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First day on the job. I hadn't done *that* in, what, fifteen years or so. Not since they let me join the Warriors after I ambushed Dwim in Hyde Park.
(I had this... somewhat mistaken... idea I that needed to "audition" to get into the Warriors, you see, and he happened to be a target of opportunity. I hadn't done all my research, either, and didn't realize that Dwimanor wasn't a front-line fighter. Hell, he was a *Warrior* -- best of the best, defender of world peace and all that -- how could he *not* be a tough customer, right? Well, I won't go into the details of what happened, but suffice it to say that I came off looking like an out-of-control jerk who had to be taken into the Warriors just so they could keep an eye on me and keep me out of trouble. They were probably right. What with one stunt or another I pulled in those early days, it took me three years to get out of probation and earn a full membership -- a record no Warrior before or since has come close to matching.
I waited quietly in the reception area this time instead of making my own way to Ohara's office. In the few days since I'd been there they'd apparently repaired all the damage I caused during my ill-fated assault the previous week, which didn't do anything to assuage my guilt over it all.
The receptionist was the same girl who'd been working the desk that day. She seemed a little twitchier than she had when I'd first encountered her, which I guess was kind of reasonable, all things considered. After taking my name and informing Ohara that I was there, she gave me a surreptitious once-over. I didn't expect she'd recognize me; after all, I wasn't wearing the helmet, and I had decided to dump the fake black mustache, which was the only identifying characteristic she might have seen, between the goggles and the helmet and whatnot.
A moment later, Ohara burst into the room. "There you are," he boomed happily, and judging from the dubious glance that earned him from the receptionist, it was probably well out of character for him. In a couple of energetic strides he was across the room and reaching out a hand to me. I rose and shook it. "Come in, come in. We have to get you set up. Sindra," he said, turning to the receptionist, "Mr. Reed here is our new technician. You'll be seeing a lot of him from now on."
She blinked. "Welcome to IDEC, Mr. Reed," she said softly, almost inaudibly.
I tried to thank her, but Ohara had me by the arm and dragged me past the double doors through which I had so recently blasted my way. As the doors closed quietly behind me I hissed, "'Mr. Reed'?"
"We've set up a new ID for you under the name 'Craig A. Reed, Junior'," Ohara replied offhandedly. He released my arm and settled for leading me down the hallway, which smelled (not surprisingly) of fresh paint and new carpet. "We used some of GENOM's less-known resources, and a few of our own, to make sure it's real as far as the government and GENOM are both concerned. We just need some photos to finish the job."
"'Craig A. Reed, Junior'?" I grimaced. "Couldn't you have given me something with a little more, I dunno, style?"
We turned the corner by his office, and without looking at me he replied, deadpan, "You'd prefer maybe something like 'Sylvester T. Katz'?"
I'm tempted to say it went downhill from there, but it didn't, really. For a bunch of cloistered academics, they had a collective streak of larcenous duplicity which I can't really say I admired, but which certainly turned out useful. Ohara dragged me into the same conference room where I'd confronted him before (newly repaired) and the same three other people were there, along with a workstation, a couple of digital cameras and several different sheets of colored paper taped to the walls. As they ran me through a quick assembly line for my new fake ID, Ohara introduced me to his merry band.
Hiroe was the angry woman who took a half-dozen or so pictures of me in front of the various sheets of paper. Tony was the frowning fat guy in the Italian suit who dragged me from sheet to sheet, told me which way to turn or look, and who at one point dusted fake five-o'clock shadow across my face with a camel hair brush. Illya was the blond man-mountain stationed at the combination of computer, desktop nanofac and laminator which all sat at one end of the conference table. He took images from the different cameras, cropped and printed the head shots of me, and melded them into various documents and objects which then spat out of the printer and the fabricator. In about an hour I had not only a GENOM/IDEC employee ID card, but an assortment of other paperwork that claimed definitively and with the endorsement of numerous Japanese government agencies that I really was this Craig Reed fellow.
I browsed the documents and examined the implied life history. Born in the US in 1996, immigrated to Japan as part of the post- Kanto workforce, just back from a long-term contract job in the Ukraine, of all places. Letters of recommendation from all "my" former employers (including someone with the unlikely name of Bradford Loukianov, who apparently had been my supervisor in Russia), all effusively glowing. A Japanese passport, about a year and a half from renewal. Driver's license for a motorcycle. A new registration for said motorcycle, in Reed's name. A couple of credit cards, including a GENOMBank Visa. Checking and passbook savings accounts, also at GENOMBank, both with modest balances. A small but healthy independent retirement account. A customer card for the Tower branch of Lackluster Video. Membership in some midtown gym called "The Fitness Bee". Vaccination records. The obligatory stack o' business cards, both old and new. And about a kilo of other assorted paper and plastic, all unimpeachably testifying to my new identity -- far more than I'd gotten from the professional I'd contacted when I'd first arrived in MegaTokyo. I was seriously impressed.
"Damn," I said. "If you guys ever want to get out of R&D and into a more lucrative line of work, I know someone you can talk to." This netted me a few uncomfortable chuckles, even as they watched me with cold and untrusting eyes.
"Is not us," said man-mountain Illya in a slow rumble. "Many illicit resources GENOM has. A few illicit connections into GENOM's systems we have." He coughed. "And no great love for it."
"I'm still impressed." I held out the financial documents and the credit cards. "Are these real?"
"Yes," Hiroe replied. "For now. The cards are paid from what is left of IDEC's rather limited discretionary funds, so please use them as little as possible. Likewise the balances in your bank accounts. The retirement account..." She trailed off and shot a glance at Ohara.
"Call it a redistribution of wealth," he said, with what was almost a smile.
"Uh-huh." I folded the papers back into the stack. "I won't ask."
"Okay, now that I've become Craig, what next?" I asked, dropping into one of the chairs around the table.
Two hours later. Same conference room, same people. They'd pushed the impromptu forgery system off to one side, and had begun interrogating me about almost every damned song I'd used in public since I got there.
(This was repeated ad nauseum until it was almost time for lunch, my initial explanation of my metatalent having been ignored or simply disbelieved. As time went on, though, the questioning acquired a certain air of desperation and panic.)
"Good," announced Tony, rubbing his hands together. "Now we're getting somewhere."
I grinned at the chance to be a little snotty. "It's both technology *and* magic."
There was a collective groan from everyone but Hiroe, who seemed strangely sparkly-eyed and much less angry. Ohara glared at me through his glasses. "I thought you said you had devices you could give us."
I shook my head. "No. You asked if I could reproduce my world's technologies for you. I can. I never said I was carrying any samples of them."
"This is bullshit," Tony growled as he shoved back his chair. "I'm not going to sit here and listen to this madman."
Which is how I ended up, somewhat less than an hour later, standing in a blank, empty "dead-zone" isolation chamber, stripped down to my Fruit-of-the-Looms. (White briefs, if you *must* know. The rumors that I only wear custom-made Shadowwalker Underoos are gross exaggerations. It was only that one unfortunate incident, and anyway the lady involved settled out of court.)
Most of that delay was due to the time it took to set up their various sensors. Save for a few devices specific to IDEC's original research goals, the stuff they had on hand was all small, portable, and stashed haphazardly in a storeroom on the other side of the office suite. The five of us headed over there together. I tried to make small talk, but they were taciturn with a touch of hostile, except for Ohara, who was just taciturn, and Hiroe, who was still oddly sparkly-eyed *and* taciturn. Not that I blamed them. I just hoped that once I established my bona fides, they'd open up a bit. Otherwise, this arrangement would soon rank up right there as one of my least thrilling gigs.
I didn't really plan on being all that social back, mind you -- these people were still responsible for hounding me, killing those two kids, and god knows how much property damage caused by the boomers they sent out. Ohara's little revenge trip alone was more than enough to ensure that I never actually trusted him, in particular. But all that didn't mean that I didn't want a pleasant working environment.
Anyway, I took my share of the large assortment of silver metal and black plastic cases. We made our way back to lab with the isolation chamber, our little parade garnering the occasional curious look and outright stare from the employees we passed in the corridors. (It might have been because I was walking backwards behind the others and vigorously juggling three duffel bag-sized packing cases, but I can't really say. I never did get entirely familiar with their corporate culture.)
From the storeroom to the lab was a quickish walk, and once we were there, Tony snatched the cases from me (one at a time, as I handed them to him out of their orbit) with a glare that could pierce steel. I was getting the feeling he didn't like me. Ohara bluntly told me that he didn't want me involved in the sensor setup, so I busied myself by clearing anything that wasn't me out the isolation chamber.
Finally they were ready for me. Before I went in, they took an initial scan, both for use as a baseline and to make sure I had no secret implants. Tony N. was pretty insistent on that, and even after the others had written off the possibility, he kept going back, cranking up the resolution, and trying again. After about ten minutes of this, I grabbed Nakamura by the lapels of his natty little suit. "Look, you," I snarled. "I'm an unmodified human being, got it? I'm not cybered. I'm not an alien. I'm not an android. I'm not a nanobot anthropomorph. I'm *human*. Mutant, but human. See? No dealer customizations, no after-market add-ons, got it? Just let me get in there and demonstrate what I can do."
Thirty seconds later I was wiggling my bare toes against cold ceramic tile and wondering if a sense of modesty would have been a benefit or not. Outside the big quartz glass window, Ohara and his crew clustered around their sensor readouts. (The sensor heads themselves snaked into the room on cables that made their way in through both special ports in the wall between us.) Ohara looked up at me, made an attempt at a smile, and spoke into the microphone that sprouted from the center of the chamber's control panel. His voice echoed tinnily against the hard walls of the empty chamber. "Okay, 'Craig,' we're going to feed a song in to you now. We'll be accessing the Golden Oldies channel of GENOMnet's on-demand digital music system to get it, so if you've got a request, this is the time to make it."
I gave that a moment's thought. Something dramatic would be best, something that would be so beyond the range of a portable, hidable technology that they'd have no choice but to accept it as what it was -- magic. I mentally shuffled through all the songs I'd ever used up to that point in time and found one that would more than suffice. "Okay. See if you can find this track," I said with a smile, and told him the title and artist. Ohara consulted something just out of my line of sight and nodded.
The CD hadn't been officially released yet when I... left home, but Nonnie had sent me a copy of the masters when they were finished in the hope I could make use of one or more songs. (To be absolutely honest, it was as much an example of her well-known talent for relentless self-promotion as it was a tribute to our long-standing friendship -- a friendship which dates back to when we met in a Manhattan club three years before she became famous and seven years before I did.) And use one of her songs I did -- that future CD's title track.
