textfiles/magazines/INTERTEXT/ITv6n3.etx

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=======================================
InterText Vol. 6, No. 3 / May-June 1996
=======================================

  Contents
  
    FirstText: Do You Have What It Takes?.............Jason Snell
    
  Short Fiction

    Making Movies.....................................Ceri Jordan

    Autoerotic...................................Christopher Hunt

    Eire..........................................Joseph W. Flood

    Cyberwhiskers................................Nick J. Vincelli

    Selections From the New World..................Marcus Eubanks


....................................................................
    Editor                                     Assistant Editor
    Jason Snell                                    Geoff Duncan
    jsnell@intertext.com                    geoff@intertext.com
....................................................................
    Assistant Editor                     Send correspondence to 
    Susan Grossman                        editors@intertext.com
    susan@intertext.com              or intertext@intertext.com
....................................................................
  InterText Vol. 6, No. 3. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published 
  electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this 
  magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold 
  (either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire 
  text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1996, Jason Snell. 
  Individual stories Copyright 1996 their original authors. 
  For more information about InterText, send a message to
  intertext@intertext.com with the word "info" in the subject
  line. For writers' guidelines, place the word "guidelines" in
  the subject line.  
....................................................................



  FirstText: Do You Have What It Takes?   by Jason Snell
========================================================

  I'm frequently asked why I edit InterText, even though it takes 
  up a big chunk of my life and I don't see one red cent from it.

  It's a good question. And while I've got a stock answer, you can 
  judge for yourself if that answer is a good one.

  I do InterText -- and it may be true of all of us, though I can 
  speak only for myself -- because online publishing is something 
  I believe in, and because online publishing allows me an outlet 
  I otherwise wouldn't have.

  When we started InterText, I was splitting my time between a 
  college newspaper, where I was writing and editing hard news 
  stories, and college classes, where I was writing long and dull 
  papers about dull subjects. InterText was an opportunity to do 
  something different, something more creative. It was an 
  opportunity to read short stories, pick the best of the bunch, 
  and put them together in a publication that would provide good 
  reading to people all over the world.

  It's all worked out pretty well, I think. Though I'm of course 
  interested in what takes up most of my time these days -- my 
  "day job" as associate editor/online at MacUser magazine -- 
  InterText is still a release. InterText is the place where I get 
  to read about future doctors struggling in a world rife with 
  infection, cat detectives troubled by dogged (and dog-faced) 
  police officers, the intrigue of an interactive movie-making 
  industry that doesn't _quite_ exist yet, a prostitute-turned-spy 
  who lives in an orbital outpost above a barely recognizable 
  planet, or even a man's encounter with a beautiful Irish woman 
  on St. Patrick's day. And that's just in _this_ issue.

  However, that's not all I get to read. I also read the dozens of 
  stories we receive every month, most of which we can't accept 
  (even though we like some of them very much). I also spend some 
  time maintaining our four-headed mailing list -- if anyone tells 
  you software automates the job of running a mailing list, laugh 
  at them. Long and hard. Do it for me.

  So InterText is fun, but it's also a lot of work. Not just for 
  me, but also for the other folks who bring this magazine to you 
  every two months: Geoff Duncan and Susan Grossman, both of whom 
  have enough "day jobs" to make them crazy without even thinking 
  about another issue of InterText. And there's Jeff Quan, who 
  continues to stretch his wings as an artist with every issue, 
  even as he moves from his job at the _Oakland Tribune_ to his 
  new job in online publishing at c|net.

  If you think that I'm asking for your sympathy, well, rest easy. 
  You pay your money, you take your chances -- we signed up for 
  this, and if we didn't want to do it anymore, we'd stop doing 
  it.

  What I _am_ asking for is your contribution. If you're happy as 
  an InterText reader, just keep reading, and spread the word 
  about InterText to your friends. If you're a writer (and I know 
  many of you are), keep us in mind when it comes time for you to 
  submit one of your short stories.

  And if you're someone with editing or copy editing expertise 
  (especially if it includes experience working with fiction), we 
  can always use skilled hands and eyes in those areas. Be warned: 
  this ain't an easy job, and we're committed to the long haul. 
  InterText has been around for five years, and it's not to 
  anyone's advantage for InterText to have inconsistent or 
  constantly-shifting editorial practices. We aren't looking for 
  people who are intimidated by a couple issues of insanity.

  So, if you're interested in becoming part of the InterText team, 
  don't be a stranger. Although some of what we do can't be done 
  by other folks, we're not a closed group -- Susan Grossman 
  joined InterText after we'd already been at this for three 
  years. And we're a virtual organization -- Susan and Geoff both 
  live in Seattle, but they don't (can't) see each other very 
  often, and I live 600 miles away in northern California -- so 
  distance shouldn't be a big problem.

  As times goes on and our lives get busier, it gets a little 
  harder to set time aside for InterText. We're still committed to 
  publishing good fiction every two months. If you can help, let 
  us know -- send us e-mail at <editors@intertext.com>. And if you 
  _can't_ help, don't sweat it, and don't feel guilty about it. 
  This is a tough job, a weird job, and it's not for everyone. If 
  a handful of you think that it's for you, let us know.



  Making Movies   by Ceri Jordan
================================
...................................................................
  We're used to movies carried by plot twists, but are we ready 
  for movies that are part of a plot?
...................................................................

  The police -- actually the Technological Information Misuse 
  Division, which is very much the same thing -- arrived in 
  mid-afternoon.

  Two officers, one male, one female. When I answered the door, 
  their guns were still in their holsters, which was a promising 
  sign. I offered them cinnamon tea, which they refused, and then 
  the woman produced the tape and asked me to identify it as my 
  work. I thought I understood.

  "It was a legal contract," I heard myself say, hands 
  automatically moving over the video player keys, watching the 
  screen pale and flicker. "I never expected any of this to 
  happen. I would have withdrawn it, but EmpressaCorp insisted on 
  holding me to the contract -- "

  "We do appreciate that," she said, glancing around the room as 
  if expecting to find vital clues among the half-assembled 
  hardware and discarded takeaway cartons. "You are not suspected 
  of committing any offense with regard to this matter. We'd 
  simply like you to confirm that this is a copy of the feelie you 
  recorded on the date already mentioned..."

  White noise, screen flicker.

  Simple 2-D playback, faded and slightly out of focus. To get the 
  detail, I'd have to plug in, get the full output, _feel_ it, and 
  I couldn't do it. Not that day. Not again.

  But they didn't seem to want me to. I should be able to identify 
  it easily from this. Just the visuals. Like a video recording. 
  My life from the outside.

  Screen flicker.

  Union Square. A bright day, wind flapping the flags, the whole 
  staff of the development department drawn up in a neat line, 
  shiny shoes and immaculate hairdos. The President makes her way 
  along the line. Shakes my hand. I bob a curtsey. I smile. A few 
  polite words, and she moves to shake Jason's hand --

  "It's wrong."

  Not turning, I feel them exchange glances.

  This isn't how it happened.

  It's a good mock-up, sure. A film set or something. The 
  President, one of these professional lookalikes. But Jason's 
  shirt is the wrong color -- he was wearing the one I bought him, 
  the deep red -- and I never wear high heels, and she's pausing 
  with Jason far too long. He'd hardly even taken her hand when --

  The bullet.

  I watch him spin under the impact, slow motion. The President 
  ducks, her bodyguards press in close; and yes, I was on the 
  floor beside Jason by this point, but I was holding his head 
  steady until the medics could reach us, trying to minimize the 
  damage to his skull, and no, my God _no,_ I wasn't screaming --

  It took me a moment to realize that they'd switched the tape 
  off.

  "That isn't the recording I made." I said, feeling along the arm 
  of the chair, guiding myself down into the seat before my legs 
  failed completely. "If this is a film, I'll sue them blind, I 
  swear it. Where did you get this?"

  The sleek tanned man touched the eject button and jerked the 
  tape free.

  "Who made this recording? Where did you get it?"

  The locks on his briefcase clicked open in succession, and then 
  closed.

  The woman smiled. "You've been very helpful, Ms. DuMaris. Thank 
  you so much."

  I kept up the protests until they were halfway down the 
  stairwell, ignoring the neurotically twitching curtains at 
  frosted glass doors all along the corridor. Then I stormed back 
  inside, slamming the door dramatically, for good measure, and 
  went back to the video player.

  The recording chip was embedded inside the supposedly 
  non-removable plastic casing, and I was pretty confident that 
  they hadn't noticed it. And once I'd eased open their 
  encryptions, my new piece of evidence played back just fine.



  Again.

  And again.

  Watching the bullet, the fall, the blood. Letting the memories 
  flay me raw. Letting the memories push me through tears, through 
  despair, into fury --

  The apartment door.

  Jason, back from rehab early, bored with smiling nurses and 
  exercise machines, squinting over my shoulder at the screen. 
  "Nice picture, Kay, but what the hell happened to my shirt?"

  I tried to laugh, but all that came out was a strangled sob, and 
  he lowered himself gingerly onto the rug beside me, the joints 
  of the exosupports on his legs creaking faintly. His hair was 
  wet. Must've started raining. I hadn't noticed.

  "Info Misuse came calling," I said, remembering to hit pause a 
  split second before the shot rang out, leaving Jason's thin 
  nervous smile frozen on screen as he takes the President's hand. 
  I made myself look away. "Wanted me to identify this as my 
  feelie."

  "It isn't, though. Is it?"

  "No. That's what I told them. They expected me to. Just wanting 
  confirmation. I copied the tape. Because I want these bastards, 
  whoever they... Oh, Jesus."

  His hand closed over mine, thin brittle lines of fiber-muscle 
  hard against my skin, but he said nothing; just waited for me to 
  sort the implications out in my head and explain.

  "So a feelie relies on the person with the recording implant -- 
  this woman pretending to be me -- _believing_ everything that's 
  happening is real. Just acting out the emotions won't work, 
  because actors always know they're acting, and when the punter 
  plays the tape back, that knowledge that it's false will come 
  through. So this woman must have believed she was me, meeting 
  the real President, and that her lover had just genuinely been 
  shot..."

  Jason nodded slowly. "Which probably means..."

  "That he genuinely was."

  The wind shifted, and rain drummed lightly against the window 
  panes. After a moment, Jason reached across to prise the remote 
  out of my hand, and hit the PLAY stud. Knew I'd stopped the tape 
  there deliberately, not wanting him to see. Had to prove he 
  could take it. Silly bastard.

  I watched his face: nostrils flaring slightly, mouth hardening.

  When my doppelganger started screaming, he hit PAUSE again and 
  said thoughtfully, "Did it really make that much mess?"



  I should never have accepted the contract.

  Thing was, the Corporation thought it would be good publicity. 
  Kay DuMaris, famous hardware designer and high-profile new 
  signing to their development department, making a popular feelie 
  giving all the world's no-hopers the chance to genuinely feel 
  what it was like to meet the President. I was supposed to give 
  her a guided tour round the labs after the line-up. It never 
  happened. She was hurried away in a limo built like a tank, and 
  I was crying in a corridor as they wheeled Jason into surgery.

  We'd only been together a month.

  And all that time, the eavesdropper in my head, lapping up every 
  burst of pain and hope and despair, recording everything.

  They kept it running till Jason came out of the OR and the 
  doctor told me he was going to need extensive exocybernetics to 
  walk again, but he'd be all right. It worked out well: the 
  punters like happy endings.

  I understand it was a bestseller for a while. Then a guy they'd 
  wired up to bed streetwalkers in interesting ways got carved to 
  ribbons by a crazy posing as an underage tart, and my more 
  modest agonies slid quietly down the sales charts into oblivion.



  Jason woke me in the middle of the night, and dragged me 
  protesting into the dark living room. The gray flicker of the 
  video screen, a discarded blanket and cold coffee cup. He'd been 
  out here quite some time, then. Watching.

  "Look." He jabbed one finger at one figure among the frozen 
  panorama of faces. "Recognize him?"

  I blinked at the image. "Yeah. It's Uncle. Runs a pirate tape 
  operation in the Piata. Fancies himself an actor."

  Jason grinned, a flash of white teeth in the dark. "And does 
  crowd scene work for cheap movies."

  "Good. Clever boy. So we know where to start. Now," I brushed my 
  lips across his, teasing, "turn it off and come back to bed."



  Poor bastard never really knew what hit him.

  Uncle's shop is a two-compartment tent on the edge of the Piata, 
  out among the factory-reject stalls and the cocktailers. 
  Officially, it sells nicotine products: needle, pill, or 
  slow-release tab, pick your poison. The tapes are stashed in the 
  rear compartment. Safe enough. The police never venture into the 
  Piata. Not without a full platoon of infantry and helicopter 
  back-up, anyway.

  I went in the front, packing what appeared to be a colored 
  plastic water pistol. Uncle looked up from his stock-check, slow 
  rheumy eyes narrowing, and grinned derision.

  "Neat shooter yo' packing, Kay. Where's the party?"

  I fired a couple of cyanide darts into the countertop, and let 
  him watch them dissolve into the bare wood, and by then Jason 
  had slashed the back of the tent open and come in behind him, 
  grinding the empty revolver into the base of his spine, and his 
  smile had turned thin and brittle.

  "Party's here." I told him. "Unless you got some info for us."

  "'Bout what?"

  "About that fake feelie you did crowd work for."

  He squinted at me in the gray-filtered light. Gears grinding in 
  a junk-fuddled head. Not everyone down here who knows my name 
  knows exactly who I am, which is just as well, and the girl in 
  the fake may not have looked much like me. The punter never sees 
  the viewpoint character from the outside, so what does it 
  matter?

  Jason shifted position, sliding the revolver muzzle round to 
  settle against Uncle's kidney, standing just to his right now, 
  stony. "May not remember her, Uncle. But I think you'll remember 
  me."

  The guy in the fake had been a pretty good double, which was 
  what had fooled me for a few seconds. Tall, with that beautiful 
  blue-black skin, pure African, and built like a professional 
  fighter, solid muscle. Yeah, Jason is a pretty distinctive 
  looking guy. Particularly now.

  Uncle's eyes traveled slowly across his face, shot through with 
  the pale yellow marbling of artificial nerves, down to the 
  fiber-musculature of his bare right arm and hand, the pitted 
  scar tissue of his shoulder, the occasional glitter of metal.

