange
way was it fulfilling also.

     Yellow reflec ribbon crossed the edges of the balcony,
cutting across the sky like a badly-set bandage. Nicholas Meyers
gazed out at the pale blue-grey sky, squinting in the glare, lost
in consideration. The job was a suicide, no doubt about it; the
only thing he could not uncover was a motive. No note, no
mounting strain, no desperate incoherent phone calls to fringe
acquaintances that represented a final, desperate grab at the
straws of life before the plunge was taken. Just a pure, simple
drop this time. Intent. Methodical. Spontaneous.
     Or so it seemed. The body had been found on the street three
days ago, a reeking smear of scarlet gutter-lining; it had taken
the labs this long just to run I.D. tests on the pulverised
genetic material. Neighbors knew nothing; that was to be
expected, in today's isolationist world, but he still had to
check. Procedure and all. Christ, the you-are-fucking-naive looks
people gave him when he started questioning, like he
WANTED to probe an area that society conditions people to
ignore. 
     The only help at all had been the friends of the meat. No
contact in three or four days, they'd said, nothing unusual,
probably caught up in a project. And from the layout of the
apartment, it looked like she had been. There's some clue here
somewhere, he thought, some message she left, and I can't find
it. What we need is an artist up here, someone that speaks the
same language. Another tortured soul. A translator.
     Meyers blinked, turned from the shining twisting CAUTION
tape, strode into the apartment with wide, slow steps. His
partner in crime was standing, gazing at the abstract metal thing
in the center of the room. Meyers paused, joined Daiche in silent
contemplation; the work was worth a second look, at any rate. His
eyes slid, travelled along a well-honed groove, turning inwards,
slowly, unfocussing...He blinked, a reflex to keep from staring
too long at one place, from becoming distracted, from extensive
examination. The piece was on the whole disturbing; he was not
sure he liked it. The shape was a little harsh, biting, almost
insulting. It seemed to mimic and mock him, him and the human
shape in general, yet he could nail nothing specific about the
piece that struck him. Pure emotion, he realized, worked through
metal. If we can discover the emotion, we have solved the
suicide.
     "Daiche," he began. "How does this thing make you feel?"
Then
half-turned away, feeling stupid, feeling vulnerable, feeling
child-like. His partner did not respond, just looked on slowly,
passively, riding through some grinding internal process.
     "Strange," came the response, finally, about when Meyers was
looking for the drool to come off the other's lower lip.
"Despair. Enlightenment. Kind of a realized pessimism. But a good
sort of knowledge, like defining the problem." He turned, looked
earnestly at Meyers in a way that suprised him. "Like now it can
be fixed."
     Not surprising. Daiche was one of those rare people who get
charged by obstacles, by problems or puzzles; presenting him with
a wrong to right was like handing a techie a broken keyboard. Ten
seconds, and the fingers were flyin'. "Like 'what' can be
fixed?" He asked more gently than he'd spoken in years.
     "Me. Life. Society. You know, everything," his partner tried
to explain. Hell of a detective, in no way a communicator. "It
says.. self-reliance, I guess. Inner strength. I get this feeling
like I'm clay, you know, and I've gotta choose who molds me." He
turned away, embarrassed by the directness of his reply, as any
modern mortal would be.
     Meyers persevered. "How does it tell you this?" 
     Daiche looked down, looked up, spoke towards the wall off to
Meyers' left. "By molding me. You know, it changes you subtly,
but calls attention to the change it is making, letting you know
that you're changing and that there is nothing you can do about
it. Except patch up afterwards. Or not look in the first place."
He seemed through, then added, "Which seems like begging the
question, I guess. I mean, if you look and change so you wouldn't
look, you wouldn't change, right? Or maybe you wouldn't change
again." He paused to consider the piece a final time. "That must
be it."
     Meyers nodded. No wonder it bothered him. He'd always hated
when someone--something--tried fucking with his head. He
only put up with crap like that on his on-time, and then only
from the department. No-one got in his head but them, ever. Which
was probably why he was so alone...
     "Get some pictures of it," he ordered, resuming his on-duty
role. "All angles. Give it to the guys in psyche, tell 'em it's a
suicide note in form, got it? And get me a couple of
stills." Was that a mirror he saw in the convoluted iron as he
slowly circled it, mesmerized like a moth around a spiritual
light? Breaking forth from this cocoon, this mortal shell, he
murmered internally. 