While shopping for music some months back, I had confirmed that she'd had an analogue in this universe, with a virtually identical album/CD career, at least up to the unreleased masters I'd received. (She still had an analogue here, in fact, although this here-and-now's version was mostly retired, only occasionally doing a little producing for younger acts.) So I felt safe in requesting that particular song.
As Ohara punched buttons on the console, I sighed and reached for the node once again, determined to prove my point as emphatically as possible.
"Just a second while the network retrieves it," Ohara murmured to the others as he doublechecked the virtual circuit that would feed the song into the chamber's intercom system. He glanced around. Tony stood against the back wall, arms crossed defiantly across his chest, his brows like glowering thunderclouds as he studied Sangnoir through the thick glass. Next to him, Hiroe's eyes glittered with excitement as she did the same, a pad and pen clasped in her hands.
Illya crouched behind the hastily-erected bank of sensor readouts, less concerned with his co-workers than with the tangle of wiring carelessly laid out on the floor. "Full bandwidth to main computer we have, Daniel," he called out conversationally. "Complete record we will have of all the sensors see."
As Ohara nodded, the music began. At first it was a gentle, repetitive guitar line, then strong techno beat leapt in, interspersed with tuneless synthesized glissandos and arpeggios that were more sound effects than music and which gave the piece an almost old-fashioned psychedelic feel.
Behind the glass, Sangnoir had risen up into the air, his head tilted back, arms and legs spread slightly but hanging limply as he floated a foot off the floor. He began to rotate slowly in place, as if he hung on a string. A faint but perceptible white light, faintly tinged with blue, began to emanate from his body.
Tony took a long, hissing breath, and stepped forward to stand next to Illya at the readouts. "It's just visible light, nothing else."
On the sound system, the orchestration grew more intricate and electronic, and the vocalist -- an American soprano -- began to sing in English:
"<Zephyr in the sky at night, I wonder
Do my tears of mourning sink beneath the sun?
She's got herself a universe gone quickly,
For the call of thunder threatens everyone...>""What?" Hiroe leapt to the displays, her eyes wide, as Tony hissed in disbelief.
"Very. Accelerating it is... Mass is now zero." Illya tapped the display. "Mass is... less than zero? Recalibrating now."
"Impossible," Tony softly murmured. "His energy density is off the scale, too. Recalibrating." His fingers danced over the controls before him.
Within the chamber, Sangnoir had been obscured by the glow he emitted, leaving him nothing more than an ellipsoid of brilliant blue-white light which began to pulse and flow.
"Confirmed, Daniel," Illya said. Something like awe crept into the Russian's voice. "Negative mass he now has, and continues to drop it does. And we have the lower bounds of the sensor reached and exceeded."
"Energy density just peaked. No measure on that, though. The computer refused to recalibrate," Tony added. "Beginning to drop now..."
"<...Faster than the speeding light she's flying,
Trying to remember where it all began.
She's got herself a little piece of heaven,
Waiting for the time when Earth shall be as one...">"He's moving," Hiroe said. Ohara nodded, having seen it already. The azure ball of light which had been Sangnoir began to drift back and forth in the isolation chamber, approaching first one wall, then another. On each pass it seemed to grow faster, leaving a faint, slowly-fading blue trail behind it.
"Energy levels still dropping." Tony spun a knob. "Drop is accelerating? But he's turned into a freaking light bulb and he's picking up speed! Where's it all going?"
"The spectrum he's emitting is consistent with..." Hiroe paused, and swallowed. "With Cherenkov radiation."
Within the chamber, the sphere of light was no longer visible -- it moved too quickly and was lost in its own glowing contrails. It was impossible to make out any of the chamber's details; the window was awash with a blue-tinted white light that streamed out, overpowering the mundane illumination of the control booth to cast sharp, black shadows behind them.
"My god!" Hiroe gripped the edge of the case in front of her with a near-hysterical strength as everything suddenly assembled itself for her in a single flash of insight. "Tachyons! He's turned his mass into tachyons!"
"<...Quicker than a ray of light
Quicker than a ray of light
Quicker than a ray of light...>"Illya studied the displays before him and smiled broadly. "Except for visible light with Cherenkov wavelength, and a little infrared and ultraviolet, is emitted no radiations, Daniel."
"Confirmed." Tony stepped to a different stack of sensors. "In every other part of the spectrum, he's now a black body. A *perfect* black body." He shook his head. "Impossible. Just freaking impossible!"
None of them were sure precisely what had happened next. Even the high-speed video pickups saw only the wall of the brilliant blue energy that burst through the chamber window, washing out the control room in an overload that left the cameras blank and burnt out.
To the four scientists, it felt as if they had been suddenly buffeted by a fierce desert wind, warm enough for comfort, but not so hot as to harm. It swirled about them, setting their clothes a-flutter and winding around them like an affectionate cat appreciating a favorite pair of ankles. It didn't quite blind them, merely obscuring details while seeming to outline the forms of objects and people alike at the same time.
Then, as the singer faded away, the light again flared brilliantly and contracted back into the outline of Sangnoir's spinning body. One final flash, and he stood there in the control booth among them, nearly naked, arms outflung and grinning broadly.
They all stared at him in shock as he turned slowly to survey them. Sangnoir stopped when he realized that tears were flowing from Hiroe's eyes.
"Did I hurt you?" he asked, concern replacing the unholy glee on his face. "Are you okay?"
As he flickered to her side, she nodded, smiling beatifically even as the tears ran down her cheeks. "Thank you," she finally whispered as he looked down in shock.
"For that... for the magic. For showing..." She trailed off, took a long breath, then let go of him and stepped back. Gathering together the remains of her dignity, she continued. "I'm being silly. I'm just a hopeless romantic, I guess." Tears still shone in her eyes, as she smiled shyly.
Sangnoir nodded slowly, a small smile of his own playing on his lips. He stepped up to her and lifted her chin with his fingertips. "<These are the days of miracles and wonders,>" he whispered, his voice almost breaking with the emotion in it. "<And don't cry, baby, don't cry.>"
The message light on her phone flashed lazily when Linna returned from lunch. Settling in behind her desk, she lifted the handset and automatically engaged the privacy shields, in case it were a confidential trading request.
"Hello, Ms. Yamazaki," Sylia's smooth, recorded tones purred into her ear. "This is Ms. Stingray at the Silky Doll. Your special order has arrived, the halter top. Can you come in for a fitting tonight around six PM? Please call back and let me know your availability. Thank you."
Linna gave a little sniff of laughter and instructed the voice mail system to erase the message. "Can you come in?" was Sylia's code for "Be there -- or else." Her amusement faded when she translated the rest of the message. The "special-order halter top" had to be her hardsuit's powerup. *Sounds like a night in the simulator with the new equipment,* she thought sourly. Abruptly, she stood again.
Several minutes later found her staring at her image in the huge mirror of brokerage's executive ladies' restroom. Linna washed her face, rubbed her eyes, then absently scratched at the decades- old chicken pox scars she habitually kept hidden under her headband. It was usually fun to get a new upgrade to her hardsuit, but this time it grated on her sensibilities. This time it wasn't intended for use against boomers, but against a real flesh-and-blood human being. *I'm sorry,* she thought, *that's just wrong.*
Using a growing nervous energy that might otherwise show up at her desk as an unacceptable fidget, she pulled off her headband, and fluffed up her hair with her fingers. Then she ran the band through her fingertips to remove imaginary wrinkles and retied it in place, all the while avoiding looking at the two tiny pockmarks that marred the otherwise perfectly smooth, white skin of her forehead. *I don't care what he's done, or what he thinks about us, or what Sylia thinks about him, for that matter. We're not assassins. We shouldn't be gunning for him.*
It had been a long time since she'd seen Sylia affected this way by an opponent. Now, while Linna could sympathize Sylia's need for revenge against Brian Mason, and certainly had helped her friend achieve the closure she needed, she had never entirely approved of Sylia's obsessive tendencies. *Not that I could ever do anything about them, anyway.* Linna frowned at herself in the mirror. *Short of refusing to fight, and I can't do that. I can't do that at all.*
She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the mirror. *I hope Sylia doesn't keep us all night. I could really use some time to work on one of the cars and relax a little.*
"So?" Daniel Ohara leaned back in his chair and studied his friends and co-workers.
"So," Tony said, "we've studied the records now for most of the afternoon, and..." He trailed off, frowning to hide his embarrassment and consternation.
"And," Hiroe picked up the thread. "And, after looking at all the data as well as passing it through the old 1.13 release of HARUSPEX we still have on the miniframe, we have to admit it. Our friend Reed-san really did turn into something like a macro- scale tachyon for several minutes."
Illya grinned broadly. "Is a *most* intriguing puzzle, friend Daniel! *Many* puzzles! A theoretical particle with negative mass a tachyon is; how for him is it possible to change positive mass to negative? There to suggest this is nothing even in most outlandish theory!" Ohara noted that Illya's Nihongo syntax was fracturing more badly than usual -- a sure sign of the man's excitement and interest.
"Not only that," Hiroe added, "but for him to move as slowly as he did after changing his... his 'mass polarity', for lack of a better term, required nearly *infinite* amounts of energy, because of a tachyon's inverted energy/velocity relationship. Where did it come from? How could he contain and control that much without exploding and vaporizing half the planet?"
Hiroe nodded. "Yes, it is. It's magic. And it works. And if we are indeed scientists worthy of the name, we should *burn* with the desire to find out why and how. I mean, imagine it -- an entire new field of endeavor to explore, untouched by any other researchers."
"I don't know," Ohara said slowly, sliding his fingers up under his glasses and rubbing his eyes. "If just this one demonstration perplexes us so much, how likely are we to be anything other than terminally confused after we see more?"
Illya shrugged massively. "Does it matter? As much data as we can, get. Study it. If one thing we discover that no one knew, if one thing we learn to do that no one has ever done, then worth the effort it was. And if even we don't, the try worth it was."
Ohara nodded slowly. "You're right, of course. We'll keep going."
Once I proved to those merry pranksters who ran IDEC that I was *not* crazy because I claimed my metagift was magical in origin, we got along much better. It certainly eliminated the demands for specific gadgets. Less than half an hour after my dramatic little demonstration, they set me up in one of their fabrication workshops and let me loose. On his way out the door, Ohara actually said to me, "Build whatever you want. I don't care what it is, as long as it's a technology we don't have yet, we can reproduce it, and you can explain its basic principles to us."
