387 lines
16 KiB
Plaintext
387 lines
16 KiB
Plaintext
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Underground eXperts United
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Presents...
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[ Two-Two-Six-Eight ] [ By Phearless ]
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____________________________________________________________________
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____________________________________________________________________
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Two-two-six-eight. The PAST visit.
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by Phearless for uXu
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Morning
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He woke up early that morning. The blanket that had covered his body up to
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his chin when he fell asleep, lied like a pile of dirty laundry at his feet.
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The air was hot and dry, and easy to breathe.
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The sunlight shining through the window made one side of this blanket
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mountain look brighter and warmer than the other. The opposite side seemed
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cold and dark. He turned his head to the other side. Half the room was
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bathing in sunlight, the other half was dark and gloomy.
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Every object in the room had one light side and one dark side. The time
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display on the desk had a great light side, absorbing all the sun light, and
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a very small dark one.
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Clean
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The high pitched tone lasted exactly one third of a second, and the metal
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bars surrounding his bed immediately began their way up through the ceiling.
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He sat up and stretched both his arms straight up and forward.
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"Current time; two-two-six-eight, five-one, oh-six-double-oh. Time
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remaining; one, oh, one-eight-double-oh."
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The automated voice message echoed a few times between the walls. He sat up
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and turned away from the bed, his legs bent over the edge, slowly reaching
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for the floor with his toes. They reached their goal, and he felt the hot
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surface warming up all of him through his feet.
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When he stood up, the bed behind him immediately disappeared into the wall
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next to it, just to be replaced by the cleaning unit. He entered, and felt
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the light, body tempered liquid flowing all over him. It made him feel
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good and relaxed. Ten exhales later, hot air filled the small cabin. After
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that, he left, clean and dry. He felt satisfied.
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Hunger
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When he turned around, the cleaning unit was gone, in it's place was a
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belly leveled desk, and there were three, hand-high, metal, cylinder shaped
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objects visible on top of it. Each one filled with different kinds of colored
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liquid.
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He reached for the leftmost object, grabbed it, put it to his mouth and
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emptied the cylinder into his thirsty throat. It made him feel comfortable.
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He put the thing back on the desk. The liquid in the second cylinder made him
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feel happy, the last one made him feel strong.
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After the third metallic object had been put back in position, the desk
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fell to the floor, not leaving a single trace of it's recent presence, nor
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making any kind of sound.
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Play
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He turned around and walked in direction of the opposite wall. When he got
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closer, a control panel was made visible. He reached for the thin wire to the
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right, hesitated for a second, then plugged the end of the wire into the tiny
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hole in the middle of his chest.
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The panel was lit and he checked, without actually being aware of it, four
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of the lights before hitting the red square, clearly marked with the letters
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BEGIN. He rested his arms along his side, and leaned his head forward,
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waiting.
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Blackness. He got two options. PLAY or TRANSMIT. He chose PLAY, and the
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vision went blank again. Another menu.
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PAST 1.00
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PRESENT 1.00
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HISTORIC 2.00
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EXTREME SURVIVAL 2.00
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PLEASURE 3.00
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FUTURE 4.00
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SURREALISTIC 4.00
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"One, oh, one-eight-double-oh," he said to himself and took a deep breath.
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PAST was highlighted just to be faded away along with the other options.
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Bright light turned slowly into a great green valley. Nothing had changed
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since he left last night. The two huge cracks in the ground after the last
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earthquake were still there. Both with their big mouths wide open and their
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throats ending deep inside mother earth.
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He walked towards the hole in the ground and stopped two feet away from the
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edge of the hungry darkness. His eyes looked up and searched for nothing in
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the great, endless blue sky.
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Control
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One big leap and he was on his way. Falling. It was a long way to fall, but
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he felt no fear. The blue sky, trapped between the edges of the crack above
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him, got smaller and smaller. Thirty seconds. The breathtaking wind flying
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pass him stopped, but his stomach told him he was still falling.
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"I did it again. The other side of everything. The dark side."
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Some parameters were quickly changed to avoid suspicion of the global
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guards. A phantom was created with his own personal data, and placed at the
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bottom of the valley, dancing around bare feet in the wild grass.
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After a quick but very advanced use of a hidden "feature" in the time
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controller, he transferred time two, eight, double-oh-double-oh to himself.
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The receipt was labelled as a 'gift from anonymous'.
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He then transmitted himself to another location of PAST.
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"One-nine-nine-four, two-five-oh, oh-one-double-oh... let me see what you
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look like."
