"I see you're awake officer." her voice was what he expected
from Med*Evac personnel: calm and neutral yet friendly. He could be
dying and they would never give it away. A holo appeared in his field
of vision just in front of him. He could see the static cube he was
in. It held his body completely still in it's blueish force-field.
 

     The static cubes isolated the subject from all vibrations except
for those approved for communication. The static cubes hold the
subject so still they can't breathe and have no heartbeat. An IV
pipes oxygenated and medicated blood into the body. The field uses so
much power the Med*Evacs using them have to run on the street so they
can use the power strips normally only used by the automated
sanitation units.
 
 

     Soon she came into view on the holo. She was holding a clipboard
and shaking her head. She pushed some of her hair behind her ear and
switched on her headset mike.

    "Normally we can plug a link cable into officers before we put
them in the cube, but you managed to ruin your plug before we got
there." She shook her head while trying to keep a smile off her face.
Hillworth hoped this wasn't just an act to get him to think he would
be ok. He was hoping it meant he really was going to survive this.
After all the damage done he was going to have to defend the Foot
Patrol to a lot of people.

    "I really wish you could answer me. I've never seen anything
this weird before." She flipped through the clipboards pages and
nibbled on one of her nails. Hillworth knew her hair wasn't
regulation and Med*Evac were more careful with their hands. She must
be with Forensics, one of the Theoreticals, they did all the guess
work in the initial investigations.

    "This preliminary report from the site is so weird. The suspect
was burned but there was no incendiary compound traces on the body.
The internal organs were atrophied to the point of appearing useless.
The subject at first looked more like it had been dead for quite some
time and then burned only recently. If not for the well developed
musculature, the tissues of which, by the way are very bizarre, and
the lack of surface decomposition, it looks like you just set a
corpse on fire." She turned away from Hillworth, more like she was
just talking to herself. Unable to look away or even blink, he just
kept staring at her. She was really very pretty, and smart enough to
have a decent conversation with. It might be nice to share the
company of a woman who wasn't trying to gouge him on support payments
like his ex-wife or a blood sucking monster. Well, that might be
redundant.

    "I think maybe this guy was taking massive injections to sustain
his musculature, and his body got so used to the boosts his organs
just withered from disuse. I bet he spent most of his time sleeping
in a nutrient tank. Who ever set him up wasn't just some flesh
mechanic. There weren't any traces of stock implants in him anywhere,
in fact we didn't find anything mechanical at all. It must all have
been bio-systems." She talked faster as she went on, it reminded
Hillworth of his Aunt.

    " The fire that killed him could have been from some kind of
chemical feedback or something.  Well, before I can follow up on that
I'll need to check him out in the lab." She turned and was listening
to someone by the look of it. She turned off her mike and moved out
of the holo.

    "We must be at the hospital." Hillworth thought before sedatives
carried him off to sleep.

    Hillworth woke up dead. He was standing with a chair and a table
suspended in an inky void. Soon he was joined by a white suited man.
The man held a clipboard in hand.

    "Officer Jacob Hillworth?" he asked. Hillworth breathed a sigh
of relief.

    "This is the hospital, isn't it?" he reached for the clipboard.

    "Yes sir, if you would sign this we can place you in the
recovery simulation." Hillworth suddenly had a pen in his hand. He
shrugged and signed the form. The date and time was nearly 15 hours
after he had been picked up.

    "For a minute there I though I was dead..." the Nurse
interrupted him.

    "Yes sir, that is a common reaction. We would have contacted you
sooner, but we had to replace your neural link socket. Yours was
damaged."

     Hillworth handed the clipboard back and asked nervously.

    "How long will I be here?" he gestured to the darkness around
him. The nurse gave him a reassuring smile.