Well, the first thing I did was check out what I had to work with. The shop was well-equipped for the work that they wanted out of me. A righteous selection of tools and test equipment. Bins and bins of parts -- from big spools of different wires to discrete electronic components for fast breadboarding. A few classic shop tools -- lathe, drill press, coil winder, things like that -- both manual and automated. (The shop was soundproofed, I later found out, to prevent their use from disturbing the rest of the suite.) A mid-size nanofac, capable of churning out objects as large as an end table. Bins of raw materials for the fac. And most importantly, a lovely state-of- the-art desktop workstation, linked not only to IDEC's in-house miniframe but also to the GENOM corporate dataweave (and through that to the Tapestry. Net. Whatever).
The terms of my employment specified that I got maximum access to GENOM's dataweave, at least the maximum available to IDEC, and it looked like they had come through nicely. If Ohara himself had had any higher clearance than they gave me, he wouldn't have been as deeply in the corporate doghouse as he was. Or so I reasoned.
I decided to spend the rest of the day and a fair amount of the night right there on-line. After all, it wasn't like I had anything to go home to -- just my little shithole efficiency apartment, no friends, no family. No cute, perky neighbor I could relax and shoot the bull with to forget the vig business. Just me, all alone. So why not use up that time in work, right? Although I did resolve to give Lisa a call to let her know I was all right. Eventually.
The next thing I did was scrounge up a yellow legal pad and some pencils from the supply closet down the hall. Then I plopped myself into the seat at the drafting table and began to draw up a list of technologies I could kitbash for them right away.
My memory chip design took the number one position on the list. It was at least two orders of magnitude denser and faster than the local state of the art, and I already had nanofac spec files already. (On a separate sheet of paper ripped out of the pad I made a note to remember to bring my helmet to work the next day.)
The second item was gravtech. I hadn't done more than poke at that gravity gun I'd liberated, and I'd much rather examine it with the tools in the shop than eyeball it in my apartment. I added the gravgun to my list of things to bring from home.
I knew the chemical structure of the pseudo-aramid compound on which polykev was based, and with a little help and the right software I could probably reverse-engineer the synthesis process. It wasn't polykev, not without the enchantments, but it did make a decent armor by itself. So I put that on the list, too. I didn't know how it would rate next to that Abotex stuff, but I figured, hey, it's worth a shot.
Turning back to the computer, I did a little research on the state of the art in beam weapons. I noted that they had nothing resembling a proper stunner, and added it of my list of doohickeys to build.
I continued in this vein for a couple of hours before I realized I was hungry. Between the interrogation and the demo, I hadn't really had a proper lunch. I'd grabbed coffee and a bagel from the employee lounge as Ohara escorted me to the shop, but that was it.
(It didn't occur to me until quite a while later to wonder where the hell it had come from. I asked, and Hiroe told me. Turns out the Tower had a very nice bagel place in the food court of the public shopping mall on one of the lower levels. They'd pretty much paid off the owner/operators of a genuine NYC bagel bakery to move to MegaTokyo and open up shop in the Tower. Apparently some higher-up had transferred in from the Manhattan offices a couple years back and then complained about the lack of decent bagels. GENOM responded as GENOM usually did, by throwing money at the problem until it was solved. As a result, a fair number of MegaTokyo locals were now devoted customers, although I really couldn't get behind the idea of a bonito and seaweed bagel...)
Anyway, I got hungry. I ordered a big dinner from a burger place in the food court for delivery to IDEC's offices, and charged it to my new GENOMBank card. Turns out the restaurants in the Tower do this kind of thing all the time for Tower residents. It was still early -- before six -- so the receptionist was still on duty. I let her know I was expecting a dinner delivery and went back to work. By this time I was browsing the GENOM dataweave and occasionally breaking into systems where I didn't belong.
(And I hadn't even had to use a song yet. Biggest, nastiest, most secretive mega-corporation in the world and *still* some idiots don't change the default admin passwords. Of course, the only reason I could even make the attempt was because I was behind the Tower's outer three firewalls, but even so... Geeze. Some people shouldn't be allowed behind a keyboard. Unless they're on the enemy's side, of course.)
Anyway, half an hour later I heard the cardkey buzz of the shop door, followed by footsteps. "Mr. Reed?" The voice and steps belonged to a girl, probably one of the college-age interns or OLs.
I didn't look up, as I was involved in a very delicate reassignment of certain key access rights to a system that appeared to be the capstone of the Tower's main R&D dataweave. "Mmm?"
"Hi, I'm Chizue, I work over in the research pool. Your dinner arrived while I was talking to Sindra, and I thought I'd bring it to you and welcome you to the company at the same time." She sounded very chipper and perky, more so than anyone had any right to be at this point in the day. A lot like Lisa, in fact, which just fired off another pang of loneliness.
I tried not to lose my focus. "Oh, great, thanks. Just leave it on the counter there, okay?" I waved in the general direction of some free space I remembered seeing earlier in the afternoon. Then I heard a gasp and the rustling thud of a paper bag full of burgers hitting a floor.
I knocked over my chair leaping out of it and spinning around -- a usually-fortunate reflex that I have to cries of fear and panic coming from right behind me. Sadly, this time it only made things worse, because Chizue turned out to be delicate, tiny, pretty, and last but not least, the poor girl I had frightened so badly in the hallway during my siege. She raised her arms in front of her face in what would have been a futile attempt to defend herself had I actually been attacking. She screamed again, her eyes wide with panic and recognition behind her forearms.
"I can't believe you went through all this trouble, Sylia," Priss protested.
Sylia smoothed the ruffles in the voluminously-skirted dress as she returned it to its the hanger. "It's no trouble at all, Priss. What did you think of this one?"
"And here I thought we were going to get our powerups tonight," Nene griped quietly to Linna, who nodded, smiling. Lisa, on the other side of Nene, giggled.
"Oh, we are," Sylia responded evenly from across the room; evidently Nene hadn't been quiet enough. "We're also helping Priss select her wedding gown and her bridesmaids' dresses."
Priss gritted her teeth. She stood in front of a three-panel mirror in a T-shirt, jeans and stocking feet. Laundry-basket- sized bundles of filmy white fabric scattered about her testified to almost half an hour's effort already expended. "Look, it's not like I don't appreciate it, but you didn't need to go through all this trouble. You don't normally stock this kind of stuff." Her tone rose precipitously. "And I never wear dresses! I only own one skirt!"
"We're not counting what I wear on stage, okay? That's *work* clothes."
Eyebrows raised, Linna held up her hands in a gesture of placation. "Okay, okay." Softly, she murmured, "Mou! I'm sorry I said anything," and on either side of her, Nene and Lisa snickered.
"I don't look good in dresses!" Priss escalated into a despondent wail as she held three gowns up to her body in rapid succession, studying herself in the mirrors and then flinging each dress aside. "I'm too butch and I'm going to look ugly and Leon's going to leave me at the altar and I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life!"
Linna couldn't hold it back any longer; she erupted into uncontrollable giggling, which earned her a poisonous glare from her teammate. Next to her, Nene's face contorted into a bizarre expression that tried to combine sympathy, amusement, amazement and disbelief -- and failed utterly. Lisa, thanking her training as a journalist, managed to maintain a look of blank-faced innocence.
Sylia suppressed a sigh of empathy and decided that shock treatment was necessary. Stepping to the singer's side, she laid her hands on Priss' shoulders, and in the most sincere voice she could muster, said, "If that happens, you'll just have to move in with me."
Sylia nodded. "We can finally yield to our long-denied mutual lesbian attraction, and spend our declining years in sybaritic Sapphic fulfillment," she continued in even, measured tones. "If that meets with your approval." She quirked an eyebrow at Priss. "Sweetling."
Jolted completely out of her panic attack, Priss stared unabashedly at Sylia's cool, collected visage. "You have *got* to be shitting me," she said after several long moments.
Lisa, Linna and Nene exploded into uncontrolled laughter and slowly collapsed to the floor and into a pile of quivering limbs.
"Yes," replied Sylia, her tone unchanged. "I am." Then the corners of her mouth quirked upward into a small smile. "Feel better now?"
Priss evaluated her emotional state, and to her surprise, the panic had vanished. "Yeah," she said, nodding. "Yeah, I do. Thanks."
Sylia briefly inclined her head in acknowledgment, then turned to a new gown. "What do you think of this one?"
Priss considered the satiny, frilly item with a mischievous gleam in her eye. "I don't know. Do you have anything in black leather?"
On the floor, the other two Knight Sabers and their archivist gave up on trying to stand in favor of another gale of laughter.
"You haven't seen your wife in over three years? That's *so* sad!" Chizue nibbled on her half-a-hamburger and bounced her heels against the foot rest of the stool on which she sat.
The first thing I did when she screamed the second time was fling myself across the room -- *away* from her. I babbled madly at her, all sorts of reassurances and promises and *anything* I could think of to make her stop screaming. It didn't work.
We kept it up, the both of us, for quite a while. I attribute the fortunate lack of overly concerned co-workers to the soundproofing on the shop; it ensured we had a private confrontation. So there we stood, me babbling, she screaming, for a good five minutes or so.
She ran out of breath first. Peering out from behind her arms, she eyed me curiously. I was still flattened against the wall furthest from her.
"You're not attacking me." It wasn't quite a question, and it wasn't quite a statement. Her voice was still tremulous, though; she wasn't relaxing any in my presence.
Fear vanished from her eyes, wiped away utterly by a sudden surge of indignation. "What, am I not worth attacking?"
*WHAT?* was the only thought that entered my mind. "No, I'm sure you'd make a wonderful victim," I returned to babbling. "I'm just not attacking *anyone* at the moment. I work here now, and it would make for bad office politics."
"Yeah." I relaxed infinitesimally, now that she was talking and not screaming. "Your boss apparently mistook my little rampage last week for a job application." I shrugged. "It seems he liked how I interviewed." A thought then struck me. "You know, out of the three jobs I've had in the last 15 years, that's the second one I've gotten by assaulting the management... I wonder if I've hit upon some hitherto-unknown technique for guaranteeing employment," I mused.
Chizue giggled, and bent over to pick up the sack of burgers. "Here," she said, considerably calmer. "I think this is yours."
To make a long story short (or shorter, at least), I ended up sharing my dinner with her and recounting the tale of my travels and woes. Chizue was surprisingly sympathetic for someone who had only half an hour earlier been frightened unto death of me; I think the burgers helped, as they were *very* good burgers, even better than Eriko's. Good burgers and a lack of violent intent can make up for a multitude of sins.
Better yet, she believed my story at once -- or else put on a very convincing act. Probably the former, as she *did* work in a lab dedicated to interdimensional exploration, and was in fact a grad student in advanced physics at GENOM Institute of Technology, doing work-study at IDEC while she earned her Master's. (Yes, we talked about more than just me.) Chizue was less interested in the science and magic of the matter, though, than in my relationship with Maggie; she practically gushed, stars twinkling in her eyes, over how "romantic" it was that I was working my way across universes trying to get back to my wife.
