By Duncan Long 



Long Term Publications 

Copyright © 2000,2003, 2004 by Duncan Long. Cover 
artwork Copyright © by Duncan Long. For more 
information and free access to short stories, 
artwork, music and articles by Duncan Long, visit 

http://duncanlong.com/ 

All rights on both text and cover artwork reserved, 
which includes the right to reproduce this book or 
portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as 
provided by US and international copyright laws. Any 
resemblance between characters in this book and 
those living or dead is purely coincidental. 


2 


e became the tsunami that 

changed history and turned it 

wrong side out. Of course all 

events didn’t unfold as planned by 

those who thought they were in 

charge; but those in charge never 
suspected our coming. The simplest departure from 
their machinations became a far-reaching danger, as 
if one pebble thrown into a pond somehow created 
the tidal wave that came back to destroy. 

I know now that the pivotal event started quietly, 
the way many do. Like most, it merited no mention in 
the newspapers. Its real damage wouldn’t occur for 
nearly a century, long after all but one of the players 
was dead. Thus, event heralding this storm charging 
toward my doorstep occurred long before my birth. 

It started shortly after Jeff Huntington cast his 
smoldering cigarette toward the tarmac. Its glowing, 
crimson tip arched in the darkness then crashed into 
a thousand sparks. He exhaled smoke, eyeing the 
glowing sunrise that promised to transform the humid 
night’s heat into another Thailand scorcher. 

As part of the sweaty step crew, Jeff stood 
nervously with the other specialists stationed at the 


end of the runway, waiting for the bombing mission to 
be flown. Their job was to fix any of the electronics 
that broke down before the takeoff of the eight aging 
B-52s. 

Lieutenant Norton came charging up behind Jeff 
and the others, his approach masked by the jet 
engines winding up. “Huntington,” he yelled, 
announcing his presence and causing Jeff to wince. 
“Get to the second BUFF. They’re having troubles.” 

Jeff swore under his breath. “You’ve got to be 
kidding.” The BUFFs were starting their engines 
which meant he’d have to go along and fix the 
package in the air—bad news since only the air crew 
had ejection seats and Hanoi’s SAMs had become 
more accurate over last few months. They’d brought 
down two B-52s the day before. Huntington opened 
his mouth to protest, but wasn’t quick enough. 

“Get moving,” Norton yelled. “This isn’t a matter for 
negotiations, mister.” 

Jeff glared at the lieutenant a moment, then pulled 
his muffs over his ears, augmenting the ear plugs he 
already wore, in a vein attempt to shut out the noise 
of the distant jet engines. Grabbing his tool kit from 
the pavement, he headed for the second aircraft as 
the aircrew opened a hatch so he could board the 
massive bomber. 

Minutes later the engines throttled to full power 
and the big steel bird soared into the air for its 
bombing run on the distant city. Jeff remained 
encased in the eagle's belly, repairing a backup 
module that would never be needed. 


looked Death straight in the eye and tried not to 

lose control of my bladder; had I known I’d be 

seeing him, I definitely would have skipped the 

Morning Thunder. I made a mental note to do so 

in the future—should I somehow escape his 

clutches one more time. 

His henchmen must have had a milliwave scanner 
because they had very efficiently relieved me of my 
main and hideout pistols along with my four knives. 
All they’d missed was the mini-claymore strapped to 
my thigh—apparently mistaking it for part of my exoarmor. 


 The claymore was useless weight at this point. 
Firing a claymore on your thigh was a guaranteed 
broken leg but I would have risked that. My main 
consideration was that the six-foot swath of jagged 
plastic that would exit the front of the device might fail 
to kill Death. The last thing I wanted to do was wound 
him again and be unable to escape. It would be better 
to do nothing and let him kill me coolly and quickly 
rather than have him angry and able to do his worst 
for a protracted time. 

Dying quickly beats dying slowly any day— 
including your last. 

Of course setting off the claymore was all 


academic since I couldn’t reach the firing pin with 
Death’s thugs gripping my arms in their muscled 
claws. I stood there sweating and fighting to control 
my bladder while Death’s two mesomorphs held me 
by either arm, threatening to dislocate my shoulders. 
A mech-clock ticked off long seconds in the room that 
smelled of sweat and blood. 

Death stared at me across the smoke-filled room, 
sitting behind an antique steel desk that resembled a 
mortician's examination table. As always he wore the 
chrome face with the crazy grin molded into it; he 
never seemed to wear any of his other masks which 
hung along the wall like an eyeless crowd of 
onlookers. His antenna darted around like a nervous 
cricket’s as he faced me. “Surprised to see me again 
so soon?” 

“Just get it over with,” I said. No more waiting for 
me. I wanted to at least go with clean underwear. 

Death threw back his head and roared, creating a 
grating that was his way of laughing. “You think we 
brought you here to...” He chuckled with what could 
pass for a death rattle. 

He uncoiled himself from his chair and rose to his 
feet, stooping so his dented skull didn’t scrape the 
ceiling. “Actually I have a little job for you.” The hand 
that ended in digits instead of a claw snaked into his 
chest compartment and retrieved a plastic vial. 
“Here.” 

 The meso on my left let go of my arm so I could 
receive the tiny jar. I recognized the pearlescent liquid 
inside without checking the label. “I don’t do jet 
anymore. You can have this back.” 

Death’s eyes turned red in the dim light. “You’re 
not going to wear out my patience today, are you?” 

“No,” I answered quickly. There was no way I was 
going to do that. 


“I’ve paid to see your records,” Death said. “You 
have three jet-net convictions and two months in 
detox on your records. I know you’ve used the stuff, 
so don’t try to smudge me.” 

“Used to use is the key point here. I quit. I’ve seen 
what happens when a guy crashes and splatters his 
gray mat all over the —” 

“Let’s just say you have no choice in this. It’s 
nonnegotiable. You aren’t in a position to bargain.” 
With a blur of motion his hand snaked toward me and 
abruptly a razor sharp steel blade was at my throat. 

I know when to fold. “I’m over a barrel with my 
pants down,” I said in as steady a voice as I could 
muster. “Please continue.” 

Death withdrew and then paced the narrow room 
for a few moments which seem like eternity, his 
clawed hand opening and snapping shut with quiet 
efficiency. Finally he stopped and spoke. “There’s a 
man we need to find. Lost—very thoroughly. But he 
probably left tracks in cyber. That’s where you come 
in.” 

“You want me to jet net him? That’s not what you 
have in mind, is it?” 

“That’s precisely it. For a cypher-tech like you, that 
ought to be a grav dive with eyes closed.” 

“What kind of pay are we talking about?” I asked. 
“If I’m going to risk frying my mind —” 

“Pay!” Death roared, making the sets of teeth in 
the skull collection on the shelf behind him rattle 
ominously. “You think you have room to bargain 
here?” 

“I thought, maybe,” I ventured. “You know...” 

“You ought to be glad I’m not going to kill you 
outright after what happened last time.” 

He was right on that point. 

I’d left him short a couple of arms after capturing 


him in a booby trap I’d left behind. Unfortunately I’d 
failed to kill him—hence my consternation at being 
brought into his chamber earlier. When you try to 
assassinate a crime king, you don’t want to botch it. I 
was glad, yea even surprised, that he hadn’t brought 
me in for a slow roasting over a low flame. 

Death leaned toward me, coming so close his 
antenna brushed my face, tickling my sweat-covered 
brow. I could hear tiny gears whirring somewhere 
inside him. “Fortunately for you I’m feeling generous 
today. You find our guy’s hard address by the end of 
the tomorrow and —” 

“Just find his hard address?” I asked. “You don’t 
want me to make the pick up or anything?” 

“That’s correct. I’ve got other guys looking for him 
now—they’ll make the pickup if you find his hard 
address first. You find his hard address before my 
other guys and I’ll delete your criminal records from 
the PD machine and throw in a couple of thou to boot. 
How’s that sound?” 

“Very generous.” 

“As a bonus, I won’t kill you.” 

“Very, very generous.” 

“Here’s his data file,” he said, handing me a ROM 
dot. “This is everything we have on him. He left 
records behind when he went into hiding.” 

I took the tiny storage device and carefully placed 
it into the PA on my wrist. “Is this guy dangerous?” 

“Not hardly,” Death replied. “An antique. You 
remember the Supreme ruling last month? The one 
that said all vets had to be compensated for the past 
sins of the UN and its member states?” 

“A hundred thous per year, for each year they 
continue to live,” I replied. I was up to speed on this 
because I’d been trying to figure out some way to 
hack my way onto the list of those who’d be receiving 


the cash. 

“That ruling was their death warrant. The Powers 
decided to cut their losses to a hundred thous per 
vet.” 

“By killing them off this year?” 

“Right,” Death said with a low, hissing voice. “The 
actuary tables will be off for years to come with all the 
unexpected accidents, heart attacks, and super-bugs. 
But our guy wasn’t dumb. When the law was passed, 
he didn’t wait for the knock-knock. He went 
underground. We contracted the job from The 
Powers. Now you have two days to hard address him 
for us. Or else.” 

“I hate to mention this,” I said in the most contrite 
voice I could muster. “But I’m short of cash. If I’m to 
access the private Debs... The pub-net doesn’t have 
anything of value for a data search like I’ll need to—” 

Death growled, his eyes glowing crimson again. 
Then he fished through a pile of papers, produced a 
smart card, and hurled it at me. “Here’s an 
anonymous. Five hundred creds on it. That’s your 
advance. Now is there anything else?” 

I was quiet for a moment and then spoke. “Do you 
have a bathroom around here?” 


eff Huntington swore under his breath as he 

double-checked the voltmeter. The circuits 

weren’t getting the proper power and he didn’t 

see why. 

 “Better get your chute on,” the navigator next 

to him yelled over the engine noise of the B-52. 

“Can’t work with it on,” Jeff replied. Hell, he 
thought, I can barely work inside the heavy flight 
jacket necessitated by the cold air coming in through 
the bomb bay doors. He glanced over to see the last 
of the bombs shuttle through the bay. For a moment it 
registered in his mind just what the bombs must be 
doing on the ground. Yet in the air, everything 
seemed serene and sterile with the death they’d just 
dumped on those below, divorced from his reality. 

He turned back to the circuit he was laboring over. 

“Get your chute!” the navigator yelled at him. “Get 
your chute.” 

Jeff glanced up to see the navigator pulling his 
helmet’s blast shield down over his face and then jerk 
at his shoulder harness to tighten it. 

 With a shudder, Jeff realized the crewman was 
getting ready to eject. 

That made an impression on Jeff. He turned and 
grabbed his chute, just as the rear of the plane ripped 


apart with a concussion that threw shrapnel through 
the interior of the plane. The jagged shards poked 
holes through the skin of the jet so daylight peppered 
its dark interior. The B-52 lurched into a shallow turn, 
one of its engines sputtering. 

Blinded by the blood in his left eye, Jeff turned 
toward the navigator and then looked away from the 
headless corpse that still sat in the chair. 

 The plane quaked and the floor below Jeff’s feet 
canted to an impossible angle as the tail behind him 
ripped away. Air streamed through the cabin and 
threatened to suck him out the gaping hole. 

Fighting to stay on his feet, Jeff forced his arms 
through the straps on his chute and fastened the 
main belt around his chest with cold, shaking fingers. 
Then he fought his way toward the bomb bay that 
now seemed to be at the side of the falling plane. 

He paused at the opening, looking at the earth that 
spiraled toward him. Closing his good eye, he leaped 
into space with a yell that was lost in the wind. 

 The ride home was less than comfy. I’d hoped 
Death’s mesoes would give me a lift back since they’d 
snatched me on the front stoop in the first place. 

No such luck. 

During the snatch, they had picked me up just 
around the corner from my apartment. There was a 
Ja-Ja parade going by and I tried to take advantage 
of it to jump start my empty smart card with a “loan” 
from a hot-wired ATM 

“Whatcha doin’, Ralphy?” one of Death’s three 
goons asked, placing my arm in his vise-like grip. 

“Just trying to withdraw some creds, man,” I 
replied, trying not to wince at the bone-crunching 

9 


squeeze. 

“Lucky we ain’t cops,” Death’s henchman on my 
right said the three of them hustled me toward their 
auto. “ATM surfing is a capital offense. You’d be in 
big trouble if—” He stopped in mid-sentence, 
interrupted by a loud “plop.” Simultaneously, a red 
mist of bone and brains erupted from his face, the 
bullet hitting with enough force to knock most of the 
steel Mohawk spikes from his skull. A fraction of a 
second later, there was the report from a distant rifle, 
coming at the same moment the lifeless thug’s corpse 
tumbled toward the ground, his head spikes chiming 
on the pavement around him. 

Death’s two remaining henchmen yanked me into 
the air and made a mad dash for the safety of the 
limo, tossing me in and then diving through its open 
door behind me without a word or backward glance. A 
bullet glanced off the vehicle’s armor as we had sped 
away, heading strait to Death’s lair for the meeting. 

So now that I was leaving that meeting, I had 
hoped to have a free ride in the armored limo. No 
such luck. It was time to send me back to my friendly 
neighborhood and Death’s henchmen were apprehensive 
about putting themselves into the crosshairs 
again. Since the police didn’t bother to replace their 
CS boxes anymore, there was little chance our area 
would be safe from Snipe any time in the near future 
unless she got tired and quit. 

And even though the mesoes’ car had armor, they 
knew the new depleted uranium, anti-armor rounds 
were available on the street and that Snipe might be 
waiting for them with said ammunition. Because of 
that, they weren’t taking chances of joining their 
buddy. 

Instead of giving me a ride home, they 
crammed me into a plastic deliv box and mailed me. 


Fortunately for me it was express mail. 

 That meant I’d only be there in hours rather than 
days or months. But being sealed up in a plastic box 
that’s upsided several times despite the “this side up” 
notice on the outside of the package isn’t the most 
pleasant of experiences. 

If I had acted quickly, I might have cut my way out 
of the box and forgone the honor of the trip since 
Death’s men had handed my weapons to me before 
they dumped me into the package. But things 
happened too quickly. One moment I was standing at 
the deliv station holding my four knives and two 
pistols which had just been handed back to me. And 
the next moment I was being thrown headfirst into the 
box. It was all I could do to keep from stabbing myself 
in the eye. 

Before I knew what was going on the mechs 
dropped my box onto a loading dock; I banged my 
head as I bounced around inside becoming totally 
disoriented. By the time I’d recovered from the pain, 
the postal mech had stacked more boxes all around 
me, their weight pressing in on my container from all 
sides. Escape was impossible since cutting the 
exterior of the box might cause the others to collapse 
inward, crushing me. I settled down n the darkness 
and tried to relax as much as I could to conserve air 
and hope I made it home in time to escape and take 
another breath of fresh air. 

After freezing for an hour on a postal dock, I was 
finally loaded into a deliv bot. By now I wished I’d 
worn a jacket earlier in the morning. 

 The ride to my destination was cold and eventful. 
We hit two pedestrians and a small vehicle of some 
sort (as near as I could tell from the crunching and 
screams). Finally I felt myself lifted from the back of 
the bot and dumped onto the pavement somewhere 


in the general vicinity of my apartment building— 
approximations of addresses being sufficiently 
accurate for the gov express system. 

At least that’s what I hoped. If I was lucky, I’d be in 
front of my apartment building. The catch was that 
Death didn’t hire men known for their brain power; 
and even among hired guns, mesoes aren’t known for 
their address-writing abilities; it doesn’t appear on 
resumes that list bone breaking and face smashing 
as job skills. 

As the autodriver sped away, I cut my way out of 
the box, praying that I was somewhere close to home 
and that Snipe wouldn’t put a bullet through the box 
to see what might happen. I quickly crawled out of the 
box, blinking in the bright sunlight, and put some 
space between me and the box. Then I stopped in my 
tracks, feeling disoriented by the site of the decrepit 
store fronts and piles of trash that surrounded me. 

 With a sinking feeling I saw that I definitely was 
not in front of my apartment. In fact, I wasn’t even in 
my neighborhood. I wasn’t even anywhere I 
recognized. Even the gang scrawls were foreign to 
my trained eye. 

I went back to the box I’d escaped from and 
checked the address scrawled on the package in the 
thug’s kindergarten-style script. 

There was the problem. 

Death’s hired muscle had screwed up, just as I 
had suspected they might. But even though it was 
technically only a small mistake, it was an important 
one. They’d left the “drive” off the address. 

The lack of those insignificant characters had 
grave repercussions. Because the gov’s 
computerized delivery system defaulted to street 
when it had to make a choice due to lack of a drive, 
avenue, or similar designation. No doubt the 

12 


programmer that came up with the default scheme 
had figured he had made a marvelous decision. Heck 
it probably worked most of the time. 

But today it hadn’t. 

 Today it had put me halfway across town, on 3038 
Fremont Street, rather than at my own address of 
3038 Fremont Drive. 

 With a shudder I realized I was right in the middle 
of Demon Twenty-Two Skidoo country. The only 
place in the city worse than that would be the Land of 
Darkness, and even then not by much. 

I was in, and in deep. 

Peeping out of the box, I inspected the area 
nervously. The streets seemed deserted. Nothing but 
some trash and garbage cans piled along the 
sidewalk. 

Or so I thought. 

As I stepped from my carton, what I had mistaken 
for a large garbage can and a pile of tubing draped 
over it suddenly came to life and stood with a rattling 
squeak. A tubular arm with a human hand on the end 
of it pointed toward me. “We claim yer bod,” a voice 
from the plastic can atop the pile of junk said. 

I snatched my pistol from its concealed holster in 
my armor, covering the thing that rolled in my 
direction. “Stay back,” I warned, finger tightening on 
the trigger of my Ruger. “You can’t claim me. I’m free 
body.” 

“Yer carc is on our turf,” the junk metal creature 
facing me said, exposing a toothless mouth that was 
nearly hidden by the plastic encasing his head. “You 
were in our box and it was delivered on our street.” 

“I’m not in the box any more.” 

“But you were and the box was in our territory and 
therefore ours. Now you’re on our street. Either way 
that means your ass and your ass-sets are ours.” 


It was obvious from his lack of original parts and 
his claim on my body that I was facing a Harvey. The 
last thing I wanted to do was donate my body to 
anyone, let alone a spare parts harvest master—not 
as long as I still had an ounce of life left in me. Nor 
was I anxious to donate eyeballs and vital organs for 
some rich guy wanting an eternal job. I’d become 
attached to my parts and wasn’t interested in telling 
any of them “so long” just yet. 

“Back off,” I warned, pointing the muzzle of my 
automatic at the Harvey’s head since I knew that was 
one place that a flesh-and-blood organ still resided. 
“Let’s just be cool. And tell your friends, too,” I added, 
hearing the tell-tale squeak of another Harvey trying 
to flank me, just outside my peripheral vision. 

“You’re ours,” a third Harvey said, materializing 
from a pile of junk that laid beside the curb. It 
straightened itself up, a human arm and face 
appearing in the middle of the rubble of other 
makeshift appendages. “Don’t make yourself 
damaged goods, man. We won’t make you suffer big. 
Surrender and we’ll do you quick.”

 There was another squeak of metal in need of oil 
to my left. I whirled toward the harvester that I sensed 
must be nearly on top of me. I swallowed hard when I 
discovered it was not one but five more Harvey’s, all 
with fewer human parts than the two I’d been facing. 
“Back off,” I warned. “I’ve got armor-piercing that can 
ace your tin skulls.”

 The nearest of the four pointed a wicked stainless 
steel finger at me. A sharp blade exuded from it as he 
spoke in a metallic voice. “We do this easy or we do 
hard. Choice’s yours.” 

 With faintly whirring servo motors, they spread out 
with practiced precision, blocking any possible 
escapes. It was becoming obvious the guys were 


experienced and it was only a matter of time before 
one of them grabbed me. I aimed my gun at the 
nearest one’s head and pulled the trigger. 

 The hammer fell on an empty chamber with a 
resounding click. 

For a long moment, everyone froze. Then the 
Harvies laughed while I manually recycled my pistol, 
feeling sweat break out all over me, despite the cold. I 
checked the indicator. The pistol was empty. With a 
sinking feeling I realized that Death’s mesoes had 
emptied my gun before returning it to me. 

The Harvies didn’t need an invitation. They 
charged, metal claws snatching at me and glancing 
off my body armor as I back peddled toward the 
individual that I hoped was the weakest link in the 
steel and plastic ring of Harvies forming around me. I 
beat away a blade with my empty pistol and cursed 
Death’s gang for emptying my guns. 

 Then I cursed the Harvies who loved me only for 
my body. 

And while I cursed, I dodged and weaved and 
then, somehow, bowled the one closest to me over, 
jumped his junkyard body, and for a moment was free 
of them. 

Another scooted up and blocked my escape, his 
body oscillating back and forth, trying to anticipate 
which way I would go. 

Sometimes I move so fast it surprises me. This 
was one of those times, my body sped forward, 
fueled by adrenaline and a racing heart. In one blur of 
motion, I fought my way through the last snatching 
appendages and blades and was finally clear of the 
gang with only minor cuts along one arm. 

I took three giant steps toward the curb since I 
knew their wheeled feet would have trouble stepping 
up onto the sidewalk without pausing to shift wheel 


bases. That would buy me a few precious moments 
to get ahead of the pack that pursued me. 

As I leaped onto the sidewalk, I holstered my pistol 
and executed a long-practiced twin kick of the toes of 
my boots, bringing out the in-line wheels embedded in 
the thick soles of the shoes. The wheels snapped into 
place beneath my feet and in another fraction of a 
second I was skating for my life, jumping over dead 
rats and piles of trash to keep from stumbling as I 
fled.

 The Harvies climbed the curb with their servos 
groaning noisily. Then they were in noisy pursuit, 
having apparently skipped their last lub job during 
maintenance cycles. But once on the straight-away, 
they made up for the last time, the wheels that had 
replaced their legs speeding them down the concrete 
just a short distance behind me. 

Our noisy parade raced down the empty street, 
plastic garbage cans and trash careening in our 
wake. For thirty seconds I pumped and pushed, trying 
to go faster than I ever had before. I hit a relatively 
uncluttered stretch of sidewalk and chanced glancing 
backward over my shoulder, half hoping the Harvies 
had given up the chase. 

 They hadn’t. 

I was now speeding faster than they were, putting 
distance between us. But I knew it would only be a 
matter of time before my lead would dwindle. Flesh 
and bone would grow tired. Motorized wheels would 
not. They would eventually grind me down because I 
couldn’t keep up my speed for too much longer. 
Already my lungs felt like they were going to explode 
and my left calve was beginning to cramp. 


volley of shots echoed from behind me. 

Bullets pinged off the side of the stores I 

raced past and ricocheted down the 

street. Another fusillade was 

accompanied by heavy thumps on my 

body and a dull pain in my leg and back 
as the slugs were absorbed by my plastic armor, 
bruising the skin below. I lowered my head so it would 
be protected by the high neck of my ballistic vest and 
concentrated on maintaining my speed. 

 Trying not to be distracted by the gunfire behind 
me, I knew I must devise a plan that would save my 
hide. To simply continue on would spell certain 
failure. Perhaps, I thought, if I can just get to the 
corner and head down another street.... Or should I 
just push on? Somewhere this gang’s turf had to end. 
Then I would be free—at least until I ran into the next 
band of hooligans. 

My hopes were dashed when I saw movement 
ahead of me. A block away, six more Harvies rolled 
across the street and the sidewalk, blocking my 
escape, their long, outstretched claws snapping to 
show they meant business. Two of them unfurled 
nets and one was mounting a machine gun atop a 
tripod. 


Obviously it was time for me to switch to Plan B. 
Either that, or resign myself to being sliced and diced 
when I reached the barricade forming in front of me. 

I looked around for some way out. A sign hanging 
from the store halfway up the block proclaimed 
“Sporting Goods”. As I raced toward it, I had an idea. 

I reached down and released the mini-claymore 
from my thigh and then, with shaky fingers, peeled 
the backing from it, exposing the sticky surface 
underneath. I slowed as I neared the sport store and 
slapped the claymore onto the thick armor plate of the 
front door. 

Speeding up, I could now see the machine gun 
ahead of me being trained at my chest, but the 
Harvey held his fire. If they could avoid damaging me, 
I would be worth a lot more to the snatchers that 
bought parts from them. The machine gun would only 
be employed as a last-ditch method of stopping me. 
The other Harvies were spreading their nets, hoping 
to capture me alive for minimal damage to the small 
fortune in body parts that was headed their way. 

I glanced back. Those pursuing me were nearly 
even with the sporting goods store. 

I thumbed off the cover of what appeared to be 
only a decorative insignia on my vest, exposing the 
claymore’s remote firing button. I pushed the button. 
There was a resounding explosion behind me. 

I didn’t turn back to see the results produced by 
the spray of high velocity steel shot thrown in a wide 
swathe across the street behind me. With any luck I 
would have gotten nearly all of the Harvey’s and there 
now had to be fewer working models behind me than 
in front. I slammed to a stop, turned, and headed pellmell 
back toward the sporting goods store. 

I immediately saw that I my luck was changing. All 
the Harvies that had been pursuing me had been cut 


to ribbons, though a few were still kicking, their 
clawed arms snapping and thrashing madly. 

Seeing that I was no longer boxed in, the machine 
gunner behind me fired a short burst; the armor-
piercing slugs cracked through the air over my head 
as I kicked the remains of a dying Harvey out of my 
path and then dived through the now-open door that 
had been blown asunder by the back blast of my 
claymore. 

My luck held. 

 The sporting goods store had a few bows and 
arrows and an ancient Frisbee that had to be an 
antique; but most of its merchandise was 
armament—just what you’d expect in a neighborhood 
like the one I was in. On the shelves were everything 
from grenades to mortars to pistols and crossbows. 
Inside the dust that was settling, exposing a dazed 
store owner sat at the counter inside, his ears 
undoubtedly still ringing from the back blast that had 
knocked open his store. While there had been no 
shrapnel thrown from the back side of the claymore, 
the blast itself had undoubtedly been deafening and it 
was apparent it had had an effect on the owner. 

I pulled the shotgun he held from his limp hands 
before he could fully recover and defend himself. 
“Sorry about the door,” I said loudly over the machine 
gun fire on the street. “I’ll pay for it. Here.” I handed 
him the charge card Death had given me. “And you 
can have the armament and parts from the dead 
Harvies outside,” I added, figuring many of the parts 
would probably appeal to a weapons nut the way my 
body did to the Harvies. 

The sight of a card full of creds brought the 
businessman back to his senses. He blinked twice 
and took the card in his grimy hands. Then he 
dropped it into a reader for a quick cred check. The 


unit glowed green and “500.00” appeared in the 
readout. He smiled. “That will be two hundred for the 
door. Need anything else today?” 

There was one thing I needed to deal with the 
creatures that by now must be almost to the store’s 
gaping door. “Cartridges. Two millimeter SRR, armor 
piercing.” 

The man behind the counter scratched his chin 
and raised an eyebrow, then vanished behind the 
counter. He reappeared a second later with a box of 
pre-loaded, disposable magazines in his hand. He 
plinked them on the counter and I snatched them up, 
broke the package open, and then jammed one of the 
magazines into my pistol. 

 The gun cycled itself automatically as I turned 
toward the door; the viewscreen on the rear of the 
slide showed it was fully charged with forty-eight 
rounds and a green diode showed it was ready to fire. 

I aimed toward the opening just as the steel head 
appeared in the open frame. There was the Harvey 
with the machine gun, his wheels grinding over his 
fallen comrades as he struggled to jab the long barrel 
of his weapons into the store and bring it onto target. 

Almost reflexively I centered the red aiming dot of 
my weapon on his head and squeezed off a burst. 
The three hyper-velocity slugs connected an instant 
before he could fire, stitching his skull with a triangle 
of holes. 

He seemed frozen in place, then fell backward 
onto the sidewalk before he could fire the weapon. 

I braced myself for his friends. 

But none appeared. Harvies are persistent, but not 
dumb. When the others saw their flesh and steel 
comrade fall back into the street, his brains oozing 
from his head, they took the hint. They vanished with 
a grating of gears and clanking of spare parts that 


echoed from the buildings outside as they fled away 
for easier marks. 

I took a deep breath, muttered a prayer of 
thanksgiving, and pulled out my cellular to call for a 
taxi. But I saw it wouldn’t be working thanks to a neat 
bullet hole right through its main chip. I turned toward 
the shop owner. “Can you call a cab for me?” 

“No problem,” he replied. “Anybody that aces the 
leader of the Demons TTS should be getting out of 
Dodge as quick as possible. Just as soon you didn’t 
hang around here.” 

“Leader?” I asked. “You don’t mean that —” 

“That one lying there in the street with the three 
holes in the his brain pan was the leader of the pack. 
To become the new leader of the Demons, you have 
to kill the person who killed the old leader. Which 
would be you.” 

I gulped. 

“I’ll be more than happy to call you a cab and get 
you out of here. ‘Cause I most certainly don’t want 
you around here when word gets around about what 
you did. Buddy, you’re in deep —” 

“OK, OK,” I interrupted. “I get the picture. Make the 
call, would you?” 


couldn’t get the taxi that took me home to go 

closer than a block from my apartment. It had 

received some updates about Snipe’s activities 

and apparently the cabs circuits wouldn’t allow it 

to proceed—which seemed odd since it had 

gone into Demon TTS territory to pick me up. 
Sometimes there’s just no telling for the insanity of 
circuitry. 

After paying the vehicle with my charge card—I 
was now down to a hundred creds after settling up 
with the vehicle and the sporting goods store owner— 
the doors unlocked so I could get out. 

“How’s it going?” I asked Quaker, the local gang’s 
neighborhood toll taker. I stepped over to his small 
booth and fished a silver coin out of my pocket and 
handed it to him. The gang only took old coins since 
they didn’t want any chance of their transactions 
being traced. 

“Everything’s cool,” Quaker said, taking the coin in 
his trembling hand and then handing it back. “No 
charge today. Heard about your acing the head of the 
Demon TTSs.” 

“You what?” 

“Yeah. The store owner sold his security shot to 
the vids. You’re on ten chans at least. Boy, you’d 


better be ready to dive for cover anytime you hear the 
clank, clank of a Harvey, though. They’re gonna be 
sorer than hell about what you done.” 

Just what I needed. Harvies out for my scalp. 
Facing Death didn’t seem so bad in retrospect. “Is 
Snipe still out?” I asked, trying to forget my newest 
problem and concentrate on the job at hand. 

“She may be napping. But you’d better be careful, 
man.” 

“Thanks.” I rounded the corner and started toward 
my apartment, moving cautiously and hoping Snipe 
was asleep or, if she was awake, wouldn’t decide I 
was a prime target. She seldom fired at locals. But 
when she had a slow day, anything became fair 
game. I could only see one body on the street so it 
looked like a slow day. 

I felt like I had bull’s-eye painted on my back as I 
crept along the avenue, sticking to the shadowed side 
of the street, planning on crossing only when I neared 
my apartment. Usually Snipe kept the sun toward her 
back which meant I might stay out of sight with any 
luck. Snipe was a creature of habit and I hoped her 
almost human frailty would be in operation today. 

I reached the old theater across from my 
apartment and stood in the shadows. It was time to 
cross the street. I studied the roof tops, searching for 
some sign of Snipe and her ten power scope and 
rifle. 

Nothing. 

Holding my breath, I sprinted across the narrow 
street, jumping over Snipe’s latest victim, a 
subvertiser who still had his compubrush in hand, his 
handiwork half done on the wall of my apartment 
behind him. 

I could tell Snipe’s shot had been clean, right 
between the eyes and out the back with a big chunk 


of scalp missing. It was a messy way to go, but I 
didn’t feel sorry for the clown since he hadn’t suffered 
and he’d obviously been defacing the sign that helped 
our super keep our rent low. 

Advertising pays the bills and subvertisers were 
the enemy as far as I was concerned. 

I guess this was Snipe’s saving grace and most 
likely the reason the local gang and the rest of the 
hood had never vigilanted her. She was sudden death 
on subvertisers, salesmen, and out-of-place gang 
members. She was better than the police who were 
generally too afraid to leave the scrapers where the 
rich and famous lived behind their electrified fences. 
Snipe helped keep the neighborhood clean of vermin. 

Nearing the entrance to my apartment, I dodged 
around the Moravecs who danced jerkily to puker 
musak, pretending they were alive. I’ve never 
understood why Snipe didn’t see the Moravecs that 
roamed the streets as targets—but for some reason 
she treated the mechanical monstrosities as if they 
were off limits. 

Some in the neighborhood thought perhaps Snipe 
was a Moravec. But those who had caught a glimpse 
of her claimed most of her body and all of her head 
was flesh and blood. If they were right, then she 
wasn’t a Moravec, even if she left them to roam the 
hood free of fear. 

The front door to my apartment fortress was 
charged so I slowed and approached it gingerly, 
placing my hand on the I-dent pad when I neared it. 
“My name’s baloney,” I told the computer, eyeing the 
door guns that automatically trained themselves on 
my chest. 

“Welcome home, Ralph,” the computer said in a 
low, feminine voice. “I didn’t bother calling the police 
since I figured the goons that took you were either 


friends or bill collectors.” 

“Thanks for the consideration,” I said, pushing my 
way through the armored door as it buzzed opened. 
“You might want to make a call for recycle. Looks like 
Snipe got another subby out front.” 

“Already called. Third subvertiser she nailed today. 
Snipe’s getting to be a better shot as of late. No 
wingings, just righteous hits. Need to open a parts 
franchise.” 

“Don’t joke about selling parts,” I said with a 
shudder at the thought of how close I’d come to being 
cryogenic meat. 

“Who’s kidding?” the computer asked as I headed 
up the creaking stairs that lead to my room. Once 
there I tapped in my code on the door lock, double-
checking the small paper match I always placed 
below the hinge so I could tell if someone had 
circumvented the lock. It’s an old trick but usually 
worked with the newbies. 

 The match was in place so I entered without 
drawing a pistol. Once in, I closed and barred the 
door behind me, addressing my MC. “Security, mail, 
and news.” 

“Alarm and defense activated,” the computer told 
me as it let in sunlight from the pump on the roof.. “No 
attempts to enter while you were gone. All e-mail's 
junk and spams except for a note from Death asking 
that you pay him a visit.” 

“Dated a couple of hours ago, I hope.” 

“Yes. Nine twenty AM.” 

“Voice mail includes three second notices and 
threats to shut down the electrical and sun relays.” 

“Use this to pay the bills,” I said, jabbing the smart 
card Death had given me into the MC’s slot. I’d hoped 
to use the creds for some other purchases, but 
having the power and daylight down would be a 


bummer and hacking util computers was often futile— 
and fatal. 

I had the talent to hit some ATMs, but not the will; 
no matter how many times I told myself I was just 
stealing from some rich corp that had done its best to 
screw little old ladies, I still felt too guilty to hit ATMs 
unless things were really desperate. And today, when 
I’d finally psyched myself up to override my conscience, 
Death’s goons had caught me in the act. 
Given the fact that I would be facing a capital charge 
had it been the police rather than Death that had 
nabbed me... I didn’t pursue that train of thought. 

I retrieved a cold wine can from the frig’. If I only 
had two days left to live—which seemed very likely at 
this point since Death didn’t make idle threats and 
locating Huntington in that sort a time seemed 
doubtful—I wasn’t going to hold back on the vices my 
last few hours. I picked up my VG. “Delete everything 
in the e-mail.” 

“News on goggles?” 

“In a min.” I retrieved my PA from my wrist and 
popped the whole unit into its MC input slot on the 
computer access panel at the wall. “I have a new data 
dot in here I want you to check out.” 

“I’ve located it.” 

“Authenticate everything. Put an agent on the web 
and see if you can find any new leads. If you do, 
follow those, too.” I figured it didn’t hurt to double-
check the data to be sure someone hadn’t given 
Death some fake input. The last thing I needed with a 
two-day deadline hanging over me was to flame on jet 
over erroneous info. 

“It will take about five to fifteen minutes. Section 
four has a net-split and the alternate re-route is down 
again today due to a wicca/majic battle. I’ll have to 
use cable—it may take a few minutes.” 


“Whatever. I’ll read the news while I’m waiting.” I 
slipped my VG screens over my face. Call me 
paranoid but I preferred to be able to see screens by 
myself without worrying about a police bug or visitor 
overseeing what I was viewing. No wall screens for 
me thank you—even if I could afford one. I put my 
money into a high-def VG and let it go at that. 

I hated keyboards, too. So the MC voice-inputted 
and brainwaved from my VG for the most part while 
the key-bee collected dust next to the mains. On the 
other hand, I could read a lot faster than I could hear, 
so I preferred my news on the goggles rather than 
phones. 