    "You will be moved to a dormitory room within the ward
simulation. You'll have the company of others who are in intensive
care." Hillworth figured this wasn't so bad. He had heard that the
simulations were a nice way of recovering. It was like the doctors
could instantly fix whatever was wrong and then just wanted to watch
you for awhile. He had some suspicions about getting a new link
socket taking as long as it did. The blackness around him lifted like
light coming up on a stage, Hillworth was standing in the entry way
of a dorm. It was a lot like the one he lived in back in college. The
first thing he was going to do was find a way to contact a doctor and
find out why the replacement took so long. The Nurse appeared next to
him.

    "Officer Hillworth, just follow me, I'll show you to your room."
He pointed off down the right corridor. Hillworth followed him past a
commons area and down a hallway to his room.

    "Here we are sir, I hope this will be fine." Hillworth looked
wide-eyed at his "room", it was bigger than the lobby at his
building. The ceilings were at least 10 meters high, with equally
massive windows overlooking a beach. A kitchen adjoined this room. To
the left of a sliding door to a deck he could see a door open. It
looked like a library with books! The Nurse walked over and opened a
door to a bedroom about the size of his apartment.

    "This is your bedroom. Through that door there is a den with a
Vidphone, you can call anyone you like. Also there is a police
network terminal at the request of your department. Neither the
Vidphone nor the terminal are working right now. Dr. Philips wants
you to rest until they have a chance to finish the surgery. Once he
thinks your body can handle stress he will have them turned on."

    "When can I speak with Dr. Philips?" Hillworth walked over to
the closet and found it full of clothes, a little of everything.
"Well sir, I'm sure if you tell me what you would like to know Dr.
Philips will call you with answers." the Nurse had one of those
vacant reassuring smiles. The Med*Evac people were better at it.

    "Well, tell him I would like to know some of the details of my
arrival: why it took so long to put me in simulation, and so on." The
Nurse nodded in acknowledgment.

    "Yes Sir, I'll tell him. Now try to relax." The nurse left and
Hillworth started looking through his clothes to find a change out of
his "uniform".
 
 

     Angella Van'Braum sat in her lab, forehead furrowed,
absentmindedly chewing on a fingernail. The figures that ran across
the screen in front of her didn't make much sense. The longer she
looked at the analysis results the more it all flew in the face of
the evidence from the site. According to the on-site reconstruction
Officer Hillworth and the subject had been in a very violent series
of conflicts. However, from the data of the victim's corpse, or the
parts of it, this guy had been dead for awhile. She shoved her hair
behind one ear, took a drink of coffee and shouted across the lab.

    "Bill, is the cranium in reasonable shape?" Bill, a short
intern, answered.

    "Yea, it's in alright shape." he had a look on his face that
suggested he had hoped to get out early today. He knew the tone in
her voice, that wasn't going to happen.

    "Well, Bill I hope you didn't have any plans." He shook his
head, and mumbled.

    "No Dr. Van'Braum. I didn't have any plans." Bill drug his feet
toward the examining room, The first date he had been able to get
since starting this internship and he was going to have to stand her
up to pick at corpse brains. Angella walked past him down the
hallway, fresh cup of coffee in hand.

    "Bill, don't look like it's the end of the world." Bill couldn't
help but whine a little.

    "Well, I was going to meet someone and.." Angella interupted
him.

    "Oh Bill, I'm hurt. Aren't I good enough for you. You, me, a day
old brain. What could be more romantic?" Bill heard her giggling
softly as she rounded the corner ahead of him. Bill shrugged. Well,
Dr. Van'Braum was smarter and prettier, but between her constantly
making fun of him, the ten years between them, and the fact she had
NO life, he wouldn't even dream of trying anything. Bill joined her
at the scrubdown sink. Angella leaned closer to him so he could hear
her over the sonics of the sink.

    "Well, Bill what do you think of all this?" Bill shrugged.

    "From his internal organs it looks like the subject has been
dead for a long time. I'd say at least 30 days." Angella raised an
eyebrow.

    "What about the condition or the skin, hair eyes and
musculature? What about the lack of bacterial growth?" Bill got a
green light from the sanitation check and put on a pair of gloves.