"Tell me about her," Chizue said as she nibbled away at the remains of her burger. "What's she like?"
I smiled and leaned back in my chair. "Maggie's tall, almost as tall as me." Chizue -- all of a meter sixty in height -- giggled. I closed my eyes and went on. "Long and lean, built like a marathon runner. High cheek bones, like a model. A smile that'd melt you down into your shoes. Beautiful auburn hair, like a garnet waterfall." I made a little "mmmm" noise as I envisioned Maggie once again.
"She sounds very beautiful," Chizue said with a little romantic sigh. "What color are her eyes?"
I snapped out my reverie. "Her eyes? Well, that's..." I shut down my mouth before I babbled anything Maggie would make me regret. "Grey. They're grey." I closed my eyes again. "Her voice is a sweet, soft whisper that can caress your ear or shatter steel. She runs faster than the wind. And she can bench- press an elephant and not raise a sweat," I finished with a fond chuckle. Between Maggie's strength and my field, our wedding night had been... well, "tentative" was one word. "Different" was another. But we eventually managed. No children yet; not for lack of trying, mind you, but between our respective mutations and my field, we haven't had any luck at conception. We had been about to resort to a magical intervention, before... I shook myself to exorcise the less-than-happy memories to which that line of thought led.
"And yeah, she's the most beautiful thing in the world to me," I continued.
"That's *so* sweet," Chizue crooned, then popped the last bit of cheeseburger into her mouth. She hopped off the stool and practically minced across the room to pat me on the cheek. "You're a very devoted husband," she declared with a smile. "And you seem like a really nice guy."
"Which is why I don't understand why you were so violent and nasty the other day."
I didn't quite frown. "Your bosses have been sending boomers after me for months. And the last time they did, one of the boomers killed two kids. That upset me -- a lot."
Chizue's eyes grew wide, and started to shimmer. "Two kids died?" she breathed.
Uh-oh. "But it's okay," I said quickly. "They got, um, medical attention in time, and were resuscitated. They're better now. But it *really* pissed me off, and I decided to take that all out on your bosses."
She nodded, her eyes still moist, but the threatened tears held back -- for now. "Yeah, I can understand that."
"Just don't spread it around, okay? I'm sure your bosses wouldn't approve."
Her eyes widened again, and her mouth made a little "O". "Oh, I would *never* do that. Cross my heart and hope to die!"
Uh-huh. If I had her personality pegged right, the story of Ohara's culpability would spread through the company like stage two starpox. I may not have been able to take it out of his hide, but I could make him hurt in other ways. Just because I was taking his money and making toys for him didn't mean I'd made my peace with the man. He still needed to be taken down a notch or two.
Chizue and I chatted for another twenty minutes or so before she announced that she had to leave. I bade her good night, and went back to cracking GENOM's R&D dataweave.
Lisa settled back in on her futon with a fresh bowl of popcorn. One benefit of walking out on the "16 Times" was no "homework" -- she frequently had had to piece together assignments before the next work day. And with her copious new free time she had not only taken part in the dress- and armor-fitting "party" at Silky Doll, but had also already taken care of almost half of the pro- Sabers counter-propaganda Sylia had asked her for this week. Add to that the fact that she'd already begun her first forays into a leisurely free-lance career, and Lisa felt quite justified in taking the rest of the night off.
And that meant it was finally time to go back and watch some of the rarities she'd picked up during the Sailor Moon marathon the Anime Channel had broadcast some months before. She'd already gotten through the infamous "Kodomo no Ginzuisho" parody and was just about to start on the American live action version again. It was just the thing she needed to round out an already pretty good day, especially since it would keep her from missing Doug and worrying about him. It had become a frequent preoccupation for her, in the dark of night when she was alone. Lisa swore she would give him hell for all the anxiety she had upon hearing about his fight with the Dobermans and the Boomer Giant.
*No, don't start with that. That's why I'm watching "Sailor Moon", so I *won't* get all worked up about Doug.* She determinedly crammed a handful of popcorn into her mouth and reached for the remote control.
In the days since Doug had gone into hiding, she had managed to bring her explosive reaction to the sound under some degree of control, but her heart still raced at the thought that he might have come back. She forced herself to take a deep breath, carefully laid the bowl and the remote to one side, and slowly rose from the futon. With measured steps she crossed to the door, unlocked it, and opened it.
Standing in the hall was a large winter coat surmounting a pair of expensive slacks, at the other end of which were a set of Italian leather flats, somewhat the worse for wear thanks to the slush outside. The face of a thirty-something woman peered out of the coat's hood. "Excuse me." Her voice was both cultured and hesitant. "Are you Lisa Vanette?"
The woman swept back her hood with one hand, revealing a cascade of lavender hair. "My name is... I'm Kate Madigan. I'd like to talk to you about the Sailor Senshi you photographed."
The phone shrilled, and Leon punched the "receive" button without looking up. "McNichol here."
A videophone window opened on his monitor to display "Visual Not Available" in large red letters. "Good morning, Inspector."
Leon's head snapped up to stare at the blank window as he recognized the voice. "Loo--" he began even as he waved Daley over to his desk.
"Uh-uh-uh, no names, Inspector. And don't bother tracing this call; I've got it routed and redirected six ways from Sunday, and I don't think GENOM would appreciate it if you attempted to storm the Tower because you thought I was calling from there."
Daley, hearing this last, raised his eyebrows and slipped over to another desk to quietly speak into its phone.
"Do you remember what we talked about last week, Inspector? About taking boomers down nondestructively?"
"I would like to come to some kind of agreement with you. You seem to know something of my origins. You should be aware that in my native here-and-now I am -- among other things -- basically a cop like you, only with an international jurisdiction. I prefer to work with local law enforcement. I would like to work *with* the ADP rather than against it."
Leon glanced over to where Daley spoke energetically into the phone. "I can't exactly revoke the orders to capture you, you know."
The Loon snorted. "Maybe not, but I don't doubt that you can turn down the heat quite a bit. Look, here's the deal. Give me a little breathing room, and as long as you try to take down the rogues without destroying them, I'll do everything in my power not only to help, but to protect ADP troops. In fact, I'll put priority on protecting the troops." A momentary pause. "As long as you are sincere about saving boomer lives."
"You bet your sweet bippy it is, McNichol. Not at the cost of human lives, mind you, but if I can save both, I'll do it."
"Just tell me," Leon peered into the small phone window, wishing he had *some* video whatsoever. "Why?"
There was another pause. "You're in your thirties, I'd say, right, Inspector?"
"So you're way too young for the Berlin Wall to have been anything but a page in a history book to you." A deep breath echoed across the line. "I'm not, Inspector. I was there, in my world, in 1989. I helped tear that wall down, with my hands and with my metagift.
"When we first showed up, the people swarming the wall backed off and started to form a mob, figuring we were there to stop them. Hexe -- that's my C.O., she's German herself, by the way -- flew up and hovered over the Wall. She faced East Berlin and spread her arms wide, as if she were trying to embrace the city. Then a curtain of lightning bolts slammed down out of the sky to either side of her and vaporized almost 500 yards of the Wall in one explosive, blinding strike." In his voice Leon could hear the smile creep onto the Loon's lips. "The thunder was deafening, but not as loud as the cheers from the crowd. By then, the rest of us were going to work on what was left, and the crowd flowed back in like the tide to join us."
There was a long pause; as the phone connection hissed softly, Leon began to wonder if the line had gone dead. Then the Loon continued. "It's my job, Inspector. It's my *duty.* Even as far away from home as I am. I save lives, I protect the innocent, and I free the enslaved. And every boomer ever made falls under at least one of those three criteria."
"No need to answer me now, Inspector. I'll find you or the admirable Inspector Wong at the next incident, I'm sure." Daley raised one brow and grinned, mouthing the word "admirable" with obvious amusement. "You can think about it until then."
"Doesn't matter, Inspector. I trust you to do the right thing. Have a nice day!" he added brightly, then disconnected. Leon watched, nonplussed, as the video window shut itself and vanished.
"He's good," Daley said, sitting down on the desktop next to his partner. "We traced the call right into the Tower and no further." He chuckled. "The guy's got a sense of humor, you've got to give him that. Guess *where* in the Tower the call originated, according to Nene."
"She tried to backtrack further, but whatever he did to set up the link stopped her cold. There were at least a half-dozen possible connections out of IDEC's trunk that might have been him, but she couldn't figure out which. As far as she could tell, he might as well have been calling from their lobby." Daley shook his head. "Incredible."
Lisa paused the playback on the "hydra" and rubbed her eyes. *God. I'm so tired.*
She'd been up until two in the morning the previous night, speaking with her visitor -- Katherine Madigan, of all people. *Damn. Who'd've thought it? GENOM's own queen bitch on my doorstep, bumming around in Ota without her bodyguards, wanting to talk to me.* Not that Madigan had once invoked the name of GENOM or her position there, oddly enough, but it was impossible to be a journalist in MegaTokyo and not recognize her on sight.
*Talk about your twilight zone experiences...* For the hundredth time, a highly-compressed replay of the night flashed through her mind. They had spent hours talking about "Sailor Moon" -- and "Sailor Loon", to Lisa's extreme agitation. Still, for all that her reputation painted her as imperturbable and unshakeably in control, Madigan had seemed almost pathetically desperate for any information Lisa could offer. And she had never even once hinted at threats or bribes in response to Lisa's repeated protestations of ignorance, instead only seeming to grow more and more somber and disconsolate as the night drew on.
To her immense surprise, Lisa had found herself feeling for the woman, her compassion fighting down the almost-automatic fear and distrust of someone so highly placed in GENOM. And to compound her surprise, at the end of her visit Lisa found herself impulsively inviting Madigan back on some unspecified future night to watch their favorite episodes together. The offer had evoked the only smile to grace Madigan's face during the entire night -- a small, geniune flash as she replied, "I'd like that, thanks," before vanishing down the hallway.
Lisa shook her head to clear it. *I'd say my life was strange, but that'd be redundant these days. One thing for sure, I'm *not* going to tell Sylia about this until I know what's really going on.*
Daley Wong considered himself lucky to have gotten the last of the breakfast miso before the cafeteria staff put it aside in order that the progress of time might turn it into the lunch miso. It wasn't that he had missed his morning meal that day. Not at all; he was just a little peckish. Too hungry for a cup of coffee to substitute for food, not quite hungry enough for a donut; a nice cup of miso fell right between the two. And even though he'd grown up on an improbable mix of Irish and Szechuan cooking, he'd always harbored a fondness for miso soup that occasionally bordered on a craving -- even for the cafeteria's less-than-stellar instant variety.