     Meyers walked towards the door, grabbing his leather-polymer
crash jacket, looking about for his navy-blue issue binder. The
metal looks so appropriate here, looking towards the city, arcing
around the skyscrapers like flight patterns, tracing through a
number of stops like a tragic figure wandering through the
hostile influence of the city. What a path to tread
     Daiche stepped in front of him to snap a picture, brought
Meyers back to the present. Quickly he looked away, thinking of
his partner's description. 'To avoid being changed again'.
"Let's get going," he began abruptly. "There's still that
homicide up on 63rd to check out."





	Beneath the vague clutch of his spread fingers, spanning
through visible space like the lifeless branches of a wintered tree, milled the aimless crowd, a swirling gossiping sea in sportsgear shirts and artfully worn jeans. Gil silently watched them move as his hand slid slowly along the synthwood rail of the third-floor walkway, a slight smile playing across his lips occasionally. His steps were slow and languid, the social motions of a listless spirit too resigned to battle the chains of solitude that even now bound it to its lonely ways.
	The unhurried, uncaring stroll, one hand thoughtlessly
extended to the rail's edge as if for balance, brought him eventually to the cascading steps of the escalator, where he dropped his legs into park with a lurching lean backwards, elbows on the black strip of handrest. His eyes gazed ahead steadily, fixedly, half-lidded. Killing as much time as possible.
	When he swung his body in the wide four-step arc that brought
him to the next flight of downsliding stairs, he realized that his laminated name badge was still clipped to his pocket. Great. He tried to slip it off casually, looked at it as if wondering how it got there. Gilroy Londale, of Dynamic Environmental Simulation fame. And his picture. He tucked the gleaming plastic into his shirt pocket before lurching onto the stable metal landing at the foot of the escalator.
	The first steps he took were hesitant, unsure, the steps of
the lonely and the purposeless, stalling in disordered helplessness in the face of a bustling society. Then the habitual shroud of contrived countenance flared up and about him, and he stepped into a sure gait, a determined stance that moved him through the thickening crowds in a lofty blur, as if on to situations of actual consequence. The instinct was old and vital: the need to move from the guttered bottom of society to its towering peak, if in illusion only. If he were to be removed from the jabbering world about him, he at least was going to make it appear to be his choice.
	A destination came to him in mid-act, as it always did; the
numbed bones of his legs fell into one or another well-beaten psychological path--a store in which to browse, a stall at which to dine mechanically, a cafe wherein to withdraw in self-absorption. The path he unconsciously began upon was a faint lure fed by the faint embers of hope that glowed faintly within despite the most dousing efforts of the world outside; it was the seeking of knowledge, and thence security, and then perhaps solace.
	The trail that he followed over the polished tile and through
the churning crowd stood out in vivid, sharp-lined clarity amidst the blurred over-stimulating background noise of eye and ear: a series of images, distances, and body-shifts that had been worn into the neuronic paths of his mind by constant trodding. Deep into the mall, past the pretzel stall and the envio-sound bath supply, away from the main lemming stream via a long glaring white corridor, past the phone booth at its end and down an unlit flight of stairs beyond an alarm door. Gil raised an unthinking hand to brush aside a heavy wool curtain, nostrils flaring in the sandalwood air, pupils dilating in the candlelit gloom.
	"Gilroy." The voice was low and worn. "Here again." But still
feminine. "Yet so soon." Flat, disinterested statements, the tone of no surprise. Which was to be expected.
	He came here to hear of all the greatness in store for him,
the heroic stands and the vast treasures and the beautiful women swooning....Yet never had he heard them, not from her; never was he told what he wanted to hear. And that was what kept him coming back.
	Beneath the intricate twining black etchings that tatooed her
features into a wiry circuited mask, her skin, visible in a single, continuous needle-thin line, gleamed the color of well-creamed coffee. Iron fingernails, acid-etched with the same convoluted patterns that worked up her hands and arms and shoulders, caught the yellowed light of the candles and juggled it through the air, moving in the hypnotic patterns that laid the foundations of her concentration. Her eyelids, painted with a gunmetal mascera that matched the ten dancing nails, lowered slowly amidst the low throaty tone building behind her closed zinfandel lips. Gil walked in slowly, sat carefully on a satin pillow across from her, bowed his head, waited. 
	Her breathing deepened, became rythmic, her lithe chest
heaving fluidly under the worn denim vest. She raised her head, straightened her spine, the balls of her eyes rolling underneath closed lids as if trying to peer through her dark arcing eyebrows. Gil slowed his breathing to a shallow, drawn-out repetition, blanketing what remained of his emotions to provide the smallest possible distraction. Time slowed, dwindled, paused; then, ignored, it drifted away entirely, lost in inconsequence.