    "If the body were kept in a sealed environment immersed in a
nutrient solution until they needed it I don't see why it would be a
problem." Angella got a green light and put on her gloves, following
Bill into the examination room.

    "I had a similar idea. Until I got a look at the heart and
circulatory system, I thought he had been boosted to the point that
he slept in a tank and received all his nourishment from IV. But
nobody can run around without a heartbeat. Verify: Dr. Angella
Van'Braum." The last part spoken to the static chamber's controls.

    "Welcome Dr. Van'Braum. This examination will be logged into the
investigation records. Good Luck." the static chamber's control
computer was all voice based. The idea was that it would free up the
examiner's hands. It's voice was like most of them, warm and female.
Angella wondered how many men spent most of their day hearing a
woman's voice only from subservient machines. What that must do to
their perceptions of women might explain her last few dates.

    "Did you send out the request for reports from the other teams
working on this?" asked Bill as he reached for the bone saw.

    "Yes, I did. They plan on sending complete reports tomorrow."
 

     Hillworth found exactly what he was looking for: jeans an
old-style flannel shirt, and boots. He checked his terminal, no not
working, neither was his Vidphone. He got up and went to check on the
library.
 

     Wire stood on the street corner waiting. The neon played off his
mirrored sunglasses and the chrome sockets at his temples. He fished
around in the pockets of his black synthleather coat for a cigarette.
Midas wasn't here yet, it drove him nuts when he kept him waiting
like this. Wire checked his watch, it had been ten minutes. He could
have cracked a God Box in ten minutes, he had expenses.  Midas said
this was big, for Midas that just meant well paying. He hadn't done
anything dangerous for a long time. He could remember the old days
when he was nobody, runs that they ask the wilsons to do. They
weren't difficult, you could send a trained chimp to do the computer
work. All the gunfire before and after was why you needed a bunch of
wilsons looking for fame and fortune. He missed that kind of thing.

    "Where the HELL is Midas!" Wire yelled at a random passerby.
Midas always met him in Slidetown. He hated Slidetown, back when he
was a wilson and didn't know where to look he got everything from
Slidetown. It was a hundred block square section of the old northern
district where you could get anything. Just ask and someone could
slide it to you. Now he knew where to look. You could get higher
quality goods from better people for half what they would charge you
in Slidetown.
 

     Hillworth wandered out of his room into the rest of the
dormitory. The books in the library hadn't felt right, the texture of
the paper was off. It was the rough feel of the endlessly recycled
stuff they used at the station, not what the few books still printed
were on.  He headed around the corner to find the commons area full.
It looked like a game of pool was starting, this hospital stay might
not be so bad. It could give him time to get his head together after
what happened. He still wasn't sure what that thing was, or how he
was going to fill out the police report. It had run endlessly and
wrecked havoc for the fun of it on the chase. It turned into a woman
and made him belive it was someone he loved. Then when Laterio showed
up on his Air Patrol route, it killed him. When he got a terminal he
could fill out the reports and get this situation under control. If
he remembered right, he and the perp had taken a eighty story drop or
so onto a walkway, then walkway and all through the roof of a
restored Fundamentalist Church. He kept hoping that part hadn't
happened. He knew Laterio was dead and he could swear it had grown
wings to fly away. Without someone to defend the Foot Patrol, this
could be exactly the kind of thing its critics could use to disband
it. An automated system, four times as expensive and unproven, was
the alternative for the Foot Patrol. Several influential people had
wanted it instead. At this rate at least he would have a forensics
report when they let him connect to the outside world. He would still
belive it was a radically modified human if landing in the church
hadn't made it explode. That fact in mind he really should start
going back to church, they must have something.
 

     "Dr. Van'Braum, uh..I don't know..they didn't really prepare us
for this at Harvard." Bill just shook his head and took a step back.

    "Well Bill, this brain doesn't look human to me either." Angella
headed out of the examining room.

    "Close session: Code three." the holding chamber whirred and
began closing up.