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Travel
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He safely got to his preset location and he could see a thousand small lights
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in the distance. Three white lines marked the beginning, center and the end
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of the warm, grey ground. A quick and sudden yell somewhere in the dark
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surrounding made him jump. He tried his best to relax.
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A white "t-shirt", a pair of blue, strong trousers model "jeans" with a
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black cow-skin "leather" belt, and finally a pair of comfortable shoes, that
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ought to be enough he thought when the shoelaces were in place.
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Some minutes of walking later he reached the city. There were a place named
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"Palpo Gapla" in the corner of a huge building where a lot of people went in
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and out. He thought it looked quite interesting and he entered the bar.
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"This will be entertaining."
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Bar
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"May I have a big alcohol drink, please," he said to the man behind the
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counter. He had learned how to talk the old way by studying the oldest
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information he could find on the topic.
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"One alcohol drink coming up. Seven dollars and fifteen cents."
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Money. He always forgot the money. He put an attache beside himself at his
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feet, and stuffed it with one-dollar bills. He then opened it a little,
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counted eight notes, and put them on the bar disk.
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"Say, issat really yours?" said someone sitting beside him. A fat man with a
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big beard and long, dirty, dark hair, drinking a dark brown/orange drink with
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white foam on top. He pointed at the attache.
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"Yes, it is mine."
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"Ya didn't haveit when ya came hea. I sawit. I think it's mine," the fat man
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with the beard said, slightly drooling when he took another sip of his drink.
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"You can have it."
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He reached down and grabbed the attache, and then handed it over to the
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fat man, who was so surprised he almost fell off his chair. The fat man
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immediately put the case in front of him, and opened it, though the dollar
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bills he expected to see were not there anymore.
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"Howdidya dodat?" the fat man asked, with his eyes wide open. Though the
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alcohol in his brain made it hard for him to focus on anything specific.
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"This is my world. I control it, you live in it. Simple as that."
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"Yourlike God or Jesus orwhat, you fagget magician bastard. Whereya hide
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dat money? Tellme or I'll messup yar pretty lil face real good."
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The fat man had switched from a happy child to a potential murderer.
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"I think you are one of those who like to look down on people, but listen,
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I do not like being insulted. Do not worry though, I will make us both
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happy."
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He then changed the fat man's location parameters, and added five hundred
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feet to his current altitude.
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"Have a nice trip." he said to himself, trying his best to keep a smile
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off his face.
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Hunt
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"Darn."
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His personal alarm beeped twice. He noticed two global guards scanning all
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the PAST memory banks.
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"I better improve that parameter box. They noticed it again, this is
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getting annoying," he thought to himself, grabbed the alcohol drink and
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drank it all up.
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"I will try another phantom reality." He created a copy of his own personal
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PAST, slightly modified to avoid any suspicion.
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"An interesting impossible physical event should do the trick."
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His other scanning devices followed the guards' search. They found his
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copy in a matter of seconds, froze and terminated it. The copy itself
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disappeared, then the guards themselves.
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For a short moment he thought of the billions of people he just sent to a
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certain doom, but he got over his emotional feelings when he remembered the
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fact that it was not real people, just a bunch of structured data deep inside
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the biocity.
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"Lucky me they do not scan all memory every time something unexpected
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occurs. It is far too expensive, ha h..."
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Pain
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His laughing stopped when he recalled something that happened a long time
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ago. A close friend had his time reduced to oh, oh, two-four-double-oh, which
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is practically a death sentence. He also remembered why his friend got this
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sentence.
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"Not being loyal to the city. Creator of chaos and disorder. Abusing public
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material. No respect for the laws of moral. Enemy of the people."
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He was a great friend, and good at what he did. With time though, he lost
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more and more contact with the top level reality. They found out when he got
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a memory flash during a party, and almost strangled his wife. After a quick
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scan of his personal data and some cooperative drug shots, they had an almost
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complete picture of what he had been doing.
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That had not been the first case of this kind. The first incidents happened
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when they started the system way back. People had created a copy of their own
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personal reality one time too many, and went out of their mind. Since there
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is no difference, except when you die in a reality other than the top level
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one, everyone must be very sure of which one they are in.
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He stared into the empty glass, and he could feel the alcohol changing
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his way of thinking, and he loved it.
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Alcohol
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"Another alcohol drink, please."
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The bartender sighed and poured up another drink. This time he did not fill
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the glass with the black liquid he did the first time, now it was only the
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transparent water-like liquid.