I adjusted the ear phones and sensors over my 
temple plates. The screens came up in front of my 
eyes as I settled into my old, worn easy chair. I 
popped open the can of wine and waited for its 
cooling unit to kick in. I checked the first story that my 
com-puter had automatically chosen for me according 
to my specs, stripping ads and sub-channeling the 3D 
graphics since both were generally useless bandwidth 
as far as I was concerned. 

I always read the news rather than listening to it 
since I could read faster than most casters spoke, 
and hated the tiny sound of speech compression. The 
first story came up, accompanied by a flat video clip 
that ran at its side: 

National Data News 
08/01/2046 - 10:01 AM UT 


Killer executed after 14 minutes on 
death row 

ANGOLA, NVA -After 14 minutes on 
death row, James Franklin was 
executed by lethal injection early Friday 
for killing a prized mech during a 


neodrug raid on his amphetamine lab. 

Authorities claim— 

“Next,” I ordered, shuddering at the 3D graphics of 
the killer’s cold eyes which had somehow sneaked 
through the filtering. Death would be jealous of that 
guy’s face, I thought as the next story appeared. 

Fugitive forgotten for century turns 

self in 

DALLAS, NT. -Friends and family of a 
man who has been a fugitive from the 
law but frozen for nearly 100 years have 
begun a letter-writing campaign. They 
hope to persuade New Texas's Prime 
Minister not to extradite him to 
Washington, DC.. 

Authorities say Mary Wilson 
underwent a sex change operation 
before secretly paying a cryogenic lab to 
freeze her body for nearly a— 

“Next,” I ordered. 

Pseudo Frank Synattra Tapes 
Released ($00.005 Surcharge for 
Download) 

 Erpic Records announced its new 
algorithm which perfectly duplicates the 
voice of the singer it is named after. In 
the ground-breaking release of an all-
new set of — 


“An ad!” I yelled. Three curses later I asked, “What 
happened to your ad and Spam filters? Aren’t they 
still installed?” 

“They are non-functional,” the MC answered. 
Nothing ever works right for long, I thought, 
shaking my head. “Let’s see the next news story.” 

Panicked crowd stampedes—twenty 
crushed 

TOPEKA, NK -A panicked crowd raced 
through a down-town shopping center. 
When the hysterical shoppers emerged 
from the mall, many claimed that a 
helicopter, firing rockets and machine 
guns, had been chasing them. The 
Vietnamese owner of the restaurant 
where the stampede originated was 
mystified as to what had sparked the 
frenzy. “We don’t have a high enough 
ceiling for a chopper—even if we would 
allow such a thing to fly in—which, of 
course, we do not.” 

“Cut,” I ordered. This bit of loony news did happen 
close to home, right downtown from me in fact, but it 
was the last thing I wanted to hear about now and 
there didn’t seem to be any money making angle to it 
that might be exploited. 

“Next.” 

Death rates continue to climb in 
MUDs 

Redmond, NW -The Supreme Investigation 
Council announced today 
that jet drugs were to blame in four 
states for the unexpected death rates... 


“End,” I said, trying not to lose my temper. I definitely 
didn’t need to see that one since I might be 
joining the lucky losers all too soon. What the hell 
was wrong with my MC? None of the stories were 
anything I had requested the computer to search for, 
and if that weren’t enough, seeing the last one pop up 
had turned my stomach into a knot. “Do you still have 
my filters in place on the news server?” 

“Yes but they’ve been non-functioned,” the MC 
replied. 

“Non-funked? How can that be? Virus?” 

“You ordered a flash update to 7.2.2 yesterday. 
The bypass command in the code was hidden within 
the update so your filter can’t override it anymore. 
Now I can only receive the mainstream news with the 
ads.” 

I swore under my breath. Everybody knew the 
mainstream was just so much fluff and proppa when it 
came to news—not to mention full of subliminals. And 
the ads were simply obnoxious. But no doubt 
mainstream and the advertisers had paid big money 
to the programmers updating the software so now I 
got stuck with unfiltered junk instead of the news I 
had set up search programs for. 

It was getting more and more dangerous to update 
software. “Some days I think we should break your 
code into applets. Remind me to update you later. 
Are you able to override the new programming?” 

“No. Your subroutine is still in place but—Excuse 
me. The agent has returned from its web trip with the 
data check you requested on Jeff Huntington.” 

“Great. Erase the e-news file and let’s see what 
you have.” 

I settled back to see what I could learn, dreading 
the moment that I knew was going to come soon. I 


wondered if this would be the time I let jet netting 
override my wetware. 


ust going by what was in his records, it was 

easy to see that Jeff Huntington had led quite a 

life. The more I read about him, the more I 

knew I didn’t want to turn him in. But if I 

decided not to betray him, snatching him out of 

the jaws of Death (as it were), I would also 
have to devise a way to protect my soft parts and 
underwear from Death. And I knew I’d have to keep a 
lookout for gov agents from the Powers because I 
was willing to bet they were nosing around looking for 
Huntington as well and they weren’t above cutting a 
few corners to get their man. 

Keeping myself clear of trouble was going to be a 
tall order. 

Of course it would have been easier to just find 
Huntington and turn over his hard address to Death. 
But I have always been handicapped. Having a 
conscience—even as poorly formed one as mine—is 
more liability than asset in my line of biz. I had it and 
generally could overcome my handicap. But not 
always and this seemed to be one of those times. 

Sometimes I had to live with it; that was the case 
now and I wasn’t about to turn an apparently innocent 
guy over to Death or the Powers. Trying to be 
philosophical about it, I told myself that my inability to 


do the wrong thing was what makes life interesting. 

At least that was the theory. 

Fortunately my plan to rescue Huntington was 
straightforward enough. All I had to do was locate and 
help him concoct a plan to save us both. In two day’s 
time. Sound easy? 

 Wasn’t. 

Finding Huntington was going to be hard. 
Otherwise Death wouldn’t have come to me to do the 
job or his other hunters would have nabbed the guy; I 
knew Death would have rather seen me suffer a slow, 
lingering demise. He’d forgone the pleasure in order 
to get Huntington since not many other people could 
do what I could with the computer; my bordering-onthe-
criminal skills had probably saved my life—at 
least for the next two days. 

But unless I really got lucky it wasn’t going to be 
easy to live past the next two days. 

 The main lead I had was a list of MUDs that 
Huntington frequented on the net. Whether he still 
went to them after going underground, and how often, 
was impossible to say. If I could locate him in a 
MUD—not an easy task even when your brain was 
taking extra code through jet—I would have to be 
careful not to scare him off. 

One didn’t just go up to players in a MUD and ask 
if they were so-and-so. Doing so guaranteed that 
you’d quickly be killed in the game. And no one was 
going to come up and tell you who they really were 
until you gained their confidence. 

Gaining confidence took time. 

 That I didn’t have a lot of. 

About my only break was that Death had given me 
the vial of jet. That would make my job easier since 
I’d have complete input from the extra MUD code that 
most programmers added just for wired heads—or jet 


users. While jet was illegal; code and hard wiring 
wasn’t, so the code was available for use in most 
MUDs and the Supreme currently ignored it for the 
time being, saving it for some future crackdown when 
the prison population was lagging. With jet I could get 
extra nuances invisible to non-jet users. I could “see” 
what the other players looked like, even down to 
facial features and other clues for those players who 
were also using jet. And judging from Huntington’s 
major attendance of MUDs, he was a major jetter. 

If I failed while doing the jet, there wouldn’t be 
anything for me to worry about afterward. A recycling 
crew would come in and clean my brains off the walls 
and I would have died quickly and maybe even 
happily in the throes of love, shot by an angry 
husband or in the middle of an adventure with any 
luck. 

 What more could a guy ask for in the 21st 
Century? 

I searched Huntington’s records on my viewscreen 
goggles for some clues that might betray him even 
when he was only simming on the net. The 
documents Death had given me showed Huntington 
had worked for what had been the United States of 
America’s air force back during the First Indochina 
War—the one commonly known then as the Vietnam 
War. 

 That was a surprise because that war was back in 
the 20th. And that meant the guy was ancient. As in 
antique. 

Although he wasn’t a pilot, somehow he’d 
managed to be on a plane when it got shot down over 
Hanoi. He’d been captured—apparently tortured and 
crippled during the process since the Vietnamese 
didn’t take kindly to people dropping bombs on their 
wives, children, and water buffalo. 


As I read between the lines and bureaucrateese, it 
became obvious that Huntington had suffered a great 
deal during his long life. That type of suffering would 
leave its mark, even over a century later and might 
enable me to identify him beneath the most elaborate 
of web disguises. 

He came out of his ordeal in the air force with 
something called a purple heart (I filed that away for 
later checking in the histo docs) and two legs that no 
longer worked. He’d also lost an eye during the 
ordeal—that might be something to watch for in the 
MUDs since characters often forgot to features they 
had come to live with. 

After the war, Huntington’s luck had changed. He’d 
inherited a small fortune from an aunt. He’d spent his 
money frugally, building on his electronics skills and 
broadened them with a chemical engineering degree 
compliments of the gov. He then put what was left of 
his aunt’s inheritance to good use, making one of he 
first successful talkie MCs. He’d sold his company 
just before its stocks crashed with everything else in 
‘10. From there he went to build the first practical PT 
and mental-com units, one of which was now 
hardwired to his frontal lobe. 

He next obtained one of the few legal eternal 
mods, just before the procedure became illegal. That 
seemed to explain why he was still alive and why the 
gov wanted him dead. With any luck he could live 
another thous years, collecting money each year he 
survived. 

For some reason he’d never bothered to get new 
legs or a replacement eye. Instead he used old-
fashioned wheelchair and wore an eye patch with an 
input plug in his left eye socket, augmenting other 
hardwire implants to his brain. 

 The guy was wired and weird from the looks of the 


last known photo of him that was included with his 

files. 

He also was a friend of Mark G. Newman. 

Right. 

The Mark G. Newman, the guy that is credited with 
developing jet. Was there a connection between 
Huntington’s chemical engineering degree and 
Newman? It seemed like quite a coincidence if there 
wasn’t. 

I filed that idea away for future reference. It might 
be that Death was using the government thing for a 
screen; he might be after Huntington in order to get a 
lead on manufacturing jet. 

I swore under my breath. This was getting 
complicated right out of the starting gate. 

Something was fishy. It didn’t seem likely that the 
guy would be on a hit list. Heck, he could buy Death 
and the gov off if he needed to. The guy had enough 
money to buy the contract on him from Death. Death 
could arrange to tell the authorities Huntington had 
been aced and that would be the last of everyone’s 
problems. Huntington wouldn’t have to pay taxes any 
more, either. No death and no taxes. 

Death would have thought of that, too. No, there 
was more to this than I’d been told. Death must be 
after the jet. Maybe the Powers were, too. 

And maybe my conscience wouldn’t be such a 
handicap after all. 

 Turning this guy over to Death might be easy if he 
was as crooked as his records seemed to suggest. I 
was having second thoughts about saving 
Huntington. The more I saw, the less I liked him. And 
I was in a grave situation; I decided the main thing 
was to get my rear out of the line of fire. To do that I’d 
have to find Huntington and get some answers. After 
that I could throw him to the wolves if he didn’t seem 


worth saving. For now I’d keep my options open and 

get to the first step of the procedure... 

Finding him. 

 That was where the jet came in. 

Because even though Huntington was eternalized, 
he’d gone underground, he might still be MUDing 
through anonymous gates so he couldn’t be traced 
but could get e-cash deposits and make purchases 
from time to time. 

It wasn’t likely he’d quit MUD cold turkey because 
the records showed his MUD attendance was 
daunting. Not just one MUD. Many. Judging from the 
police payoffs included in his data files, the guy must 
have been into jet in a big way. Huntington had all the 
earmarks of a multiple personality whizzer and heavy 
jetter. I had my work cut out for me but I might luck 
out and locate him on one of the MUDs rather than 
having to try to hack into an anonymous e-cash data 
base. 

Looking over the list of MUDs, I could see that 
some would be dangerous to visit. Jet enabled you to 
immerse yourself in the side code for an experience 
that was realer than life. But there was a catch. Your 
brain filled in all the gaps in the code to create a 
whole, real fabric. You felt pain just like you felt and 
saw everything else in the MUD. Extreme pain—or 
even your apparent death—could be fatal due to the 
stress it put on your heart. 

Jet wasn’t all fun and games. 

And it wasn’t just an on/off proposition. Since jet 
stayed in your blood until it had been used up by the 
receptor cells in your nervous system, it was 
impossible to pull your mind out of the whole MUD 
world that had been created around you. You couldn’t 
leave fast enough to avoid what would spell death in 
real life. One you jetted into the system, you were 


there until the ride came to an end, and if it came to 
an end before the jet ran out, the shock would cause 
a contest between your heart and the veins in your 
brain, seeing which one split wide open first. 

For most people jetting in a MUD, an imaginary 
car wreck or getting stabbed with a sword became 
fatal. They didn’t die of the wound in the MUD but the 
sudden shock of massive injury led to a brain 
aneurysm or heart attack. For this reason, MUDs 
were as dangerous as real life when things got out of 
hand in them. And they often did get of hand since 
those attending the MUDs were there for adventure. 

How Huntington had survived all his heavy 
attendance of MUDs noted for their dangers was 
another mystery and suggested he was either very 
skilled or had developed some way to protect himself. 

A new form of jet? That would explain the interest 
everyone had in finding him. That might be the key to 
the whole think. A good old fashioned drug war. And 
I’d managed to get myself into the middle of it. 

 Time to start extracting myself from the fray. 

“Computer,” I said to the MC. 

“Yes?” 

“Sort through Huntington’s list of MUDs with an 
eye toward where I’d be most likely to encounter him 
at this moment.” 

“Sort finished. The Vietnam Chopper MUD is 
unlisted and has low attendance. Normally he’s there 
during this hour. You have a very high probability of 
finding him there now.” 

“You have the address?” 

“Your last hack included it.” 

Maybe I was finally going to get a lucky break. It 
was about time. 

There was just that nagging question: Do you 
really want to do something this stupid? 


I held the vial of jet in my fist, afraid to answer my 
question, afraid to open the container of this 
dangerous drug. Sweat broke out on my forehead 
and a wave of nausea washed over me as the detox 
conditioning took over. Off I ran for the bathroom. 

 What a day. 

 What a life. 

 What a choice. 

After emptying my stomach and then re-filling it 
with liquids so I wouldn’t dehydrate if I got stuck in an 
extended stay on the net, I settled into my chair, 
closed my eyes, and forced myself to relax. 

“Maximum security,” I told my MC. “Use the 
emergency generator if you need to and shoot to kill if 
someone other than the law or a medic breaks in. 
Don’t shut down my connection unless you have to. If 
you do, loop me and have an alternate line open and 
ready. I want to net jet undisturbed so I don’t blow my 
brain.” 

“You’re jet netting?” 

“Your auto report circuit is still overridden, isn’t it?” 
I asked with a sudden cringe of terror. The computer 
might this very minute be calling 911 to report my 
infraction to the authorities. 

“My lips are sealed,” my computer protested. “No 
reports of your sins to the cops from me.” 

“That’s good.” If the flash updates ever started 
changing that bit of programming, it would be the 
hacker poky for me for sure. 

“I’ll monitor your vital signs and call the medics if 
you —” 

“Good plan. Just be sure I’m really slipping before 
you call. I don’t want a bunch of paperwork if I’m not 


about to kick off.” 

“Understood.” 

“Take me to the Vietnam whatchamacallit MUD 
now. Permit transfers to other MUDs from the first site 
in case I have to chase this guy. But make me wait 
twenty minutes before jumping again—no matter how 
much I beg you to let me. I don’t want to get locked 
into a false personality.” 

“I’ll wait at least twenty minutes between jumps,” 
the MC promised. 

I said nothing. 

Already I was trying to figure out a way to override 
my last command so I could get maximum use of my 
jet jolt. Once a jet head always a jet head, I guess. I 
just hoped my new self that came back wouldn’t 
outfox the old one now departing at Gate Six for parts 
unknown. 

I put the VG onto my head and settled into my 
chair, wiggling a little to be sure I was comfortable 
and double-checking to be sure I hadn’t crossed my 
legs—the last thing I wanted to come back to was a 
body with gangrene in one foot. 

I opened up the vial and got a whiff of the 
chemical’s distinctive acrid odor. Then I placed a drop 
of the white liquid on my forefinger and touched it to 
my tongue, then quickly sealed the container before 
the drug started to take effect. 

“Connect me to the first MUD on the list.” I 
ordered. 

“Dialing. Connecting now.” 

40 


have been shot at a lot, but never shot from a 

gun. 

But I have a good notion of what it must be like 

because using jet comes close. It’s as if your 

whole body is poured into the viewplates and 

zipped along the fiber opt lines to the MUD site. 
You leave your body and you enter a world that’s 
real—often more real than the day-to-day one you live 
in. 

The code a skilled programmer puts on the 
sideband can go straight into your head via the VG and 
screens. Once in your head, it produces colors brighter 
and more intense than life; you hear sounds too high 
and too low to detect in real life; you smell things 
you’ve never and can’t smell in real life; often your 
body is strong and tireless. 

 To say that jet may be habit forming would be an 
understatement. To your mind jet’s more real than life. 
That’s why there are so few ex-jet heads and so many 
dead jetters. Jet was habit forming to the utt. 

A voice seemed to come from nowhere, echoing in 
my head. “You are in Vietnam, 1970. You are the pilot 
of a Bell Model 209, Single-engine, AH-1 Huey Cobra 
helicopter gunship. You have just received word that a 
squad is under attack and you are to provide air 


assistance for it. There is heavy ground fire from the 
Cong. Your chances for success are low. Good luck.” 

Abruptly I was in the pilot’s seat of the chopper, 
sitting above and behind the gunner who manned the 
lead cockpit slightly below me. The air was hot and 
smelled of the new plastic interior of the aircraft. 

New memories filled my mind as if they’d always 
been there. I remembered everything from the past of 
my new life role, from time spent in basic training to 
the period that I had learned how to fly the machine 
that vibrated around me. Now I was here in the 
middle of what I had trained so hard for, fighting to 
keep the people of South Vietnam free—though as of 
late I was beginning to have doubts about this later 
fact that had been drilled into us by our commanders. 

I flew northward, hugging the muddy river below us 
so the noise of our advance would be masked by the 
heavy jungle below. As I approached the bend in the 
river, I strained at the control column to keep the 
aircraft on its winding course over the water below. 
The dark clouds to the west silently flashed with 
lightning, hinting at the monsoon season that was fast 
approaching. 

“We’re nearing the target,” my gunner, “Stan the 
Man” told me. “About one click away. Why don’t you 
take the rockets and I’ll keep the gun.” 

“Sounds good,” I replied, keying in the rockets on 
the green control panel in front of me. “Arm our 
weapons systems. You have the 20 mill. I’ll keep the 
rockets. You ready to rock and roll?” 

“Roger that. All weapons systems armed.” 

I switched from intercom to radio to warn the 
grunts that had called us in. “Little Red, we’re about 
on top of you. We’re coming in from the north. Please 
advise on position of the Indians. Over.” 

My earphones crackled from the distant lightning 


and then the voice of the grunt on the ground came 
through. “We’re reading you, Big Bad. We’re in the 
valley, gooks on our southeast side along the tree 
row.” 

“You back so we don’t crisp you? Over.” 

“Roger that, Little Red. Hit anything in the grove if 
you can see. It’s up to its eyeballs in gooks.” 

“Can and will, Little Red.” I switched to intercom. 
“Stan, you got the position of the Cong?” 

“Roger,” my gunner replied. “Have gun, will travel.” 

I pulled upward on the collective pitch lever, lifting 
us over the palms along the bank of the river to head 
for the squad that was pinned down. I couldn’t see 
the Cong, but could hear the pings small arms bullets 
hitting the armor on our underside. 

 While the armor offered protection, I knew it wasn’t 
complete and had seen more than one pilot come in 
with a neat but fatal hole in his hide from an AK 
round. One of the bullets might easily do some 
serious damage if we didn’t suppress the fire. I 
strained my eyes, trying to spot a muzzle flash below. 

“There’s the squad at six o’clock,” Stan yelled over 
the intercom as we hurtled toward the valley. “You’re 
right on the money.” 

“Rake the tree row while we descend,” I told Stan. 
“Let’s see if we can scare some of them out into the 
open so we can get serious.” 

“I got ‘em.” Bullets shot from the 20mm cannon 
mounted to the underside of the cabin and the deck 
vibrated under my booted feet. Stan directed the 
bursts, the tracers from the shells streaking through 
the hot air and pounding the ground below. 

I shoved the column forward continuing our 
charge. 

“There they are!” Stan yelled over the intercom. 
“There’s a group heading out the back of the row.” 

43 


“See ‘em,” I said, kicking the right rudder pedal to 
bring us around. I waited until we were lined up, then 
thumbed the button on my control stick, sending a 
rocket hissing earthward. The projectile exploded into 
a cloud of shrapnel that tore the three Vietcong into 
ribbons before they fell to the earth. 

“There’s another knot of gooks at three o’clock,” 
Stan warned. 

“I see them,” I answered, kicking the chopper 
around again through a giddy turn that made my 
stomach lurch. 

 The muzzle flashes of the rifles indicted they were 
firing at us. The faint pinging of bullets off our armor 
indicated they were actually hitting their mark. So far 
we’d lucked out. No red warning lights on my board. 

Stan turned his automatic weapon toward the 
group, blasting them with a string of thumping 
discharges. The shells smashed into the earth in front 
of the four, ripping holes and throwing clods that 
gyrated into the air. Then the shells connected with 
two of the guerrillas, exploding them into a mist of 
flesh and bone, casting body parts in every direction. 

“Cease fire so we don’t hit our guys,” I yelled, 
bringing the chopper back around for another run at 
the tree row. “I’m going in low so we don’t take so 
much ground fire.” I kicked his left rudder pedal and 
climbed above the other trees, then descended on 
the other side. Below I got a glimpse of US soldiers 
firing at the tree row, with several in the squad having 
fallen. 

Abruptly there was a renewed clang of bullets 
snapping against the underside of our chopper. 

“More ground fire,” Stan yelled needlessly. “From 
the east end of the tree row. I can take them if you 
bring us around.” 

I threw the Cobra toward the end of the tree row, 


going in low. When we were nearly there I shoved the 
control column forward so we charged the area where 
the muzzle flashes were coming from. 

“Look out!” Stan yelled. “Pull up, pull up. It’s a 
trap.” 

 The warning was too late. We plowed into the wire 
that the Cong had strung between the trees, lured into 
their trap. 

 The rotor blades whipped into the cable and wire 
that had been invisible to us just a moment before. 
One of the wires quickly wound around the main 
blades, causing us to lose lift. The cable slashed over 
the nose and cut into the cabin ahead of me, 
apparently decapitating Stan in the process before 
glancing upward just inches above me and wrapping 
with the main rotor. His helmet dropped down into his 
cabin and I could no longer see any sign of him. 

One blade snapped, sending a shuddering 
vibration through the hull as the entire chopper 
wobbled and jumped in the air. I slapped down the 
collective pitch lever to slow the speed of the 
remaining rotors, hoping they wouldn’t tear into my 
cabin. 

After that I fought the nightmare of twisting blades 
and groaning metal, trying to bring the chopper to 
earth in one piece, even though I knew it was an 
impossible task. The ground rushed toward us. We 
crashed with a scream of steel and snapping of tree 
limbs during our decent. 

I was unconscious for a few moments. I awakened 
to see Stan trying to pull me out of my cockpit. “Come 
on buddy,” he said. “The Cong are comin’ and this 
thing’s about to blow.” 

“Huntington,” I said. “I thought you were dead.” 

Stan gave me a weird look, and then said. “Stan, 
I’m Stan the Man. The cable only knocked my helmet 


off and gave me a shiner. Lucky I hadn’t buckled the 
strap on my helmet or I’d for sure have lost my 
second most important appendage. Now help me or 
you’re going to get cooked. I can’t lift you out on my 
own, big guy.” 

I released my harness and pushed with my legs. In 
a moment I tumbled clear of the wreckage and was 
back on my feet. Then we were scrambling toward 
the American line, bullets cracking overhead from the 
Cong racing toward us. We stumbled down a narrow 
path, running toward the American patrol—or so I 
hoped. I wasn’t too sure about my directions any 
more. 

 Without warning two Cong, dressed in black 
pajamas and armed with AK47s rifles, jumped from 
the brush ahead of us. 

Stan and I drew our revolvers as we dived into the 
underbrush; the same instant the semiauto fire 
erupted ahead of us, kicking up plumes of damp earth 
in the path where we’d been. 

 We crashed through the foliage, heads low, as our 
opponents fired blindly into the scrub. 

“Buddy, if we stay here we’ll be dead meat,” Stan 
told me as we dropped down to avoid the heavy fire 
now erupting from both directions. “I’ve got an idea.” 

“What’s the plan?” I asked. 

“You ready to call an end to this game?” 

For a moment I was confused. “Game?” 

“Don’t fade out now. We’re in the middle of a MUD 
game. If we keep going I know we’re both going to be 
deader than dead.” 

The humid smells, heat, and noise of the 
environment argued this was real. I had memories 
clear back to my childhood in Alabama. Then I 
vaguely remembered another life, a motionless body 
sitting in a chair, his head full of jet somewhere far in 

46 


the future in a drab world that wasn’t as alive as the 
one I was in now. 

 Then I realized where I was. “You can’t get out of 
the middle of a jet game. The code won’t let you. 
We’ll have to take our chances.” 

“Do you want out or do you want to die.” 

The Vietcong were closer now. I was getting 
desperate. “Yeah, sure,” I yelled. “Let’s get out of 
here.” Dying in the middle of a jet game wasn’t my 
idea of fun and I was ready to grasp at any straw no 
matter how far-fetched. When I can see the white in 
the eyes of guys with AKs, it’s snatch at straws. 

“I don’t know how you know my name’s 
Huntington,” he said. “But I plan on finding out.” 

I didn’t tell him it was more the blow on the head I 
received during the crash than any deductive 
reasoning on my part. Now I wondered if my mistake 
would cost me my life. Would he get suspicious and 
just leave me here to die? 

As if he’d read my mind, he said, “If I were smart 
I’d leave you behind with the Cong to die. Or maybe 
just plug you myself. Any reason I should trust you?” 

“Would I tell you the truth if you couldn’t trust me?” 

“Just the answer I wanted to hear,” Huntington 
replied with a grin. “Hang on, I’ll get you out with me.” 

Abruptly everything went black and I felt myself 
falling. 

For what seemed a lifetime, my brain raced 
without any constraints like an engine being revved to 
full RPM while in neutral. In this state, I recalled the 
strange news article I’d seen earlier in the day about 
people at the mall who had thought they’d been 
chased by a helicopter gunship. 

 Was there—could there—be any connection to 
what I’d just experienced? Had we just caused 
another stampede somewhere? 


I dismissed it from my mind, instead wondering 

how Huntington had been able to initiate my jump 

from the MUD. Leaving a MUD in progress was next 

to impossible when you were on jet. Yet I was 

obviously out of the Vietnam MUD, headed for 

Huntington-only-knew where. 
How was that possible? 

Helicopter attack may be mass hysteria 

Hanoi, New China -Hanoi police 
officials are at a loss to explain reports 
of an antique helicopter that circled a 
downtown parking lot, spraying the area 
with machine gun fire and rockets. 
Despite hundreds of witnesses to the 
event, there were no casualties or 
damage, according to official sources, 
though two of the onlookers died of 
heart attacks thought caused by the 
excitement. 

 “At first we thought perhaps it was a 
gang war,” said Comdr. John Wang, 
head of special investigations. “However 
now we’re leaning toward a classic case 
of mass hysteria. Our police 
psychologists believe this may have 
been triggered by the recent release of 
the surround-D film, Apocalypse Now. 

 Although no one was hurt by actual 
rocket or gun fire, one elderly man died 
of heart failure, according to officials. 

 Makers of the new version of the 
movie classic were unavailable for 
comment. 


Click here for full story 
Click here for 3-D/hardwire version 

Click here for exciting scenes from the 
all-new, surround view version of 
Apocalypse Now staring the actual 
clones, Michael Caine II (Impress Files) 
and Arnold Schwarzenegger, III 
(Terminator, Terminator II, Terminator 
III, Terminator IV, Terminator V, etc.) 


landed in my new environment with a belly flop 

and a clatter of metal. Much as I hate to admit it, I 

quite often bite the dirt when I enter a MUD on jet, 

for reasons I can’t imagine. Probably tells you 

something about my personality. 

Normally I don’t clatter on the landing, 
however. I creaked as I got to my feet as well, like a 
rusty door hinge. I looked down and studied my outfit 
and discovered I was encased in a shiny suit of armor. 
Not a bad idea, I thought. A little extra protection never 
hurt anything, especially in the often-violent MUDs. 

 The electronic world around me was another feat of 
programming. Although I knew it was only electrons 
coursing through a computer somewhere, it was all 
highly detailed—the perfect illusion. Someone had 
gone to a lot of work to create the wooded area. It 
might be purely illusion, but was so well done that it 
seemed real nonetheless. 

 Turning around, I spied an ill-kept yard and a rundown 
thatch-roofed house of 1800 vintage, I guessed. 
In front of the house, under a large oak, was a dining 
table set haphazardly with broken crockery lying 
around it. This all took second place to the large 
creatures sitting at the table. The man-sized rabbit I 
recognized as the March Hare. The wild-eyed little man 


next to him with the tall head gear had to be the Mad 

Hatter. 

 Which one was Huntington? Or was he here, yet? 

Both were noisily toasting themselves, oblivious to 
the small furry creature lying in a saucer between 
them. 

“Sleeping on a dish must be very uncomfortable for 
the Dormouse,” the young lady who materialized next 
to me said. “Don’t you think?” 

“Yeah,” I said, eyeing her closely for some hint if 
she might be Huntington. There was no resemblance 
at all to his picture or to the last incarnation I’d just 
seen him in. But I’d been in enough MUDs to know that 
he might—or might not—be a cross player. It would be 
a mistake to assume he could only be one of the male 
players. For all I knew, he was standing right next to 
me. 

Or he might be the oak tree. Finding him was going 
to get tricky. Of course if it was easy, then Death 
wouldn’t have hired me and I’d be dead. Time to quit 
complaining. 

“I said, ‘Sleeping on a dish must be very 
uncomfortable for the Dormouse,’” the young lady 
repeated. “Don’t you think?” 

“Uh, yes,” I muttered. 

“Of course I guess Dormouse is asleep,” Alice 
continued. “I suppose it doesn’t mind. Come on let’s 
join them.” She took my hand in her cool grip and 
pulled me along toward the large table. 

Despite the length of the table, the Dormouse, 
Hatter, and Hare were crowded together at one corner 
of it. 

“No room,” the Hatter and Hare cried as Alice and I 
approached. 

“There’s plenty of room,” Alice insisted, sitting down 
in a large arm-chair at one end of the table. She pulled 


me down into the chair beside her where I sat with a 
clatter of heavy armor. 

“Who are you supposed to be,” the Hatter 
demanded. “You’re not a part of this story. You must 
be in the wrong MUD.” 

“There’s always room for more players,” Alice said. 
Then, winking at me she said in a low voice, “Besides, I 
have sort of taken a fancy with him. I wonder what he 
has hidden under that codpiece.” 

“Who are you,” the Hatter demanded of me again. 

“I’m the, uh, White Knight,” I mumbled, feeling a 
blush creep up my neck from Alice’s remark. Normally 
I’m as risqué as the next guy. Being having a demure 
young girl make lurid suggestions had taken me off 
guard. 

“Have some wine,” the March Hare said before the 
Hatter could say anything else to me. 

Alice glanced round the table. “I don’t see any 
wine.” 

“There isn’t any,” the March Hare replied. 

“Then it wasn’t very civil of you to offer it,” Alice 
said, trying her best to appear angry while glancing my 
way to be sure I was watching her. 

“It wasn't very civil of you to bring this joker to our 
party without being invited,” the March Hare countered. 

“Let’s get naked,” the Hatter said. 

“Out of character,” the Dormouse protested, 
suddenly looking wide awake. He squinted at me a 
moment and then scuttled off the table and fell onto a 
chair with a loud plunk. “We’ve got to stay in character 
if this is going to be any fun,” his voice said from 
behind the tablecloth. “This is supposed to be a 
children’s story.” 

“It’s her fault for bringing an extra guest,” the Hatter 
cried. 

“I didn't know it was your place to decide,” Alice 


said. “Besides, the table’s laid for a great many more 
than three people.” She looked me in the eye when 
she said laid, leaving no chance for me to miss her 
double-entendre. 

“Your hair wants cutting,” the Hatter said, pulling out 
a wicked-looking dagger that somehow had been 
hidden in his jacket. “Or maybe your throat.” 

“You shouldn’t make personal remarks,” Alice said, 
drawing a revolver from her garter belt and brandishing 
it carelessly. “How about a little lead to eat with your 
crumpets, dearie?” 

I held my breath, unsure what to say. If Alice shot a 
simm that the MUD master had created, nothing would 
be lost. But if she shot a real person who was in the 
MUD on jet—the way I was—it might very well be fatal 
to him. 

 The March Hare looked wildly about, leaning back 
in his chair to stay out of the potential crossfire that 
appeared about to develop. “Now, children. We mustn’t 
hurt anyone. Tell me, why is a computer like a writing-
desk?” 

“I’m glad you’ve begun asking riddles,” Alice said, 
setting her revolver on the table beside her as she got 
back into character. “I believe I can guess that one.” 

“Do you mean that you think you have the answer?” 
the March Hare asked. 

“You might,” the Dormouse said, his voice groggy 
as if he were talking in his sleep. He peered over the 
table and spoke. He spoke with one eye still closed. 
“And then again, you may be on another flight of 
fancy.” 

“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter 
asked. 

“No, I haven’t a clue,” Alice replied. “What's the 
answer?” 

“I haven’t the slightest,” the Hatter said. 


“Of course not,” Alice said. “It’s the March Hare’s 
riddle.” 

“That’s too bad,” said the March Hare. “Because I 
don’t have the slightest clue to the answer, either.” 

Alice sighed. “I think you might do something better 
with the time.” She stood and took me by the hand. 
“Come with me. I have something to show you.” 

“Oh, oh,” the Hatter said, raising an eyebrow and 
winking at me. “And I bet I know just what it is.” 

I started to speak, when the Dormouse interrupted. 
“Treacle. I want a clean cup. Let’s all move one place.” 
He moved on as he spoke. 

I rose to my feet with Alice still tugging at my hand. 
The last thing I wanted to do was get involved in a têtêà-
têtê in cyberspace. On the other hand, I wasn’t totally 
sure that Alice wasn’t really Huntington so I didn’t want 
to lose track of her, either. 

The Dormouse scooted over to the next place 
setting, walking on hind legs in an odd, very un-mouselike 
way. But what would you expect from a talking 
mouse? 

 The March Hare settled into the Dormouse’s former 
place, spilling a cup of tea in the process. The liquid 
pooled on the already stained tablecloth. 

“Surely you two aren’t going to leave and spoil our 
party,” the Hatter said to Alice, plunking himself into a 
new chair. 

“I’m tired of this,” Alice replied. “It’s always just the 
same old thing.” 

“You forget the time we had an orgy in the pasture,” 
the Hatter protested. “That was fun.” 

“I wasn’t there that time,” Alice protested. “A girl like 
me would never do anything like that," she confided to 
me. 

“Wrong,” the March Hare said, again drawing his 
knife and jumping onto the table. “You were there and 


now you’re lying to impress the White Knight.” 

“Was not,” Alice said. With that, she raised her 
revolver and coolly shot him between the eyes before I 
could make a move to stop her. 

 The creature fell over backward, a gaping hole in its 
head. 

“A girl’s best friend is the .44 Magnum,” Alice told 
me, blowing the last of the smoke from the barrel. 
“Anyone else want to argue.” 

“No, no,” said the Dormouse, feigning sleep. 

“I’m stopping this game,” the Hatter said. “This has 
gone too far. I’m leaving if you can’t obey the rules.” 

“So long then,” Alice said, pointing the muzzle of her 
firearm at his head. 

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You —” 

 The gun discharged with a blast that echoed back 
from a distant hillside. The meadow became ominously 
silent as the Hatter’s lifeless body fell to the ground.

 The Dormouse continued to feign sleep and I stood 
silent. 

Alice grabbed my hand again. “Don’t worry your 
mind about the Hatter and Hair. They were both just 
simms so no harm’s done. Now come on, we’ve got to 
leave. The Jabberwocky’s coming. I can hear it.” 