    "Confirmed. Session closed." Bill followed Angella back into the
lab. Angella sat down at her desk and rubbed her eyes.

    "Bill, have I ever told you how indifferent you are."

    "What! Just because you can't figure out what that guy was is no
reason to take it out on me." Bill's face bore the strongest
expression Angella had ever seen on it.

    "Bill, you shrug, mumble, and drag your feet all around the lab
all day. I don't think I know anyone who shrugs so much."  Bill
balled his hands up and scowled. Then he just let out a sigh like all
the wind went out of him. Arguing wasn't going to get him anywhere.

    "Can I go now?" he mumbled. Angella got up and poured herself a
cup of coffee.

    "Yes you may, you don't need to come in until noon tomorrow. I
don't expect the other reports in until after then." Bill left
quickly the only thing he ever did quickly around the lab.

    "Wimp." she said after he left.
 

     Wire finished off his pack of cigarettes and checked his watch.
He had been standing here for an hour. Midas had better have a real
good job lined up.

     They called him Midas because of his early success here in
Slidetown. He would set up ops for getting all but worthless stuff
easy. Then turn around and make it into a small fortune. Rumor was
that one of his first ops was a raid as janitors on a nut house. The
security was all but non-existent, and the drugs from the place were
cut into a fortune in stim. Like most good ops-men Midas had
contacts with a group of eccentric personalities that were difficult
to work with but the best in their fields, like God, an old flesh
mechanic. There were tons of rumors about him, and only the really
weird ones were true. But of all of Midas's associates there was only
one he needed for every job, you had to have a hacker, and Wire was
the best there was. Wire was also the most feared and hated, they
called him Wire for a reason and it didn't have anything to do with
computers. Wire had a fetish for monofiliment. He carried one of the
infamous monofiliment whips. Molecules thick, you couldn't even see
it, just its handle, spool and the weighted tip at the end. Wire got
the name after he sliced the third employer to not give him (what he
felt to be) sufficient information about the op in half. After that,
opsmen didn't just stop leaving unpleasant details out to make sure
he took the job, they just stopped offering jobs completely. Then in
stepped Midas, who has somehow kept his torso in one piece.

    Wire stood there watching businessmen come out of the strip
clubs. He stepped in front of one of them.

    "Give me your wallet." Wire gave the man a reassuring smile. The
man took a cautious step back and looked around the skies. No Air
Patrol units in sight. He looked Wire over, then handed over his
wallet. Wire opened it up and took the cash inside, these guys always
had cash on them in slidetown, hard to explain sex or stim on your
credit account. Wire put the money in his coat pocket, returned the
man's wallet, and stepped out of his way.

    "Have a nice day sir." Wire said genially as the businessman
scurried off toward the taxi stop. Well, at least that made him feel
a little bit better. Then finally he saw Midas's car headed around
the corner. Midas's car was one of a kind, it had been chromed and
mirrored everywhere all in the same tone. It looked like it had been
carved out of one solid block of silver. Wire though it was the
ugliest damn thing he had ever seen in his life, proof that style and
taste were not the same thing. He looked at his watch, he had been
waiting for an hour and a half. He snapped his fingers and the sheath
on his forearm dropped his whip into his hand. He hit the spool
button and it lowered a length out to the ground. Midas got out the
car. His solid black synthsilk suit was tailored to the latest
trends, it was spoiled by the inch diameter ruby cuff links and lapel
pin. The red synthleather shoes didn't help either. Midas tossed Wire
a D-disk. Wire caught it with his left hand, Midas considered that to
be a bad sign. Wire dropped the disk into the player in his front
shirt pocket and plugged it's output cable into his left socket. Then
he looked at Midas in disbelief.

    "Midas, are you serious?" Midas smiled.

    "Yes I am, that's the job." Wire unplugged the line and hit the
button to retract his whip with a leering grin on his face.

    "Midas, I'll do that for free." Wire headed for his apartment
chuckling to himself. Midas is the best.
 