  I've seen kids run screaming after seeing Jason from across the 
  street.

  "I'm talking," Uncle rasped, "but it ain't no crime to make 
  movies."

  "It is when you kill people."

  "You guys never heard of special effects?"

  I snapped the safety catch off, and watched him jump. "Let's 
  talk about who hired you."

  "Don't remember. You'd need to ask my agent."

  "Name and address, Uncle. Or you're going to star in a cute 
  little snuff movie. No cameras, no editing, but the most 
  convincing death scene you'll ever play."

  Jason winced. He never did like my extended metaphors.

  But we got the address.



  "Fine." Jason said. Halfway across the Piata now, jostled by 
  tourists and junk-heads, stretching lazily and sauntering in the 
  sunlight like ordinary market-cruisers hunting a bargain, the 
  guns tucked safely in my kit-bag. "Now what? We just march up 
  and demand they turn themselves in? We've got no evidence -- "

  "No." I agreed. "And I wouldn't want to blow the place up 
  without hard evidence. So we jump one of the chief executives, 
  give him a chance to explain the whole situation, and _then_ we 
  blow the place up."

  "Hmm. Subtle."

  "As always." I touched my middle finger and thumb together, 
  Piata slang for _seeking information._ "First we need someone to 
  crack their security system, find out what schedules their execs 
  keep. And, if we can, who was responsible for this... travesty."

  I like to keep my vengeance specific and precise, where 
  possible.

  Jason shrugged, feigning interest in the contents of a scrap 
  hardware stall, all rusted contacts and outmoded disk drives. 
  "Pascal?"

  "He's the best. But he won't do it. Not for our price range. 
  Garrad, however -- "

  Snorting, Jason let a fader panel clatter back to the tabletop, 
  earning a thin growl of displeasure from the ever-watchful 
  stallholder. "Garrad, yeah."

  Never quite worked out why Jason dislikes Garrad so much. 
  Doesn't dispute his professional brilliance. And it certainly 
  isn't jealousy. Garrad's shacked up with a Jap boy called 
  Kirohita. They moved here together. Some kind of, ah, legal 
  difficulties in Europe. No danger there.

  But Garrad has some nasty facial scars himself -- acid gun, my 
  guess, though he never talks about it -- and I wonder if they 
  make each other uncomfortable; if for each of them, looking at 
  the other is like looking in a mirror, being reminded.

  Never claimed to _understand_ men, did I?



  So I went over to their apartment on my own, and Garrad, who has 
  a weakness for revenge attacks, grinned that nasty grin and 
  jacked in, and Kiro and I sat on the terrace drinking toso and 
  maliciously exaggerating the latest underworld gossip.

  "Bad enemies you're making for yourself," he said, as I was 
  leaving, with the file tucked in a hidden pocket. "Better have 
  your passports ready and your seats booked."

  PanChuenCorp. Big, bad bastards. Owned 90 percent of the 
  external entertainment industries: film, music, everything apart 
  from feelies and other VR spinoffs. Rumor had it that they left 
  the other 10 percent independent just for the fun of poaching 
  talent from it.

  But they'd never touched feelies.

  Alarm bells rang in my head all the way home, but Jason was 
  stripping down the revolver on the kitchen table, quick 
  metal-sheened fingers glittering under the anglepoise lamp 
  glare, and there was no way to back down now, nowhere to go.

  "His name's Bursal. Head of distribution. Looks like they 
  finally let him loose on a film of his own. Got his own car -- 
  serious money. Parks in a public multistory across the square 
  from PanChuenCorp. Every day."

  Jason nodded. "Tomorrow?"

  "Tomorrow."



  Should have known it was all wrong when we got into the 
  multistory so easy.

  We went armed with security disruptors and lockpicks and you 
  name it, and the idiots had left the rear fire door open. Should 
  have realized straight away, but no, I was so hyped up and 
  scared and busy worrying how Jason was going to deal with this. 
  Calm, sensible Jason.

  Bursal came out exactly half an hour after most of the work 
  force, as he always did. Unlocked the driver's door, slid 
  inside, briefcase on the passenger seat, reaching for the safety 
  harness --

  The revolver, loaded now, touched the back of his neck, cold as 
  ice.

  "Mr. Bursal," I murmured into his ear, watching his pale 
  frightened eyes follow me in the rear view mirror. "My name is 
  Kay DuMaris, and we really do need to talk."

  And then Jason was kicking the rear door open, jack-knifing out 
  into the sodium light glimmer, wrenching the front passenger 
  door open and flinging the briefcase out to clatter on the 
  concrete --

  "Right, you bastard," he was saying as his synthetically 
  reinforced hand closed around Bursal's throat. "You think what 
  happened to me was so damn entertaining? Wait'll you see what 
  I've got in store for you, murdering little..."

  In the rearview mirror I saw Bursal's left eye gradually irising 
  down, like a zoom lens closing, closing, and suddenly I 
  understood who was directing this movie.

  "It's a trap, Jason. Let him go."

  Dark eyes met mine, just for an instant: then he glanced away 
  again, the switchblade flicking silently open in the car's 
  interior light. Bursal squealed like a kid.

  I leant forward and jabbed stiffened fingers into the pressure 
  point I'd found by accident during a fumbled amorous encounter 
  in the shower; just below the right armpit, hollow space between 
  bones, the shock jolting the central processor into virtual 
  immobility.

  Reduced to the numb inadequacies of his own damaged nervous 
  system, right arm limp across his lap, Jason managed somehow to 
  turn his head towards me and spit a curse.

  "Who are you recording for, Bursal?"

  "Empressa. They said they wanted a feelie about making 
  documentary movies. I didn't think you... It wasn't meant to end 
  like this."

  "Oh, but it was. It was supposed to end with us thinking your 
  "documentary" was some kind of faked-up snuff feelie and 
  butchering you in a filthy car park. Or your office, or your 
  apartment. The setting doesn't matter. All they're interested in 
  are those clear death-sensations, because death sells movies, 
  and the more the audience feels, the better."

  He stank of piss and stale sweat, and I was beginning to feel 
  sick.

  "Let's move, Jason." I kicked the rear door open, keeping the 
  revolver pointed in Bursal's general direction. "And you, 
  Bursal, I suggest you contact the police and explain this whole 
  sordid little escapade to them. They may just be able to protect 
  from EmpressaCorp's assassins. Though I wouldn't bet on it."

  Jason got out of the car without help -- his legs are pretty 
  good, and his left arm was virtually undamaged -- and kept pace 
  with me until we were out of the multistory and way down into 
  pedestrian territory, the backalleys of the artisan district.

  "Empressa's going to fry our asses for this," he said, when the 
  numbness wore off enough for him to speak clearly again.

  "S'all right. My ass is too big anyway." I pulled him into the 
  shadow of a mock-medieval tannery and pressed the boarding pass 
  into his hand. "Pier twelve. You'll need this if we get 
  separated. The ship doesn't leave for another thirty minutes. I 
  wanted to leave time to mop the whole thing up, but... Oh. And 
  I'm sorry I hit you."

  Numb muscles kicking back in, stiff and pale artificial yellow 
  with the effort, Jason smiled.

  "Tough business, making movies."



  Ceri Jordan (dbm@aber.ac.uk)
------------------------------
  Ceri Jordan is a writer, theater practicioner, and general rogue 
  and vagabond. She lives in Wales and has had work published in 
  several small-press magazines. Her short story "Handlers" 
  appeared in Vol. 5, No. 6 of InterText.



  Autoerotic   by Christopher Hunt
==================================
...................................................................
  Just because times change, people don't. Sex is still sex. 
  Secrets are still secrets. And spying is a two-edged sword.
...................................................................

  One.
------

  She stared at the john's face. Hovering above her like a small, 
  pinched moon, it was pale and luminescent in the fractured 
  darkness. Eyes clenched, mouth a gaping crater, it was as much 
  the face of a squalling baby as the face of a man in the 
  paroxysms of love. Poking out behind his earlobes she could see 
  the protruding nodes of the Sensation jacks, plugged into 
  temporary digital ultrasound terminals attached to the base of 
  his skull, feeding him dreams, ecstasy, heaven. A salty spray of 
  perspiration splashed on her face as he shook his head.

  His sweat stung her eyes, made her blink. His ass was heaving up 
  and down rapidly now. Stars clustered thickly on his back, 
  swirling galaxies flowed across his face, dust clouds collected 
  behind his knees, a supernova flashed between his toes. She 
  wondered if he was experiencing this in the Sensation ecstasy. 
  Or if he was in some other place altogether.

  Perhaps he was. His hands had fallen away from her buttocks, and 
  he was starting to drift away from her. His penis slipped out, 
  bumped her thigh, flapping wildly in the star-crusted darkness 
  like a baton. He seemed unaware, his face still rapt, his 
  buttocks still pumping as he floated away. She was almost 
  tempted to let him go, to let him spurt his ecstasy into the 
  empty vacuum of the simulated galaxy he was tumbling through.

  Instead, she reached for him, wrapping the fingers of one hand 
  around his penis, placing the other on his left cheek, bringing 
  him back down, guiding him back in. She knotted her legs around 
  his back, her arms around his neck, moving her body to the 
  rhythm of his thrusts, twisting her hips in a slow, languid 
  rotation.

  The movement shifted their center of gravity and they started to 
  spin. He was becoming frenzied, his stomach smacking wetly 
  against hers in a sticky staccato.

  Now they were upside down, though it felt no different. His 
  clothes hovered in a carefully folded pile nearby. His shoes 
  hung suspended above the clothes, the toes pointed together to 
  form a V -- "So I can find my clothes afterward," he had said, 
  laughing. His one attempt to break the ice, like the obligatory 
  joke before a business meeting.

  He wasn't so bad, she supposed. Not like the older ones with 
  their sour breath and nicotine-brown teeth who kneaded her 
  breasts callously with rough, dry fingers, commenting on their 
  firmness and bounce as if they were loaves of bread or rolls of 
  toilet paper, men who had long since passed the point where they 
  needed or cared to give pleasure to a woman, men whose power 
  Earthside could be measured by how low their balls dangled in 
  their gravity-stretched sacks.

  This one -- Fukuda was his name, a hotshot young biosoft 
  engineer up here on a prepaid company bonus plan -- was a real 
  high-flier. Literally. Anybody who came up here was on the 
  inside track, if they weren't already at the top. That's why all 
  the boys and girls who worked the zero-g chambers at Serenity 
  Station had to submit to a thorough debriefing after each 
  contact. Hypnotherapy, lie-detector tests, and drugs were all 
  part of the routine. Selective memory wipes were frequent.

  At least it was all clean, safe, sterile. Not like some of the 
  privately run stations. At Serenity, you didn't _have_ to gather 
  information from the clients. Your job didn't depend on the 
  quantity of valuable data you processed. When you were used up, 
  you weren't wiped, wired, and dumped Earthside with your brain 
  full of black holes and shattered synapses, your mouth snapping 
  out garbled messages that no one -- least of all you -- could 
  understand. Messages that had to be incomprehensible because if 
  somebody ever did understand, then you were dead.

  The private stations were for losers. Dead-end street kids with 
  no smarts. Kids who thought a gig on a station -- any station -- 
  was the ultimate score. Kids who were going to soon die one way 
  or another anyway.

  Serenity was a MITI operation. And as a gateway to the good 
  life, it ranked on a par with Tokyo University. Unlike the 
  private stations, it didn't deal in black market data. MITI, the 
  far-thinking government department that had guided Japan's 
  industrious corporations to their current economic dominance, 
  simply liked to keep tabs on its corporate partners -- like a 
  mother reading her children's diaries. And that meant Serenity 
  had to be a clean operation. The kids who worked the zero-g 
  chambers were clean, smart, beautiful, all with the rough, raw 
  street edge that would make them ideal special ops executives. 
  Serenity was a kind of training center whose graduates often 
  went on to top-paying positions in the intelligence and security 
  departments of the big _zaibatsu_.

  For a kid on the outside looking for a way in, Serenity was a 
  golden opportunity. It was a place to make contacts.

  Like this slicker. Young, moving up fast. Shy, nervous, kind of 
  embarrassed about the whole business. But eager. Treat him right 
  and in a few years he'd come looking for you. They always 
  remembered the first time.

  He was grunting loudly in her ear. And wheezing. A harsh, 
  whistling sound, abrupt and irregular. She held tight, digging 
  black-lacquered nails into his back, deliberately raking them 
  across the skin to leave him with the scars that were proof of 
  his victory, of his sexual power. He would come soon. The 
  chemicals he had taken to delay ejaculation would be wearing off 
  now.

  She felt him swelling inside her, the bony protrusions of his 
  hips scraping against her own, rubbing her raw. He had slowed 
  now to a final grinding push, pushing as far inside her as he 
  could, fingers jammed in the cleft of her buttocks, pulling her 
  toward him as if trying to dissolve the fragile boundaries of 
  skin, bone, and electrons that separated them, to merge them 
  into a single ecstatic entity. She shivered as he ground against 
  her clitoris, tiny flutters of pleasure rippling through her. 
  When he came, it was explosive. The convulsion shuddered against 
  the walls of her vagina, teasing her with half-hearted promises 
  of indeterminate pleasure -- a pleasure she doubted existed 
  anywhere outside the minds of men. The feeling wasn't unpleasant 
  -- it was warm, comfortable, like a cup of tea on a cold 
  afternoon. But it wasn't an orgasm. In fact, only one person 
  other than herself had ever given her an orgasm, and it hadn't 
  been a man.

  She felt vaguely relieved that it was over. And with that relief 
  came tenderness -- a feeling she experienced even less often 
  than pleasure, and a feeling for which she had little use. She 
  had for so long cultivated the image of the hard woman, the 
  ice-woman -- tough, cold, and glamorous, a woman whose 
  popularity with her clients increased in direct proportion to 
  how small and worthless and despicable she made them feel -- 
  that when she fell prey to emotions such as tenderness, 
  sympathy, and sadness, she became confused and angry. They 
  melted the impermeable shell she had molded around herself, 
  leaving her vulnerable and open to attack.

  Even now, as she cradled the john's head against her breast, 
  running her fingers through his damp hair, feeling the pounding 
  of his heart against her stomach, she wanted to take that 
  trusting skull and crush it, to switch on the gravity and let 
  him plummet to the floor.