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son,” the Dormouse 
chanted, abruptly awake and dancing around a large 
cup, making motions with his front paws as he 
continued, “The jaws that bite, the claws that catch.” 

 There was a roar from the forest that rattled the 
crockery and made my knees feel weak. 

“Come one!” Alice cried over the still-chanting 
Dormouse. “We don’t have a second to lose if we’re 
going to escape from it. It’s a killer and its fast.” 

There was another roar that punctuated her 
warning. Whatever the creature was, it was now a 
whole lot closer. 


Alice said nothing more but instead turned and ran, 
her dress flapping behind her. I snatched the 
Dormouse and my helmet from the table and followed 
her, my armor clanking as I sprinted toward the maze 
of oaks. 

 The roaring behind us grew louder and somehow I 
ran even faster. 


crashed through the brush behind Alice, cursing 

the armor I wore since it clanked with my every 

step. While the weight of the armor was no 

problem—my body in MUDs is always strong 

and healthy, nearly tireless—it clinked with each 

step and clanged whenever a branch brushed 
against its smooth surface. The noise betrayed me to 
the Jabberwocky pursuing us; my armor let it know 
exactly where I was. And I was also giving away 
Alice’s position as well. 

Pushing the branch ahead of me out of the way 
with a steel-encased paw, I continued down the path 
a few more steps, then decided at least I could avoid 
giving Alice away by not tagging along behind her. 
When we came to a fork in the path, I took the one to 
the right after seeing her head to the left. I jogged 
forward, continuing to make a loud din that I hoped 
the Jabberwocky would follow. 

After going a short distance, I plowed into the thick 
vegetation. After traveling several yards away from 
the path, I hid behind an knurled oak tree, forcing 
myself not to breathe less the sound give us away. 

If I could stay still and hidden long enough, I 
thought perhaps the Jabberwocky would trudge past 
us and lose our trail. But I discovered that staying 


quiet might not be an option. 

Because of my companion. 

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son,” the Dormouse 
said, his voice echoing in my empty helmet in which 
he now stood, reciting the poem that seemed to have 
driven him insane. 

“Shhhh,” I hissed. “Do you want to get eaten?”

 The Dormouse’s beady eyes glowed in the dim 
light coming through the thick canopy of leaves above 
us. “But it’s such a wondrous poem,” he whispered. 

“No doubt,” I said. “But now’s not the time for a 
poetry recital. Just go back to sleep or something. 
Can you do that?” 

He nodded his head and then curled up inside my 
helmet, pretending to sleep. 

I turned my attention away from him toward the 
crashing coming toward us. For a moment I wondered 
if Alice had continued on by herself down the other 
pathway. Then I forgot all about her. 

Because the thrashing suggested a mammoth 
animal was headed our way. With a shock I also 
realized I had no idea what a Jabberwocky looked 
like. But I also knew I was soon going to learn—the 
hard way. Because whatever was coming down the 
path was obviously very, very large and definitely 
coming down the fork of the path we had taken. I 
could see trees shaking and heard brush being torn 
asunder in the monster’s wake. Something huge was 
after me. 

Fourteen heart thumps latter, a giant pine was 
swept aside and there was the Jabberwocky. The 
sunlight, exposed by the tree the creature had shoved 
aside, shown down from heaven as if the behemoth 
were some sort of saint, rather than the killer beast 
that it was. 

Peering through my screen of bush, my eyes were 


drawn to its killer jaws lined with razor-sharp teeth 
that glinted in he light. Then I noticed its forelegs, 
held in the air like hands, with claws the size of 
daggers .Two leathery wings sprang from its back to 
complete the nightmare, wings that must have been 
more for looks than flying since it was doubtful that 
they could ever lift the tonnage they were connected 
to. 

I ducked back behind the tree as the Jabberwocky 
continued down the path toward us; in just a moment 
it was alongside our hiding place in the foliage. 

 Where it stopped. 

And waited. 

I listened to its breath swishing in and out of its 
massive lungs, condensing in the cool air in the glen, 
transformed into clouds of steam that drifted toward 
my hiding place. Abruptly it quit breathing and I knew 
it was listening, waiting for some sign of where I was. 
I closed my eyes and held my breath. 

I don’t know whether it was our scent, or simply a 
lucky guess, but the creature stepped off the pathway 
toward us, twigs snapping like dry bones beneath its 
feet as it thrashed toward us. It had started breathing 
again and within moments the steam from its nostrils 
was streaming through the air from either side of the 
tree I hid behind, covering us in the thick, foul-
smelling fog. 

Remaining motionless, I waited, hoping it would 
fail to see me. The creature leaned against the oak I 
cowered behind and the massive tree groaned 
against the weight, a large branch crashing to the 
ground beside me. 

Now would be a nice time for the jet to wear off, I 
thought, reaching down to the spot where I usually 
carried my pistol—and discovering nothing on my belt 
but a pouch of coins. Oh, well. A pistol wasn’t going to 


cut it with the monster I faced anyway. Even an 
elephant gun would have been pressed to do the job. 
I realized I was just going to have to let it kill me and 
hope my heart held out long enough for the medics to 
get to my body back in my apartment before I went to 
that great MUD game land in the sky. 

I took a deep breath and started to step out to 
meet my fate when a faint voice shouted far in the 
distance, “White Knight? Dormouse?” 

It was Alice. 

“White Knight? Dormouse?” 

Had she lost her mind? Most certainly. No one in 
their right mind would holler when the Jabberwocky 
was around. And then I realized that no one in their 
right mind would be in this MUD in the first place. 

“Hell-oooohhhhhhhhh,” Alice continued to call. 
“Where arrrrrrrrre you? White Knight? Dormouse? Is 
it safe to come out?” 

 The creature behind the tree thrashed around, its 
tail smashing into the oak I was hidden behind, 
uprooting it and spinning the Dormouse and me to the 
side like bowling pins, slamming us into the brush 
with a bone-jarring crash of armor, flesh, and foliage. 

I lay dazed on my back wondering if the 
Jabberwocky would turn back to see why the tree its 
tail had hit had made such a metallic ringing. But it 
ignored the noise of our fall, if it noticed it at all, 
instead homing in on Alice’s voice which called again. 
“White Knight? Where are you?” 

Finally I sat up, collecting my helmet where the 
Dormouse still resided. “Alice must have lost her 
marbles,” I whispered, rising to my feet. “Come on, 
let’s get out of here.” 

“No, no,” the Dormouse replied, standing up in my 
helmet and shaking a paw at my nose. “You must 
help her. That’s the White Knight’s job—that’s your 


job: To battle the Jabberwocky.” 

 With that the creature stood ram-rod straight and 
broke into verse again, this time doing a little jig in my 
helmet as it spoke. 

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son! 

“The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! 

 “Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun 

 “The frumious Bandersnatch! 

“He took his vorpal sword in hand: 

“Long time the manxome fow he sought--” 

“This is all very nice,” I interrupted. “But I’m headed 
out of here so I can keep my body with soul— 
something not likely to happen if I battle the 
Jabberwocky. ” I pushed my way back onto the path 
and headed back toward the clearing, in the direction 
opposite that taken by Alice and now the 
Jabberwocky. 

“Don’t you understand,” the Dormouse protested. 
“Your job is to slay the Jabberwocky and to save 
Alice.” 

“Not in my job description, friend,” I replied. “I’m 
here to... Hey, you’re not Huntington, are you?” I 
studied the small creature in front of my, trying to 
discern if it could possibly be the man whose 
photograph I’d seen in my apartment. 

After a few seconds, I gave up. Fur, whiskers, and 
a totally different body concealed the human 
characteristics of the being I held in my helmet. 

“You’ve got to help her,” the creature continued, 
ignoring my question. “It’s your job.” 

“Right.” I snickered grimly. “Like I’m going to win in 
a wrestling match with ten tons of claws and teeth.” 

“But your vorpal sword can defeat the creature. It’s 
part of the game.” 


“My what?” I asked pushing through the brush. 
This was the craziest MUD I’d ever been in. It would 
be nice if the jet ever wore off. 

“Your vorpal sword, there in the sheath at your 
side. It can defeat the Jabberwocky.” 

I looked down at my belt and saw there was a 
sword on my left side. I grasped the jeweled hilt, 
almost afraid of what I might find. Then I drew the 
blade which clanged as it left its sheath. 

 The steel edge seemed to shimmer in the dim 
light, glistening as if it had a beam of bright sunlight 
trapped just beneath its surface. I tested its weight 
and balance. The blade sang through the air almost 
as if it were a living thing, doing what I wanted it to 
with very little effort on my part. 

“See!” the Dormouse cried, jumping from the 
helmet and standing on its hind legs in the lush moss 
underfoot. “You see. The vorpal sword can defeat the 
Jabberwocky. And that is your task.” 

“You’ve seen this done before?” 

“Well... No. But—” 

Before I could re-sheath the sword and head away 
from the monster, I heard Alice’s distant scream. I 
tried to ignore it but couldn’t. My conscience had 
struck again; once more I was its victim. 


ravery is easily confused with stupidity, 

most likely because the two are identical. 

 Heavy doses of bravery, a.k.a. 

stupidity, propelled me down the trail after 

the Jabberwocky, shimmering vorpal 

sword in hand. Within thirty seconds I 
clanked down the path, coming to a ledge. Below me, 
in a clearing, Alice stood, cornered with her back 
toward the edge of a cliff with ocean waves crashing 
far below her. 

 The Jabberwocky blocked any avenue of escape 
she might have had with its ridged back which was 
toward me as it swayed back and forth, playing with 
her the way a cat does before it makes its kill. 

 This scene didn’t remain that way for long. 

Because as I noisily clanged down the hill, racing 
for the clearing, the beast whirled around, its massive 
tail sweeping through the air and narrowly missing 
Alice who stepped back, dangerously close to the 
edge of the abyss to avoid being knocked over by the 
massive appendage. 

 The Jabberwocky faced me, sunlight glinting off its 
right eye; its other eye was missing, a dark, empty 
socket showing where it had once been. With a 
shock, I realized that the monster must be 


Huntington. 

“So we meet again,” the creature snarled, 
confirming my suspicion. “You may wish you hadn’t 
been so quick to come with me into this MUD.” 

“I am having second thoughts,” I admitted. “Maybe 
you could send me back to the Vietnam game.” 

The creature in front of me laughed a horrid, 
bubbling rumbling gargle of a chuckle. Then he spoke 
again, “I hope you’ve brushed up on your 
swordsmanship—the last White Knight I fought wasn’t 
much of a challenge—though he proved a tasty 
morsel. You look a little skimpy for my tastes, but 
you’ll do.” 

I said nothing, trying to decide if there was enough 
room between us to permit a hasty retreat back into 
the brush before he caught up with me. Deciding I’d 
be a White Knight sandwich before I could make my 
escape, I faced my fate, sword in hand. At least I 
could go down fighting. 

 The Jabberwocky circled me cautiously, making 
me hopeful that perhaps the sword I held was a 
potent weapon. In fact he was only trying to take me 
off guard. He sprang forward, the ground shaking 
underfoot as he crashed nearly on top of me, racking 
my side with his claws as I dodged to the side, 
slashing with my sword. 

I backed away as the creature lumbered around 
for another attack. Glancing down, I saw that his 
claws had penetrated my armor, ripping my clothing 
underneath and grazing my skin with jagged 
scratches that already throbbed despite their 
superficiality. All was not lost, however. With a 
smidgen of hope welling up inside me, I noted that my 
sword had also left a mark. Now there was a deep 
gash in the creature’s arm and an even uglier look on 
its face. 


“Well, done,” Huntington’s voice said, booming 
from the dragon. He circled around and I realized he 
was trying to back me toward the edge of the cliff, 
thereby limiting my ability to maneuver. 

 To counter this, I ran forward, yelling and swinging 
my sword as if to initiate an attack, then swerved to 
the side at the last moment as his huge paw smashed 
downward, rattling the earth where I would have 
been. 

Almost to him now, I dived under his spread hind 
legs, raced beneath him, and slashed and thrust at 
his belly with my sword as I went, releasing a torrent 
of green blood. 

He roared in pain. “You’ll pay for that!” 

I cringed at the thought that I most likely would 
pay, and pay dearly. 

As he turned around to face me, the Jabberwocky 
swept his long tail toward me. I jumped aside in time 
to avoid being bowled over by scaled tail which 
flashed past, almost taking me by surprise. But I 
miscalculated my landing managing to clear the tail 
but stumbling and falling in a jumble of man and 
armor. 

I struggled to rise, then saw him striking like a 
giant snake; thinking better of standing, I rolled out of 
the way as his jaws snapped shut just inches from my 
head. I continued rolling, sounding like a barrel of tin 
cans, finally stopping on my knees and hands. I 
quickly rose and retreated a few feet from the 
creature. 

It was then that I realized I’d left my sword lying 
where I’d fallen. I stood empty handed. 

Huntington produced a 10-foot wide, toothy grin. 
“How about a little hand-to-hand combat?” he asked. 
“Humankind is so poorly matched to anything without 
the proper tools, wouldn’t you say? No teeth, no 


claws. Brains don’t do a lot of good in a situation like 
this, do they?” 

I backed toward the brush, thinking perhaps a 
quick dash was my only chance of avoiding a certain 
death. Then I saw a flicker of movement behind 
Huntington as he stepped over my sword. 

Alice! 

At first I thought she was escaping and didn’t think 
any less of her for it. Better one of escape than both 
perish. Then I saw she was not rushing away but 
rather dashed toward the creature, trying to reach the 
sword I’d dropped. 

“Huntington,” I said, trying to keep him distracted 
so he wouldn’t notice Alice approaching behind him. 
“Couldn’t we just call it quits without any more 
trouble?” I backed away at an angle now, forcing him 
to keep his good eye toward me and making it less 
likely he’d observe Alice. 

He turned cautiously, apparently suspecting a 
trick. 

“Did you ever feel like playing MUDs is a terrible 
waste of time?” I asked, half turning as if to run. 

 The monster laughed with a rumble that made the 
hair at the back of my neck stand on end. “Where 
else can you smash people freely with a stomp of 
your foot?” 

“Oh, what fun,” I agreed. 

“And where else can you enjoy the taste of human 
flesh?” 

Great, now I was the main course. “You can quit 
now. I understand all the ramifications of your list of 
fun things to do here.” 

He took another step toward me. “Quickly or 
slowly?” 

I didn’t need to ask what he meant by that. Had I 
known I really had a choice, I would have opted for a 


quick death. But I also knew my answer would make 
no difference since he was just playing with me. On 
the other hand, my answer might enable me to stall 
for time. 

Perhaps long enough for Alice to mount an attack 
or for the jet to wear off. “What are my choices— 
maybe you could elaborate?” 

But Huntington didn’t answer. 

Instead, he struck quickly, his jaws snapping off 
my left arm just above the elbow at the same moment 
Alice raced forward. 

I staggered back, pain clouding my vision as I saw 
Alice hit the creature’s under-belly with a two-handed 
swing, leaving a jagged cut that gushed green blood, 
coating her head to foot in the sticky, foul-smelling 
liquid. 

Huntington roared in pain, spitting out my arm as I 
tumbled to the ground. He whirled around and chased 
after Alice who sprinted toward the edge of the cliff. 

I fought to remain conscious, watching in horror as 
Alice stopped at the edge, turned to face the monster, 
and then tossed the sword toward me. It twirled in a 
rainbow arch through the air, landing on its point in 
the hard soil next to me. 

“Good luck, my sweet knight,” Alice called. Then 
with a determined smile she turned and leaped over 
the edge.

 With a sick feeling in my stomach, I pulled the 
sword from the earth and stood to face Huntington as 
he wheeled back toward me. 

“My, my,” he snarled, “such feats of bravery, 
today. You two have been a notch above my standard 
fair, I must admit.” 

 The sword seemed very heavy in my hand and I 
fought to keep from passing out as my blood 
continued to spurt from the stump of my arm. All that 


kept me going was the fact that Huntington was 
bleeding badly, too. I hoped perhaps he’d been 
weakened enough that we were once again matched. 
I lifted the sword as he cautiously circled, waiting me 
intently, looking for an opening that would permit him 
to attack without being wounded again. 

He jumped forward just as I stumbled to the side. 
He crashed into the earth with a mighty belly flop and 
for an instant his head was lying on the ground right 
beside me. In that moment I brought down the sword 
with all the strength I could muster. The shining, 
razor-sharp blade struck with a loud, wet “chunk.” 

He shook his head, emerald blood gushing from 
his jugular vein. Lowering his head to paw at the 
wound, he left himself exposed to another slash. I 
threw my body behind the blade, ripping through the 
other side of his neck, the magical blade almost 
pulling me along behind it as it slashed through a 
massive expanse of reptilian flesh. 

Abruptly his head and body were two entities 
rather than one. 

 The head rolled away from me as I staggered back 
and the monster’s jaws opened and shut a few times 
in his death throes. The body thrashed about, tail 
whipping through the air with a loud cracking sound. 
This went on for nearly a minute then the creature lay 
still. 

And then the carcass did the impossible. 

It stood upright on its own and staggered forward, 
step by step, it’s front legs groping along the ground, 
looking for its head. The claws finally found the head, 
lifted it from the ground, and placed it atop the bloody 
neck that gurgled out blood like a living volcano. 

 The flesh joined together and the creature stood 
up straight. “There, that’s better,” Huntington said, 
turning toward me with an evil, toothy grin on his 


reptilian mouth. 

My head seemed to spin and all the color drained 
from the dragon. At first I thought I was about to pass 
out. Then, with exhausted relief, I realized the jet was 
wearing off and I was about to leave the MUD. 

I drew the sword back and then heaved it toward 
the monster, hoping for a lucky break. The blade 
seemed to guard itself, plunging deep into the 
creature’s heart, just as I blacked out. 


sat in a daze, the terror of what had happened 
to me clouding my mind as the news server fed 
oddities from the net news feed into my mind... 

Does your video visor or monitor leave you 

Blurry eyed? 

Then maybe it’s time to come to the friendly folks 

at Ace Medical Labs for a hard-wire interface. Put 

your computer’s video straight into your frontal 

lobe where Mother Nature intended it to be. 
Click here to schedule an appointment 

Lightfoot News Service—News you can 
use. 

New Guinea Massacre Just a mistake. 
Plymouth, New Washington—Today 
spokesbot for the MS/AppleSun Corp. 
released the findings of their study of 
the recent New Guinea Massacre. ™ 
“We were quite surprised to see that 
our soldiers had been killed purely 
through a software bug,” Mason Greb 
told newscans. “This is the first time 
since our company was formed that 


anything like this has happened, and the 
first and only time our soldiers have died 
outside of a major corporation 
battlefield. Management expressed 
embarrassment over the death of nearly 
one thousand people.” 

 According to MSAS, the original riots 
leading to the massacre were the result 
of bugs in the translation computers 
company troops are routinely issued. 
According to company spokesmen, 
whenever soldiers addressed the 
indigent peoples as “Sir” or “Madam”, 
phrases dictated by public policy, the 
computer embedded in the troops 
throats translated the words as 
“bastard” or “whore” in the villagers 
native tongue.

 “We knew something was wrong 
from day one,” one of the surviving 
troops who asked to remain anonymous 
told reporters. “From the very first we 
could see the villagers were reacting 
badly. But we just chalked it up to the 
difference in our cultures. We never 
suspected our translators were going to 
get most of us killed.” 

Click here for full story 

Click here for 3-D/hardwire version 

Winged Dragon Sighted in New Kansas. 
Topeka, NK—UIP Officials were 
perplexed by reports of a dragon-like 
creature sighted near the downtown 
area today. According to a police 


spokesman— 

“Stop,” I sputtered to the computer, abruptly 
aware that somehow I was now back in my 
apartment—and alive. And that my missing left arm 
was back as well. I’d come close to getting the super-
stress treatment that makes most jet users ooze 
blood from all orifices and escaped it by the very 
thinnest of margins. 

I pulled off my goggles and looked down at my 
arm in disbelief in the dim light, realizing my body was 
whole again, my missing appendage now magically 
rejoined to a body soaked in sweat instead of gore. 

I closed my eyes. I could feel my heart pounding, 
racing in my chest and I wondered how close I’d been 
to stroking out during my MUD visit. I took a deep 
breath and forced myself to relax. I let the air out of 
my lungs, took another deep breath, and then rose 
from my chair. “Time.” I finally demanded. 

“Eighteen hundred, thirty-four, UT.” 

No wonder it was so dark in the apartment. 

“May I suggest a trip to the emergency room,” the 
computer offered. “Your heart rate was alarmingly 
high and your blood pressure is still rather extreme. 
While the chances of your having a stroke are now 
only eighteen percent —” 

“No, I’m okay,” I said, hoping I was. 

Besides, going to a hospital was risky in itself 
these days with the omnipresent super-bugs and 
bootleg organ rings that were rampant in most 
medical establishments. And one blood test would let 
them know I’d recently used jet. Last time I’d gotten 
off lightly as a first-time user. The second time 
wouldn’t be that light a sentence with the new twostrikes-
and-you’re-out legislation. 

No, unless I was leaking vital fluids at an alarming 


rate and had a one hundred percent chance of dying 
if I did nothing, the last place I wanted to take my 
chances at was the local hospital. 

And even then I’d need a few minutes to think it 
over. 

I took another deep breath and tried to collect my 
senses. One thing for sure, I wasn’t going to beat 
Huntington on his home turf on the wires. Sooner or 
later, he’d get me before the jet wore off. Not only 
that, he’d somehow been able to stack the deck in his 
favor. 

I had thought I’d mistakenly seen him killed in the 
Vietnam War MUD, his head severed by a cable. Now 
I was pretty sure my first impression had been 
correct—after seeing Huntington reassemble his 
monster self. My gut feeling was that Huntington had 
be decapitated in the Vietnam MUD and he’d simply 
cheated death, somehow replacing his missing 
crown. 

Most MUD players would have died of a heart 
attack had that happened when they were jetted into 
the wire. Yet he’d recovered in the MUD and 
continued as if nothing had happened just as he had 
when I’d beheaded him with my vorpal sword a few 
minutes ago. 

Somehow, some way, Huntington had learned to 
control the jet code or even the basic code going into 
the games. Or had created a new form of jet—I had 
come back to that suspicion again. 

Either way, somehow he was able to override the 
programming, making himself immortal in the games 
while those playing against him were not. That made 
him very dangerous in the MUDs. 

How many people have died of heart failure or had 
their heads explode while playing him? Judging from 
the playing habits listed on the data Death had given 

73 


me, Huntington might have racked up quite a number. 

But that wasn’t my main concern right now. The 
question was: How soon would I join their numbers if I 
kept after him in the MUDs? I already knew the 
answer. Very, very soon. I was lucky to be alive right 
now and had only been saved by the jet wearing off 
when it did. 

I could never beat a guy who was impossible to 
kill—especially if I could kick off from a massive brain 
hemorrhage at any moment due to my imaginary 
death in the MUD. Sure, I might learn more about him 
if I continued to explore the MUDs he frequented, but 
it was very likely I would never live to tell about it. It 
was almost certain I would instead become another 
statistic in the Supreme’s jet-abuse column. 

“That fries it,” I said, getting to my feet that 
seemed to be connected to my body by two rubbery 
legs. Without permitting myself to argue me out of my 
decision, I picked up the bottle of jet, and staggered 
over to the sink. “I know I’ll hate myself later, but I’m 
going to do this before there are any jet cravings to 
cloud my judgment.” 

I dumped the liquid down the drain, watching until 
the last of the liquid was out of the bottle and then 
rinsing the container. After that I ran lots of water 
through the sink so I wouldn’t be tempted to tear it 
apart and suck on the drain later—something I had 
little doubt I would do when the cravings returned in a 
few hours. 

“There,” I said, wondering if I’d lost my mind or 
committed the first act of sanity in some time. 

Either way the deed was done. 

Time to get on with it, I told myself. I still had a job 
to do and now it was going to be harder. 

I crossed back to the moth-eaten easy chair and 
sat back down, trying to figure out what my next step 


should be. Running away sound good but would 
eventually fail. I didn’t have enough e-cash or gear 
that was easy to hock. Sooner or later I’d have to 
make a score for cash and then Death’s goons would 
have me. Or the police would catch me in the act, 
unlikely as that might be. Running was out; I’d have to 
overcome the problem by meeting it head on—or die 
trying. 

I rubbed a hand across my chin, trying to sort out 
my predicament in a rational fashion. 

Several things were apparent: 

1) I no longer felt any need to protect Huntington 
from Death or the government. After seeing his 
savage behavior, I would be happy to lead the parade 
with his head on a stick. 

And... 

2) Death would be happy to carry my head on a 
stick if I failed to come up with Huntington’s hard 
address by the end of tomorrow. 

So it was time to roll up my sleeves and get to 
work. 

But how was I going to get to work? 

An idea started to form itself in my mind. 
“Computer?” 

“Waiting.” 

“Clear the decks. We’ve got some serious 
searches to conduct.” 


’ve always been amazed at how many people 

don’t know how to do a proper search with a 

computer. Oh, sure, there are automated search 

programs that do all the work with umpteen 

commercial super computer search engines. But 

they often fail to find the things that a searcher 
like myself could find with just a little more time and 
effort. And a few tricks up the sleeves. 

Of course if people realized how easy such work 
was, and that the automated search programs they 
were dependent on weren’t all that whippy, then I 
would have been out of business. So I didn’t go 
around spouting off the secrets of my trade. When it 
came to selling hijacked knowledge and hacking into 
computer systems, I was pretty tight lips. 

The fact that Death didn’t know such refined 
secrets was no surprise—he operated by brute 
strength with a minimum of strain to his gray cells. But 
the fact that the government hadn’t found Huntington 
was a puzzle. Sure most net engines have been 
coded to discontinue serving a gov agency when the 
tell-tale footprint of a bureaucratic snoop was 
discovered; the net had remained gov unfriendly 
since the Great Clipper Chip Wars that led to the 
destruction of the United States of North America. 


But any Powers hack worth his salt and pepper 
could get around the traps and use the systems just 
like anyone else. Not to mention the gov supersystems 
that could be, and undoubtedly were, 
smuggled online to smash the data banks before any 
algorithms were any the wiser. 

 That the gov would need to use me was doubtful 
at best and suggested the gov wasn’t yet involved in 
any deep way. At least not yet. 

If that were true, then Death must have been lying 
about the buy-off contract on Huntington—bringing 
me back to the possibility that Death wanted 
Huntington for some other reason. New jet. 

 That had to be it. 

But if it were, then the gov would be in the 
equation before long, because the Powers wouldn’t 
sit around if a whole new, and very dangerous, form 
of jet was about to hit the streets. 

 Which was another reason to hurry. If the gov got 
into the whole thing, my job would only get harder. 
Time to get to work right now and in a serious way. 

 Within ten minutes I’d launched a flotilla of my 
more reliable netbots, had my MC hit the usual 
search engines, and also initiated several searches 
with three renegade systems most people aren’t 
aware of and which feel into the gray area of the law. 
Today I was in luck since only one of the latter group 
was down due to government raids. And of course I 
worked through an anonymous server to keep from 
being backtracked. 

 Within five minutes the bots started returning 
along with the results of my searches. All were put 
through the MC filters I’d set up to avoid being 
overwhelmed with information and—I hoped— 
obnoxious advertising. 

 Within two more minutes I was ready to go, putting 


what I call the IIS (intuition into the system) in the mix, 
this factor being comprised principally of the hardware 
between my skull—which most gov agents and thugs 
like Death didn’t have the first inkling about. And 
those IIS circuits worked like magic as far as I could 
tell, chugging along even independently of intellect 
from time to time and often at odds with so-called 
“common knowledge” (i.e., the prop that organizations 
like the Supreme, Powers, and Corps fed us through 
the mainstream). 

 Working at my virtual desk, I carefully sorted 
through the stories and data the online computers 
had collected for my MC. One news story I’d actually 
seen before: The report about the mall panic being 
one which I now recognized and which had put me on 
the trail of what became my search. As I looked at the 
other stories retrieved by my search, I realized I my 
IIS hunch was on to something. 

Because the stories all had one important thing in 
common: Large crowds had all seen the same basic, 
but impossible, happenstance. 

 The last of the group of stories chilled my blood: A 
dragon-like creature had chased a young woman who 
had apparently thrown herself from a rooftop. Only 
the roof couldn’t have supported the winged creature 
that had vanished nor was the body of the blond-
haired girl found on the streets below. 

Alice. 

For a moment I felt a pang of guilt; what had 
happened to Alice? More importantly, was she—or 
had she been—real? Or had she simply been a 
complex computer simm that was part of the MUD? 

Or were innocent bystanders in the area of a MUD 
user somehow sucked into the games, seeing things 
that the MUD user saw. 

But that’s impossible, I told myself. That would 


amount to telepathy and science had disproved that 
decades ago. But I made a mental note to find out 
what the girl who’d fallen to her death looked like, 
should I ever get out of the mess I was in. 

Now what was the connection between all the 
stories and Huntington? That was the key question. 
Or maybe the answer was that there was no 
connection. Things get complicated and sometimes 
too much thinking makes it worse. 

Yet there had to be a connection. 

 The dragon/Alice hallucination was not far from 
where I was and one of the Vietnam helicopter 
escapades had happened just blocks from me. If 
Huntington was capable of controlling both the MUDs 
and causing hallucinations among groups of people, 
then it would make sense that it was happening in my 
area. 

Yet there were a few peripheral stories coming in 
from Vietnam and New Florida. That didn’t tie in. 

Something else occurred to me. If Huntington was 
creating peripheral hallucinations, then that would be 
another reason the gov, and maybe even Death, 
would be interested in capturing him. Being able to 
control people’s minds in an area might be a very 
valuable capability. 

But if that were true, then why would Death hire a 
small fry like me to look for him? I was good, but not 
that good. There were better hackers and searchers. 
And if the gov was or shortly would be involved, they 
could afford to hire the best, too, without working 
through a scab like Death. 

 There was only one answer I could think of: No 
one had yet linked Huntington to the events. 

If knowledge is power, then I was sitting on a 
suitcase nuke. And finding Huntington first and 
learning his secret might put me ahead of the rest. Or 


get me killed. The stakes were getting higher by the 
minute and I realized I was going to need to be extra 
careful. 

I continued my search of odd events, having the 
computer plot them as I could drop them onto the 
virtual map that my goggles created in front of my 
face. After filtering and averaging the various 
locations, I could see that they intersected in one 
area, not that far from me. And only miles from 
Huntington’s original address. 

It made perfect sense that he might be there. Sure 
as rich as he was, he could have gone anywhere in 
the world. But with this address he wouldn’t have had 
to go far and it was a place that few people ventured 
into without an armored car and heavy machine guns. 

Just the place to go if you had money and needed 
to hide. 

 The good news was that I now had a good idea 
where Huntington was. I could give the address to 
Death and be done with it. But there was a catch. By 
the time Death’s mean got into the area—if they 
survived—my time would be up. And if they failed to 
find him, my time would be up and I’d be dead, too. 

So I’d have to do the searching myself to be sure it 
was done right. And the bad news was that to do that, 
I had to go to the really bad part of Topeka where no 
one in their right mind went without an armored limo 
with machine guns mounted in it. “A treacherously 
bad part of town,” I muttered, shaking his head after 
I’d removed my visor. 

I decided to get a good night’s sleep before going. 
After tossing for an hour I realized that I was only 
wasting precious time. I got up, cleaned my weapons 
and replaced the broken plates in my body armor, 
and headed out. 

Right into the arms of two gov thuggites. 


So much for the Powers-isn’t-involved-in-thesearch-
for-Huntington theory, I told myself. And then 
they began beating me with their gov-issued 
blackjacks. 


untington slipped the check for a hundred 
thousand dollars across the table to the 
Dean of Students. 

The little balding educator sitting on 
the other side of the massive walnut desk 
cleared his throat and then spoke. “Let 
me see if I have this right, Mr., uh, 

Huntington. If we let you pursue a double degree in 
chemistry and biology here at the college, you’ll make 
this donation?” 

“That’s correct.” 
“But I don’t, uh, quite understand.” 
“It’s simple,” the young man in the wheel chair 


said. “These departments have the best reputation in 
the country and I need this knowledge for my work. 
My GI bill has helped, but I still want to learn more.” 

 The dean looked through Huntington’s transcript 
for a moment, fidgeting and worrying the papers as if 
trying to wear them out. “It’s a little unorthodox for us 
to let you into our program with your, uh, record. And 
I, we, can’t guarantee your grades...” 

“I’m not buying the degree,” the one-eyed man 
replied. “I understand that. You’ll find I’m a hard 
worker and that I’ll accept whatever the grades I earn 
are. The only string attached to the money is that I’m 


accepted to your programs. After that I’ll sink or swim 
on my own and the money is the college’s regardless 
of how I do.”

 The dean looked relieved. “In that case, Mr. 
Huntington, welcome to our University.” 

Everything happened faster than I could say, 
“Drug detox.” 

 The two gov thuggites first grabbed me, bashing 
me up the side of the head and along the spine with 
their blackjacks to get my attention. The blows to the 
back were cushioned by my armor, but the strikes to 
my head got my undivided attention, once I quit star 
gazing. 

 They had a really simply message for me: “Stay 
out of our business,” the uglier of the two snarled. 
“Huntington’s ours.” 

“Huntington?” I said, trying my dumb routine. 

I was rewarded with another blow to the scalp, 
sending a trickle of blood flowing down my brow down 
my cheek. 

“Death isn’t working for us any more,” the agent 
told me. “And that means you’re off the case, too.” 

“How about my pay? He owes me some money for 
all the work I’ve been doing. Who’s going to—” 

Another blow to my head left me without any more 
questions about pay or what I should be doing from 
now on. 

 They shoved my semi-conscious body over to a 
local cop whose powerglove threatened to break my 
shoulder as he stood me at attention. The policeman 
tossed livecuffs at my wrists and the semi-living 
device coiled itself around my wrists while the officer 
methodically removed all my guns and knives, then 


double-checked me with a sniffer, finding the new 
claymore I’d mounted on my leg. 

“I’ll pretend I didn’t find this,” he said, placing the 
device into his booty bag. “Unless you’d like me to 
charge you with possession of a destructive device.” 

“Is there a law in effect with claymores?” 

“Five to ten.” 

“No problem, it’s yours,” I said. He might have 
been bluffing, but I suspected he wasn’t sense the 
Supreme had lately been trying to downgrade the 
armament citizens felt justified in carrying on the 
streets. Five to ten years in prison for a destructive 
device was a charge I didn’t relished thinking about. 
Not when there was most likely a seven-foot tall 
professional prisoner named Sue waiting somewhere 
to welcome me to his ward. 

Finally the policeman relieved me of my billfold 
and, satisfied he had all I owned that was worth 
stealing, escorted me down to the street where we 
dodged a couple of Snipe’s rounds and then the 
officer tossed me into the back of a patrol car that 
automatically drove itself to the nearest working 
courthouse, the one in our neighborhood having been 
burnt down by outraged citizens during the tax 
protests five years ago. 

I did my best to avoid the mechanical arm that 
snaked toward me inside the traveling cell. But my 
restrains tightened to hold me motionless in the seat. 
My cursing had no effect as the device plunged a 
needle into my arm, extracting a blood sample for the 
small lab built into the vehicle. The blood sample went 
into the system that hummed a happy tune while I 
watched my life passing before my eyes. 

 Thirty seconds later a mechanical voice 
announced, “Controlled substance number four thirty-
one detected.” 


I wasn’t really up on controlled substances, but 
figured it had to be the jet which had undoubtedly left 
a trace in my bloodstream and the only controlled 
substance I could think of that I’d used over the last 
few years since I’d cleaned up my act. With a sinking 
feeling I realized that if I hadn’t been in serious 
trouble before, I was now. 

 We reached the bullet-pocked steel courthouse 
and the plastic-encased back seat of the patrol car 
became my porta-prison cell. The unit I sat in quickly 
ejected itself into the loading dock where a large 
robotic claw grasped my tiny cell and placed it on a 
conveyer line headed for the automated courtroom. 

I tentatively tried kicking the side of my cell, only to 
be rewarded with a pre-recorded message, 
“Destruction of police property will increase sentence 
time by three percent.” 

I didn’t try kicking it again. Even a few extra days 
in a modern prison could easily mean the difference 
between life and death. 

Before I’d even reached the underground court 
area, the speaker in my traveling slammer 
announced, “Under the authority vested in this 
computer by the Supreme, you have been found 
guilty of abuse of an unauthorized controlled 
substance number four thirty-one, commonly called 
jet or hacker sauce. Any statements you make will be 
ignored as per Penal Code two million, five hundred 
thousand, four hundred, fifty-six of the Powers Act of 
2014. Please remain silent. You will be sentenced 
momentarily.” 