 

     Angella headed out of the Medical Center and toward the subway.
She had an apartment in the worst part of town, she didn't have any
problems though. Most people didn't want to have anything to do with
Deadtown.

     It was a Fed zone, the police didn't have any authority there,
the military was the only law in Deadtown. The only local law about
the place was that unauthorized entry was a crime. The only Federal
law that applied was that No activity deemed illegal by the local
government will threaten the rest of the city. The punishment was the
firebombing of Deadtown. The idea was that most of the anarchists and
gangs would keep to themselves there and shoot each other instead of
the rest of us. It worked. The ground was heavily guarded by the
military, they considered duty there to be invaluable training. The
only way in or out was by aircar through the anti-aircraft fire,
unless you had clearance. The "citizens" of deadtown couldn't bribe
their way in or out on the ground so it kept good aircar pilots rich.
Not that bribing the soldiers was impossible, just very expensive.

    Angella lived in a Tower Reality inc. apartment. They used the
lack of law to there advantage and pushed through legislation to
convert abandoned buildings in Deadtown into apartments. The first
forty stories were sealed off, bomb proofed, ect. Automated
anti-aircraft lasers and regular security patrols kept the occupants
safe. Tower got the buildings for free, paid no property taxes and
didn't have to conform to rent control. The apartments were huge and
cheap for their size. Still Angella couldn't have afforded one if not
for the discount they gave to anyone involved with law enforcement.
Mostly, the other tenants were a mix: the practical like her, young
rich kids who liked the idea of living in Deadtown, stim addicts and
such who used Deadtown to "legally" indulge themselves, and an odd
mix of artists who used the bleak decaying war zone as a muse. Like
the guy across the hall who writes terrible poetry about dumpsters
and concrete and absurd fairy tales about addicts and gang warfare.

    Angella took an aircab, she gave the cabby today's passcode so
the anti-aircraft lasers would leave them alone and the automated
door for the 61st floor garage would open for them. The cabby stuck
his head out the window as she headed for the elevator.

    "Hey lady how do you stand livin' here?" Angella turned around
and sighed, this one she heard all the time.

    "The rent is cheap, the apartments are huge, and the gangers are
250 meters too short to reach my windows." she could hear the cabby
chuckling to himself as she walked into the elevator. She felt like
that guy on the slab. She had been called in at 12:45 last night,
this had been a hell of a day.
 
 

     Hillworth finished his fifth game of pool and headed toward his
"room" he didn't feel any better and had gotten the run-around all
day. He wanted to speak to a doctor about his condition and get
access to a terminal, he had a report to file and calls to make. He
had been through plenty today, the kind of thing that happens in the
action holos, except if he were an action Holo character, everything
would be great: he would be a hero, Laterio only wounded, and he
would have that Theoretical that spoke to him in the Med*Evac in his
arms right now. To live in a world without loose ends, paradise.
 

     Midas sat in the op staging area. He had been called crazy for
stealing 4 industrial sound dampeners. He installed them here along
with the theater holo projectors and the salvaged grid regulator.
This warehouse sounded empty, looked empty, and stole power from the
city they never knew they had. When he wasn't using it others paid by
the hour. At present he had the largest computer he had ever seen in
his life set up here, along with a lab for God. This was his most
expensive op ever. Filch stood him up earlier, he needed her
expertise. If he couldn't get a pass card for Wire to use this could
become much more dangerous than it already was. His phone beeped,
hopefully it was Filch.

    "Hey Midas listen I had a little thing I couldn't pass up here,
I'll be there in about an hour." Filch, late as usual.

    "Filch, would you mind explaining how you plan to get here ?"

    "You're at the "house" right ?" Midas took off his sunglasses
and began to massage the bridge of his nose, this didn't sound good.

    "Filch my dear, you haven't ever been to the "house", how is it
you know where it is now ?" He heard her voice falter a little.

    "Well I don't know where my head was Midas, where are you ?"

    "I'm not buying it Filch, how did you get the address ?"

    "It was on a disk I found." she mumbled.