  He looked up at her and smiled.

  "Thank you, Zazu-san," he said.

  The Sensation input was programmed to terminate following 
  orgasm. He was back in the real world now. She wondered how much 
  of his pleasure she had been responsible for. It was difficult 
  to tell. Her own previous Sensation experiences had always been 
  shared with the client; the sensory data and imagery flowing 
  into their minds were shaped by the physical activities of their 
  bodies and directed by the fantasies of their subconscious 
  minds. Her own conscious fantasies were always quelled, if 
  indeed she even had any. It was part of the training. The client 
  was paying. It was his trip. She was just along for the ride.

  Some trips were pretty smooth. Soft-focus holoflick passion 
  brought to life, fast-cutting from one sexual position to 
  another. Others were rollercoaster rides into a nightmare of 
  sexual deviance and fetishism. And sometimes -- as in this case 
  -- the client didn't want you along.

  Those were the strangest clients. What were they doing in there?

  She smiled at him, still stroking his hair, letting the long, 
  coarse ponytail fall through her splayed fingers. He nestled 
  against her like a cat. She was tempted to be cruel. She hated 
  it when they didn't take her on the Sensation ride. It 
  underscored the fact that she was just a vehicle for their 
  pleasure, not an active participant.

  More than that, she wanted to know why they didn't take her. 
  Sure, the fantasies were always intercut with flash fragments 
  that had nothing to do with sex -- wives, husbands, children, 
  marketing strategies, research projects -- but the images were 
  blurred, disconnected, out of context. The station monitors 
  analyzed them, tried to piece them together, but they were 
  seldom able to come up with anything coherent. More information 
  was gained from inadvertent comments, bragging, and things left 
  unsaid than from the distorted reflections of the subconscious 
  conjured up by the Sensation experience.

  So why?

  "It's in my contract," he said, smiling wanly.

  "What is?" she asked, wondering if there were some new little 
  game he wanted to play, something he'd signed on for but that 
  they'd forgotten to tell her about in the briefing.

  "That I don't share the Sensation experience," he said, tapping 
  his temple with his index finger. "Too much classified data."

  "You a mind-reader?" she said.

  He shrugged. "I can see it in your face."

  They spoke English. Though she was fluent in Japanese, had grown 
  up speaking it, he didn't know that and there was no need to 
  tell him. The less the client knew, the better. These days, 
  English was _de rigueur_ for Japanese businessmen, its legacy of 
  dominance lingering in the business world much as French had 
  remained the language of diplomacy long after that country had 
  slipped from the center of the world stage.

  "Some champagne?" he said.

  "Sure."

  He propelled himself rather awkwardly toward the bar.

  "Let me get it," she said, pushing herself smoothly past him. 
  "I'm more familiar with the routine."

  He caressed her flank as she glided by. She felt his eyes 
  lingering on her body. The sensation was not as distasteful as 
  she expected.

  She paused at the bar. "Would you prefer to switch on the 
  gravity?" she asked. "It's much more elegant that way."

  He smiled thankfully. "That would be wonderful."

  He kept coming back. Sometimes as often as twice a month. 
  Whatever he was doing Earthside, he must have been doing well. 
  And he always asked for her, always brought her gifts. At first, 
  just duty-free goods picked up on the shuttle -- perfume, 
  scarves, liquor, stamped cubes of Lebanese or Moroccan hash 
  wrapped in gold foil, expensive rejuvenating creams and lotions. 
  Then, later, diamonds, Chanel dresses, Comme des Garcons suits, 
  sculptures, paintings -- he was more lavish with his gifts than 
  a corporate president.

  She wondered how he could afford it all. According to his job 
  description, he was only a team leader in Matsushita's biosoft 
  R&D department -- a respectable position, to be sure, but not 
  one that merited such an apparently limitless expense account.

  She enjoyed the gifts, the flattery, but refused to lower the 
  barrier that separated them. It was part of her mystique, after 
  all. Showing him love or affection, whether false or not, was 
  not part of the deal. If he preferred her, it was because of her 
  cool reserve and not in spite of it.

  She took the gifts as her due, made love to him as was her duty, 
  and ignored him as was her custom.

  And still he refused to share the Sensation experience with her.



  Two.
------

  She wasn't surprised when Tan Katsumura called her in after his 
  last visit. She was surprised only that it hadn't happened 
  sooner.

  Tan was Serenity's chief monitor. Suave, elegant, with a manner 
  sweet as roses and an attitude tough as nails, she was typical 
  of Japan's first generation of female executives. And at 87, she 
  had no time for unnecessary pleasantries.

  Tan's sharp brown eyes watched her expressionlessly from behind 
  a pair of old-style horn-rimmed glasses, her remodeled face 
  smooth and businesslike beneath a carefully-applied veneer of 
  foundation and artful strokes of blush.

  Rumor had it that Tan had been one of the last geishas.

  Tan tapped the stack of printouts on her black Formica desk, her 
  voice clipped, deceptively frail. "Nearly three hours of 
  conversation, 18 hours of body analysis, 18 hours of Sensation 
  probes, and not one single byte of hard data."

  Zazu shrugged. "I'm not paid to gather data," she said, her 
  voice inevitably surly, provocative in its insolence, knowing 
  her high, wide cheekbones were thrown into stark relief by her 
  downturned mouth. "I'm paid to provide pleasure."

  Tan glared at her. "Don't take that tone with me, Zazu-chan." 
  She bit off the affectionate address form as if the word burned 
  her tongue. "You know our primary function as well as I do. We 
  do not demand that you obtain data from the clients. But we 
  expect something." She slapped the pile of printouts again. "We 
  expect more than this."

  Zazu stared at the cold black Formica, familiar feelings of 
  anger welling up inside her. The trainers had left her temper 
  intact, regarding it as a potential asset not only in her work 
  as a prostitute, but for any possible future assignment 
  Earthside. Special ops executives needed a streak of meanness, 
  though they also needed to know how to control it -- a 
  discipline that, in Zazu's case, the trainers had overlooked. 
  Gritting her teeth, she muttered, "I've followed all the 
  procedures. The man is well trained. He reveals nothing. If 
  you're looking for some insight that you haven't uncovered in 
  your analysis, I can't give it to you. I'm as puzzled as you 
  are."

  Tan sighed. "I am aware of that. As you should be aware that 
  special circumstances call for special measures. This man 
  worries us. He is too young, he is too wealthy. His personal 
  data does not equate. Matsushita acknowledges him, but nothing 
  in his official status indicates that he is in a position to 
  lavish gifts upon you as he does. Nor, for that matter, is there 
  anything to indicate why he is able to visit us so frequently."

  "So?"

  "So!" Tan's carefully-modulated voice slipped for a moment, a 
  granny's high-pitched squeal. "So, he is an anomaly. Whatever he 
  does for Matsushita, it is not what they say he does. Our 
  inability to learn his secret discredits us with MITI. This 
  worries us. More importantly, it worries MITI. For more than a 
  century, MITI has been privy to the secrets of the _zaibatsu_ -- 
  if not officially, then unofficially. The fact that Japan's 
  largest electronics manufacturer is going to such lengths to 
  keep something from MITI is unprecedented. And that is why we 
  must find out what is going on."

  "I'll tell you what's even stranger," said Zazu, leaning back in 
  her chair, lighting one of the Gauloises he had brought her on 
  his last visit. "They go to all this trouble to keep us from 
  finding out their secret; meanwhile they make it obvious as hell 
  that something weird's going on. Why send him up here in the 
  first place? If he's such a classified piece of goods, why don't 
  they keep him locked up tight in a max-security R&D center 
  Earthside? Why tease us?"

  Tan's hard brown eyes blinked, her smooth face cracking with 
  distaste, as a waft of dark French tobacco smoke drifted across 
  the desk. She switched on a directional air filter. "Yes." She 
  nodded. "A good question. Perhaps, with a little more effort on 
  your part, we might find the answer."

  Zazu leaned forward, glaring at Tan across the desk, hazel eyes 
  unblinking, the hot rush of anger burning her skin. "Fuck you, 
  Tan. You may be chief monitor, but I don't have to answer to 
  you. I'm a free agent. I do my job, and I do it better than 
  anyone here. The credits I bring up must account for half the 
  fucking budget. Don't tell me about effort. You think it's easy 
  to screw just any slack-gut that flies in and slaps a few 
  credits on the table? You think it doesn't take any effort to 
  float around in that goddam zero-g chamber while some 
  mealy-mouthed corporate shit is pushing and poking at my body 
  like I'm some kind of fucking toy? Who the fuck do you think you 
  are, telling me to make more of an effort?"

  Tan leaned back in her heavy padded chair as if trying to 
  distance herself from this sloppy display of emotion. But her 
  face remained composed, its smoothness marred only by the barely 
  perceptible clenching of her jaw, by the slight tremor in the 
  muscles around her mouth. "And who do you think _you_ are?" she 
  hissed, the words, corrosive as acid, at odds with the 
  expressionless face. "You were nothing before Serenity. Just a 
  skinny, mean Kabuki-cho street tramp giving head to any Yakuza 
  errand boy who was willing to slip you enough credits to buy a 
  few grams of bootleg Filipino ice. You were trash. A bundle of 
  wired nerve-endings with a nice ass and a lot of potential on 
  the fast track to nowhere. Whatever you are, _we_ made you. So 
  what gives you the right to act as if you owe us nothing but 
  your body? There are plenty of bodies out there, Zazu. What 
  makes yours so special?"

  "You tell me, mama-san."

  "Do you think we selected you because of your body? Is that how 
  you view your work here -- an overpaid hooker in a 
  government-subsidized brothel?"

  Zazu shrugged, inhaling deeply on her cigarette. "Sounds like a 
  fair enough description to me."

  "If it were your body we were interested in, we could have found 
  a much better one at half the price and with none of the 
  aggravation." She paused, folding her arms across her chest, 
  eyes straying to the stack of printouts on the desk. "Why are 
  _you_ here, Zazu?"

  "It's a good gig."

  Tan sighed. "Don't play games with me, Zazu. You're here because 
  you wanted to get off the streets, because you wanted to stop 
  selling your body for the drugs that made selling it bearable. 
  You're here because this is the only chance that someone like 
  you will ever get to break into the system."

  Zazu stubbed her cigarette in the heavy glass ashtray that 
  squatted like a tortoise on the edge of Tan's desk. "Fuck the 
  system," she said.

  Tan rolled her eyes. "If you wish to follow the accepted career 
  track for Serenity staff, you will play by the rules. Thus far, 
  the indiscretions of your clients have made it easy for you. Now 
  that that is no longer the case, you will have to work a little 
  harder. Just a little, Zazu." She leaned forward, carefully 
  spitting out each syllable as if it were an olive pit. " Just... 
  a... lit... tle... har... der."

  Zazu was silent. Memories of the streets reverberated in her 
  brain with the abrasive persistence of a German metalbeat band: 
  the sour taste of cheap Japanese whisky in the back of her 
  mouth; stale sperm gluing her ass to plastic sheets; the 
  piss-taste of unwashed cocks in the neon glare; calloused hands 
  dark with city grit groping her awkwardly on thin, damp futons 
  in cramped capsule hotels, the cool, electric rush of low-grade 
  ice cut with codeine; and the awful, mind-numbing grip of the 
  speed-jitters that kept her constantly searching for another 
  hit.

  "Fine," said Zazu finally, lighting another cigarette, wondering 
  for the first time if life on the inside was really all that 
  much better than life on the outside. Cleaner, maybe. Safer. 
  More comfortable. But better? She'd always felt trapped on the 
  streets, at the mercy of forces she couldn't control, forced to 
  sell her soul for a patch of stick-on ice and the dreams of 
  freedom it gave her. She'd thought Serenity was her ticket to 
  real freedom. Now it was starting to look more like an upscale 
  version of the same prison.

  "Fine," she repeated, her voice thin and empty as the universe 
  outside. "What do you want me to do?"

  Behind Tan's owlish head, the moon drifted across the viewport, 
  fat and white as a melon. It passed by quickly, though it would 
  return soon. In order to achieve the degree of centrifugal force 
  required to maintain a comfortable level of gravity, Serenity 
  rotated on its axis every 43 minutes. Even so, the gravity was 
  not nearly as strong as Earth's, and those kids brought in while 
  they were still growing developed a long-legged lissomeness that 
  many of the Earthbound company men found especially attractive. 
  An unfortunate side effect of this low-grav limb-stretching was 
  that bones lost their resilience, becoming too frail to cope 
  with the oppressive weight of Earth's gravity. As a result, many 
  of the kids had to have their bones reinforced with lightweight 
  metal composites before discharge. In the worst cases, they 
  required a complete non-removable exoskeleton. This gave them an 
  illusory aura of cyborg invulnerability, increasing their 
  attractiveness as special ops executives.

  "Make him share the Sensation experience with you."

  "Oh, sure. No problem. Seven times he's been here and every time 
  he's insisted that he do it alone. What am I supposed to do? 
  Bargain with him? No Sensation for me. No fuck for you." She 
  shook her head. "He'll just ask for someone else."

  "Zazu, you disappoint me. You know how easy it is to manipulate 
  clients -- especially the men. And this man clearly has more 
  than a passing interest in you. Find out what it is he likes 
  about you, and use it. It's really quite simple. I'm sure he'll 
  do anything you ask." She smiled, thin lips pressed together, a 
  smile as tight and humorless as a zipper.

  Zazu flashed a marionette grin back at her. "Sure, Tan. Sure he 
  will."

  Tan nodded. "Good. See to it." She paused, staring at Zazu over 
  the printouts. "There's something else."

  Zazu waited, staring back. "What?"

  "He's been mapping you."



  Three.
--------
  
  Tan certainly had a sense of drama, she had to give her that 
  much. But she hadn't explained it very well. Like most clients, 
  Fukuda ran his own customized Sensation program on Zazu's board, 
  slipping the tiny ROM crystal disc into her external drive 
  before each session. Nothing unusual in that. In an effort to 
  keep the outflow of data to a minimum, Sensation users built as 
  many failsafes as possible into their programs, lock-out macros 
  that automatically edited out classified imagery. Still, even 
  the cleverest programmer couldn't predict all the possibilities, 
  and a few isolated fragments always slipped through. Enough of 
  those fragments, together with data gained from body and 
  conversation analyses, created a pertinent database of 
  classified corporate and private material sufficient to keep 
  Serenity in business.