	Eventually, face staring straight ahead from its post at the
top of her iron-pole backbone, she parted her lips and spoke through relaxedly open teeth. "Gil."
	He looked up.
	"You are here for your future." As always, starting with the
painfully obvious. "You seek excitement, fear, passion, sensuality. But such is not the the path you have begun upon." Gil bit at his lip thoughtfully. She was unusually candid this evening. "The way you tread is a solitary one, lonely and anti-social. Monotony and stagnation will foster feelings of boredom and a desire to change, a willingness to confront any and all influence in a severe backlash. Do not do so. To continue on your path is destructive." Her eyes opened. "A man will come to you, a man who cannot feel. He will ask you for a favor, a service you can provide that you may be wary of." Their eyes locked. "It is in his power to destroy you. Do as he asks, as a first step. Follow upon this by occasional breaks from character, stepping occasionally off the path that you find so comfortable. In time, your circumstances shall change themselves." Her eyes lidded again, her breathing once again deepened.
	Gil sat silently for a moment, closing his eyes and letting
the incense penetrate up his sinuses, through his muddy skull. So specific, yet still meaningless, still cryptic. He got to his feet, a trifle unsteadily, legs bloodless after being crossed for what may have been hours. He needed to get out, he needed to think, he needed light with which to examine this latest unearthed jewel of wisdom. He tossed somewhere upwards of thirty pieces of silver into a copper dish and shouldered through the curtain, walking dazedly past the phone and down the glaring corridor with distracted iron-weight steps.

	The slim mirrored rectangle hovered near the top of his
windshield, a window into the world he'd left behind. Through it he could see the snaking line of headlights that flowed down the hill in pursuit. He smiled.
	Palo "Chase" Madera squinted at the orange clouds smothering
the sun upon the horizon, checked the high-mag mirror past his left elbows. At least they'd stopped with the gunfire; the chance of hitting him once he'd got moving were slim enough, and the bullet-weave beneath the fiberglass hull of his Arcana would stop anything small-arms could throw. Besides, it made him edgey--even bullets had to come down somewhere.
	His eyes flicked back to the trail of lights navigating the
S-curved road behind him, and he allowed his dramatic self- entertainment to produce a slight sigh. Obviously the drag scene in Portland was dead. It was going to be one long drive down the coast....

	An unusually cool breeze swept through the cement streets,
lifting the sweltering smoky residue and envigorating the pulsing nightlife. The streetlights, no longer supported by the glare of close-clenching smog, loomed in isolated white pinpricks from their thirtieth-floor perches; diffused pools of their artificial light fell in sharp outline upon the dark-coated shoulders of ambling creatures who struggled to awake from the daily sleep of their routine.
	Duncan squinted up at the sequin-gleams bolted far overhead,
the closest he would ever get to gazing at the stars. The monolithic faces of the ancient skyscrapers towered on high, dwindling into the polluted night like the darkened planes of perspective art. Dimly visible, gathering occasional light as they swung passively on their taut moorings, the off-black comm cables spanned the air above the boulevard in a sporadic grid, strung with grimy streamers, faded warning tags, the occasional dying red aircraft light. The wide armored-plexiglass belly of a road patrol car drifted ghostily by overhead, its idling jets painting the street with a momentary candlelight glow.
	He caught the steady indigo logo of the Cold Crow reflected
across the street, high up; with a casual resignation he stepped onto a ledge of the ascension belt, hooking his hand through the balance loop while the steeled tread passed by the first three levels. At the fourth landing he stepped nimbly off the moving strip, pausing a moment to gaze at the traffic twenty stories down before heading down the wide jutting sidewalk towards the bar at the end of the block.
	Outside, leaning against concrete that was trying to be wood,
he saw Eddie, a vice in either hand. The orange ember of a smoke rose and fell, balanced in its pendulum motion by a pint glass. Duncan waved when he got close enough to stand out. "Long time," he smiled thinly.
	Eddie gave a half-salute, steel glinting through the air-
holes of his black fingerless gloves. "Least a week," he agreed. "How're things?" The glass tilted slightly in a casual toast before pressing against his lips.
	Duncan leaned against the wall, senses feeling out the
interior scene. People clumped in jabbering groups, immersed in social facade. Conversation at a low, sober level; the air tense, nervous, sweaty. A band playing what could be called blues only from the effect it had on the audience. "Slow," he responded. "Still not working. You?"
	Eddie blew out a plume of smoke. "Same. Tried for a cabling
job the other day, but all the positions were snapped up when I got there."