    "Let me guess, this disk was in Wire's pocket ?" Midas could
hear her nervously tapping her fingers on the handset.

    "Well I bumped into him in slidetown today and it was just so
easy." Midas cleared his throat for the proper authoritative tone.

    "Filch, you can't steal from Wire like that. He always finds out
it was you. One of these day's he'll get tired of trying to get into
your pants, and his infatuation for you won't protect you anymore."

    "All that street hype won't fool me, Wire wouldn't just kill me
like that. It doesn't matter whether he has the hots for me or not."
Midas could tell by her tone that she didn't belive that. She was
just trying to sound tough. Or maybe she was fooling herself. No
matter how vulgar and insistent Wire became with her she always said
no. To the rest of the team she claimed she knew Wire was "just
kidding". Midas knew she wouldn't get involved with Wire because she
was afraid of him. For someone as reckless as Filch she had her
moments. Business partners was as close a Midas was ever going to get
to Wire. Filch broke the uncomfortable silence.

    "Well I'll be there in an hour, don't tell Wire if he hasn't
noticed yet, okay Midas ?" she sounded just like when Midas pulled
her off the street corner in slidetown three years ago. A scared kid,
Midas thought she might be fucking with him. She pulled this young
and helpless bit at least once a month, and Midas couldn't help but
fall for it.

    "Don't worry Filch, I won't say anything." He felt like a mark
every time he did.

    "Thanks Midas I'll be right over. Bye." He could hear her ooze
joy and warmth. He always fell for that too.

     As Midas hung up he wondered why he wasn't making a play for
Filch himself. He was sure it was the father complex he was
developing. He treated most of his associates like children, better
than the usual treatment, a tool of the opsmen that hired you. Except
for God, he always made Midas feel like the child. Mean old bastard.

    A red light warned Midas someone was approaching the door. Midas
took the remote out of his pocket and switched the holos on, an empty
warehouse was better suited for prying eyes. The green light above
the entryway made Midas relax, Wire headed through the door looking
pissed off.

    "Wire, good to see you." Wire scowled.

    "I'm not in the mood Midas, for polite conversation. I was
robbed today." Father complex or not, Midas knew it was good business
to keep Wire happy. He could have Filch break into his apartment and
put whatever she took under his couch. In the meantime he knew just
the thing to cheer Wire up.

    "Take a look at this." Midas switched the projectors off with a
flourish. Wire stood there for a moment, staring with wide eyes at
the computer.

    "Oh...Midas it's..oh." Wire walked up to it and embraced one of
the corners. When he stared talking dirty to it and making obscene
motions with his hips Midas decided it was a good time to check on
God. Midas walked to the other end of the warehouse, quickly. A
section had been partitioned off and sealed. Midas passed through the
decontamination booth and into the lab. God's lined gaunt face held
it's familiar look of distaste.

    "Midas I don't see how you expect me to work in here." God
gestured to his lavish surroundings.

    "God, this is exactly like your lab in Deadtown, only newer."
God pursed his lips together.

    "Humph." Midas maintained his carefully cultivated "business
face". What was "Humph" supposed to mean ? God shuffled toward the
door. Midas realized he shouldn't have spoken to Wire and God so
close together, you needed time to unwind when dealing with both of
them.

    "Where are you going ?" God stopped and turned back to face
Midas, chin up, an impassive and dignified look on his face.

    "I will not be insulted no matter how much you pay me."

    "Oh, I see I'm very sorry. If you can't do the job with this
equipment I'll see what else I can get. Perhaps you need an assistant
to help, think of your age." Midas knew that should straighten this
out.

    "I can use this insufficient equipment just fine, thank you. If
the job were a challenge I might need better. If you'll excuse me I
have work to do." God folded his arms and waited for Midas to leave.

    Midas walked back to his chair. Dealing with both Wire and God
was going to be hard. He had a little time before Filch got here,
hopefully Wire wouldn't notice her. This was going to be a long
night.

 

[Issue 12]	[Archive]

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