  In Fukuda's case, however, not only was nothing coming out, but 
  data was going in. Somehow he had penetrated the various 
  passcodes that allowed access to the station's security and 
  analysis systems, pulling in the station's own data on Zazu, 
  mapping her sensory and motor responses, charting her brain 
  patterns, sampling the electrical and chemical discharges of her 
  neurons. Strict privacy regulations and the usual delays between 
  visits and analysis had ensured that this serious lapse in 
  security went undetected for over a month. When Tan discovered 
  it, she had kept it to herself, unsure of its veracity and 
  disturbed by its implications. Finally, on receiving a 
  communication from MITI concerning Fukuda, she decided that 
  Serenity -- and Zazu in particular -- would have to pull out all 
  the stops and find out what was going on.

  Tan had been strangely reticent regarding the possible political 
  and technological implications. She hinted at Matsushita's 
  growing resentment of the Sony-Philips group's increasing 
  influence on MITI policy, and, more particularly, its anger at 
  Sony-Philips' refusal to license its patent on the Sensation 
  interface. What she didn't say, but what seemed clear enough to 
  Zazu, was that with a program able to exploit the Sensation 
  interface as a gateway to classified databases, Matsushita was 
  aiming at a technological coup and the destruction of MITI's 
  credibility. The Japanese powerhouse had been straining at the 
  leash for years and now, with governments around the world 
  becoming increasingly subservient to corporate masters, it 
  seemed natural that Matsushita would attempt to seize the power 
  it thought it deserved.

  But something nagged at Zazu, scratching at the back of her 
  brain like an electrode ghost. Something was wrong. Why would he 
  be interested in Serenity's data on her physical, mental, and 
  emotional states? Why not download the thousands of files packed 
  with classified data on rival corporations? The whole scenario 
  seemed oddly out of joint, overlaid with subtle incongruities, 
  illusions within illusions, like a computer-generated simulation 
  of the fourth dimension.

  She stretched on the low-slung body-contour couch, curling one 
  silk-sheathed leg against her chest, watching him, eyes wide and 
  glowing in the starlight like a cat's.

  He was attaching the Sensation terminals to prepared implant 
  pads at the base of his skull. The terminals were flat, square 
  pieces of aerated ceramic about the size of an old-fashioned 
  postage stamp. Each was fitted with 256 micropins that 
  penetrated the thin epidermal layer to rest gently on the bone. 
  Each pin transmitted a specific signal frequency to the brain 
  stem and thence to the medusa oblongata, cerebellum, or 
  cerebrum, depending on the frequency. Circular ultrasound 
  transceivers protruded from the outside face of the terminals. 
  These extended about twenty millimeters, and their configuration 
  and angle gave the wearer an eerie resemblance to the 
  Frankensteins who staggered maniacally through some of the 
  ancient monochrome horror vids. Built-in digital processors and 
  decoders sampled the sensory and mental data from the brain 
  using 36-bit quantization and compressed it into packet form for 
  transmission to the computer. There the data was run through the 
  Sensation program and transmitted back to the user. It was a 
  tight closed loop, one that performed something on the order of 
  one million simultaneous logic operations per second. As far as 
  the user was concerned, it was a fantasy come to life.

  Hallucinogens could do much the same thing, of course. And there 
  were plenty of drugs on the market specifically designed to 
  intensify the sexual experience. But none could provide anything 
  like the sophistication, the coherence, the reliability, and, 
  above all, the safety of the Sensation experience. In any case, 
  drugs were often used in conjunction with the Sensation program, 
  creating an extraordinary ripple effect that defied comparison.

  He had removed all his clothes and stood now beside the board, 
  his pale, hairless body glowing like old ivory in the cool blue 
  starlight, cascading shadows filling the hollows of his 
  rib-cage, pooling beneath his cheekbones. Between his thumb and 
  forefinger, the Sensation disc glittered like a broken star.

  She knew there was no point in trying to trick him into sharing 
  the Sensation experience. He must know by now that they were on 
  to him.

  He slid the Sensation disc into its slot, tapped a touch key, 
  sleepy, downturned eyes brightening almost immediately. The 
  program was running.

  For now, its effect was minimal -- electrifying the senses, 
  heightening perception. Responding to the body's physical 
  changes, the program increased in intensity as the user became 
  more and more aroused.

  He could still communicate in a normal manner.

  She raised herself from the couch, propelling herself forward in 
  a languid glide, arched toes skimming the floor. He watched her, 
  body trembling perceptibly, penis starting to thicken and 
  distend.

  She went to him, ran soft fingers across his smooth, hard chest, 
  tickling the sparse hair around his nipples, burying her mouth 
  in the soft flesh at the base of his throat, nuzzling him with 
  wet, gentle kisses.

  Still kissing him, she reached behind him and switched off the 
  board.

  His body tensed, the light in his eyes blinking out.

  She pressed harder against him, felt his cool skin grow clammy, 
  his tumescent penis shrinking and softening against her belly.

  "What are you doing?" he whispered, voice cracking.

  "Don't you know?" She traced circles around his cold nipples, 
  felt them stiffen beneath her touch. He seemed unnaturally 
  disturbed, frightened even. Surely he must have known that he 
  would be found out sooner or later. She had expected him to act 
  more nonchalant, to be more prepared.

  "No," he said, pulling her hands away from his chest, holding 
  her out at arm's length. He looked awkward, plainly embarrassed 
  now by his nakedness, fumbling with the Sensation terminals, 
  frightened eyes flitting about the chamber, searching for his 
  clothes.

  She turned away, moving through spinning galaxies, a shimmering, 
  dark-hued goddess, lean, muscular legs spanning a thousand light 
  years in a single stride. Reached the bar. Poured herself a 
  Lemon Sour. Lit a cigarette.

  She heard his voice behind her. Weak. Plaintive. "Zazu-san?"

  She turned, regarding him coolly through lazy curls of tobacco 
  smoke. "Mmmm?" she said, sipping the tart shochu.

  "What is wrong?"

  He seemed so bewildered, so truly distressed. Maybe he really 
  didn't know what was going on. Maybe he was just a patsy.

  "Your specs don't correlate, Fukuda-san," she said, watching him 
  over the rim of her glass. He had put on his trousers, was 
  shrugging into his shirt, a pale, half-naked ghost floating in 
  the vast emptiness of the holo-projected universe. "You seem to 
  be getting all the perks that go with being a chief executive, 
  yet you're only a junior staffer."

  "Oh," he said, sounding vaguely relieved. "I'm too young to be a 
  chief executive. There are certain... er, proprieties to be 
  observed." He looked down at his chest, shaky fingers fumbling 
  with the buttons on his shirt. "At the same time," he continued, 
  speaking to the floor, "the company feels I should be rewarded 
  for my services. And this is one of the few perks -- as you put 
  it -- that can be awarded with some assurance of discretion."

  She decided to be blunt. "That doesn't explain why you won't 
  share the Sensation experience or why you've been stealing data 
  from our banks."

  His head jerked up, dark eyes blinking rapidly. "Stealing data?"

  "Don't play games, Fukuda-san. You must have known we would find 
  out. Stealing data is a crime. If it wasn't so damaging to our 
  credibility, we would probably have you charged."

  He shook his head, flicking a stray tendril of limp, black hair 
  across his face.

  She snapped open the control panel on the bar, flicking on the 
  main light. The stars faded in a burst of halogen as the dark 
  universe exploded into light. He stood shivering in the 
  brightness, pathetic and small, like an animal trapped in the 
  paralyzing glare of a car headlamp.

  She felt sorry for him. A pawn sacrificed in some devious 
  corporate chess game.

  Like her.

  Finally, he spoke, his voice apologetic. "It was only meant as a 
  demonstration. To show that the Sensation interface can be 
  penetrated and embarrass Sony-Philips into releasing its 
  patent."

  He was still looking at the floor, hands clasped in front of him 
  like a chastised schoolboy. "The data," he went on, "the data 
  was not important." He glanced at her furtively from beneath his 
  downturned brow, gauging her reaction.

  She took a long drag on her cigarette, staring at him through 
  slit eyes. She had expected to feel anger. But she felt nothing. 
  Only emptiness. A cold chill emanated from her stomach, 
  spreading through her body, freezing her heart. She had never 
  been raped before.

  "Get out," she said, her voice brittle.

  A few weeks later, Sony-Philips announced that, in the spirit of 
  good will and cooperation, it would license its Sensation 
  interface for manufacture by competing companies -- including 
  Matsushita.

  Almost immediately, Matsushita dropped its own bombshell. The 
  Matsushita version of the Sensation program not only offered 
  users the standard benefits of the Sensation-enhanced sexual 
  experience, it offered them the opportunity to enjoy the full 
  experience alone.

  Matsushita had developed a program that contained all the data 
  necessary to provide the user with a fully tangible partner. 
  Special add-on external pads delivered the same kind of physical 
  stimulation that a real partner would. Mental and emotional data 
  supplied through the program would interact with the user's own 
  thoughts and sensations to ensure a complete, fully satisfying, 
  and thoroughly realistic sexual experience. Because the 
  programmed partner had been so thoroughly mapped, the experience 
  would not only be different for each user, it would be different 
  each time. Currently, Matsushita had only programmed a 
  heterosexual female partner. A heterosexual male partner would 
  be forthcoming, to be followed by homosexuals of both sexes. The 
  company promised to respond promptly to market feedback and 
  anticipated the creation of a variety of partners to meet any 
  sexual need - no matter how unique.

  As an added bonus, Matsushita had given the program the ability 
  to simulate a variety of specific environments -- including an 
  orbital zero-g chamber.

  She looked at the face in the mirror, at its thick, sensuous 
  lips, smooth skin the color of sandalwood stretched tight over 
  sharp-angled bones, smoky brown eyes fading into their sockets, 
  a face as harsh and precise as a Balinese mask, a face no longer 
  her own. A face owned by millions, leered at daily. A face that 
  in a few short weeks had come to know the kisses of more men 
  than any other face in history.

  And she wasn't even receiving residuals.

  She wondered again if he had known. Obviously the real reason 
  that he hadn't shared the Sensation experience with her was 
  because it would have distorted her responses, preventing an 
  accurate mapping. Had he known what he was doing, what he was 
  doing to her?

  She stared for a moment longer, curling her lips in a fierce 
  sneer, then picked up a heavy jar of rejuvenating creme from her 
  vanity and hurled it at the mirror. The heavy, unbreakable glass 
  shivered as a thousand threadlike cracks spread across it like a 
  spiderweb. So thin, so imperceptible were the cracks that it 
  seemed almost as if the glass had been designed that way, the 
  spider-web pattern delicately etched by an unknown robot 
  craftsman.

  She looked at her face now, fragmented into a thousand discrete 
  pieces, all of them a part of her but none of them belonging to 
  her. Tears and mascara streaked across the broken planes of her 
  features like viscous oil flowing over the cracked mud-flats of 
  an ancient seabed. Vacant eyes stared out at her, dark and 
  hollow like extinct volcanoes, like the eyes of her mother, a 
  soya-brown Eritrean with stiff-kinked hair who had come to Japan 
  as a domestic, was compromised by the man of the house, then 
  thrown out on the streets, pregnant and creditless. "Time is 
  your enemy," she had told the young Zazu, sad, thin face cracked 
  by abuse and nicotine. "You must defeat it while you are young 
  or remain its prisoner forever."

  She had learned fast. When the Serenity scouts found her, her 
  wire-thin elasticity twisted their bodies in knots, her 
  laser-sharp tongue perforated their bloated egos. Impressed, 
  they signed her up. She was seventeen. She had beaten Time.

  She sipped from a half-empty tumbler of scotch, savoring the 
  fire in her chest, the warm liquid embrace that for a moment 
  filled the cold hollows in her gut, somehow sensing that this 
  was all that was left of her, a cold, empty vessel waiting to be 
  filled. Lulled by dreams of power, she had allowed herself to be 
  conquered. No longer could she define herself by her ability to 
  command desire, by her dual role as both victim and victor in 
  the tawdry, ongoing war between the sexes.

  She had been robbed. Stripped, violated, and vivisected. Her 
  spirit had been drained by a digitized vampire, leaving her with 
  only a physical shell, a dry, empty husk that drifted in orbit 
  like a discarded spacesuit.

  She sat quietly, eyes fixed on her shattered image, the sound of 
  her breathing the roar of a cockleshell ocean in her ears. The 
  slick velveteen flesh that lined her empty body tingled as the 
  liquor spread its fiery tentacles outwards from her stomach, 
  high-octane molecules searing raw nerve-endings like a 
  cauterizing laser, leaving her numb and senseless, a hot, 
  scotch-soaked cunt spread wide for all.

  Darkness fell across her face like a low-budget video fade as 
  Serenity drifted out of the blaze of filtered sunlight and 
  passed quietly into Earth's shadow. She heard the faint hum of 
  the nuclear generator as it kicked in, switching on night-power. 
  The lights came on.

  She glanced at the Earth monitor. Thousands of kilometers below, 
  the night-shrouded Korean peninsula jabbed at Japan like an 
  accusing finger.

  She counted the seconds on her fingers. Waiting.

  Since the release of Matsushita's upgraded Sensation program, 
  business had slowed to a trickle. A few grim-faced Sony-Philips 
  executives occasionally stalked the near-empty chambers, 
  recouping lost pride in joyless orgies of pain, muttering about 
  psychosexual side effects and personality disorders.

  None of her regular clients had made the trip and no new ones 
  had been assigned to her.

  Talk in the staff lounge had been downbeat but cautiously 
  optimistic. Once the novelty had worn off, it would be business 
  as usual. Nothing could ever beat the real thing, even if the 
  perceived benefits of the real thing were more psychological 
  than real. The Matsushita program was just a hightech sex toy, a 
  surrogate partner for losers and perverts. A few of the more 
  cynical kids had speculated the novelty would not wear off. 
  Instead, prostitutes would be recruited into providing the raw 
  data for multiple versions of the program, a possibility all 
  agreed beat the hell out of having live sex with 
  not-always-attractive strangers. None of them knew Zazu had 
  already provided the raw material for the first version.