Stepping out of the serving area, Daley glanced around the dining room for a place to sit. The space was half-full, dotted with groups of personnel taking their mid-morning breaks. After the morning's events Daley wasn't terribly inclined to sit alone, but by the same token he didn't feel like crashing a large group. He turned slowly in place until he spotted a good prospect.
Walking up to the small table and its single occupant, Daley smiled charmingly. "Good morning, Lieutenant. Mind if I join you?"
Bochinksi looked up from his now-empty bowl; from the traces left in it, Daley thought it might have been oatmeal. "Huh? Oh, sure, Inspector. But I'm going back on shift in a couple, so I won't be worth much as company after that."
"Not a problem," Daley said, still smiling, and pulled out the chair opposite Bochinski. Carefully keeping his tray level, he lowering himself into the seat. "I'm not going to take long, myself."
"Thanks." Daley seated himself, and then spent a moment savoring the scent of his miso before taking the first sip.
"So," Bochinski said after half-heartedly scraping the inside of his bowl with his spoon, "scuttlebutt says you and Inspector McNichol got a call from the super-powered nutbar this morning."
Daley swallowed a mouthful of soup and resisted the impulse to react. *Well, it's not like we were on a secure line or anything. And we wonder how GENOM finds out what's going on in the department...* "Yeah," he said aloud.
"So..." Bochinski stared at his empty spoon. "Is it true he's volunteered to help the ADP?"
Daley lowered his bowl. "Leon's handling this, and he hasn't decided yet. Why?"
Bochinski shrugged. "Just curious. It's just that I've got this strange feeling, like I'm running around on the edges of something big and exciting, but I'm not really involved with it. And I'm kind of feeling like I ought to be. It's weird."
Daley raised his eyebrows and considered this. "Yeah, it is. But you shouldn't be concerned about stuff like that. After all, you're in the ADP. You'll get to be in the middle of all the action soon enough." He aimed a mock-frown at his fellow officer. "Besides, don't you have more important things to worry about?"
"Fiancee?" Daley prompted. "Wedding? Plans, caterers, all that?"
"Oh, that," Bochinski blurted. "Kendra and her family are handling most of it." He shrugged sheepishly, and Daley laughed.
Daley smiled. "I can't say as I'm too surprised. How are you going to manage the work situation?"
"Eh, well, we're both going to keep working for now. If... I mean, when she gets pregnant, she'll probably take a desk job, but she'll work right up to the moment they wheel her into the delivery room." Another shrug, this one small and expressive. "You know Kendra."
"Yeah," Daley replied. "We couldn't keep her away from HQ if we tried."
"You better believe it, Inspector," said a mellifluous contralto voice.
Daley looked up to see nearly two meters of stunning amazonian blonde poured into an ADP uniform. "Good morning, Wadderson," he said in greeting.
"Good morning, Inspector," Kendra Wadderson replied, then turned to her fiance and partner. "C'mon, Fido, time to get on the road."
"Yes, dear," Bochinski said with a grin. He stood and picked up his tray. "Later, Inspector."
"Have a safe shift, you two," Daley replied. They thanked him and walked off. He wistfully watched them go. "Ah, young love," he murmured as he returned to his soup. "When will I find some of my own?"
The next morning I strolled in, waved to Sindra, caught a bagel that Chizue tossed at me, pretended to be civil to Ohara and his accomplices, and then locked myself in my workshop. I had my helmet with me, in the bowling ball bag again. It only took me a few seconds to pull the specs for my memory chip design from it and store them on my workstation. It only took another ten or fifteen minutes to set the nanofac to churn out a dozen or so, already emplaced on circuit boards suitable for testing in the local computers.
That done, I went back to the R&D capstone system I had compromised the night before, and began to study boomers.
Now, the thing to understand was that while this particular system -- which had been given the spectacularly imaginative name of "rdmain" -- was indeed the hub of a dedicated R&D dataweave, and acted as a master security gateway to all the other systems on the weave, it did *not* give me master access to all the computers linked to it. Most, but not all. There were at least a dozen strands off the main weave which had higher-security gateways of their own, and four of those had names which suggested they handled boomer matters. Naturally, I focused on them.
I cracked the subsystem called "BUMAin" first, for obvious reasons. There I found general development information -- some of it dating back ten or more years. Chassis design, electronics subsystems, weaponry options, musculature -- the damn things were *far* more organic than any of the "official" literature available to the public suggested. They were practically 50/50 cyborgs built from scratch. If I had known that from the start...
The second system I cracked dealt exclusively with the 33-S models -- the "sexaroids" the Knight Sabers had mentioned during my little visit with them. Illegal on earth, their manufacture ostensibly banned, they were still in use in various orbital habitats -- and the only things that distinguished them from first-class genetically-engineered humans were their brains (which were less constrained than the standard issue model for most boomers), a few job-related "features" that sounded disturbingly like metagifts, and a couple of weaknesses and faults built into their bodies. These last were to cement control over them in the event they ever became rebellious and sought their freedom. One of the memos I found referred to this condition as "disturbingly common", and cited a case where a half dozen or so tried to make a break from one of GENOM's orbital facilities in 2033; two actually managed to crash land a shuttle near MegaTokyo before they were "terminated".
It took me a *long* time to calm down after browsing through that system.
(It helped me settle down to assemble copies of the most incriminating documents for later dissemination via the Net. By that time I knew of a couple of anonymous remailers with delay options; I would put the "package" up on them that night, chaining and cascading the transmissions between different servers to ensure that at least a few copies reached their destinations -- mainly media, government and human rights organizations based outside of Japan -- before GENOM inevitably trashed the systems.)
The third subsystem was devoted entirely to a subvariety of boomers. These "Covert" models had the ability to masquerade as humans or simple androids, but could "pop" out of their "skins" and manifest as full war machines, effectively doubling their size. I thought back to all the humanoid boomers I'd seen, such as those in the Tower lobby, and wondered just how many of them were disguised weapons platforms.
Anyway, I'd never actually seen a boomer "pop", all the time I'd been there. But there were videos in the archive on the server, and I played them. You know, I've seen a lot of sick stuff in my day, but that really took the cake. There was absolutely no reason for the horrifying way the expansion shredded the human guise except as a psychological ploy, as a terror weapon.
And I wanted to know how they managed to pack a two-meter-tall by one-meter-wide boomer inside what looked like a normal human.
The answer was something called "programmable matter." I'd certainly never heard of it before, but it seemed simple enough, and I wondered if back home someone was working on it. Basically, it's an offshoot of nanotechnology. You nanofabricate a molecule-sized "trap" for electrons called a "quantum dot". With the right support circuitry, you can control exactly how many electrons are fed into the dot. The electrons, having nowhere else to go, automatically form themselves into shells exactly identical to those that form around the nuclei of atoms, except they're a couple of orders of magnitude larger. Since all chemistry is a consequence of atomic shell structure, you now have a "giant" version of whatever element has the particular number and arrangement of electrons caught in the trap -- a virtual, tunable atom. It can react with both other virtual atoms, and real ones, for as long as you keep the power on. You can change the atom programmatically by adding or removing electrons on the fly, too. And the actual power consumption was remarkably small. Incredible idea. Incredible stuff.
And boomer "flesh" was thoroughly laced with programmable matter and its related circuitry. In "covert" mode, it's all inactive. But turn on the power, and Voom! Suddenly you have four times the body volume you had a moment before. And properly arranged, it's all *structural* -- virtual atoms with *real* chemical bonds making what amounted to a flexible monomolecular framework woven through the boomer's entire structure. No wonder the things were so damned tough.
Imagine a semi-intelligent "goo" made up entirely of nanobots, each one carrying a quantum dot or two. Imagine that this goo can network itself to accept and propagate signals from an authorized "controller", and act upon those signals. Imagine that it "knows" a little about simple machines and circuits -- pivots, screws, wires, switches -- and how to build structures to use them with their virtual atoms. Imagine this goo seeping into a gun, and, using a combination of its built-in knowledge and extra data transmitted from its controller, "understanding" how to infiltrate the gun's trigger mechanism and take it over. In about ten seconds. Maybe less. Now imagine that the controller is a boomer with a couple dozen liters of this stuff stored in its body.
This is the so-called "fusion" boomer, and I *had* seen one of these in action -- at Bunko's. The lobby boomer with the minigun welded to its arm. Only it hadn't been welded -- bonds made up of nanobots and programmable matter had turned the gun into a very real part of the boomer's own body.
*This* was a technology I had to report back to the Warriors before some ingenious asshole with the right metagift brewed up a batch in his garage. Assuming that, in the years since I'd been home, it hadn't already happened. I made a copy of the complete fabrication specs for the fusion goo and stashed it in my helmet immediately.
With precise, controlled strokes of her pen, Katherine Madigan initialed the final set of requisition forms needed to set in motion her plan to capture the Visitor. All but a mere formality, she reflected, since the forces and supplies she required were already assembled and undergoing last-minute instructions. But a proper paper trail for internal cost- tracking and audits was a necessary part of all but the blackest of black projects, whether or not the project was one GENOM would ever publicly acknowledge.
Madigan closed the blue folder which held the requisitions, and placed it carefully in the upper left corner of her desk, from which a secretary would retrieve it the next time she left her office. Then she closed her eyes and sighed. *Only a couple of days to go. So much planning, and still so many things that could go wrong.* She resisted the urge to rub her eyes, if only to avoid spoiling the faint lavender eyeshadow she'd decided to wear today. Assuming any had survived the long day -- it'd been hours since she'd looked at herself in any kind of reflective surface.
*And on the subject of things going wrong...* She leaned back in her chair, eyes still closed, hands lightly gripping the armrests. *I must be prepared for the possibility that, in the wake of my recent activities, my loyalty to GENOM might be questioned.* Roused by the thought, memories of those activities flashed unbidden through her mind: her confession at St. Jude's; her long, fruitless discussion with the girl who had photographed the Senshi; the infuriating and terrifying letter from nowhere and the energy she had spent trying to discover its origins; even her reviews of certain business ethics texts. It wouldn't take much for one of the sharks below her to weave a plausible accusation from these -- an accusation which would be uncomfortably close to the truth. And in such a case, events might run too swiftly for her to employ her carefully-hoarded supply of blackmail evidence in time to do any good. She could well find a pair of security boomers in her office before she had any idea that GENOM had declared her a liability.