I didn’t have long to wait. 

 The charges were repeated by my cell’s speaker 
as it jerked alone the cable into the steel-walled 
chamber that served as the automated courtroom. A 
super computer presided at the judge’s seat with two, 


worn TV cameras bearing mute witness as they 
carefully recorded the event. 

“You are sentenced to four months of 
detoxification,” the computer rasped at me. “Due to 
the suspension of habeas corpus, there are no 
appeals.” 

“Four months? Wait a minute there must be a 
mistake. Four months can’t possible be the correct 
sentence for —” 

“Next.” 

“Wait a minute!” I yelled helplessly as the conveyer 
line started, whisking me out of the courtroom and 
back toward the surface. I reached the darkness of 
the night where another arm removed my cell from 
the line and stacked it into a pile of cubicles, each 
with another misfit trapped inside. 

“Where we headed,” I yelled through my plastic 
cage to the tired-looking recomb sitting in the cubicle 
next to mine. 

“Does it make a difference?” 

“To me.” 

He smiled a grin that revealed a double line of 
stainless steel teeth. “Timothy Leery’s House for the 
Addicted.” 

I know my face grew pale. “You’re kidding. I 
thought they closed that place down two years ago.” 

“And reopened it. Economizing, you know.” 

I didn’t have a chance to say anything else 
because the roboarm clanged another cell on top of 
mine, completing the stacked load. Our automated 
truck lurched to a start, pulling out of the dock, then 
sped into the night, taking me to Timothy Leery’s 
Home for the Addicted, the world’s first—and least 
successful—experiment in automated mental health 
care. 


e approached the detox hospital, 
whose neon sign blazed in the 
night, boldly proclaiming in pink 
and blue to all the darkened 
landscape that we were 
approaching: 

Timothy Leery’s Ho-e for the Addicted. 

Yeah, the neon was showing its age with the m in 
Home missing, causing hoots of derision and a 
debate among the inmates headed there whether it 
should be pronounced “Timothy Leery’s Hoe for the 
sex addicted” and “Timothy Leery’s Hoe for the 
Afflicted”. There was lots of laughter. 

Nervous laughter. 
Way too much. 
Like you’d expect from those acceding the gallows 


while trying to project an image of being tough and 
fearless. 

One of the prospective inmates in the cubicle 
below me started a raunchy rendition of Just Say “No” 
to Drugs and Dough, suggesting it might have been a 
return visit for him. “Nothing like a musical interlude to 
soothe the drug-starved nerves, the recomb next to 


me hollered over the raucous musical rendition. 

“Nerves?” I answered. “What nerves?” 

 We circled the driveway leading to the front of the 
tall, three-story building and I was aware of the 
pleasant smell of syntho-rain on damp earth and 
vegetation. Barely visible in the garish blinking neon 
light was a huge flower bed that stretched in front of 
the building and the round, shiny bodies of robogardeners. 


Maybe things won’t be so bad after all, I tried to 
convince myself, forcing all the stories I’d heard about 
the terrors of this rehab center out of my cringing 
consciousness. Any place this pretty can’t be too bad 
to be in. 

But then the autotruck we rode in continued 
around the building and my assessment took a nose 
dive. With a shudder I saw the truth. The building’s 
front was only a facade, designed to impress those 
viewing it from the road. Behind the bill-board-like 
front was a massive pit that looked like it most likely 
descended straight into the depths of Hell. 

 The truck carrying us went straight for the pit 
without slowing, traveling down a concrete ramp into 
the blackness that couldn’t be penetrated by the lone 
floodlight dancing along the rim of the pit looking for 
escapees. 

“Why aren’t there any lights down there?” I called 
to the recomb next to me. 

“The guards don’t need them.” 

I closed my eyes and tried not to shake. “Why’s 
that?” 

“The guards don’t have eyes.” 

“I have eyes,” I protested. 

“You’re not running the place,” my new friend told 
me. 

 That seemed sensible enough at the time. 


 The truck lurched to a stop, throwing all the 
inmates it carried onto the floors of their cells. The 
doors flopped open in the darkness and an abrasive 
mechanical voice instructed us: “Patients will 
disembark to the left, following the red line.” 

It might as well have told us to follow the yellow 
brick road. Because in the pitch blackness of the pit, 
we could see nothing. 

“Follow the red line,” the mechanical voice ordered 
once more. 

What red line? I asked myself. It was now so dark I 
couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I was free to 
move—but where to. 

 “Where’s the damn red line?” I asked aloud. 

 “Get out of the cubicles and follow the red line,” 
the voice said. “Those failing to follow this order will 
be severely punished,” it added ominously. 

 One of the prisoners to my left yelled loudly, 
“Where’s the freaking red line? Hey, let go of —” His 
voice vanished in a gurgling sound and there was a 
flash of electrical energy. 

 The second flash lasted long enough to freeze 
frame a picture that seemed to claw at my mind. A 
skeletal, eyeless mech monster hovered over the 
prisoner who’d been protesting, a glowing cattle prod 
in the mech’s hand held spear-like as it touched the 
helpless man’s body which writhed on the dock, 
shuddering with the electrical arch coursing into his 
body. 

 “Come on,” the recomb ordered, taking my arm. “I 
saw the red line in the electric spark. It’s over here 
somewhere. We need to head this way.” 

I followed in the darkness, my hand on his 
shoulder, picking my way like a blind man. I only 
regained my sight momentarily when the area was lit 
with brilliant white light as another of the inmates was 


electrocuted because he had failed to follow 
impossible orders. 

“Don’t they know we can’t see?” I asked, stumbling 
along where I hoped the red line I’d seen was. 

“That’s just it,” the recomb said over the crackle of 
another discharge. “They don’t have eyes. They don’t 
know the light’s out.” 

“Can’t we just —” 

“Shuttup and stick close.” 

I glanced back over my shoulder as another 
crackle of electricity hissed in the air. Those who were 
being shocked seemed to be lying lifeless on the 
ground below the mechanical skeletons that 
continued to prod the lifeless bodies, shocking them 
again and again. 

“Don’t they ever let up?” I muttered. 

“I’ve been told that nothing ever lets up down 
here,” the man ahead of me said as we continued 
forward. 

Not many of us made it to our cells that first night. 
Of the forty-eight of us who arrived in the cubicles 
piled on the truck, I think only the recomb, who I later 
learned was Drognir 437, and I made it off the dock 
alive. 

Before being thrown into damp cells that smelled 
of urine, our heads were jammed into some sort of 
contraption that very efficiently cut away our hair. 
With programming worthy of the Baghdad school of 
encoding, the machine also took a few chunks of 
scalp here and there. Later, as I lay in the dark cell I 
ran my hand over my cut scalp, trying to determine 
how bad the cuts were. “I hope these don’t get 
infected,” I muttered. “Damn machine needs to be 


adjusted.” 

“Just be glad you didn’t get one that takes off your 
ears along with the hair,” a voice called from a cell 
across the hall. 

His comment was answered with hysterical 
laughter from farther down the pitch-black 
passageway. 

I swallowed, wondering if he was joking or serious 
and also doubting the sanity of whoever the laugher 
was. I patted my ears, thinking perhaps I’d got off 
lucky after all to just have a few nicks on my now-bald 
head. 

“Welcome to Timothy Leery’s Home for the 
Addicted,” the voice across the hall said. 

“Welcome to Hell,” another voice called. 

This response was answered with hideous, 
uncontrollable laughter that seemed to fill the 
darkness. 

I finally fell asleep hours later when I no longer 
cared what the creatures were that brushed my feet 
and eventually crawled all over me during the night. 

“Glad you could drop in,” a familiar voice said. 

I opened my eyes and saw Huntington’s face. Only 
now he wore a beard and shining steel armor. Before 
I could duck he slapped me up the side of the head 
with a steel gauntlet. “I challenge you to a duel.” 

“Nwwwww abbbbyyy,” I said. Then I spit out some 
blood and a tooth and tried again. “No way. This is a 
dream and I’m going to get some rest and there’s 
nothing you can do to —” 

 The next slap with the gauntlet argued otherwise. 
This was very real, pain and all. I took a step back so 
I wouldn’t lose any more teeth. 


“You’re a slow learner, aren’t you,” Huntington 
laughed. “Don’t you realize that you’re back in the 
realm of the MUD? Pinch yourself if it helps.” He 
threw back his head and bellowed at the puzzled look 
on my face. “See these suits of armor?” He beckoned 
at the ten suits hanging on poles inside his dark tent. 
“I’ll give you a hint. They belonged to knights I 
challenged and none of those I fought need their suits 
anymore.” 

I swallowed. 

“Get him ready for the tournaments,” Huntington 
ordered the men standing on either side of me. 

Each of the squires took an arm and escorted my 
lordship, kicking and cursing, out of the tent we stood 
in. 

“Hope you enjoy our fight,” Huntington called after 
us as I left the tent, stepping out onto a grassy field 
with bright sunlight beaming down on us. 

“I don’t suppose there’s any graceful way out of 
this,” I suggested to the two muscle-bound servants 
dragging me through the grass. “Could I maybe slip 
you each a golden coin and then you slip me into the 
forest?” 

“No, my lord. We will be forced to kill you if you try 
to escape,” one warned, touching the wooden handle 
of the knife in his belt. “To preserve our lord’s honor, 
of course.” 

“Of course,” I said. “Wouldn’t want it any other 
way. And isn’t it a beautiful day to die?” 

“Yes, my lord, it is.” 

I could tell my wit was going to be lost on the two 
clods escorting me to my tan and white-striped tent. 

Inside the tent smelled of sweat and leather, 
growing hotter as the sun blazed down on it. The two 
squires sat me down in a wood and canvas chair and 
proceeded to dress me in woolen padding followed by 

92 


chain mail. Since I was still able to stagger about 
under the weight of the mail, my outfit was 
augmented with heavy armor. 

It was becoming painfully obvious that the two 
squires were automatons created by the computer 
program I was trapped in. They named each piece of 
armor they screwed and strapped to my body, 
apparently in an effort to add an “educational game” 
designation to justify the coming bloodshed that I 
knew was about to occur. 

I cleared my throat. “I don’t suppose you guys 
would consider undoing some of this so I could go to 
the bathroom?” 

 They both ignored me. 

Instead the continued their programmed speech. 
“For the joust you may carry your weapons of choice,” 
Squire One told me, escorting me and my squeaky 
outfit to a table laden with instruments of destruction. 
I had my doubts about my abilities with the two-
handed sword. 

Next... 

“What’s that,” I said, pointing to a device that 
looked like an antique hammer on steroids. 

“A war hammer, my lord.” 

“Let’s put that in my belt. Looks efficient and I 
have experience with the hammer around the house 
for driving screws. Either of you know what Lord 
Huntington generally carries into combat?” 

“Usually a short sword, dagger, and lance, my 
lord.” 

“Then let’s add a dagger and lance to my 
armament,” I said. “Might as well die in the style the 
fans have become accustomed to.” 

Minutes later there was a fanfare of out of tune 
and badly played trumpets followed by the pounding 
of pig-skin drums. “That is the signal, my lord. The 


joust is about to begin.” 

“Had a feeling it was,” I said. “Gentlemen, if you 
can escort me to the nearest taxi, I’ll be on my way.” 

“What, my lord?” 

“To my steed.” 

“Yes, my lord.” 

I was escorted to the lists where my king-sized 
horse waited, snorting and pawing the ground like the 
war animal it was. Three additional squires helped 
manhandle me into the high-backed saddle and 
guided my heavy laden legs into the stirrups. Then 
my lance was inserted into my rusty glove, counterbalanced 
on the projection extending from my 
breastplate. My iron shield was added to my other 
arm as I stared across the wooden fence at 
Huntington about fifty meters in front of me, who was 
likewise being festooned for the main event. 

 The morning sun was nearly halfway up on its 
climb to noon, and the heat inside the armor was 
already becoming uncomfortable. There was another 
flurry of miss-tuned trumpets and Huntington lowered 
his lance. 

This is it, I warned myself, battling to get my own 
lance lined up so it pointed across the tall fence that 
separated the two paths we’d follow during our 
charge toward each other. 

 “Lords and ladies,” a high-pitched voice trilled. 
“This will be a duel to the death. Blunt lances have 
been abandoned in favor of those designed for the 
spilling of blood of him who lacks valor.” 

 I started to protest, twisting my head inside my 
helmet to peer at the stands through the slits in the 
visor. Then I thought better of it. 

 A hooded figure with an ax suggested that those 
who wanted the easy way out would be 
accommodated in no uncertain terms by the referees. 


 The lord high fellow in the stands held up his 
handkerchief and the crowd got quiet. 

And then I got surprise number two: Next to the 
king, sat Alice—the Alice from Wonderland that I 
thought had jumped from the cliff. While I sat in the 
saddle trying to decide whether it was really her or 
just a bit of code that had somehow duplicated her, 
the head honcho dropped his handkerchief which 
made me a bit suspicious that the festivities had 
begun. 

Looking back toward Huntington, I saw him kick 
the flank of his horse, bringing it to an ever faster trot. 
Realizing that the battle had commenced and that 
greater momentum would at least make the fight 
quicker and the outcome less certain, I spurred my 
horse as well. It took off with a whiplash of speed, 
and would have spilled me from its back had it not 
been for the high-backed saddle I was sandwiched in. 
I struggled to keep my balance and avoid dropping 
my lance as we bounced down the course. 

Huntington sped toward me and I tried to raise my 
heavy iron shield to cover as much of me as possible. 
Then I attempted to center my lance on his 
approaching chest, only to realize that the angle 
continued to change the closer we got to each other, 
making it impossible to actually aim the point of my 
weapon without continuous adjustment—not an easy 
task on the back of a charging war horse when you’re 
peering through tiny slits in your visor. 

Almost magically we were on top of each other in 
a clash of flesh and steel. My lance went wide, sliding 
off Huntington’s shield and then hitting only air. 

Huntington’s lance also glanced off my shield. But 
then it plunged into my breastplate, screeching along 
the metal and then cracking through the hardened 
iron, putting a searing pain through my ribs before 


impaling me to the back of my saddle. Abruptly the 
wooden shaft of the lance mercifully shattered and 
our horses continued past each other, all in the 
twinkling of an eye. 

My horse slowed its gallop and I fought to remain 
seated on it. Warm liquid spread beneath my arm and 
I felt suddenly weak and short of breath. I reigned my 
horse to a stop and turned, trying to avoid falling from 
the saddle. Casting my lance to the ground, I 
discovered my horse was wheeling around on its own. 
I struggled at the reins, trying to get it to hold still, 
then saw why it was doing an about face. The animal 
was doing what it had been trained to do. 

It was facing the approaching enemy. 

I stared at Huntington as he raced toward me, two-
handed broadsword at the ready. Before I could even 
get my war hammer from its loop. I forgot about my 
weapon, my eyes instead fastened on his blade which 
whistled through the air, its edge slicing into the edge 
of my shield which I reflexively held in front of me. 

His blade glancing off my shield, he pulled the 
blade in a wide circle, back over his head, and then 
brought it toward me again, this time the edge 
traveling straight for my neck. 

I closed my eyes and heard Alice scream. 

“Wake up,” a voice said, shaking my arm. 

I gasped, expecting to see the landscape bouncing 
around during the last few minutes it took my severed 
head to lose consciousness. Instead I found myself 
staring at a giant nose, about six inches from mine. 

“What the...” I said, jumping back and bumping my 
head on the concrete wall behind me. 

 The nose pulled back to reveal the more or less 

96 


normal face it was attached to. “You’re making so 
much racket, I figured I might as well wake you up so 
we didn’t have to listen. Bad dream, eh?” 

“You better believe it,” I said, rubbing my neck and 
then testing my lungs. 

“I’m Francis Scott Keys,” the stranger said. “And 
no jokes about my name, I’ve heard them all.” He 
held out a hand which I took and shook. “Guess I was 
asleep last night when you came in. Sorry I didn’t 
wake up to great you. That first night is the roughest.” 

“Bet you’re able to sleep through anything after 
you’ve been here a while,” I said, trying not to think 
about the nightmare I’d just had. Or wasit a 
nightmare? It had been so real. Was the jet causing 
flash backs? Could this whole prison thing be a 
MUD? I pushed these crazy thoughts from my mind. 

 “You two are lucky,” Keys said to Drognir and me. 
“Some of the cells have one or two crazy guys in 
them. You can’t sleep in those cells without risking 
waking up dead.” 

 I wasn’t sure whether he was joking or serious. 
Nobody laughed and I had a horrible feeling he 
wasn’t. 

 “If your luck holds, you’ll have a new sane room 
mate when I leave.”

 “You’re leaving?” I asked. 

 Keys nodded. “This is my last day. Whole month 
of detox and I made it. Most don’t last more than a 
few days down here. I should be getting out before 
breakfast if the mechs work right today—and that’s a 
mighty big if as you’ll see after you’ve been here a 
while.” 

 “We’ve already seen it,” Drognir said. He uncoiled 
his long legs from beneath him and stood up in front 
of his bunk and stretched, his hairless head nearly 
reaching the seven foot ceilings. “Looked like the 


mechs killed most of the detox patients they brought 
in last night.” 

“Wouldn’t doubt it,” Keys said, pacing the floor and 
glancing down the hallway. “Their programming has 
been out of kilter for at least a year now, near as I can 
figure. There used to be lights on the processing dock 
but they burned out a couple weeks back. The subroutine 
for replacing it has apparently become 
corrupted. Cut down on the overcrowding down there, 
though.” 

There’s a silver lining to every cloud, I thought. “So 
the bots fry anyone who doesn’t have the good sense 
to try to figure out where to walk? How many other 
glitches are in the system down here?” 

Keys shrugged. “Too many. Who knows?” 

“At least they have sunlight piped down here 
during the day,” Drognir said. “Imagine what this 
would be like if it were dark night and day.” 

I shuddered at the thought, realizing that my ability 
to imagine the worst had got a giant boost since the 
last night. 

“Here he comes,” Keys said, pointing down the 
hallway. “Here comes Old Red. He’s the one they 
send when it’s time for guys to check out—or get the 
chair. Glad that’s not where I’m headed today.” 

I moved over to the bars and looked down the hall 
toward the skeletal bot moving toward us. It was like 
the other creatures on the processing docks, but 
crimson instead of black. It moved with jerky 
movements like something out of a nightmare. Which 
is exactly what it was as far as I was concerned. 

The thing called Old Red stopped at our cell. “All 
back,” it warned, holding out an arm that ended in a 
wicked-looking electrode. 

I took the hint and plastered myself against the far 
wall. 


“Francis Scott Keys,” Old Red said. “Step forward 
and exit the cell.” 

“So long, fellas,” Keys said, picking up a small 
cloth bag and slinging it over his shoulder. “Sorry I 
can’t be staying to keep you company.” 

“Leave your bag,” Old Red said as Keys stepped 
toward the doorway that opened in front of him. 

“But I have a right to take my gear.” 

“You won’t be needing it where you’re going.” 

“Wait a minute. Where you taking me? What’s 
going on? Hey, give me back my bag.” 

“Francis Scott Keys, 814-85-8692-82734. Slated 
for termination at oh, eight hundred. The time of 
execution is nearly here. Please come peacefully with 
me or I will use force.” 

“Wait a damned minute,” Keys said, jerking his 
arm free from the mech’s grasp and stepping back 
toward the cell. “Just a damned minute. There’s been 
another screw up. I’m supposed to go free.” 

Old Red moved in a blur, its claw-like hand 
wrapping itself around the old man’s waist and pulling 
back out of the cell. The door zipped shut and the 
automated nightmare dragged Keys kicking and 
screaming down the hall. 

“There’s been a mistake,” Keys yelled, over and 
over again. “There’s been a mistake.” 

I stood at the bars listening to the old man’s cries 
until they abruptly ended. Minutes later the PA 
crackled to life and announced, “Francis Scott Keys, 
814-85-8692-82734, has been executed for the crime 
of...” There was an ominous pause and then the 
machine continued, “‘Term Served, Prisoner Free to 
Be Released.’ All who commit this crime will be 
punished and those contemplating it should 
remember today’s execution. Good prisoners are 
happy prisoners. Drug-free citizens are good 


citizens... Are good citizens.” 
There was a loud snap and the halls were silent. 
“Welcome to Hell,” I whispered to myself. Where 

every prisoner is a happy prisoner, once he’s free— 
and dead. 


nd how are you today?” the 
creature escorting me down the 
prison’s concrete hallway asked, a 
permanent look of concern etched 
into its metal face. 

“Okay,” I said. 
“Only okay?” 
“Nothing’s wrong a little freedom wouldn’t cure.” 
“Freedom from drugs is freedom indeed. Coming 

down off additive drugs isn’t easy.” 
That I knew. 
“Have you had any cravings for the drug cocaine?” 
“I’m not here for cocaine abuse,” I said, hoping to 

correct the machine’s mistake. “I was a jet user.” 

“Learning to admit your addiction is the first step 
toward recovery. You need to realize that there’s 
nothing wrong with admitting your addiction to 
cocaine. That’s an important first step.” 

“But —” 
“ Stay on the green line to avoid punishment.” 
Green line? I looked for the green line and saw 


only the red line we’d followed in. I started to protest 
that I didn’t see any green line, then noticed the faint 
smudges of green on the floor; apparently the years 
of the heavy mech and human foot traffic had worn 


the paint off the enter of the hallway, leaving only an 
occasional green splotch on the floor. I did my best to 
follow the faint trail and was doing fine until we 
reached a stretch where four tunnels met. I made a 
guess and started down the left fork. 

“Stay on the green line,” the robot warned me, 
gently gripping my right elbow in its strong rubberized 
fingers, pulling me to the right. 

“Another failure will necessitate shocking you,” the 
machine warned. 

“I’m color blind,” I lied, wondering if perhaps there 
might be some sub-routine in the machine’s 
programming that would cut me a little slack. I also 
had the faint hope that maybe I could create a glitch 
in the computer that would work in my favor rather 
than against me. 

“Color blind?” the machine asked, coming to a 
halt. “You must be injured and are in need medical 
assistance.” 

“No,” I said. “Color blindness is a condition that 
makes it impossible to differentiate between red and 
green.” I thought. I wasn’t so sure about that but 
decided to do my best in fabricating what sounded 
like the truth. 

“Don't try to confuse me,” the mech warned. “Stay 
on the yellow line.” 

“I thought you said green.” 

“We are now traveling the yellow line. Yellow lines 
lead to the medical area of the prison.” 

 This was easier to do since the yellow line hugged 
the wall and was still visible most of the way. We 
headed down a narrow hall that branched from the 
main one and ended in a sickly yellow room with dirty 
floors and dark splotches on the walls that looked 
ominously like dried blood. 

“You'll be in good hands here,” my escort told me, 


shoving me into the middle of the room and then 
stepping back to block the exit. 

“And how are you today?” a mechanical voice 
asked in front of me asked. 

 With a shock I realized that the mass of tubes and 
wires that I'd mistaken for a piece of equipment was 
actually a medical bot. 

“This man is injured and in need of medical help,” 
my guard answered. “Symptoms are...” There was a 
lengthy pause and then the machine continued. 
“...color blind eyes that fail to see red or green.” 

 The med-bot approached me, scrutinizing me with 
a sensor on the end of a snake-like metal feeler. At 
least this machine can see. And most likely it would 
catch the failure of the guard that had brought me 
here to get my improvised disease properly sorted 
out. Or so I hoped. 

“Bad eyes are so hard to work on,” the machine 
confided in me. “But we always do our best here.” 

“My eyes don’t need any work,” I said, beginning to 
wonder if I’d be able to fast-talk myself out of my 
predicament. 

“Blindness is nothing to be ashamed of and not an 
excuse to abuse drugs. Freedom from drugs is 
freedom indeed. Coming down off additive drugs isn’t 
easy.” 

“I’m perfectly fine. Just can’t differentiate between 
colors too well. Color blindness—you’ve heard of that, 
haven’t you? Isn’t that somewhere in your medical 
dictionary?” 

 The machine paused its inspection of my eyes and 
its voice took on a different tone. “Blindness: The 
inability to see,” the med-bot mumbled. Then it 
started moving again, its eye zooming to within inches 
of my nose. “Pupils dilated uniformly and eyes appear 
functional. Babbling about blindness may indicate 


brain damage.” The machine took my head in its 
hands and twisted me back and forth, giving me a 
good idea of how an egg feels just before it becomes 
an omelet.

 To my relief it let go. “No external signs of 
concussion,” the robot said. “All stand clear for X-
rays.” 

“The X-ray machine is non-functioning,” a voice 
from the top of the room announced. 

 That seemed like good news to me. At least I 
hadn’t been bathed by 800 REMs of X-rays, a 
happenstance that wouldn’t be unexpected given 
what had occurred thus far in this insane asylum. 

“It will be a few minutes before the X-ray results 
return,” the med-bot said very matter of factly. 

Okay. “Maybe I could come back later to —”

 My head was jerked to the side and the sensor 
came to within inches of my face. “You seem to have 
abrasions on your head.” A feeler inched along the 
scab that had formed on my temple, then jerked it off. 

 “Just some contusions from an encounter with gov 
blackjacks and this place’s hair cutting machine,” I 
explained. “Nothing serious.” 

 “Here’s the x-ray now,” the med-bot announced. A 
rotating hologram of a skull materialized in the air in 
front of me. “Some kind of animal caused the wound, 
judging from the tooth marks on your skull.” 

 “That’s not my skull,” I protested. 

 “Delirium is consistent with this sort of injury.” 

 “I don’t have any injury like that at all. And I have 
all my teeth. See,” I said, running my finger through 
the air where the projection was hoping I could 
convince the machine. “Look, this guy’s missing two 
front teeth. I have all mine.” I gave him a toothy grin 
and held his sensor up to my mouth. 

 “A tooth extraction will be necessary so your teeth 


will match your X-ray,” the med-bot noted. “Perhaps 
we should remove the bone fragments and replace 
that portion of your skull with a steel plate. I will place 
plates on our order list and do this work at a later date 
when there is more time.” 

Hopefully, much later, I told myself. Why had I 
opened my mouth about being color blind? I eyed the 
mech that had escorted me into the alleged medical 
area. It still stood in the only doorway, blocking any 
chance of my escape. 

“Since you have no concussion or other broken 
bones,” the bot continued, “we can extract your teeth 
and eyes in a just few minutes. You’ll be ready to go 
back to class in a few hours.” 

“Thanks but I don’t need any dental work,” I 
protested. “And—hey, what do you know. My eyes 
are just fine now, thanks.” 

“First I need to put you under for a few minutes 
while I work. You may feel a slight bit of pressure.” 

A clamp slithered out of the table and fastened 
itself around my right arm, pulling me toward the 
table. I was beginning to really sweat as I tugged at 
the clamp that was reeling me onto the operating 
table. 

“Just lie back while I give you a pain killer,” the 
med-bot said. 

“Synthacane is out of stock and on back order,” 
the voice from above me announced. 

No pain killer? I thought with horror. What kind of 
madhouse was I in? “Hang on just a minute,” I yelled.

 Despite the lack of anesthetic, the mech produced 
a gleaming syringe in its hand, aiming the point for my 
stomach and making me wonder what 40 CCs of air 
in my blood stream might do. “This won't hurt a bit 
and you'll only be asleep for a few hours while I 
extract all your teeth and eyes. Then, once you've 

105 


rested for a bit we can work on your addiction —” 

I blinked. 

And... 

“Our dirigible is approaching the landing dock,” the 
pilot’s voice said soothingly over the public address 
system. “Please remain seated until we arrive. We 
hope you enjoy your visit to Kansas City, Home of the 
Houston Oilers.” 

I forced myself to sit still in the crowded cabin. I 
looked around at the two-hundred, fifty-some people 
around me and wondered what had happened and 
how I’d got onto the huge flying ship. 

A dream? 

I looked down at my clothing; I was still in my soft 
armor. Then I felt my head. It was shaved and still 
had the scabs from the nicks I’d received from the 
haircutting machine. And the place where the medical 
bot had ripped off the scab was still bleeding. 

 I tried to think. I had been in the madhouse of a 
prison. Now I was somehow sitting on an airship 
headed for Kansas City. 

 Or had I completely lost my marbles? Was that 
thing actually removing my eyes and teeth right now 
and this was my mind’s way of coping with the horror 
of it all? That most likely was the answer. 

 I shuddered and put my head in my lap to keep 
from fainting. 

 “Everything all right?” the old man sitting next to 
me asked. 

“Yeah, sure,” I said, straightening up. 

 “You don’t look so good, mister. Must of plopped 
into that seat too fast. Funny, where were you before? 
I thought this seat was vacant.” 

 “I’m not sure where I was to be honest.”

 “You better just sit back and relax,” the old man 
said. “You’re not looking so hot.” 


I didn’t feel so hot either. Somehow I’d left the 
prison and now was sitting in the middle of a tourist 
blimp. 

What’s going on? 


ithin two minutes, the nose of the 

blimp passed through the thick 

web of graphite filament cables 

that anchored the “Mile-High 

Building” to the bedrock in the 

earth far below us, hidden by the 
clouds around the building. A large boom atop the 
super-scrapper reached out and secured itself on the 
nose of our ship. Then it commenced reeling our 
dirigible into the dock. 

 “Watch your step,” a plastic stewardess warned 
seconds later as I followed the passengers down the 
heaving gang plank to the roof observation tower. I 
caught a glimpse of the distant checkerboard pattern 
of the fields far below us, barely visible through a 
break in the clouds that enveloped the ground far 
below. 

 “White Knight!” a familiar voice called. 

 I turned. There was Alice, dressed in a low-cut 
white evening gown. I pushed my way through the 
crowd coming down the gangplank, making my way 
toward the small blond waiting at the rail. “Alice?” 

 “And how many other people know you as the 
‘White Knight’?” 

 “Well, now that you ask —” 


“Come on,” Alice said, grabbing my arm and 
pulling me toward the cool interior of the building. As 
we stepped from the open-air landing port into the 
enclosed building; anti-noise circuits dampened the 
babble of the crowd jostling around us. “The humidity 
outside is awful,” Alice said. “Took all the curl out of 
my hair. And I so wanted to impress you” 

Suddenly she let go of my arm and waltzed a 
complete circle, surveying the luxuriant interior of the 
building and then stopping to take a deep breath. 
“The air in here is full of exotic perfumes and smells 
of food. I love the city.” 

I approached the rail of the atrium that lined the 
hollow interior of the building and looked down the 
giddy height of the hollow core of the building. Bright 
clouds created by condensation within the structure 
obscured the bottom. A one-man glider circled 
through the mist, drifting in a wide circle, wafted 
upward on the warm air rising from the floor. The 
whole structure swayed noticeable when the breeze 
outside battered against its massive sides making me 
feel even more dizzy. 

I turned my eyes away from the sight in time to 
dodge a delivery bot intently pulling a plastic carriage 
piled high with suitcases. 

“There must be a restaurant around here 
somewhere,” Alice said, dragging me over to an 
information pad so a holographic display appeared in 
front of her. After she placed her finger in the air at 
the “Restaurant” selection, a map of the restaurants 
within the building appeared. “We can’t eat at the 
restaurant here on the roof, it’s too expensive.” 

“No problem. I don’t think I could keep the food 
down here anyway. These swaying floors are worse 
than being on the ocean.” 

“You have any food preferences?” 


“I don't like live food. Hate the way it wiggles going 
down.” 

Alice giggled. “You just went up ten points in my 
estimation. Highly civilized tastes. Only hope they 
don’t apply to your women,” she added with a wink 
before turning back to the menu. 

“Here, this looks good.” Her finger tapped a 
location that hung in the air in front of her, producing 
a picture of a dark, paneled restaurant lit by candle 
light. “Yes, this is perfect. Let's see,” she said 
checking the map. “This way. Come on.” 

I followed her as she zigzagged through a crowd 
of children escorted by two savage-looking intelli-lions 
and then we climbed onto a slidewalk headed toward 
the elevators at the side of the tower. 

 We zipped by the columned fronts of busy shops 
and service stores. Here and there among the 
rainbows of exotic vegetation surrounding the stores 
were white marble or stained bronze statuary. 
Archways leading to the various shops sent a 
confusing mix of music and noise cascading toward 
us, the stores’ racket keyed to avoid the noise 
cancellation circuits that deadened the din of the 
crowds. 

I self-consciously tapped the pocket in my armor 
where I usually carry a pistol only to discover it was 
missing. Then I remembered that the policeman had 
taken it the night before. 

Or had he? 

Time and place were warped without a doubt and I 
was totally confused about where and even when I 
was. 

 The loss of my pistol wasn’t a pressing worry 
anyway. Security in the building looked good—as 
shown by the three mezzo guards passed, dragging a 
struggling criminal out of a store, the long plastic knife 


he'd been carrying held in one of the officer's claws. 

Alice jumped off the slidewalk and ran to the 
elevators, holding the door open until I got there. 
Then she punched the button for our floor and we 
headed down, fast enough that I estimated my 
stomach was at least eight feet above us during most 
of the decent to the level of our restaurant. 

Fifteen minutes later we sat at a synthawood table, 
a candle glowing between us, making Alice’s face 
look like that of a cherub with twinkling blue eyes. She 
finished her bowl of chocolate pudding, carefully 
putting it aside with a very prim and proper flourish. 
This was followed by an enormous sigh. “Sometimes I 
wish I were big and fat so I could eat more. That 
would be such an advantage at the dinner table.” 

“I’m glad you’re not big and fat,” I said. “And I 
suspect you are, too. Now tell me, “What am I doing 
here?” 

Alice suppressed a smile as she put another 
spoon of sugar into her tea and carefully stirred it. 
“You know it’s rude to talk business while you’re still 
eating. I should make you finish your meal before I 
say another word to you. But I guess I should tell you 
now since you probably don’t have much more time 
here. Can’t have you winking away without offering 
you a clue, I suppose.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean I don’t think I can keep you here much 
longer. Soon you will return to wherever you were 
before you came to visit me.” 

“Back to the prison?” 

“Only if that’s where you were. If that wasn’t where 
you were then I don’t suppose that is where you’ll go.” 


I thought a moment. “This is just a MUD, right?” 

“Not really. I haven’t quite sorted it out myself, I’m 
afraid. But it seems that our exposure to Huntington 
has changed the way things are in our heads. It 
seems that we can go places—or seem to go 
places—just by thinking. I think Huntington has this 
ability. Now, somehow, we seem to have gained the 
ability as well—or so it appears to me. When illusions 
become real, reality and illusion don’t have much 
meaning anymore, do they?” 

“But I thought you died—when you jumped off the 
cliff.” 

“Oh, that” She paused and took a sip of tea. 
“Whoever designed the game put a vine on the side 
of the cliff. I saw it and jumped off right above it. I 
grabbed the branch and swung into a cave. Hokey 
programming—but what do you expect from a MUD 
designed by an amateur?” 

This is all crazy, I told myself. Yet here I was, 
expertly picking up a jumbo shrimp and enjoying it like 
the real thing. Doubly so since I hadn’t eaten since I 
couldn’t quite remember when—that’s if time really 
meant anything any more. But the food was the real 
as far as I could tell. Alice had a point when she said 
reality and illusion became almost impossible to tell 
apart when the two became so similar. 

“The question,” Alice said, stirring yet another 
spoonful of sugar into her porcelain tea cut, “is what 
we’re going to do with our knowledge. By now you’ve 
probably realized that Huntington is trying to kill us.” 

“I had got that general drift the last time he tried to 
give me a haircut down to my neck,” I said. 

“Such a haircut couldn’t be much worse than what 
you have now. Did you discover a new barber from 
the head-hunter school of hair cutting?” 

“Very funny. Now look, this is serious. Huntington 


seems to be taking over my dreams.” 

“Or vice versa. I haven’t quite made up my mind 
which it is. One thing is certain. You have to be 
careful to dream only when he’s asleep. He can still 
get into your dreams then, but he isn’t any more 
powerful than you are. And I can’t help you all the 
time—only when you’re asleep or under a lot of 
stress. But if you can keep Huntington from seeing 
you appear in the MUDs or his dreams it helps. I don’t 
think he’s figured out who I am, yet.” 

“He never has much trouble finding me,” I said 
glumly. “He’s always right there waiting.” 

“You need to work harder at hiding a bit more. 
Don’t confront him head-on. Last night I concealed 
myself as a tree and gave him quite a bloody 
whomping when he came into reach. He never even 
saw me because I winked back out before he found 
his eyes.” She flashed an innocent smile and winked 
at me, leaving me totally perplexed. 

I started to ask her another question but our 
mouthless waitress came to the table, interrupting me 
in a soundless sort of way. 

“I don’t think we need anything else, thank you,” 
Alice told her. 