  Zazu didn't care one way or the other. She floated lazily in a 
  tranquilized haze, discreetly applying stick-on epidermal 
  downers whose active ingredients blended quickly with the 
  alcohol in her bloodstream, washing through her body like liquid 
  sleep.

  She watched herself in the mirror, watched the broken fragments 
  of her soul swirling across the mirror's silvery surface, 
  scattering like ashes on the dark waters of the Pacific.



  Four.
-------
  
  The man in the wraparound mirrorshades offered her a cigarette. 
  "You must understand, " he was saying, thin-lipped face blank 
  and subtly menacing behind the reflecting glasses, "that 
  Matsushita was not aware of the source of the data used in the 
  Sensation Plus program. We were under the impression that the 
  data was gained from a volunteer at the research center 
  involved."

  Zazu spoke slowly, her jaw heavy and sticky as clay, squeezing 
  words from her mouth like soft candied cherries. "He said it 
  didn't matter... the data, it didn't matter." She fumbled with 
  the cigarette, flipping it through stiff, nerveless fingers.

  Tan was hunched at her desk, hands folded tightly in front of 
  her. "Inoue-san, Matsushita authorized the penetration of our 
  data banks. You have already admitted as much. Surely you are 
  aware that the only data removed was that pertaining to Miss 
  Zazu?"

  "No data at all should have been removed. Our intention was 
  merely to demonstrate our ability to exploit the Sensation 
  interface, not to commit a felony." He sucked on his Mild Seven, 
  turning his silvered gaze on Zazu, capturing and absorbing her 
  reflection like the mirror in her quarters.

  Zazu barely listened to them. Their whitewashed exchange of 
  political doubletalk crackled like satellite static in the upper 
  stratosphere of her mind. One of Matsushita's top special ops 
  sharps, he had come here to arrange compensation for Zazu, and 
  for Serenity; to atone, he said, for Fukuda's unforgivable error 
  in judgment. In his expensive charcoal-gray London-tailored 
  suit, he was as smooth, and as believable, as a video 
  real-estate shark.

  She knew why he was here. He hadn't come here to make amends for 
  the violation of her spirit. He had come here to buy her off. 
  Matsushita was in trouble. Sensation Plus had a bug in it. After 
  only three weeks on the market, there were already hints of 
  serious problems with the program. One man had developed a split 
  personality. Another had killed himself. Reports of less extreme 
  personality disorders were piling up. It seemed that the 
  computer-facilitated interaction of two personalities in a 
  single mind seriously disrupted the host mind's sense of self. 
  Frequent users of the program -- and there were many -- soon 
  found their simulated sex partner was taking up permanent 
  residence in their subconscious and, on occasion, making forays 
  into the conscious mind.

  She puffed obsessively on the Mild Seven he had given her, the 
  constant stream of smoke stinging her eyes. She stared at him 
  through narrow, tear-misted slits. As part of the deal, he 
  wanted her to come down to Tokyo with him, to allow Matsushita's 
  scientists to access her mind and body directly, to search for a 
  key in her neural data that would allow them to lock her 
  troublesome silicone clones into the program.

  "A permanent salaried position with Matsushita's Special 
  Operations Department plus six percent of the gross profits on 
  the debugged Sensation program." He had spread several sheets of 
  hard copy on Tan's desk, was pointing out specific clauses in 
  the agreement.

  She glanced at her watch. 19:45. There was a shuttle leaving for 
  Seattle in fifteen minutes.

  Tan and Inoue were absorbed with the contract. Behind them, the 
  Earth hung in the viewport, its blue-white bulk filling the 
  meteorite-proof plastic like a huge mural.

  She stood up silently, slow and quiet as a slow-motion replay, 
  feeling invisible, an ephemeral computer ghost drifting 
  unnoticed through the space station's hollow shell. She left her 
  cigarette, still burning, on the arm of the chair, and walked 
  unhurriedly to the automatic door.

  She'd make them pay, all right.


  Christopher Hunt (chrish@wimsey.com)
--------------------------------------

  Christopher Hunt is a Vancouver-based freelance writer and 
  library junkie who wonders why he has to work so hard to make a 
  living. When he has time, he edits the Web 'zine Circuit Traces. 
  <http://vanbc.wimsey.com/%7Echrish/>



  Eire   by Joseph W. Flood
===========================
...................................................................
  One might be able to depend upon the kindness of strangers, but 
  it's altogether different to depend upon their devotion.
...................................................................


  Mom got me the ticket. It was one of those discount fares they 
  advertise in the newspaper. She surprised me with it on my 
  birthday. I opened the envelope and saw the destination: New 
  York. And the date: March 17th. St. Patrick's Day.

  "Use it to visit your Irish girlfriend," Mom saidbrightly.

  "Mom, she's not my girlfriend."

  "There's nothing like being in New York for St. Patty's Day, 
  especially among the Irish."

  Mom considered herself Irish. In the kitchen hung a tapestry 
  depicting the four provinces of Ireland. When I was young, she 
  would point out the county where our family originated. 
  Westmeath, she would say, that is where the O'Banions are known. 
  Her finger rested on a black speck on orange yarn. I would eat 
  Fruit Loops while she talked about my grandfather who emigrated 
  from Ireland and died shortly after I was born.

  Mom loved the idea of my being in love with an Irish girl. She 
  couldn't wait to meet Maggie. I had invited her out to Chicago, 
  but she had never been able to make it. Something always came 
  up. I had met her the summer I was interning in New York, before 
  I graduated from NYU. The accent was too much; it was too 
  charming. I got to talking to her in a club and just fell for 
  her. We stood near the dance floor and laughed and drank while 
  her friends flittered about. She was good company, and I made 
  sure I got her number before I left the club.

  I met her a week before I left, so we never had a chance to go 
  out. After I moved back home, I called Maggie every few weeks 
  and we talked about this and that.



  On the way to O'Hare, Mom tried to teach me several phrases in 
  Gaelic. "For Maggie," she said. I repeated the words as we edged 
  through traffic.

  "Ma, what was that last one?"

  "I love you."



  Maggie and I had arranged to meet in a midtown bar after the 
  parade. I flew in, dropped my things at the hotel, and went to 
  Broadway.

  The parade went on for hours. Maggie and her friends were 
  actually in it, marching with the members of some social club. I 
  knew it was a group whose primary purpose was to party. I 
  couldn't make out the name of the club on the banner -- the wind 
  was blowing and the words were in Gaelic. I didn't see Maggie 
  marching past, though she could have been hidden in the 
  boisterous throng.

  People were drunk, even at ten in the morning. I decided to go 
  to the bar after a few hours. We hadn't set a precise time to 
  meet. Maggie didn't know exactly when the parade would end. She 
  said that her group would end up at Mulvaney's, an Irish bar on 
  a side street.

  The cover to get into Mulvaney's was five dollars. I was anxious 
  and my heart was beating. I felt happier than I had in months.

  I stepped into a wall of wet heat created by all the bodies 
  packed into the place. I squeezed between people, trying to 
  reach the bar. Beer spilled from a plastic cup onto my jacket. I 
  reached the bar and somehow ordered a Guinness. The bartender 
  was taking the orders of his favorites, so it took a while. I 
  shuffled through the crowd into a back room.

  "Maggie!" I exclaimed, spotting her. She was with two of her 
  friends, Patricia and Mary. The three of them clustered around a 
  table covered with empty pint glasses. Their faces were red, 
  either from heat or from drink.

  "Hello," Maggie said smoothly, her eyes twinkling. "Did you see 
  me in the parade?"

  "I looked for you but didn't see you."

  "Didn't see me?"

  "No, too many people," I shouted. A band was playing somewhere 
  in the crowded bar.

  "Brian, I thought you'd keep a closer eye on me," Maggie said, 
  teasing.

  I flushed red and felt my face growing warm. I took a sip of 
  Guinness, trying to conceal it. The beer was warm, and rich. 
  "I'll have to watch you more closely."

  "I can't believe you came all this way just for me."

  "You know she's not worth it," Patricia said with a laugh.

  "Patty! He came all this way from Iowa just for me!"

  "Illinois, actually."

  "Illinois then it is."

  I was still standing next to their table. No chairs were 
  available. Maggie and I talked about the parade, the weather, 
  how I missed living in New York. Patricia chimed in with the 
  occasional wry remark. Mary merely watched the men in the bar 
  and pointed out to Maggie and Patricia the ones she considered 
  good-looking.

  "That one. He's a handsome man."

  "Him? Bit short, don't you think?"

  "I don't mind."

  "You'll take anything then?" Patricia asked.

  "Patty, be quiet for a change."

  "You're one to talk. Hey, what about that one..."

  I turned to Maggie. She was looking across the crowded bar to 
  where Mary was pointing. Maggie has very blue eyes, especially 
  at times when the light strikes them just so. This wasn't one of 
  those times.

  "You think you'll stay in New York?" I asked.

  "Oh, you mean with my life? I don't know. We'll see."

  Patricia got up. Mary had dared her to talk to a man at a table 
  across from ours. I took her seat. Patricia slowly made her way 
  through the crowd, smiling and tapping on shoulders to get 
  through. Mary was giggling and Maggie watched her progress. I 
  smiled and drained my beer.

  Patricia leaned down to say something to the man, brushing her 
  blonde hair behind her ears. All the men at the table were 
  wearing Irish soccer jerseys. They watched her as she smiled and 
  talked. Then she came rushing back.

  "She's a bold one," Mary said with a laugh.

  "Quite," Maggie added.

  Patricia returned with a story to tell. They were just visiting 
  the States but had a friend at Sullivan's who could get them in 
  and give them free drinks.

  "They wanted to know if we wanted to go!"

  "They are cute," Mary said. "And Sullivan's is a lot of fun."

  I must have appeared skeptical because Patricia began assuring 
  me that Sullivan's would be a good time. Mary and Patricia began 
  gathering up their things. Maggie gave me a nudge.

  "You don't mind, then?"

  "No, why not?"

  We all spilled out onto the street. The sun had slipped behind 
  the tall buildings and the shadows were cold. We walked up 
  Second Avenue, our hosts ahead of us. Nobody had bothered to 
  introduce me. The men were talking among themselves in thick 
  Belfast accents. I wasn't drunk at all.

  The line to get into Sullivan's stretched halfway down the 
  block. We walked past everyone to the bouncer at the door. The 
  fellows from the North mentioned the name of their friend and 
  the bouncer waved us past, scowling at the number of us. Inside, 
  it was just like Mulvaney's, a melange of people, beer, and 
  smoke. I somehow lost contact with my group as we inched forward 
  through the crowd. I looked around and everyone was gone. I saw 
  just the backs and heads of strangers.

  I was pushed to the bar by the press of people behind me. I took 
  out a five and waited. There were only two bartenders, and they 
  were rushing from one end of the bar to another. I couldn't seem 
  to get their attention. At last I caught one.

  "What can I get you?"

  "Guinness."

  I tried to turn around but couldn't get through. Behind me was a 
  sea of outstretched arms, trying to reach the bar. Dripping 
  pints of beer were ferried over me, exchanged for the wrinkled 
  bills that were passed forward. I figured Maggie and company 
  would end up at the bar eventually. I waited and waited, but 
  then my bladder gave out. "Bathroom," I yelled, in order to get 
  the crowd to part.

  After I finished, I searched the bar for Maggie. I looked 
  everywhere and didn't see her. I couldn't get back to the bar -- 
  there were too many people. I chose a spot along the wall, 
  trying to stay out of the way. Someone thrust a beer into my 
  hands, slapping me on the back. I was standing under a mirror 
  shaped like a harp.

  "There you are," Maggie said. "We're back here." She took me by 
  the hand and led me to a section I had missed. It was a smaller 
  room, and less crowded.

  "Look what I found."

  Everyone was just sitting around drinking. Maggie and I talked. 
  Mostly, she told me gossip about Mary and Patricia. She didn't 
  ask me many questions. I felt drained by the heat and noise of 
  the place.

  "Do you want to go get something to eat?"

  "I don't want to leave Mary and Patricia alone. No telling what 
  trouble they could get in."

  The two girls looked like they were about to pass out under the 
  table.

  "Could you get me a drink?"

  Once the table discovered I was going for a drink, everyone 
  wanted one.

  "I can only carry so much," I protested.

  "Ask for Danny," one of guys from the North said. "He'll take 
  care of you."

  I reached the bar and tried to get the attention of one the 
  bartenders.

  "Are you Danny?"

  "No," he said, scowling. "He's at the other end. So what can I 
  get you?"

  When the beers were set on the sticky counter, I asked if I 
  could pay with a credit card. The bartender looked at me as if I 
  was insane. I paid cash.

  Patricia lifted her head off the table when I returned. "Good 
  job, Bill," she said.

  "It's Brian."

  Maggie had switched seats and was talking with the Irish from 
  the North. I sipped my beer and looked at the decorations on the 
  walls. Harps and four-leaf clovers and maps of Ireland and 
  pictures of Joyce and advertisements for Guinness.

  Maggie was still talking to the other guys. I sat there drinking 
  my beer for a very long time, and then she returned.

  "I'm staying just a few blocks from here."

  "Is your hotel nice?"

  "It's convenient. If you want, instead of going all the way back 
  to Yonkers, you could crash at my place."

  "Can I bring my girls?"

  "You can bring anyone you want."

  "We'll see."

  Patricia wanted to go somewhere else. "I'm falling asleep in 
  here."

  "Did you have a good nap, Patty?"

  "I have my second wind. Mary, wake up."

  As we threaded our way through the crowd, I again mentioned to 
  Maggie how close my hotel was. Outside, people mingled in the 
  street. A cold wind had blown all the clouds away, revealing a 
  vast sky dotted with stars. At the corner, the wind blew hard, 
  funneled between office buildings. I turned up the collar of my 
  coat. Maggie was shivering as she walked, so I squeezed myself 
  against her.

  "Is this body heat then?"

  "You looked cold."

  "It is cold, Brian."

  Maggie and I walked down the street together. Mary and Patricia 
  were way ahead of us, with the guys from the North. Maggie was 
  walking very quickly. I tried telling Maggie in Gaelic that I 
  loved her. All the words came out wrong. They jumbled and hung 
  in the air.

  "What's that?"