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"Here's your alcohol drink mister. This one's on me," the bartender said
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with a big grin.
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He accepted the drink, looked at it for a second, and then emptied the
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glass to the last drop. It then fell to the floor and smashed into tiny but
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extremely sharp pieces. His first thought was that he had been poisoned,
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but as the pain in his throat eased out, he relaxed, and the warm feeling
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spread through every part of his body.
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"Gah... are you trying to kill me?" he said to the bartender who had been
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watching him with his everlasting smile all the time.
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"Give me one that taste good next time, okay?"
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The bartender nodded, not giving up his smile, and gave him another drink,
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apparently of the same kind as the first one he made.
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More
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Two drinks later he was talking to a brown haired, well dressed woman sitting
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next to him with a strange looking drink in front of her.
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"See dis hole in my chest?" he said, and pulled his t-shirt over his head.
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"Through dis hole I can connect meself to yer pitiful world, n'more, I've
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got full control o'whaddis happenin everywhere. The world you all live in
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exists only because I want it to. I can make it all disappear n'no one will
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ever know yaevah existed. Gives ya'nother perspective of life, doesn't it?"
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"Oh yeah?" the woman replied, not sounding especially interested.
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"Yes my friend. I only have to concentrate on something, and thus creating
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a mind link to a process I've got running, that hides everything I do
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and want to do. If it's sumthin extra ordnary, I have to hide it meself."
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"Sure." the woman said. "But something puzzles me." the woman said. "Why are
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you here, in this bar, drunk and babbling, when you say you can be anywhere
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you want to? There must be a million places better than this one."
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"First of all, nuthin beats alcohol when it comes to exploring da mind on
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yer own. Second, of sum strange reason, I prefer places like dis. You never
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know when something unexpected will happen. Third, I wanna experience what
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inspired people in dah end of dis century. Most of dah rules and laws of me
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own time is based on what is found out at dis very moment. They are extremely
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difficult to understand for most of dah people. I guess dats why it was
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accepted by dah leaders of dis time."
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"Intriguing." was the only response from the woman, who obviously found more
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interest in her drink than in what he was saying.
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Trap
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He woke up in a soft bed. He was freezing, and with a smashing headache. No,
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his whole body was aching. When he looked up and saw the white walls, he
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thought he was back home, but changed his mind when he noticed a wire going
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from a small plastic bag filled with some transparent liquid. The other end
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of the wire was attached to his arm.
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"Oh no, enough for today," he said and pulled out the wire from his arm.
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He decided to go back. He sat up and took a deep breath to clear his mind a
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little. His chest was feeling a bit strange. When he scratched the itchy spot
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he felt something that he could not believe, nor understand.
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He looked down on his chest, and where he expected to find the small hole,
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he saw nothing but a big, red scar. It hurt him just looking at it.
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A door opens and a man with a thin white coat enters, and walks up to the
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bed. The friendly looking type.
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"So you've decided to wake up now? You've been sleeping for almost three
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days."
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He could feel the cold sweat running down his back.
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"Please, help me! What has happened to my hole?"
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"Don't you worry. You're gonna be just fine now. The metal object we found
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in your chest has been successfully removed, though it was very critical at
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the point we cut it away from your spine. That thing must have hurt! For how
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long have you been walking around with it?"
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He forced himself to remain calm, though he could feel the fear sneaking up
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on him.
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"Listen now, this is very important. Where is my hole now? I must have it
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back!"
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"Take it easy now. We sent it to the lab, but they came up with nothing.
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It's been destroyed or sent to another lab by now I guess."
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He couldn't help it any longer. Memory flashes attacked him. He saw the
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connector being destroyed, himself being terminated by the global guards, and
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getting an oh, oh, twenty-four-double-oh sentence. Without any chance of
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hiding. The only thing that would be left of him would be a stupid phantom
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dancing in the nude.
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The other possibility was not especially kind to his mind either. He saw
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the connector being put on some lab's shelf, to never be noticed again. If
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it remained intact, the global guards would never find something wrong, and
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he would be a prisoner in this world for as long as his character was alive.
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When he died here, his top level reality would terminate his true self as
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well.
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He cried and begged the white coat man to find his hole and to put it back
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into his body, but he only got a funny look for a reply. Then the man slowly
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backed away from him, towards the exit. The doctor closed and locked the door
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when he left the room.
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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uXu #187 Underground eXperts United 1994 uXu #187
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Call CYBERPUNK SYSTEM -> +1-316-942-0064
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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