“Nothing more,” I agreed. I was loaded to the gills 
as it was. 

 The waitress tapped the table top and a bill spun 
out of its surface. “We hope you’ve enjoyed your 
meal,” a pre-recorded message told us. “Thank you 
and please visit us again.” 

“Thank you very much,” Alice said, beaming at the 
waitress who did her best to smile back with her eyes. 

As the waitress left, Alice reached over and took 
the bill from me. “Better let me have that, you’re 
starting to fade on us.” 

“What?” I said, looking at my hands which, like my 


chest, were becoming transparent. 

“Don’t worry,” Alice said. “It’s nothing serious. And 
it gives you that Cheshire Cat look that I’ve always 
admired so much. I’ll see you again soon—so to 
speak.” 

“But —” 

“Shhhhh. Don’t worry. Just do your best not to let 
Huntington get you. He about got your head last time. 
That gave me a scare.” 

“But what —” I started. 

Everything seemed to blink. 

And I was back in my previous pickle. 

“This won't hurt a bit,” the medical bot said, 
holding the sharp needle of the empty hypodermic 
syringe next to my stomach. “And you'll only be 
asleep for a few hours while I extract all your teeth 
and eyes. Then, once you've rested for a bit, we can 
work on your skull.”

 With a yell I broke free of the table’s tentacle, 
dodged the hypodermic that tried to stab me, and 
dropped into the mass of cable that rooted the 
medical bot to the floor. The machine bent at an 
extreme angle, three of its hands snatching at me as I 
rolled out of its reach under the examination table. 

“Don’t resist,” the machine ordered. “You won't 
feel a thing and then you can be on your way to detox 
classes.” It snatched at me again. 

I zigged when I should have zagged. 

The med-bot latched onto me and then its 
mechanical tentacles twined around me as well. Once 
I was captive, the machine reeled me in and tossed 
me onto the table where more restraints snapped into 
place, this time around both my arms and each leg. 
Now I knew how animals must feel when a 
vivisectionist has them in his grip. 

 The needle inched toward me. Being the brave 


person I am, I closed my eyes. I hate the sight of 
needles in me and decided to enjoy blindness a bit 
before it became fact. I clinched my teeth. 

Now would be a great time to—what had Alice 
called it? Wink. Come on, wink now, I told myself. But 
I was still on the table. 

But the jab of pain I expected didn’t happen. 

I cautiously opened my eyes. 

 The med-bot stood frozen in place, motionless, the 
syringe just inches from my midriff. 

“Hey,” I said tentatively. “Hello?” 

“End of line. Error message 4,562,” the voice said 
from the ceiling announced in a drone only computers 
can achieve. “System on hold until reset.” 

Never have I been so overjoyed by a computer 
glitch. Only a government tax computer crash that 
destroyed my individual records might have made me 
happier then the current glitch. 

And this error was working to save my teeth, eyes, 
and God only knew what else I added, noting that the 
hypodermic syringe had stopped just inches from my 
groin. I squirmed around in my restraints and glanced 
at the bot that had escorted me to the medical room. 

It, too, was frozen in place. 

I didn’t waste any time. I wriggled and wiggled until 
first one hand, then a foot, and then all of me was 
free of the restraints. Then I cautiously got up from 
the table, crossed to the door, and squeezed past the 
mech blocking the doorway. 

After checking up and down the hall and seeing 
nothing, I boldly stepped into the passage and then 
tried to decide what to do next. One thing was certain, 
I’d be dead or horribly crippled if I stayed here for 
even a few days. 

I had to escape. 

But how? 


Here I was, free as a bird, and I had no idea of 
how to escape or which direction to run. Then I 
realized that my escape route might very well be 
marked on the floor in front of me. “Follow the red 
line,” was the phrase the bots had drilled into us the 
night before. By backtracking along the red line I 
should be able to get at least to the front door. 
Provided I went the right way; the wrong way would 
only lead back to my cell. And provided the main 
computer system stayed down. If it restarted, all bets 
were off. 

Hoping I was headed in the right way, I ran as fast 
as I could along the red line that snaked along the 
hallway. 


hirty minutes and two false trails later, I was 

at the front gate of the pit that formed the 

business portion of Timothy Leery’s Home 

for the Addicted. The barred gate was open 

and I could see past the loading ramp I’d 

come in on the night before which, in turn, 
led up the incline leading out of the pit. 

And after that freedom. 

Outside on the dock sat an empty truck loaded 
with prison cubicles; I suspected it had been full of 
prisoners half an hour earlier who now had escaped 
when the bots guarding the entrance froze in place. 
At least that’s what I assumed. There weren’t any 
bodies on the dock and the mechs were lined up at 
the ready, as if anticipating the arrival of the new 
prisoners. I hoped my assessment was correct and 
that everyone in the truck had escaped. 

One thing was sure. Whatever the systems crash 
was, it had trashed all the automation in the institution 
as near as I could tell. 

I cautiously stepped onto the arrival dock and 
looked upward at the rim of the pit but saw no sign of 
any other prisoners. No doubt they were long gone by 
now if they’d got free. That might mean I didn’t have 
much time before the cops came to see what had 


malfunctioned here at the drug detox hospital. 

I squinted at the sun which shone brightly above 
the rim of pit like a beacon to freedom. All I had to do 
was waltz up the ramp and say so long to the insanity 
of the place. 

And I would have if it hadn’t been for my 
conscience. 

 The thought of leaving all the inmates back in their 
cells, waiting perhaps for eternity until the system 
timed out and rebooted or a technician was sent to 
check the automated machinery. Judging from the 
state of errors being committed by the equipment, 
either event might easily be a long, long time away. 
The result would undoubtedly be prisoners who died 
of thirst in their cells. Even if they somehow survived 
the shutdown, the startup would undoubtedly 
eventually spell their deaths since the bug-ridden 
system would continue to make mistakes and most 
likely would continue to execute prisoners slated to be 
released. 

So I didn’t leave. Instead stood there, trying to 
guess at where the main control board or manual 
over-ride system might be that would open all the 
cells. I closed my eyes for a moment trying to imagine 
where the logical spot to place such a system might 
be within the prison. 

Obviously the builder wouldn’t place the system 
where it would be hard to access, I told myself. And 
most likely he would place it toward the center of the 
complex to minimize wiring and fiber runs. I went onto 
the loading dock, hoping the system didn’t restart 
while I was outside with the lightning-rod-equipped 
killer bots. Trying to ignore the terror machines, I 
searched for a second entrance of some sort. 

There it is. 

The small doorway was nearly hidden by the vine 


which grew along the cracked wall, one of the few 
places ever hit with sunlight inside the pit. I cleared 
away the growth and was confronted with a locked 
door. But it wasn’t much of a lock—that surprised me. 

 Then I realized that you didn’t need much of a lock 
if you had killer bots milling around the entrance all 
the time. 

I looked around for a tool, finally ending up 
toppling one of the guard bots and pulling a large rod 
from one of its legs. I started toward the door and 
then decided to take a side trip. For the next few 
minutes I very methodically beat the snot out of all six 
of the guards frozen on the loading ramp. Even if I 
didn’t succeed at doing anything else, at least I’d 
have the satisfaction of knowing these six would 
never kill any more new arrivals. 

After stopping to admire the litter of used parts that 
now decorated the dock, I turned my now-battered 
steel rod upon the door. It was not a job of great 
dexterity or finesse. I simply bashed the electric lock 
apart, then pushed the bar into the opening and pried 
until the latch snapped, letting the door creak open on 
squeaky hinges. 

I stepped into the dark opening, wondering how 
long it would take my eyes to adjust after being in the 
sunlight. I felt along the wall and was rewarded with 
an old-fashioned light switch which I flicked up, 
bathing the area in a greenish, flickering florescent 
light. 

Ahead of me was a low tunnel, with a red arrow 
and lettering that said, “Main Control.” 

Sounded like what I wanted. 

I headed down the passageway, my boots 
echoing, the rod held firmly in place just in case I 
should meet a vampire or other creature that the 
environment seemed so well suited for. 


At the end of the one hundred meter tunnel was 
another door which I dutifully broke with the bar, the 
noise rumbling up and down the hall with enough 
volume to alert anyone who might have been about— 
and fortunately no one was. 

 The room behind the door was tiny, perhaps six 
meters square. A large console opposite the door 
spanned the room with rows of monitors placed 
above it. Everything was coated in dust and looked 
like it hadn’t been used in decades. 

I brushed the cobwebs off the ancient office chair 
and sat down at the console, then pulled off the clear 
plastic cover, hoping no dirt had reached the 
keyboard and various controls the cover had 
protected. A few taps on the “Enter” key brought 
everything to life except for three of the monitors 
which were either burned out or connected to 
cameras which no longer functioned. After a few 
minutes of experimenting, I was able to locate the 
various cell blocks and view various areas within the 
prison. 

Finally I turned my attention to the video monitor 
connected to the MC itself. The screen was covered 
with various error messages, the last of which was the 
herald of the command that shut things down 
moments before my teeth/eye-ectomy. I paused a 
moment before doing anything, double-thinking what I 
was about to attempt. I wanted to open the cells and 
let everyone out; I definitely wanted to avoid 
reactivating the guards. But looking at the 
programming code, I knew that doing one without the 
other was going to be tricky if not impossible. 

I cautiously tapped into the main directory of the 
system and explored various files for about an hour, 
finally locating the electronic manual that gave the 
general procedures and commands available to 


manually override various systems. “Procedure for 
Opening Doors on Incarceration Cells” was the 
heading I finally settled on and within a few minutes I 
had translated its encrypted English into something 
that made sense—or seemed to. 

After carefully typing in the orders and double-
checking them, I hit “Enter” on the keyboard. 

A riot erupted in Timothy Leery’s Happy Hellhole. 
Because not only did the cell doors open, the guards 
were reactivated as well. 

I watched on the monitors as the cells doors 
opened and prisoners raced for their freedom. At the 
same time, the bots guarding the halls and various 
points within the prison came to life. For a time the 
mechs were winning the battle, then they slowly fell 
back from the sheer weight of prisoners throwing 
themselves against the machines. Once the guards 
toppled over, they weren’t long for this world as the 
prisoners quickly dismantled them and then used 
various parts as weapons against the remaining 
guards. 

Satisfied I’d done all I could, I turned to leave, 
dashing out the door to make my escape. 

And I ran smack dab into a modi-gorilla policeman. 

I don’t know where the creature had come from. 
Maybe he’d been sent to check-up on the prisoners 
that had escaped from the empty prisoner transport 
truck at the loading ramp. Maybe he’d just stopped by 
to chat with his buddies on the loading dock. Who 
knows why a gorilla does anything. 

At any rate he was there and I had just managed 
to knock him off his feet. 

The growling policeman recovered a bit more 
slowly than I did, apparently not having dealt with 
many people foolish enough to ram into him head on 
when he wasn’t expecting it. 


I didn’t wait for him to get back to his feet. Instead 
I shoved on past him in the narrow tunnel, dodging 
his big mitts as he snatched at me. Then I sprinted 
down the tunnel leading to the main entrance of the 
prison. 

Leaping into the air, I kicked the in-line wheels out 
of my boots, then hit the floor going as fast as I could 
manage. I didn’t need to look back to know that the 
policeman was in pursuit since I could hear his 
lopping feet and knuckles slapping the floor, alerting 
me to his progress down the narrow passageway. 

I knew he'd have no problem catching me, should I 
manage to reach the loading dock and try to skate up 
the ramp-like road leading to the surface. I hadn’t 
eaten anything for days now, and was no match to 
the raw might of a modi-gorilla even when I was fed 
and fit and on wheels. But there was no other avenue 
of escape and always a chance for a lucky break, so I 
raced forward at top[ speed with muscles that 
seemed to grow more leaden with each successive 
stride on my skates. 

Finally I reached the loading dock, running into the 
sunlight. I fell to my knees and gasped for breath, 
knowing I could go no farther. I put my head down 
between my arms and panted, waiting to be beat to a 
pulp by the angry officer. 

I waited a few more seconds, and nothing 
happened. I looked back to see the policeman racing 
past me, toward the main entrance of the prison. 

And I saw why. 

All the prisoners were now stampeding out of the 
narrow front gate. And the modi-gorilla’s training 
apparently dictated dealing with the biggest crowd of 
criminals first. He stopped in front of the barred front 
gate, trying to hold it shut against the throng of 
inmates cascading through it. 


For just a moment he succeeded. But the flood 
behind the gate continued to mount as more and 
more bodies shoved against it. Four seconds later he 
vanished beneath the wave of humanity that swept 
over him. 

At this point I decided I’d better tend to my own 
business, getting to my feet and skating to the side as 
the crest of inmates crashed toward me. Within a 
second I was inundated by a pushing, shoving, and 
cursing mob that raced for freedom. I fought my way 
into the open tunnel and waited until the largest knot 
had passed, then dropped into the flow, not even 
having to push myself as those around me supplied 
the power. I simply kept my balance atop my skates 
and was carried up the ramp toward the surface. In 
five minutes we were all clear of the ramp and free. 

I sat by the roadway at the entrance of the 
hospital, watching the crowd of escapees heading 
back toward the city. Knowing they’d most likely 
eventually be confronted by more police units, I 
kicked my wheels back into the soles of my boots and 
got away from the road, cutting through an open 
wheat field, hoping a round-about path that ended on 
a different road leading into town would be less apt to 
encounter problems. 

Once I hit a road, I made it back into town. From 
there I skated on back streets and though allies all 
day since the cop that had arrested me the night 
before had relieved me of my e-cash card and ID; any 
officer that stopped me now would give me a free go-
back-to-jail card without passing go or collecting my 
salary. 

My tactic worked. By nightfall I had finally reached 

123 


my neighborhood almost without incident. There was 
a light drizzle and the air carried the faint aroma of 
sewage but I didn’t mind; it was nice to be back in 
familiar territory again. 

But everything wasn’t perfect. 

A block from home three young punks interested 
in robbing me stepped out of the shadows. “Hey, 
buddy,” one of them said. “You got a light.” 

I fought back a yawn. After all I’d been through, 
these guys were penny ante. “Guys, I don’t have time 
to play your games. Step out of the way and I promise 
no one will get hurt.” 

 The three youngsters spread out, attempting to 
encircle me. I heard the snap of a switchblade behind 
me the same time the one in front of me pulled a gun 
from under his plastic jacket. 

Fifteen minutes later I was on my block, armed 
with two pistols and three new knives, with only a 
bloody knuckled to show for my efforts. I hoped I’d 
taught the kids that crime doesn’t pay—hopefully 
they’d take my lesson to heart once they regained 
consciousness. 

I also had borrowed the undoubtedly stolen e-
cards they had on their persons; since the cards were 
anonymous models, there was no way to return them 
to their rightful owners. So, out of civic duty, I decided 
to keep them. All in all one bloody knuckle wasn’t 
such a bad tradeoff for the guns, knives, and cards as 
far as I was concerned and I felt a tingle of pride in 
crime-fighting, model citizen job well done. 

 This happiness was short lived as I neared my 
apartment complex. The street was barely lit. That 
wasn’t unusual since Snipe had shot out all but one of 


the lamps long ago in order to make it harder to spot 
her on the roofs. 

But other things were wrong. I kicked the wheels 
back into my skates and stood in the shadows. 

For one thing, the street was way too quiet. No 
one was racing around to avoid Snipe. And there 
weren’t any bodies on the street, either. That wasn’t 
like Snipe not to leave at least one or two around for 
the meat wagon. As I looked around, I realized there 
weren’t even any trogs rummaging through the 
garbage; no Moravec dancing around, either. 

Something wasn’t right in Dodge City and the 
townspeople were all hiding out in anticipation of the 
coming gunfight. 

I knew I had to get into my apartment as quickly as 
possible. I didn’t know what was up but it was most 
likely Harvies, the police, or some other major pain in 
the butt. After looking around to be sure Snipe’s dark 
silhouette wasn’t gracing the top of a near-by building, 
I scampered across the street toward my apartment. 

It would be unwise to stay at my apartment for any 
length of time, but I needed to collect a few tools of 
my trade so I could get more e-cash and then lie low 
for a few weeks. While I figured the police might have 
records of my escape I wasn’t too worried. As 
screwed up as the institution had been, it would 
probably take them years to make heads or tails of 
what had happened at Timothy Leery’s House for the 
Addicted. With luck they might even conclude I had 
died on the loading dock. I could buy a new ID and 
then start all over with a fresh slate, my next arrest 
being a first offense that would translate into an 
automatic release, regardless of how serious it might 
be.

 The main trick would be to stay clear of Death 
since he wouldn’t be too happy with me, even if the 


gov had taken him off the case. If Death didn’t get 
paid to find Huntington, then I wouldn’t get paid by 
Death even if I did the leg work. Besides that, Death’s 
find-him-in-two-days deadline was past. So I figured 
he’d use my failure to get him the information about 
Huntington in time as a good reason to snuff me. 

If he needed a reason, which he really didn’t. 

So it was time to lie low to avoid Death as well as 
the police. 

As for Huntington, I could have cared less where 
he was. Yeah, I had a good idea from the computer 
search—probably within a mile or two of where I 
stood. But it wasn’t a place I wanted to go to and as 
long as I didn’t start seeing things like flying dragons I 
wasn’t going to worry about him or what he was up to. 

As for the dream about the joust with him and my 
trip to the Mile High Building, I chalked those up to 
very vivid hallucinations brought about by the horrors 
of the environment I’d been thrown into. I’d let the 
government worry about finding Huntington because I 
didn’t want anything else to do with him. 

I had to admit that I wouldn’t mind seeing Alice 
again. When she was in her more adult attire, she 
was quite attractive. But I was now almost certain that 
my last visit with her was all a vivid creation of my 
brain. I’d seen her jump from the cliff in the MUD and 
saw the story of her death in real life in the news. 

At least that was what I remembered. Maybe I’d 
just lost my marbles along the line. For all I knew, 
maybe I’d blown up my head on the first jet trip and 
this was all just part of my brain deprogramming itself 
in the last throes of death. 

But I didn’t believe that. No, I was going to do my 
best now to get out of Dodge City with my scalp in 
place and as many effects as I could quickly gather 
from my apartment. Then I’d do my best to get lost 


and forget the whole Huntington thing. 

No more worrying about Huntington. Good-bye 
and good riddance, Mr. Huntington. Ditto for Alice in 
Wonderland. Good-bye Alice. That was a tougher 
good-bye. 

I paused at the main entrance of the apartment 
building and waited for the automated door to ask for 
my voice ID. 

But nothing happened. 

I stepped back and looked around, saw a 
movement out of the corner of my eye, but wasn’t 
able to move fast enough to avoid the fat paws that 
snatched me. 

Death’s mesoes held me in place. “You’re dead 
meat, buddy,” the one on my left said. 

“Yeah,” the one my right growled. “Dead meat.” 

“Hey, come on, guys,” I protested. 

“Your time is up, Ralph.” 

“The law had me on ice for the last twenty-four 
hours,” I protest. “There was no way I could meet 
Death’s deadline. Besides two gov thuggites said 
Death was off the case. How can you expect me to 
work when —” 

“Death said not to listen to any excuses you might 
come up with. He said you didn’t do the job under the 
wire so you had to pay the price. You’ll be an object 
lesson to Death’s other contacts.” 

I didn’t say anything. And neither did the two 
henchmen. Because the three of us saw the black 
limo with government markings silently stop at the 
curb. Two gov thuggites exited and ambled across 
the wet street toward us. And the agents held their 
very effective blackjacks at the ready. 

I wasn’t sure if the thuggites could better Death’s 
mesoes in a two-on-two match. But I was glad to 
have the privilege of witnessing the contest and most 


certainly was looking forward to it. The trick would be 
staying out from under the feet of the four dancing 
monsters as they met in the battle that I was hoping 
would soon ensue. 

“Have fun, guys,” I told my two companions as 
they let go of my arms. 


eath’s mesoes and the gov thuggites 

were about evenly matched. Yeah, they 

were technically quite different; one pair 

represented better monsters through 

chemistry and the other, better brutes 

through eugenics. But the end result of 
the chemistry and breeding experiments was about 
the same: Three hundred fifty pounds of muscle and 
killer instinct looking for a place to happen. 

Quietly trying to melt into the brick wall of the 
apartment complex, I waited for the main event to 
begin as each pair of killing machines circled, waiting 
to see what their opponents would do. I had hoped 
that the fight would be hand to hand, giving me some 
time to head on down the street and vanish into the 
mist. 

But one of Death’s goons drew a master blaster 
and just a fraction of a second later, his friend and the 
gov agents all drew their elephant guns with speed 
that seemed a blur to my human-slow eyes. 

And then the lead began to fly. 

 What the four lacked in marksmanship skills, they 
made up for in firepower. The Super Glock 37s 
Death’s men carried were full auto, firing a long burp 
of bullets that were dispersed in a wide path. 


 The gov agents carried standard issue Berettas, 
set to three-round bursts, arguably more accurate but 
lower in firepower. One of the agents went down in 
the initial flurry of shooting, catching at least twenty 
slugs before he bit the pavement. 

Unfortunately for Death’s side, both his men were 
a little slow on tactics, both aiming for the same gov 
agent who they thoroughly stitched with bullets, killing 
him at least ten times before he hit the ground. But 
that left both of the thugs with empty guns, facing an 
opponent who still had rounds left to fire. 

 Which he did very efficiently while they attempted 
a retreat. 

Neither of the goons fell, but it was easy to see 
they were good as dead, even if they didn’t realize it 
just yet. Despite their wounds they both dropped their 
guns and charged the agent with howls of rage as he 
emptied the last of his rounds into them and then 
attempted a speed reloading. 

He didn’t succeed. He dropped his empty weapon 
just moment’s before his close encounter with the 
guided muscles, backing three steps before being 
plowed into the pavement. From there the fight 
degenerated into a biting, punching, cursing, gouging 
match during which Death’s goons bit off several 
thuggite fingers, ran Mohawk spikes into his groin, 
and severed an ear before finally succumbing to the 
severe hemorrhaging from their bullet wounds. 

 The snarl of bloody limbs twitched and flexed for a 
few moments and I thought perhaps everyone had 
succumbed to their wounds. But to my great 
disappointment the remaining agent started to extract 
himself from the tangled mess lying in the growing 
pool of blood. 

As he labored, I thought about drawing one of my 
stolen guns to see if I could finish the job Death’s 


men had started. In the end I decided not to risk 
injuring the agent further without actually making a 
clean kill. Wounded thuggites are not a pretty sight to 
behold, especially for those doing the wounding. 

Nor are they noted for a gentle and forgiving spirit. 

 The pea-shooters I had taken from the punks were 
only 22s; they wouldn’t guarantee a clean kill even on 
a normal person, let along a thuggite. When dealing 
with thuggites a guy needed a ample caliber and a lot 
of luck. 

I had neither one right now. 

Another important reason for not drawing on him 
was that it was possible the whole fiasco on the street 
was being filmed by a government camera. Often 
these little moth-sized drones were used by agents, 
recording what was happening for later use in the 
courtroom or, more often, to show the police who 
then beat you to death as an object lesson for anyone 
else foolish enough to resist arrest or attack an agent 
of the Powers. 

I’d my fill of the justice system over the last twenty-
four hours and had a great aversion to death by 
beating—especially my own death by beating. So I 
stood like a model citizen and waited for the thuggite 
to rise. 

“You still here?” he asked, staggering toward me. 

“Like I could outrun you, right?” 

“You might. I took a round in the knee.” 

Now he tells me. 

“You know these guys?” he asked motioning to the 
pile of limbs on the street. 

“Yeah, they were some of Death’s henchmen. 
He’s not going to be too happy with you. Good help is 
hard to find.” 

“I’d like to meet Death some day. I have a score to 
settle now. My partner was a pretty good egg.” 


I remained silent, unsure how serious he was 
about his partner. Thuggites generally were pretty 
emotionless, but they might be different about a 
partner and I didn’t want to tell a joke that would cost 
me my nose. 

“I’ve got orders to take you in,” he said, taking a 
gov-issue wound dressing from a jacket pocket, 
opening it, and very matter-of-factly wrapping it 
around the hand that was missing fingers. “My car’s 
over there.” He motioned toward the dark vehicle 
parted in the shadows on the other side of the street, 
sending several drops of blood careening off his 
stubs to point the way as he did so. “Why don’t you 
step over there for me.” 

“Look,” I said backing away from him a few steps. 
“I’m off the Huntington thing. How about just leaving 
me alone.” 

 The thuggite smiled. “You haven’t caught on yet, 
have you?” 

Right there. 

“We’re out tying up lose ends tonight.” He took 
another step closer. “We’re doing that so no one gets 
to Huntington before we do. I don’t know what he has. 
But he’s got something the Powers wants very badly. 
And we don’t want anyone else to know about it. Now 
get into my car. We can make your trip real painless if 
you help out a little.” 

I took another step backward, glancing upward to 
the skyline. And there it was. The sight I had been 
hoping—praying—for. The glint of a streetlight off a 
scope. A scope that I hoped was attached to a rifle 
powerful enough for hunting elephants and other big 
game—including thuggites. 

 Trying to buy time, I turned and took off running. I 
got six steps at my fastest speed before the thuggite 
was on top of me, bad knee or not. He picked me up 


by the back of my jacket the way a man might pick up 
a rag doll. “Nice try,” he laughed. “I’m always amazed 
how dummies like you think they can get away from 
someone with superior strength and reflexes.” 

“Sometimes there are ways,” I said, deciding to 
quit struggling and simply enjoy the ride across the 
street to the limo. We were nearly to the car in two 
giant steps that took me and jumbo across the street. 

 The thuggite clicked the burglar alarm off. 

What’s taking Snipe so long? I wondered. Had I 
been mistaken? Was it someone else? 

 The agent opened the doors, tossing his jacket 
into the front seat and me into the back. He bent over 
to look me in the eye. “Just sit there like a nice little 
toad and don’t give me any more trouble.” 

I smiled meekly. 

Satisfied I was going to be quiet, he straightened 
up and started to slam the door. Then he stopped in 
mid-motion with the loud thump that emitted from his 
chest. He looked down in disbelief at the hole that 
was oozing blood, drew his gun, and fell backward 
onto the street. 

I slid down onto the floor of the car in case Snipe 
decided to make it twofer and had armor-piercing 
rounds. 

The street was deadly quiet. Nothing moved 
including me. 

I stayed that way for about fifteen minutes, trying 
to decide when it would be safe to move and what I 
should do next. 

If I went into my apartment, it would only be a 
matter of time before more of Death’s men or more 
gov agents dropped by to shoot the breeze—and me. 
Definitely a losing proposition unless I had a death 
wish. 

 Which I didn’t. 


Running might save my hide for a while. But 
eventually the government would find me even if 
Death didn’t since my prints, retina, and heat patterns 
were all tucked away in a master computer 
somewhere miles underground, waiting to give me 
away. 

For a moment I toyed with simply putting a muzzle 
in my mouth, then decided I should at least go down 
fighting. And if I had to make a last stand, I wanted to 
know what the hell I was dying for. 

There was one guy who could give me the 
answers: Huntington. I thought I knew about where he 
was, thanks to my computer search of the night 
before (which now seemed like it had happened a 
couple of years ago). The area was also one where it 
would be tough to find me quickly. 

My mind made up, I slid along the seat, taking 
care to stay out of sight to Snipe’s roof-top vantage 
point. I reached down to search the pockets of the 
bloody corpse. Finally I located the keys to the car 
and would have thrown up my lunch if I’d had any that 
day. Since I was already up to my elbows in gore, I 
went ahead and borrowed his heavy-duty firearm and 
spare magazines of ammunition as well, along with 
his anonymous e-cash card. 

I left the blackjack. 

Somehow I couldn’t see myself using something 
like that. 

Staying low, I slid out of the back seat, stepped 
over the corpse, and got into the front seat. After 
wiping the blood off my hands with mammoth-sized 
jacket lying in the front seat, I tossed it out, closed the 
door, and started the engine. 

It was time for my trip. I headed the car toward the 
area that the locals quaintly called the “Land of 
Darkness.” 


untington watched the antique blue-green 

lights dance and roll with the gentle 

waves of Sarasota Bay. The cool breeze 

coming over the water brought a welcome 

relief from the heat radiating from the hot 

pavement. He pulled the last puff from his 
cigarette and tossed it over the edge of the dock, 
watching it arch toward the water in an orange 
rainbow that was suddenly snuffed out like the lives of 
so many people he had known. He closed his eyes 
and listened to the racket of distant traffic which 
blended with the waves lapping ashore into a low, 
rolling roar. He tightened his tie without bothering to 
fasten the top shirt button, retrieved his jacket from 
the van, then ran the lift that lowered his wheelchair to 
the pavement. 

Had Florida always been this hot? he wondered. 
Sometimes he wondered why they hadn’t changed a 
few things when they rebuilt the area after the terrorist 
nuke had leveled much of it and irradiated what was 
left standing with corral dust that would be 
dangerously radioactive for nearly four months. 

 Then Huntington smiled at his foolishness. Can’t 


rebuild the weather all that easily. Maybe before too 
long he’d be able to do that for them. He smiled at his 
private joke. 

Being able to control the weather would be nice. 
Sweat oozed from every pour, making his skin almost 
iridescent as he guided his wheelchair alongside the 
Realtor who had emerged from the car he’d been 
following. 

“I think you’ll find this to your liking,” she said, 
already launching into another sales pitch not unlike 
the four he’d already heard. 

However this place felt different to him as he 
wheeled himself up the front walk. The tall home 
didn't look like much outside—or inside, he 
discovered a few minutes later. It was probably much 
as it had been a century before: In need of paint and 
enough capital to get some serious maintenance work 
done on it. The old pink paint had flaked completely 
off in spots, exposing the gray cement stucco 
beneath it. 

But it had potential and he had tons of money. 
Fixing it up would be no problem for him. And it would 
complete the last step toward realizing his plans for 
dropping out of circulation. That was the key thing. 

A half hour later, the Realtor ran her hand over his 
shoulder in a manner he found to his liking, even 
though he knew she was only trying to manipulate an 
old cripple. “What do you think,” she said, a crooked 
smile lighting her waspish face. “Is this something you 
could live with?” 

“Well, the residual radiation levels are a little high,” 
Huntington said, toying with her. He watched her face 
carefully and was satisfied to see the Realtor’s smile 
flicker for just a moment before reappearing the same 
as before. He swatted at the mosquito humming next 
to his ear. “And the little beasties seem a bit 


bloodthirsty out here. But I think neither will be a 
problem.” Especially after I get my last three eternal 
treatments, he added to himself. 

 The Land of Darkness, where my computer search 
coordinates had suggested Huntington might be, was 
the perfect place for someone to hide. Provided they 
could stay alive long enough. That was the hard part. 

 The headlights of my new limo showed streets that 
were growingly littered with both trash and bodies. I 
knew I was approaching the seedy outskirts of L of D. 
I threw the wheel to the side to avoid hitting what 
appeared to be a staggering drunk, then speeded up 
to hit the three thugs that had been hoping to force 
me to stop so they could most likely rob and kill me. I 
heard the satisfying crunch of one of the would-be 
thief’s legs under the wheel. That gave me a warm, 
satisfied feeling inside. 

At night, the Land of Darkness doesn’t look much 
different from most run-down sections of the city, 
though it did have a lower level of morality, no doubt 
reading in the negative if any psychologist had 
bothered to measure it. But it wasn’t named for its 
morals. 

Rather because of the 20-square-mile solar array 
high above the area. This massive array blocked the 
sunlight from the sky during the day. Originally giant 
sun lamps had been erected to help counter this 
problem. But the residents soon destroyed them and 
eventually Topeka’s city fathers finally tired of sending 
in crews to replace them, only to lose the crews to 
knives and bullets. 

Now the Land of Darkness dwelt in eternal night. 

I checked the navigator, watching as I neared the 


coordinates I’d entered into it. Just a few miles and I’d 
be in the neighborhood. The catch was that until I had 
a chance to search the neighborhood, I had know 
way of locating the exact place Huntington was 
operating from. And somehow I suspected most of 
the tenants wouldn’t take too kindly to a house-tohouse 
search. 

But I had a plan. 

Provided I could get that close, which wasn’t a 
sure-fire thing. I slowed at the barricade of old cars 
that was ahead of me. Then hit the accelerator pedal. 
“You are about to impact,” the on-board car computer 
told me. 

“Override collision avoidance,” I ordered, hoping 
the gov cars permitted this. They did. The car 
continued forward at full throttle and I aimed carefully 
at the lighter tail end of the vehicles blocking my path, 
putting into practice a technique taught to me by an 
old drug runner I’d once met in jail. 

The noise of the limo struck the two junkers 
simultaneously and I held the pedal down. There was 
an enormous clang and grinding of metal and then 
the vehicles parted and I was through, causing the 
would-be hijackers manning the barricade to scurry 
for cover. 

I wasn’t out of the woods yet, however. Because 
as my car hurtled down the dark street, barely lit by a 
single remaining headlight, the thugs behind me 
opened fire. Most of the lighter pistol and rifle bullets 
thumped into the car, trapped in the bullet-proofing 
Kevlar of the body. But that wasn’t true about the .50caliber 
BMG projectiles that followed the initial 
barrage. These cut through the armor of the car, 
leaving a thought-provoking string of holes in the 
windshield just to the right of my head. 

 The car skidded along on two wheels as I shoved 


the wheel to the side, shooting down a side street so 
I’d be out of the line of fire. Unfortunately I didn’t quite 
make it out of sight in time; a second burst rattled 
through the aft section of the limo. For a couple of 
minutes I thought I had made it. But then the car’s 
computer piped up, “You are running low on fuel.” 

“What? We had a full tank just a half hour ago.” 

“The fuel tank appears to be leaking. Head for the 
nearest Ford repair shop immediately. Be sure to buy 
genuine Ford parts.” 

Somehow I didn’t think I’d be finding a friendly 
neighborhood Mr. Goodwrench to service my stolen 
vehicle in the middle of the night. Especially in the 
cutthroat section of town I was in. I checked the 
navigator; I was only about three blocks from my 
target area. Good thing, because the engine started 
to sputter. I slowed down, easing the car to the curb, 
and got out. 

I eyed the gang of homeless kids across the 
street. Street children are tough for me to deal with 
because I always feel too self-conscious to kill them, 
even if that’s exactly what they have planned for 
anyone who comes across them. 

But the car gave me an out. Before the gang of 
street rats at the curb could collect their senses and 
threaten me, I tossed the keys to the car to them. “It’s 
all yours.” I high-tailed it away from the vehicle, 
gaining distance during the mad rush of the munchkin 
gang members to get to the car. 

By the time they discovered it was leaking 
gasoline, I was down the block and able to duck into a 
dark doorway to avoid their angry shouts, threats, and 
bullets. When things got quiet a minute later, I started 
to leave my hiding spot. 

“Not leaving so soon?” a voice purred in the 
darkness. 


I turned to see a syntha-prost whose beautiful face 
was briefly lit as by the match that brought her 
cigarette to life. She held the match up and blew it out 
in a way that made me remember I was of the male 
persuasion. “Want a good time?” The snakes grafted 
into her scalp writhed around her face, making me 
feel that I was about to be turned to stone. 

Finally I tore my eyes from her wriggling crown and 
found my voice. “Thanks. Can’t stop right now. I’m in 
a hurry.” 

“I’ve got some boyfriends if that would be more to 
your liking.” 

I realized something wasn’t right. She was too 
persistent. “No thanks. Gotta go.” I leaped backward 
and just barely made it out of the doorway when the 
bars clanged shut, nearly trapping me in the small 
space with her. 

“Now that wasn’t very nice,” I said, getting to my 
feet and shaking my finger at the woman. “Not much 
repeat business, I bet.” 

 The syntha-prost leaped forward, throwing herself 
against the bars, lashing at me with the sharp stiletto 
she’d retrieved from its hiding place. The sharp blade 
slashed past my face as I ducked back. 

“Ah, the wrath of a woman scorned.” 

I clicked the skate wheels out of my boots and 
wheeled down the street, watching to be sure I didn’t 
trip over any of the garbage and bones that littered it. 

A city block can make all the difference. In a few 
minutes I was dodging through crowds of people in an 
area that was better lit, with knots of vendors, 
musicians, and drug dealers crowding the sidewalks 
and spilling into the narrow street, offering their wares 
to anyone who’d buy. Had it not been for the distant 
gunfire crackling from time to time, and the bodies 
putrefying on the curb, I might have felt almost at 


home. 

I skated around a nearly naked woman wearing a 
tall headdress composed of tin cans and a g-string 
composed of very little, then skirted a snaking line of 
recombs, dressed like devils, dancing and singing as 
they entered a building that proclaimed, 

Live Girls, Girls, Girls 

… in flashing LEDs. 