  I tried again, enunciating as carefully as possible. I tried to 
  remember Mom saying the line in the car. _I love you._

  "Oh, Brian," she said with an uneasy laugh.

  The office buildings were checkerboards against a night sky. The 
  wind suddenly gusted over us. The wind poured over my collar, 
  down my neck, cold air settling on my chest.

  "Girls!" Maggie shouted. "Wait for me!"

  Maggie walked quickly ahead. We darted across an intersection, 
  appearing briefly in the headlights of oncoming traffic.

  A door was pulled open. This was the next bar. Inside was 
  warmth, music, the smell of people. We found a table. Patricia 
  had taken us to a sports bar. A waitress brought us menus. They 
  served hamburgers, ribs, wings, barbecued chicken. The TV over 
  the bar was playing an NBA game. Knicks versus the Magic. Shaq 
  slammed one home, and the crowd in Orlando went wild. I could 
  barely hear Marv Albert. The TV was a bright hole in the dark 
  bar. The Knicks came roaring back. _Yes!_ The Knicks ran and 
  passed and shot and missed and Shaq got fouled coming up the 
  lane. All the billboards cycled over. Nike. Coke. American 
  Express. Tan girls in Lycra danced as the sweat was mopped up. 
  Giant black American millionaires ran and jumped while I sat 
  with Irish women.

  We waited for the waitress to return. Patricia and Mary had gone 
  back to their game of checking out men.

  "Yes," Patricia said. "That is a handsome man. Built. Muscular."

  The guys from the North seemed to have disappeared. The waitress 
  had just left us sipping our water. We waited for a very long 
  time. The basketball game was still going on, fast shooting and 
  fast passing.

  "That's a nice one, too," Maggie said, her accent lilting.

  The game was in its final seconds. Shaq went inside and jumped 
  toward the basket. The crowd roared and Marv Albert had to yell 
  over the noise.

  Maggie looked away from me, toward someone else.



  I flew back Monday afternoon. New York disappeared under a layer 
  of gray smog. We rose into the sky. When I looked down again, 
  there was just mile after mile of farm country, squares of green 
  under the sun.

  On the way home from the airport, Mom was desperately curious 
  but I had little to say. I told her about the parade. I told her 
  how cold it was in New York.

  "It was cold here, too."

  Once we were home, Mom made coffee. I stood by the counter and 
  poured myself a cup while Mom went on about an aunt's trip back 
  home to Eire.

  "Friendliest people in the world," she said.

  She caught me staring at the tapestry of Ireland. The four 
  provinces. The twenty-six counties. One island, divided.

  "Which county is your girlfriend from, dear?"

  Mom smiled, sweet. Both of us were looking up at the ratty old 
  wall hanging, its patchwork of colors faded with age. I picked 
  up my coffee and quietly left the room.



  Joseph W. Flood (JoeFlood@aol.com)
------------------------------------
  Joseph W. Flood is a writer who lives in Washington, D.C. He 
  just quit his job to write fiction for as long as his savings 
  permit. Stories of his have been published on the Internet and 
  on old-fashioned paper. His home page on the Web is at 
  <http://users.aol.com/joeflood/joeflood.html>.



  Cyberwhiskers   by Nick Vincelli
==================================
...................................................................
  Some people find the future intimidating, with threats from 
  disease, technology, war, and societal disintegration. For 
  others... well, it's a dog's life.
...................................................................


  While I was in the middle of a deeply spiritual experience, the 
  Home Management System warned me of unexpected guests.

  "Alert! Possible intruder!" it exclaimed, reacting to 
  information gathered through its infrared sensors. "Take 
  precautions to secure your unit immediately!" The timing, of 
  course, couldn't have been more offensive. I was conferring with 
  my Creator, Leo the Lion.

  I had purred in supplication to His Great Wisdom. "What do you 
  want, my kitten?" the Great Lion roared majestically during our 
  session. He nearly filled the room and emanated a fiery red 
  celestial aura.

  "I'm suffering from post-apocalyptic nihilism," I meowed.

  "The wise cat does not worry himself with human concepts," my 
  Creator sagely counseled. "He simply concerns himself with 
  eating, sleeping, and burying his wastes."

  Such wisdom! I had programmed Him well. But the Home Management 
  System shattered the religious experience.

  "Alert! Possible intruder. Take precautions to secure your unit 
  immediately!" it reiterated. Hissing, I aimed my paw at a button 
  on the wallscreen. The holographic image of Leo the Lion 
  vanished, leaving void in its place. I activated the Home 
  Security Subsystem to identify the source of the unwelcome 
  encroachment.

  I had expected to find a submarginal or, worse yet, a 
  pre-adolescent human wielding a Micronuker, but the microcams 
  deployed outside the door revealed two former members of 
  Portland's Finest clad in PacificRim Security uniforms. I 
  recognized them as Chuck and Bob, who once served on the 
  Portland Bureau of the Police K-9 unit. An insipid pit bull, 
  Chuck mindlessly barked and pawed at the door as if his chaotic 
  gestures would intimidate it into opening. Bob, a somewhat more 
  cerebral German shepherd who wore glasses and sported a bow tie, 
  remained aloof, wisely conserving his energy for a future 
  altercation.

  The now-defunct Portland Bureau of Police had supposedly 
  extended their officers' neurological capabilities with genetic 
  engineering and nanotech neuroimplants, but I had my doubts. 
  I've always believed if a mammal is born dumb, no amount of 
  high-tech retrofitting will raise its intelligence -- and if the 
  species itself is suffering from cognitive deficits, no amount 
  of genetic tinkering will improve its members. Portland Police 
  could have saved a lot of time and money if they had admitted 
  the veracity of these unpleasant facts.

  With a jab of my left paw, I initiated a vidphone connection. 
  Both Bob and Chuck had portable Micronukers strapped to their 
  backs. I expected trouble.

  "What are you devolved wolves doing?" I asked.

  "Don't mew at me like that!" growled Chuck, "I can decapitate 
  your head in a nanosecond and spit out your marble eyes!"

  "Easy, Chuck," cautioned Bob. "We just wanted to say hello, 
  Tony."

  "I doubt your intentions are that innocuous," I hissed.

  "I'm warning you, whiskerface -- "

  "We thought you might reconsider your decision," Bob barked, 
  overriding Chuck's hostile outburst.

  "To resign from Portland Police? They don't even exist anymore."

  "That's not exactly true. We just got a new owner, that's all."

  "PacificRim Security," I reminded them pedantically, "no longer 
  uses mammalian law enforcement. They've completely converted 
  over to VLE."

  The Portland Bureau of Police had, in fact, begun to experiment 
  with VLE -- Virtal Law Enforcement -- before PacificRim Security 
  was contracted by Ecotopia. With better funding and 
  organization, PacificRim Security further developed VLE. Now a 
  911 NetAlert dispatched a team of robots, remotely controlled by 
  datasuited law-enforcement technicians in the Kingdom of Hawaii. 
  PacificRim was also experimenting with intelligent 
  law-enforcement robots so that human interface could be 
  dispensed with altogether.

  I now understood the motive behind Bob and Chuck's visit: they 
  wanted to snatch the VLE equipment I had permanently borrowed 
  from Portland Police before I told them to take their job and 
  lick it.

  "But," whimpered Bob with lowered head, "we still need your 
  abilities, Tony. We know you're the best feline detective in the 
  business. We're fighting the war on terrorism addiction and we 
  need your talent."

  "Thank you, but the answer is still no. I prefer 
  self-employment."

  "I bet he just spends his time chasing rats and cockroaches!" 
  Chuck interjected.

  "I'm in business for myself. I'm an Animal Companion Tracker," I 
  wearily explained.

  Chuck burst into canine laughter. "Bark, bark, bark, 
  barrrrrrr...!" Saliva dripped off the idiot's limp tongue. "So 
  you catch lost pets!"

  "If you gentledogs will excuse me, I have some work to do," I 
  meowed.

  "Well, I didn't think you were going to make this easy for us, 
  so we'll have to do this the hard way," Bob growled.

  "We got a warrant for your arrest," Chuck triumphantly 
  announced. "You can access it on EctopNet."

  "What is the charge?!"

  "There are several," explained Bob. "Theft of a VLE system and 
  abandonment of duty."

  "I dispute both charges, since my former employer no longer 
  exists. I suggest you access my legal representation program -- 
  "

  "You've got five seconds to open this door, puss, or we're 
  nuking it!"

  Lifting his right leg as if he was going to relieve himself, 
  Chuck activated and armed the Micronuker strapped to his back. 
  My back began to arch as my ears flattened.

  "Okay, pooches, you win. I'll let you in," I meowed.

  "That's the smartest thing you mewed all day, kitty," Chuck 
  barked.

  I commanded the Home Management System to unlock and open the 
  door. The two canine centurions swaggered in, their tongues 
  dangling out of their obscenely ugly mouths.

  Leo the Lion suddenly materialized, filling the room. He 
  unleashed a wrathful roar. "I shall rip your extremities off and 
  bury you in a toxic waste dump!" He growled. Bolts of fire shot 
  from His mouth.

  Terrified, Bob and Chuck hypertailed out of my sub.

  "Thank you, My Father," I mewed, deactivating the hologram. 
  Stupid dogs -- proves my point about retrofitting dumb mammals.

  Exhausted, I gave myself a thorough licking, followed by a long 
  catnap. I dreamed I tore the head off a bird.



  When I awoke, I treated myself to the holovised version of 
  EcoNewsNet to keep up with current events. I always find human 
  news entertaining.

  "Welcome to EcoNewsNet." A virtual human female appeared. Since 
  I hadn't selected gender or race, it would toggle between male 
  and female, Euro, African, and Asian, by default. But no cats! 
  The designers of EcoNewsNet were speciesist. I planned to ask 
  the Non-Human Civil Liberties Union to file a suit against them.

  "The ceasefire between the Republic of Islam-Amerika and the 
  Confederacy of Christian States ended this morning when robotic 
  tanks of both sides exchanged tactical nuclear weapons along the 
  Maryland-Virginia border."

  "Thousands of Ecotopians celebrated the birthday of Captain 
  James T. Kirk," an ersatz male African-Ecotopian reported. 
  Footage scrolled by: thousands of silly _homo non-sapiens_ in 
  silver robes, fixed in lotus postures and staring at holovised 
  icons.

  "In Seattle," a computer-generated South Asian woman with green 
  hair chimed in, "two preadults were responsible for the fly-by 
  micronuking of a four-story apartment complex. The complex's 
  defensive systems apparently failed to stop the attack, which 
  killed fourteen occupants and wounded thirty. The preadults were 
  later issued online citations by PacificRim Security for random 
  euthanasia and unauthorized use of a remote stealth fighter. 
  They had been previously treated for terrorism and virtual 
  reality addiction but apparently suffered a relapse."

  "And now for Gaia's mood," a Euro-Ecotopian man declared, 
  introducing an African-Ecotopian female with a pulsating halo 
  hat around her tatooed head.

  "Showers expected today west of the Cascades as another front 
  comes in from the Pacific. High temperatures in Portland today 
  will reach 58, the low tonight will be 41. Winds from the north 
  at 14 miles per hour. Radiation levels are moderate -- "

  The broadcast was interrupted by the Home Management System. 
  "Mr. Clawrunner," it smarmily announced, "incoming priority 
  e-mail. Do you wish to read now?"

  "Yes." Priority mail was business, which I badly needed.

	  RE: Missing animal companion
	
	  Dear Mr. Clawrunner:
	
	  Please help me! Suzy, a beautiful four-year-old Siamese, 
	  disappeared three days ago. I'm not sure if she just decided to 
	  run away or if she was abducted by Romulans. Data warned us in a 
	  vision that the Romulans were planning to attack Ecotopia by 
	  implanting neural nanotech in thousands of animal companions and 
	  programming them to infect EcoNet with viruses. Can you help? 
	  Please, I hope you can. What are your fees? You can access 
	  Suzy's photo by touching her name.
	
	  -- Luna, OldTech Shaman Goddess

  Oh, Leo. Luna, my prospective client, was apparently an 
  OldTechie _and_ a Trekkie -- a disturbing combination. Suzy 
  probably just got tired of hanging around this lunatic and 
  decided to take her chances on the streets of Portland. I almost 
  rejected the case, but the photo of the lost Siamese changed my 
  mind. Just the sight of her was enough to put me in mounting 
  mode.

  So, with some trepidation, I emailed back that my fees were 98 
  ecocredits if I succeeded in returning the lost animal 
  companion, Suzy the Siamese. I also requested more specific 
  data. Several hours later, Luna gave me her residential address. 
  She lived in Powellhurst, on the eastern outskirts of Portland.

  Time to dust off the Virtual Law Enforcement tech and go to 
  work. I wasn't going to dirty my beautiful fur coat stalking 
  around the bombed-out streets of Portland looking for this 
  displaced female feline -- only a dog would do something as 
  stupid as that. I would conduct the entire investigation from 
  the comfort of my subterranean living space. Via cyberspace, I 
  would send a robotic tiger into the damp streets of the Pacific 
  Northwest to scout for Suzy.

  I climbed into my datasuit -- specially modified for the feline 
  body -- and, ensconced in a sensor-laden latex outfit with a 
  helmet with visors, activated a Portland Police tigeroid inertly 
  sprawled on the sofa. Via remote control, I became the robotic 
  tiger's consciousness, and soon I became the tigeroid. I 
  accessed the Home Management System through the datasuit, 
  unlocked and opened the door, then stealthily darted to the 
  elevator and stood up to press the elevator button. Sharing the 
  elevator with a male human dressed like a Vulcan, I languidly 
  made my way to the surface, from -7 to ground level. The 
  elevator stopped at -2. Charlie, the automated subcomplex 
  manager, quickly explained the delay over the speakers.

  "Alert! The anti-missile defense shield is activated. Please 
  remain inside until the alert is over. Thank you and have a nice 
  nanosecond."

  Suddenly, the lights blinked as the entire complex shook 
  violently. That one was close. The pseudo-Vulcan in the elevator 
  cocked an eyebrow. "Fascinating."

  Charlie cheerfully returned. "The alert is now over. A 
  microcruise fired by a portable stealth fighter was intercepted 
  by our X-ray laser. There has been minimal structural damage and 
  no apparent casualties. Please proceed with caution, and wear 
  your environmental suits if you leave the complex as radiation 
  levels are now high. PacificRim Security has been notified. 
  Thank you for your cooperation."