	"Anybody flunk their training-sims?"
	Eddie shrugged. "Won't know till they rehire. Job market
bites, these days."
	"Always has."
	"Ain't that the truth." He passed Duncan a smoke, the need
not having to be voiced. The two stood quietly outside, watching the world filter by slowly, in degrees. At the far end of the sidewalk, by the steel-cable railings and their proximity net-traps, two groups of self-imported adolescents vented their hormonal surges, each calling the other coward yet both packs backing away. Cussing, because it was more adult than running.
	"Fucking snotlings," Eddie muttered, then spat the effects of
his cigarette in punctuation.
	"Duncan," came an approaching voice from inside. He turned,
Eddie looking as well, grey smoke spewing from both their nostrils as if a stage effect for the tall leathered woman walking up.
	"Cindy," he greeted, eyes locking with the dark orbs that hid
beneath her icy white bangs.
	"And Eddie," she half-smiled, strolling out of the bar to
join them. "What's up, Man o' Steel?" She had her own smokes, bummed a light.
	"Just the old news," he lamented. "Been beatin' the street
all day, racking up the miles trying to find gainful employ." She glanced up from her sidewalk-stare in an "Any luck?" look. He shook his head. "Nope. Still bouncing on my employment insurance." He stared across the street dismally. "Christ, they're gonna ream me when I finally get paid." High Risk. He drained his beer.
	"You not workin, huh?" Cindy pulled at her whiskey sour. "You
used to shock, yes?"
	He smiled at her affected phrasing, the levity of those too
bored to talk normal. Shockjock. Memories came to him of landfill- ashtrays and beer-scented mikes catching his attitude and throwing it out upon unseen miles. "Yeah."
	"The station where I work," she swallowed, then lowered the
glass. "Needs their redeye covered. I don't know if they're looking for a shock, but at 4 am not too many people are listening anyways." She looked at him, almost scrutinizing. "Like to take it? Pay ain't great, but the coffee's free."
	Eddie paused for all of the time it took to not seem anxious.
A habit, with women and employment. "Sounds okay. You could line me up?"
	"But of course," she grinned. <)2>It's not what you can do<)1>, he
reminded himself, reaffirming modern employment strategy. <)2>It's who you know Inside.<)1>
	"Well," Duncan began, mock-petulantly. "Aren't you going to
line <)2>me<)1> with something now?"
	Cindy's smile was an intentful white. "For you," she replied,
fingers curling through his black hair, "I have somewhat of a greater surprise in store."
	Eddie tried to drink from his empty glass. If there's one
thing women hate, he thought passionlessly at the trickling foam, it's steel fingers. He left them to get a refill, the night seeming all of a sudden both so young and so old.

	Blackglass. She woke with a rolling jerk, the heat of the
night reducing her movements to slow, languid swaying. Her greycoated eyelids were a warm gelatin that sunk her deep within herself, smothered her in the oppressive weight of slumber, barred reality like a flesh portcullis guillotining before her anxious mind with a resounding metal-stone clash. So warm, the vinyl seat worked into the shape of her body, turning her own heat back on her...
	Danyele snapped her head up as if in alarm, kicking in her
fight n' flight to gain full consciousness. Her van was hot, the air stale and suffocating, but she did not crack the window for fear of breaking her parked-car image. The windshield at the left end of the metal box was frosted over to an opaque shadowy hue; she looked down from it to the similarly-dark moniter at her feet, black power cord snaking through the domestic ruin of the floor to replace the dashboard cigarette lighter. Her hand held a remote, an on-off pause switch, now on OFF. Wired to the monitor was an 8mm recorder that perfectly supplemented the Van Eck device which mimicked the radiation emanating from the 5th story lab server a few buildings away. A directional antennae shaped like a stereo speaker was welded at an angle to the inside wall of her van.
	It was hot; beads of sweat lined her neck and shouders,
running under her denim vest and down her back. Danyele cursed almost audibly, glared at first the monitor, then the remote in her hand. Dozin'. If anything had happened, she'd missed it. One night of surveillance, not much to ask for, just one small eight-hour period that would end as soon as someone used the server and the intsec system would replicate on her screen, would be recorded on her tape. And she was dozin'.
	Busting Kendachi was not going to be easy; exactly the reason
she was going after it in the first place. When your life has been molded by instant-access chemicalectronic satisfaction, a true challenge--a true <)2>threat<)1>--is something to hardly ignore. She could break the internal security system--could break any electronic guardian--given time, but she was not likely to get much during the run. Hence the prep: know what intsec asks for, write a program to blow through it, <)2>then<)1> do the run. Simple, smart, effective. If she could stay awake. 