I glanced into the open door as I whizzed past— 
hey, I’m only human—and saw women, women, 
women, their fat naked bodies smeared with oil, 
writhing snakes in their mouths as they cavorted on a 
long silver table. 

 Turning back from that memorable sight, I got a 
good look at the four-hundred pounds of man, man, 
man which I was about to plow into. 

Perhaps when the elephant man saw me hurtling 
toward him at top speed, that I was trying to attack 
him. Or perhaps he just couldn’t see the humor in our 
impending collision. Either way, I found myself 
headed straight for a blade that was more sword than 
pocketknife which had appeared from under his 
jacket and now was in his hand, point aimed at my left 
nostril. 

Somehow I managed to weave and dodge and 
avoid the blade at all costs, but in the process 
tumbled and then slid along the rough sidewalk on 
hands, knees, and face. Not a happy five point 
landing. My knees were protected by my body armor. 
But my hands and face weren’t and I got to my feet 
with the realization that I now had some serious 
abrasions that were going to hurt for a while and 
already smarted. 

“What’re ya tryin’ ta pull, buddy?” the man asked, 


blade held at his ample belt-buckle level and even 
with my eye level. 

“Nothing,” I said. “Sorry. Wasn’t watching where I 
was going. Honest.” 

“Maybe this will teach you a lesson.” 

I already knew the lesson so the blade passed 
through the air where my head had been but no 
longer was. It would have been nice if I could have 
back pedaled on my skates at that point to avoid 
further trouble. That wasn’t possible because of the 
crowd that was pressing up behind me, busy placing 
bets on who would win the contest. So far it was ten 
to one and I won’t mention who the favored party 
was. 

I was getting both frightened and angry. And the 
elephantine genius was now mad, too, apparently not 
liking it when someone had the gall to move their face 
out of the way of his sword, making him look bad in 
front of his friends. 

He prepared for another lunge. I pulled the 
government-issued pistol out of my jacket. The old 
saying, “Never bring a knife to a gun fight” was 
definitely operational. The odds being placed on the 
winner of the fight instantly shifted with a few betters 
crying foul. 

My single burst of fire sent three bullets his way. 
They neatly stitched up Mr. Elephant’s front, knocking 
him to the ground with a bellow of pain—but no blood. 

“Lucky you have the new titanium body armor,” I 
said as he writhed on the ground at my feet. I kicked 
the short sword away from him. Knowing that he’d 
recover in a few minutes with more unpleasantness, 
since I didn’t feel right about putting a burst into his 
fat head, I turned, waving the gun in warning in case 
anyone else wanted to tangle with me. 

Everyone backed away, in part because I was 


armed and in part because of the firearm which 
everyone who watched the 3Ds recognized as govissue 
and therefore assumed it might belong to a gov 
agent. Agents generally travel in groups so those 
around me were assuming I wasn’t alone and neither 
I nor the rest of my group would think twice about 
shooting anyone. 

The sea of people parted. Once there was an 
opening, I boogied away at top speed before anyone 
started questioning the general assumptions about 
who I was. Agents aren’t popular anywhere. People 
who pose as agents to fool criminals are even less 
popular and enjoy short life spans if they hand around 
for long—which wasn’t like in the Land of Darkness. 

I hit top speed and kept it up on down the block, 
rounding the corner before slowing and looking back. 
I was relieved to see that no one was following me 
and that there were far fewer people on the side 
street ahead of me. I slowed to a stop and looked 
back again, making certain no one was following me. 

I took a deep breath and offered a prayer of 
thanksgiving that I’m managed to remain in one piece 
thus far. Now to get down to work. 

I had to be just about in the right neighborhood. I 
started down the street again, looking upward to the 
rooftops of the moth-eaten, two-story shops and 
homes around me. Not seeing what I was looking for, 
I continued on watching both the street for any sign of 
danger as well as the rooftops. 

 Three minutes later, I spotted what I was looking 
for. A single telephone dish half hidden behind 
wicked-looking ribbon wire, in turn attached to a high 
voltage line and emblazoned with warning decals so 
no one would be tempted to try to steal it. 

I’d hit pay dirt. 


cased the joint three times, trying to avoid 
looking too conspicuous and wondering what 
kind of security Huntington might have. Since he 
had lots of cash and had worked in the 
electronics industry, it seemed likely the two-
story house would be well protected. 

On the first pass I noted the fine wires in the glass 
behind the bars on the windows; old-fashioned but 
highly effective burglar alarms often used the 
embedded wire or foil system. That meant the 
windows and most likely the doors were not a reliable 
avenue of access. 

On the second trip down the street and through 
the alley, I noted the camera that appeared to watch 
the street was only a fake. 

On the third pass I knocked the would-be mugger 
following me unconscious and then noted the lethinject 
grid protecting the front door to the house. 
Lethal injectors are overkill, perhaps, but no doubt 
useful in a neighborhood where police response time 
was four or five decades. 

Since the doors and windows were obviously well 
protected, I decided to take a less direct approach 


and go through the wall. And here’s the spot, I told 
myself, picking a place that was in the shadows and 
out of sight of the street. I checked once more for 
unwanted obs or a peephole camera I might have 
missed, but saw nothing. The coast was clear. 

 Time to go to work. 

I scrutinized the rusty steel-plate siding. It looked 
impressive but time had taken its toll. The adhesive 
had come loose, permitting me to pry a small crack 
apart with one of my purloined knives. 

Once the opening was started, the government 
issued gun, a la pry bar, was inserted into the crack 
and leverage applied. Soon the plate popped off, 
clanging on the asphalt pavement. With great relief I 
discovered the building material below the armor was 
standard plastic construction, rather than concrete or 
brick facing. 

After an hour’s work with a cheap and growingly 
dull pocketknife, I had carved out a hole big enough 
to squeeze through—which is just what I did after 
carefully probing inside to be sure there were no telltale 
wires or strings that might be connected to a 
booby trap. Detecting none, I checked again to be 
sure there were no pedestrians around to see me and 
then wriggled through the hole into the blackened 
interior of the musty old house. 

 The inside was a surprise. 

I’d expected some modern furniture, some art 
work, something reflecting the money that Huntington 
had. Instead it was decorated in Early American Hotel 
66, dimly lit by a light in the hallway beyond the front 
room. A thread-worn couch and chairs were clustered 
around an ancient digital TV set. The carpet was so 
matted with dust that I could see my tracks in the dim 
light inside as I walked across the room. 

Had I broken into the wrong place? No, that was 


silly. This had to be the place. Was it perhaps a trap? 
Distinct possibly. 

For a moment I stood motionless and 
contemplated leaving, then decided I’d have to check 
the place out or die of curiosity later, wondering if it 
was the right house and whether or not Huntington 
was there. 

I went across the living room, moving very slowly 
in order to watch for burglar alarm equipment, gritting 
my teeth because the ancient wooden flooring 
seemed to creak with every other step, making 
enough noise it seemed to be heard upstairs if not out 
on the street. 

Passing the wooden stairway leading up to the 
second floor, I opted to remain downstairs, heading 
through an archway leading to a long hall where the 
single bare bulb valiantly glowed in the ceiling through 
a layer of dust. At one end of the hall was the front 
door to the house; the dust was disturbed here; 
someone had recently been in and out several times. 

Not on a wheel chair; there were footprints. That 
raised a question: Was Huntington really confined to 
a wheelchair or was that just a convenient bit of 
misdirection? 

I know if I’d been in his shoes, and had some 
money, I would have thrown everyone off by 
appearing to be restricted to a motorized cart while 
really being able to take off when nobody expected 
me to. Of course just because I’d do it that way didn’t 
mean Huntington would. 

I passed a shaded window. The small diodes on 
the window frame showed that the burglar alarm was 
activated; and the window was armed with barrels 
pointed toward the outside, ready to give any intruder 
a face full of buckshot. Luckily I’d had the good sense 
to dig through the side of the house. The alarm was 


another sign that someone might be in the house or 
at least was using it, intent on keeping it free of 
criminals. 

My stomach growled loudly, reminding me I hadn’t 
eaten for over twenty-four hours now—if I didn’t count 
the make-believe meal with Alice on the Mile-High 
Building. I realized that somewhere in the home there 
might be a kitchen with food. The thought made my 
mouth water and I started down the hall, figuring the 
kitchen must be somewhere on the ground floor. 

Pay dirt. I went straight to the refrigerator, opened 
it, and discovered a jar full of mold that—according to 
the label—had officially once been beets Otherwise 
the ‘frig’ was empty. I was halfway back down the hall 
when I heard the floor creak behind me, back in the 
living room. 

And then I heard voices, so faint I couldn’t quite 
make out what they were saying to each other. 

I drew my gun, put my back to the wall, and 
listened. 

“Come on hot boy,” someone whispered. 
“Nobody’s here. Quit being a xonk and get in here.” 

I let out my breath and shook my head. Great, I 
thought. A couple of punks had followed me in 
through the opening I’d made in the side of the 
house. It seemed like no one had any pride any more. 
Couldn’t they figure out how to hit a place on their 
own? Now I’d have to work around them. 

I quietly replaced the heavy duty government 
armament and withdrew the ancient Jennings .22 
auto I’d borrowed earlier that evening. I only wanted 
to scare the two of them, not plaster them across the 
walls. I waited, ready to run them off if they headed 
my way. Fortunately they didn’t come into the hall, 
instead opting to head up the stairway for the upper 
bedrooms where people generally keep their 


valuables. 

I stood still until they were nearly up the stairs, 
then carried on a debate with myself about the 
wisdom of heading back out to the street rather than 
waiting around to see what happened. Instead of 
being smart, I stayed inside, straining my ears for the 
confrontation I knew must be coming. 

 Twenty seconds later, the confrontation came. 

“Hey!” one of them yelled. 

 The other simply said a few very old four-letter 
words. 

 Then there was a flurry of rapid footsteps above 
me as someone ran a few paces, as if trying to 
escape. This was followed by two heavy thumps of 
bodies hitting the floor with the finality only 
unconscious carcasses can achieve. 

Silence. 

Not a peep or any hint of life in the stale house. 

I found myself sweating. What happened? I had 
expected gunshots, screams, pleading for mercy. 

It had been too quiet. Too efficient. There hadn’t 
been a hint of a firearm’s report—not even the pop of 
a silenced weapon. Nor had anyone screamed in 
pain. Their deaths must have been almost 
instantaneous from the sound of it. 

Now’s a great time to leave, I informed myself as I 
left the hallway and crossed into the living room. 

Curiosity killed the cat, I warned as I stood at the 
base of the stairs that looked amazingly similar to 
those in the 3-D remake of Psycho. If I’d been smart, 
I would have dived out the hole in the wall and said 
good-bye to Huntington and his cheery little abode for 
good. 

Of course I’ve never received any medals for 
being smart. So I cautiously crept up the stairs to see 
what had happened to the two amateur burglars. 


reeping up the steps, I switched back to 

the gov-issue elephant pistol, figuring I 

needed some serious firepower to deal 

with whatever had taken out two kids 

without making it sound like work. I 

checked to be sure the auto was set to 
burst fire, and continued up the creaking planks. 

Since each squeak undoubtedly alerted anyone 
that might be listening that I was headed up, I took my 
time, One potato, two, potato for each step. And I 
kept watching through the rungs above me for any 
sign of the silent killer that had caught the previous 
intruders. 

As my eyes came in line with upper floor, I could 
see the two bodies of the punks. I forced myself not 
to study them, instead concentrating on the closed 
doors along the upstairs hall, keeping my eyes 
moving while wondering whether the prize I’d be 
facing was behind door number one, two, or three. 

Little by little, step by step, I continued upward 
until I was standing on the wooden floor covered by a 
strip of worn carpeting, now adored with two punks 
put into early retirement. I knelt and waited, taking 
deep breaths in an effort to calm down. 

Rule one of surviving an indoors gun fight was to 

149 


make your opponent fight on your terms, not his. 
Make him come to you. 

My terms were out here in the upstairs hallway 
where I could see what was going on and was 
prepared to shoot first and ask questions later when I 
was far, far away. Now all I have to do is out wait my 
opponent. 

I must have knelt there, motionless, for at least ten 
minutes. After five minutes, sweat started trickling 
down my brow and into my eyes with a stinging, dropby-
drop progress. The heavy gun got clammy in my 
hands. I started to relax. 

 There was a low groaning, “Ohhhhhhhh” of a noise 
which made me jump, bringing my gun to bear on the 
nearest doorway, and then switching it to the next 
entrance, watching for a movement of the knob. 

 The groan came again. 

 This time I could tell where it came from. It wasn’t 
from a hidden figure about to attack from behind any 
of the doors. Rather, it was one of the two intruders. I 
cautiously glanced at them again, then back to the 
doors, fearful my distraction would get me killed. 

I continued to watch the doors, mulling over the 
fact that one of the two punks was obviously still alive. 
Most likely both were alive since there was no sign of 
blood. 

But what had caused them to run? What had 
lowered the boom on them? They must have seen or 
heard something before getting taken out—taken out 
very, very quickly. 

Both were lying with their heads pointing toward 
me. That meant they’d been running away from 
something toward the end of the hall. I moved my 
firearm’s point of aim farther down the hallway. The 
only thing there was a low mahogany table with an 
antique Tiffany lamp on it. The tiny bulb cast its green 


and blue hues on the wall behind it and— 

Tiffany lamp? 

“Way out of place in this dump,” I muttered. And 
just the treasure an inexperienced thief would make a 
beeline for. Perfect bait for a booby trap to separate 
the chaff from the elite. 

I cautiously stood and advanced, stepping over the 
two boobies, my gun still at the ready. Glancing down, 
I saw that both were still breathing. Must have been 
hit by some sort of electrical shock or maybe a gas— 
though I couldn’t think what type of chemical might be 
used in a counter-personnel trap that would act so 
fast. 

I stopped about two meters from the lamp, 
inspecting it and the area around it from what I hoped 
was a safe distance. I searched for some sign of an 
offensive system. The lamp and table looked pretty 
normal. No extra cords to the lamp, nothing visible 
under the table. The lamp might have been 
electrified—but that would have only accounted for 
one punk and he’d be draped under the table instead 
of three paces from it. Had to be something else. 

I took another step closer, then froze... 

There, I told myself. Under the carpet. 

Just in front of the lamp the carpet seemed to rise 
higher than the rest of the floor. Must be a pressure 
switch under the strip of carpet leading up to the 
table. Perfect plan. Attract the moths to the Tiffany 
lamp and then burn them when they stepped on the 
carpet in front of it. 

Now the question was what had put the two punks 
behind me and whether it posed any danger to me? 

Did I really want to know bad enough to find out? 

I decided not. Better to get into the rooms and see 
if there’s any sign of Huntington, then get out of— 

My thought was interrupted by a pleasant, familiar 


odor. With a start I realized that the two punks had 
been gassed. And that some of the gas was still in 
the air. I held my breath. 

Too late.

 The dumbest things come to mind when you see 
yourself fading away. My feeling was one of shame at 
being felled by a trap laid for amateurs. If the guys on 
the block found out, my status would be severely 
damaged. 

My eyes clouded and I felt light-headed as I 
staggered away from the lamp. I quickly sat down so I 
wouldn’t fall and bang my head. 

 Then I was gone. 

Abruptly I found myself standing in a dank cavern. 
I felt totally confused and was nearly naked, dressed 
only in some sort of short toga and sandals. 
Somewhere I could hear muffled voices, like 
someone far away in an amusement part, either 
having a really good time or totally frightened out of 
their gourd. 

Fighting back the temptation to run in a blind 
panic, I tried to remain motionless and fight back the 
fear I felt welling up in my throat. Time to think. Calm 
down. 

How’d I get here? 

I backtracked in my mind: I had been in the house. 
The gas I’d smelled... 

Jet. That was the smell. The drug I used—used to 
use, I corrected myself—to immerse myself in the 
MUDs. I’d ingested it, never inhaled it before because 
it was hard to figure the dose that way. But I still knew 
the pungent odor from the times I’d ingested it, 
getting a potent whiff when I opened the bottle. 

152 


 There was a catch. 

I couldn’t possibly have inhaled that much. I had 
hardly even noticed the smell. And besides, I wasn’t 
connected to a computer now so I couldn’t be in the 
middle of the all-too-real MUD I seemed to be 
standing in the middle of right now. 

Or was I attached to a computer? 

Maybe Huntington had built high-power electrodes 
into the walls of the hallway. While I’d never heard of 
such a thing, the guy was supposed to be an 
electronic whiz, right? . 

How else could I be in a place like this? Wait a 
minute. Had the home itself been a MUD and now 
was I in another? Maybe I’d never got out of the first 
string of MUD illusions. Maybe I’d bounced from the 
Vietnam MUD, to the Alice in Wonderland one, and 
then didn’t wake up. Maybe the trip to the drug rehab 
and Land of Darkness were just part of one long, bad 
trip. 

 That didn’t work out, though. Too much time had 
seemed to pass. Time in MUDs was more 
compressed, but not that much. One drop of jet 
wouldn’t send me out for this long. 

Could I be in the middle of one of the illusions that 
I’d read about in the news accounts? Was I in the 
middle of a restaurant somewhere, making a 
complete ass of myself in front of puzzled customers. 
Or was I still back in Huntington’s house next to the 
two unconscious punks, about to fall down the stairs 
and break my neck? 

I’d never heard about jet flashbacks. But even 
though I didn’t believe all the gov hype, I knew drugs 
were dangerous. Maybe this was something like that 
crazy dream I’d had in the rehab center—if I’d ever 
been there. 

 Where did reality end and the dream or jet trip 


begin? Alice had known what she was talking about 
when she’d said they were hard to distinguish 
sometimes. 

It was time to sit down and assume The Thinker 
position. 

I would have, too, if the screaming that echoed in 
the distance hadn’t suddenly started growing louder 
and louder. Abruptly the two punks I’d seen on the 
floor in the upstairs hallway of the home burst into the 
cavern and ran past me like someone had set their 
tails on fire and I wasn’t worth noticing on the way to 
the water trough. 

I wasn’t there for long to contemplate it their 
amazing burst of speed. Because the growling 
coming down the tunnel they’d just exited was 
growing louder by the second. I didn’t know what it 
was but knew it didn’t sound friendly. 

I didn’t plan on finding out how unfriendly it might 
be.

 Taking a cue from the two punks, I was off and 
running as fast as I could, totally forgetting that the 
whole place was most likely only an illusion created 
by computer code. Even if I had remembered, I still 
would have run. Because deep down inside I knew 
that a death in the middle of a MUD would be just as 
fatal as a death in real life. 


didn’t run far. 

I realized that all the noise the two punks 

were making would probably keep whatever was 

chasing them on their trail. So I had the sense to 

head down a tunnel other than the one they 

took. It appeared to be lit, like the others, by a 
smoking torch just inside the entrance. Other similar 
torches continued to appear on the walls, just like 
you’d see in a Grade-B net flick. Like those torches, 
these seemed to never burn out. I wasn’t about to 
argue with the premise, though; it beat being in the 
dark and bouncing off the rough-hewn wall with 
whatever it was after me. 

Curiosity got the better of me and I stopped 
running, turned, and peered from the safety of a 
column of rock back toward the cavern to see what 
was doing all the growling. I didn’t wait for long. 

A snarling Cyclops at least fifteen feet tall and all 
muscle loped into view, its large single eye cast this 
way and that as it looked for its victims. It stopped, 
flicking a six-foot club back and forth nervously the 
way a man might swish a fly swatter. It didn’t wait for 
long. Another cry of fear from the two punks betrayed 
the tunnel they’d taken and the creature was after 
them again. 


I took a deep breath and leaned back against the 
wall, trying to think about what the next step ought to 
be. I couldn’t have got much of a whiff of jet so the 
effects should wear off soon—I hoped. Because I 
really didn’t know what dosage I’d inhaled nor did I 
know how that would compare to usage at a 
computer. 

In fact I wasn’t even sure any more that I wasn’t 
jetting at home with my computer. Could I still be in 
the original session? Had I dreamed I’d returned 
home, gone to the prison, broke into the old house, 
and then jetted into this maze? 

That made more sense then thinking I’d somehow 
got into the middle of a MUD without being jacked into 
the net. Reality is only perception deep and I had no 
way to compare my present situation to any reality. 

 There were a couple of things I did know. 

First if Cyclops caught me, I’d undoubtedly 
become one of the tragic brain-dead junkies the news 
liked to parade on the screens for their just-say-no 
ads. Second if I could avoid that fate long enough, the 
jet would wear off and I’d end up either in my own 
apartment or the old house I thought I’d been in when 
this last episode began. 

 The main thing to do now was to stay alive. 

Since I didn’t know what dangers might be present 
in the tunnel ahead of me, the best bet was simply to 
sit tight and move only if some peril presented itself. 

I pulled up a boulder and sat down. 

For at least thirty seconds. 

Because the screams of the two punks were now 
echoing toward me. Which meant the two were now 
in front of me instead of behind toward the cavern. 

 This puzzled me for a moment before I realized 
that could only mean the tunnel they’d gone into had 
doubled back and they were headed for the central 


cavern again. I stood with the realization that this 
MUD construct we must be in, like many others that 
at first appeared almost infinite, was in fact pretty 
small. Its programmer had simply made a cavern and 
then duplicated a single tunnel, doubling it back to the 
cavern with each cheap-and-dirty replication. If that 
was a correct assumption, then a guy could run 
around in here and have absolutely no chance of 
escaping Cyclops because everyone would always 
return back to the main cavern. 

Meaning that the programmer had most likely—at 
least so I hoped—put in a secret trapdoor into the 
system, an escape hatch to take users to another 
level of the game. The trick would be in finding that 
route to safety. If I could do that, then I might have a 
chance of survival. 

I jogged back to the main cavern and glanced 
around for any tell-tale features that didn’t belong. 

None. Only barren gray rock. 

Since the cries of fear were now growing much 
louder, I ducked into one of the side tunnels, hoping 
the two punks didn’t choose it rather than one of the 
ten other choices ringing the cavern. 

 Was again in relative safety, I turned my attentions 
back to saving my own behind: How would a 
programmer mark the trapdoor? 

Maybe the torches? A bit obvious but worth a try. 

I continued down the tunnel and pulled at one of 
the torches. It was securely attached and didn’t 
budge. I twisted, jerked, and struggled with it but 
nothing happened. Nor did my cursing help. 

I stopped, deciding it was again time to run when 
the two screamers hit the cavern because, for a 
terrible minute, it seemed their screams were coming 
right down my tunnel. But then their hollering faded. 
Moments later the growling Cyclops passed, hot on 


their trail. The chase wasn’t going to be for much 
longer, judging by the dwindling space between the 
prey and the predator. 

Stepping up onto the boulder that also appeared 
to be in each tunnel, I tried jumping toward the ceiling. 
Nothing. No springing boost or other unusual feature 
that often accompanied such games. I gave up on the 
rock and continued farther down into the tunnel, 
thinking the key to the escape route might be beyond 
where I hadn’t been so far. 

I strolled forward, stepping over a small stream of 
lava that boiled across the floor. Traditionally, since 
some of the very first electronic games were created, 
lava was bad news—just like real life. However some 
programmers also bucked tradition, making it a way 
out. If all else failed, I’d try jumping into it as a last-
ditch attempt to find a way out. But that was the last 
choice since I didn’t relish discovering that the lava 
was only lava.

 There was the reverberation of sandaled feet 
running very fast. I stopped and listened. It was 
coming from far ahead of me. The two punks had 
managed to pick a tunnel that again doubled around 
to me. 

Or did they all double around? Maybe there was 
really only one tunnel that looped around. That had to 
be it. That would complicate things since I was going 
to have to keep dodging the Bobbsy Twins with 
Cyclops hot on their trail. 

Four seconds later, one of the punks who rounded 
the corner ahead of me. “Look out!” he gasped. “It’s 
right behind us.” 

I stared as his companion appeared far behind 
him. The other punk was about pooped from the look 
of it. He staggered a few more steps and dropped to 
the floor. I turned and ran with the remaining punk as 


Cyclops rounded the bend and pounced on the fallen 
juvenile delinquent. 

 We were almost to the cavern when the remaining 
punk turned toward me and pulled me to a stop. 
“You’ve got to do something. He’s eating Frank.” 

I stood doubled over, gasping for breath, thankful 
that Cyclops had at least paused when he’d caught 
the rearmost runner. And that the runner wasn’t me. 
“This is only a game,” I told my new comrade around 
deep breaths. “We don’t have any way to fight that 
thing. Got to escape.” 

“Maybe if we keep running we can loose it,” the 
punk suggested. “Come on, these tunnels go on 
forever.” 

“No they don’t,” I said. “You’ve been running in 
circles.” 

“No we’ve —” 

“I’ve seen you go through that cavern twice, and 
I’ve never even gone through a tunnel.” 

“Then how can we, ever...” 

“Survive? We can’t, not by running. Unless we find 
the way out of this level of whatever game we’re in 
we’ll end up like your buddy Frank.” 

“Level of game?” 

“Yeah, we’re in a MUD of some sort.” 

“A computer game? But how—This is all too real 
to be —” 

“You guys tripped a booby trap in the apartment 
you broke into. You breathed in jet and now, 
somehow, we’re all in the middle of a computer 
game.” 

“So that’s what happened.” 

For a moment logic nearly overcame me. Because 


if he remembered the house, that meant it must be 
real and that, somehow, we’d both got connected into 
this game without accessing a computer. 

 Then I realized my logic was false. 

Because the punk I was talking to might simply 
have entered that part of the game—or might himself 
be a computer construct rather than a real person. 
Reality can’t be determined in the middle of a MUD 
when you’re on jet. 

Or in a dream, or flash back, or whatever the hell 
I’d had when I ended up with Alice in the Mile-High 
Building, I added glumly, though this all seemed to 
real to be a dream. 

One thing was certain. “We need to get moving,” I 
said. “Sounds like lunch time is about over back 
there.” 

The punk swore, turned white, and looked like he 
was about to faint. Then he got his color back and we 
both headed down the tunnel. 

“Look for something unusual that might be a way 
out,” I told him as we jogged away from the monster. 

“Something unusual?” the punk said, his voice 
getting hysterical. “You don’t call being in a maze with 
a one-eyed people eater unusual.” 

 The growling behind us got louder and we both 
broke into a dead sprint. 

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll look.” 

As I trudged forward, a gleam on the wall caught 
my eye. I slowed down and crossed over toward it. 
There was a tiny jewel embedded in the granite wall. 
This has to be it. 

“Hey, come back,” I called to the punk. 

“No way, man.” He never even slowed his pace. 

I tapped the jewel, kissed it, tugged at it, swore at 
it. 

No results. 


I turned to glance back. Cyclops was nearly on top 
of me. Then he came to a halt as I frantically tried to 
activate what I knew must be the escape route out of 
this game. I hoped. 

“You again?” Cyclops asked, his gravelly voice so 
low it sounded more like thunder than speech. “This is 
a surprise. I thought you were dead. You’re one lucky 
fellow.” 

Funny, I didn’t feel real lucky. Come on secret 
passage! I thought, clawing at the tiny stone. What 
was the secret to activating it? 

“You must have a charmed life to have survived 
our last encounter,” Huntington Cyclops said, 
shuffling toward me, his tall head nearly reaching the 
top of the tunnel. “What’s your name? I’d like to know 
that before I dismantle and eat you.” 

“Actually I’m just a computer construct.” 

Huntington laughed and the walls shook, small 
pebbles falling from the ceiling. “That’s good. With 
lines like that I will almost feel bad about devouring 
you.” 

“Not half as bad as I’ll feel.” 

He chuckled again. “A fine line to exit on,” he said, 
his massive paw reaching out for me. 

I jumped aside, dodged another grab, then leaped 
backward, hitting the wall right where the jewel was. 

And abruptly everything vanished. 

I had lurched into freedom. 


ot becoming the gourmet delight for 

Huntington’s incarnation as Cyclops 

wasn’t without its upside. But where I 

found myself was scarcely any better. I 

was falling downward toward what 

appeared to be a surface covered with 
black worms writing over jagged rocks, far, far below 
me. 

My escape route was looking more like a trap. 

 Trying to think coherently when you’re about to be 
smashed into oozing bits of protoplasm isn’t too easy. 
But I did my best, trying to imagine if there might be a 
way to survive my predicament. 

Obvious: No parachute or rocket pack strapped to 
me. Equally obvious: No vines or other obstructions to 
grab for one the way down. I was up to trying anything 
since almost anything might work according to the 
whims of the game programmer. I tried concentrating 
and growing wings, attempted to turn into a feather or 
rocket, took deep breaths hoping to float like a 
balloon. All were exercises in futility. 

Finally I simply concentrated on spreading myself 
as flat as possible, trying to increase my cross section 
to maximize of air resistance and decrease my 
maximum rate of all. If I can slow down enough, 


maybe the worms will break my fall, I lied to myself. 

 Then another thought occurred to me. I flapped 
my arms, feeling utterly foolish. Then didn’t feel so 
dumb because I discovered that I really could fly in 
this game level of the MUD. 

I flapped around enjoying the ability to soar for a 
few minutes, then realized I was tiring quickly. Flying 
is more work than I had ever imagined. I recognized 
my needed to simply concentrate on getting down to 
the earth in one piece before I ran out of the oomph 
necessary to stay afloat. 

Going into a long spiral downward, I glanced back 
down at the worms which were now much closer. 
They weren’t worms at all.

 They were snakes. Hundreds and thousands of 
squirming, writhing snakes. Not your harmless garden 
variety of snake, either. They wore cobra hoods and 
were very much without any formal training at snake 
charmer school. They all had Cassius’s lean and 
hungry look that snakes get when they need 
something yummy to swallow. They all looked upward 
expectantly at the foolish creature nonchalantly 
soaring down to their lair. All that was missing was the 
“Lunch is served” announcement. 

Seeing what was below me, I flapped my arms 
violently and climbed upward, my efforts fueled by a 
fresh spurt of adrenaline. I knew my labor would soon 
come to not, but I had a plan. If I was going to die 
anyway, I’d do so by gaining some altitude and then 
going into a dive, crushing myself below and perhaps 
taking a few of the serpents with me in the process. 

 Then I remembered it was only in a game. I swore. 
It was too real, even if fully unbelievable. 
Unfortunately, real or not, the end would be the same 
if I didn’t figure a way out. 

Or would it? 


If I hadn’t got too big a whiff of the jet in the 
Huntington’s home, then there might not be much 
more of a drug trip ahead of me. And if I was really 
still back in my apartment, I had to be nearing the end 
of my jetting session. Either way, all I had to do was 
flap my arms and continue to fly like a bird for a little 
bit longer. 

“Nothing to it,” I muttered as my arm muscle 
started to cramp. I gritted my teeth and continued 
upward, trying to ignore the pain. I don’t know how 
long I maintained my flight upward. I lost all track of 
time and concentrated on just keeping one beat after 
the next going, climbing... 

Climbing... 

One more flap, one more, one more, ad infinitum. 

It went well until I heard the cry of a hawk flying 
high me. And I knew exactly who it most likely was. 
Huntington was getting to be a pain in the posterior 
lobes. “Don’t you ever let up?” I shouted at the 
predator circling over me. 

“And miss all the fun?” it squawked back. 

Everything was starting to gray out. Either the 
altitude was getting to me or the jet was wearing off. 
“Sorry to spoil your fun,” I said, waving as I relaxed 
my arms and fell toward the mass of writhing snakes 
far below me. 

I folded my arms to my sides and aimed my face 
at the ground below. I rapidly picked up speed, the 
wind whistled past, my clothing flapping in the wind. 
The ground accelerated toward me and I was nearly 
on top of the cobras when everything dissolved into 
nothingness. 

I was sitting back in Huntington’s old, run-down 
house. 

Now I’m going to find him, I promised myself, 
picking up my pistol that laid beside me. I wasn’t 


feeling in a very merciful mood. As far as I was 
concerned he’d tried to kill me and had definitely 
killed the two punks who were lying on the carpet 
beside me, their faces both twisted into death masks 
of pain and horror with blood running out their ears 
and noses. 

How he was able to throw people into the middle 
of his MUDs without any hardware connected to their 
scalps was a puzzle. But it was obvious that 
somehow he could do it. 

I would find out and also make him pay. 

I kicked in the nearest door in the hallway, my gun 
held at the ready. 

All that greeted me was with dusty furniture. I took 
a deep breath and went through the same procedure 
for door two. 

And then three, all with the same results: No sign 
of Huntington. 

 Where is he? The telephone dish outside was 
connected into the roof. If I could find the line, I could 
trace it back to his computer. He had to be 
somewhere in the building, perhaps in a hidden room 
or the basement. 

Or in the attic. 

“Might be it,” I muttered, jamming the pistol back 
into the pouch in my armor and checking the ceilings 
for some sign of an attic entrance. Finally I located 
one in the closet of bedroom number two. I pulled a 
dusty old chair into the empty closet, pushed up the 
plastic access plate in the ceiling, and was rewarded 
with a face full of dust. But I knew I was on the right 
track because there was a light in the attic where no 
light should be. 

I grabbed the two sides of the opening above me 
and chinned myself, peeping through the opening to 
be sure there were no traps or Huntington waiting with 


a shotgun. Seeing nothing, I pulled myself on up into 
the attic. 

There was a narrow plastic walkway extending 
from the access door which I followed toward a tiny 
room at the far end of the attic. I paused in front of 
the door, again drawing my gun. Then I kicked it in, 
rushing in like a gang buster. 

 There, in the sights of my pistol, was a telephone 
relay machine attached to a computer. That was it, 
nothing more. 

I holstered the gun, swearing at my stupidity. 

Of course Huntington wasn’t going to be that easy 
to find. He’d simply used a relay system to send his 
signals from his real hideout to this place which then 
relayed them around Topeka. That way, should 
anyone like me track him down, he could simply send 
a signal to the computer to self destruct, taking the 
relay information with it. He could maintain his 
anonymity, sort of like the re-mailers used during the 
late 20th and early 21st Centuries before technology 
made such methods impossible. 

But the computer didn’t look like it had self 
destructed just yet. Maybe there was still a chance to 
trace the path back to Huntington. I approached the 
machine carefully, inspecting it without touching it. 

I saw the tiny, hair-thin wire attached to the 
keyboard. That had to be a booby trap that would 
initiate the self-destruct if someone fooled with the 
machine. 

Or was it? 

Huntington had been a pretty crafty old turkey so 
far. Maybe that was the decoy and— 

There! I told myself as I got down to my hands and 
knees so I could view the small pressure switch under 
the keyboard. I followed both wires to a tiny box 
attacked to the side of the ancient PC, then carefully 


disconnected them. Taking no chances, I removed 
the box of plastic explosives away from the computer 
and myself and checked the area once more for other 
booby traps. 

Finding none, I got down to some serious hacking 
on the computer system Huntington had been using. 

 There were at least three more break-ins while I 
worked up in the attic. But I ignored the first two since 
they’d split when they saw the two bodies in the 
hallway. Most criminals can take a hint that things 
may get ugly if they persist in their crime. 

 The third was a heavy duty dumberd. “You’re a 
dead man,” he told me when he poked his head up 
into the attic to see what was going on. 

 That was the last thing he said before a three-
round burst ended his career so I could get back to 
work. I don’t take kindly to threats. 

 The interruption out of the way, I finished my job, 
finally cracking the code by using Huntington’s own 
phone dish, relaying his encrypted access code to 
Washburn U’s super-computer which did the serious 
number crunching for me while I explored the rest of 
the computer files on the system looking for some 
clue to help me find him. 

Finally the Washburn computer had the code, 
“Vietnam, Class of ‘73.” 

I entered it into the system and was in. By the time 
the Washburn officials tracked the unauthorized use 
of their super-c and sent the police here to collect the 
fine for the umpteen nanoseconds I’d stolen from 
there, I’d be gone. That was if they should even find 
any police volunteers dumb enough to enter the Land 
of Darkness. No sweat stealing the computer time for 


this job. 

 Within minutes of opening Huntington’s forwarding 
system, I had the telephone number he was relaying 
to from here. With that information I hit the net and 
did a backwards search of phone numbers. This told 
me where he must be—or where the next relay was (I 
didn’t put that past him). 

Surprised at the location, but satisfied I had all I 
needed, I backed out of the system and replaced the 
booby traps under and on the keyboard. If the gov 
agents wanted to come in here and blow themselves 
up trying to duplicate what I’d done, who was I to stop 
them? 

After kicking away the bits of skull fragment and 
brains left over by the dumb crook that had 
threatened me, I scrambled through the trap door, 
dropping back into the house, averting my eyes from 
the latest decease’s body. Then I then went 
downstairs, crawled out the opening, and hit the 
mean streets of the Land of Darkness. 