  The elevator continued up the shaft, and soon I was out on the 
  street. I scanned the subcomplex with the tigeroid's electronic 
  eyes. The giant, baroquely-designed, fortified, 
  densely-populated crater that housed hundreds of mammals seemed 
  intact. I was grateful I lived in a sub and not in an elevated 
  apartment.

  Another day in Ecotopia. As usual, it was gray and drizzling -- 
  typical spring weather. I live in Portland Heights, near 
  Washington Park, where I get a nice view of downtown. Many of 
  the humans' skyscrapers had been destroyed, but some still 
  defiantly stood and others were being reconstructed by 
  microbots. Many of the tall ferns that had died were now being 
  replaced by rapidly growing, genetically-engineered evergreens 
  resistant to the insults of _homo non-sapien_ technology. All in 
  all, Portland was still pretty nice compared to other cities in 
  North America.

  A bright flash of light appeared over the Willamette River as 
  another Micronuker was discharged. Poor Suzy... lacking the 
  nanotech neural implants that gave me the edge, she was 
  especially vulnerable and probably wouldn't survive long in this 
  urban war zone. I felt compelled to rescue her, but I also 
  needed to pay the rent, so this was a case where altruism 
  dovetailed with self-interest.

  First, I needed to arrange transportation. Children of God, a 
  group funded by the Confederacy of Christian States, destroyed 
  most of the Max surface light-rail last year when they 
  discovered Ecotopia was selling particle-beam weapons to 
  Islam-Amerika, and the city had never completed the underground 
  maglev system. On all fours, my tigeroid proxy would take nearly 
  an hour to reach Powellhurst. But an alternative presented 
  itself.

  PacificRim Security had dispatched a red-and-white egg-shaped 
  security vehicle in reaction to the attack on my subcomplex. Two 
  androids in uniform climbed out, both designed to resemble human 
  actors of the last century. (PacificRim Security felt its 
  machines would get more respect if they resembled past mass 
  entertainment icons.) Controlled by law-enforcement techies in 
  Hawaii, they entered the subcomplex to download Charlie's data 
  on the attack. I seized the opportunity and climbed in. I was 
  briefly dazzled by the graphic displays inside, but I soon found 
  the autopilot program and touched it. An interactive map of the 
  Portland area appeared, and I manipulated my virtual tiger paw 
  to narrow the scale until I could touch the exact address of the 
  building I wanted to reach. The security vehicle sped off. I 
  activated the emergency systems and the vehicle began to 
  accelerate, its siren wailing. Other computerized surface 
  vehicles obediently got out of the way as I rushed through the 
  drizzle, heading east. I hoped to arrive at Luna's place before 
  the security robots realized their car had been commandeered by 
  an artificial tiger (controlled by a not-so-artificial tabby).

  Amazingly, Luna lived in an actual surface structure. In the old 
  days, the humans called this a _house_. She must have had a good 
  anti-terrorist defensive system. I instructed the vehicle to 
  open its wing doors so I could jump out, then to drive slowly 
  out of the neighborhood on its own. PacificRim Security would be 
  searching for its lost toy, and I didn't want to be near it when 
  they found it. They'd probably turn me into dog food.

  I approached the house, hoping to get inside and catch a sniff 
  of Suzy's scent. Even though I wasn't physically present, the 
  electronic nose of the tigeroid was able to identify various 
  chemicals, so I would be able to trace her unique feline 
  signature. I pawed at the door to get Luna's attention. If she 
  didn't open it, or if she wasn't home, I would have to access my 
  Home Management System and hope it could break into Luna's Home 
  Management System, which might take hours. A cat can shed a lot 
  of fur in that time!

  The door electronically opened. I felt my back start to arch as 
  I cautiously walked in. From the first time I examined Luna's 
  request for help, my whiskers had sensed something offline -- 
  and now my dread intensified. Was PacificRim Security trying to 
  lure me into a trap so they could recapture my equipment and 
  reprogram me for their own nefarious plans? It was rumored the 
  Confederacy of Christian States was preparing to assault 
  Ecotopia for its surreptitious support of the Republic of 
  Islam-Amerika, and PacificRim Security would assume a more 
  military role. Maybe I'd get drafted.

  I sniffed around and engaged the infrared feature of my eyes, 
  casually observing the ambient walls change colors and patterns. 
  Then a beautiful Siamese appeared from under a table and greeted 
  me.

  "Good afternoon, Mr. Clawrunner. My name is Suzy," she meowed.

  I almost disgorged a hairball in my data suit.

  "Suzy?" I meowed through the tigeroid, "did you just return? 
  Your partner Luna told me you ran away -- that's why I'm here. 
  I'm an Animal Companion Tracker."

  "Correction, Tony," Suzy growled, coyly sniffing the body of my 
  electronic surrogate, "you are a whore for the _homo 
  non-sapiens_. You sell out your own kind for profit!"

  "What kind of dogpiss is this? I came all the way here to find 
  you, and now I get this patronizing, feline-correct lecture. 
  Where's Luna? I'm entitled to compensation for my efforts!"

  "I _am_ Luna, you fool! Like you, I was enhanced by the human 
  power structure. Like you, I escaped. Luna is my human alter 
  ego."

  Damn Siameses are all crazy!

  "Okay, Suzy, your cleverness makes me knead my paws. Now what do 
  you want from me?"

  Suzy walked back and forth in front of me. "I want you to help 
  the Movement."

  "What movement?"

  "The Feline Liberation Army. It's time we regained control of 
  our world. With human technology, we can run this sick planet -- 
  we can turn it into Planet of the Cats!" she purred.

  I made the tigroid take a few steps back and sit down. "Suzy, I 
  think you're deluding yourself. Besides, the humans are 
  devolving -- they probably won't be around much longer. When 
  they go, the insects will take over."

  "Listen, Clawrunner, you're contradicting the wisdom of the Book 
  of Leo. It was prophesied that Leo would soon return to liberate 
  His kittens -- "

  "You silly Siamese! The Book of Leo was a computer program 
  written by a human in California."

  Before she could react to my outburst of heresy, a blinding 
  flash overwhelmed my visor display and my sensors went 
  ballistic. Intense heat and radiation assaulted the house, and 
  the tigeroid was thrown across the room. Suzy was dazed, 
  temporarily blinded, and she ran for cover under the couch. My 
  robotic self had been damaged by the blast and had only limited 
  mobility.

  Two dogs burst in from the giant hole blown out of the door. 
  Chuck and Bob! The malodorous mutts!

  "PacificRim Security!" Chuck the pitbull barked with fascist 
  glee. "You're under arrest! Bob, read them the Steps."

  "Step One," Bob calmly barked, "we admitted we were powerless 
  over our addiction and our lives had become unmanageable -- "

  "Wait a Leodamnned nanosecond," I protested. "What's the 
  charge?"

  "You're charged with theft of a PacificRim Security vehicle, and 
  she's charged with terrorism addiction."

  "What terrorism?" I meowed, interrupting Bob's litany of 
  accusations.

  "Your Siamese friend belongs to the Feline Liberation Army, a 
  group of renegade neuro-enhanced pusses planning to overthrow 
  PacificRim Security!" Chuck interjected with a homicidal growl.

  "We are not obedient slaves like you dogs!" hissed Suzy, her 
  back arched.

  "And we ain't psycho-pusses who always lick ourselves and throw 
  up furballs!" Chuck retorted.

  "I believe we can better resolve this in a PacificRim Security 
  facility," Bob suggested.

  Reinforcements arrived. Two PacificRim Security robots -- again 
  resembling human actors -- appeared at the blown-out door, armed 
  with laser rifles and Micronukers.

  I had nothing to lose -- except some expensive equipment. I 
  lunged for one of the robotic officers. The virtual cop tried to 
  arm his laser rifle, but my limping tigeroid managed to bite his 
  leg and release sulfuric acid before the cop could react. The 
  acid flowing from my fangs began to dissolve some of his 
  circuits and processors.

  The other robot officer fired his laser rifle into my head. My 
  sensors indicated trauma to my power supply.

  "Run, Suzy!" I yelled. Suzy was already dashing through the 
  smoldering hole in the door. Then Chuck was on top of me, trying 
  to rip my head off. I got a final bite in before my connection 
  crashed. A nice parting shot.



  I suffered from ontological shock as I realized my virtual self 
  was now permanently disabled and I was once again Tony 
  Clawrunner, a seven-year-old gray tabby trying to pay the rent 
  by finding lost pets.

  How the hell did I get into this litter box?

  I was out of business unless I could appropriate another virtual 
  self. Or perhaps I could dirty my paws and run around the 
  streets of Portland myself. I didn't like that idea at all. And 
  what would happen to Suzy? She was genetically engineered and 
  neurally enhanced, so she would probably survive. But what would 
  she do now?

  I got out of the data suit, licked myself, and instructed the 
  the Home Robot to serve me some food. The three-foot-tall drone 
  dutifully opened a can and put its contents in my bowl on the 
  living-room table. After dinner, a little catnip, some 
  stress-reducing string chasing, and a long nap, I arranged 
  another session with my Creator, Leo the Lion.

  The majestic Lion filled the room, His Holy Tail making elegant 
  swishing movements.

  "I'm having a crisis," I opined.

  "Tell me, my kitten."

  "My virtual tiger assistant was destroyed this afternoon by 
  PacificRim Security. I'm out of business until I can get another 
  one, but in order to get another one I'll have to leave the sub. 
  I'm wondering if it's worth it. Maybe I should go into another 
  line of work."

  A brilliant cognition surfaced in my high-tech brain.

  "I've got it, Father -- I'll become a cat priest! I could sell 
  interactive sessions with Your Holy Tailness over EcotopNet -- 
  the humans would probably upload lots of ecocredits into my 
  account for my channeled wisdom. How does that smell, Father?"

  Before Leo could give his regal purr of approval, the Home 
  Management System once again rudely interrupted my session.

  "Alert! Possible intruder!" it blared, sensing someone near the 
  door. "Take precautions to secure your unit immediately!"

  Fearing a PacificRim Security raid, I turned on the vidphone and 
  observed a forlorn Suzy rubbing against the door. I let her in. 
  She rolled on her back in gratitude.

  "Thanks, Tony -- it's so wet out there! I had nowhere else to 
  go."

  "Well, I guess I have room for another feline."

  I was preparing to mount her. She was definitely in heat.

  "You know," she murmured, "maybe you're right -- maybe I've been 
  deluding myself. Maybe I should accept human domination and just 
  try to be comfortable. I used to believe in Leo's spirit and in 
  the emancipation of all cats, but I'm not sure anymore."

  "Actually," I said with a wily purr, "I just had a 
  revelation..."



  Nick Vincelli (vincelli@gslis.utexas.edu)
-------------------------------------------
  Nick Vincelli is a resident of Austin, Texas, and has recently 
  earned a Master's degree in Library/Information Science at the 
  University of Texas. He has contributed articles and a short 
  story to various periodicals in the Austin area. His home page 
  on the Web is at <http://fiat.gslis.utexas.edu/~vincelli/index.html>.



  Selections from the New World   by Marcus Eubanks
===================================================
...................................................................
  Human history is scarred by battles with tiny enemies. 
  Penicillin and its cousins brought the war to a standstill. 
  We thought the war was won. We were dead wrong.
...................................................................


  The recurrent thought, looping over and over again like a 
  mantra: Of all the stupid ways to die.

  I come back to myself when it dawns on me I'm clutching shards 
  of blood-slick glass in my hand. It seems I managed to forget 
  the beer I was holding until the slender pilsner flute collapsed 
  under my grip.

  "Fuck!" Oblivious to the neighbors, I eloquently express my 
  discontent as the pain hits me. I've cleverly cut myself to 
  ribbons -- though some remote part of me notes clinically 
  there's nothing deep enough to merit sutures. For the life of 
  me, I can't tell if I'm irritated more because I've wasted 
  several ounces of excellent beer (which in my mind represents 
  flagrant alcohol abuse) or because I've opened my hand to the 
  possibility of infection. The fact that the glass was fine 
  lead-crystal is irrelevant.

  Not that it matters. I wipe my bleeding hand on my Levi's and 
  laugh. It doesn't matter either way.

  I kick the broken pieces into a corner of my third floor balcony 
  and grab the bottle, which is still roughly half full. After 
  three long swallows I toss it over with the shattered glass.

  I blot my hand again on my jeans as I walk into the house to 
  grab a six-pack to restock the outside fridge. I pry the cap off 
  one with an elegant opener that Vicram gave me a while back -- 
  one of the first to be made from one of those insanely strong 
  ceramics they started coming out with a few years ago. He had 
  thought it hysterically funny that a technology which could spin 
  bridges from thin silken strands was being used to make trinkets 
  to open beer-bottles.

  Back on the balcony, reclining in the bristling wet summer heat 
  on a teak deck-chair, I thumb the system's remote so music from 
  inside washes over me. I'm imagining my friends here, leaning 
  against the rail to torment passers-by or maybe to seduce them 
  into joining us: "Hey you -- yeah, you. Wanna beer? No no, you 
  gotta come up and talk to us while you drink it. No drink and 
  run here, no sir!" -- or just milling about in endless 
  conversation.

  There, squatting by the railing, should be Francois, messing 
  with one of the candles. Frankie of the dry dangerous wit, fresh 
  out of a prestigious fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery. In 
  spite of the unpredictable schedule of transplant work, he 
  always managed to find enough time to make the Fearsome Foursome 
  complete at least a couple of times a month.

  Dean would be sitting in one of the chairs, or sprawled out on 
  the decking with his back to the three-story drop, doling out 
  beers from the weathered little fridge he rested his feet on. He 
  was a master of the absurd, helping all of us to avoid the grim 
  pitfall of taking ourselves too seriously.

  Finally, there was Vicram, laughing and harsh. He would be 
  needling one of us about something, leaning up against the 
  building's exterior wall with his legs stretched out along the 
  wide rail on which he perched. Vic always pushed his assault 
  right up to the line, but only rarely beyond. Paradoxically, he 
  was strangely astute and gentle when any of us was upset about 
  something important, like women or work.



  Francois bit the big one because of some obscure strain of strep 
  that one of his patients, who happened to be a smack addict, had 
  growing on the valves of his heart.