	Coffee had long been given up on her night-ops; the hot
liquid only made her more sedate, a warm slow-breathing mound with an overwhelming urge to piss. Stronger stimulants made her edgy and restless, bad qualities when you're sitting tight in a parking lot for eight hours, the newly-applied corporate decals on your van the only thing keeping you from being searched or towed by passing security patrols. All that worked anymore was sheer willpower.
	Danyele stretched slowly, rubbed the capped metal ring behind
her ear. The metal always expanded in the heat, staying ten degrees hotter than the rest of her body, and was wedged against the base of her skull with a dull ache that was harder to think through than a migraine. It was a necessary evil. Suffering for her art, and all that.
	The screen flickered to life and she jumped excitedly,
flicking the switch to ON. The program splash screen came on, with a PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE, then the NAME prompt floated up. Full name, she noted intently. Two words only. Department number; six digits, the first an alpha. Then the password: eight asterisks that appeared when the user entered the code. Eight characters, probably restricted to alphanumeric. Unless the code was high-level and therefore not widely used; then the whole keyboard was fair game, however weird the combination. She silently wished that she'd been able to gimmick the keyboard to send her whatever strokes were used, but actual entry into the Kendachi building was beyond her abilities. Better off trying random ASCII combinations in the hopes of gaining high-level clearance; her standard break-in dictionaries would almost assuredly leave her stranded at file clerk level.
	She watched, silently, as the late-night operator punched
through the security program and began updating progress reports. Boring stuff, she knew, but she'd wear out the tape in the process of scrutinizing the procedure for every possible detail, every possible lead, every possible edge. With enough on-screen information, she could even replicate the program at home for dry runs.
	The user signed off, finally, half an hour later. She leaned
back, smiled slightly, looked at her watch. 3:12. Switching the remote to OFF, she kicked some legroom among the jackets, wires, and tools littering the floor and lay limply among the debris. From here on was slack time, till it was light enough to leave casually; <)2>now<)1> (finally) it was okay to crash.


	Toni glanced up out of paranoid instinct as she heard the
front door open, turning her attention momentarily from the marinara sauce boiling on the range before her, then returned to her work as she heard the familiar jangle of keys, the dense rustle of a leather jacket being tossed to the couch.
	"You're late," she tossed over her shoulder to the tall dark
form crossing the kitchen behind her. "Better get that squid on-line, quick-o."
	"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Daiche muttered, rooting through the
fridge. He pulled out a rectangle of blue styrofoam, some plastic- wrapped obscurities, a bottle of cheap chardonnay. One hand balanced the loot while the other snaked over her shoulder to kick on the oven at a time-saving 500. One finger brushed her neck on the way back, and she smiled. "Hello," she heard from behind her, as if in afterthought, his back turned while he focussed on his half of the meal. Does anybody else fake <)2>blase<)1> like this, she wondered, or are we just depraved?
	"Uh," Toni began, stirring carefully, the steam of the sauce
wafting up to bathe her face in scents of green olive and garlic. 
	"Hmm?" he leaned towards her, eyes on the saucepan. He dipped
a finger in quickly, before she could react, slipped it between his lips. "Needs more basil," he told her, locking eyes with her in concern.
	"<)2>My<)1> sauce!" she snapped, brandishing the wooden spoon
threateningly, globules of tomato paste arcing through the air.
	"And tarragon," he continued, ducking her slow-blow. "You
have to balance the," he stepped aside from the frustrated towel-snap, "Bitter squid with the," he closed swiftly before she could try another strike, "Sharpness of the tarragon." He kissed the back of her neck. "And the semi-sweet basil," he continued, before she turned into his embrace.
	"Welcome home," she greeted him with a smile and a quick
kiss.
	"Thanks," he smiled, then tried for a second sample of
marinera.
	She knocked his hand away. "Now get back to hacking up that
squid-thing from Beyond," she admonished him mock-seriously, curly black hair swinging with the shake of her head.
	He shook his head slowly as he turned away. Too much
Lovecraft. Without pausing he grabbed a handful of tentacles and clamped them between his teeth, the serpentine pseudopods hanging limply down his chin. "Look honey," he said through clenched teeth, "I'm Cthulhu!"
	She had to laugh, couldn't help it, but still managed to
salvage a you're-not-helping look out of the whole affair. He watched her as she added basil and tarragon, her back to him. Must be hungry. He got back to work, slicing the squid, coating the pan with a thin layer of wine, sprinkling a crumbly mixture of romano, butter, and oregano onto the dismembered cuttlefish.