Streaking down the street on my skates, minding 
my own business and avoiding anyone looking like 
trouble, I heard a familiar voice coming out of the 
shadows. “Hold it right there, buddy.” 

 This of course made me speed up. 

But I had to stop because my way was blocked by 
three heavy duties who suddenly were no longer 
milling around and who did have a sticky net, ready to 
embalm me if I tried to get away. 

So I stopped and turned to see the gentleman 
stepping out of the shadows had to say. At first I had 
trouble remembering his ugly puss. Then I realized it 
was the knife wielder elephant that I’d stitched with 


bullets earlier in the night. Only this time he had 
brought a gun to the gun fight. I was looking down its 
.45-caliber barrel. 

Despite the fact that my hands were empty and 
with the elephant man and his three friends I had 
enough meat surrounding me to build a fair-sized 
football team, all was not lost. Because I could see 
the genius with the gun had managed to leave the 
safety engaged on his weapon. And worse yet, he 
came right up to within arm’s length of me. 

“Are you somebody important’s nephew or what?” 
I asked, perplexed that the guy had survived the night 
in the world’s toughest neighborhood for more than a 
few hours. 

“Do you want to eat lead or get into my car?” 

I looked at the car he motioned toward. I needed a 
car and this one would do nicely. I could see the keys 
in the ignition of the ancient Cadillac. And it was 
obviously armored, judging by the two-inch thick 
windows. Big, roomy, engine purring nicely bellowing 
hydrocarbons into the breeze. 

 What more could I ask for? 

I unceremoniously placed the toe of my skate in 
the groin of the elephant man with enough force to do 
the job. Only I could feel that nothing would happen 
since the guy wasn’t quite as dumb as I thought and 
had a metal codpiece under his baggy pants. 

I threw myself forward, twisting his gun out of his 
hands, and at the same time slamming my forehead 
into his chin. Then I twisted, sidestepped one of his 
buddies, and kicked into the side of his knee, 
dropping him with a bellow of pain. 

Not stopping to do more damage, I hopped into 
the Caddie and slammed and locked the door behind 
me before any of the buddies could react. With them 
pounding at the door and turning the air blue with 


their curses, I pulled away from the curb, flashing 
them the peace sign as a way of saying good-bye. 

Actually it was only half a peace sign, more a 
single-finger salute. 

Dead on my feet—or, more correctly, my rump 
since I was driving—I managed to navigate out of the 
Land of Darkness without racking up a body count 
above five. Once into safer territory, I drove to an 
armored parking lot, paid the bot with nearly all the e-
cash I’d collected from my recent exploits, and parked 
in a stall. 

Knowing the security system in the parking lot 
would give me fairly good protection, I reclined the 
front seat with the government-issue pistol across my 
lap and was asleep within minutes. 

I slept dreamlessly for several hours—I know this 
because I later checked the clock in the car. But my 
state of dreamlessness was not to remain. I again 
found myself in one of Huntington’s nightmares. 

I stood up next to a palm tree, the humid air 
smelling of smokeless powder from the recent 
barrage we’d launched into the air at the American 
chopper. I looked around and realized I was now a 
Vietcong. My comrades around me were excited, 
talking rapidly in the sing-song Vietnamese spiced 
with an occasional word in French—all of which I now 
understood fully. We’d just lured the American 
chopper into the cables we’d strung between palms, 
bringing it down in a violent display of flashing blades 
and grinding metal. 

Now we were racing through the brush, intent on 
killing the US pilots who had slain so many of our 
comrades. I realized I was back in a MUD and forced 


myself to hold back, knowing that Huntington was 
probably one of the pilots and that he wasn’t going to 
loose without taking bunches of the other players with 
him. 

I fell away from the squad of Cong, creeping 
through a patch of elephant grass, staying low to 
avoid being hit by the stray bullets cracking over 
head. Ten seconds later I’d transgressed the patch of 
tall vegetation, pushing the last of the foliage aside 
with the barrel of my SKS so I could see what was 
happening in the depression the helicopter had gone 
down in. 

 There, in front of me, were the two American fliers, 
leaning against the side of the chopper. Without 
thinking, I brought up my rifle and took careful aim at 
the helicopter gunner who now wore a bandage over 
one eye—typical Huntington trademark and the type 
of thing that gave him away to me every time. 

Flicking off the safety as I brought my rifle up, I 
placed the ring of the front sight around his head and 
lined the rear notch with the post. Slowly squeezing 
the long trigger pull of the SKS, I took up the slack 
until there was resistance. I kept the front sight 
centered on the gunner’s head as I pulled through the 
last bit of resistance. The rifle kicked back with a 
deafening report. I lowered the barrel in time to see 
the bullet connect, smashing into Huntington’s head, 
causing it to explode thanks to the alterations I’d 
made to the tips of all my bullets. 

 With satisfaction I saw the American’s body 
tumble into a pile of limp flesh. I drew a bead on the 
pilot. 

And didn’t fire. 

Because I abruptly remembered who I really was 
and that this was just a MUD. Whoever was playing 
the part of the pilot might easily stroke out if I blew 


him away now. I withdrew my rifle and hunkered down 
in the grass as the pilot whirled around with his Colt 
.45 pistol, looking for a hint of where the shot that had 
killed his companion had come from. 

He failed to spot me. But I quickly lost interest in 
him; the corpse with its head nearly missing sat up, 
picked up the pieces of its skull, and reassembling 
them atop its body. The torn flesh melted together 
and the zombie stood, drew his gun, and started 
walking directly for my position. 

I woke up screaming in the car. 

I sat up, gulping for air. 

Was that only a dream? I didn’t think so. It was too 
vivid, the feel of the dirt under my body too real—I 
could still smell it, feel the impressions of the tall 
grass under my thin black pajama outfit, the bite of 
the insects. 

No, something very extraordinary was happening 
to me. Somehow I was still going back into the MUD 
games without any exposure to jet and without any 
computer connections to the net. 

And I wasn’t going into them at random. Somehow 
Huntington was pulling me into them, or I was 
somehow gravitating to his games. Either way it 
seemed like only a matter of time until he would finally 
capture and kill me—in the MUD as well as in real life 
when I stroked out. 

Did that mean that my meeting with Alice in the 
Mile-High Building had really happened? I hoped it 
had. The more I thought about her, the more attracted 
I was. It was crazy. I didn’t know her at all. 

I started the engine, knowing that I couldn’t get 
any rest until I’d somehow dealt with Huntington. 
Since he altered the games so he survived and others 
died, the only chance I had was to track him down 
and change the situation face-to-face. The MUDs 


were a no-win situation I must avoid at all costs. 

 When I got to the airport I made two important 
discoveries. One was a body in the trunk—leading to 
a careful wipe down of my prints from the vehicle. The 
second was a briefcase full of e-cash. Things were 
looking up for me, if not the other occupant of the 
limo. 

I loaded my pockets with all the cards I could carry 
in case someone managed to swipe the briefcase 
from me, then put the keys into the truck and 
slammed it shut, hoping it would be a while before 
anyone discovered the body. 

If I’d been smart I would have taken the e-cash 
and split to Tahiti. But I wasn’t sure that distance 
would protect me from getting sucked back into 
Huntington’s games. So I went with plan B. 

After a side junket to an electrical parts store at 
the port authority where the cyberclerks thankfully 
didn’t know me or the police record that prohibited me 
from purchasing computer equipment, I bought the 
gear I thought I might be needing. 

Next I checked all my armament and armor into a 
local lockbox, bought a new business T-shirt and 
plas-pants along with a larger brief case into which I 
transferred my electronic hardware and most of the e-
cash cards, and discarded the old briefcase so it 
couldn’t’ be traced to me. I rounded things off by 
purchasing a snythafur coat at a tourist shop figuring I 
would need it at my final destination. 

I rented a cubicle at the port, cleaned and shaved 
so my fellow passengers wouldn’t faint, and then went 
to the port’s ticket counter and purchased a round trip 
ticket. Half an hour later, all orifices in my body had 


been searched by the bomb squad (standard routine 
for all the passengers, not to worry) and I was on a 
shuttle rocket, headed south. 

Far south. As far as I could go. 


ver been to Antarctica before?” 

the redhead next to me asked. 

I wanted to impress her. But I 

knew she was sharp enough to 

spot a lie. “No,” I finally answered. 

“Me, neither.” 

I was enthrall that we now had 
something in common. Things were definitely looking 
up. Visions of naughtiness danced in my head.

 Then my tigress added, “I’m headed there to meet 
my new husband.” 

 We didn’t talk much the rest of the fifteen minute 
flight.

 The lights warned to fasten seat belts; I pulled my 
shoulder harness tight. Thirty seconds later I was 
plastered into the seat with our violent takeoff. After 
the initial wrench, we were in micro grav during which 
my empty stomach attempted to climb up my 
esophagus. The ship swung around for the next leg of 
the journey which was initiated with another five 
minutes of blast, flattening me into the seat as the 
rockets decelerated our ship. 

 The pulse rockets brought us right to our landing 
pad without incident and the passenger module was 
transferred to the Ronne Ice Shelf Hotel entry port 


where we disembarked into short-sleeve shirt 
comfort. I placed five, hundred-cred cash cards into 
the hotel manager’s slot and gained both a cred 
account keyed to the heat patterns of my face and 
access to the glass observation balcony of the hotel. 

 The floor, railing, and walls were all made of clear 
crystan giving a wide-open view of the slowly moving 
Ronne Ice Shelf which the hotel was built on. The sea 
of ice wore a mantle of newly fallen snow, whipped 
about by the howling Antarctic wind. No penguins or 
tourists were to be seen outside in the cold, polar 
daylight. 

Along the balcony beside me stood a cluster of 
tourists that you’d expect to find anywhere else on the 
Earth or Moon. A few of the men wore formal glow 
suits with non-wife rentals in multicolored sequin-
infested dresses cut to see-level hanging on their 
renters’ arms. But most of those on the deck wore 
usual T-shirts and shorts or plastipants similar to what 
I wore. 

Most of those on the balcony were pointing toward 
some unseen landmark lost in the snow and arguing 
about where it must be. I’m not sure why this was 
important and did my best to ignore them, instead 
admiring the cloud of snow that was buffeting the 
hotel, giving the illusion that we were hurtling through 
space with the giant flakes careening past us. 

 Though I didn’t grow tired of the sight, I knew it 
was time to get to work. I took the elevator down to 
the main lobby and crossed to the desk. 
“Reservations?” the highly polished bronze bot behind 
the clear counter asked. 

“I afraid I don’t have any,” I replied. “Had to come 
here unexpectedly. I'm hoping you have a small room 
available.” 

“Normally we don’t. But today’s your lucky day 


because a party of four has been lost for two days 
now with grave doubts as to whether they’ll be 
returning. So we’re letting out their rooms. Do you 
mind a large suite?” 

I started to protest that it would be too expensive, 
then remembered the briefcase full of e-cash that I 
was carrying. “No problem.” 

“I think you’ve made a wise decision,” the bot said 
as I deposited ten of the larger cards into his chest. 
“We’ll credit the surplus to your account. I think you’ll 
enjoy your room. It comes complete with a built-in 
food and drink dispenser, choice of three uh, 
entertainers to help you while away the cold winter 
nights, and —” 

“Could you put my briefcase in a safe place?” I 
interrupted. 

“Most certainly,” the bot gushed. 

I took out the sack of electronics gear and 
purchased, then closed the case and shoved it across 
the counter to him. 

“I’ll put it in our safe immediately. Here’s the 
bellhop. 

A small bot came up to me. “Do you have any 
luggage?” it squeaked. 

“No luggage. Just lead the way.” 

“Thank you, sir,” the bot behind the desk said. 
“Enjoy your stay.” 

I waved and followed the knee high bellhop which 
led the way to the elevators with a whirring of servo 
motors. 

“Here on business,” the bot asked as the elevator 
doors closed. 

“Little business, little pleasure.” Not wanting to 
reveal more about myself to a machine that was most 
likely recording everything I said, I changed the 
subject. “Is there a gift shop around here? I’ll probably 


be needing some things.” 

“On the third floor,” the bot pointed with a tiny 
appendage toward the clear floor above us where a 
large shopping mall suspended on stainless steel 
beams. “The elevators at the end of each hall will 
take you to it. Here we are at your floor. This way, 
please.” 

I followed my round guide down the hallway which 
radiated light from its translucent floors. The floors 
became an opaque bluish white as we reached the 
area of the guest rooms. 

 The door to my room opened as we approached. 
Although it was formed of plastic, my room appeared 
to be carved out of the bluish ice with a dark blue 
carpet. I regretted that my e-cash would soon run out. 
This would be a great place to crash for the rest of my 
life. 

“The food dispenser is there,” the bot said, 
pointing with its claw and adding to my remorse that I 
wouldn’t stay long. “The net-jack and telephone, 
there. And the beds fold out from inside those blue 
lines in the wall. Tables and chairs are the red circles 
on the floor. Just hit the yellow release area for any of 
them. The modi-bath is through there. What 
temperature would you like your room to be 
maintained at?” 

“Uh, seventy-two Fahrenheit would be fine,” I 
answered. 

“Anything else you need?” the bot asked. 
“Anything at all,” it added in a conspiratorial whisper. 
All that was missing was the wicked wink. 

“That should take care of me,” I said, holding out a 
small denom e-card. 

 The claw darted out of the top of the bot and 
snatched the card. “Thank you. Enjoy your stay.” 

“Wait a minute. Could you get me any Doze


178 


Less?” 

 The bot swiveled to face me and was silent a 
moment, undoubtedly checking its sources. It finally 
spoke. “No problem. Twelve tablets be enough?” 

“More than.” 

“I’ll bring them to you momentarily.” The bot rolled 
out the door which closed behind it. 

I hit the recessed release studs on the floor and a 
small table and chair hissed up. Then I hit the food 
dispenser. It had been nearly thirty-six hours since I’d 
last eaten and I was famished. If I was going to meet 
Huntington and risk death again, at least I wanted to 
do it on a full stomach. 


he bot delivered the Doze-Less tablets and 

I took two. I knew I couldn’t go without 

sleep for too much longer without starting to 

hallucinate so I had to work fast or risk 

being sent back to a place like Timothy 

Leery’s Home for the Addicted. I carefully 
assembled the gear I’d purchased before my trip and 
tapped into the phone line with my new laptop comp. 

“All right, Huntington,” I said as my computer 
searched through the phone logs of the area, “let’s 
see where you are.” Within moments I had the 
information and backed out of the system—I hoped 
before anyone knew I’d been in. I had an address— 
but it didn’t do me a whole lot of good since the 
Antarctic isn’t divided up into addresses like the rest 
of the civilized—or lack thereof—world. 

An address of McTavish 121-085 didn’t tell me a 
lot. Fortunately a trip to a search engine on the net 
would help out. I entered the address and crossed my 
fingers, hoping Huntington, with all of a whole 
continent to choose from, hadn’t gone hog wild and 
placed his hideout in the middle of the ice someplace 
next to nowhere. I was hoping that even someone 
with the monetary resources he had would have tried 
to save money by keeping his supply lines short, 


locating close to the only major settlement on the 
continent. 

 The page came up, starting with the usual ad. 

Planning a Trip to Antarctica? 

Fly the Friendly Skies of Yeltsin Airlines. 

No frills, just the thrills. 
Click here for a travel agent near you. 

The ad over, the search engine got down to 
business: 

The Solar Atlas Search Page. 
Search Results of McTavish 121-085: 
Earth: Longitude: 70.52°, Latitude: 82.23° 
For New Search, Click Here. 
For Map, Click Here. 
For Hot Naked Bodies, Click Here. 


I copied the coordinates to a hard print out, 
realizing that I was in luck. Huntington’s lair must be 
just a short distance from where I was. I would need 
to organize an expedition to visit him. 

I felt a sharp pain in my pocketbook, knowing such 
an junket wouldn’t come cheap. 

It took four hours and some e-cash under the table 
to get a tourist excursion tractor diverted for my 
impromptu trip. The expedition arranged, twenty 
minutes later I found myself plodding through the 
snow in the space-explorer suit they’d issued to me. 
The heater in the outfit kept me a few degrees above 
hypothermia and almost succeeded in keeping the 
inside of my fishbowl helmet from fogging up. 

“So why didn’t you visit Hawaii?” my guide, Don 
Smeel asked. He’d already got under my skin and 
made me wonder why there weren’t more ax murders 


in Antarctica. 

“Needed to drop in on an old friend,” I answered. A 
heavy gust of wind threatened to knock me over and 
sent a shower of ice rattling off my helmet. 

“We’re almost there,” Smeel told me needlessly as 
we trudged to the 20 meter geodesic aluminum and 
plastic dome that was his home base. In minutes we 
were through the air dock, into a junk-filled space that 
made me claustrophobic. Then we were in his snow 
tractor, headed out across the snow and ice. 

“So what’s your friend doing way out here?” Frank 
asked with his normal, whiny voice. 

“He likes his privacy, I guess.” 

“Hey, you’re not a reporter, are you?” 

“No.” 

“Tax collector?” 

“Smeel, if I paid you another hundred, do you 
suppose you could keep from asking questions?” 

“Thought you’d never ask.”

 We traveled the rest of the way in blessed, 
peaceful silence. 

I suppose some would think vast stretches of snow 
and ice and blue sky beautiful. I found myself longing 
for my grimy streets of New Kansas. And I wondered 
if I could ever walk the streets of Topeka with the thrill 
I got every time I avoided a mugger or Harvey. 

“It’s straight ahead, about a hundred yards,” Smeel 
told me, jerking me from my reverie. The lack of sleep 
was beginning to have its effect, despite the Doze-
Less I’d been snarfing down. 

“Don’t get too close—I want to surprise him.” 

“You won’t have any problem surprising him. With 
this wind, the engine noise will be up in Argentina 


long before he hears it. If we stop fifty meters away 
he won’t know you’re on top of him. Hey, you’re not 
going to —” 

I glared at Smeel. 

“Sorry. Forgot our deal. I’m stopping here. Be sure 
to leave your suit’s radio on so I can call you if we 
need to bug out in a hurry. Looks like there’s a storm 
coming in and we may need to leave before long. 

“You got it.” 

Smith slowed down the tractor, taking its tracks off 
line but keeping the engine revved up so it would 
continue to generate heat. “He’s straight ahead, right 
where that flag is. Looks like he’s dug in good.” 

“Thanks. I’ll be back in about ten minutes.” 

I hoped. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to 
do when I found Huntington, but most of the ideas I 
had didn’t involve more than a few minutes of work 
with a crowbar. 

I unlatched the tractor door and opened it, fighting 
the wind to keep it from slamming shut, and stepped 
out on the snow. Carefully latching the door behind 
me, I turned and sighted the tiny red flag flapping in 
the wind. I realized how easy it would be to get lost on 
foot and was thankful for a reference point to head 
for. 

After two minutes of heavy labor fighting my suit 
and the wind, I was at Huntington’s front door. As 
before, the place was wired and—I suspected— 
booby trapped. So I employed my same tactic: I went 
through the wall. This time the job was easy. A few 
kicks to the plastic material forming the dome and I 
had a new entrance. 

I eased myself through the opening, dropping 
down into the buried dome that formed Huntington’s 
home, wishing I had some sort of weapon. A nearby 
metal vase was lying on a small table near the door. I 


picked it up, hoping it would suffice. 

Ten minutes later I had avoided the traps 
Huntington had laid only to discover another 
computer relay system. My trip to the Antarctic had 
been more or less a wild goose chase. Feeling like 
weeping, I cracked his computer system again and 
got the next phone number in the links he was using. 

“Better get back to the tractor,” Smeel’s voice 
crackled over the radio set in my helmet. 

“I’m coming out now,” I said. With any luck we’d 
get buried in the storm. I was sick from lack of sleep 
and frustration in trying to track Huntington down. 

Was it worth it? 

I wasn’t so sure any longer. 

Despite my best of intentions, I fell asleep during 
the storm that overtook us. Smeel didn’t wake me; he 
was busy fighting the controls of the tractor, bucking 
the wind to follow the homing beacon back to the 
home base, mindful that he might easily run into a 
large crevasse if he didn’t remain sharp. 

My nap was unlike anything I’d experienced. My 
mind seemed to almost fly on its own, seemingly 
jumping from place to place and even through time. I 
had little doubt that much of it was purely an illusion 
brought on by lack of sleep. And yet it remained 
extremely vivid, like the super-reality experienced 
when hitting a well-written MUD with maximum jet 
coursing through my veins. 

I seemed to twist through a dimension my mind 
couldn’t grasp but somehow could use. Over and 
around I moved, ending behind an old man in a wheel 
chair in a darkened room. 

“Who’s there?” his voice called. He spun around to 


face me, his single eye glaring with anger. “What are 

you doing here?” 

“I could ask you the same question,” I replied. 

 The man slowly morphed, melting into a puddle of 
slime that oozed onto the floor and flowed toward me. 

“If I had a mop I’d take care of this little problem of 
yours,” I said with a grin. 

 The material congealed and then reformed itself, 
growing into a huge python unlike anything Mother 
Nature had ever seen. Because this snake formed a 
huge rattle with fangs to match, dripping venom as it 
rose to strike at me. 

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said, pulling my image 
backward like a super-zoom of a high-powered 3D 
camera. The snake telescoped away from me at an 
accelerating rate until I was racing away first from the 
home next to the beach, then into the sky over the 
city, and finally zipping away from the Florida 
peninsula and then the Earth itself. I wheeled around 
the planet twice, marveling at the beauty of clouds, 
land, and sea, feeling a wonder at the beauty of my 
home. 

 Then I started a long, fast dive into the sun. As I 
neared it, the heat became almost unbearable. I’d 
made a mistake. I had to get out in a hurry or— 

I started and sat up, wide awake in the tractor. 

“Bad dream?” Smeel asked. 

“Yeah,” I answered, forgetting our deal. 

“This weather inspires bad dreams. Sometimes I 
think all the bad dreams flow south and freeze here 
around the pole, waiting to be rediscovered.” 

I shuddered at his idea. 

“You can relax,” he said. “We’re almost back.” 

“Great,” I said. But it didn’t seem so great. Had it 
just been a bad dream? Or were Huntington and I 
somehow linked? 


If I’d been faced with my nearly insurmountable 
problem of tracking Huntington down a few days 
earlier I would have simply lied down and played 
dead. Yet now something in me refused to give in. If 
the guy was going to ruin my life, even rob me of my 
sleep and dreams, I figured I owed him a black eye or 
two. 

And now I was determined to at least do that much 
damage before checking out of this life. 


was racing time now. Any time I sat down or 
attempted to rest, the dreams reoccurred, 
usually putting me somewhere close to 
Huntington or in places that were unlike 
anything I’d seen before, even in the 
psychedelic MUDs. 

 Worse, I still had no idea whether the dreams 
were reality or simply nightmares. Most were too 
strange to believe. 
Yet I didn’t want to risk falling asleep on the off 
chance that what I thought were dreams might be 
real. 

After using my room’s computer to tracking down 
the next link in Huntington’s phone relay system, I 
checked out of my hotel and exchanged my return 
ticket to Topeka for one to Miami. Twenty minutes 
later, I left Antarctica and arrived without incident at 
Miami; from there I took a roboplane across the 
Caribbean Unitico mainland to Sarasota, nearly 
exhausting the small fortune I’d collected in unmarked 
e-cash. 

My very last e-mail went toward the purchase of a 
fake ID and the money needed to rent a car for what I 
hoped would be the last leg of my journey. 

I then proceeded on a trip that would have 


been a rubber-necker for an urbanite like myself had I 
not been in such a hurry. 

 The new airport was well outside the city, located 
in a vast stretch of grassland interspersed with pines, 
palmettos, and thick under-brush. Cattle—the real 
thing, not plastic imitations—meandered through 
pastures, each cow followed by an entourage of tall, 
white cattle egrets. Each bird matter-of-factly gobbled 
up the insects disturbed by the passing cattle. 

I downed the last of my Doze-Less tablets as I 
continued driving, the grassland and scrub brush was 
bathed in an orange sunset and then the wilderness 
gradually gave way to tourist traps and small business 
buildings as nightfall approached.

 The ancient Ringling estates had somehow 
survived being within eight miles of the nuclear blast 
that had leveled the area nearly twenty-five years 
before and the grounds had been restored for at least 
the third time since being built in the late eighteen 
hundreds. 

After I had passed these, I headed south for a 
short time, checking the navigator and then turned 
west down the John Ringling Causeway to Lido Key. 
Being a historical preserved zone, Sarasota’s 
buildings and housing were very nearly like what they 
had before the bomb—or at least what the experts 
thought they must have been like. That translated into 
very expensive real estate. 

Soon I was circling the drive that had been 
designated by my phone number search of computer 
files. Most of the area was empty, no one yet having 
collected the money needed to rebuilt the estates that 
had once dotted the beach here. But there was one 
home, a massive two story pink stucco Florida house, 
that I hoped would be the final resting place of one 
Jeff Huntington. 


I drove past the wrought-iron fence that hugged 
the street, parking beneath a giant palm tree draped 
with gray-green Spanish moss. Checking to be sure 
no one was watching, I quietly got out of the car, 
searched the fence for visible sensors, and seeing 
none, vaulted over the low obstacle. 

Scrambling through the scrub pine, I was 
rewarded with the low hum of an air-conditioning unit 
at the side of the house. That’s a good sign. 
Huntington didn’t seem like someone that would run 
an air-conditioner to cool an empty house. Maybe I 
was finally going to meet to him flesh-to-flesh. 

Since most people put their maximum burglar 
defenses on the front door instead of where the 
devices should be on the side entrances and 
windows, I avoided the wide front porch and instead 
scooted along the mock orange bushes to a side 
window. Stopping at the first one I found, I pulled a 
tiny infrared/ultrasonic detector from my jacket and 
scanned the potential entrance. 

Nothing. 

Huntington was making this too easy. But I was 
too tired to worry about the possibility of a trap. I 
reached through the edge of the antique window 
frame with the cheap pocketknife I’d acquired from a 
thug outside the airport and quickly opened the lock. 
Easing the window up, I slipped into the house. 

I found myself standing in what seemed almost a 
palace, even in the dim light from the street lamp 
outside. 

 The burglar genes in my DNA forced my mouth to 
drool. 

 Wide oak doors graced the foyer and faint 
rainbows cast by the outside street light spanned out 
from the beveled glass in the front door. There was 
wooden—not plastic—furniture and oil paintings on 


the walls. Much as I hated to admit it, the room was 
tastefully decorated with antique-style furniture, much 
of which looked original. 

 Through the archway on my left I could see the 
huge living room, containing overstuffed Queen Anne 
chairs. The sound of music drifted down from the floor 
above; a small elevator in the hallway suggested 
Huntington really was still wheelchair bound. 

I crossed to the arched doorway and shoved the 
partially open door around, entering the living room. 
There, his back to me, sat Huntington in front of a 
computer monitor. I took a step toward him. 

His motorized wheelchair hummed, turning him to 
face me. “I’d been expecting you,” the one-eyed man 
said. 

“So you’re psychic now, too.” 

He laughed. “More like knowing water would seek 
its own level. You’re the first to approach my 
capabilities. I figured it was only a matter of time 
before one of us killed the other or you’d drop by for a 
visit. Won’t you have a seat?” 

I started to reject his proposal, preferring to keep 
on my feet in case he had a manservant with a 
butcher knife waiting in the wings. 

But the moment I opened my mouth to say no, 
the chirping of a bird volumned out instead of words. 

Then an invisible hand shoved me into the 
cushioned chair that seemed to walk up behind me 
on its four legs. 


can see you’re puzzled by my 
powers,” Huntington said, a wicked 
smile on his lips. “And to be honest I 
was puzzled by them at first, too. It 
started with exposure to the new 
version of jet I concocted for use on 

the MUDs. I discovered it permitted me to alter the 
rules somewhat. Now I can control reality the same 
way, without having to enter a MUD. Life and 
imagination are almost the same thing for me.” 

“I think it’s called insanity.” 

“It borders on that,” Huntington agreed. “But I have 
to say I’m perplexed by the fact that what one can do 
in cyberspace now has somehow carried over into 
real life. That I’ve been unable to explain. Watch this.” 
He closed his eye and a standing version of him 
appeared next to the wheel-chair-bound version. 

“Now,” the standing version said, “which is more 

real? This version of me or the former?” 
“This is a trick questions, isn’t it?” 
Huntington’s duplicate laughed. Then he stepped 

toward me and slapped my face. “Did that feel real?” 

“Definitely,” I said, glaring at him, determined to 
return the favor with a kick to the groin if he failed to 
stay clear of my feet. 


“I hate to have to hurt you,” the image said. “You 
probably won’t believe it, but it is very true. Yet it 
seems to be the only way I can make a lasting 
impression on people.” 

“You can quit now because I doily impressed.” 

“I hope so.” 

“The dreams?” I prompted. 

“Oh, yes. That’s another side-effect. It seems that I 
can invade your dreams the same way I can the 
MUDs. Recently I’ve found I can enter either without 
any need of a computer connection or hard wiring. It’s 
all in the mind. The first sign was when I started to 
notice that those around my transponders or close to 
the MUD home sites were getting drawn into my 
games.” 

“Causing sightings of Vietnam helicopters and 
dragons.” 

“Exactly. Now, since you and that girl—“ 

“Alice?” 

“Yes. You and she seem to have become an 
integral part of my dreams and games. And 
unfortunately I’ve tired of you and will have to end 
your participation.” 

I didn’t like the sound of that. 

“You’d be amazed at the abilities I’ve achieved the 
last few days.” Huntington number two walked over to 
a table and removed a cigarette from an ornate box 
on it. He checked to be sure I was watching, then 
snapped his fingers, producing a flame that floated in 
the air, traveling slowly to the tip of his cigarette which 
he puffed to life. “No doubt this might be duplicated 
by cheap pallor magic. But you don’t have to go to all 
the work to create the machinery for the illusion this 
way. You can have a lot of fun if you have enough 
self discipline to learn how. My fear is that you and 
Alice might also gain this capability. I fear there isn’t 


room in Valhalla for more than one god—if you catch 
my drift.” 

 That gave me an idea. I concentrated on getting 
my hands free of the restraints of the chair. They 
melted away and I stood. 

“Very well done,” Huntington said, clapping his 
hands together several times. “But I think you’ll have 
to do better than that if you want to survive.” He 
clicked his fingers and the cigarette in his hand 
transformed itself into a military flame rifle. 

 Whose flame wasn’t lit. 

I hoped his mental version of the flame rifle 
worked the same as the real thing. If it did, that meant 
it took an extra hand movement to light the flame 
before it could be fired. 

I created a pistol in my hand. A pistol loaded and 
with its safety off. I aimed my weapon, not at the 
standing Huntington, but instead at the head of the 
seated Huntington, crossing over to stand next to the 
unconscious figure. “You can flame me,” I told his 
Doppelgänger, “but I can still get off a round into the 
real McCoy, here. Burning is a painful death but not 
quick. I have a feeling that a bullet through the brain 
of the real you might work wonders on curbing your 
mental abilities.” 

 The standing Huntington turned white as a sheet 
and took a step back. “It’s a little soon for that. Tell 
me, did you ever wonder if the constructs in a MUD 
game could think. Or if they might imagine they were 
alive as long as the game lasted?” 

“Constructs are just code. Nothing more.” 

“Yet, as you’ve seen, it is possible to get to the 
point where imagination and reality are one and the 
same. Right now you’re talking to a construct. Yet I 
feel totally real, as real as my original self. And better 
in some ways. I have two eyes—and could grow two 


more if I wished. I can walk, think, speak. I can breed 
children or create a flock of birds with a snap of my 
finger.” 

“But you can’t survive a bullet through the brain of 
your creator,” I said, keeping my pistol pointed at the 
original Huntington’s head. 

“Suppose you learned you were a construct? An 
artificial man who thought he was real. Who had 
memories like those you receive in the MUD. 
Memories that seem so real, yet are only so much 
code.” 

I mulled that over for a terrible moment, my faith in 
myself having been shaken for just a few long 
seconds. “An interesting metaphysical thought, but 
one I can’t buy since I’m inside my head and know I’m 
real.” 

“Are you?” 

Abruptly I was standing on the other side of the 
room, looking at myself with my gun at the Huntington 
in the wheelchair. I stood with the ancient armor of 
the White Knight which clanked when I took a step 
toward myself. 

“Now, which one is the real you?” Huntington’s 
image asked. “Tell me. Do you feel real? Do you still 
have memories of the past?” 

“I don’t know how you’re pulling off these stunts, 
but I know they’re all illusion. My memories are real.” 
That’s what I told him. 

Deep down inside, I wasn’t so sure. It’s one thing 
to know something, another to see yourself standing 
where you were while having your mind in a second, 
identical body. Reality had been turned wrong-side 
out for me. 

“Put the bullet through his head,” I told my other 
self that was still standing with the pistol. “Do it now.” 

My duplicate did nothing. Perhaps it was only an 


illusion created to confuse me. I didn’t’ know. But one 
thing I did know. Sooner or later Huntington was 
going to kill me if I stood in confusion and did nothing. 

I drew my sword and threw it at the Huntington in 
the wheelchair, the tip headed directly for his heart. 
The sword abruptly stopped about two feet from his 
chest, caught in a shimmering veil of light. Then it 
turned and flew through the air, its hilt ending in 
Huntington’s image’s hand. 

“Close but no cigar,” he sneered. “Almost had me, 
there.” He flexed the blade, testing it with practice 
strokes through the air. “So this is the vorpal blade? 
Hummm... Looks like it is made of molecular steel. 
Did you know this type of metal is super-sharp and 
cuts like a hot knife through butter when it comes to 
armor. Or so I’m told.” 

I backed away. 

And discovered a wall behind me where the 
entrance to the room had been. 

“Can’t have you running away, can we?” The 
duplicate made his move, the blade singing through 
though the air and clanging against the armor on my 
leg before continuing its arch. 

I attempted to jump away and discovered I now 
had only one leg, blood gushing from the stump 
where my other one had been. 

“A blade this sharp doesn’t hurt much, does it?” 
Huntington said. “A little thought will make that wound 
quit bleeding. There, you see?” 

Sure enough, the wound had stopped bleeding. 

“Did you ever consider what makes you who you 
are?” Huntington said as I tried to crawl away from 
him. “If I cut off your leg. No, let’s make that your legs 
—” He slashed and I felt a chilling pain in my 
remaining leg and looked down in horror at my other 
severed leg. 


“Yes,” Huntington continued. “That’s more like it. 
Won’t be running off, now will you?” He kicked at my 
legs which were still twisting about on the floor as if 
they had a life of their own. “My, you’re just full of life 
today. Maybe this will help.” 

For the next few minutes he hacked my legs into 
pieces. While he was distracted with his new pastime, 
I tried to pull what was left of me to safety. 

“Not going away, are we?” Huntington said, 
stepping to block my path. “Now then, I have a 
philosophical problem for you. If we cut off your legs, 
suddenly they’re not a part of you—Ralph—anymore. 
They’re just so much cast-off flesh once they leave 
you. Yet you are still you, even without your legs. 
Odd, isn’t it? Or if we graft them back on—please 
note the if—do you become more than you were 
before without the legs? Can you be less Ralph or 
more Ralph? There’s more to this experiment. I 
wonder...” 

He slashed and I saw my armored arm go 
clanging to the floor. I sprawled on the floor, dragging 
my head and torso away from Huntington with my 
remaining arm, wondering how long it would take me 
to die if he continued to somehow stop the bleeding 
from the wounds he was creating. 

“Hold still, will you?” Huntington demands. “How 
do you expect me to conduct my experiment. One 
arm—and you’re still you. How very odd indeed.” 

I continued my crude attempt at escape. 

“All right then,” he said, stepping toward me with 
the sword held above his head. 

Another searing pain announced the cut. 

“There, totally disarmed as it were,” Huntington 
said. “Now I need to do some more hacking, 
otherwise I can see that your parts are going to try to 
rejoin you. That’s always a problem in our changing 

196 


world of thought. Nothing ever stays quite in place if 
you don’t make sure to keep it in place.” 

I watched helplessly as he hacked apart my arms. 
Then he turned back to what was left of me. “Any last 
words?” 

I remained silent, fighting back the pain and fear. 

He raised the sword. “Farewell, then.” 

 There was a violent pain through my neck, and 
then I felt my head rolling across the floor. I opened 
my eyes. 

“What?” Huntington said in mock disbelief. “Still 
alive? Let’s see how you are at swimming without a 
body.” He picked my head up by the hair, went to the 
window, and tossed me into the pool. 