"Hope for the best, plan for the worst," Father Knecht had frequently said. She now needed an edge in case the worst happened.
Katherine stood, thumbing the door lock button on her desk. Fingertips brushing over another control opaqued her windows -- just in case. There were always security bugs, but her status within the company had long ago ensured most were inactive; those that weren't, fed to logs sealed with a corporate security level so high that only she and Mr. Quincy had access to them. She hoped.
She crossed to the heavy wooden credenza which took up most of one of the office's side walls, set aside the potted plant which normally sat upon it, and carefully pressed her fingers against four apparently innocuous spots in a rapid, syncopated tattoo.
There was a click, and the credenza's thick oaken slab of a top swung up slightly, like the lid of a box.
Katherine lifted it, revealing a hollowed, padded recess in its underside. It was lined with a velvety material, and a strip of velcro tape held a cellphone securely within. *A cellphone,* she reflected, *that could get me "disappeared".*
It had been four years earlier, give or take, that she had learned about the OverMind System -- GENOM's secret and as-yet unused world-wide remote-control for every boomer ever made. Not long after that, she had almost died at the hands of the insane "boomer messiah", Largo. During the weeks of her recovery, she had angrily vowed never to be caught so unprepared again, and arranged for the construction of this -- a control unit which employed a tiny subset of the OMS protocols. When activated, it would paralyze every boomer within a hundred meters for as long as its power held out -- five or ten minutes if she were lucky. It was also a functional cellphone that responded to the same number as the identical one she habitually carried.
The implications of what she had done only struck her with the device's delivery, weeks after her rage at her own impotence had faded away. Appalled at her own recklessness, she arranged for the permanent "dismissal" of the technician who had built it (Katherine winced with regret and pain at the thought of how coldbloodedly she had issued that command) and hid the device. She had never used it. She had never even carried it. Until now.
With a ripping noise that was disturbingly loud in the quiet room, Katherine freed the phone from its hiding place and traded it for the one which she withdrew from her pocket. The latter took its twin's place within the credenza top, which she then closed; it latched shut with an audible click.
Sylia slowly nodded to herself as she set the earpiece back in its holder and turned off the playback. Much as it had distressed her to do so at the time, it *had* been the right thing to do to have the listening devices planted in Lisa's apartment.
*Katherine Madigan of GENOM calling upon Lisa, alone and all but incognito, to question her about the so-called "senshi" -- and to discuss "Sailor Moon".* Sylia shook her head. *Curious... and disturbing. This will bear further watching.*
I spent several hours carefully probing and prodding that fourth system. It was *far* more secure than the other three, which convinced me that it had to hold what I was looking for -- the only thing about boomer technology which was a double-plus hush- hush certified trade secret, the design for the boomer brain. In the end, though, it was resistant to all the mundane techniques I could apply to it without going out into the Tower and trying a little social engineering. I couldn't very well do that, so I did the next better thing. I put on my helmet, called up "Lightning's Hand" and sent my consciousness directly into the recalcitrant machine.
Three minutes later, I had an "invisible" account with administrator clearance and I had patched the OS to automatically clean up any trail I left behind.
(I have to admit, when it comes to cracking systems, "Lightning's Hand" is an invaluable tool. But like any good tool, I save it for the situations where I actually need it -- like this one. Besides, it takes the fun out of cracking when you can remotely reprogram the entire system from the outside. Plus I'd rather not become dependent upon my metagift for things like that; not only wouldn't I always have my helmet with me, but that skill set was something I'd worked long and hard for, and I didn't like to let it get rusty.
I had been right. The fourth and final system was dedicated entirely to boomer brain design. Unlike the others, though, there was little in the way of active development going on in this area, judging from file dates. There was almost nothing here any newer than the various directory creation dates, and in fact most files were a lot older -- obvious remnants of a transfer from a previous system.
In order to accomplish my charge from the Three, I needed to learn everything that there was to know on boomer brain design. That pretty much covered the entire contents of the machine, as far as I could tell. I wasn't content to simply browse my way around the box, though; even with my enhanced access privileges, I didn't want to spend any more time in this system than I actually had to. So I copied everything over to my machine at IDEC.
There was a lot there -- including several terabyte-sized CAD files which I suspected contained the entire build specs for the standard boomer brain models. I started a transfer to my local machine and while it ran, I ordered in a late dinner. While I waited for it, I set up a little program that hooked into GENOM's intelligence network and would alert me to an ADP deployment -- just in case.
Not long after that, my dinner arrived. I trotted out to the lobby to retrieve it and tip the delivery boy, then retreated back into my lab to scarf down my sesame chicken, broccoli with garlic and fried dumplings. A little while after I had polished it off, the transfer completed. I tossed out the trash left over from my meal and went to work.
The CAD files were unrecognized by any of the programs on IDEC's machines.
It took me a half-hour to discover that they were in an obsolete format -- one that hadn't been in use for almost fifteen years. It took me another forty-five minutes to find a pirate copy of the package on the Net, download it and install it.
By which time I was frankly worn out by the day's efforts. I shut everything down and resolved to jump feet-first into the task in the morning when I was fresh.
Bagel in hand, I bounced up and down in my chair while NanoCAD 6.71 slowly initialized and spun up a window on my desktop, and as soon as the first image appeared, I dove right in.
How can I describe this? It was the feeling you'd get if you opened up an Egyptian tomb and found a working atomic pile built from raw pitchblende ore and rough charcoal blocks. The feeling you'd have upon discovering a 19th-Century steam-powered mechanical computer with the processing power of a late-model Cray laptop, buried in the basement of an abandoned Victorian warehouse. It was something that shouldn't have been possible with the available technology, but some twisted genius had figured out how to do it anyway. Just barely.
It was a brilliant piece of hackery, and an excellent first prototype. But that's all it was -- a proof-of-concept implementation that should never have been used as a production spec. Worse, it had been crudely modified by others. I could see the evidence of at least four hands in the design: the original creator, of whom I was increasingly in awe when I saw more and more of what he'd done to make his design work, and no less than three butchers, who had slashed through the golden precision of the original creation to turn it into something controllable. Something marketable.
Whoever that original designer had been -- I found the Roman initials "KS" worked into the circuitry at one point and I presumed they were his -- he had to have been a remarkable polymath, because he mixed cybernetics and biological systems with a facility that quite frankly was beyond my ability to comprehend. As far as I could tell, he hadn't been designing a processor unit for a slave bot, he'd been designing the brain of a new *lifeform*. This hadn't been it, but it was clearly a significant evolutionary step along the route to it.
I suppose something must have happened to "KS", basically because the brain design was so crude (relatively) but still had so much potential. Even without the expertise to judge the bio half of it, I could see *so* many places for improvement, and anyone capable of this design in the first place would never have been content to leave it as it was, let alone allow it to be butchered the way it had been and then put on the market afterwards. And since GENOM had no significant competitor in boomers -- and no minor manufacturer's boomers were significantly more intelligent or stable -- "KS" was probably dead, possibly even at GENOM's hand or order. And afterwards, they had gone in and inserted their controls and overrides and governors with all the delicacy of an epileptic rhinoceros. I mean, I'd known they were there, but I'd thought they'd've at least been part of the original architecture.
Anyway. Something about this conjectural history bugged me -- like I knew something relevant but wasn't able to put my finger on it. I resolved to do some Net searches later for names with the initials "KS" connected to the development of boomers (not just boomers in general, else I'd surely find nothing but "Knight Sabers" sites), just to see if I could shake free whatever datum my subconscious was clinging to so tightly.
In the meantime, I tried to find some quick and/or easy way to release a boomer brain from those obedience circuits so crudely inserted into it. And, while I was at it, I started sketching out some improvements in the cybernetics side of the brain -- because, damn, they were needed, and because I could. I didn't expect that they'd ever get implemented, of course. But I couldn't look at those plans without seeing the kinds of fixes I was sure that "KS" would have wanted to apply to his next- generation design, and not doing anything about them would've driven me nuts.
By lunchtime I'd already filled up one pad of lined paper with my notes, and had made good headway into a second. The mystery genius had been exactly that -- a genius -- but he took shortcuts and made design decisions I would never have agreed with. Yes, he had been creating a new lifeform. But it had been a disposable one.
As designed, boomer brains were, to put it mildly, expendable components. They had an operational lifespan of ten years tops (and that was my most generous guess) before they simply broke down. Oh, the electronics would continue to work just fine (unless they were used in a high-rad environment like space, in which case both electronics and biologics would eventually fry from the ionization -- shielding had *not* been a priority). But the neurons would eventually die off, starting slowly and then accelerating, mainly because their support systems were a little less than perfect. Waste product disposal was just a hair under 100% effective, causing the neural tissues to slowly, inexorably poison themselves. And it was, according to the design notes, intentional. Planned obsolescence of a profoundly disturbing, even obscene, variety.
A genius, yes. Designing a new lifeform, yes. But a lifeform with a self-destruct built in. A lifeform that could be used up and thrown out like an old soda can. Or maybe they could recycle the body by popping the lid and dropping a new brain in...
(I shook my head at that thought. Too weird for me at the moment.)
I wondered if "KS" had ever given any thought to what a boomer would *do* once its brain tissue started dying. Forget about what it would think and feel...
Worse, someone in GENOM took these original kludgy designs and overlaid all those control circuits and behavioral blocks on them, further disturbing the already-delicate balance between organic and electronic systems. Jesus Harold Christ. What a mess.
While I'd trained as a cybernetics engineer, I'd specialized in the wholly inorganic side. Bionics and cyborgs weren't really my bailiwick. But I did know a trick or two, thanks to almost fifteen years of field experience and to my insatiable curiosity. Add that to what I did know about pure electronics, and I now had a sheaf of ideas on how to improve the boomer brain design. I had a pretty good idea how I could not only break a brain free from the GENOM constraints, but also double, maybe triple its lifespan. The method I was starting to lay out could be applied non-destructively to an active brain, cannibalizing and recycling GENOM's add-on circuitry, which -- purely by coincidence, of course -- would free the boomer's mind from all blocks, overrides and coercions in the process. I might even be able to improve general performance as well.
It wouldn't even be a terribly complex job. The problem was, it amounted to a couple of hours of brain surgery. It took too long, it needed to be performed by an engineer or at the least a well-trained tech, and... Well, you see where I'm going. If I were to free the entire population of boomers, I couldn't do it one boomer at a time. It simply would not work, for dozens of realistic reasons.
I spent the rest of the day toying with the idea of maybe redesigning the fusion nanites to do the job, but that turned out to be a blind alley, too. For one, they were too stupid by themselves. They needed a guiding intelligence. Second, GENOM was well aware of the dangers of having its own technology subverted, and all its boomers were fusion-proofed.