	"Uh," she said again as he put the pan of unrecognizable
squid into the oven, "You're baking the squid?"
	"Yeah," he grinned. "Lets the romano work into the meat. Less
grease than when you fry it. Good stuff," he assured her. She continued to look skeptical. "C'mon, let's get the pasta on."
	"So soon?" She turned back to study her sauce critically.
"What about the squid?"
	"Trust me," he grinned, leaning into her back as he reached
into a cabinet over her head. He caught a lungful of a curious mixture of shampoo and tomato sauce before his heels touched the ground again. "You don't want a sauce that tastes like squid; it gets redundant. We'll add it in at the end." He hunted about for a pot to boil the rigatoni in until she pointed to the water simmering on a back range burner. "Precog," he accused sharply, dumping the dry pasta into the pot. She smiled, held out the olive oil, watched him try to track down the butter.
	Everything seemed to happen at once. He got the pasta
started, and the sauce was simmering too quickly. He reached past her and lowered the heat, then the squid was sizzling. Daiche opened the oven with a jerk, flipped the meat quickly with steaming fingers, put the pan back in. The pasta boiled over, and he lifted the pot while Toni turned down the burner, then watched the water settle until the squid started into the intense hissing noises again. He got it out, drained the wine and grease, threw the meat into the sauce, and the pasta was just finishing.
	Before he knew it they were at the table eating. Red wine,
candles, garlic bread, the whole bit. No sense making a good meal if you weren't going to do it right. 
	Or if there wasn't someone to share it with. He smiled at
her, raised his fork. "Par excellence," he grinned, a tendril of mozzarella swinging from one tine. She nodded, mouth full, bypassing language with carefully arched eyebrows and the curl of a lip.
	Red wine, he thought as he sipped ecstatically. Should it be
red or white? The red seemed okay, but white was supposed to go with seafood.... Red sauce. Right. Red sauce, red wine.
	When he came back, glass and gaze both returning to the
dinner scene, Toni had stopped chewing was gazing out the picture windows of their Level Eighty apartment. Out, upon the black sea of night, the bright freeways like coastlines that bounded outcroppings of vast skycrapers which had been fragmented by the incomplete darkness into coral-like reefs of scintillating light. Groundcars and the light air traffic of security and corporate hovers swam in erratic patterns, like slippery groups of predator and prey, oblivious to each other over the vast distance. One can almost imagine, she remarked to herself, that this is all underwater, an unknown city buried at the bottom of an unchartable crevasse somewhere in the Pacific. No, make it the Atlantic, she amended; the Atlantic is much more mysterious, more hostile...
	"I still can't get over the view either," Daiche commented by
way of conversation.
	Toni nodded. "It's remarkable, alright." He probably didn't
see. Their imaginations ran in opposite directions, as if away from each other; to him, she reasoned, the vague pattern of lights and power were perhaps the unreachable depths of space, a scattering of suns and nebulae and novae, screaming "Life!" amidst the inky blackness. To each our vision, she toasted silently, sipping more wine. To each our unknowns.
	"You're lost in thought," he observed needlessly, then cocked
his head and looked at her intently. "Are you falling in love with the world again?"
	Toni set down her glass, apologetic. "I'm just a little
introspective today, that's all." She turned her mind back to the meal, and the two ate in silence for a unsure few moments. "Luther called today," she told him finally. "His wife's got cancer."
	He stopped with fork in midair, rigatoni slipping gratefully
off the shiny metal to splash back onto the relative security of his plate. "Angela?" he asked, half-incredulously. "But she--how? Lung cancer?"
	Toni nodded numbly. "Spread too quickly. She's on chemo,
maybe has a week left. From what he told me, I'd giver her a couple of days." She drank from her wine, deeply; he refilled her glass wordlessly. "It's just so sudden..." Her hands shook, so she put down her fork.
	"Cancer's like that," he murmered, unable to raise the
courage to soothe her. "Rob, Mallory, Neil...they all got it, before they knew what hit them." He paused to wonder if he shouldn't be drawing out the subject, then continued venting. She'd understand. "The air's that bad, you practically got to wear a mask to make it these days."
	"Or be a corporate," she muttered darkly. He didn't reply.
With enough cash, bracherial agents could be obtained that guaranteed pink lungs under even the harshest conditions. With enough cash.
	Daiche sighed, toyed with what was left of his dinner.
"There's just too much," he remarked lowly. "Too many ways to bite it these days. Sometimes I wonder how any of us can make it through a day, let alone our whole lives." Their eyes met. "And sometimes I wonder what would happen if one of us didn't."