I sank downward into the black water, into the 
silence of the depths. 

Finally, I thought, the peace of death. 


magine many ragged and very crude animals, all 
telepathic and all intent on mating at once. That’s 
basically the “feel” that seemed to extend 
between my drowning head and tiny bits that had 
been the rest of me. Somehow, in my state of 
semi-consciousness, I was aware of my cells 

communicating, of fingers and limbs wriggling and 
moving spasmodically, trying to get back into one 
perfect whole again. Little by little they succeeded, 
reassembling into what I once had been. 

My face broke through the surface of the water, 

and I gasped for breath in the cold night air. 
“There you are, White Knight,” Alice’s voice called. 
I reached up with hands that were again part of 

me and shoved the water out of my eyes. Lungs that 
were once again connected filled with the cool, fresh 
air. 

“You’d better get out of the water before you catch 
your death of pneumonia,” Alice scolded. 

I waded ashore onto the sandy beach, faintly lit by 
the light radiating from Alice. That’s right. She was 
now only six inches tall, not counting her gossamer 
wings; and a cool, blue will-’o-the-wisp light that 
emanated from her skin and wings. I stared at her 
beautiful perfection a moment, then double-checked 


to be sure I was really back together. Satisfied I was 
in one piece, I finally spoke, “Thanks for getting me 
back together.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean—getting me back together. Getting all the 
bloody little chunks of me back into one piece. Not 
even a stitch shows.” 

“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about,” Alice 
said, rising into the air on her fluttering wings and 
giving me a once over like a hungry hummingbird 
eyeing a large flower. “I’ve never seen you any less 
together than you are right now. In fact it’s hard to 
imagine you being any less together than you 
normally are.” 

“All right. Joke all you want. But I still owe you.” 

“Is this some sort of come-on?” 

I laughed. “No. I’m serious. Huntington hacked me 
apart and tossed my head in his swimming pool. 
Somehow I got back together and I just figured you 
had—You did reassemble me, didn’t you? Seriously.” 

“I didn’t do any such thing. You must have done it 
yourself. You underestimate yourself all too often, it 
seems to me. You undoubtedly put yourself back 
together and brought yourself here. I certainly had 
nothing to do with it and I’m sure Huntington didn’t, 
either, or he’d be a crocodile or something intent on 
swallowing us whole. But I’m certain that he can’t find 
us here. This is our private place.” 

“But I wasn’t conscious of doing anything,” I 
protested. “I was dying. Or at least I should have 
been.” For a moment I felt a glimmer of memory, of 
pieces joining together and rising up out of the dark 
water. 

I shivered. 

“You’re cold. Let’s get that armor off and get you 
all dried off. You really will catch your death of 

199 


pneumonia if you stay like that.” 

“Now who’s being suggestive.” 

“Fat chance,” Alice said, fluttering in front of my 
face and waving her tiny fist at me. “You think I could 
risk sex with you when I’m only six inches tall? What 
a terrifying though.” Alice put her hands on either side 
of her face with an expression of mock horror. 

I laughed as she zipped away, then turned and 
returned to her original spoke, ten inches from my 
face. 

“Besides,” she continued, “I’m not that kind of girl. 
If I were, I’d have taken on the form of the Birth of 
Venus or something equally classical yet provocative. 
Now quit your sophomoric daydreaming and take off 
that armor before you rust into a solid piece of iron 
oxide and I have to chisel you out with my tiny little 
hands. While you’re doing that, I’ll build the fire.” 

Her job went more quickly than I thought it would. 
A brilliant spark shot from her, striking a pile of drift 
wood which burst into a bright and warm bonfire. 

I took a cue from her, closed my eyes, and the 
armor vanished from my body. I got closer to the 
warm fire, letting it drive the chill from my bones. 

 We sat together there by the fire, and I told her all 
I knew about Huntington and what had happened. 
She squeezed my hand and then we said noting for a 
long time. Later I learned that Alice was not totally 
truthful with me. As we sat beside the fire, she slowly 
grew to full size, her form changing as well; she was 
no longer a young girl. She was now all woman. I also 
discovered that, at least where I was concerned, she 
was that kind of girl after all. 

* * * ** 

Morning came. I basked in the sunshine, eyes 


closed, a soft cotton blanket under me. Opening my 
eyes I discovered myself lying on the beach next to 
the smoldering embers of last night’s fire. I sat up and 
looked around. 

 There was no sign of Alice. 

I looked around the area where I found myself. 
The forest nearly crept up to the shoreline and it 
looked like the kind of place King Kong and his giant 
lizard friends would pick for a playground. The last 
thing I wanted to do was go into it and look for Alice. 
What could have happened to her? 

I turned toward the ocean which seemed was 
bubbling and churning. I reached fro my sword—and 
realized I was standing defenseless with a bunch of 
other less’s thrown in as well. I commenced a frantic 
search for my clothing, half expecting the Loch Ness 
monster to come wading ashore after me—nothing 
was too awful to imagine after the last few days of 
Huntington and his nightmares. 

Instead of a horrible monster, the exact opposite 
bubbled to the surface: Alice, this time doing an exact 
rendition of the Birth of Venus, right down to the 
clamshell and costume. 

Or lack thereof. 

I couldn’t resist commenting on her outfit. “I 
thought you said that you’d never appear like —“ 

“That was last night. Woman’s prerogative to 
make a new fashion statement with the dawning of a 
another day. Were you born in Kansas?” 

“Now that you mention it...” 

“Stand back, shut up, and listen. And close your 
mouth; you look like a perfect bore.” 

I didn’t remark that “no one is perfect” because 
when it came to looking at perfectly formed woman, I 
figured I came pretty close to being the perfect bore. 
Instead I closed my mouth and attempted not to look 


like the perfect bore. 

Alice climbed out of her shell and waded ashore, 
splashing through the gentle waves. 

 Then she fought off my advances. “I said shut up 
and listen, you moron. Maybe I should slip into 
something more appropriate. Let’s see. Something 
nice in barbed wire, perhaps.” 

“Okay, I’ll behave,” I lied. “I promise. Just stay as 
you are.” 

“Come on,” she said, taking my hand. 

I trudged alongside her down the long white 
beach. And was disappointed to learn she really did 
just want to talk. 

“It’s time we held a council of war,” Alice said, 
squeezing with my hand in hers. “It’s time to go on the 
offensive.” 

“Can’t we just stay here the rest of our lives. That 
wouldn’t be so bad. Besides, I’ve been offensive all 
my life.” 

“Get serious, Ralph. Stop to think about hiding out. 
Huntington isn’t going to leave us alone. We’re his 
only threat as far as I know. No one else has survived 
playing in the MUDs with him.” 

“So sooner or later he’ll be out for our blood,” I 
said, finishing her line of thought for her. 

“Exactly. After last night I’d think you of all people, 
would realize that just sitting tight is—” 

“All right,” I said, trying not to shudder at the 
memory of being chopped asunder. 

“Huntington needs to be stopped,” she continued. 
“Have you ever thought about what he’s up to—I 
mean beyond playing around at the MUDs and 
honing his skills? Think about what he’s doing.” 

I stopped and scratched my head, doing my best 
ape imitation no doubt. “I suppose he can do about 
anything he wants to do at this point,” I finally said, 


rejoining her on her walk down the beach. “He can 
build any world he needs in his mind and be anything 
he wants to be. Why would he want anything else?” 

“But why would he stop there? Huntington seems 
like a very ambitious man to me.” 

“Ah, the most dangerous kind of man. Ambitious. 
Something you’ll never have to worry about with me, 
my dear.” 

“No doubt about that. But just stop and think. He 
wants it all and always has to win. With his ability to 
project illusions, what’s going to stop him from taking 
over and running the country—running the world. He 
could make soldiers launch counterattacks to retaliate 
against his illus ional assaults. Or make bodyguards 
shoot the person they’re protecting because they 
mistook them for an assassin. He could shove 
everything around however he wanted. Little by little 
he’ll gain control of the whole world.” 

“Like he’d do a worse job than what we have now.” 

“You’re impossible. Just —” 

“Okay, already. I’m not quite as dense as you 
seem to think. As things are now we have a rough 
check and balance system. The governments, 
corporations, and crime organizations more or less 
cancel each other out—though arguably they all have 
the worst possible things in mind for the little guys 
most of the time.” 

“Not really. They exploit us. But only to a point. 
They can’t do too much or they’ll kill the geese that 
lay the golden eggs.” 

Now I was a goose laying eggs. I wasn’t making 
much progress on my walk along the beach. “Okay,” I 
finally said. “I’m not sure I buy the idea that he could 
take over the world. But let’s say Huntington needs to 
be stopped. Why don’t I just go back to wherever 
civilization is and call the gov and some of the thugs I 


know. They can round him up, ace him, or whatever 
they have in mind. End of problem for all concerned.” 

“Because even if they could do that, they’d end up 
with the modified jet he used to expand his mind. It 
may be that you and I are rare birds that can acquire 
this enhanced mental ability simply by exposure to it 
over the wires. But I have a feeling that the 
modification of the jet formula that Huntington made 
would work on almost anyone exposed to it.” 

“You’re probably right. I think the hood that hired 
me is after it already.” The thought of someone like 
Death being able to control people’s minds was 
troubling. Worse than being cut into pieces. 

Alice saw she’d got to me and went for the kill. 
“Can we risk criminals welding with the power of this 
new jet? Do you want to have the responsibility of 
having the world wrecked by hoodlums on your 
head?” 

“Much as I hate to admit it, no. And we’ll always be 
a danger to anyone who gains access to jet,” I said. 
“Because we might be able to stop them. That means 
they’d be trying to kill us the same way Huntington is 
now.” 

“Right,” she said, stopping and taking both my 
hands in hers. “As long as we’re alive, we’re a threat. 
Sooner or later they would figure out a way to destroy 
us. Hack us up and burn some of the parts, launch 
our heads into space, or—“ 

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I got the picture. No need to 
go into the part about letting the crabs and seagulls 
eat our brains, either. Even if they couldn’t succeed, 
having them give it the old college try wouldn’t be too 
pleasant either.”

 We started pacing down the beach again. “So 
what do we do?” I finally asked. “I’m betting you have 
an idea.” 


“Ralph, I thought you’d never ask.” She turned and 
planted a big kiss right on my surprised face. 
Before I could recover, she was pulling me back the 
way we’d come from. I started to speak. 

“Be quiet,” she ordered, placing her finger on 
my lips. “And keep your paws to yourself, buster. I’ll 
tell you my plan on the way back to camp.” 


lice’s plan wasn’t half bad. 

But it had some holes in it. 

So we spent more hours figuring out 

how to plug them, eating on some fruit 

that floated up to the shore so we could 

pick it up and munch on it. I could see life 
could be majorly pleasant if we could just get 
Huntington out of the way. 

More incentive to do the job right. 

I settled back down to working on finalizing our 
plans. We were nearly done when: “Oh, my gosh,” I 
suddenly said, jumping to my feet.. 

“Sand fleas?” Alice asked with a smile. 

“No, this is serious. I just remembered that I left 
my body with a gun barrel in my hand, pointed at 
Huntington’s temple—the real Huntington. I became a 
projection to counter Huntington’s duplicate. That 
means my real body is back—was back... Where I left 
it almost a day ago.” I swore. The mind boggled at 
what Huntington might have done to my body by now. 

“Don’t worry, silly,” Alice said. “Your real body is 
here. I’m sure what you saw was only a projection 
Huntington created to confuse you. People don’t go 
around leaving their bodies unguarded. Just think 
what kind of place the world would be if they did.” 


“I’m serious. This isn’t funny.” 

“So am I and yes it is.” 

“What?” 

“Even if that was your real body back there,” Alice 
said, “I don’t think it would be dangerous for you. I 
don’t believe time is really passing here. I’m betting if 
you went back now, or tomorrow, or a year from now 
after you’ve spent all that time in this place —” 

“With you,” I added squeezing her hand. 

“With me,” she agreed. “When you went back it 
would be the same time it was when you left there 
last night.” 

“What makes you think that?” 

“Because I went back to my house before you 
woke up this morning. The time was the same there 
as when I left. Half a day passed here, not more than 
a second there—and I’m betting no time passed there 
at all.” 

“But...” 

“It makes perfect sense. Remember when you 
winked out from the operation table at the detox 
ward?” 

“Can’t forget.” 

“We promenaded around and then ate dinner 
together before you went back. How much time had 
passed while you were gone?” 

“You’re right. The medical bot was still right where 
I’d left him. Hadn’t moved an inch. But I still don’t see 
how this place can have time pass in it while nothing 
happens back on Earth.” 

“Watch this then.” Alice closed her eyes. The sun 
vanished and it was dark. 

I jumped to my feet. “What the —?” 

Alice laughed. “See. When I was little I used to 
think the whole world became dark whenever I closed 
my eyes. Here it can really happen. Because 


everything here is just however we want it to be.” 

“I don’t like this. Bring back the daylight.” 

“Do it yourself. It’s time you learned to control your 
powers. You’re the most undisciplined person I’ve 
ever had the pleasure of meeting. Go ahead. Make 
the sun come back.” 

Fat chance for success, I thought. But I closed my 
eyes to give it a try. And opened them. Still dark. “I 
can’t do it.” 

“Try again. Don’t give up so easily. 

I closed my eyes and opened them—to sunlight. 
“Did you do that?” I asked suspiciously. It would be 
just like Alice to trick me. 

“No, silly. You did.” 

I sat back down. Our plan didn’t sound quite so 
impossible now—though if there’d been a bookmaker 
in our tropical paradise, I would have pawned the 
farm and put all my markers on Huntington. 

I stepped over the four corpses in front of the 
entrance. It looked like Death was in fine form today. 

“Well, look what the cat drug in,” the meso guard 
quipped. 

“I need to see Death.” I said. 

“No problem, Ralphy.” The thug grabbed me by 
the back of the collar and dragged me through the 
armored front door into Death’s lair. 

 We waited as the mech-clock ticked off long 
seconds in the room, reminding me that I might have 
lived a whole lifetime with each click, had I been in 
the hidden zone that Alice and I had discovered. That 
waste of time coupled with Death’s theatrics designed 
to prolong a victim’s anguish made me angry, and 
suddenly I didn’t feel a bit guilty about what I was 


about to do. 

Death finally turned around, rotating slowly in his 
chair to stare across the smoke-filled room at me, his 
chrome face with its permanent mad grin plastered 
across it. His antenna quit twitching and he spoke. 
“Give me one good reason not to kill you.” 

“I know where Huntington is,” I said. 

Death’s claw slashed through the air and stopped 
with a steel claw just inches from my left eye. “I’m 
listening.” 

“If your boy will lighten up, I can give you the 
address,” I suggested. 

Death nodded and the meso holding me released 
me so I could reach into my pocket and get the slip of 
paper. I handed it to Death who held it up to read. 
“So. He’s clear down in Sarasota—isn’t that the place 
that got nuked.” 

“Yes. But residual radiation is low now.” 

“Why’d a rich guy want to be down there?” 

“He’s got eternal treatments. Maybe he figures he 
can rejuve fast enough to keep from getting cancer.” 

Death’s eyes turned red in the dim light. “Nice job. 
Too bad you’re so late. Now I’ll ask once more. Any 
reason I shouldn’t kill you?” 

I swallowed. I had to be careful not to blow it. “You 
might need me again. To get more information.” 

Death laughed a grating chuckle. “If we get this 
guy, and the new jet he’s supposed to have, we won’t 
need nerds like you any more. We’ll be the new nerds 
on the block.” 

 The mesoes and Death all had a good laugh at 
that one. I stood silently and waited for their mirth to 
subside. 

“Take him out and kill him,” Death said. “No, wait. 
Better yet, take him into the back and let me kill him.” 

 Two of the mesoes dragged me into the back 


room, turned me around in front of a bullet-pocked 
wall, and fastened my arms to the chains embedded 
in the concrete. Then we waited. 

Death, with his unerring sense for drama, let three 
minutes pass, his clock ticking away loudly to mark 
each second. To say I looked scared when he came 
in would be an understatement. I was beginning to 
have second thoughts about what I was doing. Could 
Alice and I have made an error in our planning? 

Death finally came in, pistol in hand. 

“I think you ought to reconsider this,” I said. “I 
think you’re making a big mistake if you just haul off 
and —” 

“Shut up and I’ll make it quick. No one can say I’m 
not fair. A quick death will be your pay back for 
coming in and settling up old debts. If you hadn’t 
missed the deadline by a couple of days, it would be 
different even though we won’t be needing you. But 
I’m a businessman. I have my image to uphold.” 

“Wouldn’t want your image to suffer,” I said. 

“Knew you’d understand.” He placed the ancient 
.44 Magnum revolver to my temple. Cocked the 
hammer back, and pulled the trigger. 

There was only a click of the hammer drop. I 
gasped for breath and Death and the others started 
laughing again. “Oops. Empty chamber. Dry run. 
This one’s for real so say your prayers, rabbit.” 

 The barrel went to my temple. This time I watched 
the firearm and could see the bullet tip in the cylinder. 
He pulled the hammer back and the cartridge rotated 
into place behind the barrel. 

I closed my eyes, knowing this one would be it and 
that there was no other way for our plan to work. 

He pulled the trigger and I saw a momentary burst 
of light and then nothingness as my brains were 
splattered across the wall behind me. 

210 


It was a clear night, the city’s lights blotting out the 
stars as usual, making the sky a gray expanse of 
nothingness. As I looked upward and remembered 
the beauty of the star-studded firmament on the 
island Alice and I had created, I realized that the old 
neighborhood could never be home to me again. 

But I would miss the gang. 

“How’s it going?” I asked Quaker, stepping over to 
his small booth where he collected his toll while acting 
as look out. Rather than the usual silver coin I usually 
paid him, I took a heavy cloth bag out of my pocket. 

“Better high-tail it now, man,” Quaker whispered. 
“You’ve got gov agies in your apartment. They 
counter-sniped Snipe earlier.” 

I bit my tongue. I had never seen Snipe, but she’d 
saved my hide more than once and seemed almost 
like family. I fought down the anger and sorrow, 
handing the bag to Quaker. “I appreciate all you’ve 
done for me.” 

He took the bag, opened it, and peered into it. 
“Woe! Are these... Gold coins?” 

I smiled. “Be seeing you.” 

“Hey, wait. They’re agents in your apart and 
they’re not Albert Switzers.” 

“I know,” I said over my shoulder. “It’s okay.” 

I rounded the corner and started toward my 
apartment, moving cautiously out of habit, even 
though Snipe was no longer there to be a danger. I 
shook my head. Already homeless people were 
staking out spots on the sidewalk. Not that I didn’t feel 
they had a right to be somewhere, just that I knew 
they’d bring attract the predators that robbed from 
them who in turn would bring in the street dealers and 


on and on. The trouble that followed would gradually 
destroy the old neighborhood. 

I slowed at the front door to my apartment fortress, 
placing my hand on the I-dent pad. “My name’s 
baloney,” I told the computer. 

“Welcome home, Ralph,” the computer said in a 
low, feminine voice. “It’s been a while. You might 
want to wait a while longer before going up. By law 
I’m programmed not to tell you there are government 
agents up in your apartment. So I won’t.” 

“Thanks for the warning.” I don’t know who 
programmed the old gal at the front door, but they 
certainly did a sweet job. I’d miss her, too. I pushing 
my way through the armored door as it buzzed 
opened. “You might want to make a call for recycle up 
in my apartment. Oh, in maybe an hour.” 

“Have you become a prophet or are you expecting 
some trouble?” 

“Both.” 

I headed up the creaking stairs that lead to my 
room and tapped in my code on the door lock. 

“It’s about time,” the burley gov thuggite said, 
pushing me into a chair. The two of them very 
efficiently wrapped me in tape and jabbed a syringe 
full of something into my arm, no doubt to loosen my 
tongue. 

I won’t bore you with the details. They did their 
best to extract the truth from me and I did my best to 
make them think I was trying to hold out. They went 
through my fingernails, then started on fingers and 
eyes, saving my private parts for the pièce de 
résistance. Finally I got to the place where I could 
blurt out the truth and have them think I was really 
doing it against my will. “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you,” I 
said, gasping around the pain that radiated from 
various parts of my body. 


“We’re listening.” 

“Lido Beach. Sarasota, New Caribbean. That’s 
where Huntington is.” 

“Street address?” one of my tormentors asked, 
pushing a cigarette into the socket where my eye had 
been. 

I cried out, then gave them the address. They 
worked me over some more to double-check the facts 
I’d given them, then placed a bullet in my brain. 

As my spirit drifted away, I mulled over the odd 
fact that whether I dealt with criminals or government 
agents, the end result was often the same. 


ur plan in motion, Alice and I waited for 
the action to begin. We hid in plain sight. 

 Alice became a tall palm in the garden 
next to the living room window where 
Huntington spent his evenings hooked to 
his computer, his powers growing as he 
extended himself through the net to encompass more 

and more of the world. 
I became a small green lizard. 
Type casting, Alice told me through her thoughts. 
Funny, funny, I replied, swishing my tail back and 

forth in mock anger. I scurried along the floor and 
positioned myself near the wall where Huntington’s 
wheelchair wouldn’t turn me into road kill. I tried to 
ignore the dark stains on the carpet, remembering 
that my blood had put them there. After this is over, I 
thought, I’m going to have Alice erase a few 
memories. 

No way, Alice told me, you need those so you’ll be 
strong enough to clean house whenever you need to. 
Not everyone is like you. 

That’s somehow comforting. 
I mean it. Sometimes you’re too easy going and 
those memories will help make you stronger. 
We’ll talk about it later. I can feel the vibrations of 


someone coming up the walkway. 

And my little lizard sensors were right. The 
government agents were arriving right at sunset. They 
came in the front door with a flash-bang grenade, the 
usual contingent of Ninja-clad SWAT members 
streaming in, looking just as hokey as they had in the 
20th Century. Three of the team efficiently 
surrounded Huntington, keeping the invalid in the 
wheelchair covered with their submachine guns while 
other members of the outfit ransacked his home. 

After rummaging through his home and failing to 
discover the jet, they ruffed up Huntington, trying to 
get him to tell where his stash of the new drug was 
hidden. Battering him was a big mistake. It angered 
him. 

 We soon learned that an angry Huntington is a 
fearsome thing to behold. The ashen figure in the 
wheelchair closed his eyes. 

“He have a heart attack?” one of the SWAT team 
asked. 

 Worse. The figure in the chair turned into sawdust, 
crumbling into a fine powder that ran through the 
fingers of the agents trying to catch it, as if somehow 
they might reassemble Humpty Huntington again. The 
disintegrating parts settled into the wheelchair or ran 
onto the floor. 

The SWAT officers didn’t worry about their 
dissolving prisoner for long, however. They had other 
worries in the form of fifty Huntington’s with meat 
axes who now stormed through the front door with all 
the efficiency the agents had displayed just minutes 
before. 

 The ensuing battle was not a pretty sight, even 
from my vantage point on the floor. However, unlike 
Alice, I didn’t suffer any direct hits to my trunk from 
the exploding bullets that flashed through the air, 


striking members of both sides during the confusion. 
Part of the panic resulted because the Huntingtons 
fought beyond what the SWAT team had ever 
encountered in the past. Even with limbs and heads 
blown off, the duplicates continued to battle, crawling 
or staggering forward until they were nearly blown to 
pieces and drained of blood. 

The SWAT team didn’t fair well. Besides the 
casualties from friendly fire, the members were outnumbered 
and the meat cleavers proved extra sharp 
with an uncanny ability to cut through ballistic armor, 
gravely wounding those who were slashed by the 
wide blades.

 The gory fight didn’t last long and Huntington 
made it a bit more fair by letting himselves die when 
sufficiently blown asunder. When the smoke cleared, 
seven SWAT team members remained, wounded but 
alive, standing back-to-back in the room strewn with 
bodies and enough body parts lying around to make a 
grown Harvey weep. 

 The magnificent seven were loading the last of the 
ammunition into their submachine guns when another 
salvo of Huntingtons appeared at the front stoop. This 
last leg of the battle went quickly. The SWAT team 
exhausted its ammunition and fell under a wave of 
angry Huntingtons, welding their cleavers with 
devastating effect. I finally had to climb part way up 
the wall to avoid being drowned in blood that was 
flowing across the floors of the wall-to-wall 
slaughterhouse. 

Huntington reappeared when the remaining 
antagonists had breathed their last, his wheelchair 
creaking out of the armored closet he’d taken refuge 
in. “My, my,” he said, unaware that he was being 
watched by a lizard and a bullet-pocked palm tree. 
“Looks like I’d better get into the government’s 


records and tidy up a bit. Can’t have thugs dropping 
in unannounced like this on a daily basis.” 

He carefully wheeled himself across the room, the 
red sea of bodies and gore parting so his chair 
passed over dry ground as he surveyed the damage. 
“Better get this mess cleaned up while I’m at it.” 

He closed his eyes and another army of himselves 
appeared in the room to join the survivors of the 
battle. 

“Fill up the old sunken garden,” he told them. “I’ve 
been meaning to fill it in anyway. This will be a good 
excuse and should help fertilize the earth while we’re 
at it.”

 The cleanup went on most of the evening and well 
into the night. With timing that couldn’t have been 
better if I’d planned it that way myself, the doorbell 
rang at midnight, just as the last of the mopping and 
washing was finished. 

“Who the hell could that be,” Huntington muttered, 
wheeling himself to the door. He opened it a crack. 
“What do you waaaa —” 

Death’s two mesoes came thundering in like 
rhinos, ripping the front door off its hinges for the 
second time that night and dumping the old man onto 
the floor. One of the mesoes tossed his wheelchair 
across the room while the other broke his arms, just 
to make sure he didn’t crawl away. 

 The opening act over, Death made his entrance. 
“Well, well,” he growled, walking over the fallen front 
door. “So this is the great Jeff Huntington. I’m 
disappointed. I expected something more than an old 
prune like you.” 

Huntington glared at the towering figure above 
him. “You caught me off guard—I’ve been busy 
tonight. I’m tired.” 

“We’ll be giving you your little old beauty rest real 


soon,” Death promised. Then he and his men cackled 

at his joke. 

For about five seconds. 

After that their mouths became solid expanses of 
flesh, bringing an abrupt halt to the festive mood. One 
of the mesoes panicked and attempted to make new 
lips in his face with a sheath knife. Not a pretty sight. 

 The other along with Death rushed Huntington and 
attempted to stomp him, only to go flying through the 
air themselves, smashing into a wall with a jarring 
thump of flesh and metal. 

Huntington spent the next five minutes 
transforming the three monsters in the living room into 
fine, pink confetti that swirled around the room like a 
slime tornado that eventually exited through the 
window that opened by itself to provide an egress. 

 The tornado spread and grew as it left his yard, 
traveling out over the dark ocean where it dissipated, 
dropping what was left of Death and his merry men 
into the water to feed the fish. 

His savage work over, Huntington tried to rise, but 
couldn’t. He crumpled into a broken pile of flesh, his 
strength exhausted. 

Huntington wept. 

It was at this point that Alice and I had planned on 
attacking him, banking on the fact that the intense 
mental activities he would be stretched to the limit by 
the twin attacks from the gov and Death. 

Our assumption seemed correct. His was 
exhausted, unable even to get himself up off the floor. 
But we didn’t initiate our attack. He was just too 
pathetic a figure. 

I don’t think I can do it, I told Alice. It’s too much 
like cold-blooded murder. 

Me neither. 

“You won’t need to,” Huntington said, his arms 


mending themselves as he stood up, straight and tall 
on his own two feet. 


reformed myself into a human being and 

prepared for the knock-down, drag-out free-for


all. Now Huntington looked anything but spent. 

Even with Alice helping, I was no longer so 

certain we’d be able to take him on. He’d 

suckered us into what now appeared to be a very 
efficiently laid trap, making us drop our guard, 
exposing ourselves, right on his home front. 

Huntington read my thoughts and chuckled. 
“Relax, this isn’t a trap. I could have squashed you or 
turned you quite some time ago—though those were 
certainly ingenious ways of hiding. Hide in plan sight. 
That was good.” 

Alice and I tried to wink away. 

Nothing happened. 

“Don’t leave me just yet,” Huntington told us. “Sit 
down. No, don’t be afraid. Hear me out and then see 
what you want to do. You just passed your last test. It 
was a final test, not a trap.” 

A couch scooted over behind us as Huntington 
motioned for us to sit as he settled into his wheelchair 
which rolled up behind him. I cautiously sat down next 
to Alice, taking her hand and keeping my mind tensed 
in case we needed to take action. Don’t let your guard 
down, I warned Alice, hoping Huntington wouldn’t be 


able to intercept my thought. If he did, he did nothing 
to indicate that he had. 

“I’m dying,” Huntington said in a low voice as he 
settled into the wheelchair and his legs shriveled up. 

“But the eternal treatment,” I protested. “You can’t 
make us believe that —” 

“Ralph,” Huntington interrupted. “I like you a lot. 
But if you don’t shut up I’ll be tempted to take some 
sort of action.” 

“Okay, say your piece.” 

“You two won’t believe most of what I say until I 
prove it to you. But please listen with an open mind.” 
He paused, twisting uncomfortably in his wheelchair, 
then continued. “I had the eternal treatments. But I’m 
dying of my own free will, as part of my long-range 
plans. Long ago I picked you both to be my 
successors.” 

“Long ago, I didn’t have much to live for,” he 
continued. “Worst of all, I was selfish and had trouble 
trusting anyone. That changed when I realized what it 
was I needed to do. The plan has born fruit over the 
last few weeks. 

Huntington shifted position in his chair and then 
resumed his explanation. “For years I’ve groomed you 
both, placing special thoughts in your heads when 
you were on the net, substituting the jet you thought 
you were buying secretly on the street with chemicals 
I’d created to change and mold your minds. It isn’t by 
accident that you two were able to withstand my 
abilities when I attacked you on the net and in your 
dreams. I made it possible for you to grow and attain 
such abilities.” 

He continued talking on into the early morning 
hours, explaining how he’d been in the background, 
often working to keep us safe on the streets or, 
conversely, throwing us into danger to force us to 


become more skillful. We weren’t the only two he 
worked with, but we were the only two that survived 
his rigorous training. 

As he spoke, I realized he was leveling with us. He 
wasn’t trying to be a god of mercy or love. He was 
only a frail man who discovered a way to transform 
the earth into a better place, and worked toward 
creating the tools to do the monumental job. He set 
an elaborate plan into motion that spanned decades 
before coming to fruition with Alice and me. 

His plan was finalized when he put Death and the 
gov on my trail, having them select me to search for 
Huntington, the man that had masterminded the 
changes and would use the worst Earth had to offer 
to bring about good. 

“When I am gone do not feel sorry for me,” 
Huntington told us. “I have lived a million lifetimes— 
just as you will if you so desire. You can live a life in a 
fraction of a second on other planes where time 
stands still. In a year you can live almost forever; in a 
decade you will experience more than mankind has 
ever dreamed possible. But I’m hoping you two won’t 
make my mistake. Don’t squander your time like I did 
for so long on games and useless distractions. I’ve 
not done much right, but I have done the right thing in 
choosing you two. Now I must go.” 

“Wait a minute,” I said sitting forward on the 
couch. “You haven’t told us what it is that you want us 
to do.” 

Huntington’s face softened, looking more tired and 
wrinkled than before. “Simply do what you think is 
right. You wouldn’t follow my orders anyway, would 
you?” 

“If we agreed with them, perhaps,” I hedged. 

Huntington nodded. “It’s all academic anyway. I 
don’t know what will be the right thing for you to do 


because I don’t always do the right thing. I’m 
confident, however, that you two will know and that 
you’ll act on it.” 

I stood up. “But —” 

“Ralph,” Alice interrupted, taking my hand and 
pulling me back into the couch beside her. “Let him 
leave.” 

Huntington grinned. “See, already it’s working. You 
keep this guy in line, young lady. That may be the 
biggest part of your job.” 

“It won’t be easy but I’ll try. Are you sure he’s the 
one you chose?” 

“Thanks,” I said. 

“I’m sure about both of you,” Huntington said. 
“After you’ve lived out your extended lives, you’ll 
understand why leaving you in charge is such a 
blessing for an old man like me. When the time 
comes and you’ve seen it all and done it all, you’ll 
discover that all you want to do is to leave something 
good behind when you go to meet the Maker. You 
two are the something good I’m leaving behind.” 

I started to speak but then bit my tongue. It was 
hard to feel sorry for a man that I had hated and 
feared so much just a short time before. It was 
impossible to know how to respond or what to say 
after being overwhelmed by the truth. Finally I simply 
said, “Good-bye” with Alice echoing me. 

Huntington turned into a younger version of 
himself, gave a salute, and then vanished, leaving 
only his empty wheelchair behind to make his 
passing. 


lice and I went to work to cover all the 

electronic tracks that might lead anyone 

to Huntington—and to us. But we 

discovered that Huntington had already 

done the job, apparently while explaining 

to us what he had been doing to us 
behind the scenes as we sat in the living room. Now 
anyone checking the government’s computers would 
find them strangely blank when it came to any 
information about Huntington, Alice, or me. 

As for Death, he’d left no records at all behind for 
anyone to find. And those who remembered him back 
in Topeka would be happy to see him gone. 

 The computer records blanked, no one would ever 
learn about the new drug that Huntington had created 
other then as a rumor that might drift about for years 
to come, whispered about behind closed doors where 
fellow workers speculated about those agents who 
had gone to Florida and abruptly fell of the face of the 
Earth. 

Running the world was a daunting prospect. We 
could have gone to our island paradise and stayed 
there instead. But it really wasn’t an “either/or” choice; 
we still could live anywhere our minds created for 
what seemed like years in the time it took a flea to 


blink back on Earth. We could work and still take 
years off to play. 

More importantly we knew from experience that if 
we turned our backs on our new responsibilities, it 
would only be a matter of time before someone else 
rediscovered the new variant of jet and exploited it— 
undoubtedly with detrimental effect for most of those 
living in the world. So Alice and I would also see that 
no one ever invented the new type of jet again. 

 We knew history. 

It hadn’t been a pretty tale.

 Without any discussion at all, we both agreed to 
quietly change it behind the scenes. For too long the 
wrong side had been in power, polluting, gouging, 
and abusing. Little by little the power and prosperity 
has flown to rich men like those running the 
government and business while the rest of us have 
become enslaved to them. 

Now we would become the tsunami that changed 
history and turned it from wrong side in to right side 
out. With our minds we could destroy evil men or turn 
them into loyal automatons. We could make the earth 
whatever we wanted it to be—and we wanted it to 
become as calm and peaceful as would be humanly 
possible. 

Under our guidance, wars would cease; the last 
bombs had been dropped, the last politicians had told 
their lies. Alice and I would rearrange the boundaries 
and forge the alliances. Perhaps we could even end 
the age when the assassin’s bullet decided mankind’s 
fate. Perhaps we would give the little guy a chance to 
live without being trampled by the kingpins. 

If we succeed, no longer would the players battle 
to kill or be killed, exchanging bullets and missiles to 
hasten the process started long ago with tooth and 
nails. There’d be no more fluid politicians to rearrange 


the boundaries and form new alliances. There’d be no 
more filling of corporation’s coffers, no new men that 
pretended to rule until an assassin’s bullets or bombs 
cut them down. 

“Facts” would no longer be created nor old truths 
destroyed. Papers which were quietly hidden in safes 
for purposes of blackmail would now be destroyed; 
and those secrets shredded to avoid prison terms 
would now be revealed, shouted from the housetops. 

Our pivotal event had started quietly. No trumpets 
announced our coronation. There was no mention of 
it in the newspapers. 

But it had started.... 

Now we would finish our job. 


About the AuthoR 

D
D
uncan Long is an internationally recognized 
author with over seventy books that have gone 
into print. His subjects include everything from 
how to survive chemical, biological, and nuclear 
weapons to health manuals to how to handle 
firearms. Long has authored the Spider Worlds 
trilogy, the nine-book action/adventure Night Stalkers 
series as well as the science fiction novel, Anti-Grav 
Unlimited. 

His manuals can be found in the private libraries of 
the CIA, US Marines, FEMA, and other US agencies 
as well as the library of at least one foreign embassy 
and the EPC (Emergency Planning, Canada); the FBI 
has requested that his non-fiction books be sent to 
their FTU (Firearms Training Unit) at Quantico. 

Reviews of Long's books have appeared in The 
Journal of Civil Defense, Emergency Planning Digest, 
and other magazines. He has also been featured on 
radio and TV shows and for a time had his own radio 
program named (appropriately enough), The Duncan 
Long Show. 

Read more of Long’s short stories, novels, and 
articles—and browse a wealth of pictures and 
download MP3s—at: http://duncanlong.com/