The obvious alternative was to design my own nanite to do the job, but the nanotech of this here-and-now was significantly more advanced than that of homeline. I was barely beyond the "Nanotechnology For Dummies" level here; forget about building a whole new nanite from scratch.
Along about three o'clock in the afternoon, I gave up on the subject for the day and decided to do something -- anything -- else instead. So I spent the rest of the day and well into the night taking apart, studying and ultimately rebuilding the gravity gun. And when I tired of that, I finished up a couple other small projects of mine that had been in the pipeline for a while.
Katherine Madigan lifted the handset of the scrambled telephone to her lips, punched a number in on the keypad, and spoke one word.
The alert sounded just as Leon began closing down his open files for the day. He gave an ironic half-grin to no one in particular, and reached for his coat.
"Daley!" he bellowed across the suddenly-galvanized squad room. "We've got ourselves a street party!"
"Already on it, Leon-chan," Daley responded from behind him. Leon turned to see him standing, palmtop in one hand, coat in the other. "Six combat boomers converging on Geo City Plaza," he said as the two started striding for the elevators. "We'll get there just ahead of the front line troops." He looked up and shot a mischievous look at Leon over the hand-held computer. "So, are you going to take the Loon up on his offer?"
Leon nodded curtly. "I've already made sure that the squads on duty all had a couple of BRS units each. We'll give the guy a chance." He glanced at his partner, and Daley was surprised by the serious look in his eyes. "One chance. Unofficially. If the casualty rate is notably lower..."
After almost six years of leading a high-powered vigilante group, Sylia Stingray had many ways to learn about an AD Police mobilization. Some, like the monitor tap Nene had placed on the ADP comm grid for her, and which fed into her bedroom, were quite straightforward. Some, like the pager which she wore in the Silky Doll, and which was operated by a dedicated link to an automated news service, were indirect and somewhat slower. Some were intended as extreme backups in the event that all her other lines of information were cut off.
It was as she rang up a customer's purchase that the pager went off. After making change and bidding the woman a good night, she withdrew the pager and checked its small screen to confirm that the ADP was indeed responding to a boomer incident. She nodded to herself. It was time to alert her sisters.
I was, as had become usual, putting in a lot of late hours at IDEC. I'd spent most of that day rebuilding the Doberman's gravgun into a crude antigravity system (documenting every step as I went), and I'd been in the middle of my second hour of fine- tuning it when my ADP alert daemon popped up. A set of boomers were on the loose in a commercial district a few kilometers away from the Tower. I grabbed my helmet and the bag I carried it in, keyed in the code for Simon and Garfunkel's "Homeward Bound", and found myself teleported back to my little shithole efficiency apartment.
It may have been shit, but it *was* home, as far as the song was concerned. For the moment.
There, I quickly changed into my full duty uniform, pulled my duster on over it, and ran out to my motorcycle. Less than three minutes after the alert had popped up on my screen, I was roaring my way through and around the evening traffic backups.
Lisa forced herself to act carefully and deliberately as she picked the lock to one of the roof access doors of the Shogakukan complex. With the excitement in the street, it had been simple enough to walk past the distracted security guard in the lobby and onto an elevator. Just a few more deft motions with the tools, and she would once again have her trademark aerial viewpoint. Even better, the publishing conglomerate's complex covered several blocks wrapping almost half of the way around the plaza which served as the entrance to Geo City; far more of it was actually *in* the underground arcology than above ground, in fact. Pedestrian bridges spanned many of the streets which ran between the complex's above-ground structures, their roofs giving her a convenient route from one building to another should the action move beyond the current battle line.
The lock unlatched with a loud "click!" and she grinned as she slid the picks back into her coat pocket.
*Somehow,* she thought as she slipped into the chill wind outside, *the fact that I'm doing this more for fun than for money makes it even more exciting.* She looked up at the broad, gibbous moon, visible in the clear sky, and took a deep breath, savoring the crisp scent of the cold nighttime air. *And maybe I can corner Doug before he vanishes. There's no doubt he's going to be here.*
She knelt at the edge of the building and lifted her camera to her eyes.
I got to ground zero just as the line of scrimmage was forming. Ground zero in this case was yet another broad plaza -- the city was rotten with them, a side effect of the planned rebuilding, I suppose. This particular example was broad and square, and in the center of it was a Bauhaus box of glass and steel inhabited entirely by escalators and transparent elevator shafts. Tastefully understated signs of blue block characters above the broad bank of doors announced "GEO CITY" in both English and Japanese. Any other night, they might have been brightly lit, but the only thing that illuminated at the moment was moonlight and the beams from the ADP halogen spots.
About 50 meters in front of the structure, six big, blue and ugly combat model boomers were busily engaged in the task of dismantling a pair of commuter buses and throwing the pieces in random directions. Several merrily-blazing piles of metal and rubber elsewhere around the plaza marked previous efforts, as did the shattered (and in some cases burning) facades of nearby buildings.
It occurred to me to wonder if this Geo City place were owned by one of GENOM's few competitors.
Wong and McNichol were there, bellowing at their people as the ADP forces poured out of their troop carriers. A flight of those stupid little helicopters buzzed by overhead. The boomers ignored the ADP forces except for the occasional warning shot at anyone who tried to get too close. Radio chatter that I'd overheard on my way there had indicated that they'd seemed to be focusing on property damage; while there had been casualties, the count was surprisingly low. That probably accounted for the high number of news crews already on site to cover this particular rampage.
I roared through the still-disorganized picket line the ADP was establishing and then pulled the bike through a 180-degree skid to stop on a dime in front of the two inspectors. To their credit, they didn't flinch. I dropped the turbine down to idle and shouted over the still-loud whine, "Do we have a deal, McNichol?"
He nodded curtly. "Yes. We'll try it your way today," he shouted back. "We don't have all that many of the restraint guns, but there should be enough. If it works, I'll do my best to make their use a permanent policy."
"Fair enough," I shouted back, and hopped off the cycle. "Safepark," I murmured to its computer, and the turbine howled as it sped off, riderless, through the ranks of astonished troops. I looked up to see the inspectors trading a look.
"Nah, just a fancy autopilot," I replied quickly. "See you later!" And with that, I bounded out towards the action.
"Doug!" Lisa grinned to herself and took a telephoto shot of him with Leon and Daley. Slowly, she crept along the edge of the building to keep him in sight.
As Daley watched the Loon hurtle toward the boomers with sense- defying six-meter leaps, Leon slid into the driver's seat of their patrol car and lifted the radio handset to his lips. "McNichol to all forces, attention," he declared. "The Loon will be engaging the boomers in an attempt to distract them. BRS troops deploy to the fore, fire as soon as they get in range. Heavy weapons, cover them but do *not* fire unless under direct attack. Repeat, heavy weapons, *do* *not* *fire* unless under direct attack. And try not to hit the Loon, guys, okay? He's on our side tonight, got it? Acknowledge!"
As the various squads counted off their acknowledgments, Leon stared out through the car's open door toward the arcology entrance. "Good luck," he whispered, shaking his head.
"<System. Combat mode on. 'Tubthumping.' Play.>" Nothing like a little insurance.
The moment the boomers caught sight of me, they immediately dropped what they were doing -- not that there was much left of the two buses by that time anyway. Popping out their flight systems, they took to the air and beelined right for me.
When I saw that, I realized three things. One, this was almost certainly a trap set for li'l ol' me. Two, I was going to tear Ohara a new one as soon as I got back to IDEC, because he was supposed to stop pulling this kind of shit. And three, I should maybe turn around and head right back to the ADP line if I were going to lead the boomers into firing range. So as soon as I hit the ground after my last leap, I spun on my toe and ran back full- speed towards the cops. I'd gotten to within maybe twenty meters or so of the line when the first ADP fusillade launched.
A few of the restraint thingies came suspiciously close to me, but I dodged them easily. Not that they would have done more than bowl me over, and maybe not even that; the way I understood it, they were a kind of EMP device, so they couldn't've hurt me. Not even my helmet -- it was too well shielded against that kind of thing. I used Hexe's lightning bolts as the baseline when designing those protections, and if the trademark attack of a weather goddess can't get through, no mortal-built device has a chance. Still, getting hit with one would have thrown me back into the hands of the boomers, and while I was confident I could go toe-to-toe with one (for a little while, at least), I did *not* want to be the target of a whole gang of them. Again.
Three of the boomers went down twitching, studded with black gooballs; the other three split up and fell back in different directions. I made a sudden right turn to run parallel to the line of ADP forces; my plan was to dash back in and play bait again, but I didn't know if the remaining trio would cooperate after seeing what had happened to their companions.
"Tacteam G1 to base," crackled through handset. "Target is *not* cooperating. He's moving too fast for the boomers to get a bead on him, and he's refusing to engage them hand-to-hand. And we already have three 65Cs down."
"What?" Madigan cried, her surprise shattering her control for a moment.
"Confirmed, base. It wasn't the target. ADP is using a new weapon, looks like blobs of tar. Units B2, B3, and B6 took direct hits and appear to be having epileptic fits."
"Damn!" she swore. "Restraint systems. I thought we got those things discredited and discarded years ago! Of all the times for the ADP to dig them out again..." She thought furiously for a moment. "G1, continue to follow the target."
"Acknowledged, base." There was another crackle, and then, "Um, base? Looks like we have a new complication."
They were leaping down from the top of a building on the edge of the plaza when I spotted them. A black VTOL aircraft of some sort had just dropped them off on the roof and was already vanishing into the night sky.
The Knight Sabers. Just what I needed -- Lady White and the High- Heel Gang would turn this operation into a bloodbath. Fluidbath. Whatever.
With a murmured command, I opened the ADP channel. "McNichol! Loon. We've got trouble -- the Knight Sabers are here. If they jump in with their usual M.O. ..."
McNichol was on the same wavelength as I was, and I'm not talking about the radio. "They'll open fire on the boomers, the boomers will shoot back, and guaranteed someone's going to get get hurt in the firefight." He sounded more than a little worried and concerned.
"Look, you can handle the last three boomers on your own, I think," I said. "Those restraint systems of yours look pretty damned effective. I'm going to lead the Knights away from the fight so it doesn't escalate." I was already creating, evaluating and discarding potential battle plans, sifting through courses of action until I found one I liked.
"You're going to what?" McNichol squawked, but I shut off the channel without another word. I had my plan.