	"Don't think like that," she pleaded, hoping against all
reason that she could absolve the pain and uncertainty, merely by willing it so.
	He shrugged, finished the food on his plate methodically. She
copied his silence and cleaned off her plate in rserved solitude, soaking up the last streaks of marinera with an end of garlic bread before joining him in the kitchen to do dishes.
	"You know," he began in a charcateristic change of subject,
as he dried his hands on the burgundy dishtowel. "It's been awhile since we've played...."

	In the morning she staggered out in her robe to find him
dazed in the kitchen, leaning forward on the counter, eyes staring vacantly at the wake-up supply in the cabinet above the sink. Goosebumps prickling up his bare chest and arms.
	"I can't decide," he told her, not turning his gaze away from
the stimulants and the euphorics, the tranquilizers and the depressants, the mem-boosters and the hallucinogins. "I don't know how I want to feel today." Daiche stared down at his hands, then turned and leaned with his back to the cabinet. "I think I'll go without anything today," he told her sleepy expression. "I try things straightforward, just myself. Nothing else."
	"Whatever you want, babe," she mumbled with a tired smile,
not wanting to question or examine or even think this early. Later on she'd wonder what had gone wrong inside of him; for now she reached past his forearm to grab a vial of artificial salts that enhanced synthesis of the hemispheres within the forebrain. Balance and harmony. 
	He watched her silently as she mixed a teaspoon of the grains
with a cup of instant European coffee, and was still standing there silently when she moved off to the bathroom to shower.


	Too-tuh too-tuh too-tuh. Drey Chavkin tapped his loose fist
against the pocket with his keys in it, absently keeping time with the clap of his boots on the cold concrete. Too-tlink too-tlink too- tlink. Low-humming flourescent bars overhead stained the dismal grey-brown of the parking structure a chalky orange, created blue- black pools of shadow that melted about his leather jacket like inky wax absorbing a nightly candlestick. The shades he wore for image, the same ones that had forever ruined his eyes to the prospect of daylight, rode a proud windshield over his oft-broken nose, faced the far exhaust-dusted wall with a riveted fascination, screamed orange with the gleam of passing lights. Black sheepskin shifted smoothly with each movement, silenced into worn creases by the determined pace he strode. Dark, towering, a creature of the night chained in leather, Chav waded through the parked cars with an air of power and domination that he had long since felt the need to practice.
	Three cars ahead, just past the silver Audi, sat his squat
ride, the Alfa Romeo. The car that had never gotten him pulled over, the car that had a leather interior, the car that had gotten him through a number of discriminating gates. Kelly green, the color of the Irish, whose blood he might have had but whose whiskey he definitely drank. It was small, inoffensive, a little slow, but it suited his needs. And it had been free.
	Chav climbed in, driver's bucket ratcheted all the way back
to the rear passenger pillow that was taken up by a skateboard (stolen) and a once-shiny bat (dented), keys dangling and glinting in one leather-wrapped fist. A cestus, it was called; a leather strap sewn with iron weights, wound around the wrist and fingers, crossing over the palm and the back of the hand. Spikes in the right places. Once the boxer's friend, before padded gloves came around and made the sport tame. Chav didn't box.
	One ponderous fist opened, slipped into the drug-pocket of
his biker jacket, pulled out a banded wad of cash. Fifty thou, an advance; not bad, but not the best he'd made. The greyhair who paid him would deliver that much again, after things were taken care of. The money went to the glove-box; the hand, to his hair. He started the car, kicked in the lights, belched a wisp of black smoke from the back before gearing into speed and burning down the spiralling exit ramp. One thing for the Romeos, they sure as hell could move.
	

	The orange glare of the streetlights below suffused the thick
grey steam of the air, blocking out the stars loitering about the heavens above, the streaking lights of the cars shooting along thoroughfares through the night, the security lights leaking through the panes of countless establishments sleeping in silent monolithic hordes. Up here, in the fog, above the life, it was impossible to tell that society lay fifty-plus floors away. The skeletal rooftops that pointed stabbing fingers at the sky were cluttered with cooling vanes and exhaust vents, polluted with the gas and heat that were not allowed to infect the established population. The hyper-industrial network of twisting aluminum cables and snaking copper pipes, braced by a maze of arcing concrete supports and looming iron smokestacks, decorated with sparks and grime and the faint scarlet glow of the aircraft warning lights that rested high above like malevolent stars, this entire synthetic landscape had its own breed of life, a stringy, tough, unseen population that evidenced itself in forgotten clothes- lines, charred oil cans, or rodent bones picked clean.