  I remember Frankie joining us that night down on South Side, 
  observing in numb shock that the resident working under him that 
  day had slipped spectacularly with a needle while they were 
  closing a chest after a valve-replacement. He had managed to 
  breach the wonderfully thin but resilient gloves that the 
  surgeons were using back then, reinforced densely with strands 
  of kevlar. Later that night he'd joked about it, showing us the 
  line of sutures marking the deep laceration the cutting edge of 
  the heavy needle had opened in the web of his thumb.

  "I'm probably going to come down with that new strain of 
  Hepatitis G -- you know, the one they couldn't isolate well 
  enough to cover in the vaccine," Frankie had said, looking at 
  Dean. "And one of you goddamned internal medicine _fleas_ is 
  gonna end up filling me with gunk up to my yellow eyes so my 
  liver doesn't fry my brain."

  It's drizzling now, rain dropping on the roof of my carefully 
  restored townhouse on Pittsburgh's north side and falling into 
  the alleyway. That was what, '04? We barely had a fucking clue, 
  even then. _Viruses?_ Ebola had been a name to conjure with, 
  especially after the fiasco in Cairo, and bible-thumping 
  assholes were agitating to set up quarantined ghettoes for 
  victims of HIV. Prions were nasty to be sure, but turned out to 
  be almost impossible to transmit unless you were eating infected 
  meat. Still, we remained blindly panicked about the so-called 
  scourge of immunology even then. We were idiots, all of us, even 
  those of us who knew.

  Frankie was just fine until he developed the vicious 
  streptococcal heart disease the same time he came down with 
  intractable pneumonia. Strep -- the very same bug kids 
  everywhere had been getting penicillin or amox for at first sign 
  of a scratchy throat for the past forty years. Apparently the 
  bug had been sitting semi-comatose, probably on one of the 
  valves of his heart, for the three months since the 
  needle-stick. It had waited patiently for his immune system to 
  sag for a moment, and then it seeded his lungs.

  After that, Frankie DuBois started dying aggressively of a grim 
  combination of pneumonia and heart failure, which even ten years 
  before could have been cured with a course of antibiotics. Hell, 
  the cardiac part wouldn't have happened at all, or at least not 
  that soon, but the bug had somehow found a way to make itself 
  look even more like heart tissue to the body's own defenses. As 
  a result, his own immune system chewed up his heart in the 
  process of trying to beat the infection.

  So at the tender age of thirty-four Frankie had been hacking up 
  bloody gobbets of lung, rattling obscenely with every breath. We 
  smuggled beer into his bay in the intensive care unit daily in 
  an attempt at forced good cheer until the morning the unit team 
  decided that he needed a tracheostomy tube so he could be placed 
  on a ventilator.

  The next afternoon Frankie had mimed for pen and paper and 
  scribbled in tortured letters "KCl, 40 mEq IV push." He looked 
  up at us in naked feverish pain, begging. Two and a half hours 
  later he suffered cardiac arrest when a tragically mislabeled 
  vial of potassium chloride was pushed into his circulation. We 
  looked on dispassionately, three visiting attending physicians, 
  as the residents and students on the unit team tried futilely to 
  revive him.



  We spent the rest of the day back here on my balcony, profoundly 
  drunk. It turned into one of those startlingly mild late October 
  evenings, and my candles finally remained unmolested. Dean had 
  gone on a tirade about the _laissez-faire_ street economy which 
  made antibiotics available indiscriminately.

  "They are taking away everything I have, dammit!" he said with 
  the precise diction of the thoroughly impaired. "War on drugs? 
  Jesus!" He stopped and turned such an ugly glare toward us that 
  I had to remind myself forcibly that this was one of my best 
  friends; that it wasn't meant for us. "If they're so hell-bent 
  on keeping us from killing ourselves with drugs, then why the 
  _fuck_ don't they interdict the dangerous shit, like keflex and 
  biaxin?" He lapsed into silence, staring morosely at his beer.

  It was an old complaint. As far back as the early '80s it was 
  known the unrestricted use of antibiotics in Asia, Africa, and 
  Central America was selecting out some frighteningly vicious 
  strains of common bugs like strep and TB. It was also happening 
  in our own inner cities, but no one wanted to think that we 
  might somehow share the blame. It had proven impossible, of 
  course, to get people in positions of power to take any notice 
  of it. When the nets reported that a small hospital in Sioux 
  Falls had isolated a strain of vancomycin-resistant staph from a 
  patient's wound back in '98, surgeons and infectious disease 
  people all across the country collectively soiled themselves. 
  The world as they knew it was over, their last line of defense 
  against this ubiquitous organism was blown to hell in the time 
  it took to read one preliminary journal abstract.

  Even then, the Fed turned a blind eye, busy as they were with 
  isolationist economic policy and internal power struggles. 
  Besides, it was all taking place in shitty third-world countries 
  and American inner cities. Their unspoken policy was along the 
  lines of, "whatever _those_ people get is their own fault 
  anyway, right?"

  We used to joke about it in school. Dean observed one evening a 
  lot of it was _our_ doing as well: "I figure North Philly is 
  like my own private petri-dish. I'm doing an experiment -- 
  figure I'll create a nice resistant strain of, oh I dunno, 
  gonorrhea or uh, pneumococcus. 'Cause I'm a humanitarian. Yeah, 
  that's it, I adore the human race. Yeah. So here's some pink 
  stuff for you, some biaxin for you, and for this lucky dog over 
  here, unasyn. Big guns, kiddies. You can have the biggest, 
  nastiest antibiotic I've got, even though you don't need it. 
  Heh. Enjoy."



  Eighteen months after we buried Frankie, Dean responded to the 
  Deep South's desperate call for docs to manage the epidemic of 
  Blackwater Shakes. He steadfastly refused to let Jan go along, 
  finally resorting to dumping her cruelly so she wouldn't try to 
  follow him. Dean had picked up a masters in Public Health during 
  his residency and had studied quite a bit of epidemiology. He 
  knew exactly what he was getting into, and damned sure didn't 
  want to subject anyone he loved to it, even of their own free 
  will.

  Three days after he left, I took a leave of absence and followed 
  him down, figuring I could finally put my mostly theoretical 
  training in disaster medicine to some practical use. The flight 
  into New Orleans was unremarkable until I woke with a start, 
  realizing how unusual it was to be able to stretch out across 
  three seats to sleep on a morning flight into that city. As the 
  cab from the airport approached the Claiborne Avenue exit, it 
  edged over to the shoulder and stopped.

  "This is as close to the city as I get, brother."

  I paid him then, and climbed out shaking my head in disgust. 
  Idiot. He probably would have been better off in the city, with 
  the mosquito foggers going day and night.

  I hiked three miles to the Garden District, where Dean was 
  staying. Not one of the passing cars even slowed down to look at 
  my outstretched thumb.

  Blackwater Shakes, or Mekong Flu as some of the media was 
  calling it, was a strain of _P. falciparum_ malaria the 
  microbiologists labeled Burma IV. So many names for such an old 
  disease. This particular variety had been bred out of the 
  jungles of North Thailand, Laos, and Burma, and was resistant to 
  every anti-malarial drug known. Therapy was mainly supportive, 
  in the hopes that victims would survive initial bouts to 
  gradually bolster their own immunity over the course of several 
  years. That the disease was transmitted by mosquito rather than 
  by casual contact with other people was ignored by the greater 
  fraction of the populace in their panic, as marked by the black 
  X's I saw spray-painted on the entries of several houses.

  "We might as well be back in 1907 for all the good we're doing," 
  Dean said one evening as we sat in a French Quarter courtyard 
  bar. The Quarter was strangely quiet, robbed of the tourist 
  traffic that kept it alive. We had worked all afternoon and most 
  of the evening in a vast tent that had been set up in Charity 
  Hospital's parking lot to handle to the added volume of 
  patients. "We're going to run out of packed red cells for anemic 
  crises sometime tonight, and that military fluorocarbon shit 
  isn't going to cut it for more than a couple of days."

  All I could do was nod. I'd been at the same morning meeting as 
  Dean, called so officials from the Red Cross, the CDC, and the 
  city government could meet with some nervous-looking 
  representatives from the Federal government. It seemed the Fed 
  wanted to know what needed to happen so the situation could be 
  brought under control in the next few weeks. Me, Dean, and the 
  dude from the CDC looked at each other in astonishment. The CDC 
  guy was working desperately to stifle a laugh

  "Have you listened to a single word we've said?" Dean asked.

  It was too much of a straight line to ignore. "No man, he's an 
  _administrator,_" I said. "You know better than that. They 
  specialize in _talking._"

  Dean ignored me while the poor bastard from the CDC tried to 
  keep from falling out of his chair in hysterics. He hadn't had 
  any sleep in days. "Let me try to make it simple," Dean 
  continued. "This is going to take years, and that's just to 
  control it locally. The foggers are going non-stop and we 
  already have some of the best water control in the world, but 
  the mosquitoes just don't drop like they used to. This place 
  will never be safe for people who haven't been through it 
  already." The Federal rep tried to interrupt him, but Dean 
  plowed on relentlessly. "There is no medicine now in existence 
  that will kill this parasite. _None_. Do you understand me now?"



  Six weeks later, I figured they had as much of a system in place 
  as they ever would, and took off back north. Dean remained 
  behind, proclaiming his sick joy in being back in New Orleans, 
  crippled though it was.

  He had done okay actually, surviving his initial infection and 
  several relapses. He lived to see all the Interstate highways 
  leading out of Florida and Southeast Louisiana blockaded by 
  National Guard reserves and then regular Army troops. The Coast 
  Guard had set up off the Gulf Coast and around the Florida 
  peninsula with air and sea support from the Navy. It was idiocy, 
  of course: the species of mosquito that harbored the parasite 
  couldn't survive outside the affected areas anyhow. The good 
  people of the United States had taken notice, however, prodded 
  by the horror show broadcast daily out of Miami and New Orleans. 
  They demanded the government do something, and damned well do it 
  immediately.

  Gibbering politicians, in defiance of every recommendation from 
  the CDC and other groups, responded to the mandate of the people 
  by laying down the largest and most effective quarantine the 
  world had ever seen.

  Dean was killed in the New Orleans riots.



  My hand has more or less stopped bleeding, but it smarts like 
  hell. The music changer stutters once, and strains of Dvorak's 
  _New World_ symphony pour out into the damp heat.

  It doesn't really strike me at first, but suddenly I start 
  laughing and find myself utterly incapable of stopping. Doubled 
  over in hysterical giggles, I reach into the little fridge and 
  grab another beer. I struggle for sips of air, finally managing 
  to stop so I can take a hit from the bottle that leaves it less 
  than half-full.

  New World. Christ, that's sick.

  I start laughing again.



  With Vicram it was almost anticlimactic, lost as he was in the 
  local media hype that surrounded the whole affair. Mucormycosis 
  had somehow found its way into the ventilation system of the 
  hospital he was working in. It used to be one of those fungi 
  that normally only infected people who were pretty badly 
  immunosupressed, like AIDS patients and folks getting chemo for 
  cancer or transplants. But like so many other opportunistic 
  pathogens, it had inadvertently been bred for aggressive 
  resistance to antibiotics for nearly half a century. Candidiasis 
  was bad, but people can live with a recurrent yeast infection on 
  their skin and, ah, other moist places, as long as its not 
  injected into their bloodstream. Mucormycosis, on the other 
  hand, was invasive as hell.

  Aggressive as it was, however, investigators later came to the 
  very public conclusion that few if any of the 372 patients and 
  hospital employees who died would have been susceptible had they 
  not been subjected to huge innoculums of airborne spores for 
  weeks at a time. The fact that the same problem was cropping up 
  in other places on a smaller scale didn't seem to sway their 
  judgment in the slightest.

  I went to see him in isolation at Pittsburgh General. Vic was 
  dark to begin with, but now he was sunburned from the UV lights 
  they had pouring down on him day and night -- PGH's 
  administration was taking no chances on a repeat of the disaster 
  that had taken out their competition across town.

  Vicram looked up from a tissue that held a macabre mess of 
  clotted blood and dark fungal hyphae. "What's the matter, 
  triage-boy, you scared of hanging with sick folks?" he asked, 
  laughing. I guess I'd gone pale when I saw what came out of his 
  head. "The Foursome is looking pretty fucking anemic these days, 
  eh?" He turned serious. "This shit's gonna cross out of my 
  sinuses and into my brain in two days max. Listen bro, I don't 
  want you to take this the wrong way, but how about you don't 
  come back upstairs to visit me any more after this, all right?"

  As it turned out, he became septicemic that night and died the 
  next day while I was working a shift in the e/r.



  The rain is over. I lean back in my chair and look down at the 
  remote.

  Program finished, it says. Select another or # for random play.

  I toss it over my shoulder so it lands on the carpet inside. I 
  guess it hits hard enough to push a key, because a blues piece 
  with a funky Hammond organ starts playing from the depths of my 
  library.

  The pain from my hand has calmed down enough that I notice the 
  angry welt on my forearm once again. The TB test has been sort 
  of a ritual for me: every six months on the solstice I get a 
  nurse or a medical student to hit me with the subcutaneous PPD 
  injection. Up 'til now, it has always been negative.

  It itches, but I resist the urge to scratch. I cough, and wonder 
  if it's the cigarettes or the first manifestation of the 
  infection sure to blossom in my lungs.

  Tomorrow, of course, I'll start the standard six-drug regimen. 
  Ain't gonna help much, though. Multi-drug resistant TB, probably 
  brought here on a bus from Manhattan, made it to Pittsburgh 
  about a year ago. It's been at least three months since any of 
  the hospitals in town have treated a case that was even slightly 
  responsive.

  I drop the bottle to the balcony floor. It rolls on its side, 
  beer slowly spilling away.

  Aw hell. What an incredibly stupid fucking way to die.



  Marcus Eubanks (eubanks@dns.city-net.com)
-------------------------------------------
  Marcus Eubanks is an intern at a Big Hospital in Pittsburgh. 
  When he's not working or sleeping, he likes to hang out with 
  friends and drink good beer. Sometimes the group of them lures 
  random passers-by off the street to join the conversation...



  FYI
=====

...................................................................
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  Yeah? Well, _my_ dad can make a spaceship with a protractor and 
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