Loon stopped short and glanced at the approaching Knight Sabers, placing himself foursquare in the path between them and the plaza. Then he turned to the watching police and news crews and pressed a button on the side of his helmet. "Ladies and gentlemen," he declared, his voice amplified to reach the entire human side of the conflict, "I'd like to dedicate my next song to those lovely crusaders for corporate peace, those brave hunters of runaway slaves, those freelance murderers whom we all know and love -- the Knight Sabers!" He fingered the button again, then gripped and turned the domes on the side of his helmet like knobs.
"System set mode split output," I said to the helmet computer the second they got within 30 meters of me. "System set external 'Fat-Bottomed Girls' set internal 'Firing Line'. System play!"
A moment later, a chorus of voices like a human pipe organ filled the street. As Daley started to chuckle and cough, Leon strained to understand the English lyrics:
"<Are you going to take me home tonight?
Ahhh, down beside that red firelight?
Are you going to let it all hang out?
Fat-bottomed girls, you make the rocking
world go 'round!
Fat-bottomed girls, you make the rocking
world go 'round!>""That's it," Daley murmured with a grin after recovering his composure. "He's dead meat."
In case it isn't obvious, my helmet's soundproof. Big cups of acoustically-dampening foam cover my ears to eliminate the possibility of unwanted outside noise interfering with the recordings I need for my metagift. There's an external microphone that feeds in sounds from around me, so I can have conversations and whatnot, but shut that off and I might as well be deaf. The acoustic insulation is that good. I rely on the small stereo speakers by my ears for all my hearing needs.
The external speakers, it should be obvious, are completely optional. I don't have to use them, and I have to physically turn them on when I do.
And they don't have to play the same thing as the internal speakers.
The computer in my helmet can run two different songs at once, and route them to different speakers. A phase-inverter circuit filters the external speakers out of the signal coming from the external mike, so I can leave that on and still hear what's going on around me, without interfering in whatever song I'm actually using.
That's what I was doing at that moment. The world heard a no- effect Queen song that I selected to be moderately insulting to the Knights. *I* heard Gossamer Axe's "Firing Line" -- an explicit song of heavy-metal challenge that *did* trigger my metatalent:
"<Are you surprised to see me
Standing here at your door?
Thought that it was all over between us, huh?
Thought you could forget about it all? I'm here
And I'm calling you out
So get your ass out here, boy,
'Cause it's time to get down
To the firing line!>""Come and get me, girls!" I trilled mockingly at the Knight Sabers, wiggling my butt at them and then slapping it. Then I ran out of the plaza in a direction that would take us all away from both the boomers and the ADP.
"That... that... that..." Nene sputtered, almost wordless in outrage after spending a moment puzzling out the meaning of the English words. "I do *not* have a fat bottom!" she shrieked.
Sylia's temper flared in a way it hadn't since she'd faced off against Mason. How dare he! She'd teach the smug bastard a lesson, she would! "After him!"
Around her, the Sabers, equipped with all their new weaponry, nodded grimly and followed.
"Damn it, Doug! Stand *still!*" Lisa growled as she scuttled along the rooftops after him. *God! Does he have a deathwish?* she thought furiously as she kept up her pursuit. *What was he thinking, calling the Sabers "slave hunters" in public? In front of the media, even?*
Behind her, some of the news crews in Geo City Plaza were trying to break down their setups and get mobile again. A few of the other stringers might already be on the road, trying to chase down the Sabers and their prey; Lisa had to make the best use of her communicator watch and her advantageous position on the roof to beat the other reporters to the scene.
She glanced up to see Sylia and Priss making a jet-assisted jump over the building in front of her. At least Doug seemed to be staying within the maze-like Shogakukan complex. For now.
"The target has left Geo City Plaza with the Knight Sabers in pursuit."
"The Knight Sabers are chasing the target out of the operation zone, base."
She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Would nothing go as planned? Who would have expected the Sabers to go after the Visitor rather than engage the boomers? It was so out of character as to be inexplicable. Still, she raged at herself internally for not foreseeing such a development.
Despite her anger at herself, though, she managed to keep her voice calm and level -- for the moment. "G1, follow and observe, but do not attack unless the Loon escapes pursuit. Acknowledge."
*There will have to be another attempt,* Katherine thought as the transceiver fell silent. *And next time, I must eliminate all possible complications.*
Silently thanking the ADP for its comprehensive and effective roadblock policies, I led the Knight Sabers deep into the maze of empty roads and interconnected buildings adjacent to Geo City. The entire area, save for the streetlights, was blacked out -- whether because of boomer damage or because some smart boy had shut down the power in case of boomer damage, I couldn't tell, but I didn't care. The lights and almost-full moon lit it well enough for my needs, and besides, I just wanted to get them away from the plaza and keep them away long enough for the ADP to finish the job they'd started. Already I'd heard another salvo of globguns, and I hoped that meant another two or more boomers had been saved from violent death.
I decided it was time to face the foe, and stopped in the center of an empty intersection. Overhead, the traffic light creaked on its pivot as the winter wind swung it back and forth. I cut the playback of both songs, shut off the external speakers, and reset the mode to single-output. The Knights had been flitting in and out of the area of effect of the song for the entire chase, and while they might be a little off-balance from the on-again/off- again emotional manipulation, it should fade before they reached me.
Which they were about to. I heard the jumpjets and that poink- poink-poink first, then they came into view. Lady White strode straight down the street at me. Blue and Olive dropped together from the roof of a nearby building. And Pink... Pink dove in from above, silhouetted for a moment against the moon. Her armor had been mated to something that looked like a small jet drone and a three-barrelled machine gun like those the ADP used on their stupid little choppers. I took a quick glance at the others. Blue had her big gauss needler rig again. Olive looked bigger and thicker in the torso than before. And White wore something that looked a lot like a flamethrower and was probably far worse.
Oh joy. I appeared to have been promoted to "extremely serious threat." Only one chance to end this without someone getting hurt (namely me). "<System, 'Under My Thumb.' Play,>" I murmured. As the Rolling Stones kicked in, I turned the PA back on and said, "Ladies, let's talk." Then I focused all my will on Lady White.
"<Under my thumb
The girl who once had me down
Under my thumb
The girl who once pushed me around It's down to me
The difference in the clothes she wears
Down to me, the change has come,
She's under my thumb.>"Lady White stopped short and Blue and Olive came to a halt behind and to either side of her. Pink landed, the wings on her fancy backpack thingie folding partway down behind her as she joined her compatriots. White looked at me. "Okay, we'll talk," she replied, but I could already hear the strain in her voice. This was going to be a close one. It was a pity I couldn't get an area effect out of it, but it was the only explicit full-spectrum mind control song I had. Best keep it simple and straightforward.
And *no* comedy. I valiantly resisted the urge to wave my hand and say, "I'm not the metahuman you're looking for."
"There's no reason for us to fight, you know," Sangnoir said as they stood facing him in the middle of the street.
"So you say," Sylia ground out. She wanted to agree with him; deep within her she felt a powerful, almost overwhelming desire to do so. But at the same time Sylia knew she had very good reasons to disagree. Trying to voice them was all but impossible; the noncommittal response she forced out was the best compromise she could slip past the compulsion. It was a disturbing, unnerving sensation... if she lost her focus on her contrary reasons for even a moment, she all but forgot she even had them.
"Wouldn't be better if we all just went home now?" He raised his hands in a pleading gesture. "You don't need to fight me or the boomers in the plaza."
"That may be the case," Sylia slowly forced herself to say, barely able to force down the powerful urge to cheerfully and enthusiastically agree with him and do what he said. She began to fear it was a losing fight, and redoubled her concentration.
"I thought we were going to take him down," Priss growled over the private channel.
"Sylia?" Nene said, doubt and surprise at her leader's words plain in her tone.
"Well, then, why don't you go? NOW," Sangnoir declared, a sudden intense urgency in his voice. The indescribable pressure rolled a little further over the edges of her will.
"Yes, yes, you may be right," Sylia found herself murmuring -- and believing.
"It's him! He's doing something to her!" Priss swung the barrels of her rail cannons to bear on Sangnoir and gripped their handles firmly. "Whatever you're doing, stop it now!" she bellowed.
"Yeah!" Nene carefully aimed her Vulcan at his chest. "What she said!"
Overhead, Lisa froze at the sight of the moonlit tableau and the challenge: Priss and Nene, their weapons trained on Doug, who stood maybe ten meters from them; Sylia, her posture betraying an uncharacteristic confusion, a bit closer; Linna, almost at Sylia's side, unmoving.
"Shit," she whispered even as she raised the camera to her eye again.
"I'm not doing anything, ladies." Inside my helmet I grinned while mentally crossing my fingers behind my back. "Maybe your boss just changed her mind."
Damn. I'd been worried about leaving her uncontrolled. Oh well. Thanking Lady Blue for her kind warning, I threw myself into a back somersault as she and Pink opened up on me. The spikes from Blue's gauss cannons missed me handily, but Pink was clever enough to walk her machine gun fire right into my trajectory. My field deflected a lot of it, and my armor intercepted most of the rest, but I had to stifle a cry of pain when a few of the bullets slammed into my flesh. The burning impacts stitched their way across my body and knocked me out of my clean, neat arc and into a sprawling heap in the street.
Even as I tumbled to a halt along the asphalt, I inventoried my wounds by feel. Pink had gotten both of my arms and one leg -- clean punctures or simple creases from what I could tell; and thank god the punctures had all missed bone. I'd have to wait for a moment when I could look to see if she'd hit any major veins or arteries, but I didn't feel like I was hemorhaging. (I've taken such wounds before; I would know, and quickly.) I certainly hurt like hell, but it wouldn't hold me down -- I've kept going with far worse.
Blue and Pink darted in to cover me with their weapons again. "Not bad, Pinky," I rasped out as I rolled to my hands and knees and focused part of my mind on suppressing the pain of my wounds. "You actually hit me. I'm impressed." Olive approached more cautiously. I would have thought that as their primary hand-to- hand specialist she couldn't add too much to the ranged firepower aimed at me, but then that new heavier torso armor of hers opened up like a pair of double doors to reveal a familiar-looking array of focusing lenses. More joy. "Just remember, though, when the time comes," I went on. "*I* tried to do this nonviolently. *You* drew first blood, not me."
"<It's down to me, yes it is
The way she does just what she's told
Down to me, the change has come
She's under my thumb.>"Behind the three of them, White shook herself free of the song's influence and my suggestions. I could feel her considerable will power reverberate back up the channels of magic as she seized control of her own mind again. Ah, well. I wasn't going to get much use out of the song now. I shrugged to myself and shut down the playback. "Hmm," I continued, a thoughtful tone infusing my voice. "If *she's* Pinky, does that make you the Brain, Blue?"