	Kara worked through the intermittent gaps in sheetmetal walls
or pipe clusters, occasional jets of steam condensing on her legs, tired moths bumping her cheeks, gusts of wind lashing torn trails of wire against her elbow. The people up here were known to her: a rugged brand of humanity nurtured on the dry wind and the scrawny bone. They also left her alone, the mark of the Graveyard visible in her eye and her gait, a persistent sign declaring, "You're <)2>not<)1> the toughest one around." Uncaring, unmolested, she vaulted over low windbreaks and ducked under exposed beams, steadily working through the elaborate path to reach a section all but inaccessible from the street.
	Feet skipping to either side of a pipe, a black strip of
four-lane pavement all but invisible below, crossing one of a number of concrete bridges between these ariel islands, she ducked around a brick corner, the dirty concrete smokestack that could hold ten of her receding into the sky to spit malicious clouds at the cosmos. Small rectangles of glass slipped past beneath signs of caution; an empty can ricochetted off her toe and clattered twice before plummeting eight seconds to punch through someone's car on the street below. A faraway glow bounced off brick and caught Kara's eye; she moved closer until the flicker of flames was apparent, then moved towards the once-yellow oil can that was ablaze with chemical fire. Behind it, shrouded in smoke, a silhoutte waited patiently, the rising sparks mimicked by twin gleaming lenses.
	Kara approached slowly, passively, with great deliberation.
One hand snaked into her jacket, gripped the metal-cased cigars and the pint of reserve night-black rum that she had rooted from the depths of her land. Treasures for the sacrifice. "Judas!" she called out as the man's head looked at her eyes, ebony dreads framing the dark face in a curtain of shadow that allowed ocasional light to splash on broad cheekbones, wide nostrils, solemn lips, silvered sunglasses. "It's me again." 
	No response, but the alcohol and tobacco left her small dirty
hands as if snatched by some hidden familiar. Pressure on her lips, she realized, a lit cigar, one of her own. She inhaled, bringing the leaves to full life, blue grey smoke frolicking amidst her breath. "I need to save someone," she began. "A friend." His face loomed in a sudden break in the smoke, then was clouded again.
	"You Graveyard," the thick deadened voice came, deep like the
uncharted crevasses of the sea. A swallow of the rum, audible over the tinny crackle of the fire. "Your friend, you want to save him from himself?" She nodded. He waited.
	"He's going to destroy himself. He tackles too much. He tries
to work with power which is not his," Kara explained carefully. "I am worried for the future."
	"The future." Another swallow of the alcohol. "The future is
everything, as is the past, one must understand. It is possible for anything to happen, anything we can or cannot imagine. The potential lies in the number of influences which favor each possibility; the greater such influences, the greater the probability has of becoming reality. Thus, with your friend, one must recognize what potentials have the most influences, and one must add influences to the potential that is most appealing, while reducing the odds of the other options."
	The rum found its way into her palm; she gulped from it, felt
a brown drying burn work its way up her cheeks and throat as Judas continued. "Anything that could have happened, has happened. Just anything that can happen will happen, in some universe, be it physical or mental. The potential or probability is enough for the option to have had existed, and thus it exists, in or of reality, affecting the world even by not having happened. Thus it is to me that all things have and will have occurred, with or without my influence; thus it is that I celebrate and mourn each moment, for each moment brings in turn a mosaic of potential events that could have been, and as such they be, internally, and as such I feel. Thus is it hard for me to act and well for me to observe, for in truth my actions affect not the existence of these options, and my observation causes one of these options to manifest itself as reality." The bottle tilted skyward, then lowered with an internal splash. "There is no difference between the internal and external reality, to the individual. External reality occurs to one merely as the internal reality reacted to with some consideration for the internal reality of others. Thus is all possible, thus can all be, for there are no limitations to the psychological universe. This is the secret to creativity." Once again the rum found its way to Kara.
	She handed the bottle back after another swallow that all but
stole the chill breath from her lungs. "You should not worry for your friend. In some futures, he will be alive, saved by you or others. In others, he will be dead, destroyed by himself or others. It is enough cause for joy and grief that these each may come to pass. The awareness of, and the response to, every possible outcome bars one from emotional obsession, yet does not allow for detatchment. It is the way of the wise man, the road of not-apathy, the path of the awakened."
	The twin lenses shot forth interpretations of flame, then
night, then hidden stars, then fixed directly on Kara's light-hungry pupils. "But to load the odds in your favor, I suggest you hire Chase."